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A Texas refinery that supplies green fuel to U.S. airlines has been purchasing animal fat from cattle raised on illegally cleared lands in the Amazon rainforest, according to a Reuters review of government tracking data, interviews and eyewitness accounts. Louisiana-based Diamond Green Diesel, a joint-venture between biofuels producer Darling Ingredients and petroleum refiner Valero Energy, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into a refinery in Port Arthur, Texas that turns cattle fatcalled tallowinto a cleaner alternative to petroleum-based jet fuel and diesel. Diamond Green Diesel is a major player in the U.S. sustainable fuels market. It has collected over $3 billion in U.S. tax credits for producing biofuels since 2022, according to filings. But interviews and documents show at least two Brazilian factories that supplied Diamond Green Diesel with tens of thousands of tons of cattle fat since 2023 are sourcing some of it from slaughterhouses that have bought animals from illegally deforested ranches in the Amazon rainforest. Carriers such as JetBlue and Southwest Airlines, which struck deals with Valero to use the “green jet fuel, can claim credit for lowering their emissions because Diamond Green Diesel’s plant is certified under a United Nations agreement curbing the impact of aviation on the climate called CORSIA. The global market for sustainable jet fuel is small, about $2.9 billion in 2025 according to analysis firm SkyQuest Technology Group, compared to the $239 billion global market for conventional aviation fuel. But government incentives are expected to help the market grow exponentially, pumping more resources into the Brazilian cattle industry, the leading driver of the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Pedro Piris-Cabezas, an economist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said any additional demand could result in the expansion of herds and directly or indirectly drive deforestation and forest degradation. It could also violate Brazilian law. “Companies that profit from raw materials originating from a supply chain that involves deforestation, are also responsible for these illegalities,” said Ricardo Negrini, a Brazilian federal prosecutor who has opened a number of government investigations into the cattle industry. Diamond Green Diesel, Darling Ingredients, Valero Energy, Southwest and JetBlue did not reply to multiple requests for comment, including detailed questions about the Brazilian tallow supply chain. To track the tallow trade from illegally deforested ranches in the Amazon to Diamond Green Diesel, Reuters partnered with the nonprofit investigative outlet Reporter Brasil, which helped review court documents that link slaughterhouses to the tallow plants, corporate filings, trade data, and government cattle tracking records. Reuters also interviewed over a dozen people involved in each step of the beef tallow supply chain, including traders, truck drivers, prosecutors, auditors and regulators. Diamond Green Diesel sources tallow from multiple countries, and Reuters was unable to determine how much of it came from ranches in illegally-cleared land in the Amazon. Tainted cattle In 2022, Darling Ingredients CEO Randall Stuewe announced the $557 million acquisition of several plants in Brazil, including four in the Amazon region, that would supply waste fats to be used in the production of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel,” according to a statement issued at the time. Reuters found one of those rendering plants in Para state, called Araguaia, sourced cattle fat from at least five meatpackers that failed a May 2025 audit conducted by federal prosecutors for slaughtering 20,000 cattle from illegally deforested areas. In 2023, Araguaia exported $4.4 million worth of beef tallow from the Amazon to Diamond Green Diesel, according to trade data from Import Genius. In June, a Reuters journalist saw a truck with an Araguaia logo inside the Sao Francisco slaughterhouse, which failed an audit for buying cattle from farms on illegally deforested land. The driver of the truck, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters he had been picking up carcasses at the Sao Francisco slaughterhouse and delivering them to the Araguaia plant for two years. Two other drivers and two Sao Francisco employees confirmed the slaughterhouse was an Araguaia supplier. Sao Francisco didn’t confirm or deny that it is a supplier of the Araguaia plant. It said it has been cooperating with federal prosecutors since 2018 and that it hired an outside firm to monitor its supply chain. Sao Francisco sources some of its cattle indirectly from Vale do Paraiso, a farm that had been blocked from grazing cattle since 2006 because 15 square miles of trees had been illegally razed, according to Brazil’s environmental protection agency, Ibama. Cattle tracking data shows that the cattle was moved from Vale do Paraiso to a farm with a clean record before it reached the slaughterhouse. The agency unblocked Vale do Paraiso last year because a court determined that the statute of limitations had expired, but its owner Antonio Lucena Barros still owes over $3 million in fines for the deforestation there, according to government documents. Barros lawyer Calebe Rocha said in a statement that his client is fighting the fines in court and has been granted an injunction that suspends the payment of the fine. He also said that no animals were sold from the part of Vale do Paraiso that Ibama had blocked due to deforestation. Another plant owned by Darling Ingredients sourced fat from a slaughterhouse that confirmed to Reuters that it bought hundreds of cattle in 2022 and 2023 from rancher Bruno Heller, who Brazil’s Federal Police has described as possibly the Amazon’s biggest deforester in a 2023 investigation. In a statement, Hellers lawyer Vinicius Segatto said Brazils environmental law is “excessively rigorous” and that the criminal case against his client is ongoing. Fat to fuel Airlines have been under pressure to buy more green jet fuel, which is now produced in tiny quantities, to meet industry targets of net zero emissions by 2050. Supporters of the use of tallow as a biofuel assert that demand for it alone is unlikely to push ranchers to clear rainforest to grow their pastures because of its economic value less than 3% of what slaughterhouses get for each animal. Diamonds imports from Brazil were certified as sustainable by the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), a third-party certification body that approved Diamond’s plant for CORSIA. To be eligible, biomass used for fuel cannot come from land that was deforested after 2008 or protected areas, but the ISCC told Reuters it did not investigate Diamond’s supply chain because it considers tallow a “byproduct” of the beef industry under CORSIA. Three experts who helped design CORSIA told Reuters that the program allows producers to omit the score for carbon emissions and deforestation of the Amazon rainforest because it assumes demand for tallow is unlikely to push ranchers to grow their herds. The International Civil Aviation Organization declined to comment when asked about whether it viewed deforestation in the tallow supply chain as a violation of its sustainability standards. However, the agency said it is constantly monitoring the compliance of third-parties responsible for certifying sustainable aiation fuel producers and welcomes information on any potential deviations for further evaluation. Fabio Teixeira, Manuela Andreoni, and Allison Lampert, Reuters
