♻️ 🇪🇺 🗳 The European Commission will not unveil its long-awaited proposal to enshrine the EU's new 2040 climate target tomorrow, a spokesperson told POLITICO today.

🔶️ The amendment will formalize last year’s Commission recommendation to cut emissions by 90 percent by 2040, kicking off the EU's legislative process involving national governments and the European Parliament.

🔶️ That’s in part due to EU lawmaking grinding to a halt in the bloc’s election year. But the proposal’s timing is also subject to political pressures. Poland, which holds the rotating Council of the EU presidency, hopes to avoid dealing with the issue until after its May election.

🔶️ Meanwhile, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party, the largest faction in the European Parliament, is divided over whether to back the 90 percent goal. In the Council, only eight countries have explicitly supported it.

https://www.politico.eu/article/commission-pushes-eus-2040-climate-target-law-into-spring/

https://archive.ph/8WkUM

🏭 🇩🇪 🚗 Rheinmetall, Europe's top ammunition maker, intends to repurpose two of its automotive plants in Germany to mostly make defence equipment, highlighting the impact of an expected surge in spending in the region amid U.S. tensions over the Ukraine war.

🔶️ Rheinmetall's (RHMG.DE), opens new tab defence expansion affects its factories in Berlin and Neuss, where the company currently makes automotive parts, a business that has faced challenges as Germany's carmakers battle high costs and competition from abroad.

🔶️ Rheinmetall's operating profit at its weapon and ammunition business nearly doubled to 339 million euros over the first nine months of 2024, while profits at its automotive division fell 3.8% to 74 million, it said in November.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/rheinmetall-repurpose-two-german-factories-make-defence-equipment-2025-02-24

https://archive.ph/xpWq3

🏦 🇩🇪 📉 Deutsche Bundesbank reports the highest loss in the central bank's history.

🔶️ Germany's central bank plunged to a record €19.2bn (£15.9bn) loss last year in the latest setback for Europe's largest economy. A bond-buying spree prompted the Bundesbank to report its largest net loss in history, with officials warning that financial strain would remain throughout 2025.

🔶️ The losses stem from the central bank holding too many government bonds with low yields, which were unable to offset a recent rise in borrowing costs that led to the Bundesbank paying out more in interest to banks.

🔶️ Adrian Prettejohn, an economist at Capital Economics, said: “It was buying bonds with yields that were very low or negative, and now it is paying interest rates at 2.5pc, or last year it was 4pc.”

🔶️ However, it comes at a time of increasing gloom around the German economy, which is grappling with a slump in manufacturing, an ageing population and Donald Trump’s global trade war.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/25/german-central-bank-plunges-to-record-19bn-loss

https://archive.ph/7hSdw

🔗 Disclose TV

🔍 🇺🇸 🕵‍♂️ CNN reports that, on CIA’s leadership floor, there are talks that mass firings & proposed buyouts may result in a group of ex-CIA officers who could run to foreign intel services.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/politics/cia-security-risks-trump/index.html

🔗 Jerry Dunleavy IV

⚠️ Confirmed: A nation-scale power outage has knocked out internet connectivity across much of #Chile; network data show national connectivity at 25% of ordinary levels, with services including public transport affected by an energy transmission failure in Norte Chico #CorteDeLuz

🕵‍♂️ 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 Peter Navarro, one of the US president’s closest advisers, is pushing for the US to remove Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network — which also includes the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

🔗 Financial Times

☢️ 🇺🇸 🏫 Texas Wants To Be King Of Nuclear Power As Next AI Trade Unfolds

🔶️ Amid a flurry of nuclear startups around the country, Abilene-based Natura Resources is one of just two companies with permits from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a so-called "advanced" reactor. It will build its small, one megawatt molten salt reactor beneath a newly-completed laboratory at Abilene Christian University, in an underground trench 25 feet deep and 80 feet long, covered by a concrete lid and serviced by a 40-ton construction crane.

🔶️ The other company, California-based Kairos Power, is building its 35 megawatt test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the 80-year capital of American nuclear power science. Both target completion in 2027 and hope to usher in a new chapter of the energy age.

🔶️ The U.S. Department of Energy has been working for years to resuscitate the American nuclear sector, advancing the development of new reactors to meet the enormous incoming electrical demands of big new industrial facilities, from data centers and Bitcoin mines to chemical plants and desalination facilities.

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/texas-wants-be-king-nuclear-power-next-ai-trade-unfolds