The Swedish state will not take a stake in battery maker Northvolt and the company's future must be determined by its private owners, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a press conference on Monday.
Northvolt last week announced it would shrink its operations and cut jobs, sparking fears that Europe's best shot at a home-grown electric vehicle battery champion may stall.
"There is no doubt that we are committed to Sweden being a good place for new technology that is needed in the green transition, but it is not relevant for the Swedish state to step in and take a stake," Kristersson said.
Northvolt did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The prime minister's statement came in reply to a question on whether the Swedish government would participate in a potential financial rescue of Northvolt.
"The ball is in the company's court now," said Kristersson, who leads Sweden's conservative Moderate Party, adding that it was up to Northvolt's owners to develop the group.
"We don't involve ourselves in the business plans of individual companies but we do want to be a good place for this kind of industry," he said.
Northvolt on Sept. 9 said it would suspend parts of the production at its gigafactory in Sweden and that the planned construction of plants in Germany, Canada and southern Sweden faced delays as the company scales back its rapid expansion.
With Volkswagen among its owners, Northvolt has led a wave of European startups investing tens of billions of dollars in battery production to serve the continent's automakers as they switch from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles.
But growth in EV demand is moving at a slower pace than some in the industry had projected, and competition remains stiff from China, which controls 85% of global battery cell production, International Energy Agency data shows.
A Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran is set to appear in U.S. court on Monday on charges of scheming to assassinate an American politician in retaliation for the killing of Iran's Revolutionary Guards top commander Qassem Soleimani.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say Asif Merchant, 46, spent time in Iran before traveling to the United States to recruit people for the plot.
Merchant told a confidential informant he also planned to steal documents from one target and organize protests in the United States, prosecutors said.
The defendant named Donald Trump as a potential target but had not conceived the scheme as a plan to assassinate the former president, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Court papers do not name the alleged targets, and no attacks were made. As president, Trump had in 2020 approved the drone strike on Soleimani.
There are no suggestions that Merchant was tied to an apparent assassination attempt on Trump at his Florida golf course on Sunday, or a separate shooting of the Republican presidential candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania in July.
Merchant faces one count of attempting to commit terrorism across national boundaries and one count of murder for hire.
He is expected to enter a plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Levy in Brooklyn at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT). Merchant was arrested in Texas on July 15.
Iran's mission to the United Nations said in August that the "modus operandi" described in Merchant's court papers ran contrary to Tehran's policy of "legally prosecuting the murder of General Soleimani."
Mike Pyle, who had served as an economic adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, will return to BlackRock as deputy head of its Portfolio Management Group (PMG), according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on Monday.
The unit, which has $3.2 trillion in assets under management, encompasses multiple asset classes, including fundamental and systematic fixed-income and equities.
Pyle served as envoy to the G7, G20, and APEC summits and was most recently U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics, leading the Biden administration's international economic policy efforts for nearly two years. The role ended in February.
He left the world's largest asset manager in 2021 after serving in key roles in its investment institute and multi-asset strategies and solutions units.
Pyle's appointment is effective Wednesday, the memo said.
Assets managed by BlackRock hit a record $10.65 trillion in the second quarter due to stronger equity markets and higher inflows into the company's exchange-traded funds.
ThreeApple Watcheshave received approval for detecting sleep apnea, just in time for today’s launch of the feature inwatchOS 11.
The Federal Drug Administration approval was able to be granted swiftly on the basis that the way Apple is doing it is “substantially equivalent” to methods already approved by the FDA
The health feature will be available on the new Apple Watch Series 10, but also the older Series 9 and Ultra 2.
What is sleep apnea?
Sleep apnea is a potentially serious disorder in which your breathing is interrupted while sleeping. Although these interruptions are too brief to be dangerous in themselves, they disrupt sleep, which is associated with both physical and mental health risks.
The most common form is known as obstructive sleep apnea, which is when the throat muscles collapse and block the flow of air into the lungs.
Sleep apnea detection with the Apple Watch
Traditionally, sleep apnea is detected by an overnight stay in a sleep clinic while hooked up to a variety of instruments. Alternatively, suspected sufferers can be given a simpler device to wear overnight at home, with the results captured for later diagnosis.
The Apple Watch instead uses the built-in accelerometer to detect movements indicative of sleep disturbance. Here’s what Apple says about it:
Sleep is an important area of health as it impacts a person’s overall physical and mental wellbeing. Sleep apnea is a prevalent disorder in which breathing momentarily stops during sleep, preventing the body from getting enough oxygen. The condition is estimated to impact more than 1 billion people worldwide, and in most cases, goes undiagnosed. If left untreated, it can have important health consequences over time, including increased risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and cardiac issues.
Breathing Disturbances is an innovative new Apple Watch metric that uses the accelerometer to detect small movements at the wrist associated with interruptions to normal respiratory patterns during sleep. Every 30 days, Apple Watch will analyse breathing disturbance data and notify users if it shows consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea so they can speak to their doctor about next steps, including potential diagnosis and treatment.
