Electric vehicle batteries are quickly becoming one of the most important commodities in the USA. Mineral processing operations are largely happening overseas, but one US company created by a Tesla founder and previous CTO is now delving into cathode and anode processing.

Tesla co-founder JB Straubel is currently in the battery recycling business with his company Redwood Materials, which recycles old batteries to create lithium-ion batteries for cars. The company recently announced a partnership with Panasonic to supply billions of dollars in battery hardware, marking the first major processed cathode contract to come to the US.

The cathode material makes up around a third of an EV battery pack, and Redwood Materials will supply a Panasonic factory in Kansas City, Kansas, with the processed mineral starting in 2025. Additionally, most of the Kansas City plant’s battery cells will be destined for US automaker Tesla — another major partner of Redwood’s.

“Panasonic has been a partner for many years, but this is very significant,” Straubel said in an interview. “This is a large portion of their cathode supply. It’s such an impactful announcement for the U.S. supply chain in general — and of course for us as a company.”

Straubel’s time at Tesla led him to recognize a growing need for the materials needed to make EV batteries. Not long after, Redwood became the largest lithium battery recycler in the US. From there, Redwood branched out into processing and producing anode and cathode materials, arguably an equally necessary process.

Panasonic’s cathode material from Redwood will be produced using 100 percent recycled cobalt, and 25–30 percent recycled nickel and lithium. Straubel didn’t share where the rest of the plant’s materials will come from. Cobalt remains a pricey and controversial mineral for EV batteries, with the vast majority of the resource coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose mining operations have been flagged for human rights violations.

President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act also requires half of a battery’s minerals to be recycled in North America or mined from a free-trade agreement-friendly country — supporting domestic operations such as these at Redwood Materials.

“We were already going at supersonic speeds,” Straubel said of the manufacturing provisions in Biden’s climate plan. He compared their accelerating qualities for the recycled materials industry to “what happens if you attach a rocket engine to supersonic airplane.”

Cathode materials play a huge role in EV pricing too, and Redwood is planning to bring its cathode production up to around 100 gigawatt-hours per year by 2025 — or the equivalent of about one million EVs.

The company has three recycling factories near Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada, and cathode and anode material processing are only set to become increasingly needed with rising EV popularity in the coming years.

Anode and cathode materials are “just an incredibly high percentage of the cost of the car,” according to Straubel. “As the world is shifting to electrification, there’s going to be a bit of a new vocabulary and new list of components that everyone will get familiar with.”


https://cleantechnica.com/2022/11/23/tesla-co-founders-processing-ev-battery-minerals/

Departmental officials told MPs on the House of Commons health committee that the data is “confidential business information” which belongs to the companies importing the drugs, but said they will make the information public as soon as possible.

OTTAWA — Health Canada officials said Tuesday they can’t reveal how many more doses of children’s pain and fever medication are on the way to help address the ongoing shortage of the drugs.

Departmental officials told MPs on the House of Commons health committee that the data is “confidential business information” which belongs to the companies importing the drugs, but said they will make the information public as soon as possible.

Opposition MPs had little time for that answer, as well as the officials’ insistence they’ve been working on alleviating the shortage since it began in the spring, including with doctors and pharmaceutical companies, and that parents’ panic buying and stockpiling of the drugs is in part to blame.

The numerous heated exchanges highlighted the extent to which the issue has moved beyond just frustrated and frightened parents and into the political arena for the Liberal government, seized upon first by Conservative MPs earlier this fall and now by the New Democrats and Bloc Québécois as well.

Conservative MP Laila Goodridge accused Health Canada of not publicly addressing the issue until political pressure started being applied this fall, suggesting that parents just thought they were “going crazy” rather than there being an actual shortage.

“This is an absolute failure from the government leadership,” she said.

The committee hearing Tuesday did provide some behind-the-scenes glimpses into the genesis of the shortage and the work being done to alleviate it.

Health Canada officials told MPs they first became aware of the problem in the spring amid reports from Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador of shortages of the medications.

They said that while Health Canada offered manufacturers options then to import medications from elsewhere, the decision was made to scale up domestic production dramatically.

