OPEC announces big cuts
Saudi Arabia and Russia, acting as leaders of the energy group OPEC Plus, yesterday agreed to cut two million barrels of oil per day in an attempt to raise prices, countering US and European attempts to choke off the huge revenue Moscow derives from crude oil sales. The cuts represent about 2% of global oil production and are the first in more than two years.
By reducing production, OPEC Plus is also seeking to make a statement to energy markets about the group’s cohesion in the Ukraine war and its willingness to act quickly to defend, analysts said. price. The White House has criticized the decision, describing it in a statement as “short-sighted”, given the global economic situation.
The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, has fallen throughout the summer, having risen more than 1.5% after the meeting, extending gains recorded in recent days and bringing prices back to levels last seen in mid-September.
Analysis: OPEC’s move expose the failure of President Biden’s flawed foreign policy over the summer with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia — and signaled the limited influence of the United States over its Gulf allies.
A new European forum
The European Political Community, the brainchild of 44 countries of French President Emmanuel Macron, will convened today for the first time in Prague. It includes non-EU members such as Israel, Norway and Ukraine and excludes global superpowers such as the US and Russia.
The formation of the group is part of the French president’s long-standing mission to build a united Europe with independent strength. Macron believes that the war in Ukraine will continue beyond winter: Given this perspective, a collective strategy to confront the energy crisis is particularly convincing. Whether that strategy will push Europe away from fossil fuels remains unclear.
Macron fears that Europe risks becoming an outsider of history, as he says, by losing control of its destiny in the 21st century. The war in Ukraine has sharpened these concerns; America, essentially, is energy independent, and Europe, no, did not experience the war in the same way.
Books: Today’s meeting will open with a speech by Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who is expected to press for accelerated membership of NATO and the EU.
Brexit: Liz Truss, the British prime minister, will also attend the forum. He even offered to hold the next meeting, which Macron wanted within six months.
Russia attacks deep into Ukraine
Losing ground to counter-attacking forces of Ukraine, Russia attack targets far from the front line yesterday, hit the city of Bila Tserkva, about 50 miles south of Kyiv, with a flurry of news coverage of what Ukrainian officials say are self-destructing drones supplied by Iran.
The target of the attack is unclear, but since September, when Ukrainian warplanes began to push Russian forces out of occupied territory in the northeast, Moscow has targeted power plants. , power lines and water works with long-range weapons. Officials said the attacks on Bila Tserkva affected infrastructure.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin yesterday announced the signing of more than 400 pages of legislation with the aim of formally annexing four regions of Ukraine – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia – although the Russian military does not control the territory.
Assassination of Daria Dugina: US intelligence agency believe that parts of the Ukrainian government allowed the attack near Moscow in August that killed the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist. American officials said they had no prior knowledge of the operation and later warned Ukrainian officials.
LATEST NEWS
Around the world
The headscarves that Iranian women are forced to wear have long been a sign of government power, writes Amanda Taub in The Interpreter. Now, women-led protests have turned the veil into a symbol of a conflicting vision of the country’s future.
SPORTS NEWS FROM ATHLETIC
Will a stalemate take away Spain’s best generation of female footballers? A group of 15 players signed a letter saying they don’t want to be chosen until the team’s coaching staff changed.
World Cup 2030 contractors: The country, or countries, that will stage the 2030 World Cup finals will be chosen at the FIFA Congress in 2024. Let’s take a look. an early look at which countries are in the frame.
ARTS AND IDEAS
Fall in love with bebop
Think of a whistle player dashing through a dizzying line in a swing. The actual cymbals are smoking. It’s bebop. It is the music that Jean-Michel Basquiat painted, the foundation of jazz theory that music students are taught as they learn to improvise, and a distinctive American genre forged in urban life. postwar blacks.
Jon Faddis, a trumpeter, suggests Start your bebop journey with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. “Parker pointed bebop; Gillespie, a wonderful teacher, imparted this complex musical style to others,” he wrote. For saxophonist and singer Camille Thurman, Parker is the “epic epitome” of the genre: “His improvisations are creative, limitless, free, daring, transcendental, and unexpected. unexplainably broken”.
Natalie Weiner writes: Scat singing may not be a huge innovation, but it is a core part of child development. Today, Betty Carter’s 1958 tic and riff sound all too familiar and the norm. However, the “almost immeasurable amount of notes” she crams into just a few minutes of “You’re Driving Me Crazy” was groundbreaking at a time when “female singers” were looking for Look for soft, mellow background music styles, adds Weiner.
For more: Preservation Hall is a white-owned and white-run New Orleans jazz institution with a self-described mission to “preserve, protect, and perpetuate” one of the great heritage of black culture. the nation’s greatest. What does its owner, Ben Jaffe, owe to the community?
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to cook?
