Ruling on downed Malaysian plane. Russia is responsible for shooting down a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane over Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 people, the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) ruled. The plane came under fire during combat between pro-Russian separatists and Ukraine’s armed forces. Australia and the Netherlands—whose citizens were on the flight—want Russia to enter talks on reparations, the Dutch foreign minister said. Moscow does not recognize the ICAO’s authority and has called the allegations “fake.”
Colombia’s BRI ambitions. Colombia plans to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), President Gustavo Petro said yesterday during a visit to the country. More than twelve Latin American countries have joined, but Colombia had until now held out; it has been one of the biggest recipients of U.S. aid in the region. Now, Bogotá seeks to “expand our options to other parts of the world,” its foreign minister said.
The climate adaptation economy. Companies that respond to the physical risks associated with climate change made more than $1 trillion in combined revenue last year, the London Stock Exchange Group said in a study. Its sustainable investment research director said that the green economy “is now so big… it’s not going to implode just like that,” regardless of potential policy choices by national governments.
U.S.-China trade climbdown. Following yesterday’s announcement of broad bilateral tariff relief, Trump also ordered the reduction of tariffs on low-value parcels shipped from China. Those duties had targeted Chinese e-commerce companies. Meanwhile, China removed a ban on airlines accepting deliveries of Boeing planes, unnamed sources told Bloomberg. Boeing and China’s aviation authority did not immediately comment.
India-Pakistan talks. Top military officials from both countries spoke yesterday and agreed to continue talks on shoring up Saturday’s ceasefire. Both sides agreed to gradually reduce troop deployments from their border areas. Pakistan said its airspace was open yesterday, while India said civilian flights at more than thirty airports in the country’s north were also functioning.
Rama’s victory in Albania. Albanian leftist Prime Minister Edi Rama is on track for a fourth term, according to the preliminary results of Sunday’s election. Rama campaigned on moving forward with reforms that would bring Albania closer to European Union membership. His party was estimated to have won eighty-two legislative seats, well above the majority needed to govern alone.
Afrikaners arrive in U.S. as refugees. Fifty-nine white South Africans arrived in the United States under a new U.S. policy that grants them refugee status. Trump falsely said they were victims of “genocide,” while South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said they “did not fit the definition of a refugee.” Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, called the policy “a racialized immigration program masquerading as refugee resettlement.” The Trump administration has suspended other refugee resettlements.
Uranium harvesting. A team of Chinese scientists developed an electrochemical method to extract 100 percent of the uranium from seawater, they wrote in a paper in Nature Sustainability. Some existing physical methods of extraction absorb less than 10 percent of the uranium found in water. A chemical expert at the University of North Texas told New Scientist that the method is “a significant step forward,” although there was “a long way to go” before its large-scale use.