Health Canada, drug manufacturers and stakeholders, including the Canadian Pediatric Society, were in communication the entire time, and Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos was being briefed, the officials said.

But by August, it became clear that increased production was not going to be sufficient to meet demand, MPs heard, in part because reports of shortages led to more people buying up the medications, creating further pressures.

That is the government’s fault, said BQ MP Jean-Denis Garon, because it never clearly communicated what was happening.

“You are part of this panic among parents, and you are part of the abnormal increase in demand,” he said in French.

The situation is “unprecedented,” said Gerry Herrington of the Food, Health and Consumer Products Association, whose members manufacture the drugs.

He said drugmakers had already planned for higher-than-normal demand for this year’s cold and flu season, but that demand started to rise back in the spring ahead of expectations. That put pressure on inventories, which was further exacerbated in August when a hospital circulated a letter suggesting patients get a prescription for the drugs to ensure they would have access.

Herrington said that ended up being interpreted as a warning that prescriptions would be required for the products, creating demand that was “three or four times above normal,” further emptying shelves and creating more pressure at a time when supply chains were still not recovered from the pandemic and there were rising rates of illness globally.

But he said all along, the drug makers and government have been working on ways to ease the crunch.

He cited Monday’s announcement that foreign supplies of children’s acetaminophen for retail outlets and community pharmacies are on the way, on top of the approval recently to import children’s and infant ibuprofen and acetaminophen for hospitals.

“We believe these efforts will result in a market improvement in access to these medicines in the coming days and weeks,” he told the committee.

“With that said, we still have no clear line of sight to the day when the number of these viral cases begins to normalize and demand for these products returns to something resembling normal.”

Garon also raised the question of whether delays in bringing supplies from abroad was linked to bilingual labelling requirements, as has been suggested.

That was discounted by Hugues Mousseau, the director general of the Quebec association of drug distributors, who called it a “false debate.” He said there are easy solutions that Quebec companies are familiar with.

The drugs now being imported to Canada come from the U.S. and Australia, with the government making sure they’re being flown over to avoid further delays, officials said Tuesday.

But when asked Tuesday how many doses are coming and where they are going, Health Canada said it couldn’t provide the answer.

“We work quite closely with market authorization holders, and I’m sure you can appreciate when we have confidential business information in our possession, then we need to treat it as such,” said Linsey Hollett, the director general of health product compliance for Health Canada.

“So quantities have been established, but because of confidential business information, I’m not able to share them.”

NDP Don Davies was incredulous at her answer, noting that when the government was buying COVID-19 vaccines, it had no issue releasing the numbers.

“When the government wants to release numbers to try to make itself look good, when it’s procuring lots of COVID vaccines, then commercial sensitivities doesn’t seem to be a problem in terms of releasing numbers of doses,” he said.

“But now, when there’s a shortage all of a sudden the government is claiming commercial sensitivity, they’re not releasing numbers …”

Hollett said the government hopes to have that information available online in due course.

“The need for that information, and the importance of that information has been recognized,” she said.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2022/11/15/health-canada-says-more-childrens-pain-medication-is-on-the-way-but-not-how-much.html

The data is in a new report on EV use from Argonne National Lab.

Electric vehicles have never been more popular. Just about every automaker is in the midst of an electrification effort, spurred on by impending government regulations around the world aimed at reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. But is the movement having an effect? Here in the US, plug-in vehicles are selling better than ever, despite supply chain shortages and frequent hefty dealership markups.

According to Argonne National Lab, between 2010 and the end of 2021, the US had bought more than 2.1 million plug-in vehicles, including 1.3 million battery EVs. That sounds like a very impressive number, but bear in mind that's out of a total national vehicle pool of nearly 276 million cars and trucks. Argonne estimates that despite all these plug-ins, national gasoline consumption was reduced by just 0.54 percent in 2021.

In total, Argonne calculates that US plug-in vehicles have driven nearly 70 billion miles since 2010, consuming 22 TWh of energy in the process. That's displaced the use of more than 2.5 billion gallons of gasoline and 19 million tons of greenhouse gases, Argonne reports, although for context, the US consumed about 369 million gallons of gasoline a day in 2021. For 2021 specifically, plug-in vehicles saved about 690 million gallons of gasoline—about two days of consumption—and reduced CO2 emissions by 5.4 million metric tons, consuming 6.1 TWh in the process.

