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This article provides an overview of Japan's industrial production and its potential for recovery. The production index for April to June 2024 was lower compared to pre-pandemic levels, with industries such as transport equipment and chemicals being particularly affected. The article also examines the shipments-inventory balance and its impact on production. While electronic parts and devices have shown positive growth, it remains uncertain if this trend will extend to other industries. The article includes a series of data tables from various government sources, covering economic indicators such as cash salaries, job openings, unemployment rates, money stock, balance of payments, trade statistics, and foreign trade statistics. [Extracted from the article]

Tinna Rubber and Infrastructure Limited (TRIL) is India's largest integrated material recycler of end-of-life tyres (ELT). It imported 70% scrap to feedstock in its manufacturing plants. The nationwide lockdown declared on 24 March 2020 posed severe initial restrictions on the movement of non-essential cargo. It affected TRIL's 265 containers lodged at different ports in the country, thus escalating their demurrage/detention charges and storage costs. This case concerns supply chain problems faced by Shanti Swarup, TRIL Head–Procurement, owing to COVID-19 disruption. The situation was severe enough to wipe out TRIL's annual cash profit and put its factories at risk of running out of feedstock. Scrap importers, like TRIL, were in a deadlock with shipping lines and freight stations to waive any imposed charges or avail of any monetary relief despite regular guidelines issued by the Indian government. However, Swarup's existing and effective 'supply chain resilience' strategies had already made TRIL win half the battle by adopting a different approach to the deadlock problem, which relieved the situation. The case study also highlights typical risks and challenges faced by the Indian ELT recycling industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: In the face of contemporary environmental and economic challenges, a transition to more sustainable global plastics economy is crucial. Countries are implementing circular economy solutions, but one of the common problems is so called "waste tourism" -- export of plastic waste to other countries, often less developed. It contributes to global environmental problems but frequently surfaces also as inefficient resource management/trade and an ethical question as well. Transboundary movements of plastic waste from EU countries should be based on the principles set out in the Basel Convention which entail minimizing and disposing all kind of waste in an environmentally sound manner, minimizing the amount of waste transported and treating and disposing it as close as possible to its place of origin. Unfortunately, European plastic waste is exported in large quantities, often to less developed countries and not processed in accordance with European standards. Aim: This paper aims to identify the volume and directions of UE countries export patterns of plastic waste, its impact on the Sustainable Development Goals and trends in global and EU rules on transboundary plastic waste movements. The considerations are based, to a great extent, on literature on the subject-matter and secondary data, i.e. export data under the trade code 3915 (Waste, pairings and scrap of plastics) derived from the UN Comtrade and Eurostat Database, SDGs data derived from Sustainable Development Report 2022 and UN database and main legal basis for the international trade in plastic waste (the Basel Convention with its recent amendments) and its trends. Results: EU countries are still the leaders in exporting plastic waste, making it difficult to achieve the 12th SDG. Changes to the Basel Convention have not significantly affected the volume and destinations of EU plastic waste exports. They organize the categories of plastic waste but still leave an ample room for undesirable activities. Although the EU's proposals are more restrictive, the most desirable solution is a complete ban on the export of plastic waste by EU countries outside the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Beirut, the role of 'local strong men', known as the masoul, has significantly transformed, particularly in Lebanon's financial crisis and since the devastating Beirut port explosion in August 2020. Traditionally, these armed henchmen, affiliated with mainstream political parties, have exerted control over the scrap metal industry, from collection to transportation. However, the increasing profitability of scrap metal, notably copper and iron – long‐standing leading exports – has led to new forms of 'local strong men', termed 'asabet (gangs). These groups have escalated violence, breaking from what was previously considered normative behaviour. This article examines these evolving protection practices and their implications for Lebanon's sociopolitical landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses stochastic dominance tests to test the relative returns between conventional and clean energy stocks during different oil market conditions. We use the Barrett Donald test to test the dominance between conventional and clean energy stocks. Our sample consists of daily return data of 13 energy indexes from 2010 to 2022. Our results show that conventional energy stocks dominate the clean energy stock during extreme upward oil market conditions (top decile of oil returns) while clean energy stocks dominate the conventional energy stocks in other market conditions (first decile to the ninth decile of oil market returns). Results show a relatively lesser correlation between clean energy stocks with extremely high oil market returns and are consistent with the decoupling hypothesis of clean energy stocks. Our results also show that extreme upward oil market conditions carry good news for conventional energy stocks rather than bad news, as previously thought. Results also show that conventional energy stocks move more with oil market price shocks than clean energy stocks during different market conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]