Weekly news
Today is the 3rd of June, 2022. Here's some news to read, and yesterday’s visuals from my Instagram.
From chaos at British airports to Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubelium and European tricks to make the energy resources cheaper despite the market - some small and big news, but unfortunately nothing reassuring that this summer will bring peace and clarity in our lives.
Let’s start with the biggest news and move to the less popular topics. Though Ukraine stays on the front pages I can’t touch the subject for obvious reasons, so I will move to quite joyous event - a four-day celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s seven decades on the throne that began on Thursday with a birthday parade known as “Trooping the Colour”, closed with a flyover from the Royal Air Force. Here’re some links to read and to watch on the subject:
In Photos: Queen Elizabeth II Celebrates Her Platinum Jubilee (The New York Times)
Boris Johnson booed as he arrives at St Paul’s for platinum jubilee event (The Guardian)
Prince Harry and Meghan are now very much second row royals (The Telegraph)
Piers Morgan defends viral tweet about ‘global laughing stocks’ Harry and Meghan (The New York Post)
Prince Louis steals the show on the Platinum Jubilee balcony (The Telegraph)
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in 70 stories (The Telegraph)
UK Royal Family: Who is in it and what does the Queen do? (BBC)
Platinum Jubilee: An unspoken transition has begun (BBC)
Why the Queen is the last Royal icon (BBC)
The imaginary lives of the Queen (BBC)
On Thursday I posted a clip from BBC documentary about the Queen’s crowns. And to my surprise I discovered that the topic is quite painful because of the symbolism - of the Queen, of the monarchy and of the crown’s history. What used to be a normal historical discussion about the past that shouldn’t be repeated in the future became a cancel culture argumentation list leading to the hate and to the denial of the past as a time when people loved, lived, fought for good and for bad reasons to make nowadays what they are. That includes the opportunity for many to speak up and to live in a strong independent country. It's interesting how we easily point fingers into the past, talk on social platforms and manifest bright ideas, fight monuments and street names, and do almost nothing to change ourselves personally, stopping someone from spreading hate and racism, abuse and domestic violence. Those are just my humble thoughts to conclude the subject.
Bank holidays in the UK revealed a problem with British airports and airlines that needed to cancel enormous amounts of flights, some of which were overbooked. It's the second time after Easter, though experts fear it will take the whole summer to restore pre-COVID airport’s staff quantity and quality, and the regulator refuses to allow airlines to hire foreign workers. At the same time the amount of new airlines that were founded during the COVID is higher than the amount of closed companies. One of such newborns is Norwegian airline Norse Atlantic Airways - a hero of BBC story: “The new airlines betting flying is about to take off”.
The interesting part in all that is not just the problem with limited personnel, but also the fact that no one calculated the part of Russian civil aviation, specifically Aeroflot (one of the biggest companies that used to be on the market), that was lost as a partner on many routes, and the rising prices on fuel that should have made the budget of low coasters just a tiny bit tighter, no? I’m just saying… Maybe it’s really only COVID’s and lousy British airports/airlines planning fault.
Speaking of energy, the EU’s 6th package of anti-Russian sanctions was finally published. The European Union on Thursday gave its final approval to new sanctions on Russian oil (about 90% of it will be cut in the next 7-8 months) plus new banks were cut from SWIFT and sanctioned, that includes the National Settlement Depository which is part of the Moscow Burse. The lists become more and more weird in the choice of targets. Among the new sanctioned businessmens is the founder of Yandex, one of the major search engines, the main and unbeat competitor of Google on the Russian speaking market. Like it wasn’t enough for Yandex to be in opposition to the state companies that tried to get control over it for years, it was punished for being successful.
The news itself raised the oil prices but then OPEC+ announced that they agreed to accelerate oil production so it dropped for a moment to restore on the next day at the same $116 a barrel (Brent). As far as only Saudi Arabia can actually increase their production that fast, that means that Biden found the right words to pursue the state that he swore to make a paria among the others to take a step towards the USA. Though officially the country won’t be alone, “positive contributions of the UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq” were accepted as well. Russia stated that they support the decision to regulate the prices on the market.
Though for Russia it should be pretty bad news, well, enough to keep the statements for themselves. My guess is that there was a solution for overcoming the sanctions so Russia would keep at the existing volumes of production at least. Right now it’s not even equal to announced norms, it’s less. Only the rising oil prices compensate for the shortage caused by American and European sanctions.
Other articles on the oil prices and the EU initiatives to hold them from further growth:
G7 calls on OPEC to play key role to ease global energy supplies (Reuters)
Could a cartel of large energy consumers cut oil and gas prices? (The Guardian)
And couple of article on the renewable energy plans:
Ukraine war, pandemic set to speed Europe's green energy transition, report finds (Reuters)
Can gravity batteries solve our energy storage problems? (BBC)
And, finally, state of the European economy and world economy:
Euro zone May business growth robust but outlook darkens (Reuters)
Pasta, bread and crisps among biggest UK budget food price increases (The Guardian)
Davos 2022 meeting was a missed opportunity over globalisation (The Guardian)
Speaking of the Russian economy: Citibank didn’t execute the Eurobonds payments in time, so technically creditors didn’t receive their interest when they should. Russian Central bank changed the agent but now the agent is among sanctioned banks. Nevertheless it published the statement according to which all the creditors who had problems can address directly to get their solution.
Sanctions that lead Russia to technical default as a result cause more questions about the sanity of the economical system that suddenly became a political battle field and losses of all the involuntary players in the new game are rising. Country is not just able to pay but willing to do it. Creditors' interests are on the contrary totally excluded from the equation by political lobbies while for the country’s economy technical default won’t change a thing. Russia is already excluded from ratings. Formally insurance of the investor’s deals will cost much more so theoretically it will shrink the amount of investments into the economy. The thing is it’s already down. So it’s just a formal reputation matter and future after the sanctions are cancelled.
Shorty, to American news. The obvious headliner is gun control and gun policy problems. I won’t get into details because it’s quite complicated and a very specific issue that other countries simply don’t have. Here’s a good opinion of the nature of it and the nature of mass shooting in the USA: “America is steeped in violence. And the roots of that violence go deep” (The Guardian).
Tesla and Musk. Either Elon Musk got a star disease somewhere on his way to the Twitter deal, or media fell in love with him, but there were two news on the front pages during the last two days:
Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Tesla Execs: Return to the Office or Get Out (Bloomberg)
Tesla shares slide after Musk reportedly flags cutting 10% of staff (Financial Times).
Then two opinions on Ukraine were published in the New York Times, one by President Biden:
President Biden: What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine (The New York Times)
The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame (The New York Times)
And finally two pieces of news that I couldn’t skip: Clinton’s part in the allegations of Trump. She lied that there was a connection between Trump and a Russian bank.
And finally Amber vs Depp is over, Depp won. Though it leaves a precedent for domestic violence survivors that can feel frustrated over the results of the court:
The last one of the most curious: Canada legalised small possessions of cocaine and other drugs, trying to decriminalise those.
I finish here because there's a lot to take in and I wish us great holidays.
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If you like F! Simulacrum and want to help make it even better, give me feedback, point out factual errors or typos, or send me news subjects you want to describe. My email: o.zakharova@adlifestudio.ru
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