The biggest growth in plug-in sales occurred in 2021, more than doubling from the previous year from 308,000 vehicles to 634,000. That's probably not too surprising, given how many new EVs reached the market last year. In fact, BEV sales increased 92 percent to 457,000 vehicles, with plug-in hybrid EV sales increasing by 150 percent to 175,000.

Argonne assumed that plug-in drivers behave much like their gasoline-powered counterparts but applied a utility factor to PHEVs based on battery size and a mileage adjustment factor based on EPA-estimated range for BEVs, with the baseline being an internal combustion engine vehicle driving 13,500 miles (21,727 km), with a mix of 57 percent highway driving and 43 percent city driving. Proportional reductions in annual mileage due to COVID-19 were applied for 2020 and 2021 as well.

Given that plug-in vehicles represent almost 1 percent of all light vehicles on the road in the US, it's disappointing that the reduction in gasoline usage was just more than half a percent.

However, Argonne provides evidence against naysayers who think EV adoption will crash the electrical grid—in 2021, charging EVs accounted for only 0.15 percent of all US electricity consumption. Interestingly, Argonne found that while BEV efficiency has decreased marginally since 2018, PHEV electrical range efficiency actually dropped dramatically between 2019 and 2021, which Argonne blames on the increasing size and weight of electrified SUVs.

This report is not an argument against people buying EVs, of course; any gas saving is an improvement on turning that gasoline into atmospheric pollution that worsens climate change. But it should be clear now that EVs on their own are not a panacea to our transport-related climate problems, and the future will require many more people to walk, cycle, or take the bus to get to where they're going.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/11/american-evs-reduced-gasoline-consumption-by-just-0-54-in-2021/

• Country aims to send astronauts to the moon within 10 years
• China is expanding its ambitions in space, challenging the US

China plans to build its first base on the moon by 2028, ahead of landing astronauts there in subsequent years as the country steps up its challenge to NASA’s dominance in space exploration.
The lunar base will likely be powered by nuclear energy, Caixin reported. Its basic configuration will consist of a lander, hopper, orbiter and rover, all of which would be constructed by the Chang’e 6, 7 and 8 missions.
“Our astronauts will likely be able to go to the moon within 10 years,” Wu Weiran, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, said in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV earlier this week. Nuclear energy can address the lunar station’s long-term, high-power energy needs, he said.

China has ramped up its ambitions in space in recent years, sending probes to the moon, building its own space station and setting its sights on Mars. The plans have put it in direct competition with the US. NASA has a rover on the Red Planet and is seeking to return astronauts to the moon this decade for the first time since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s.

Both China and the US are spending billions of dollars to not just put humans on the moon, but also to access resources that could foster life on the lunar surface or send spacecraft to Mars.

In 2019, China became the first country to land a rover on the far side of the moon, and later brought back its first lunar samples. The base is intended to be the first outpost on the moon’s South Pole, an area scientists think is the best place to find water. NASA is also targeting that part of the moon. China aims to eventually expand the base into an international research station.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-25/china-plans-to-build-nuclear-powered-moon-base-within-six-years

WASHINGTON—The U.S. said it would allow Chevron Corp. to resume pumping oil from its Venezuelan oil fields after President Nicolás Maduro’s government and an opposition coalition agreed to implement an estimated $3 billion humanitarian relief program and continue dialogue in Mexico City on efforts to hold free and fair elections.

Following the Norwegian-brokered agreement signed in Mexico City, the Biden administration granted Chevron a license that allows the California-based oil company to return to its oil fields in joint ventures with Venezuela national oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA. The new license, granted by the Treasury Department, permits Chevron to pump Venezuelan oil for the first time in years.

Biden administration officials said the license prohibits PdVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela SA) from receiving profits from Chevron’s oil sales. The officials said the U.S. is prepared to revoke or amend the license, which will be in effect for six months, at any time if Venezuela doesn’t negotiate in good faith.

