Arvind's Newsletter

1.Malaysia’s Petronas to invest $1.6 bn in Indian green ammonia, reports Financial Times.

Malaysian state-owned energy company Petronas is set to invest $1.6bn in an Indian green ammonia venture, in a boost to New Delhi’s ambitions to export energy.

The investment by Petronas’s Gentari renewables division will give it a 30 per cent stake in a green ammonia company incorporated by the founders of Indian renewables group Greenko, one of India’s largest wind and solar power producers and energy storage operators, according to two people with direct knowledge of the deal and two people briefed on it.

It will be one of the top five biggest private capital raises in India so far this year, according to Dealogic data, and is the latest sign of international investor appetite for India’s growing renewable energy industry.

The investment values AM Green Ammonia Holdings at roughly $5.5bn, said a person with direct knowledge of the transaction. Bloomberg first reported the deal. Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC will also be investing, according to people with direct knowledge, who declined to say how much the investment would be worth. GIC is Greenko Energy Holdings’ biggest shareholder and has four non-executive seats on its board.

AM Green plans to build the world’s “lowest cost hydrogen delivery platform” by leveraging renewable energy generation and storage capabilities. The Greenko Group is already manufacturing electrolysers that are used in making green hydrogen alongside Belgian engineering company John Cockerill. This would help reduce costs.

2.Blackstone enters Indian healthcare services with Care Hospitals buy

Blackstone Group Inc. has acquired controlling interests in Care Hospitals and Kims Health in a multi-layered deal valued at $1 billion, marking the private equity giant's maiden foray into India's healthcare sector.

The New York-based firm secured roughly a 75% stake in Care Hospitals from Evercare Health Fund, an arm of TPG, for around $700 million. TPG Rise retains the remaining stake.

Care Hospitals, in turn, has entered an agreement to invest around $400 million to acquire 80% stake True North-backed Kims Health. Of this, Blackstone has invested $300 million, while TPG has put in around $100 million. Kims Health's founder M. I. Sahadulla will retain the residual stake.

The combined entity of Care and Kims Health will span 23 facilities across 11 cities, boasting over 4,000 beds.

3.What is behind the unexpected decline in dementia?

Dementia risk in the West dropped despite an aging population. Health bodies forecast a steady increase in dementia as more people live to old age. But a major analysis showed that the number of new cases in Europe and North America have been dropping 13% a decade, and even Japan, one of the world’s oldest populations, shows similar trends.

Improvements in general health are likely a factor: There has been “an enormous emphasis on preventing cardiovascular diseases” in recent years, one scientist told the Financial Times, and vascular health plays a huge role in several forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s. The decline implies 15 million fewer dementia diagnoses in high-income countries than expected by 2040.

Despite the widely held belief that dementia is destined to rise exponentially as global populations age, experts believe that, in the developed world at least, the prospects of avoiding dementia are stronger than they were a generation ago. A study published in 2020, which drew together multiple pieces of research to track the health of almost 50,000 over-65s, showed the incidence rate of new cases of dementia in Europe and North America had dropped 13 per cent per decade over the past 25 years — a decline that was consistent across all the studies.

Now, there are early signs that the same phenomenon may be emerging in Japan, a striking development in one of the world’s most aged populations, suggesting that the downward trend is becoming more widespread.

4.A lot of what we believe about our phone batteries isn’t true, reports Wired. There’s no need to let it fully drain before recharging, for one.

5.Israel-Hamas War:Gaza’s Tunnels Loom Large for Israel’s Ground Forces, reports New York Times

There is a transportation network below Gaza, one that Israel is trying to destroy. The network is made up of tunnels, where most Hamas fighters are likely living alongside stockpiles of weapons, food, water and, now, more than 200 Israeli hostages. Parts of the tunnels are large enough for vehicles to drive in them.

The Israeli military first launched an intense air attack targeting these tunnels and has now sent in ground troops to destroy them. Eliminating the tunnels would go long way toward breaking Hamas’s control over Gaza.

Tunnels have existed under Gaza for years. But after Israel withdrew its forces and settlers from Gaza nearly two decades ago, Hamas vastly expanded the underground network. Hamas has a long history of terrorist violence — both the U.S. and the European Union consider it a terrorist group — and the tunnels allow its members to hide from Israeli air attacks.

Israel created further incentive for tunnel construction by tightening the blockade of Gaza after 2007. The main rationale for the blockade was to keep out weapons and related material, but Israel’s definition is so broad that the blockade also restricted the flow of basic items. In response, Gazans have used the tunnels — which extend south into Egypt — to smuggle in food, goods, people and weapons. Some people refer to the hundreds of miles of tunnels as “the metro.”

Egypt’s government has also viewed the tunnels as a security threat. A decade ago, Egypt tried to destroy some tunnels along its border with Gaza, by dumping sewage into them and leveling houses that concealed entrances, as Joel Roskin, a geology professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, told our colleagues.

In the current war, Hamas will use the tunnels to hide and to attack Israeli soldiers from unexpected places. “By using the tunnels, the enemy can surround and attack us from behind,” said Col. Amir Olo, the former commander of the elite Israeli engineering unit in charge of dismantling tunnels.

The battle over the tunnels is a major reason that this war already has a high civilian death toll. More than two million people live above the tunnels — a layer of human life between many Hamas targets and Israeli missiles.

Hamas has hidden many weapons under hospitals, schools and mosques so that Israel must risk killing civilians, and face an international backlash, when it fights. Hamas fighters also slip above and below ground, blending with civilians.

The first stage of Israel’s campaign against the tunnels has been its air war. The military has launched more than 7,000 airstrikes on Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. That air war continues, along with the ground operation.

Israel has dropped special bombs that don’t explode until after they have burrowed into the ground. Another type of weapon, called “sponge bombs,” creates an explosion of hardening foam to seal off tunnels. If tunnel entrances are sealed, fighters can’t pop out of them in surprise attacks.

The ground operation allows Israel to take additional steps to demolish tunnels. An Israeli reservist soldier described one technique, called “purple hair,” to our colleagues:

Israeli troops drop smoke grenades into a tunnel, and then watch for purple smoke to come out of any houses in the area. The smoke, the soldier said, signals that a house is connected to the tunnel network and must be sealed off before soldiers descend into the tunnels. The smoke moves like strands of hair throughout the tunnel system, he said.

This description helps make clear why urban warfare tends to be so deadly. “It will be bloody, brutal fighting,” said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the former leader of U.S. military operations in the Middle East.