Tom Hancock

Record pace of strikes in Iran bombing campaign: analysis U.S. and Israel hitting more targets than any previous campaign, numbers suggest

Airwars, a non-profit group tracking civilian harm in conflict, found that the initial days of the U.S.-Israeli campaign in Iran hit significantly more targets per day than any campaign in recent decades. The targets also map heavily onto the highest populated areas. airwars.org/record-pace-...

Why is the Korean economy SOOOOOO affected?

Because it imports more of its energy than almost any other country...

www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202411/13/...

“.. the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us, and give us more reason to take action,” said one of the people familiar with discussions.

@politico.com #OOTT
www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

Higher ASPs, lower unit volumes: How the memory crisis is reshaping the PC and smartphone outlook Rising DRAM and NAND prices are driving double-digit unit declines in PCs and smartphones, reshaping margins, market share, and pricing power.

Hyperscaler butterfly effect: memory shortage --> lower smartphone sales in Africa www.idc.com/resource-cen...

Extreme poverty fell sharply worldwide – even excluding China. Line chart of global extreme poverty rate, 1990 to 2025. Extreme poverty is defined as living below the international poverty line of $3 per day; data are adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries. The chart shows global extreme poverty reduced from 43% to 10%, and the series excluding China reduced from 33% to 12%, with the two lines converging by around the mid-2000s and continuing to decline toward 2025. Y axis runs from 0% to 50%; x axis runs from 1990 to 2025. Data source: World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (2025); OurWorldInData.org/poverty. License: CC BY.

Was the global decline of extreme poverty only due to China?

The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has never declined as rapidly as in the past three decades.

everything you read about AI is someone's FORECAST. To date, there is no evidence it has raised economy-wide productivity or destroyed jobs (even among graduates). Even the impact of the capex on GDP - which is a real thing - has been wildly overstated for the past 12 months

Dangote signs $400 mln equipment deal with China's XCMG to speed up refinery expansion Nigeria's Dangote Group has signed a $400 million equipment deal with China's Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group to speed up the expansion of its oil refinery toward a planned 1.4 million barrels per day, the company said on Tuesday.

Dangote signs $400 mln equipment deal with China's XCMG to speed up refinery expansion reut.rs/4roanOJ

alternatively, the Song dynasty triumphed

This piece written in 2000 predicted US trade deficits would become unsustainable in "two or three years," and the author is on the BoE monetary policy committee today. Economics has a real accountability problem www.imf.org/external/pub...

Iza Ding · Studying is harmful: China sits the Gaokao In a country plagued by corruption, China’s national college entrance exam, the gaokao, is remarkably clean. ‘Open...

‘Lower-income households devote almost two-thirds of their earnings to education; the authors call it “a tax on China’s poor”.’

@izading.bsky.social on China’s university entrance exam, the gaokao.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Exclusive: Mexico seeking way to send fuel to Cuba without being hit by US tariffs Mexican officials are evaluating how to send fuel to Cuba to help meet basic needs without triggering reprisals from Washington, which has threatened tariffs against countries supplying fuel to the Ca...

Exclusive: Mexican officials are evaluating how to send fuel to Cuba to help meet basic needs such as electricity without triggering reprisals from Washington, which threatened tariffs against countries supplying fuel to Cuba, sources told Reuters reut.rs/4r6E5Yk

Read Tabitha Speelman's essay on China's independent bookstore scene: chinabooksreview.com/2026/01/29/b...

China sees most high temperature days on record in 2025 China's national average annual temperature hit a record for a second year at 10.9 degrees Celsius (51.6 degrees Fahrenheit), with the most high-temperature days ever recorded, the country's Meteorological Administration said on Thursday.

China sees most high temperature days on record in 2025 reut.rs/4t4d5dg

Green Tech Investments Hit a Record $2.3 Trillion Last Year Despite the surge, there are signs the energy transition isn’t gaining the momentum necessary to reach net-zero emissions.

