Fed signals rates will stay near zero for at least three years - The Federal Reserve left interest rates near zero and signaled it would hold them there through at least 2023 to help the U.S. economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. The Federal Open Market Committee “expects to maintain an accommodative stance of monetary policy” until it achieves inflation averaging 2% over time and longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored at 2%, the central bank said in a statement Wednesday following a two-day policy meeting. BloombergThe statement reflects the central bank’s new long-term policy framework in which officials will allow inflation to overshoot their 2% target after periods of under-performance. That shift was announced by Powell last month at the central bank’s annual Jackson Hole policy conference. Following the statement’s release, Treasuries were little changed, with the 10-year yield steady at about 0.68%. Stocks gained slightly. The vote, in the FOMC’s final scheduled meeting before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, was 8-2. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan dissented, preferring to retain “greater policy rate flexibility,” while Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari dissented in favor of waiting for a rate hike until “core inflation has reached 2% on a sustained basis.” Powell and other Fed officials have stressed in recent weeks that the U.S. recovery is highly dependent on the nation’s ability to better control the coronavirus, and that further fiscal stimulus is likely needed to support jobs and incomes. The Fed on Wednesday committed to using its full range of tools to support the economic recovery. The central bank repeated it will continue buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities “at least at the current pace to sustain smooth market functioning.” A separate statement on Wednesday pegged those amounts at $80 billion of Treasuries a month and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities. Officials see rates staying ultra-low through 2023, according to the median projection of their quarterly forecasts, though four officials penciled in at least one hike in 2023. In other updates to quarterly forecasts, Fed officials see a shallower economic contraction this year than before, but a slower recovery in the coming years. In addition to slashing borrowing costs in March, the central bank has pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system through bond purchases and launched a slew of emergency lending facilities to keep businesses afloat.
FOMC Projections and Press Conference (see tables) Statement here.Fed Chair Powell press conference video here starting at 2:30 PM ET. Here are the projections. Note that GDP decreased at a 5.0% annual rate in Q1, and decreased at a 31.7% annual rate in Q2. Most forecasts are for GDP to increase at a 25% to 35% annual rate in Q3.It is important to note that GDP is reported at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR). A 30% annualized increase in Q3 GDP, is about 6.8% QoQ, and would leave real GDP down about 4.2% from Q4 2019.The course of the economy will depend on the course of the pandemic, so the FOMC has to factor in their expectations of when the pandemic will subside and end (and no one knows at this time).This FOMC revised up their GDP projections for 2020, and revised down their projections for the following years.GDP projections of Federal Reserve Governors and Reserve Bank presidents, Change in Real GDP. 1 Projections of change in real GDP and inflation are from the fourth quarter of the previous year to the fourth quarter of the year indicated.The unemployment rate was at 8.4% in August. The unemployment rate declined faster than most expectations. Note that the unemployment rate doesn't remotely capture the economic damage to the labor market. Not only are there almost 14 million people unemployed, close to 4 million people have left the labor force since January. And millions more are being supported by various provisions for the CARES Act - that hasn't been renewed The unemployment rate was revised down for all three years. Unemployment projections of Federal Reserve Governors and Reserve Bank presidents, Unemployment Rate Projections for the unemployment rate are for the average civilian unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of the year indicated. As of July 2020, PCE inflation was up 1.0% from July 2019. The projections for inflation were revised up this month.Inflation projections of Federal Reserve Governors and Reserve Bank presidents, PCE Inflation1 PCE core inflation was up 1.3% in July year-over-year. Projections for core inflation were revised up.
Nominal Income Targeting and Measurement Issues – Menzie Chinn - Nominal GDP targeting has been advocated in a recent Joint Economic Committee report “Stable Monetary Policy to Connect More Americans to Work”. The best anchor for monetary policy decisions is nominal income or nominal spending—the amount of money people receive or pay out, which more or less equal out economy-wide. Under an ideal monetary regime, spending should not be too scarce (characterized by low investment and employment), but nor should it be too plentiful (characterized by high and increasing inflation). While this balance may be easier to imagine than to achieve, this report argues that stabilizing general expectations about the level of nominal income or nominal spending in the economy best allows the private sector to value individual goods and services in the context of that anchored expectation, and build long-term contracts with a reasonable degree of certainty. This target could also be understood as steady growth in the money supply, adjusted for the private sector’s ability to circulate that money supply faster or slower. One challenge to implementation is the relatively large revisions in the growth rate of this variable (and don’t get me started on the level). Here’s an example from our last recession.How big are the revisions? The BEA provides a detailed description. This table summarizes the results. The standard deviation of revisions going from Advance to Latest is one percent (annualized), mean absolute revision is 1.3 percent. Now, the Latest Vintage might not be entirely relevant for policy, so lets look at Advance to Third revision standard deviation of 0.5 percent (0.6 percent mean absolute). That’s through 2017. From the advance to 2nd release, 2020Q2 GDP growth went from -42.1% to -40.5% (log terms). Compare against the personal consumption expenditure deflator, at the monthly — not quarterly — frequency; the mean absolute revision is 0.5 percent going from Advance to Third. The corresponding figure for Core PCE is 0.35 percent. Perhaps this is why the Fed focused more on price/inflation targets, i.e.:Admittedly, the estimation of output gap is fraught with much larger (in my opinion) measurement challenges than the trend in nominal GDP, as it compounds the problems of real GDP measurement and potential GDP estimation; this is a point made by Beckworth and Hendrickson (JMCB, 2019). Even use of the unemployment rate, which can be substituted for the output gap in the Taylor principle by way of Okun’s Law, encounters a problem. As Aruoba (2008) notes, the unemployment rate is not subject to large and/or biased revisions; however the estimated natural rate of unemployment, on the other hand, does change over time, as estimated by CBO by Fed, and others, so there is going to be revision to the implied unemployment gap (this point occupies a substantial portion of JEC report). Partly for this reason, the recently announced modification of the Fed’s policy framework stresses shortfalls rather than deviations, discussed in this post. One interesting aspect of the debate over nominal GDP targeting relates to growth rates vs. levels. If it’s growth rates (as in Beckworth and Hendrickson (JMCB, 2019), there is generally a “fire and forget” approach to setting rates. An actual nominal GDP target of the level implies that past errors are not forgotten (McCallum, 2001) (this is not a distinction specific to GDP as we know from the inflation vs. price level debate). Targeting the level of nominal GDP faces another — perhaps even more problematic — challenge, as suggested by Figure 2.
Fed weighs changes to Main Street program to allay banks' concerns— The Federal Reserve is considering changes to its middle-market business rescue program in order to make it more available to borrowers, but the law limits how much additional risk the central bank can take on, said Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Only a fraction of the funds allocated for the $600 billion Main Street Lending Program have been put to use since the Fed started purchasing loans in July. Powell said Wednesday that about $2 billion in Main Street loans has been issued so far. Many have speculated that part of the problem could be that, even though the Fed is taking on most of the risk, banks still hold on to a 5% stake of loans in the program. Financial institutions are wary of taking on that added risk. “Lenders are concerned about the underwriting expectations,” Powell said at a press conference after a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. “So, banks, their approach is likely to be that they're going to underwrite this loan roughly the same as they underwrite any loan — they’re keeping part of it.” The Fed “will be making some changes in that respect,” Powell added. The Main Street Lending Program was established using money from the Coroanvirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to help businesses with up to 15,000 employees or $5 billion in annual revenue that were in sound financial shape before the pandemic, and offers loans of $250,000 to $300 million. It was one of several facilities the Fed stood up using its emergency lending powers under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act. But Powell said that the Fed is also limited by law in terms of which recipients can receive assistance, and those restrictions could be constraining the program. “If you look at the law under Section 13(3), it's very clear that we are to make loans only to solvent borrowers and the CARES Act is quite specific in keeping all of the terms of Section 13(3) in effect, including the requirement that we gather good evidence that the borrower is solvent,” he said. A recent Bloomberg report also alleged that the Treasury Department has been instructing banks to take zero losses on Main Street loans, making lending through the program a risky venture for many financial institutions. “Banks like to make good loans — that's what they do,” Powell said. “They're trained to make good loans, so you should expect that they, and we expect, that they will do some underwriting. We also want them to take some risk, obviously because that was the point of it, and the question is, how do you dial that in? It's not an easy thing to do.” Powell also discussed a growing concern in commercial real estate, as delinquency rates among CRE borrowers have been on the rise. With commercial real estate companies suffering during the pandemic, more bankruptcies could lead to increased defaults on CRE loans. The Fed has said that fiscal support may be more beneficial for commercial real estate borrowers than backing from the agency, given that the central bank can only lend and that would saddle those borrowers with more debt. But as stimulus talks in Congress have stalled, more borrowers have been looking to the Fed for an answer.
Fed, Treasury clarify underwriting rules for Main Street loans— The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department clarified underwriting expectations for lenders participating in the Main Street Lending Program in a set of frequently asked questions Friday in an attempt to assuage bank concerns of taking on added risk. The $600 billion Main Street Lending Program was established using money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act to help businesses with up to 15,000 employees or $5 billion in annual revenue that were in sound financial shape before the pandemic, and offers loans of $250,000 to $300 million. Only a fraction of the funds allocated for the program have been put to use since the Fed started purchasing loans in July. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that about $2 billion in Main Street loans has been issued so far, and acknowledged that lenders were concerned about keeping 5% of those loans on their books. The Fed is purchasing the other 95% through a special-purpose vehicle. But some banks have been nervous about having skin in the game on Main Street loans, and recent reports allege that Treasury has instructed banks to not let borrowers default, potentially scaring banks from taking on the risk. “Banks like to make good loans — that's what they do,” Powell said during a press conference. “They're trained to make good loans, so you should expect that they, and we expect, that they will do some underwriting. We also want them to take some risk, obviously, because that was the point of it, and the question is, how do you dial that in? It's not an easy thing to do.” The Fed and Treasury looked to soothe some of those fears on Friday, emphasizing in the new FAQs that lenders should not make Main Street loans based on a borrower's current financial state, which may have been damaged by the coronavirus, and should instead evaluate potential Main Street borrowers’ pre-pandemic financial condition and post-pandemic prospects. Lenders should also factor in the payment deferral features available to Main Street loans, the Fed said. The FAQs were also developed in consultation with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the two other banking regulators, and offered more information on how bank examiners will treat Main Street loans. Supervisors will not rebuke banks for Main Street loans that were made in compliance with the program’s requirements, the Fed said, including loans that could be considered “non-pass” at the time of the origination, as long as the weaknesses in those loans derive from the COVID-19 pandemic
Foreigners Dump Record $54BN In Corporate Debt As Japan Treasury Holdings Surge To All Time High - (graphs) Foreigners resumed selling long-term US Treasuries in July, offloading $22.8 billion (after buying $28.9BN in June), in yet another spending spree led by foreign official institutions, i.e. central banks, SWFs and reserve managers, who sold $20.7 billion in July (as well as another $2.1 billion in private holdings), bringing their selling to 22 of the past 23 months. Additionally:
- Foreign net buying of equities eased to $16 billion in July, from $28.5 billion in June
- Foreign net buying of agency debt also dipped to $34.4 billion from at $38 billion
But the big surprise was the puke in foreign holdings of corporate debt, which plunged by a record $54.3 billion in July, the biggest monthly drop on record, following June's more modest drop of $16.6 billion. Between this record dump, and the record issuance of corporate debt in the primary market, one almost wonders where corporate bonds would be trading if the Fed wasn't backstopping them.In any case, aside from the record corporate bond liquidation, total foreign holdings were relatively stable and a far cry from the record selling in March and April. Looking at individual countries, China continued to sell US paper, in July selling another $1 billion and bringing its total to $1.073 trillion, the lowest since April in the latest continuation of China's dumping of US Treasurys. On the other end of the spectrum, Japan - which surpassed China as the largest US creditor last year - continued to buy Treasurys, adding $31.6 billion in July, the most since February, and bringing its total to a record $1.293 trillion. Some other notable holders included Belgium, whose $211.9bn were a decrease of $6.8b; the Cayman Islands - traditionally a proxy for hedge funds - held $212.9b, a decrease of $9.1b from last month while Saudi Arabia took its $124.6b in TSY holdings $0.3bn from last month. But the big trend of de-dollarization continues...
Business Cycle Peak in Monthly vs. Quarterly Data - Menzie Chinn - There’s been some debate over how low GDP is relative to peak. One has to be particularly careful in calculations because the monthly peak is different than the quarterly peak, according to the NBER BCDC. For instance, monthly GDP (unofficial, from IHS-Markit) peaks in February 2020, but quarterly GDP (official, from BEA, 2nd release) peaks in 2019Q4. It happens that these dates coincide with NBER defined peaks; they don’t have to as NBER uses more indicators in addition to GDP to determine the business cycle chronology. Taking into account these peaks, what is GDP “now” relative to “peak”? Figure 1: Official Quarterly GDP (blue bar), IHS-Markit monthly GDP (pink line), in billions Ch.2012$, SAAR. Source: BEA, 2020Q2 2nd release, IHS-Markit release of September 1. More on y/y, q/q, annual growth rates in this post.
