The legal world was abuzz. The diplomatic channels of various countries raged and fizzed. It had been rumoured that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his cabinet colleagues, had been bracing themselves for a stinging intervention from the International Criminal Court, a body they give no credence or respect to.
Unfortunately, many a just cause sprouts from crime, and the protagonists can always claim to be on the right side of history when the world takes notice of a plight. Only at the conclusion of the peace accords can stock be taken, the egregiousness of it all accounted for. Along the way, the law looks increasingly shabby, suffering in sulky silence. These applications for arrest warrants are merely a modest measure to, pardon the pun, arrest that tendency. It is now up to the pre-trial chamber of the ICC to take the next step.
The world’s biggest tech companies are now richer and more powerful than most countries. According to an article in PC Week in 2021 discussing Apple’s dominance: “By taking the current valuation of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and others, then comparing them to the GDP of countries on a map, we can see just how crazy things have become… Valued at $2.2 trillion, the Cupertino company is richer than 96% of the world. In fact, only seven countries currently outrank the maker of the iPhone financially.”
Overnight, Apple has pulled down a controversial game from its App Store which encouraged users to ‘fight the aboriginals’ and beat them to death with stone axes. New Matilda reported the news of Survival Island 3 – Australia Story 3D – shortly after 9pm last night. By 8am this morning, the game was no longer availableMore
On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a massive new investment by the company in solar energy: an $850 million installation that will cover 1,300 acres in Monterey County, California. Apple is partnering with First Solar—the nation’s biggest utility-scale installer—on the project, which will produce enough power to supply 60,000 Californian homes, Cook said.
According to a press release from First Solar, Apple will receive 130 megawatts from the project under a 25-year deal, which the release describes as the largest such agreement ever.
Cook called it Apple’s “biggest, boldest and most ambitious” energy project to date, designed to offset the electricity needs of Apple’s new campus, the futuristic circular building designed by Norman Foster, and all of Apple’s California retail stores. “We know at Apple that climate change is real,” he said.
Cook made the announcement during a Goldman Sachs technology conference, and First Solar’s stocks shot up this afternoon on the news:
Apple has already made huge commitments to solar. The Guardianreported last year that the company planned to use solar power to manufacture its new “sapphire” screens for the iPhone 6 at a factory in Arizona. Last year, Climate Desk joined the Guardian during a press visit to the biggest solar field then in Apple’s portfolio. The Maiden, North Carolina, facility has 55,000 solar panels that track the sun across a nearly 100-acre field, offsetting the electricity sucked up by Apple’s data center across the road:
Apple’s new investment continues the startling growth of solar in America, which my colleague Tim McDonnell has reported on previously: By 2016, solar is projected to be as cheap or cheaper than electricity from the conventional grid in every state except three. Over the past decade, the amount of solar power produced in the United States has grown 139,000 percent.
In another portion of Cook’s appearance, the CEO boasted about the ways Apple’s new iWatch could help improve health by reminding you when you’ve become too sedentary:
Apple Watch can save your life? Tim Cook has his watch tap him if he’s sitting too long, says “sitting is the new cancer” $AAPL
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