“If Maduro again tries to use these negotiations to buy time to further consolidate his criminal dictatorship, the United States and our international partners must snap back the full force of our sanctions,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The U.S. policy shift could signal an opening for other oil companies to resume their business in Venezuela two years after the Trump administration clamped down on Chevron and other companies’ activities there as part of a maximum-pressure campaign meant to oust the Maduro government. But the Treasury Department action didn’t say how non-U.S. oil companies might re-engage with Venezuela.

Venezuela produces some 700,000 barrels of oil a day, compared with more than 3 million barrels a day in the 1990s. Some analysts said Venezuela could hit 1 million barrels a day in the medium term, a modest increment reflecting the dilapidated state of the country’s state-led oil industry.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October the Biden administration was preparing to scale down sanctions on Venezuela’s regime to allow Chevron to resume pumping oil there.

Under the new license, profits from the sale of oil will go toward repaying hundreds of millions of dollars in debt owed to Chevron by PdVSA, administration officials said. The U.S. will require that Chevron report details of its financial operations to ensure transparency, they said.

Chevron spokesman Ray Fohr said the new license allows the company to commercialize the oil currently being produced at its joint-venture assets. He said the company will conduct its business in compliance within the current framework.

The license prohibits Chevron from paying taxes and royalties to the Venezuelan government, which surprised some experts. They had been expecting that direct revenue would encourage PdVSA to reroute oil cargoes away from obscure export channels, mostly to Chinese buyers at a steep discount, that Venezuela has relied on for years to skirt sanctions.

“If this is the case, Maduro doesn’t have significant incentives to allow that many cargoes of Chevron to go out,” said Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Sending oil to China, even at a heavy discount, would be better for Caracas than only paying debt to Chevron, he said.

The limited scope of the Chevron license is seen as a way to ensure that Mr. Maduro stays the course on negotiations. “Rather than fully opening the door for Venezuelan oil to flow to the U.S. market immediately, what the license proposes is a normalization path that is likely contingent on concessions from the Maduro regime on the political and human-rights front,” said Luisa Palacios, senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy.

The license allows Venezuelan oil back into the U.S., historically its largest market, but only if the oil from the PdVSA-Chevron joint ventures is first sold to Chevron and doesn’t authorize exports from the ventures “to any jurisdiction other than the United States,” which appears to restrict PdVSA’s own share of the sales to the U.S. market, said Mr. Monaldi.

The license prohibits transactions involving goods and services from Iran, another U.S.-sanctioned oil producer that has helped Venezuela to overcome sanctions in recent years. And it blocks dealings with Venezuelan entities owned or controlled by Western-sanctioned Russia, which has also played a role in Venezuela’s oil industry.

Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the Maduro government’s delegation to the Mexico City talks, declined to comment on the issuance of the Chevron license.

Freddy Guevara, a member of the opposition coalition’s delegation, said the estimated $3 billion in frozen funds intended for humanitarian relief and infrastructure projects in Venezuela would be administered by the United Nations. He cautioned that it would take time to fully implement the program. “It begins now, but the time period is up to three years,” he said.

The Venezuelan state funds frozen in overseas banks by sanctions are expected to be used to alleviate the country’s health, food and electric-power crises in part by building infrastructure for electricity and water-treatment needs. “Not one dollar will go to the vaults of the regime,” Mr. Guevara said.

Chevron plans to restore lost output as it performs maintenance and other essential work, but it won’t attempt major work that would require new investments in the country’s oil fields until debts of $4.2 billion are repaid. That could take about two to three years depending on oil-market conditions, according to people familiar with the matter.

PdVSA owes Chevron and other joint-venture partners their shares of more than two years worth of revenue from oil sales, after the 2020 U.S. sanctions barred the Venezuelan company from paying its partners, one of the people said. The license would allow Chevron to collect its share of dividends from its joint ventures such as Petropiar, in which Chevron is a 30% partner.