Bank of America CEO says more stimulus needed to help last of recovery - Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan called for another round of federal stimulus to help the U.S. reach a full economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. "You're back up to where 95% of the economy is back," Moynihan said Friday in an interview with David Westin in advance of next week's Bloomberg Equality Summit, adding that more help is needed for restaurants, airlines, performing-arts venues and state and local governments so they can "cross that same bridge" as housing, health-care and other recovered industries. "We've got to help everybody else get across." Moynihan said a year-over-year increase in consumer spending is a sign of the economy's resilience. U.S. retail sales rose 0.6% last month, following a 0.9% gain in July, the Commerce Department reported earlier this week. Government support for small businesses is running dry with the Paycheck Protection Program having closed in early August, and a supplemental $600 a week in unemployment benefits having expired at the end of July. Some House Democrats are keeping pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring a new coronavirus relief bill up for a vote next week as they look to signal that the party is pursuing a deal to bolster the economy. Pelosi has held firm that the White House should first agree on a $2.2 trillion plan Democrats have put on the table. A "second bite at the apple" for PPP would help the economy come back fully, Moynihan said. "The idea of it recovering that last five percentage points tomorrow morning — it's going to take a while to grind through that," he said, adding that more government support would help industries still struggling. "What we need, I think, is pretty straightforward: You need more stimulus for the people."
Trump suggests he could back a bigger coronavirus stimulus, top aide says he's more optimistic about a deal - President Donald Trump urged Republicans on Wednesday to embrace a larger coronavirus stimulus package, and a top White House aide showed more optimism about striking a deal with Democrats. In a tweet, the president told GOP lawmakers to "go for the much higher numbers" in legislation designed to boost an economy and health-care system struggling under the weight of the pandemic. Many Republicans have embraced limited relief — or backed no new spending at all — as the major parties struggle to break a stalemate over a fifth relief bill. Asked later in the day if he backed roughly $1.5 trillion legislation put forward by a bipartisan House group, Trump said he supports "something like that" and likes "the larger amount" of spending. He added that "some Republicans disagree, but I think I can convince them to go along with that." Shortly after Trump first tweeted, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" that he is "probably more optimistic about the potential for a deal in the last 72 hours than I have been in the last 72 days." The comment from Meadows, one of the two leading Trump administration negotiators in stimulus talks, followed the Tuesday release of the plan from the House Problem Solvers Caucus. Democratic House committee chairs rejected the proposal Tuesday as party leaders call to inject at least $2.2 trillion into the coronavirus fight. Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., again opposed a more limited relief proposal. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said they were "encouraged" by Trump's tweet. They added that they "look forward to hearing from the President's negotiators that they will finally meet us halfway with a bill that is equal to the massive health and economic crises gripping our nation." Negotiations over more aid to Americans collapsed last month despite the expiration of financial lifelines including an extra $600 per week unemployment benefit and a federal moratorium on evictions. Pressure on officials in Washington to act has increased as they hurtle toward reelection fights in November. Some House Democrats have increasingly pushed Pelosi to relent and pass a smaller relief package than the party initially desired. Senate Republican leaders attempted to pass their own aid bill last week, both to put pressure on Democrats and to ease the burden on vulnerable GOP senators. Democrats blocked the legislation, which they said was inadequate to address the crisis. Trump's tweet Wednesday, in which he pushed for "stimulus payments," also showed the political benefit he sees in sending more relief before the election. The bill that failed in the Senate last week did not include a second round of direct payments to Americans. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump's tweet referred to the need for a bigger relief package than the roughly $500 billion plan the Senate GOP proposed.
Trump undercuts GOP, calls for bigger COVID-19 relief package - President Trump on Wednesday shook up the high-stakes debate over coronavirus relief, undercutting the Republicans' long-held position by urging GOP leaders to go big. Senate Republicans had initially offered a $1.1 trillion emergency aid package, but subsequently voted on a proposal providing just $650 billion - only $350 billion of it in new funding. Democrats have howled at the GOP's "emaciated" offer, arguing that it falls far short of the funding needed to address the dual health and economic crises caused by the deadly coronavirus. On Wednesday morning, Trump stunned Washington by joining those Democratic critics in calling for Republicans to seek much more funding than they've previously proposed. He suggested it would not only provide relief to those struggling, but would also stimulate the domestic economy at large. "Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!)," Trump tweeted. Judging by the immediate reaction of Senate Republicans, it appeared Trump did not tell his congressional allies that his change of position was forthcoming. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), a member of GOP leadership, quickly warned that a stimulus package in the range of $1.5 trillion - which a group of centrist lawmakers from both parties proposed this week - would likely lead to "heartburn" among Republicans on Capitol Hill. "If the number gets too high, anything that got passed in the Senate will be passed mostly with Democrat votes and a handful of Republicans," Thune told reporters in the Capitol. "So it's gonna have to stay in a, sort of, realistic range, if ... we want to maximize, optimize the number of Republican senators that will vote for it." But another member of GOP leadership, Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.), indicated he was hopeful for an agreement before the Nov. 3 election. "I think there is a deal to be had here," Blunt said. "My concern is that the window closes probably at the end of this month. We need to get busy finding out what we can all agree on. I think the number is gonna be higher than our trillion dollars." Minutes after Trump's tweet, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a key negotiator, said he was more "optimistic" about a potential for a deal than he had been in quite some time. "If the Speaker is willing to stay in, I'm willing to stay in, the secretary is willing to stay in" and negotiate, Meadows said during an appearance on CNBC, referring to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Meadows, a former leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, characterized the $1.52 trillion relief plan proposed by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus a day earlier as a "thoughtful suggestion" and said it has moved the needle, even as allies of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had panned it as insufficient.
White House shows flexibility on coronavirus aid; Pelosi holds firm - The Trump administration is willing to consider another $1.5 trillion in relief for the U.S. economy and health care system, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday, including more aid to state and local governments than top GOP officials have been comfortable with to date. Meadows spoke with President Donald Trump before a CNBC appearance Wednesday, where he said Trump was "encouraged" by the bipartisan Problem Solvers caucus proposal unveiled the previous day. Meadows said the $1.5 trillion price tag was higher than Republicans would like, but "not a showstopper at this point," while Trump tweeted that Republicans should "go for the much higher numbers" under discussion. Meadows added that he was "probably more optimistic about the potential for a deal in the last 72 hours than I have been in the last 72 days." He said a deal would likely need to come together in the next "week to 10 days" in order for a further aid package to have an impact this year, however. Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn't been willing to go any lower than $2.2 trillion, however, and several House committee leaders panned the Problem Solvers plan as inadequate. On the biggest sticking point between the parties, the Problem Solvers offered up to $500 billion in direct aid to cash-strapped state and local governments. Republicans have offered $150 billion; Democrats are at $915 billion. Meadows said the midway point proposed by the bipartisan House group was "more than what we're seeing in terms of lost revenue," which he said was in the $250 billion to $300 billion range. It wasn't clear whether Meadows was endorsing that figure, however, because he also reiterated a GOP talking point that some $100 billion of the original $150 billion from the March relief law hasn't yet been spent. Loading the player... State budget officers have refuted the Treasury Department's figures, arguing the estimates are outdated and don't account for funds that have been committed. The Problem Solvers proposal contains a trigger mechanism that would cut the amount of direct state and local aid by $130 billion if certain metrics on hospitalizations and vaccine development are met. Such metrics could result in faster reopenings, and therefore less state and local health care spending and more tax revenue. "If we're talking about trying to replace some of the lost revenues , hopefully that number is closer to the" $250 billion to $300 billion range, Meadows said, while adding that the Problem Solvers plan "at least it gives us something to talk about, and I’m encouraged."
Half a year into the pandemic and millions of people are unemployed: Congress must provide relief - Another 1.5 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week. That includes 860,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 659,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers. It provides up to 39 weeks of benefits, but it is set to expire at the end of this year. Last week was the 26th week in a row total initial claims were far greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. If you restrict to regular state claims (because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession), claims are still greater than the 3rd-worst week of the Great Recession. Most states provide 26 weeks of regular state benefits. After an individual exhausts those benefits, they can move onto Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is an additional 13 weeks of state UI benefits that is available only to people who were on regular state UI. (A reminder: PEUC is different from Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, or PUC, the now-expired $600 additional weekly benefit, which anyone on any UI program had been eligible for.)Given that continuing claims for regular state benefits have been elevated since the third week in March, we should begin to see PEUC spike up dramatically soon (starting with the week ending September 19th). However, because of reporting delays for PEUC, we won’t actually get PEUC data from this week (the week ending September 19th) until October 8th.Department of Labor (DOL) data suggest that right now, 31.5 million workers are either on unemployment benefits or have applied recently and are waiting to get approved (see Figure A). But importantly, that number is a substantial overestimate for at least two reasons: (1) Initial claims for regular state UI and PUA should be non-overlapping—that is how DOL has directed state agencies to report them—but some individuals are erroneously being counted as being in both programs; (2) Some states are including retroactive payments in their continuing PUA claims, which would also lead to double counting (this story does a great job of explaining this). The bottom line is that we truly don’t know exactly how many people are receiving unemployment insurance benefits right now. That is both bonkers, and a harsh reminder that we need to invest heavily in our data infrastructure.
Second stimulus: Trump pushes for 'larger' COVID-19 relief bill, prioritizing $1,200 checks - -- President Donald Trump parachuted into the coronavirus aid debate Wednesday, upbraiding his Republican allies for proposing too small of a relief package and encouraging both parties in Congress to go for a bigger one that would include his priority of $1,200 stimulus checks for most Americans. But his top GOP allies in the House and Senate shrugged off the president's mid-morning tweet for more aid. They also weighed in against a $1.5 trillion aid package backed by moderates in both parties that earned praise from the White House. Trump, by evening, dug in. "I like the larger amount," Trump said during a press conference at the White House. "Some of the Republicans disagree, but I think I can convince them to go along with that." The president said he wants Americans to be given relief checks and thinks he's getting "closer" to a deal. Negotiations remain far apart. All the key players in the entrenched impasse over a COVID-19 rescue package instead focused their energies on finger-pointing and gamesmanship, even as political nervousness was on the rise among Democrats frustrated by a stalemate in which their party shares the blame. There remained no sign that talks between the White House and congressional Democrats would restart. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says any deal will have to include far more than just another set of "Trump checks" and a handful of other priorities. "All they want is to have the President's name on a check going out. .... That's all he really cares about," Pelosi said. "We have to do more than just have the Republicans check a box."
Coronavirus checks: A second payment may be in the cards after all- This year, Americans were thrown a lifeline in the midst of a pandemic that spurred a recession unlike any other: a round of direct aid payments. Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, those payments maxed out at $1,200 per adult and $500 per child under 17, and they helped households keep up with their bills in the face of job losses and economic uncertainty. Lawmakers spent the better part of the summer duking it out over a second relief bill, and the expectation was that they'd come to an agreement to facilitate a follow-up round of direct payments by September at the latest. Lo and behold, we're in mid-September, and no such deal has been signed. Which means payments are deadlocked as well. As if that weren't enough to make Americans give up on ever getting a second check, Republicans presented a pared-down bill last week that did not include a payment. That proposal failed to advance in the Senate. A new development on COVID-19 relief lends a little optimism that another round of payments might be in the cards after all. That's something desperate Americans will really pull for. On Sept. 15, the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus (25 Democrats and 25 Republicans) introduced a proposal designed to provide the COVID-19 relief the public needs. The proposal addresses a number of points, including boosted unemployment benefits; state and local aid; and assistance for small businesses, many of which have struggled immensely during the pandemic and risk closing permanently. One encouraging aspect of this proposal is the inclusion of not just one check but potentially two rounds of direct relief checks. Specifically, eligible recipients would initially be in line for a $1,200 payment per adult and a $500 payment per child or dependent adult. The proposal calls for another round of automatic aid checks in March 2021 if economic circumstances warrant it. Given that unemployment has been extraordinarily high since April and that the jobless rate could stay that way or worsen over the next six months, that's a very good thing. Though this proposal is bipartisan, lawmakers might still argue over its cost: $1.5 trillion. Democrats might insist that more money needs to be spent in the course of dishing out aid. Republicans might argue that the cost is too high, especially given their slimmed-down bill. Though the proposal is certainly meant to appease both sides, there's no guarantee it will become law. The fact that it calls for a second payment round is still something for the public to hang its hopes on.
Trump-Appointed CDC Officials Reportedly Meddled With Coronavirus Reports - Forbes - Trump appointed communications officials in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been looking over the agency’s weekly Covid-19 reports before they’re published, a Politico investigation found, and in some cases have successfully put pressure on scientists to change reports that would undermine President Donald Trump’s positive message about the pandemic. Since former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo was installed as the CDC’s spokesperson in April, he and his aides have made sizable efforts to keep the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports in line with Trump’s public stance that the coronavirus is under control, the investigation found.CDC officials have pushed back against Caputo, but have increasingly agreed to allow them to review the reports and, in some cases, change the wording.Caputo and his team tried to add qualifiers to reports written by career scientists, and sometimes retroactively change reports they say overinflated the risks of Covid-19, sources told Politico.They also allegedly blocked reports from being published, including one that said the benefits of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug promoted by Trump as a coronavirus treatment, “do not outweigh [the] risks.” — that report, published last week, was delayed by a month after Caputo’s team raised questions about its authors’ political leanings.Caputo’s aides have accused CDC Director Robert Redfield and CDC scientists of using the reports to ‘hurt the President,” calling them “hit pieces on the administration” — one asked specifically to be able to make line edits and demanded the reports should stop until then, the investigation found. The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Caputo, his aides, or the response within the department.
