World

Nauru selling citizenship for $105,000 to save itself from rising seas

Published

2 months ago

March 6, 2025

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Citizenship of Nauru, an island nation spanning just 8 square miles in the southwest Pacific Ocean, can be yours for $105,000. The tiny, low-lying island has launched a “golden passport” initiative with the aim of raising money to fund climate action.

Nauru faces an existential threat from rising sea levels, storm surges and coastal erosion as the planet warms. But the world’s third smallest country lacks the resources to protect itself from a climate crisis disproportionately driven by wealthy countries.

The government says selling citizenship will help raise the funds needed for a plan to move 90% of the island’s around 12,500-strong population onto higher ground and build an entirely new community.

Golden passports are not new but they are controversial; history is littered with examples of them being exploited for criminal actions. Yet as developing countries struggle to get the money they need to deal with escalating climate impacts — a funding gap likely to be exacerbated by the US withdrawal from global climate action — they are being forced to find new ways to raise cash.

“While the world debates climate action, we must take proactive steps to secure our nation’s future,” Nauru’s President David Adeang told CNN.

The passports will cost a minimum of $105,000, but will be prohibited for people with certain criminal histories. A Nauru passport offers visa-free access to 89 countries including the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

Few of these new passport holders are likely to ever even visit remote Nauru, but citizenship allows people to lead “global lives,” said Kirstin Surak, associate professor of political sociology at the London School of Economics and the author of The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires. This can be particularly useful for those with more restrictive passports, she told CNN.

For Nauru, this program is being pitched as a chance to secure the future of the island, which has a difficult, dark history.

Nauru was strip mined for phosphate from the early 1900s. For nearly a century, the landscape was gouged by miners, leaving the center of the island a near barren landscape of jagged rocks.

It has left around 80% of the island uninhabitable, meaning most people now live clustered along the coastlines, exposed to sea level rise, which has been increasing here at a faster rate than global average.

Once the phosphate ran out, Nauru looked for new revenue sources. Since the early 2000s, it has served as an offshore detention site for refugees and migrants attempting to settle in Australia — a program scaled back after detainee deaths.

Now, the island is at the center of a controversial plan to mine the deep sea for materials for the green transition.

Nauru was even in the sights of now-disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, who floated a plan to buy the island and build a bunker to survive an apocalypse, according to 2023 filings in a lawsuit against him.

For the people who live there, however, Nauru feels anything but future-proofed.

“A lot of people residing on the coast have already lost land — some have had their entire houses engulfed by king tides and they have lost everything,” Tyrone Deiye, a Nauruan national and a researcher at Monash Business School in Australia, said in a statement.

Selling citizenship has the potential to make “an absolutely enormous” economic impact for micro-states like Nauru, LSE’s Surak said.

Nauru expects to make around $5.6 million from the program in its first year, eventually scaling that to around $42 million a year. It will be built up gradually “as we assess for any unintended consequences or negative impact,” said Edward Clark, CEO of Nauru Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship Program. Ultimately they hope the program will make up 19% of total government revenue.

The success of the program will depend on how “revenues are channeled into the country, and what they are used to do,” Surak said. That means vetting and transparency on where the funds go, and preventing people who would otherwise be prohibited from being granted passports from paying officials off the books to get one, she added.

An earlier program to sell citizenship in the mid-1990s was mired in scandal, including the 2003 arrest in Malaysia of two alleged Al Qaida terrorists carrying Nauru passports.

The government says the program’s vetting will be stringent and exclude those from countries designated as high risk by the United Nations, including Russia and North Korea. Partnerships with international organizations including the World Bank will provide “expertise and oversight,” said President Adeang.

Nauru is not the first country to look to fund climate action by selling passports. The Caribbean nation of Dominica, which has been selling citizenship since 1993, recently said it was using some of the proceeds to fund its “commitment to be the world’s first climate resilient country by 2030.”

It may be a route other countries consider as the burden of dealing with the costs of climate change far outweigh their economic resources, all while international climate funding appears to be drying up.

“Nauru highlights the opportunities for climate vulnerable countries to become testing grounds for climate innovation,” Clark said.

(CNN)

World

Spain and Portugal scramble to restore power

Published

3 hours ago

April 29, 2025

editor

A sweeping power outage left millions of people in Spain, Portugal and parts of France without electricity on Monday, leading to chaotic scenes and widespread disruption.

A problem with the power connection between France and Spain was a contributing factor to the outage, the head of a trade body that represents Europe’s power industry said.

Kristian Ruby, of Eurelectric, told the BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight a “specific incident with an interconnector between France and Spain” occurred on Monday.

Mr Ruby said this “meant the Spanish grid was disconnected from the broader European grid”.

He added that the interconnector incident was unlikely to have caused the outage on its own and that there were “likely to have been other elements in this equation”.