Analysts say the new agreement raises expectations that will take time and work to fulfill. “Ensuring the success of talks won’t be easy, but it’s clear that offering gradual sanctions relief like this in order to incentivize agreements is the only way forward. It’s a champagne popping moment for the negotiators, but much more work remains to be done,” said Geoff Ramsey, Venezuela director at the Washington Office on Latin America.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/chevron-gets-new-u-s-license-to-pump-oil-in-venezuela-again/ar-AA14AEd7

Australia has long upheld some of the strictest game rating classifications on the planet, though a new bill just filed in Parliament will impose further restrictions on games with loot boxes. As reported by Games Industry.biz, the new legislation will amend the strict Australian Classification Board guidelines further, labeling any game with loot boxes to be R18+, Australia's equivalent to the ESRB "Mature" rating. Furthermore, games with loot boxes may be denied classification entirely, which would effectively ban the game from sale in Australia.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/australian-government-files-bill-to-limit-loot-boxes/ar-AA14ERy9

New York Attorney General Letitia James in the bid to protect retirees from the dangers of investing in Crypto currencies, digital assets, digital tokens and digital coins has egged on  Congress to pass a law prohibiting crypto investments in retirement accounts.

Get outta town: Why majority of New Yorkers would rather be anywhere else

With violent crime on the rise and showing no signs of a letup, a majority of voters said their family would be better off if they fled New York City, a new survey reveals.

The poll, released Wednesday by Fontas Advisors/Core Decision Analytics, presented voters with this statement: “My family would have a better future if we left New York City permanently.”

The poll found 59% of respondents strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement, while 41% somewhat or strongly disagreed.

That’s a 12 percentage-point jump from voters who were asked the same question a year ago.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/06/why-majority-of-new-yorkers-would-rather-be-anywhere-else-poll/

Though the real world impacts of FTX’s spectacular crash have yet to fully settle, Amazon’s reportedly moving forward with a miniseries about the bankrupt crypto exchange and its infamous former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Anthony and Joe Russo’s AGBO production company is attached to produce the show, and the brothers are reportedly considering coming on to direct multiple episodes. Variety reports that Amazon has tapped Invasion co-creator Dave Weil to executive produce the currently unnamed eight episode miniseries that details how Bankman-Fried co-founded FTX, and went on to lead the company to a liquidity crisis that ultimately resulted in his being ousted. While no showrunners or casting announcements have been made yet, Amazon is said to be eyeing a number of actors the Russos worked with during their stint directing Marvel’s blockbusters like Avengers: Infinity War.

In the years since Avengers: Endgame’s 2019 release, the Russos have largely focused on relatively smaller projects at AGBO like Netflix’s The Gray Man starring Chris Evans, Apple TV Plus’ Cherry starring Tom Holland, and The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once. A drama about a group of young people riding the crypto train right up to and over the edge of a cliff sounds very much like the sort of project that AGBO might be into, but it isn’t immediately clear what the Russos — who are best known for their action and superhero movies — might bring to this story.

In a statement about the series, Amazon Studios CEO Jennifer Salke called Weil and the Russos the ideal partners “to bring this multifaceted story to our global Prime Video audience,” and the Russos remarked on how the mess at FTX is ripe for dramatization.

“It crosses many sectors—celebrity, politics, academia, tech, criminality, sex, drugs, and the future of modern finance,” the Russos said. “At the center of it all sits an extremely mysterious figure with complex and potentially dangerous motivations. We want to understand why.”

According to Variety, specific details for the show’s story are being sourced from “‘insider reporting’ by a number of journalists,” but Amazon has not disclosed which journalists or newsrooms it’s pulling from. While are currently no other details about the upcoming series, Amazon is reportedly aiming to kick off production some time next spring.


https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23475998/amazon-ftx-show-sam-bankman-fried

Protests have broken out at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, central China, as footage circulating on social media shows workers clashing with baton-wielding riot police and hazmat-suited officials. The protests started after workers, who have been under strict covid lockdown for weeks, learned bonus payments would be delayed, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Apple announced earlier this month that it expected lower shipments of premium iPhone 14 models due to disruptions created by the covid lockdowns at the same Foxconn facility. Zhengzhou, known locally as “iPhone city,” is home to an estimated 200,000 workers who are responsible for the vast majority of all iPhone production.