Political HHS Appointees Demand Authority to Rewrite CDC Case Reports - Politico recently published an exclusive report, based on its own investigation, Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19: The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports’ authors and water down their communications to health professionals. In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump’s optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation. I’m posting this a couple days after Trump communications aide Michael Caputo spoke about details regarding the CDC and went public on Facebook with allegations that political unrest will follow – including armed rebellion – after November’s elections. Alas, he also urged Trump supporters to prepare (see this WaPo account Top Trump health appointee Michael Caputo warns of armed insurrection after election; there are similar reports to be found at the NYT, NY Mag, and Forbes). Of course this is being reported as news live and straight from the cray cray zone. But does anyone seriously doubt that the upcoming electoral cycle will be a particularly fraught one? Would you want to warrant and guarantee personally that the losing side will stand down? Does anyone remember what happened in 2016? And it’s a measure of just how seriously political reporting has degraded that this warning is regarded as beyond the pale. As to that Politico report, the first thing any self-respecting writer should ask herself when faced with the latest manifestation of such textbook pearl clutching, is is it true? And does it make any sense? The reports we are talking about are the well-respected Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports Now, one thing I zeroed in on was the doctored (?, sorry, you must grant me that) reports themselves. Because I could see if they were essentially political reports – subject to interpretation – the political appointees might have a point. Much as their “corrections” might seem to fly in the face of mainstream scientific consensus. But as we should surely have understood by now, there’s no hard and fast division between “scientific” and “political”.
US Global Image Plummets Amid Virus-Handling Debacle - The United States' image has tumbled to a record-low among a new 13-nation Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday. America's reputation, nevertheless, confidence in the Trump administration, have both rapidly declined over the past year due to the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump attempted to boost his image last weekend in a Fox News interview, arguing his administration took "tremendous steps" at the beginning of the virus pandemic to mitigate the spread, which 'probably saved a couple million lives'. But according to Pew's polling data, much of the world sees things differently - and that data shows more than a dozen U.S.'s top allies' public attitudes towards the U.S. and Trump are in collapse (see: here). Many of the allies, which include the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Australia, had their share of the public give some of the lowest favorable views of the U.S. on record, going back to the early 2000s when Pew started collecting data. The polling data comes amid Trump's handling of the public health crisis, after journalist Bob Woodward leaked damaging audio of the president downplaying the severity of the virus outbreak. But as readers may recall, none other than Dr.Fauci said Trump "did not distort anything and acted immediately when he was presented the data." Nevertheless, "across the 13 nations surveyed, a median of just 15% say the U.S. has done a good job of dealing with the outbreak. In contrast, most say the World Health Organization (WHO) and European Union have done a good job, and in nearly all nations, people give their own country positive marks for dealing with the crisis (the U.S. and U.K. are notable exceptions). Relatively few think China has handled the pandemic well, although it still receives considerably better reviews than the U.S. response," Pew said.
Trump Is One of the Worst Leaders on Earth, According to the Rest of the World - People in more than a dozen countries around the world have virtually no confidence in Donald Trump, and believe the U.S. has royally screwed up its coronavirus response, according to a Pew survey of American-allied countries around the globe. In some countries that are closely allied with the United States, such as the United Kingdom, confidence is the lowest it’s ever been (41%). In others, such as France and Germany, only around 25% of respondents have confidence in the U.S., matching the country’s poor global standing in March 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq. In all but one of the 13 countries included in the survey—which includes countries from western Europe and east Asia, as well as Australia and Canada—a clear majority have an unfavorable view of the United States. Among those 13 countries, just 16% of those surveyed expressed confidence in Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs, as opposed to 83% who did not have confidence in him to do that. Just 34% of those surveyed held a favorable view of the United States in general. The only country that did not hold an unfavorable view of the U.S. is South Korea, with which Trump has attempted to broker a deal to end long standing tensions with North Korea. Fifty-nine percent of those polled hold a favorable view of the United States, but just 17% have confidence in Trump, down drastically from 46% last year. By comparison, South Korea’s confidence in former U.S. President Barack Obama in South Korea was at 88% toward the end of his term in office.
Trump says he doesn't think he could've done more to stop virus spread | TheHill - President Trump on Tuesday said he doesn't believe he could have done anything different to stop the coronavirus pandemic from spreading across the United States as part of a town hall event where he fiercely pushed back on criticism of his response to the outbreak.The president was asked by one prospective voter what the most difficult challenge of his presidency has been, and what he learned from it."I learned that life is very fragile. I knew people that were powerful people, strong people, good people, and they got knocked out by this, and died -- six people," Trump said. "It was five until about two weeks ago, now it's six.""But I've learned that life is very fragile, because these were strong people, and all of a sudden they were dead; they were gone," he continued. "And it wasn’t their fault. It was the fault of a country that could have stopped it."Trump repeated his belief that the pandemic could have been contained by China, prompting anchor George Stephanopoulos to ask if the president could have done more himself to keep the virus outside the U.S. "I don’t think so," Trump said. "I think what I did by closing up the country, I think I saved two, maybe two and a half, maybe more than that lives. I really don’t think so. I think we did a very good job." Several of the questions focused on the pandemic, with one woman noting that the virus has hit minority communities the hardest and another asking why Trump did not wear a mask more often. He repeated his unsupported belief that the virus will go away even without a vaccine, claimed he "up-played" the severity of the crisis despite his statements to the contrary earlier this year, and pointed to waiters when asked who has argued masks may be bad for preventing the spread of the disease."So you regret nothing?" Stephanopoulos asked at one point."No, I think we did a great job," Trump replied.
Trump defends claim coronavirus will disappear, citing 'herd mentality' - President Trump defended his assertion that the novel coronavirus would “disappear” with or without a vaccine on Tuesday, saying the United States would develop what he called “herd mentality.”“With time it goes away,” Trump said during an ABC News town hall in Pennsylvania when pressed by host George Stephanopoulos on his public comments about the virus. “You'll develop, you'll develop herd — like a herd mentality. It's going to be, it’s going to be herd-developed, and that's going to happen. That will all happen. But with a vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly.”Trump appeared to mistake “herd mentality” for “herd immunity,” which occurs when enough individuals develop immunity to prevent the spread of a disease.Trump went on to insist that the United States is “rounding the corner” with respect to the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 200,000 people in the U.S. Top health officials, meanwhile, have warned of the possibility of a dangerous public health situation in the fall if a second wave of COVID-19 coincides with flu season.Last week, Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, said he disagreed with Trump’s claim that the U.S. was rounding the “final turn” on the virus.“A lot of people do agree with me,” Trump told Stephanopoulos when pressed on Fauci’s disagreement. “You look at Scott Atlas. You look at some of the other doctors that are highly — from Stanford. Look at some of the other doctors. They think maybe we could have done that from the beginning.”Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, was added as one of Trump’s coronavirus advisers in August. The Washington Post reported last month that Atlas was pushing the White House to adopt a “herd immunity” strategy, though the White House has denied that the administration has ever considered such a policy to address the coronavirus pandemic.
As US death toll hits 200,000, Trump calls for herd immunity - On Tuesday, the day that the United States reached the threshold of 200,000 deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump openly defended the US government’s de facto policy of “herd immunity,” that is, allowing the virus to spread without restraint. “You’ll develop herd,” Trump told a televised town hall event, before apparently catching himself and substituting the term “herd mentality” for “herd immunity.” He continued, “Like a herd mentality. It’s going to be—it’s going to be herd-developed, and that’s going to happen.” As a result, he said, the pandemic will “disappear.” In openly defending “herd immunity,” Trump has let the cat out of the bag. In fact, herd immunity has been the guiding principle of his government’s response to the pandemic, underlying his efforts to downplay the virus, handicap testing, and get workers back on the job as quickly as possible. As a strategy for responding to COVID-19, the advocates of herd immunity argue that the disease should be allowed to spread freely throughout the population, based on the claim that, at some point, enough people will become infected that the spread of the disease will slow down. Dr. Scott Atlas, whom Trump recently appointed as a COVID-19 advisor, argued for this approach in July, declaring, “Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem. In fact, it’s a positive.” Despite the strategy’s pseudoscientific trappings, it means nothing more nor less than allowing large numbers of the population, primarily the elderly and the sick, to die in a sort of mass eugenics program potentially costing millions of lives. Trump has spearheaded this policy and, as revealed in the tapes released by Bob Woodward, deliberately downplayed the threat and lied to the population. However, it has been supported and implemented by both the Democrats and Republicans. In late March, it was New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman who praised the herd immunity policy being pursued by the Swedish government, criticized lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus, and declared that “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.” His column was followed by a Washington Post editorial praising Sweden for what it called an “appealing model.”
USDA and Meatpacking Industry Collaborated to Undermine COVID-19 Response, Documents Show - The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the meatpacking industry worked together to downplay and disregard risks to worker health during the Covid-19 pandemic, as shown in documents published Monday by Public Citizen and American Oversight. The documents, which the groups obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, reveal that a week before President Donald Trump issued his controversial executive order in April to keep meatpacking plants open—overriding closure orders from local health officials—a leading meat industry lobby group drafted a proposed executive order that was strikingly similar to Trump's directive. North American Meat Institute president Julie Anna Potts drafted the document, which invoked the Korean War-era Defense Production Act in proposing a presidential proclamation that orders "critical infrastructure food companies continue their operations to the fullest extent possible."The documents also show that the North American Meat Institute repeatedly requested that USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue discourage workers who were afraid to return to work from staying home, that meatpacking plants asked the USDA to intervene on multiple occasions when state and local governments either shut them down over health and safety concerns or sought to impose worker health and safety standards, and that pork producer and food processing giant Smithfield Foods repeatedly requested that the USDA "order" it to reopen its meat processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota—even though the agency lacks the legal authority for such a move. "While we knew that the meatpacking industry was lobbying the Trump administration to take steps to protect its profits regardless of the cost to workers' lives, the degree of collaboration these documents show is astounding," said Adam Pulver, attorney for Public Citizen. "As outbreaks continue to emerge in meatpacking plants, it is stunning to see the cavalier attitude officials took to the health and safety of workers in the early part of the pandemic," Pulver added. "To the extent that the USDA impeded the efforts of state and local governments to contain the virus, the blood of meatpacking workers is on their hands." According to July data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 23 states reported Covid-19 outbreaks in meat and poultry processing facilities, with 16,233 cases and 86 deaths reported in 239 facilities. Fully 87% of those cases occurred among racial or ethnic minorities. The problem is global, with other countries from Britain to Brazil reporting widespread Covid-19 infection among their meatpackers.A common theme connects all of these outbreaks around the world, critics said Tuesday—the prioritization of profit over people."During a global pandemic, Americans should be able to trust that public health experts are drafting public health standards, not big businesses looking out for their bottom lines," said Austin Evers, executive director at American Oversight. "This is corruption that came at the cost of lives and safety. Making matters worse, we know now that Trump knew the coronavirus was a deadly threat even while he played it down and took steps he knew were at odds with what experts advised."
COVID-19 outbreak at Virginia migrant detention center caused by repression of anti-police brutality protesters - A COVID-19 outbreak at an immigration detention center in rural Virginia was caused by the rapid transfer of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assault teams chauffeured into the area by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of the crackdown on anti-police brutality protests that broke out throughout the United States in late May and early June. As of Sunday, 339 of the facility’s inmates and staff at the Immigration Centers of America (ICA) private prison in Farmville, Virginia have tested positive for COVID-19. The outbreak is the most serious recorded at any immigrant detention center across the country. Last month the World Socialist Web Site reported that the outbreak claimed the life of a 72-year-old detainee and Canadian national, James Thomas Hill. The revelation of the source of the outbreak is part of an ongoing lawsuit brought against the detention center by four migrant detainees. According to sources inside ICE that spoke to the Washington Post, prisoners were moved to the Farmville center in order to give cover for the Trump administration’s operation involving militarized agents of the state apparatus to repress protests in Washington, DC. Detention facility in McAllen, Texas, Sunday, June 17, 2018 (Photo US Customs and Border Protection). “They needed to justify the movement of SRT [special response teams],” a Department of Homeland Security official told the Post. According to ICE lawyer Yuri Fuchs, “there is an ICE Air regulation that requires detainees and staff to be on the same flight, so they’re being moved around,” referring to the colloquial name of a program ICE uses to shuttle prisoners, material, and personnel around the country on charter commercial flights. This open admission by a United States federal official of the use of immigrant detainees as human shields for an operation of mass repression prompted federal judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia to help cover for the overshare of information by rewording the sentence into a legally permissible action: “I think what you’re saying then is when you move inmates, or detainees, you have to have ICE people with them,” Brinkema said. “That’s got to be what that means.” Fuchs replied: “Yes.”
