** The Trump administration has tapped a longtime pesticide lobbyist for a top EPA role regulating pesticides, allegedly a key focus of its “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Kyle Kunkler, who served as director of government affairs at the American Soybean Association (ASA) from 2020 to June 2025, is now serving as the EPA’s top pesticide regulator in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
** The U.S.-based Chevron Corporation CVX and Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM are set to sign a $34 billion memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Indonesia, which will deepen the economic and strategic ties between the two countries.
** California has changed its environmental rules to tackle housing shortages and homelessness. Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “This was too urgent, too important, to allow the process to unfold as it has for the last generation,” reported The Guardian.
** TheEnergy Workforce & Technology Council (EWTC), the U.S. national trade association representing over 250 U.S. and global energy service companies, has formally called on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to address long-standing and growing non-payments by PEMEX to critical oilfield service providers.
World
** The European Union is holding back on signing a joint climate action pledge with China at a summit this month to mark a half-century of diplomatic ties, a top climate official told the Financial Times in remarks published on Monday.
** Polish lawmakers have moved the country one step closer to making wind projects much easier to build, while also protecting natural habitats and locking in low energy rates for its citizens. Poland’s parliament passed a bill that would lessen the distance needed between wind farms and residential locations, Reuters reported.
** TechNave reported thatMalaysia’s natural resources and environmental sustainability minister, Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, recently announced plans to introduce an extended producer responsibility policy that will require EV manufacturers to take care of their EV batteries once they’re spent.
** Canada’s battered natural gas market is “about to turn the corner” into a new era of higher prices, according to BMO Capital Markets veteran commodities analyst Randy Ollenberger.
** Chile, the world’s No. 1 copper producer, is in wait-and-see mode after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a surprise 50% tariff on imports of the red metal, with the Andean nation blindsided while its top miner held out hope of exemptions.