Communick News

• Due to rising temperatures and climate change, small-scale coffee farmers in Colombia are increasingly planting cacao.
• Cacao faces fewer immediate challenges compared to coffee, which is prone to pests and diseases, and can integrate well into agroforestry systems. However, agronomists warn that the switch to cacao can lead to clearing forests and increasing chemical inputs in order to expand existing plantations.
• Higher profits, the high prices of cacao in the market, and the increasing expenses needed to manage coffee crops are also factors pushing small-scale farmers towards the switch.
• Although coffee remains Colombia’s most important agricultural product, cacao is emerging not just as an alternative, but as a defining crop in Colombia’s evolving agricultural future, say agronomists.

Sigh...

US stocks were battered by a sell-off Friday after China retaliated against the United States for President Donald Trump’s tariffs in a tit-for-tat that escalates a global trade war.

The Dow plunged by 1,950 points Friday afternoon, or 4.82%, pulling back slightly after being down more than 2,000 points. The broader S&P 500 was 5.4% lower. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was 5.36% lower and on track to close in a bear market — down more than 20% from its record high in December.

We're running this the same time as usual at 8pm Eastern at the usual place.

If anyone wants to tip the balance on what we watch it's not too late.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60387575

Viktor Shvets of Macquarie points out that in 2023, the US exported more than $300 billion in information and communications technology and business services, yielding a net surplus of $120 billion. US royalty and license fees (mostly tech) reached a net surplus of $90 billion, while financial services generated a surplus of $63 billion. “Expanding the scope of the trade war will be inflammatory,” he says, “but it seems the EU (and Canada) might have decided that one can only negotiate with the US from a position of strength, and services are the US’ Achilles heel.”

GOP budget would add an 'unprecedented' $5.8 trillion to the deficit.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27743346

Summary:

A conservative legal group is suing the Trump administration over the president’s tariffs on Chinese imports, alleging that they were imposed through an “unlawful” use of emergency executive power.

The 29-page complaint filed Thursday by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) in the Northern District of Florida alleges that the authority to impose tariffs lies with Congress, not the president.

“By invoking emergency power to impose an across-the-board tariff on imports from China that the statute does not authorize, President Trump has misused that power, usurped Congress’s right to control tariffs, and upset the Constitution’s separation of powers,” NCLA senior litigation counsel Andrew Morris said in a statement accompanying the lawsuit.

According to the nonprofit group, the statutes under which Trump purported to issue the levies — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) — grants the executive sweeping authority to quickly combat international economic crises, permitting the president to “order sanctions as a rapid response to international emergencies.” However, the NCLA asserts that the emergency statute does not allow the president to usurp the legislative branch’s control of the country’s purse strings through the unilateral imposition of tariffs.

“Congress passed the IEEPA to counter external emergencies, not to grant presidents a blank check to write domestic economic policy,” the complaint states.

The right-leaning legal group is seeking a court order declaring that Trump’s tariffs are an “unconstitutional exercise of legislative power” and enjoining them from being implemented and enforced.

Ace Maker - T-33 at the San Francisco Fleet Week air show in 2024.
Using my Nikon manual lens on the Sony body was a challenge to get these planes in focus

@photography@lemmy.world
#aviation #aviationphotography #sanfrancisco #bayarea #sonyA7Riii #darktable

Summary

Tesla faces a second consecutive year of sales decline after a 13% drop in Q1 2024 deliveries, the steepest in nearly three years.

CEO Elon Musk’s alignment with Donald Trump and far-right politics has damaged Tesla’s brand, triggering global protests and vandalism.

Analysts attribute the sales slide primarily to reputational harm, compounded by aging models and fierce competition from BYD and others.

Deutsche Bank forecasts a 5% sales dip this year. Musk’s political role has fueled calls for boycotts, with concerns that prolonged involvement could cause lasting brand damage.

With assistance from Spain's leading ISPs, LaLiga continues to block pirate sites, Cloudflare, and thousands of innocents caught in the crossfire. Legal action by Cloudflare and hacking collective RootedCON tried to bring the chaos to an end but their requests were dismissed last month. Meanwhile, a non-profit group is demanding that all ISPs participate in nationwide blocking.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.04-192130/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/04/04/in-ukraine-gamers-make-the-best-drone-pilots_6739849_4.html

Now more deadly than any other weapon, drones have changed the face of the fighting between Kyiv and Moscow. Pending a solution to the conflict, Ukraine is focusing on training and recruiting the people who make the best pilots: gamers.

All you could see were their black or khaki caps, five heads bent in a semicircle, 10 eyes glued to a console. If it weren't for the fatigues, you'd think it was a gaming convention. But big insects were buzzing in the air, and the 92nd Assault Brigade was actually training in drone warfare in a snow-covered field near Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine. "Of course we all play video games," smiled commanding officer Nikola, his cheeks reddened by the cold under a The North Face beanie. "Those who have had practice are definitely more proficient in piloting the drones."

"The face of war has changed. We are the 'new wave,'" said one of the supervisors of a drone manufacturing workshop hidden in the basement of an old Soviet building in Kharkiv. "The infantrymen of the trenches can do nothing nowadays without the new strategic battalions which, since 2023, have upended combat," he continued under a poster of a scantily clad woman wearing biker boots, a bra, and holding a Kalashnikov. Drones are now responsible for 70% of deaths among combatants, both Russian and Ukrainian, and their use has made the third year of the war deadlier than the first two combined.

Two sources familiar with the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told the AP of the Justice Department’s decision, including that it was made while President Joe Biden was still in office. The DOJ did not immediately respond to questions about confirming the AP report.

The development extends a multiyear string of legal victories vindicating the once-embattled Republican. It underscores Paxton’s durability through all manner of political, personal and legal troubles and helps burnish his reputation among the right wing of his party as a fighter who, like President Donald Trump, has defied numerous efforts by his detractors to take him down.

Ah, yes ... the party of law and order. I'd not mind him moving along, though I'm sure we'll get someone just as bad to replace him as AG.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27791935

This drama is getting tiresome. It’s just an app, and many Americans—at least those who are old enough to vote—don’t actually care that much about it. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that TikTok’s popularity was second only to YouTube among teenagers, but it’s far from the country’s most popular social-media app overall, despite its salience as a conversational stand-in for “internet culture” or “annoying thing that young people like.” “It’s a lot of fanfare and suspense over an app that, well, just isn’t all that important,” Kate Lindsay wrote in The Atlantic in January, pointing out that only a third of U.S. adults interviewed for another Pew survey said they’d ever used it. (More of these people say they use Pinterest!) Among young adults, she added, Snapchat and Instagram are more popular.