Trump’s Law & Order = Ronnie Thompson’s Shoot First and Ask Questions Later - Summer Concepcion reports on something I find very alarming: President Trump leaned into his self-proclamation of being the President of “law and order” further as he appeared to approve of the “retribution” of federal law enforcement officers fatally shooting a man suspected of killing a pro-Trump supporter amid protests in Portland, during an interview on Fox News that aired Saturday night. After mocking Portland mayor Ted Wheeler for refusing Trump’s offer to send in federal troops to the city to quell protests, the President then turned his focus to the fatal shooting earlier this month of Michael Forest Reinoehl — a man suspected of killing a member of the Patriot Prayer group during violent clashes in Portland — by U.S. Marshals. “We sent in the U.S. Marshals for the killer, the man who killed the young man on the street. He shot him… just cold blooded killed him,” Trump said. “Two and a half days went by, and I put out ‘when are you going to go get him?’ And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him, and they ended up in a gunfight.” Trump called Reinoehl a “violent criminal” before suggesting that his extrajudicial killing was par for the course. “This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him,” Trump said. “And I will tell you something — that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.” I went to college in Macon, Georgia when Ronnie Thompson was mayor: Anyone trying to cause violence in the City of Macon must be dealt with accordingly. People engaged in burning, looting, killing, and the destruction of property, etc. must answer to the strongest reply available. Lawlessness designed to produce anarchy and the destruction of the City of Macon will not be tolerated. No policeman, no volunteer policeman will be asked to face the enemy unarmed. See that we have sufficient arms, ammunition and equipment. Those people engaged in lawlessness and anarchy must be stopped. SHOOT TO KILL! Mayor Thompson called this “shoot first and ask questions later” and argued this order should be carried out even if a person was merely taking a $2 shirt. Quinton David Palmer was a 13 year old black boy who was merely carrying a BB gun.
Congressional investigation opened into deaths of 27 soldiers this year at Fort Hood, Texas - Over the last year, Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas has been the scene of a string of murders, deaths, assaults, and other criminal behavior. The military newspaper Stars and Stripes has dubbed the base the Army’s “most crime ridden post.” Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy stated in a visit to the base that it had the “highest, the most cases for sexual assault and harassment and murders for our entire formation of the US army.” Just within the past year 27 soldiers have died either on the base or in Killeen, with five homicides, seven suicides, eight accidents, two deaths from disease, and five as-of-yet undetermined deaths. A 28th soldier from the base was killed in combat. Democrat representatives Stephen Lynch (Massachusetts), who chairs the House Subcommittee on National Security, and Jackie Speier (California), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel, sent a letter Tuesday to McCarthy requesting information and documents on the deaths and announcing a joint investigation by the subcommittees into the spate of deaths. The letter cited Army data that documented an average of 129 felonies annually at Fort Hood between 2014 and 2019. These felonies include homicide, kidnapping, aggravated assault, sexual assault, and robbery. For a base which hosts many active military personnel deployed around the world, Fort Hood has seen more soldiers die at the base and in the city of Killeen than soldiers killed in combat since 2016.
Trump’s China tariffs ruled illegal by World Trade Organization - The World Trade Organisation ruled on Tuesday that tariffs imposed on $234 billion worth of Chinese goods in 2018 are illegal under international trade regulations. But the decision is not going to yield any relaxation of the Trump administration’s trade war against China and its assault on the international trading system more broadly. Rather it will see its further intensification. The decision, made by a three-person panel of the WTO, is the result of action launched by China against the imposition of tariffs by the US in 2018 under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, which empowers the American president to take action against countries deemed to be acting against US commercial interests. The panel found that “the United States has not met the burden of demonstrating that the measures are provisionally justified.” China took action on the grounds that the US measures contravened the most-favoured nation principle because they were not applied to all WTO members but singled out China. The panel agreed. “China has demonstrated that the additional duties apply only to products from China and thus fail to accord to products originating in China an advantage granted to like product in all other WTO members,” it said. In a statement on the decision, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it “approves of the objective and fair ruling of the expert group” and described the WTO as the “core of the multilateral trading system which forms the cornerstone of multilateral trade.” It said China hoped that “the American side will fully respect the ruling of the expert group.” There is no chance of that. Under WTO rules, the US has 60 days to appeal the decision. But that will not take place. This is because the Trump administration has rendered the WTO appeals system inoperable by refusing to back the appointment of new judges to the appellate body when the terms of existing members expired. As a result, the appeals process has been unable to function since December last year. The attack on the appeals system is part of a broader campaign against the WTO, with key sections of the administration reaching the conclusion that it should be abolished because its decisions have been to the detriment of the US while benefitting China.
US halts imports from China's Uighur region for forced labor (AP) — Four companies and a manufacturing facility in northwestern China were blocked Monday from shipping their products to the U.S. because of their suspected reliance on forced labor from people detained as part of a massive campaign against ethnic minorities in the region. U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued orders freezing imports from companies that produce cotton, clothing and computer parts in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China, where authorities have detained more than 1 million people in detention camps as part of the crackdown. CBP also halted imports of hair products made at a manufacturing facility where authorities believe Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are forced to work. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, dismissed the notion that the facility is a “vocational” center as has been portrayed by Chinese authorities. “It is a concentration camp, a place where religious and ethnic minorities are subject to abuse and forced to work in heinous conditions with no recourse and no freedom,” Cuccinelli said. "This is modern day slavery.” The treatment of people in Xinjiang has become a source of friction between the U.S. and China amid broader tensions over trade and the response to the coronavirus outbreak. The Trump administration has over the past year issued eight of what are known as “withhold release orders,” on goods from China to block goods tainted by forced labor and is considering further steps amid ongoing disputes over trade and other issues between the two countries. Among the measures under consideration is an order banning cotton and tomatoes from the entire Xinjiang region, a move that could have significant economic effects. Cuccinelli said the administration was still studying the proposal.
White House announces Oracle Corporation as “trusted tech partner” of TikTok - Business news sources began reporting on Sunday evening that California-based software services and technology giant Oracle Corporation had been selected by the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok as its “trusted tech partner” in the US. The Wall Street Journal reported, “Oracle Corp. won the bidding for the US operations of the video-sharing app TikTok, people familiar with the matter said, beating out Microsoft Corp. in a high-profile deal to salvage a social-media sensation that has been caught in the middle of a geopolitical standoff.” On Monday morning, the preliminary deal was confirmed by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said his office received a bid from Oracle to take over TikTok’s US operations over the weekend. Mnuchin also said the proposal had yet to be reviewed and approved by the White House. Mnuchin told CNBC that two aspects of the deal will be examined. The first is by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) which brokered the deal. The second “is the national security review under the president’s executive order.” President Trump issued an emergency order on August 6 demanding that the China-based ByteDance divest itself of TikTok on the unsubstantiated grounds that the company was turning over “Americans’ personal and proprietary information” to the Chinese intelligence state. Mnuchin said that the President’s executive order specified that the acquisition of TikTok had to be completed by September 20 in order prevent a shutdown of the tremendously popular short-form video sharing app, not by September 15 as had been previously stated by the President. It is estimated that TikTok has 100 million users in the US, nearly two-thirds of them under the age of 30.
Trump Backs Threats Against China With TikTok, WeChat Bans -The Trump administration made good on longstanding threats to take action against Chinese internet giants in the U.S. by issuing a ban on WeChat and TikTok from Apple Inc. and Google’s app stores.For months, President Donald Trump has said he planned to crack down on WeChat, a tool for messaging and money-sharing owned by Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings Ltd., and TikTok, a music video app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., alleging that both apps could let Chinese officials gather data on tens of millions U.S. users and manipulate information shared by Americans.U.S. officials have already limited the activities of Huawei Technologies Co.and ZTE Corp., saying their telecom gear could give China inroads into critical American networks. The moves against TikTok and WeChat mark an extension of the administration’s anti-China hostilities into the consumer realm, and give Trump a way to project a tough-on-China stance ahead of the Nov. 3 election.Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Friday that the U.S. would bar WeChat and its parent company from letting users send money to friends, family or businesses. It also banned business relationships with certain third-party technology providers starting Sunday. The move will make it harder to access and use a tool that helps more than 19 million people in the U.S. conduct business and stay in touch with contacts in China. The action against TikTok adds urgency to already complicated efforts to comply with another Trump order that forces ByteDance to find a buyer for TikTok’s U.S. operations. ByteDance had reached a deal early in the week to sell a minority stake to Oracle Corp. and other investors, but the accord so far has failed to address all the security requirements outlined by the administration. Walmart Inc. aims to take part in the transaction, and the company’s chief executive officer, Doug McMillon, could end up having a seat on the new company’s board. Ross said the government could reverse its decision to block TikTok downloads if ByteDance, Oracle and the Trump administration reach a consensus before Nov. 12. Trump spoke by phone with Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and Walmart’s McMillon on Friday and told them he was close to making a decision on the proposal, people familiar with the matter said.
Tucker Slams Facebook Censorship Of Chinese Virologist: "It's Turning Us Into The Soviet Union" - Facebook and other tech giants have engaged in a troubling pattern of censoring speech surrounding major issues in the coronavirus debate, Fox News host Tucker Carlson argued during his Wednesday night monologue.Carlson's comments came after Facebook slapped a warning label on video of his Tuesday interview with Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who claimed to have evidence showing China "intentionally" released COVID-19 onto the general population."Within a few hours of her interview last night," Carlson said, "a video of the segment reached 1.3 million people on Facebook.""And why wouldn’t it? The coronavirus pandemic has touched the life of every American. And justifiably, people want to know where it came from. But Facebook still doesn’t want you to know that.So Facebook suppressed the video, presumably on behalf of the Chinese government. Facebook executives made it harder for users to watch our segment. Those who found the video had to navigate a warning that the interview 'repeats information about COVID-19 that independent fact-checkers say is false," he added."Instagram, which Facebook also owns did the same thing. Twitter suspended Dr. Yan's account entirely. It did not explain why..." "Nor did the tech companies explain how they would know more about disease transmission than an MD, PhD virologist like Dr. Li-Meng Yan. Instead, Facebook and Instagram linked to three so-called fact checks which supposedly proved Yan was lying.
Steve Bannon Is Behind Bogus Study That China Created COVID - The Daily Beast - A new study purporting to show that the novel coronavirus was manufactured in a Chinese lab was published by a pair of nonprofit groups linked to Steve Bannon, the former top Trump strategist now facing felony fraud charges. The study, co-authored by a Chinese virologist who fled Hong Kong this year, claims that “laboratory manipulation is part of the history of SARS-CoV-2.” Its findings were quickly picked up by a handful of prominent news organizations such as the New York Post, which hyped the “explosive” allegations that run counter to virtually all existing scientific literature on the source of the virus. The study is the work of the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, sister nonprofit organizations that Bannon was instrumental in creating. According to documents posted on the Society’s website last year, he served as that group’s chair. The Bannon connection was first spotted by Kevin Bird, a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University, and shared by Carl Bergstrom, a biology professor at the University of Washington, who called the study “bizarre and unfounded.” A search of Google Scholar and the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation websites indicates that the organizations have not previously published scientific or medical research, and it’s unclear whether the paper received any peer review. It was posted on Monday on the website Zenodo, a publicly available repository of scientific and academic research to which anyone can upload their work. Both of the nonprofits behind the study were formed in conjunction with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, with whom Bannon has collaborated on a number of advocacy efforts targeting the Chinese government and business endeavors that have drawn the scrutiny of federal law enforcement officials.
Trump Administration Forces Qatari News Network Al Jazeera To Register As 'Foreign Agent' - Earlier this year, the Trump Administration started forcing Chinese state media outlets operating in the US to register as foreign agents. Twitter and other social media companies followed suit by labeling accounts linked to Chinese and Russian state-funded media companies with tags warning of "state affiliated media".Pretty soon, Jack Dorsey might be slapping a similar label on accounts associated with Al Jazeera, after the Trump Administration branded the popular media company, which publishes in English and Arabic, as a foreign agent.Many Americans were first introduced to Al Jazeera in the days after 9/11, as Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden leaked tapes taking credit for the attacks to the news network, which is financed by the Emir of Qatar. Its international headquarters is in Doha,Al Jazeera tried to spin the demand as if it were somehow part of a separate deal, signed on Tuesday and brokered by the Trump administration, in which the UAE - Qatar's biggest regional rival - normalized relations with Israel. However, the UAE ambassador in the US told the NYT that this wasn't accurate. In its letter, the DoJ alleged that AJ+, primarily a social-media outlet that produces short videos for social media in English as well as Arabic, French and Spanish, engages in "political activities" on behalf of Qatar’s government, which provides practically all of AJ's financing, and should therefore be subject to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Qatar also appoints the network's board of directors. "Journalism designed to influence American perceptions of a domestic policy issue or a foreign nation’s activities or its leadership qualifies as 'political activities' under the statutory definition," said the letter, which was signed by Jay I. Bratt, the chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence division, “even,” the letter added, "if it views itself as 'balanced.'" Mother Jones first reported the letter Tuesday afternoon.
Trump Says He Would Sell Other Gulf Countries Same Advanced Weapons Given To Israel - In an interview ahead of the signing ceremony for the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Trump said he would be willing to sell other countries in the Middle East "the same advanced weapons" the US sells to Israel.“They’re very wealthy countries for the most part,” Trump told Fox News. Trump also mentioned the UAE’s desire for US-made F-35s and said he would “personally not have a problem” with the UAE acquiring the warplanes. Since the normalization agreement was announced, there have been reports that the UAE F-35 sale was part of the deal. The treaties that were signed on Tuesday made no mention of F-35s, but the sale is clearly still on the table.He noted that the UAE wanted to buy some fighter jets, adding: “I personally would have not problem with it. Some people do, they say... maybe they go to war.” — Reuters President Trump is a big fan of selling weapons to Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia. The president has boasted about the billions of dollars in weapons the Kingdom has purchased and has vetoed efforts by Congress to end such sales.Congress tried to prohibit arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE in an effort to end US support for the war in Yemen, where the US-backed Saudi-led coalition regularly kills civilians.Israeli PM Netanyahu with “key to the White House” presented to him by President Trump and Melania Trump pic.twitter.com/uj3TMuvn4F— Steve Holland (@steveholland1) September 15, 2020 The atrocities in Yemen are so bad that US officials in the State Department fear being arrested overseas for war crimes for their role in facilitating the weapons sales.
