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Climate change: US home insurers’ rates become increasingly prohibitive


17% increase, following 20% increase last year. LA fires will cost $250 billion (NYT). Many insurers refuse to serve California customers. Just months after fires devastated parts of Los Angeles, one of the leading home insurers in California, State Farm, is temporarily raising rates 17 percent. The sharp jump, after a 20 percent rate increase last year, is sure to strain family finances in what is already one of the nation's most expensive states for home insurance... Even before the fires struck Los Angeles, state officials were scrambling to stop insurers from abandoning the California market as wildfires grow more frequent and destructive. The Los Angeles fires only made the risks to homeowners, and insurers, more apparent. The total economic toll of the fires, including property damage and longer-term economic losses, is expected to top $250 billion, according to AccuWeather, making it one of the most expensive disasters of all time. Under the January 2025 disaster

Climate change
 

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Conad- BDC (Pugliese – Mincione): €1 for €225.4 million, but this is likely to end in ‘tarallucci e vino’


..."The operation is conducted, as we said, through the company Bdc Italia: 51% Conad, 49% Mincione through his companies in Luxembourg. The agreements stipulate, however, that after the division of the various sales outlets among Conad 's members , Mincione increases his share to 95% by acquiring 46% of Bdc Italia for the symbolic price of one euro. The problem is that at that point a good chunk of the initial assets remained in the special purpose vehicle. Of the 88 properties 55 have been absorbed by the system but the other 33 are of no interest to Conad cooperatives. And they have a value that is not exactly marginal: 225.4 million, the appraisals say. Definitely a little more than that symbolic euro thanks to which Mincione would become the almost absolute owner of all the remainder "the ministry warns Conad's top management, for its chairman Mauro Lusetti, to arrange within 90 days for a 'circumstantiated expert's report' entrusted to one or more professionals 'in possession of the necessary requisites of third party and particularly qualified, even if chosen by common agreement with all the shareholders'. The choice fell on the tax lawyer Domenico Livio Trombone, future president of Coop Alleanza 3.0 (Conad's internal competitor in the cooperative system) and the lawyer Pier Luigi Morara. And on 20 November 2023, the two formulated a totally absolutory opinion on the transaction: 'On the basis of the considerations (...) and in the absence of significant elements that have arisen after the sale, we believe that there are no legally appreciable elements to contest the sale of 46% of Bdc Italia spa in order to obtain the recognition of a higher consideration (compared to the symbolic price of one euro, ed. So a survey by friends of friends is enough to 'solve' everything? It would be interesting to see the balance sheets but it seems they have never been filed. And so the names of the directors, the transfers of shares and the exact amount paid out by Auchan (to make Conad take it) are missing. Thanks to Luigi Rubinelli. Read also : Auchan-Conad-Raffaele Mincione WHAT A STRANGE TRIANGULATION. About journalists, cooperatives and unions Drafted on 17 May, updated on 18 May 2025

AuchanConadCoop
 

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In Frankfurt Bayer evaluates Monsanto bankruptcy to stop glyphosate lawsuits


The German agrochemical and pharmaceutical giant wants to put an end to the legal actions once and for all and is considering the possibility of bankruptcy of the subsidiary. In one of the latest lawsuits: A Georgia jury orders Monsanto's parent company to pay nearly $2.1 billion in the Roundup herbicide lawsuit. The total amounts to 10 billion, and the focus is on glyphosate, which is guilty, according to various sources, of causing cancer. Below : Roundup on sale at Walmart

CancerPesticidesWalmart
 

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Has deforestation in the Amazon slowed down?


Deforestation in Brazil slowed down in 2024. And this is the first time in the last six years. The figure is contained in the RAD2024 report compiled by MapBiomas Alerta, a collaborative network of Brazilian NGOs, universities and technology start-ups. RAD2024 was presented today in Brasilia, a few months before the South American giant hosts the crucial Cop30, the 30th UN climate conference. .. However, the issue is controversial. Only a few weeks ago, on 25 April, the Amazon Institute for People and the Environment (Imazon) had released data of a diametrically opposite nature, although relating to the Amazon alone: 'Deforested areas in the Amazon increased by 18% between August 2024 and March 2025, compared to the same period the previous year. A total of 229,000 hectares of forest were deforested'. Figures so conflicting that a reliable, unambiguous monitoring system on the affected territories is urgently needed. Source

Deforestation
 

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US duties: an example on Chinese textiles


.. In this example, Leslie Jordan Inc, a company that sells sportswear for special events, imported a shipment of women's T-shirts from China in late April. This came after Trump aggressively increased tariffs on Chinese imports, but before officials from both countries agreed to a temporary truce, an example of how companies have struggled to plan their purchases as tariff levels continually change... The cost of cargo almost doubled.

Non-food
 

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Walmart will increase prices due to Donald Trump’s trade war


despite this week's agreement between the US and China to reduce punitive tariffs... Walmart will try to keep food prices in check after years of food inflation, McMillon said. But he said there are new tariff pressures for products it has to import, such as bananas from Costa Rica and coffee from Colombia... McMillon's warning on Thursday came as Walmart reported a 4.5 per cent annual increase in comparable sales in its eponymous US business in the three months to the end of April, surpassing the 3.7 per cent increase expected by Wall Street analysts, according to Visible Alpha... Mexico, Canada, Vietnam and India are Walmart's main sources of imports, along with China... Walmart reported that its e-commerce business - which includes sales from its own inventory and from third-party merchants using its platform - grew 22% year-on-year and was profitable both in the US and globally for the first time. Trade war jitters prompted shoppers to accelerate purchases of certain items in an effort to beat tariffs, potentially distorting the picture of consumer demand

E-CommerceFruit and vegetablesInflationWalmart
 

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The Internet is now, also in our country, the main means by which citizens inform themselves (AgCom Information System Observatory)


which published its annual report with data for 2023 and trends for 2024 in March 2025. ✔ Why it matters: for the first time, television loses its leading position among the information media (46.5% of the population) 21 percentage points less in the comparison between 2023 and 2019. The primacy of the Internet as an information medium is confirmed for all age groups, with the exception of the over-65s. ✔ An important detail: 50.5% of those who are subscribed to at least one social network declare that they find out about news and information on social networks earlier than on other media, in particular thanks to notification systems and what the AgCom Observatory defines as "digital word of mouth". ✔ The general picture: Italian citizens inform themselves online mainly through social networks (19.8% of the population) and search engines (17.9%). Also far behind are the online versions of newspapers and magazines: 11.8%. ✔ Yes, but: only 6.6% of Italians say they have subscribed to at least one online newspaper, while among those who have not subscribed, only 14.4% show any intention of subscribing to the internet version of a newspaper sooner or later; the vast majority, however (85.6%) have no intention of doing so in the future either Source

Antitrust