Global investment in the energy transition climbed to a record $2.3 trillion in 2025, defying fears that the shifting political landscape and economic uncertainty would halt the world’s clean energy progress. Findings from a new BloombergNEF report with a gift link www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

One ship load of solar PV is worth more to the grid than 100 ships of coal: IEA says fossil fuels losing race One container ship of solar PV modules can make the same amount of electricity as 100 ships of coal, according to the IEA's latest report.

"Single ship load of solar PV – which can ultimately deliver 170 terawatt hours of PV once installed, is now worth 120 coal carries, or 57 LNG tankers"

🚨 NEW RECORD | China exported a RECORD 455 GW equivalent of solar PV products in 2025 – about TWICE the total solar capacity in the US ☀️

🇨🇳's solar exports in 2025 grew 29% from 354 GW in 2024, with cell exports DOUBLING year-on-year.

Explore the data: https://loom.ly/QN9barE

Renewables push China's fossil‑fuelled power into first annual drop in 10 years China's mostly coal-based thermal power generation fell in 2025 for the first time in 10 years, government data showed on Monday, as growing renewable generation met growth in electricity demand even ...

www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

In a newly published paper, we find that in 2025 human emissions of greenhouse gases added around 23 billion trillion joules of heat to the world's oceans – 39 times as much as the annual energy produced by all human activity on Earth. link.springer.com/ar...

Metro rail kilometers per million inhabitants, top 20 urban areas globally. Just includes urban areas with at least 1 million residents.

What urban areas in the world have the longest existing/under construction metro networks per capita?

In a quick analysis using Transit Explorer & EU GHS-UCDB 2024 data, the top urban areas are:
1—Chengdu
2—Hangzhou
3—Ningbo
4—Xuzhou
5—Stockholm
6—Zhengzhou
7—Singapore
8—Xi'an
9—Hamburg
10—Changsha

The latest Duke CFO survey shows that the vast majority of CFOs are seeing no impact from AI on labor productivity, decision-making speed, customer satisfaction, or time spent on high-value-added tasks

Torsten at Apollo

China says it has a deal with the EU on steps to resolve their dispute over EV imports China says it has reached a deal with the European Union on exports of Chinese made electric vehicles to the bloc.

China said it has reached a deal with the European Union on exports of Chinese made electric vehicles to the bloc. The EU will be issuing guidelines on minimum pricing for Chinese auto exporters, the Commerce Ministry in Beijing said.

US-based multinational companies will be exempt from global tax deal The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has finalized a deal exempting U.S. multinational corporations from paying more corporate taxes overseas.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has finalized a deal exempting U.S. multinational corporations from paying more corporate taxes overseas.

State Department Experts Fear Retaliation For Questioning Trump And Rubio “Imagine being afraid to provide what you think is appropriate legal advice," one former attorney told HuffPost.

Trump, Rubio & Miller are directing a foreign policy increasingly defined by big apparent violations of international law

Govt experts on that law are quitting or feeling silenced:
www.huffpost.com/entry/state-...

www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

For US personnel + US influence, huge risks here..

Nice chart

Quite like this. Thinking about how to think about economics of structural transformation where formal models offer little help academic.oup.com/oxrep/articl...

Exclusive: China mandates 50% domestic equipment rule for chipmakers, sources say The mandate is one of the most significant measures Beijing has introduced to wean itself off reliance on foreign technology.

key line here "The requirements are relaxed for advanced chip production lines, where domestically developed equipment is not yet fully available" www.reuters.com/world/china/...

The affordability crisis is an inequality crisis. When prices spike in key sectors, it's not just inflation—it's a massive redistribution shock that hits poor households hardest.
In our **new working paper**, we identify the sectors that matter most. A thread 🧵
scholarworks.umass.edu/entities/pub...

Reminder that Beijing isn't all-powerful: ""It's a sensitive area ... But people who get cheap electricity are still mining." www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...