Image of the week: Excavation at dusk
Lights illuminate giant excavators as they operate at dusk at the Garzweiler opencast lignite – or brown coal – mine, operated by RWE, in Garzweiler, Germany. Earlier this year, some 1,500 climate change protestors managed to halt production at the vast mine in a direct action they named Ende Gelände (Here and no further). So how much of an impact will the UN’s Paris climate agreement will have on big business? Well, the words “fossil fuels” do not appear anywhere in it, and nor does “coal” or “oil”. Still, one Brian Ricketts, secretary- general of the European Association for Coal and Lignite (Euracoal), says the industry shouldn’t be relieved that the agreement is weak, as the real danger is that fossil fuels are being portrayed – unjustly, in his view – as “public enemy number one”. Photograph: Martin Leissl/Bloomberg
In Numbers: Exploding hoverboards
3 Number of house fires in London caused by faulty "hoverboard" scooters (which don't actually hover) over a 10-day period in October, according to the London Fire Brigade. Another in Kent was said to have exploded "like a bomb" while charging.
$399-$439 Price of the Original Swagway, a hoverboard sold by one of the leading brands, Swagway (tagline: "Welcome to the Swag Revolution"). A Swagway caught fire in New York last week and the brand has since been pulled from Amazon.
15,000 Number of the hoverboards – also known as "rideables" – that have been seized by UK trading standards officials at ports and borders. Amazon has now told anyone who bought a hoverboard via its sites to dispose of them and they will be refunded.
The Lexicon: Pain-specific products
Specific pain or pain-specific products are a range of Nurofen-branded over-the-counter pills and they go by names such as Nurofen Back Pain, Nurofen Period Pain, Nurofen Tension Headache, etc. But the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is having none of it. The consumer body took a legal action against the manufacturer, Reckitt Benckiser, on the grounds that this packaging is misleading nonsense, as the products are identical. A court has now sided with the watchdog and ordered the removal of the range from Australian shelves. It also found that the range – still on sale in other countries – had a "significantly higher" price than comparable products. A painful business indeed.
Getting to know: The 3.5mm headphone jack
Most people have never had cause to think about how much affection they have for the 3.5mm headphone jack. That could change in 2016, if the vicious rumours that dastardly Apple is about to do away with the 3.5mm jack on its next iPhone turn out to be true. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s is not that much thicker than the 3.5mm jack and now Apple-watching sites suggest the company's push to make the iPhone 7 slimmer than its predecessor mean the jack could be toast. Apple could throw out the industry standard for a 2.5mm jack, or it could force everyone to buy headphones that slot into the lightning connector (that's the one that chargers use) instead. Either way, whatever it does, it's likely to be annoying.
The list: Brazilian blues
Credit ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch have this week downgraded Brazilian sovereign debt to sub-investment or “junk” status. So what’s going on in the country that not too long ago was being hailed as the “B” in the fast-growing Bric economies? Here’s the cheat sheet on this “fallen angel”.
1 Messy politics Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff is battling an impeachment process following allegations she doctored government accounts, and her ministers are arguing among themselves.
2 Surging unemployment The current rate of 7.9 per cent is expected to spiral in the months ahead.
3 High inflation Consumer prices rose more than 10 per cent in the year to November, making life pretty miserable for the average Brazilian.
4 Low investor confidence A corruption scandal at state-owned oil company Petrobras hasn't exactly helped.
5 The rest of the world Conditions in the Chinese economy, plus the tightening of interest rates in the US, aren't doing Brazil any favours either.
