Author: HeraldStar

Standard Chartered (STAN.L), opens new tab on Friday pledged to cut the emissions linked to the bonds it sells for oil and gas companies and will press ahead with its net-zero strategy, in contrast with other lenders who are reassessing their climate plans. The London-listed bank plans to reduce by 26.9% the polluting emissions associated with bond deals it arranges for oil and gas companies by 2030, it said as it announced an 18% annual profit jump and $1.5 billion share buyback. Most large banks have targets for reducing emissions associated with their lending, but only a handful have set so-called facilitated emissions. Campaigners…

The U.S. government’s foreign aid freeze has upended the supply chain for medical products crucial for fighting diseases including HIV and malaria in some of the world’s poorest countries, and life-threatening gaps could persist for months, according to two sources familiar with the sector. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) usually places around $600 million of orders annually for products such as medicines, diagnostic tests and equipment like bed nets, as part of one of its biggest health supply contracts including HIV, malaria and reproductive health. But the freeze has put orders and forecasts, particularly those made months in advance, on…

New Zealand said the Chinese navy conducted a live-fire exercise in international waters near the Pacific nation on Saturday, a day after it held a similar drill between Australia and New Zealand that forced airlines to divert flights. “Reporting from the New Zealand Defence Force that the Chinese naval Task Group has advised of a second window for live firing activity, on Saturday afternoon,” a spokesperson for Defence Minister Judith Collins said in a statement. Personnel on New Zealand Navy frigate Te Kaha observed live rounds fired from a Chinese vessel’s main gun, the statement said, adding that the task…

Tunisian President Kais Saied on Saturday called for the law governing the central bank to be amended, raising concerns the lender will lose its independence and of direct government intervention in monetary policy. Saied said in a meeting with central bank Governor Zouhair Nouri that “it is time to change the 2016 law” that granted the bank power over monetary policy, reserves and gold. “We want a national central bank, not as others wanted it based on dictates from abroad,” he added, in a video published by the presidency. In October, dozens of Tunisian lawmakers proposed a bill that would strip the…

Italian Federica Brignone won a women’s World Cup giant slalom on home snow in Sestriere on Friday as U.S. ski great Mikaela Shiffrin finished 25th on her return to the discipline after a crash in Vermont last November. New Zealand’s Alice Robinson was second, after setting the fastest time in the first run, and Thea Louise Stjernesund of Norway finished third. The top two was the same as at this month’s world championships. Shiffrin did not race the giant slalom at those championships in Saalbach, Austria, after deciding she was not mentally ready. Still chasing a record-extending 100th World Cup win, the American suffered…

Tiger Woods will miss a TGL match for the first time next week, according to the lineups revealed on Friday by the tech-infused indoor golf league he co-founded based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The decision opens the door for Woods, who withdrew from last week’s Genesis Invitational that began nine days after the death of his mother, to play in his hometown PGA Tour event — the Cognizant Classic — in Palm Beach Gardens. The deadline to commit to the Cognizant Classic field is 5 p.m. ET (2200 GMT) on Friday. Woods participated in each of his TGL team’s first three matches and his…

The British government on Friday presented plans for reforms of its flagship Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme to remove planning barriers and bring green energy projects, especially offshore wind farms, online faster. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said it is proposing to relax the eligibility criteria on planning consent for fixed-bottom offshore wind and to increase the CfD contract term beyond the current 15 years. CfDs are government-backed price guarantees for developers for the electricity produced. It also wants to change the way budgets for offshore wind are set and published, including allowing the government to…

The European Union, Britain and climate-vulnerable developing countries have raised concerns about delays to the next global assessment of climate change, by the U.N.’s climate science panel, after the U.S. administration withdrew from the process. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. body which brings together climate scientists from nearly 200 countries to assess the planet’s health, will meet in Hangzhou, China, next week to plan its next global report. “It will be vital that all working group contributions to the Seventh Assessment Report are prepared in time,” the EU’s climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, and ministers from 17 countries including Britain,…

The leaders of the three biggest centrist parties in Austria’s parliament said on Saturday they were confident they would reach a deal to form a coalition government without the far right, almost five months after a new lower house was elected. A deal between the conservative People’s Party (OVP), Social Democrats (SPO) and liberal Neos would bring to an end the longest wait for a new Austrian government since World War Two. “I am very confident that in the common ground that we have found, we will manage to finalize a coalition government agreement,” conservative People’s Party leader Christian Stocker said in…

The man arrested after a Spanish tourist was stabbed at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial on Friday was a 19-year-old Syrian refugee, Berlin prosecutors said, a day before a national election in which concerns over migration are expected to boost the far-right AfD party. Motivated by the Middle Eastern conflict, the suspect appears to have been planning to kill Jews for several weeks which is why he chose this location, the prosecutors said in a statement. Police arrested the suspect, whose hands and trousers were smeared with blood, shortly after the stabbing on Friday evening. The 30-year old Spanish tourist underwent emergency…