A day of widespread disruption saw trains cancelled and evacuated in some regions, and traffic lights stop working as delays mounted at airports.

As of Monday evening, 11 trains remained stranded, Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente said.

With shops, homes and restaurants plunged into darkness – and some people stuck in lifts – Spain’s electricity network said by mid-afternoon that restoring power could take several hours.

By Monday night, 50% of power had been restored across Spain, according to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. While Portuguese energy provider REN said electricity had been restored to 750,000 customers.

But a state of emergency remained in place, with regions able to request the special status.

Sánchez said the cause of the outage was still being investigated and warned against speculation, while Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said there was “no indication” of a cyber attack.

(BBC News)

World

Putin announces 3-day Russian ceasefire in Ukraine from May 08

Published

3 hours ago

April 29, 2025

editor

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a temporary ceasefire for the war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin said the ceasefire would run from the morning of 8 May until 11 May – which coincides with victory celebrations to mark the end of World War Two.

In response, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called for an immediate ceasefire lasting “at least 30 days”.

While US President Donald Trump, who has been attempting to broker a truce between the two sides, said he wants to see a permanent ceasefire, the White House said.

The Kremlin announced a similar, 30-hour truce over Easter, but while both sides reported a dip in fighting, they accused each other of hundreds of violations.

Ceasefires have been attempted more than 20 times in Ukraine – all of them failed eventually, and some within minutes of going into effect.

The most recent one, over Easter, was very limited in scope and only resulted in a slight reduction in fighting, with both sides accusing each other of violating the truce.

In a statement on Monday, the Kremlin said Putin declared the ceasefire “based on humanitarian considerations”.

A translation of the statement said: “Russia believes that the Ukrainian side should follow this example.

“In the event of violations of the ceasefire by the Ukrainian side, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will give an adequate and effective response.

“The Russian side once again declares its readiness for peace talks without preconditions, aimed at eliminating the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis, and constructive interaction with international partners.”

Following its release, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Sybiha said: “If Russia truly wants peace, it must cease fire immediately.”

“Why wait until May 8th?” he wrote on X. “If the fire can be ceased now and since any date for 30 days—so it is real, not just for a parade.”

He said Ukraine is ready to support a “lasting, durable, and full ceasefire. And this is what we are constantly proposing, for at least 30 days”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was growing “increasingly frustrated with leaders of both countries”.

“He wants to see a permanent ceasefire.

“I understand Vladimir Putin this morning offered a temporary ceasefire. The president has made it clear he wants to see a permanent ceasefire first to stop the killing, stop the bloodshed.”

The latest announcement comes during what the US has described as a “very critical” week for Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

Washington has been trying to broker a deal between the two sides, but the Donald Trump administration has threatened to pull out if they do not see progress.

Putin is keen to create the impression that Russia is serious about seeking peace – and he is keen for Trump to hear that message given Ukraine has accepted Washington’s proposal for a more lasting 30-day ceasefire.

It comes after the US president expressed annoyance with Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and currently controls about 20% Ukraine’s territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides since 2022.

(BBC News)

News

Chongqing gears up for 25th Lijia International Intelligent Equipment expo

Published

20 hours ago

April 28, 2025

editor

The international internet celebrity city of Chongqing in China will host a grand equipment manufacturing industry event – the 25th Lijia International Intelligent Equipment Exhibition 2025 next month.

The Expo will be held at the Chongqing International Expo Center from May 13th to 16th, 2025, attracting exhibitors and professional visitors from all over the world to discuss and showcase the latest technologies and products in the equipment manufacturing industry.

This exhibition, spanning across 100,000 sq. meters will bring together 1,400 globally renowned enterprises which will showcase their intelligent manufacturing equipment and technology, particularly the latest achievements, cutting-edge technologies, and high-end products in the fields of machine tools, industrial automation and robots, tool holders and measuring tools, sheet metal, die-casting casting, molds, rubber and plastic.

The 2025 Lijia Exhibition will also create multiple themed exhibition islands showcasing manufacturing powerhouses of China, which will comprehensively showcase solutions to industry pain points through on-site demonstrations, technical explanations, and physical displays.

In addition, the exhibition will also hold over 100 industry conferences and events. The main forum, “FIM-Future Intelligent Manufacturing Conference,” focuses on future factories, with the theme of AI+manufacturing. Industry experts are expected to provide suggestions and recommendations for manufacturing transformation.

Organizers point out that for global manufacturing enterprises, the expo is not only an excellent opportunity to learn about the latest technologies and products in China’s equipment manufacturing industry, but also also an important platform for gaining a deeper understanding of the Chinese market and expanding international cooperation. It will also open up opportunities to engage in in-depth exchanges and cooperation with Chinese counterparts, and to jointly promote the development and prosperity of the global equipment manufacturing industry.