Explainer: U.S. says U.N. sanctions on Iran to be reimposed Saturday. What does that mean? (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration says that on Saturday (2000 EDT Sunday) all United Nations sanctions on Iran have to be restored and a conventional arms embargo on the country will no longer expire in mid-October. But 13 of the 15 U.N. Security Council members, including long-time U.S. allies, say Washington’s move is void and diplomats say few countries are likely to reimpose the measures, which were lifted under a 2015 deal between world powers and Iran that aimed to stop Tehran developing nuclear weapons. Here is a look at the events leading to this showdown and an explanation of what could happen next: The Security Council arms embargo is due to expire on Oct. 18, as agreed under the nuclear deal among Iran, Russia, China, Germany, Britain, France and the United States that seeks to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons in return for sanctions relief. It is enshrined in a 2015 Security Council resolution. In 2018, Trump quit the accord reached under his predecessor Barack Obama, calling it “the worst deal ever.” The United States failed last month in a bid to extend the Iran embargo at the Security Council. The remaining parties to the nuclear deal have said they are committed to maintaining the agreement. Iran has said it would remain in place despite the U.S. move at the United Nations. Britain, France and Germany told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that U.N. sanctions relief for Iran would continue beyond Sept. 20. “We have worked tirelessly to preserve the nuclear agreement and remain committed to do so,” the U.N. envoys for the three countries said in a letter to the Council, seen by Reuters. A return of U.N. sanctions, a so-called snapback, would require Iran to suspend all nuclear enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, and ban imports of anything that could contribute to those activities or to development of nuclear weapon delivery systems. It would reimpose the arms embargo, ban Iran from developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and bring back targeted sanctions on dozens of individuals and entities. Countries also would be urged to inspect shipments to and from Iran and authorized to seize any banned cargo. The United States submitted a complaint about Iran breaching the nuclear deal to the Security Council last month. In response to the U.S. quitting the accord and imposing unilateral sanctions in a bid to get Iran to negotiate a new deal, Tehran has breached central limits of the pact, including on its stock of enriched uranium Under a 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution enshrining the nuclear deal, the United States says that it triggered a 30-day process leading to a snapback of all U.N. sanctions on Iran. Washington argues that while it quit the nuclear deal in 2018, the 2015 resolution still names it as a participant. Under the sanctions snapback process if a Security Council resolution to extend sanctions relief on Iran is not adopted within the 30 days, then U.N. sanctions are supposed to be reimposed. No such resolution has been put forward for a vote.
House passes resolution condemning anti-Asian discrimination relating to coronavirus -The House passed a resolution Thursday condemning “all forms of anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19” in a 243-164 vote. The measure came amid Democratic lawmakers repeatedly blasting President Trump for referring to coronavirus as the “Chinese virus,” alleging the rhetoric has led to an influx of discrimination against Asian Americans. The measure — spearheaded by Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) — highlighted that the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have stated that connecting the name of a virus to the geographic location where it originated perpetuates a stigma. Proponents of the resolution said it is necessary to combat bigotry as instances of harassment and violence against the Asian community have increased since the start of the pandemic. “Sadly this bigotry is being fueled by some in Washington, and you would think, I thought this would be almost unanimous consent to condemn violence against Asian Americans. Even from the White House itself, which uses dangerous, false, and offensive terms to describe the coronavirus,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on the floor ahead of the vote. “The World Health Organization and the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, have explicitly warned against linking infectious diseases to specific ethnicities because of the stigmatizing effects, which has serious impacts on health and defeating the virus. As the CDC medical officer has said, stigma is the enemy of public health," Pelosi said. Republicans condemned the resolution as partisan posturing, arguing that Democrats have misplaced priorities by bringing a nonbinding resolution to the floor when Congress has yet to come to a consensus on a coronavirus relief bill or government funding legislation. GOP lawmakers believe Democrats haven’t been hard enough on China. Others have dismissed the idea that calling the coronavirus by a name citing its origin has racist undertones, noting that other diseases like Ebola and the West Nile virus were named after where they originated.
Nurse alleges forced sterilizations, medical malpractice at Georgia immigrant detention center - A whistleblower complaint filed on behalf of a nurse who worked at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in southern Georgia until July alleges that a number of immigrant women detained there were subjected to sterilization through hysterectomies without their consent. In the complaint, filed by the legal advocacy group Project South, the former nurse describes conditions at the center as akin to an “experimental concentration camp.” The complaint also details the refusal of the center’s administrators to carry out COVID-19 testing or implement protective measures, putting detainees and employees throughout the country’s network of detention centers at risk of infection. It alleges that detainees who have spoken out about conditions at the facility have been placed in solitary confinement. The chilling report provides further evidence of the sadistic abuse meted out by the Trump administration in its fascistic war on immigrants. At least 17 people have died so far this year in ICE custody from various causes, including COVID-19. Two guards at a facility in Louisiana died from coronavirus in April. The target of the of the complaint, the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), which is operated by the private prison company LaSalle Corrections, was previously the subject of complaints raised by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2012. The ACLU urged that the facility be closed due to widespread abuse as well as its remote location. A 2017 Project South investigation found that ICDC was guilty of human rights abuses, violations of due process rights and unsanitary living conditions. The nurse who lodged the latest complaint, Dawn Wooten, explained that detained women were sent to a doctor known as the “uterus collector” and that many did not have a full understanding of what was happening to them or why they were having the procedure. “When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” Wooten said. “It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies.”
Trump signs new, expanded executive order to lower U.S. drug prices (Reuters) - President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on Sunday aimed at lowering drug prices in the United States by linking them to those of other nations and expanding the scope of a July action. “My Most Favored Nation order will ensure that our Country gets the same low price Big Pharma gives to other countries. The days of global freeriding at America’s expense are over,” Trump said in a Twitter post. The latest step, coming less than two months before the Nov. 3 presidential election, would replace a July 24 Trump executive order. It extends the mandate to prescription drugs available at a pharmacy, which are covered under Medicare Part D. The July version focused on drugs typically administered in doctors’ offices and health clinics, covered by Medicare Part B. Specifically, it would pay a price for a drug that matches the lowest price paid among wealthy foreign governments. Medicare, the government healthcare program for seniors, is currently prohibited from negotiating prices it pays to drugmakers. It also requires issuing new federal rules, a complex process that might not be done by Election Day. Determining prices paid by other countries could be challenging as negotiations between governments and drugmakers often are kept confidential. The industry’s largest trade group - the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA - denounced Trump’s move as “a reckless attack on the very companies working around the clock to beat COVID-19.” PhRMA President and Chief Executive Stephen Ubl called the policy “unworkable” and an “overreach,” and said it would give foreign governments a say in how the United States provides access to treatments.
Trump’s Eviction Moratorium Opens the Door for Medicare for All by Executive Order - On September 1, the Trump administration announced a nationwide moratorium on evictions to last until December 31, a full four months. The reason for the moratorium, according to a White House spokesman, was to make sure that people “struggling to pay rent due to the coronavirus will not have to worry about being evicted and risk the further spreading of, or exposure to, the disease.” The moratorium applies only to people “who would otherwise be eligible for federal stimulus funds in the previous CARES Act, which went only to people with certain tax income levels and citizenship status.” The ban also requires that renters “self-certify” to become eligible. As Politicoput it: “The new ban covers tenants who certify that they have lost “substantial” income; that they expect to make no more than $99,000 in 2020 or received a stimulus check; and that they are making their “best efforts” to pay as much of their rent as they can. Tenants must also certify that an eviction would likely make them homeless or push them to double up with others in close quarters.”It should be noted that the ban does not cancel rental obligations; it just delays payment. Also, as the order itself states, “Nothing in this Order precludes the charging or collecting of fees, penalties, or interest as a result of the failure to pay rent or other housing payment on a timely basis, under the terms of any applicable contract.”As a solution, it’s better than nothing, but it only defers the pain. The order provides no funds for relief to landlords. For the many landlords who are, in fact, millionaires, billionaire, and large, well-funded corporations and venture capital firms, this may look to many like just desserts. For the other half of the landlord population, however, especially the minority who own just one or two rental properties, this could spell financial disaster as great as the disaster their tenants are facing. The authority for this action comes from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Surgeon General, who reports to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — not from the Housing or the Treasury departments — and it’s based on the stated need to prevent the spread of disease in a crisis. The applicable language states (emphasis added): [Title 42 U.S.C.] §264. Regulations to control communicable diseases(a) Promulgation and enforcement by Surgeon GeneralThe Surgeon General, with the approval of the Secretary, is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession. For purposes of carrying out and enforcing such regulations, the Surgeon General may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary. This declaration and the unusual legal authority on which it is based has many important ramifications. For one, it opens the door for Medicare for All by executive order.
Mitch McConnell rams through six Trump judges in 30 hours after blocking coronavirus aid for months - The Republican-led Senate confirmed six of President Donald Trump's judicial nominees to lifetime appointments over two days this week, even though it has delayed crucial coronavirus relief since May.The Senate filled four federal vacancies in California and two in Illinois, Bloomberg Law reported. It is also expected to confirm two additional Illinois judges in short order."The Senate has confirmed six of Trump's judicial nominees in the past 30 hours,"tweeted Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "These are lifetime appointments that McConnell's pushing through instead of the HEROES Act & other crucial legislation." Three of the judges were appointed to seats covering Los Angeles, while another was appointed to a seat covering San Diego. There are 11 additional nominees to California courts awaiting Senate confirmation.The Senate additionally confirmed David Dugan and Stephen McGlynn to the Eastern District of Illinois while ending the debate on the nominations of Iain Johnston to the Northern District. The upper chamber is also expected to end debate on the nomination of Franklin Ulyses Valderrama to the Northern District of Illinois.Advocacy groups sounded the alarm over the confirmations of Dugan and McGlynn, who received support from anti-abortion organizations and signaled their opposition to abortion rights. "Today's vote should never have even happened. People are calling on their senators to provide relief from the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recession and the rampant anti-Black violence occurring around the country," Anisha Singh, the director of judiciary affairs at Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. "And yet, the Senate majority continues to prioritize confirming judges for lifetime appointments — many with hostile records on reproductive and civil rights, including abortion."
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pioneering Supreme Court justice, dies at age 87 -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the pioneering Supreme Court justice who became the second female on the nation's highest court, the leader of its liberal wing and a pop culture icon known as Notorious R.B.G., has died. She was 87. The vacancy enables President Donald Trump to nominate his third justice to swing the bench further to the right, setting up what's certain to be a colossal battle perhaps even bigger than those of his nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.According to NPR, days before her death, Ginsburg told her granddaughter: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed." Ginsburg had a history of medical problems. In December 2018, doctorsremoved two cancerous nodules from her left lung, and she underwentadditional treatment in August 2019 for a tumor on her pancreas. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and underwent surgery in 2009 for pancreatic cancer.The Supreme Court released the following statement Friday: […] By early January 2020, Ginsburg told CNN she was "cancer free," but in July she announced that she was being treated for liver cancer. The nodules in her lung were discovered in November 2018, when she was hospitalized for broken ribs following a fall in her office. Ginsburg's convalescence 2½ weeks after the lung surgery ended her 25-year streak of never missing hearing a Supreme Court case for any reason outside of recusal, but she continued to work from home in her Watergate apartment.In her second day back on the bench, she read the opinion she had written in a unanimous ruling against excessive punishment.
Trump says he will name Supreme Court successor to liberal Ginsburg 'without delay' (Reuters) - A fierce political battle was shaping up over the future of the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday, with President Donald Trump saying he would quickly name a successor to liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a move that would tip the court further to the right. “We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered to be the selection of United States Supreme Court Justices,” Trump said on Twitter. “We have this obligation, without delay!” Ginsburg, the senior liberal justice, died on Friday night at age 87 of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer after 27 years on the court. Her death gives Trump, who is seeking re-election on Nov. 3, a chance to expand the court’s conservative majority to 6-3 at a time of a gaping political divide in America.Democrats are still seething over the Republican Senate’s refusal to act on Democratic President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016 after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died 10 months before that election. McConnell in 2016 said the Senate should not act on a court nominee during an election year, a stance he has since reversed.
Hours before news of Ginsburg’s death, Murkowski said she wouldn’t vote on a Supreme Court nominee prior to election - Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in an interview that she wouldn’t vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee ahead of the election, just hours before news broke that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. Speaking to Alaska Public Media during an interview on an unrelated topic, Murkowski referenced the position she took when former President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in March 2016. Then, she supported Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to take action on Garland’s nomination. Murkowski said that then, she felt “that was too close to an election and that the people needed to decide. That the closer you get to an election, that argument becomes even more important.” “So I would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee," Murkowski said Friday, noting she had previously stated this position to reporters in recent weeks. "We are 50-some days away from an election, and the good news for us is that all of our Supreme Court justices are in good health and doing their job. And we pray that they are able to continue that.” Alaska Public Media provided the Daily News with a recording of the exchange. Murkowski’s stance will factor in to an already heated political battle over Ginsburg’s replacement ahead of the November presidential election — McConnell has already said he intends to hold a Senate vote on whoever President Donald Trump nominates. But after Murkowski and the rest of Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation learned of Ginsburg’s death Friday, they did not immediately comment on whether a vote on her replacement should be delayed until after the next president is decided.
