First Thing: Biden ratchets up efforts to secure Sweden’s Nato membership

Work to persuade Turkey to drop its objections continues, as president meets Sweden’s prime minister at White House. Plus, five ways AI could improve the world

Good morning.

Joe Biden has told the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, that he is “looking forward” to the country’s stalled Nato membership bid winning final approval, amid doubts that Turkey will withdraw its opposition in time for a major summit next week.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Biden said he wanted to reiterate that he “fully, fully supports Sweden’s membership in Nato” and was “anxiously looking forward” to the bid being ratified.

Kristersson thanked the US president for maintaining “transatlantic unity” during the upheaval sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and praised Biden’s “strong support” for Sweden’s Nato bid, which is being held up by Turkey and Hungary.

After his meeting with the US president, Kristersson said that he and Biden had agreed that the “Vilnius meeting in a week is certainly appropriate time for Sweden’s entry, but only Turkey can take Turkey’s decisions”.

What else is Biden doing this week? The Oval Office meeting kicks off a string of diplomatic events for Biden, centred on Nato. He leaves on Sunday for a one-day trip to Britain, then will attend the Nato summit in Vilnius and finish up with a stop in the alliance’s newest member, Finland.

Will Biden reach out directly to his counterparts in Turkey and Hungary before the summit? “He’s been pretty, pretty steadfast” on the need to approve the application, said the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. “Sweden is a strong, capable defense partner that shares Nato’s values.”

Threads app: Instagram owner’s Twitter rival logs 5 million users in first hours

Meta’s Twitter rival, Threads, logged 5 million sign-ups in its first four hours of operation, according to its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, as the company seeks to woo users from Elon Musk’s troubled platform through an offer of lengthier posts, a handful of celebrity backers – and a strong resemblance to its competitor.

The Facebook and Instagram owner brought forward the app’s debut by 15 hours to 7pm EDT in the US and midnight in the UK, making it freely available in 100 countries on the Apple and Google app stores, although regulatory concerns mean it will not be available in the EU.

Brands such as Billboard, HBO, NPR and Netflix had accounts set up within minutes of launch. Meta said initial celebrity backers included Shakira and Gordon Ramsay, with a recent report suggesting that Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama had also been approached.

Thread users will need an Instagram account to log in. Once they have signed up, they can choose to follow the same accounts they follow on Instagram, if they too have joined the new app.

What is Threads like? The app closely resembles Twitter visually, although some of the wording has been changed, with retweets called “reposts” and tweets called “threads”. Meta has not been averse to copying rival products in the past, including the 2020 launch of Instagram’s Reels feature, noted for its similarity to TikTok’s short-form videos.

What has been the reaction to it? Reaction to the debut on Wednesday ranged from caution to enthusiasm, many praising its ease of use and some saying that Elon Musk should be worried. Others pointed out that the app’s speedy integration with Instagram showed just how powerful Meta had become. Much of the conversation, ironically, took place on Twitter, where the hashtag “Threads” was trending on Wednesday evening.

China accused of scores of abuses linked to ‘green mineral’ mining

A new report into China’s dominance in the green-energy market has identified more than 100 allegations of environmental and human rights violations linked to its overseas transition mineral investments over the past two years.

China dominates the processing and refining of lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese, nickel, zinc, chromium, aluminium and rare-earth elements – and the manufacturing of technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines and batteries for electric vehicles (EV), which require so-called transition minerals.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), a corporate watchdog that tracks the local impact of thousands of global businesses, identified 102 alleged abuses in 2021 and 2022 linked to Chinese mining interests spanning 18 countries.

Copper is the mineral most frequently associated with allegations of harm, followed by nickel. The abuses include Indigenous rights violations, attacks against grassroots leaders, water pollution, ecosystem destruction and unsafe working conditions.

Where were the highest levels of alleged abuse? The highest number of alleged abuses – 27 – were recorded in Indonesia, which has the world’s largest nickel reserve, followed by Peru, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and Zimbabwe. More than 70% of the alleged violations were documented in these five countries where weak governance and human rights abuses have been widely reported, and where China is a major economic partner.