Because overall quality of sleep is important, Breathing Disturbances can also be used to assess restfulness of sleep. Breathing Disturbances can be influenced by alcohol, medications, sleep position, and more. Users can view their nightly Breathing Disturbances in the Health app, where they are classified as elevated or not elevated, and can be viewed over a one-month, six-month, or one-year period.
For more informed conversations with their healthcare providers, users can export a PDF that shows when sleep apnea may have occurred, three months of breathing disturbance data, and additional information. Educational articles are also available within the Health app to help users learn more about sleep apnea.
The sleep apnea notification algorithm was developed using advanced machine learning and an extensive data set of clinical-grade sleep apnea tests. The feature was then validated in a clinical study — unprecedented in size for sleep apnea technology. In the clinical validation study, every participant identified by the algorithm had at least mild sleep apnea.
Which Apple Watches can detect sleep apnea?
The new feature is available as part of watchOS 11, being released today, and will work on three Watches:
BP said on Monday it plans to sell its U.S. onshore wind energy business, which has interests in ten operating onshore wind energy assets across seven states.
The company intends to integrate onshore renewable power development into Lightsource BP, Europe's largest solar energy developer, which BP plans to fully acquire.
BP said it will launch the sale process for its wind assets shortly.
Several offshore wind companies have cancelled or sought to renegotiate power contracts for planned U.S. projects in the past year, citing soaring materials costs, high interest rates, and supply chain disruptions.
Last month, Danish renewable energy group Orsted reported 3.9 billion Danish crowns ($581.59 million) in impairment losses for the second quarter, partly due to delays in a major U.S. offshore wind project.
Perhaps the most interesting angle to attempted Trump assassin Ryan Routh's recent history in his Ukraine connection. We documented that when he went to Ukraine to recruit for its International Legion in 2022 he was a Western mainstream media darling for a time, having been quoted on behalf of the cause to get more foreign fighters thrown into the battle against Russia by a who's who of major media sources from FT to Newsweek to the NY Times.
But when he arrived in Ukraine, according to these media reports, the 58-year old Routh himself was considered too old to fight alongside the Ukrainian army. "So plan B," Routh described to one outlet, "was to come to Kiev and promote the idea of many others coming to join the International Legion. We need thousands of people here to fight alongside Ukrainians."
"There are about 190 countries on our planet, and if the governments are not officially sending soldiers here, then we civilians should pick up this torch and make it happen," he described. He had told Newsweek in a video interview from Ukraine that the war with Russia was as simple as "good vs. evil" and essentially the same as good guys and bad guys in the Hollywood movies Americans grew up with. It was not a gray conflict, he described, but "black and white".
In March of 2022, just a month into the Russian invasion, he tweeted that everyone around the globe should be willing to volunteer and "fight and die" in Ukraine. Still, much of his time was reportedly spent in a hotel room in the far western city of Lviv.
Among the more bizarre aspects to his campaigning on behalf of the Ukrainian military's foreign legion were his efforts to recruit US-trained Afghan special soldiers to go to Ukraine's front lines. The initiative appeared so large in scale (given Routh was seeking to transfer hundreds, or even thousands, of Afghan fighters - according to his words) - that one commentator questions in light of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump: "Who was he working with in the US government that was allowing him to do this?"
In a 2023 interview with the NY Times Routh openly displayed his proclivity toward violent acts by threatening to shoot his critics, and the Times featured the quote almost as if lionizing his commitment to defending Ukraine:
In a telephone interview with The New York Times in 2023, when Mr. Routh was in Washington, he spoke with the self-assuredness of a seasoned diplomat who thought his plans to support Ukraine’s war effort were sure to succeed. But he appeared to have little patience for anyone who got in his way. When an American foreign fighter seemed to talk down to him in a Facebook message he shared with The New York Times, Mr. Routh said, "he needs to be shot."
Surely visibility like this put him on the federal government's radar... or given Washington's pro-Ukraine euphoria US officials were possibly even helping him in some way.
He had received so much media attention also apparently as head of the International Volunteer Center in Ukraine. Importantly, he has boasted of having "had partners meeting with [Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense] every week and still have not been able to get them to agree to issue one single visa." This raises the question of the degree of his involvement with US government officials at the time.
The Times had documented that Routh planned to move volunteers "in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine" - and claimed that many had expressed interests. He further boasted of breaking or at least bending foreign countries' laws in some cases. "We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country," he told NY Times. He announced on Facebook at one point, "Soldiers, please do not call me. We are still trying to get Ukraine to accept Afghan soldiers and hope to have some answers in the coming months… please have patience."
He also recounted some of this experience in his self-published book, still available on Amazon, which is titled "Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity."
As if all of this weren't shady enough, raising a myriad of questions over who in the US government knew what and when of the future would-be Trump shooter, he had connections with Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Brigade (often referenced by its earlier name Azov Battalion).
For a brief background review of Azov, even mainstream media has long grudgingly admitted that "in response to the neo-Nazi ideology of the group's founders, the US had banned the regiment from using American weapons in 2014." But the State Department more recently claimed it found "no evidence" that the extremist militant group has committed human rights violations or war crimes (in which case US law would prohibit providing weapons or training). This after President Volodymyr Zelensky himself has long been boosting the reputation Azov commanders inpublic appearances.
