🌎 Nations gather to negotiate deep sea mining code as opposition mounts

The United Nations' International Seabed Authority (ISA) will meet on Monday to consider new rules allowing firms to extract minerals from the ocean floor, despite mounting concerns about the economic and environmental risks.

Supporters say deep sea mining will help boost supplies of raw materials like cobalt and nickel, which are needed for the global energy transition, but critics say it could destroy ecosystems and disrupt migratory routes.

As many as 27 countries are calling for at least a temporary halt of activities, and Hawaii last week became the fourth Pacific U.S. state to issue a comprehensive ban.

Meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, until July 26, the 36-member ISA council will negotiate the latest draft of a long-awaited "mining code", designed to regulate the exploration and extraction of "polymetallic nodules" and other deposits on the ocean floor.

🔎 Source
#resources

☠️ Blood Meridian

🇲🇽Mexico’s costly Maya Train draws few passengers in its first six months of partial operation

The pet rail project of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador could wind up costing as much as $30 billion, is only half finished as he heads into the final 2 1/2 months of his term.

But the most damning judgments on the Maya Train tourist line, which runs in a loop around the Yucatan Peninsula, are the ridership figures on about half the railway that is now open: only about 1,200 people per day use the train, according to government figures released Monday.

Most ride it only on short stretches between the city of Merida and Cancun, or the nearby city of Campeche. The big hope for paying the train’s massive cost was that tourists would use it to depart from the resort of Cancun and explore the whole 950-mile (1,500-kilometer) route to visit the Mayan archaeological sites that dot the peninsula.

But a round-trip route from Cancun to the well-known Mayan temple complex of Palenque has drawn only about 100 passengers per day each way in the first six months of operation. That is a volume that a bus or two per day could handle far more cheaply.

🔎 Source
#Mexico

☠️ Blood Meridian

The Bitcoin Whitepaper is now available for people in the UK to read freely once again. The default judgement obtained fraudulently by Craig Wright has been overturned. Thank you to everyone who helped.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

https://x.com/CobraBitcoin/status/1813271585882505272

@FelipeChannel