Sun: The Luck of the Irish is Based on Dumb US Tax Policy

That's It!!! I'm Boycotting Marmite

Unilever has said it will let Russian employees be conscripted to be sent to Ukraine if they are called up.

The consumer goods giant, which has about 3,000 employees in Russia, has policies that cover the well-being and safety of its workers.

However, in a letter to campaign group B4Ukraine, it said it would comply with Russian conscription law.

Unilever has been under pressure to pull out of Russia, but says the situation is "not straightforward".

In a letter to B4Ukraine, which campaigns for companies to cease operating in Russia to hurt its economy, Unilever said it "absolutely condemns the war in Ukraine as a brutal, senseless act by the Russian state".

It also said it had responsibility for its 3,000 workers, adding that it had "global principles including the safety and well-being of our employees".

Nevertheless, the British firm, which makes products including Marmite and Cornetto ice creams, said it was "aware of the law requiring any company operating in Russia to permit the conscription of employees should they be called".

They Also Make Ben & Jerry's? Well I Can't Boycott Everything.

What the Frack?

Could kinder, gentler fracking create a breakthrough in geothermal power?

When considering renewable energy, most evaluations look primarily at two sources: wind and solar. Both sources are growing rapidly. Both sources are getting progressively cheaper. In recent years, both sources have seen their cost per megawatt hour fall below that of coal, helping to persuade utilities to switch to renewable sources and lowering demand for fossil fuels. In fact, it’s now cheaper to build new solar or wind power than it is to just keep an old coal plant running.

Hydro power is often mentioned, but only in the sense that while it plays a significant role in the current energy portfolio, there are few options for expansion. While wind and solar have been racing up, hydroelectric production has declined.

And then there’s geothermal power. In 2000, geothermal produced twice as much electricity as wind. In 2023, wind produces 25 times as much electricity as geothermal. Limitations on geothermal kept it restricted to a few locations as thousands of wind turbines spread across the nation. But a new breakthrough may have greatly expanded the potential growth of geothermal power. And all it takes is … fracking.

It's Not the Shoes. It's Not the Jeans.  It's the Genes.

It's not magic, it's science. Recent research led by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) reveals that individuals who contract COVID-19 but remain symptom-free - dubbed as 'super dodgers' - may owe their resilience to a specific genetic mutation known as HLA.

According to the study, carriers of this gene variant are more than twice as likely to be asymptomatic. This, compared to those who experience symptoms after contracting the virus.

This study, published in Nature on July 19, 2023, represents a significant step in understanding the genetic influence on our body's response to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The research provides a possible explanation for why some people contract the virus but never fall ill.

The Luck of the Irish is Based on Dumb US Tax Policy

How U.S. Drug Companies Could Tip Europe Into Recession

Whether Europe avoids recession depends inordinately on one tiny country: Ireland.

In early June, the European Union’s statistics office reported the eurozone’s economy contracted 0.4% in the first three months of the year, having previously estimated it grew slightly. That was the second consecutive quarterly contraction recorded by the office—a recession by one common definition.

A key reason for the revision was a 17.3% annualized fall in Ireland’s GDP, which was itself the result of a large drop in pharmaceutical production in March.

A little over five weeks later Eurostat changed its estimate again: Eurozone output was flat in the first quarter, removing the recession signal. Once again Ireland was a factor. The country’s GDP drop was now smaller at a 10.7% decline, because of an improved estimate of pharmaceutical production.

There are some signs that the collapse in Ireland’s March output figures was a blip, with April and May numbers pointing to a partial rebound. That will help determine whether the eurozone posted second-quarter growth. The official figure is to be released July 31. Economists expect the eurozone to grow modestly.

Ireland owes its outsize role in the eurozone’s economic fortunes to the rapid growth of its economy since 2014 and to the unusually large contribution of U.S. pharmaceutical companies’ profits. Their swings often reflect not production and employment but the consequences of tax-minimization strategies that in the past have been a source of friction between Ireland and other countries.

Aided by U.S. digital and pharmaceutical giants, Ireland’s economy has soared as much of the rest of Europe has experienced sluggish growth. Though it accounted for just 2% of the eurozone’s combined economic output in 2014, Ireland has accounted for almost a fifth of all of the economic growth since then. Its share of the bloc’s GDP is now 4%.

Last month Oliver Rakau, an economist at Oxford Economics, tweeted in jest that the EU’s statistics agency should exclude Ireland from the official measure of the currency area’s GDP. The German economist harbors no animus toward Ireland, but the idiosyncratic nature of its economy makes forecasting the region’s moves difficult.

“It’s frustrating,” he said.

Ireland hosts the European, and sometimes international, headquarters of some of the largest businesses on Earth. They include the top U.S. digital companies and the largest U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

Those companies have located in Ireland in part because it boasts one of the lowest corporate tax rates among industrialized countries at 12.5%. They have organized themselves to direct much of the profit earned on intellectual property such as patents to Ireland.

Amid criticism of its role in tax avoidance by big international businesses, Ireland has signed up to a U.S. led push to set a minimum tax rate on company profits. It has also supported an associated plan to reallocate the taxes levied on the profits of about 100 of the world’s biggest companies. But with both initiatives stalled in Congress, it isn’t clear when and how they will impact Ireland.