Trump will nominate a woman next week to succeed Ginsburg on Supreme Court (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Saturday he will nominate a woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, a move that tip the court further to the right following the death of liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “I will be putting forth a nominee next week. It will be a woman,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “I think it should be a woman because I actually like women much more than men.” As Trump spoke, supporters chanted: “Fill that seat.” Earlier, he praised two women as possible choices for the U.S. Supreme Court: conservatives he elevated to federal appeals courts. Trump, with a chance to nominate a third justice to a lifetime appointment, named Amy Coney Barrett of the Chicago-based 7th Circuit and Barbara Lagoa of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit as possible nominees.
Obamacare may be doomed if 8-member Supreme Court presses ahead with fall cases— Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, ending one of the most remarkable careers in American legal history, leaves the Supreme Court under a cloud of uncertainty as it prepares to begin its new term in two weeks, with questions about who will put her successor on the court, when will that happen and how will it affect some of the major cases on the docket — including thefate of Obamacare.Ginsburg's death on Friday leaves eight justices on the court, which raises the prospect of 4-4 tie votes. After Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, the remaining justices ended up deferring contentious issues or deciding cases without sweeping rulings. But his death left an even number of generally liberal and conservative votes.The court now stands 5-3 ideologically, with Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh among the conservatives and Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan constituting the liberal wing.Because it takes five votes to prevail, the court might plunge ahead in deciding some of the term's major cases. The week after the November general election, the court will consider the future of the Affordable Care Act, which a coalition of red states are hoping to strike down — including the provision requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.If Roberts, who has voted in the past to uphold the law, sided with the liberals this time, that 4-4 tie would leave the lower court ruling in place, which declared the law invalid.Another case, a legal dispute between a Catholic charity and the city of Philadelphia, asks the justices to decide whether there's a religious freedom exception to nondiscrimination laws. The court considered but eventually ducked that question two years ago in the case of a Colorado baker who refused to provide cakes for same-sex weddings, saying it would violate his religious beliefs and freedom of expression. Tom Goldstein, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who argues frequently before the court, said he assumes the court will push ahead to decide those controversies. "I don't think they'll keep the landing gear down. There may be some ties this time, but not on the big social issue cases," he said.
Ginsburg's death raises stakes for Senate control (Reuters) - The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has raised the stakes in the struggle for control of the U.S. Senate, forcing embattled Republican incumbents to choose between trying to appeal to moderate voters or hoping to fire up a conservative base. President Donald Trump on Saturday said he would quickly nominate a successor to the liberal icon. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a vote, giving the pair a chance to cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court while their party holds both the White House and a 53-47 Senate majority. That would raise the chances of the court overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, placing one of the most heated social and political battles in the United States front and center on the campaign trail. With the court vacancy coming so near the Nov. 3 presidential and congressional elections, Democrats argue that the voters should weigh in before Trump and McConnell rush to fill the seat -- the very argument McConnell employed in 2016 to block a nominee of President Barack Obama’s. “There are those people who have a hypocrisy meter and it just offends them,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, referring to Republicans’ changing strategies. Polls show Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leading Trump ahead of the November election, and also give Democrats a chance of unseating enough Republican senators to capture a majority in that chamber. Now, multiple incumbent Republican senators face the choice of backing Trump’s eventual court nominee and potentially losing some moderate voters, or rejecting that person and angering the conservative base. About seven Republican incumbents and two Democrats face a chance of losing their seats in November’s election, according to nonpartisan election trackers. Democrats would need a net gain of three seats for a majority if presidential nominee Joe Biden unseats Trump, meaning a Vice President Kamala Harris would be on hand to break 50-50 ties in the Senate.
Trump repeats threats of post-election military repression as Barr calls for charging protesters with “sedition” - Speaking at a White House press briefing Wednesday evening, President Trump reiterated his threats to call out the military and suppress election night demonstrations that might be provoked by a claim on his part to have won reelection. A reporter cited Attorney General William Barr’s statement that he wanted to charge anti-Trump demonstrators with sedition and Trump’s own previous comments about invoking the Insurrection Act, then asked him, “Why do you want to use that rhetoric?” Trump replied, “The question was asked to me if you have violent demonstrations. Yes, we will put it down quickly if there is. And I think the American public wants to see that.” He continued, “Look, if there’s any kind of demonstration or violence, there will be nothing that interferes with this product, this vote. There’s going to be nothing.”The question about Barr was based on a report by the Wall Street Journalthat the attorney general had told federal prosecutors in a conference call last week that they should bring federal charges of insurrection against those who were arrested for violent actions during the wave of mass protests against police violence triggered by the May 25 police murder of George Floyd.According to this report, Barr went further, suggesting that some way be found to bring criminal charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, because she did not immediately suppress a police-free protest zone in the city’s downtown for several weeks in June. After effectively endorsing Barr’s actions, Trump then launched into a lengthy diatribe against mail ballots, attempting, as he has on several other occasions, to distinguish between voting by absentee ballot, which he acknowledged doing regularly himself, and voting based on a mail-in system where state governments send ballots out widely to all registered voters.
FBI director calls antifa 'a real thing' --FBI Director Christopher Wray described antifa as "a real thing" during a hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill, noting that the bureau has open cases against individuals who self-identify as anti-fascist activists.Wray, who was testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee as part of its worldwide threats hearing, was responded to questions about the level of threat the movement poses. "Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction," Wray said of the far-left group."We look at antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than we do an organization. We do have quite a number of properly predicated domestic terrorism investigations into violent anarchist extremists, any number of whom self-identify with the antifa movement," he added.The FBI chief also said that some who identify with the antifa movement have been coalescing regionally in certain areas, and that the FBI is examining potential violence from these small groups or nodes."We are actively investigating the potential violence from these regional nodes, if you will," Wray said.He was pressed repeatedly on the topic of antifa by both sides, but Democrats and Republicans framed their questions about antifa far differently, with Democrats appearing to seek responses with a low evaluation of the threat posed by antifa and Republicans appearing to seek ones with a higher threat evaluation. "There have been statements by top people here in fact, [House Judiciary Committee] Chairman [Jerry] Nadler [D-N.Y.] has said on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives that basically antifa is a fantasy made up of the radical right or Fox News or something to that effect. Would you agree with that?" asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), a staunch defender of President Trump. "Is antifa a total fantasy, or is it real?" she added. "So when we hear officials say antifa is the biggest threat on the left, are they being correct?" asked Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the panel.Wray offered a similar response each time, that it is a movement not an organization, but that antifa is real and the bureau has domestic extremism cases opened on individuals who self-identify as part of it.“We don’t really think of threats in terms of left or right at the FBI. We are focused on the violence, not the ideology," Wray also repeatedly said. Racially motivated violent extremists, violent anarchist extremists, militia types, sovereign citizens and other groups all fall into the broader umbrella of domestic terrorism cases at the FBI, according to Wray.
Study suggests financial holdings influenced key votes for house lawmakers - A recent study found strong associations between the financial holdings of legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives and how those lawmakers voted on key financial legislation. The study suggests that many lawmakers voted in ways that benefited their personal finances, regardless of whether those votes were consistent with their espoused politics. "Broadly speaking, we found that House members who owned stocks in firms that would benefit from financial deregulation voted for financial deregulation," says study co-author Jordan Carr Peterson, an assistant professor of political science at North Carolina State University. "And House members who had invested in financial and automotive stocks supported legislation aimed at bailing out the financial and auto sectors. "Honestly, we were surprised that nobody had done this analysis before, given that all this data was publicly available," Peterson says. "It required a fair amount of tedious work, which may explain it." Specifically, the researchers did a detailed examination of the financial holdings of all House members who voted on five key pieces of economic legislation between 1999 and 2008: the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill in 1999 (which repealed Glass-Steagall); the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (which involved substantial deregulation to the financial industry); the two 2008 votes on the Troubled Assets Relief Program (which bailed out major banks); and the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act in 2008 (which bailed out the auto industry). "We chose those five roll-call votes because, unlike many other roll-call votes, the legislation had immediate and direct impacts on the stock market in general - and in particular on the stock prices of individual firms that were regulated by the relevant bills," Peterson says. In four of the five instances, legislators largely voted in line with what was most beneficial to their financial interests. The sole exception was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 - though that may be due to the fact that the bill was bundled into a much larger omnibus legislation package at the tail end of a lame-duck congressional session. "Our findings indicate that many legislators are more likely to vote in support of their own financial holdings, rather than in line with the political positions they espouse on the campaign trail," Peterson says. "That's clearly problematic - and we don't have to do things this way. For example, an easy fix would be to require that members of Congress not own individual stocks, instead moving their investments into mutual funds or a blind trust.
As Bloomberg pledges $100 million, Wall Street boosts Biden campaign - Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has pledged to spend at least $100 million to support the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in Florida. This announcement Sunday is only the largest pledge of support from the financial oligarchy for the Democratic campaign. Bloomberg aide Kevin Sheekey said the pledge of virtually unlimited financial backing to Biden in Florida, the most critical “battleground” state in the 2020 election, “will allow campaign resources and other Democratic resources to be used in other states, in particular the state of Pennsylvania.” Florida has 29 electoral votes, the most of any closely contested state, following California with 55, overwhelmingly Democratic, and Texas with 38, leaning Republican. New York state, also with 29 electoral votes, is heavily Democratic. Only once in the last 60 years—Bill Clinton in 1992—has a candidate won the presidency while losing Florida. The last Republican to lose Florida and still win the White House was Calvin Coolidge in 1924, when the state was lightly populated swampland. Early voting begins in Florida September 24, and Bloomberg’s money will pay for massive campaign advertising on behalf of Biden, in both English and Spanish. Campaign officials said the funds would be devoted almost entirely to television and digital ads.
FBI Raids Biden Surrogate Jerry Harris For Soliciting Sex From Minors - The FBI has reportedly raided the home of Jerry Harris, a Netflix actor who previously appeared in a video with Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden where he encouraged young African Americans to vote, for allegedly soliciting sex from two younger boys. “The criminal investigation is based on allegations brought by 14-year-old twin brothers. In interviews with USA TODAY, the boys described a pattern of harassment, both online and at cheer competitions, that started when they were 13 and Harris was 19,” USA Today reported. “They said it continued for more than a year.” FBI agents on Monday served a search warrant on Jerry Harris’ home in Naperville, Illinois, sources told USA Today. Photographs published by news outlets showed agents at the house. The FBI is investigating Harris on claims that the celebrity cheerleader solicited sexually explicit photos and sex from minors. However, Harris has not yet been criminally charged according to USA Today. Although, evidence shared with USA Today suggests guilt. Shocking screenshots of social media conversations detail accounts alleged to be Harris asking the younger boys to pose naked while doing gymnastics and video themselves doing it. The two boys Sam and Charlie say they were harassed at cheer competitions and online when they were 13 and Harris was 19. Allegations also stem from a police report filed by Varsity Brands, a private company that manages the cheerleading industry, handling everything from uniform sales to major competitions.
FBI Raids Americore Holdings Tied To Joe Biden’s Brother - A business connected to Joe Biden’s brother was raided last month and accused of using the presidential candidate’s name to rake in high-dollar clients.The FBI searched Ellwood City Medical Center in Pennsylvania and the home of Grant White, the CEO of Americore Holdings, as part of its investigation into the company’s recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to RealClearInvestigations. Americore Holdings, a company that acquired and managed rural hospitals, filed for bankruptcy in December to avoid paying its creditors.Paul Randolph, a federal trustee, has been looking to halt the bankruptcy of the comapny. He argued in a Kentucky filing that White “grossly mismanaged” the company and “improperly siphoned money from the Debtors for his personal benefit.” He also claimed that Americore Holdings “has not operated the hospitals in a manner that is consistent with public safety.” White has since been removed as CEO of the comapny.James Biden, the younger brother of former Vice President Joe Biden, was not directly listed by the FBI in its investigation but is listed as a “principal” of Americore Holdings. Itt’s also worth mentioning that both White and James Biden were included in a separate lawsuit in which the two were accused of fraud by a Tennessee businessman Michael Frey.In that lawsuit, James Biden was accused of using Joe Biden’s influence to attract international clients and drive up the value of a merger between two rural hospitals. Further, Michael Lewitt, a hedge fund manager who had been working with James Biden, was accused of using the Biden name to downplay potential legal ramifications for the merger at the time. “Jim [Biden] told me: Don’t worry every time someone threatens to sue you. You’re with us now. Nobody is gonna touch you,” the lawsuit said.
Former model accuses Trump of sexually assaulting her at the 1997 U.S. Open --Amy Dorris, a former model and actress, says President Trump assaulted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the U.S. Open in September 1997, The Guardian reported Thursday. The Guardian said it learned of Dorris' story more than a year ago from a model agent she had confided in, and Dorris confirmed her allegation 15 months ago but was unwilling to go public before now. Dorris, 48, was 24 at the time; Trump was 51 and married to Marla Maples. Several people confirmed she had told them about the assault right after it happened, including a friend and her mother, and in the years after it happened, including a therapist. She also provided several photos of herself and Trump from her trip to New York, including one in Trump's VIP box at the U.S. Open. Trump's lawyers strongly denied that the president had ever harassed, abused, or behaved improperly toward Dorris. Dorris told The Guardian she considered coming forward in 2016, when a rush of women accused Trump of very similar sexual assaults, but did not want to harm her family. "Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you don't let anybody do anything to you that you don't want," she said. "I'm tired of being quiet. It's kind of cathartic. I just want to get this out. And I want people to know that this is the man, this is our president. This is the kind of thing he does and it's unacceptable." Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, recounts in his new book that Trump hit on his 15-year-old daughter in front of him, and the daughter, Samantha Cohen, told her version to CNN earlier this week.
