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This week marks the end of the Michigan State University Fall 2022 semester. Our student blog writers will be leaving the university campus for our winter break, and will be returning at the beginning of January. Over break, our team members will be traveling and spending time celebrating the holidays.

We would like to acknowledge a graduating student and our globalEDGE blog editor, Chloe Jaessing. Chloe is graduating this December with a Major in Finance from the Broad College of Business. She has been tirelessly working to keep the globalEDGE blogs up-to-date for all of our readers. To read some of Chloe’s blogs throughout the years, click here.

The globalEDGE blog will return January 16th, 2023. In the meantime, we hope our readers continue to enjoy all the other areas of the globalEDGE website!

As agricultural growth ramps up, drought continues to worsen. This is especially prominent in the Southwest regions of the United States as they face the worst drought in . Rural communities in La Paz County, Arizona have been noticing water disappearing left and right. The water workers in Wenden, Arizona are reporting that they have "" as they noticed moving water in a well where the water is typically still. This massive underground reservoir stores water built up over thousands of years and was  to be moving due to someone pumping it rapidly out of the ground. With further research, it was found that there was a neighboring well belonging to , a United Arab Emirates-based company that was pulling this water for its own benefit.

Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been burdened by a land, air, and sea imposed by Israel. Gaza is a self-governing territory but was in 1967, leading to intense restrictions that have cut Gaza off from hospitals, banks, religious practices, and other essentials in the community. The primary goal of this blockade has been to of materials that Gazans could use for military use. For fishermen needing to travel through the Gaza Strip and buy necessary fishing equipment, these restrictions are severely limiting their ability to work in this industry.

COP 27, which stands for “”, is a yearly conference in which leaders from across the world meet to discuss different topics within climate change. This year, the conference took place from  in Egypt and saw , making it the second-largest COP in history. Specifically, there were record numbers of attendees from  and small, less-developed countries and islands, which helped give them a bigger voice at this year’s conference.

The Eurozone is seeing a drop in inflation – this comes as a since the war in Ukraine set off record-high energy and food prices. Inflation has been increasing in months prior, even when the U.S. rate was after July. With this increase in inflation throughout the bloc, the European Central Bank (ECB) increased its key interest rate "." 

Global markets around the world are expected to plummet as protests in China continue. The protests are due in part to China’s strict and citizens' disapproval of such rules. This has been one of the first major government challenges since the more than 30 years ago. China has seen a high number of positive Covid-19 cases, and on Saturday, the nation saw a new . China is the of oil in the world, yet with the intense Covid-19 restrictions, the country is seeing a dip in the amount of production. The nation’s high-risk districts make up of China’s gross national domestic product. The country has seen for three days and there is no sign of them slowing down.

Esports has been a over the past few decades and has grown at a healthy rate. The popularity of esports started internationally in South Korea and China in the . By the , its popularity reached the United States. With the , a streaming service built around video games, the popularity of esports went international by the early 2010s. Investors were enticed by the esports industry and expected a fruitful market in the upcoming years. In 2022, many investors not seeing a , not due to a lack of popularity, but rather a difference in markets.

After some delay, Russia has decided to extend its grain deal with Ukraine for another , easing fears that Russia might abandon the deal. This deal will continue allowing Ukraine to ship grain through the . Ukraine is already shipping  of tons of grain through this deal. Ukraine is also a top supplier of  barley, and supplies  of the world’s sunflower oil.

During an economic crisis, Egypt is cutting back on its  to provide more natural gas to Europe. This past summer, the Egyptian government began to reduce household electricity consumption by  the lighting in some streets, squares, shops, and government buildings. In order to do this, the amount of natural gas needed to generate electricity must be  by 15%, and the surplus will be shipped to European buyers who pay top dollar for liquified natural gas.

FTX was by Sam Bankman-Fried. Based in the Bahamas, the crypto exchange allowed users to cryptocurrency. With a surge in interest in crypto, the company rapidly grew to earn more than in net income in 2021. Before FTX’s downfall, many referred to Bankman-Fried as the . The founder would and buy out rivals, growing his personal net worth to billions of dollars. This all changed on November 11th when the FTX Group once worth 32 billion dollars filed for bankruptcy, forcing him to .