CANBERRA — The likelihood of a La Niña weather event in coming months has decreased, Australia’s weather bureau said on Tuesday, adding that if the phenomenon did appear, it would be weak and short-lived.

The development of La Niña and its opposite, El Niño, are of huge importance to global agriculture, with La Niña typically increasing rainfall in eastern Australia, Southeast Asia and India and reducing rainfall in the Americas.

“The chance of a La Niña event developing in the coming months has decreased,” the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said in a two-weekly update.

The bureau said its in-house climate model suggests La Niña will not develop and four of the six other climate models it surveys now agree.

La Niña and El Niño are caused by the cooling and warming of sea surface temperatures off western South America.

“If a La Niña were to develop, it is forecast to be relatively weak (in terms of the strength of the sea surface temperature anomaly) and short-lived, with all models forecasting neutral values in February,” the bureau said. 

Other meteorologists have also become less confident that a La Nina will appear.

A U.S. government forecaster said last week there was a 60% chance of a La Nina emerging by the end of November that would persist through January-March 2025. A month earlier, it said there was a 71% chance of a La Nina forming. — Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Tuesday reiterated that state energy firm Petronas will continue to conduct oil and gas exploration activities in Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea, despite objections from China.

This includes exploration activities in Petronas’ Kasawari gas development off Sarawak state on Borneo, he told parliament.

“We will continue, but we will not close the door on discussions with any country,” Mr. Anwar said.

He said Malaysia had territorial disputes with many of its neighbors, including Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and said undue focus was placed on its differences with China.

“We have issues but these issues do not affect diplomatic relations. These issues do not affect trade relations and close friendships with our neighbors,” he said.

Mr. Anwar said last month Malaysia’s exploration activities were within its territory and were not intended to be provocative or hostile towards China, following the media leak of a diplomatic note from Beijing.

In the note, carried by a Philippine news outlet, Beijing asserted that Malaysia’s oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea breached its territory.

China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea and has deployed a fleet of coast guards deep into Southeast Asia, including the EEZs of Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Vietnam, complicating those country’s exploration efforts.

China rejects a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague that Beijing’s expansive claims had no basis under international law.

Petronas’s oil and gas projects in the South China Sea have had several encounters with Chinese vessels in recent years.

The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, a US think tank, said in a report this month that Chinese coast guard vessels have made frequent visits to Malaysian exploratory wells off Sarawak this year, passing as close as 1,000 meters (0.6 mile) from gas production platforms at Timi, Kasawari, and Jerun.

Petronas’ Kasawari field holds an estimated 10 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves and commenced first production in August this year. — Reuters

DUBAI — Iran condemned new European Union (EU) and British sanctions on Tehran and denied providing ballistic missiles to Russia, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, said in a post on X on Tuesday.

The European Union agreed on Monday to impose sanctions on seven people and seven organizations, including airline Iran Air, for their links to Iranian transfers of ballistic missiles to Russia.

The listings also include Saha Airlines and Mahan Air and Iran’s Deputy Defence Minister Seyed Hamzeh Ghalandari.

At the same time, Britain added nine new designations under its Iran sanctions regime.

Last month, the United States, citing intelligence it said had been shared with allies, said Russia had received ballistic missiles from Iran for its war in Ukraine.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson denied on Tuesday his country provided ballistic missiles to Russia.

“Some European countries and the UK have unfortunately claimed without evidence that Iran has militarily intervened in this conflict which is totally refuted,” Mr. Baghaei said, referring to the Russia-Ukraine war.

Mr. Baghaei condemned the fresh sanctions saying that imposing new sanctions by the European Union and the UK on Iranian individuals and entities goes against international law.

Also facing sanctions under the EU move are prominent officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and the managing directors of Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industries and Aerospace Industries Organization.

The sanctions include an asset freeze and a travel ban to the European Union. — Reuters

STOCKHOLM — Three U.S.-based academics won the 2024 Nobel economics prize on Monday for research that explored the aftermath of colonization to understand why global inequality persists today, especially in countries dogged by corruption and dictatorship.

Simon Johnson and James Robinson, both British-American, and Turkish-American Daron Acemoglu were commended for their work on “how institutions are formed and affect prosperity”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

“Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges,” said Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.

“They have identified the historical roots of the weak institutional environments that characterize many low-income countries today,” he told a press conference. 

The award came a day after a World Bank report showed that the world’s 26 poorest countries – home to 40% of its most poverty-stricken people – are more in debt than at any time since 2006, highlighting a major reversal in the fight against poverty. 

The prestigious award, formally known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, is the final prize to be given out this year and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).

Acemoglu told reporters in Athens that data gathered by pro-democracy groups showed that public institutions and rule of law in many parts of the world were currently being weakened.

“Authoritarian growth is often more unstable and doesn’t generally lead to very rapid and original innovation,” he said, referring to China as “a bit of a challenge”.

Johnson told Reuters by telephone that established institutions in the United States were under stress, notably due to Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election.

“I think that’s the biggest concern that I see in the industrialized world,” he said, adding the Nov. 5 presidential election was “a serious stress test” for U.S. democracy.

Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Robinson is at the University of Chicago, where he spoke at a press conference on Monday and referred to his co-laureates as his “best friends.”

“I’m not someone who thinks that economists have a kind of cure for everything, or they have some silver bullet,” he said. “Ideas are important in terms of giving people levers or giving people ways to think about the problems in their society.”

He said all humans have the same aspirations and a shared history but have nonetheless “built very different societies in different parts of the world.”

“The first thing is to think about a question that’s relevant to those people, to their context and to their aspirations,” he said of his research.

‘REVERSAL OF FORTUNE’
The laureates’ research showed how European colonization had dramatic but divergent impacts across the world, depending on whether the colonizer focused on extraction of resources or the setting up of long-term institutions for the benefit of European migrants.

This, they found, resulted in a “reversal of fortune” where former colonies that were once rich become poor, while some poorer countries – where institutions were often set up – were in the end able to garner some generalized prosperity through them.

Another finding covered how “dangerous” it was to colonize an area: the higher mortality among the colonizers, the lower today’s current output per capita, a measure of prosperity.

The economics award is not one of the original prizes for science, literature and peace created in the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and first awarded in 1901, but a later addition established and funded by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

Past winners include a host of influential thinkers such as Milton Friedman, John Nash – played by actor Russell Crowe in the 2001 film “A Beautiful Mind” – and, more recently, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Research into inequality has featured strongly in recent awards. Last year, Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin won the prize for her work highlighting the causes of wage and labor market inequality between men and women.

In 2019, economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won the award for work on fighting poverty.

The economics prize has been dominated by U.S. academics since its inception, while U.S.-based researchers also tend to account for a large portion of winners in the scientific fields for which 2024 laureates were announced last week.

That crop of prizes began with U.S. scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the prize for medicine on Monday and concluded with Japan’s Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who campaigned for the abolition of nuclear weapons landing the award for peace on Friday. — Reuters