Subpoenas Authorized For Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Halper And Other 'Spygate' Figures - The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted on Wednesday to authorize subpoenas for dozens of Obama-era officials involved in 'spygate,' including former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper -- and longtime US intelligence operative Stephen Halper, who the Obama administration paid nearly half-a-million dollars to help the FBI spy on the 2016 Trump campaign. The committee authorized chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to issue notices for taking depositions, subpoenas, records requests, and testimony related to the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation - along with the DOJ Inspector General's review of said investigation, as well as the "unmasking" of individuals connected to the Trump campaign, transition team, and administration, according to Fox News. The committee also authorized subpoenas for Sidney Blumenthal, former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough, former FBI counsel Lisa Page, former FBI agent Joe Pientka, former ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, former FBI director of counterintelligence Bill Priestap, former White House national security adviser Susan Rice, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith – who pleaded guilty to making a false statement in the first criminal case arising from U.S. Attorney John Durham's review of the investigation into links between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign – among others. As part of the authorization, Johnson may subpoena "the production of all records" related to the FBI's initial Russia probe, as well as unmasking requests for "James Baker, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, DOJ official Bruce Ohr, FBI case agent Steven Somma, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Teftt, former deputy assistant attorney general Tashina Gauhar." Halper, meanwhile, is a former government official and longtime spook for the CIA and FBI, who was outed as the FBI informant who infiltrated the Trump campaign after the Washington Post and the New York Times ran reports that corroborated a March report by the Daily Caller detailing Halper's outreach to several low-level aides to the Trump campaign, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras -- Facebook Inc. is again being sued for allegedly spying on Instagram users, this time through the unauthorized use of their mobile phone cameras. The lawsuit springs from media reports in July that the photo-sharing app appeared to be accessing iPhone cameras even when they weren’t actively being used. Facebook denied the reports and blamed a bug, which it said it was correcting, for triggering what it described as false notifications that Instagram was accessing iPhone cameras. In the complaint filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, New Jersey Instagram user Brittany Conditi contends the app’s use of the camera is intentional and done for the purpose of collecting “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to.”By “obtaining extremely private and intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes,” Instagram and Facebook are able to collect “valuable insights and market research,” according to the complaint. Facebook declined to comment. In a suit filed last month, Facebook was accused of using facial-recognition technology to illegally harvest the biometric data of its more than 100 million Instagram users. Facebook denied the claim and said that Instagram doesn’t use face recognition technology.The case is Conditi v. Instagram, LLC, 20-cv-06534, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
Wealth of US billionaires rises by nearly a third during pandemic - The already vast fortunes of America’s 643 billionaires have soared by an average of 29% since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has at the same time laid waste to tens of millions of jobs around the world. The richest of the superrich have benefited by $845bn , according to a report by a US progressive thinktank, the Institute for Policy Studies. The report calculated that 643 billionaires in the US had racked up $845bn (£642bn) in collective wealth gains since 18 March, when lockdowns began across the US and much of the rest of the world. The collective wealth of the billionaire class increased from $2.95tn to $3.8tn. That works out to gains of $141bn a month, or $4.7bn a day. Over the same period, more than 197,000 Americans have died from coronavirus and more than 50m Americans have lost their jobs. Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, who was already the world’s richest person, has benefited most from the pandemic and subsequent global lockdowns. His personal fortune, as estimated by Forbes magazine, has risen by $73.2bn since the start of the crisis to a record $186.2bn. That 65% increase results mostly from the soaring value of Amazon shares as more people turn to the delivery service. In just one day in July, Bezos saw his fortune increase by more than £10bn.
Perelman Selling Almost Everything as Pandemic Roils His Empire - Bit by bit, billionaire Ronald O. Perelman is parting with his treasures. His Gulfstream 650 is on the market. So is his 257-foot yacht. Movers hauled crates of art from his Upper East Side townhouse after he struck a deal with Sotheby’s to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of works. He’s unloaded his stake in Humvee-maker AM General, sold a flavorings company that he’d owned for decades and hired banks to find buyers for stock he holds in other companies. What in the world is going on with Ron Perelman? His exploits on and off Wall Street have been tabloid fare in New York since the go-go 1980s. But now, at an age when most fellow billionaires are kicking back, Perelman, 77, is facing a range of financial challenges, most of all at Revlon Inc., his cosmetics giant. Once touted as America’s richest man, his wealth has dropped from $19 billion to $4.2 billion in the past two years, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Bankers, socialites and art collectors have been buzzing about Perelman since his investment company, MacAndrews & Forbes, said in July it would rework its holdings in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the ravages it caused to American businesses, including his own. “We quickly took significant steps to react to the unprecedented economic environment that we were facing,” Perelman said in a statement. “I have been very public about my intention to reduce leverage, streamline operations, sell some assets and convert those assets to cash in order to seek new investment opportunities and that is exactly what we are doing.” Perelman also gave more prosaic reasons for the shift, including spending time with his family during lockdown and a desire for a simpler life.
Citigroup Was Having a Helluva Bad Year – Now a Citi Senior VP Has Been Outed as the Man Behind a QAnon Conspiracy Website - Pam Martens - So far this year, the mega Wall Street bank, Citigroup, has lost 37 percent of its market value – outpacing peer banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. (See chart below.) Then there was the fat finger in August in the back office of Citigroup that wired $900 million by mistake to pay off the entire principal balance of a Revlon bond instead of making just the payment of interest on the bond. Citigroup is now embroiled in lawsuits with the Revlon lenders, attempting to get them to return the money.Mistakenly wiring almost $1 billion on behalf of Revlon out of the bank’s own coffers is not something that federal regulators want to hear about from a federally-insured bank that sits on $1.2 trillion in customers’ deposits and a bank that received the largest bailout in U.S. history from 2007 to 2010. Citigroup also has a serial recidivist reputation for engaging in wrongdoing. Citigroup was apparently attempting to get the kind of public relations boost this week that presidential candidate Joe Biden got in announcing that his running mate for Veep was going to be a woman, Senator Kamala Harris. On Thursday, Citigroup released an unexpected statement that its CEO, Michael Corbat, would be stepping down in February and handing the reins to Jane Fraser, the first ever female CEO of a major Wall Street bank. Notably, on the very same day that Citigroup made this historic announcement, Thursday, September 10, a fact-checking website known as “Logically,” posted abreathtakingly detailed outing of one of Citigroup’s Senior Vice Presidents, Jason Gelinas, as the man behind the notorious QAnon conspiracy website known as QMap.pub.The QMap.pub website has now disappeared from the web but you can read its archived postings at the website maintained by the Wayback Machine, an initiative of the Internet Archive.NPR reports that QAnon followers believe that “President Trump is saving the world from a cult of cannibalistic pedophiles” – most hiding out in the Democratic party according to QAnon thinking. The FBI has labeled QAnon “a potential domestic terrorist threat.” That hasn’t dissuaded President Donald Trump from retweeting posts from QAnon followers. The career history that LinkedIn had been showing for Gelinas has now been taken down. According to Gelinas’ resume, he has worked at Citigroup for 17 years and is currently a Senior Vice President and Director of GFTS Core Technology Services. Gelinas hardly fits the profile of a kooky conspiracy theorist. He and his wife live in a meticulously landscaped $790,000 home in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. (We tracked down the residence at the county’s property records and then looked at a photo and market value estimate at Realtor.com.) His home phone number is the same phone number used for Patriot Platforms, LLC, a company registered with the state of New Jersey that is the developer of the QMap.pub website.
QAnon Joins Hits to Citigroup’s Brand: Dr. Evil Trade; Parmalat “Black Hole”; Enron; SIV Liquidity Puts; and Dracula Stock Options -- Pam Martens and Russ Martens ~ The business media was abuzz yesterday with reports that two of Citigroup’s federal regulators – the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve – are considering reprimanding the bank for failure to improve its risk management systems. Trust us: there is a lot more to this story than you’re reading about in the main stream press. Citigroup doesn’t do anything small. When it does something bad, it goes all in – sometimes even assigning a code name. Let’s start with the “Dr. Evil” trade. That was actually the code name that Citigroup traders assigned to an attempt to exploit a weakness in a European bond trading system. Citigroup employees gave another code name, “Buca Nero” – Italian for “Black Hole” – to an accounting maneuver that made debt appear to be an investment at the debt-strapped Italian dairy company, Parmalat. The company collapsed in 2003 in what became Europe’s largest ever bankruptcy. In 2005 Citigroup settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $101 million for helping the notorious Enron inflate its cash flows and under report its debts. Then there were those infamous SIV liquidity puts. In the leadup to Wall Street’s financial collapse in 2008, Citigroup had been creating Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) and using them to place toxic subprime debt off its balance sheet. While all of the above had been going on, Sandy Weill, the Chairman and CEO of Citigroup, had amassed a fortune from the bank through a technique that compensation expert Graef “Bud” Crystal called the Count Dracula stock option plan. You couldn’t kill it; not even with a silver bullet. Nor could you prosecute it, because Citi’s Board of Directors had signed off on it. Given that background (and Citi’s much worse long-term rap sheet), consider the news circling around Citigroup over the past week. Last Thursday, the fact-checking website, Logically, broke the news that a Senior Vice President at Citigroup, Jason Gelinas, was living a secret life as a promoter of the conspiracy group, QAnon. According to his resume at LinkedIn (now removed), Gelinas had worked at Citigroup for 17 years and was Director of GFTS Core Technology Services. But Gelinas, whose job goal was to look out for risk at Citigroup, was potentially a big risk himself. According to the FBI, QAnon may be a domestic terrorist threat. Making the situation even more concerning, Citigroup has refused to issue a public statement on the matter – which raises more alarms bells as to what the full story is.
Fincen plans major overhaul of anti-money-laundering rules — The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said Wednesday that a significant overhaul of the nation’s anti-money-laundering regulatory framework is in the works. In an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, Fincen said it plans to firm up the definition of an “effective and reasonably designed” AML compliance program, something the regulator said had “no specific, consistent definition in existing regulation.” Fincen's stated goal is to “ensure that the [Bank Secrecy Act’s] AML regime adapts to address the evolving threats of illicit finance … while simultaneously providing financial institutions with additional flexibility in addressing these threats,” the notice said. It outlines three core components of defining “effective and reasonably designed” under a new regulatory framework:
- Whether a program “identifies, assesses, and reasonably mitigates the risks resulting from illicit financial activity.”
- How well a program “assures and monitors compliance” with BSA reporting requirements.
- And whether that program provides useful information based on “the institution’s risk assessment and the risks communicated by relevant government authorities.”
One of the most significant changes under consideration involves the role of institutional risk assessments in designing AML programs. Fincen asked whether it should formally mandate such assessments and if doing so would create an undue burden for financial institutions.“Even though a financial institution’s risk-assessment process is key to ensuring an effective AML program, it is not an explicit regulatory requirement for all types of institutions,” Fincen wrote, adding that such an evaluation could consider an institution’s “business activities, products, services, customers and geographic locations in which the financial institution does business or services customers.” Fincen also asked the public whether “any regulatory changes” were necessary to better reflect the variety of business models and risk profiles among financial institutions.
Countering OCC, states announce streamlined payments exams — The Conference of State Bank Supervisors is launching a streamlined program for national payments firms to undergo a single exam, as state regulators continue to battle with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency over who supervises tech-focused nonbanks. The initiative, which the conference is calling MSB Networked Supervision, will be available to 78 payments and cryptocurrency companies that annually move more than $1 trillion in customer funds combined, the group said Tuesday. The move comes as federal and state banking regulators have escalated their battle over which side is best equipped to license and oversee fintech and payments companies. Such firms typically lack a traditional banking charter, and therefore must register with multiple state regulators to operate nationally. The bank supervisor group offered little detail about the streamlined supervision plan for money services businesses, but the group said it would be available starting next year. "The single exam will be led by one state overseeing a group of examiners sourced from across the country," the CSBS said in a press release, although the group did not specify which state would lead the process. "By relying on experts across the state system — including in cybersecurity and anti-money laundering — regulators will gain more insight while also freeing up state resources." Rosemary Gallagher, associate general counsel for Western Union, said the money transmitter supports the state initiative after the company participated in a pilot program. “Western Union was a proud participant in the CSBS’s successful one company, one exam pilot," Gallagher said in the group's press release. "We firmly believe that the impact of this new approach to multistate exams will be significant in terms of driving harmonization and streamlining of state supervision across the board.” Multiple state parties have already challenged the OCC's special-purpose fintech charter. A federal judge last year dealt a blow to the OCC’s special-purpose fintech charter, ruling that the agency lacked legal power to grant a bank charter to a nonbank entity that wasn't eligible for federal deposit insurance in a victory for the New York State Department of Financial Services and CSBS. But the case is still pending an appeal. More recently, acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks has expressed interest in the agency providing a specialized charter for payments firms, but his statements have drawn rebukes from state regulators. States have also sued both the OCC and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over rules enabling loan buyers to avoid state interest rate caps. State regulators have charged that they have the expertise and clearest authority to monitor nonbank financial providers for compliance with consumer protection laws, but the OCC says it is in the best position to provide fintechs and others a streamlined regulatory experience.