The Wall Street Journal reports that protests started on Tuesday evening near Foxconn employee accommodations at the Zhengzhou facility. Foxconn’s strict covid controls have reportedly isolated its employees, forcing them to live and work on-site (with limited food and supplies) in order to prevent further outbreaks in Zhengzhou. Since October, many workers have escaped from the locked-down facility, leading Foxconn to promise incentives like higher salaries and bonuses to retain staff.

Video footage captured on Wednesday shows hundreds of workers protesting at the campus, chanting “give us our pay” while surrounded by riot police and people in hazmat suits. Livestream footage later that night saw protests escalating, with workers chanting “Defend our rights! Defend our rights!” as they confronted police officers, according to the Agence France-Presse news agency. “Foxconn never treats humans as humans,” said another person in a social media video at the scene.

Other workers captured on live streams said they were protesting over food shortages in addition to the delayed payments. “They changed the contract so that we could not get the subsidy as they had promised. They quarantine us but don’t provide food,” said one Foxconn worker during a live stream as reported by the BBC. “If they do not address our needs, we will keep fighting.”

Most of the video footage has already been removed but The Wall Street Journal reports it has corroborated events shown in the videos with workers at the site. The hashtag “Foxconn Riots” was also seemingly censored on the Chinese social media platform Weibo by Wednesday night.


https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474868/foxconn-iphone-factory-protest-riot-covid-lockdown

Image link:  https://i.ibb.co/zJ14qKK/tesla-tsla-future-price-projection.jpg

Analysts have been slow to slash their target prices on Tesla — despite a price drop that's destroyed more than half a trillion dollars in paper gains over the last year.

The big picture: The fact that analysts still think Tesla should be worth $290 a share — 70% above the current market price of $170 — reflects the difficulty the market is having in adjusting to the new reality of higher interest rates.

• (H/t to Bloomberg, which spotlighted the growing gap between analysts and the market on Tesla.)

Between the lines: As we've written (again and again and again) high-interest rates are kryptonite for share prices of tech-driven companies. This is especially true for companies that make relatively little money now but expect vast profits in the future when their products inevitably change the world.

• Tesla is the textbook example of just such a company.

Catch up quick: After the Fed cut interest rates to almost zero during the COVID crisis in March 2020, the stock exploded upward.

• It rose a seemingly absurd 1300% between late March 2020 and early November 2021, when the Fed signaled it would start raising rates to combat inflation.
• Since then, Tesla has collapsed by nearly 60%, vaporizing more than $700 billion in market value.

Yes, but: Tesla is not alone here. Other highly valued technology shares have gotten crushed by the change in interest rates, most notably Meta.

Tesla's tumble also reflects the fact that Elon Musk ended up buying and running Twitter on a whim, forcing him to sell billions of dollars worth of shares to help pay for the purchase.

• And Meta's share doldrums are partially driven by CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg's pet virtual reality environment, which has cost the company billions (and the red ink will likely grow "significantly." )
• The two companies' year-to-date stock losses — 50% and 70%, respectively — are far worse than the Nasdaq composite's 30% drop this year.

The bottom line: Given the incredible run that Tesla had at times over the last couple of years, it's understandable why analysts are slow to recognize the new reality. But when they do, it could set off a new bout of selling.



https://www.axios.com/2022/11/23/tesla-stock-analysts-resist-harsh-market-reality

Tesla short sellers lost $40 billion in 2020

Tesla has long been a favorite play for short investors, who controlled about 19% of the shares as 2020 began. For all those who believe the company is a paradigm-changing, clean energy leader of unlimited potential, other investors maintain it is an overhyped niche player soon to be overwhelmed by larger, more established automakers.

Many of the shorts were forced to admit defeat last year. About two-thirds of the short positions were unwound during 2020, which in itself was a factor that helped drive Tesla shares higher, as the short investors were forced to buy higher-priced shares to exit their positions.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/investing/tesla-shorts-losses-elon-musk-win/index.html

When the students at Hermidale Public School in western New South Wales planted 85 hectares of wheat at the beginning of the year, harvest seemed a lifetime away.

The children dreamed of raising enough money to fund an excursion to the beach, but never thought they'd make enough money to send the whole school around the country.

"We can't believe what we have been able to pull off," teacher Rebekah Coddington said.