The US State Department in June of this year announced that it finally lifted a longtime ban on giving weapons and training to the notorious group. All the while, Azov's members have never been shy about sporting Nazi-inspired patches.
As of Monday, and with all of these deep Ukraine connections made evident with regard to Ryan Routh, the Zelensky government as well as Azov Brigade are attempting some serious PR damage control. But in the process, their statements actually serve to confirm Routh's connections to the neo-Nazi outfit.
Meanwhile, a video appeared on social media linking Routh to the Azov Brigade, claiming he participated in a 2022 event to support the unit's Mariupol brigade.
The Azov Brigade said the event was a peaceful demonstration open to all and that Routh was never part of the unit.
"We would like to officially state that Ryan Wesley Routh has no connection to Azov and has never had any connection to Azov," the unit said in a statement on X.
So they are literally doing the "mostly peaceful" line. And the statement from Azov Brigade continues with an attempt to blame all of this on Russia: "We believe that the spread of the narrative about the possible connection between Azov and Ryan Wesley Routh is playing along with Russian propaganda and discredits the 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov of the National Guard of Ukraine and the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine in general."
And yet, below is an example of something Routh posted to his social media. The GrayZonereported on it before it was deleted by Facebook administrators, presumably amid the FBI/Secret Service investigation: An official Ukrainian military enlistment form Routh posted on his Facebook page, which administrators have deleted.
But one thing is still indisputable based on the mounting piles of public evidence. As geopolitical analyst Andrew Korybko points out, "The suspect is a Ukro-maniac who’d been radicalized by the Mainstream Media into traveling to Kiev, trying to join the 'International Legion'..."
There’s no way that the earlier mentioned American “deep state” had no idea who Routh was after he’d already traveled to Kiev to try to join the “International Legion” and then openly told the New York Times about his plans to recruit Afghan soldiers that fled to Pakistan as refugees. He also brazenly boasted about how he’d purchase passports for them from there to facilitate their travel to Ukraine. The FBI might soon “do the meme” and admit that he was “on their radar”, but there’s much more to it.
The Newsweek interview... certainly the mainstream didn't treat him as just some rando who happened to be passing through war-ravaged Ukraine.
Clearly, this doesn't look like a guy who had no connections in Ukraine, or was merely some 'war tourist' on the sidelines as the Ukrainian government and Azov would have us believe. Again the questions remain: what did the US government know about this radicalized individual and when did they know it? Did he have help from US government officials in his Ukraine travels and recruitment campaign? Why wasn't he investigated years ago?
In the lead up to the 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden the US was embroiled in a host of civil conflicts from BLM and Antifa riots to debates over the pandemic response. The Democrat's election message was essentially a "return to normalcy" - "Wouldn't it be nice if all these riots and disruptions stopped? Vote for Joe and it will all go away."
Except, it didn't go away.
Today as the 2024 election swiftly approaches the public is being made a very similar empty offer; the claim being that none of this political drama would be happening if Trump wasn't a factor. It is this argument that is being used to justify not one but two separate near-miss assassination attempts on Trump, both carried out by confirmed supporters of Democrat institutions like ActBlue and the latest suspect, 58-year-old Ryan Routh, is a verified Bernie Sanders and DNC supporter who actively tried to recruit foreign mercenaries for the war in Ukraine. (Claims that Routh voted for Trump in 2016 appear to be false. Records from his residence in North Carolina show Routh did not vote in 2016).
Establishment news platforms blame Trump for both attempts on his life.
The second assertion by leftists is that Democrats like Kamala Harris are not responsible for the actions of two "random" unhinged shooters and the political left is mostly peaceful, but this excuse doesn't hold up to scrutiny. In fact, Democrat media rhetoric for the past several years has radicalized progressive activists into a delusional frenzy, with millions of them being told that Trump and conservatives are an "existential threat to Democracy" similar to the Third Reich.
The Russian Collusion hoax, the false claims of insurrection on January 6th and the false claims about Trump's "racism" have driven these people insane and, in their minds, killing him would save the world. Demonize your political enemies enough and any criminal action could be treated as justifiable. This zealotry is not limited to a handful of bad apples, it's pervasive among progressive groups.
The classic Marxist strategy is to attack the target leadership or system as much as possible while claiming your attempts at sabotage are actually the fault of the very people you seek to destroy. In other words, gaslight your political opponents and tell everyone they made you do bad things to them. Leftists must remain the perpetual victims, the perpetual underdogs, otherwise their entire narrative as "revolutionaries" falls apart.
It should be noted that only one side of the American discourse has consistently supported violence and assassination as their go-to solution to the possibility of losing the election.
This is not to say that the scale needs to be "balanced out" (that's a debate for another time), only that leftists continue to ignore the very democracy they claim to defend whenever public sentiment doesn't go their way. Make no mistake, if Ryan Routh had been successful there would be millions of Democrats on social media cheering and gloating today. They don't care about what's right, they only care about "winning."