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On Tuesday, AI startup OpenAI announced it would launch a new ChatGPT experience just for kids. The announcement explained that the latest ChatGPT was created as part of an effort to protect children’ s privacy. “We prioritize safety ahead of privacy and freedom for teens; this is a new and powerful technology, and we believe minors need significant protection,” CEO Sam Altman explained in a blog post on Tuesday. ChatGPT will direct under 18 users to the experience specifically created for kids. If the person’s age is unclear, the technology will default to the experience for kids. However, OpenAI says it’s also developing “a technology to better predict a user’s age,” too. “In some cases or countries we may also ask for an ID; we know this is a privacy compromise for adults but believe it is a worthy tradeoff,” the blog explained. The ChatGPT for users under 18 was designed with some new parental controls, such as “blockout hours” when kids can’t talk to ChatGPT. It blocks sexual content, can’t flirt, and won’t engage in discussions about self-harm. Altman said that OpenAI will flag such messages and contact a user’s guardian if suicidal thoughts are mentioned. If they can’t be reached, OpenAI will reach out to the authorities “in case of imminent harm,” it noted. The new kid-friendly experience comes less than a week after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced an investigation into how AI companies, including OpenAI, impact the well-being of children. AI chatbots can effectively mimic human characteristics, emotions, and intentions, and generally are designed to communicate like a friend or confidant, which may prompt some users, especially children and teens, to trust and form relationships with chatbots, the FTC said. At the time, OpenAI said that making the technology “safe for everyone” is its top concern. We recognize the FTC has open questions and concerns, and were committed to engaging constructively and responding to them directly,” an OpenAI spokesperson said. According to the announcement, the ChatGPT for users under 18 will be available at the end of the month.
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Featuring Artemis Patrick, President and CEO, Sephora North AmericaModerated by Elizabeth Segran, Senior Staff Writer, Fast Company Sephora isnt just shaping beautyits shaping culture. From its trendsetting beauty festival to partnering with Hulu for its Faces of Music docuseries to sponsoring women’s sports, the brand has become a force at the intersection of beauty, entertainment, and lifestyle. Under the leadership of Artemis Patrick, CEO of Sephora North America, the company is amplifying this influence while also embarking on its largest capital project yet: a full redesign of all 600+ North American stores over the next five years. Hear from Patrick on how Sephoras cultural reach and bold retail transformation are redefining what it means to be a modern brand.
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The European Union is falling further behind global rivals on growth and governments are failing to grasp the urgency to act, former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister Mario Draghi said on Tuesday. Draghi, who delivered a far-reaching report on EU competitiveness at the European Commission’s request 12 months ago, said the EU’s growth model was “fading fast”, vulnerabilities were mounting and there was no clear path to financing necessary investments. Draghi said the bloc had come up with ambitious plans, but it was moving ahead too slowly and governments had “not grasped the gravity of the moment”. “To carry on as usual is to resign ourselves to falling behind. A different path demands new speed, scale and intensity. It means acting together, not fragmenting our efforts,” he told an audience of EU officials, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in Brussels. Squeezed by U.S. tariffs Draghi addressed a number of challenges facing the European Union, now squeezed by U.S. tariffs and a trade deficit with China that has expanded by 20% since December 2024. In AI, the European Union was building gigafactories and expanding data centre capacity, but gaps were clear. The United States produced 40 large foundation modelslearning based on large datasetslast year, China 15 and the EU just three. Draghi said more action was needed to address barriers to scaling up in Europe, regulation on the use of data and adoption of AI by industry. Energy prices, such as natural gas nearly four times higher than in the United States, were also a constraint on technology, with AI electricity demand set to rise 70% in Europe by 2030. Europe had structural problems to fix, but the main step taken by EU countries had been to subsidise prices for temporary relief. “The more we push reforms, the more private capital will step up and the less public money we will need. Of course, this path will break long-standing taboos, but the rest of the world has already broken theirs,” Draghi said. Philip Blenkinsop and Tierney Kugel, Reuters
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Nissan Motor has reduced its production plan for the new model of its Leaf electric vehicle by more than half for September-November owing to delays in battery procurement, the Nikkei business daily said on Tuesday. Lower than expected battery yields at a Nissan affiliate had caused the revision, the Nikkei said, adding that the Japanese automaker planned to release the new EV model by the end of the year. The newspaper did not specify the original or revised production targets but said that the output plan has been cut by up to several thousand vehicles a month at its Tochigi plant in eastern Japan, where the new version of the Leaf is made for the U.S. and Japanese markets. Nissan said it did not have any comment on speculative reports, adding that the new model was progressing on schedule towards its planned launch. The company, which has gone from mass-market EV pioneer to laggard since its first model entered showrooms in 2010, is betting on the new version of its Leaf model to revive its fortunes. This is not the first time Nissan’s EV production has hit a snag. Another of Nissan’s electric vehicles, the Ariya, was hampered by problems at its high-tech production line at the Tochigi plant in 2023, Reuters reported at the time. Shares in Nissan closed 0.4% down before the Nikkei report, underperforming a 0.3% gain for the benchmark Nikkei average. Daniel Leussink, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Satoshi Sugiyama, Reuters
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