Seven students from kindergarten to Year 6 attend Hermidale Public School, more than 600 kilometres west of Sydney.

The town had endured an anxious few weeks as flooding has engulfed much of western NSW, but Hermidale was spared the worst and this week the headers rolled out for the harvest.

Local farmers gave up time and machinery to strip the kids' crop.

"We didn't get bogged once, which was really great," local farmer and parent Darren Mudford said.

Ms Coddington said the children had "been given the opportunity of a lifetime".

"Every member of our small community has contributed in some way, whether it be small or large, and it's been amazing to see it come together and to finally get the crop off," she said.

Unique learning experience

For most of the year, students swapped their school uniforms for work shirts and boots to tend to the paddock.

The land was donated by a former student and while the students weren't able to be operating the machines, they watched on as their hard work paid off.

"It was so exciting to get to come down and see the headers in the paddock and learn how they work and then watch our grain go off in the trucks," Year 6 student Ruby Mudford said.

The students were then able to visit the grain depot to see their grain being tested, graded and weighed.

Hard work pays off

The students' wheat crop is expected to raise up to $50,000.

About 170 tonnes of prime hard wheat was taken to the local grain depot where it will be stored before it is sold.

Former student Elly Jeffery just happened to be working at the local grain depot when the students' crop came in.

"It's very high in protein, the protein went 13.9 and the grade of wheat went H2, which is a really good grade of wheat," she said.

About 1,700 loaves of bread can be made from 1 tonne of wheat, meaning the students at Hermidale Public School have effectively provided enough grain to make 290,000 loaves of bread.

"We can't believe the tonnage," Ms Coddington said.

Funds from the wheat sale will be given to the school's P&C for its educational, social and cultural immersion project, which sends students on excursions around the country.

The school hopes to travel to Newcastle early in the new year to see their wheat being loaded onto a ship at the port.


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-27/nsw-hermidale-public-school-wheat-crop-sale-to-fund-excursions/101688622

50,000 Bitcoin were withdrawn from Coinbase on Nov. 24 and 25, marking the third-largest withdrawal from the exchange.

A total of 100,000 Bitcoin (BTC) were withdrawn from Coinbase in the past two days, marking the third-largest BTC withdrawal in Coinbase’s history.

Two withdrawals worth 50K

The chart below shows the BTC withdrawals and deposits in Coinbase on a daily basis since the beginning of the year.

On Nov.24, 50,000 BTC were withdrawn from Coinbase. The amount equated to over $800 million at the time, which marked the second-largest BTC withdrawal from Coinbase in 2022. The next day, on Nov. 25, another 50,000 BTC withdrawal took place, which equates to over $825 million at the time of writing.

Considering that Coinbase is preferred mainly by large U.S. institutions, it can be said that they are taking advantage of the affordable prices and accumulating BTC, as the on-chain data indicates that the bottom of the bear market cycle might be near.

Third-largest withdrawal in Coinbase

The chart below represents Coinbase’s BTC deposits and withdrawals since the exchange was launched in 2014.

With the second 50,000 BTC withdrawal, Coinbase reserves lost more than $1.5 billion worth of BTC in two days, which currently marks the third-largest BTC withdrawal in Coinbase’s history.

According to the chart, the most significant withdrawal was recorded in late 2017, and the second-largest one took place in mid-2022 after the Terra (Terra) collapse.

It’s not just Coinbase

The data shows that Coinbase is not the only exchange experiencing large BTC withdrawals. The chart below demonstrates the BTC balance on all exchanges since January 2018, and a significant downfall can be seen since January 2022.

According to the data, the balance on decentralized exchanges has fallen below 12% for the first time since January 2018.

https://cryptoslate.com/bitcoin-worth-1-5b-withdrawn-from-coinbase-in-48-hours/

I have read about the fentanyl epidemic going on there, and it seems serious indeed and it is not a urban legend at all, but a serious public health problem.
Since Marijuana is legal in several states there I assume people smuggle it and criminals take advance of the situation to spike the weed with other substances for their own economical gain.

However, I assume USA is a serious and modern country that does not have problems with rats eating evidence of a crime, isnt it?

Perhaps, it is something I can't take seriously because I have never read/heard about it here in my country.