In other news …

Australia’s home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, has called Donald Trump Jr “a big baby” after his tour of the country was postponed. Trump Jr’s promoter blamed “cancel culture”, even though he was granted a visa to travel to Australia. O’Neil tweeted that he actually cancelled due to “poor ticket sales”.

The US air force has released video footage it says shows Russian fighter jets flying dangerously close to several US drones over Syria yesterday, forcing the MQ-9 Reapers to take evasive manoeuvres. US Air Forces Central said the events represent “a new level of unprofessional and unsafe action”.

Heart-wrenching private tours of the bloodstained halls and classrooms of Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school began yesterday for relatives of the 14 students and three staff members who died on 14 February 2018. The school district plans to demolish the three-story building, replacing it with a memorial.

Officials in Wisconsin are investigating how eight people became trapped upside down on a rollercoaster – some of them for more than three hours – at a festival over the holiday weekend. The nightmarish incident took place on Sunday at the Forest county festival in Crandon, a city north-west of Green Bay.

Stat of the day: World’s 722 biggest companies ‘making $1tn in windfall profits’

The world’s 722 biggest companies collectively are making more than $1tn a year in windfall profits on the back of soaring energy prices and rising interest rates, according to research by development charities. The companies made $1.08tn this way in 2021 and $1.09tn last year, according to analysis of Forbes magazine data by the charities Oxfam and ActionAid. The collective profits were 89% higher than the previous four-year average covering 2017-2020. Windfall profits are defined as those exceeding average profits in the previous four years by more than 10%. Energy companies recorded the highest windfall profits. Of the 45 energy firms on the Forbes list of the 2,000 biggest companies, they made on average $237bn a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022, according to the research. The surge in energy profits has led to the creation of a total of 96 energy billionaires with a combined wealth of nearly $432bn – about $50bn more than in April last year.

Don’t miss this: Five ways AI could improve the world – ‘We can cure all diseases, stabilise our climate, halt poverty’

Recent advances such as Open AI’s GPT-4 chatbot have awakened the world to how sophisticated artificial intelligence has become and how rapidly the field is advancing. It is not yet clear how the power and possibilities of AI will play out. Could this powerful new technology help save the world? We asked five leading AI researchers to lay out their best-case scenarios for how it may help us develop new drugs, give up dull jobs and live long, healthy lives.

“Most movies about AI have an “us versus them” mentality, but that’s really not the case,” Ray Kurzweil says. “This is not an alien invasion of intelligent machines; it’s the result of our own efforts to make our infrastructure and our way of life more intelligent. It’s part of human endeavour. We merge with our machines. Ultimately, they will extend who we are.”

Climate check: Oil lobbyists spend millions to stall California’s gamechanging climate bill

Two transparency bills in the California legislature would require corporations to disclose more information about their emissions and their efforts to fight the climate crisis, writes Aarón Cantú. The oil and gas industry is spending millions to kill them. The bills would force large companies that do business in California to report all of their emissions and also require firms that buy or sell carbon offsets – which represent a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions – to disclose more information in an effort to crack down on bogus climate claims. Both measures have momentum but could be blocked by moderate Democrats historically aligned with corporate interests. Since the legislation would make new information available beyond California, the two bills could represent a watershed moment for holding big polluters accountable when they claim climate bona fides, supporters say.

Last Thing: ‘Like a very pungent office fridge’ – rare corpse flower blooms in San Francisco

A rare flower with a smell that has been compared to rotting flesh and described as “worse than one thousand pukes” is bringing hundreds of spectators to San Francisco’s Golden Gate park. The city’s Conservatory of Flowers announced on Tuesday that the plant, known as a corpse flower, was on the verge of blooming, a special event that is expected to last only a few days. The flower is known for its pungent smell, large height (it can reach 12ft) and the fleeting nature of its bloom. It can take between a few years and more than a decade for corpse flowers to drum up enough energy to unfurl. On Monday and Tuesday, hundreds of patrons lined up to get a glimpse and whiff of Scarlet, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. One visitor told the paper that Scarlet smelled “like a very pungent office fridge that hadn’t been cleaned out in a few months in a very warm room”.

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