Fed offers details on additional bank stress test triggered by COVID-19— The Federal Reserve published hypothetical scenarios Thursday for the supplemental stress tests the largest banks must undergo in light of the uncertain economic environment. The central bank is holding the first-ever "midcycle" stress test to get a firmer grasp of banks' capital strength since onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The most recent results of the Fed's normal test were based significantly on yearend 2019 financial data. The supplemental tests will use data from this year's economic tremors. The midcycle test will include two scenarios: a “severely adverse” scenario and an “alternative severe” scenario. Both are much more dire than current forecasts for the U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic. The first scenario factors in an unemployment rate that tops out at 12.5% at the end of 2021, a sharp slowdown abroad and a decline of 3% in gross domestic product from the third quarter of 2020 through the fourth quarter of 2021. The second scenario will test banks against an unemployment rate that peaks at 11% by the end of this year but remains high through the end of the scenario, and a 2.5% decline in GDP. Banks with large trading operations will also be subject to a global market shock component, and will be required to factor in the default of their largest counterparty. Banks with substantial processing operations will also have to incorporate the default of their largest counterparty. The banks subject to both a global market shock and a counterparty default include Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, DB USA (the U.S.-based affiliate of Deutsche Bank), Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargo. The Fed will release bank-specific results for the 34 banks subject to the midcycle test by the end of this year, the central bank said in a press release. “The Fed’s stress tests earlier this year showed the strength of large banks under many different scenarios,” Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles said in the release. “Although the economy has improved materially over the last quarter, uncertainty over the course of the next few quarters remains unusually high, and these two additional tests will provide more information on the resiliency of large banks.” As part of its regular stress testing cycle this year, the Fed included additional “sensitivity analyses” that tested banks against hypothetical economic models of recovery from the pandemic. In aggregate, all 34 banks maintained the minimum capital requirements under each of the scenarios tested, although “several would approach minimum capital levels,” the Fed said at the time. The regulator added that it would require banks to resubmit their capital plans in the fall to reflect more current stresses on the economy.
The Fed Announces New Bank Stress Tests: Will Look at What Would Happen if a Major Counterparty Defaulted - Pam Martens - At the time the Fed released the results of its bank stress tests in June, it announced that because of the pandemic and unprecedented economic downturn, it would require additional stress testing of the biggest banks later this year. This afternoon, the Fed released those plans.Among the various hypothetical scenarios that the banks will have to perform against, 13 of the banks with significant trading operations will have to consider what would happen if a major counterparty blew up. The banks that will have to submit outcomes under this scenario include: Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Barclays US, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank USA, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street, UBS, and Wells Fargo. The Fed will release bank-specific results before the end of the year.All 34 banks will face two hypothetical scenarios featuring severe economic downturns. Both hypothetical scenarios feature high unemployment continuing into 2021. (Read the full details of the scenarios in this Fed booklet.)The counterparty default scenario works like this, according to the Fed:“Firms with substantial trading or custodial operations will be required to incorporate a counterparty default scenario component into their supervisory severely adverse and alternative severe stress scenarios for the resubmission of capital plans in the fourth quarter of 2020. The counterparty default scenario component involves the instantaneous and unexpected default of the firm’s largest counterparty.“In connection with the counterparty default scenario component, these firms will be required to estimate and report the potential losses and related effects on capital associated with the instantaneous and unexpected default of the counterparty that would generate the largest losses across their derivatives and securities financing activities, including securities lending and repurchase or reverse repurchase agreement activities. The counterparty default scenario component is an add-on to the macroeconomic conditions and financial market environments specified in the supervisory severely adverse and alternative severe scenarios.“The largest counterparty of each firm will be determined by net stressed losses. Net stressed losses are estimated by applying the global market shock to revalue non-cash securities financing transactions (securities or collateral posted or received); and, for derivatives, the trade position and non-cash collateral exchanged. The as-of date for the counterparty default scenario component is June 30, 2020—the same date as for the global market shock.” It’s notable that the Fed is going to be looking at the “largest counterparty of each firm” and what would happen if it blew up. Let’s hope the Fed has the good sense to look to see just how concentrated that counterparty risk is to other banks.
Bankers urge extension of CARES Act reg relief — At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Congress gave banks and credit unions relief from a number of regulations so that they would have flexibility to help commercial and retail customers weather the economic shock. Those regulatory relief measures are set to expire Dec. 31, but with the virus still raging and many households and businesses still struggling, financial institutions are urging Congress and regulators to extend them into next year. And while it is unclear if regulators will act on their own to extend the relief, lawmakers from both parties have expressed support for continued pandemic relief. Among other things, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act relieved financial institutions from having to categorize loan modifications related to the pandemic as troubled debt restructurings until the end of 2020, and it it enabled them to delay compliance with the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Current Expected Credit Losses standard until the end of the year. The legislation also eased community banks' capital requirements by lowering the Community Bank Leverage Ration from 9% to 8% until 2021, and it authorized the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to revive its crisis-era program backstopping bank-issued debt and noninterest-bearing transaction deposits that exceed the FDIC's $250,000 limit. Troubled debt restructurings have been of particular concern for banks as they anticipate that their customers could need loan modifications long after the CARES Act relief expires. Critics of troubled debt restructurings have argued that they reduce the incentive for banks to work out new loan agreements with struggling borrowers, since they require banks to set aside more in capital reserves and they create other administrative hassles. The American Bankers Association is asking that the exemption on troubled debt restructurings remain in place at least until January 2023 while the Independent Community Bankers of America asked Congress in a September letter to extend the relief until the end of 2021. “We requested [an extension]...in large part because there will be debt restructurings and we don’t want the regulatory agencies in retrospect to look negatively at institutions and what they have done to help their customers through a difficult time,” said James Ballentine, executive vice president for political affairs and congressional relations at the American Bankers Association. Paul Merski, group executive vice president for congressional relations and strategy at the Independent Community Bankers of America, said that banks are worried that they will be penalized by their examiners if they change borrowers' loan terms after the relief expires. “Borrowers who are experiencing financial difficulty, banks can extend out the terms of the loan. … Really the regulators don’t like that," Merski said. "That can be negative for your exam, for your bank for providing that kind of relief. It’s still better than canceling or foreclosing on a borrower.”
Barclays Latest Global Megabank To Suffer Trading Floor COVID-19 Outbreak - As JP Morgan struggles with another COVID-19 outbreak as it prepares to order more workers back to its offices in NYC and London, Barclays has just become the latest global mega-bank to suffer a flareup of its own.Dow Jones-owned Financial News, a London-based news organization, reported Thursday that "Barclays sent some staff home from its London trading floor after two employees tested positive for COVID-19." What's more puzzling, the outbreak come as the City of London reportedly remains a ghost town, which, apparently, hasn't dissuaded local officials and the British government from considering another "localized" lockdown as cases in the UK continue to climb as PM Boris Johnson continues to reopen the economy.The infected traders reportedly worked on Level 2 of Barclays' 5 North Colonnade office."Earlier this week, two colleagues based on level 2 of 5 North Colonnade received this confirmation" of having contracted the virus, Barclays' head of markets Stephen Dainton wrote in a memo sent to employees on 2 September. The North Colonnade building in Canary Wharf houses the Barclays investment bank and trading floors.Here's the rest of the statement, courtesy of FN:"The colleagues who tested positive began a period of self isolation," said the memo, which was seen by Financial News. "Anyone who interacted with the affected individuals was notified and advised to self-quarantine for 14 days."
Deutsche Bank allowing US staffers to work from home through next summer - Deutsche Bank does not plan to allow U.S. staffers back into its offices until next summer. Americas chief of staff Matthias Krause outlined the bank’s plans during a town hall Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, after employees put pressure on leadership to lay out a clear outline as they continue to maneuver unknowns such as school reopenings. In a memo obtained by the Journal, Krause acknowledges New York City’s “success in containing COVID” but added that workers have “understandable concerns about public transportation, cleanliness, security and other quality of life issues.” “Many of you do not wish to return to 60 Wall Street soon,” the memo said, referring to the bank’s downtown Manhattan office. The bank is moving to a new office and trading floor next summer when in-person operations are slated to return, the Journal noted. The move by Deutsche Bank is at contrast with other big U.S. banks, such as JP Morgan and Bank of America, which will begin having some staffers work from their offices as early as this month.
FDIC holds line on bank fees despite sharp deposit growth — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s board voted unanimously to maintain current assessment rates for banks despite a sudden hit to the agency's insurance fund. In August, the FDIC announced that the Deposit Insurance Fund had fallen to 1.3% of estimated insured deposits in the second quarter, 9 basis points below the previous quarter and 5 basis points below the agency's statutory minimum. The agency cited an unprecedented surge in deposit growth in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic as the cause, rather than any major loss to the DIF from bank failures. The agency is required by law to develop a restoration plan whenever the DIF's reserve ratio falls below 1.35%. But officials said at this point they will continue to monitor the situation with the expectation that deposit growth will stabilize, boosting that ratio without an insurance price increase. “While subject to considerable uncertainty, it is the FDIC’s view that raising assessments based on two quarters of extraordinary insured deposit growth would be premature,” FDIC staff wrote in the restoration plan presented to the board. In the memo, the agency said for the first half of the year, estimated insured deposits had grown by an amount equal to roughly three years of growth during a more normal period. The DIF balance totaled $114.7 billion at the end of the second quarter, when the fund had earned nearly $1.8 billion in assessment income. Under the FDIC's current assessment rate schedule, the average assessment rate last quarter was 4 basis points per total assets minus its average tangible equity. FDIC officials repeatedly emphasized the short-term nature of the spring and summer’s explosive deposit growth, as well as a murky economic outlook, as reasons for not raising rates quite yet. “Of course, we're living in highly uncertain times, and these estimates are not predictions,” FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams said in prepared remarks. “As part of the restoration plan, we will closely monitor economic conditions, the health of the banking sector and deposit growth trends, and FDIC staff will provide updates to the Board of Directors not less than semi-annually.” Agency staff stressed that assuming a return to normal deposit growth, the fund would likely recover without adjusting assessment rates within eight years — the length of time allowed by law to restore DIF reserves once the fund falls below its legal minimum.
Credit unions to pay $1.5B to bolster NCUA’s deposit insurance fund - Like its counterparts at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Credit Union Administration has a deposit problem. A COVID-related deposit surge has pushed the equity ratio of NCUA’s $17.7 billion share insurance fund down to 1.22% — two basis points above the level at which the Federal Credit Union Act requires the regulator to assess a premium or develop a restoration plan. The equity ratio was 1.35% at Dec. 31, 2019, and has not dipped below 1.3% since the middle of 2017. The industry has seen just one failure so far in 2020, a $7.7 million-asset credit union in Beaver, Pa., so the equity ratio’s decline “is totally being driven by growth in insured shares,” Chief Financial Officer Eugene Schied said Thursday at a meeting of NCUA’s governing board in Alexandria, Va. Between January and June, credit union deposits jumped 13%, while the share insurance fund’s capital grew 2%, according to Schied. By comparison, the average annual increase in system-wide deposits has been 4.58%. Credit unions are required to maintain a capital deposit in the share insurance fund equal to 1% of their total deposits. To “true up” those capital deposits, the agency plans to bill institutions with more than $50 million in assets, a process expected to raise $1.5 billion, Schied said. The added capital deposit funding should boost the equity ratio to 1.32% by year-end, said Victoria Nahrwold, NCUA’s director of risk management. “We’re dealing with a black-swan event here,” board member Todd Harper said. “It’s something we’ve never seen before and something we couldn’t have anticipated.” At a meeting Tuesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported a 9-basis-point decline in the equity of its deposit insurance fund to 1.3%, 5 basis points below its statutory minimum. FDIC’s board held off on imposing an assessment on banks in hopes deposit growth will level off. NCUA had the option of imposing a premium, since the share insurance fund is well below its normal operating level of 1.39%, but like FDIC, it chose not to do so. A share insurance premium would be an expensive proposition for most credit unions. If NCUA were forced to impose 5 basis-point premium, the cost for a midsize institution with about $250 million in deposits would approach $125,000 according to Nahrwold.
CFPB data collection rule could exempt smallest small-business lenders - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finally detailed what small-business lending data it may require under the Dodd-Frank Act, but the agency also appears willing to relieve certain lenders from the reporting requirements. The CFPB said in a 79-page outline released Tuesday that it is considering whether to exempt lenders with under $100 million or $200 million of assets out of concern that some entities “might reduce or cease their small-business lending activity because of the fixed costs of" compliance. To implement Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank, the agency is also considering exempting institutions that make few small-business loans. The data requirements — similar to reporting obligations applicable to mortgage lenders — are designed to assess small businesses' credit needs and whether borrowers experience lending discrimination. Banks have largely resisted collecting data on women- and minority-owned small businesses by claiming it requires too much paperwork and is a regulatory burden. But experts note that the federal government needs some visibility — where none exists currently — on the credit needs of small entities. "We are one of the few countries that does not nationally collect small business loan origination data," said Karen Mills, a senior fellow at Harvard Business School and former head of the Small Business Administration under President Barack Obama. “It will do a lot of good for America’s small businesses, which don’t have a big lobbying arm, as they are busy running their businesses. And right now, by the way, they are in huge trouble.” Yet the proposed exemptions in the outline and other details will likely elicit pushback from consumer groups. The CFPB was mandated to release an outline by Tuesday under a settlement with the California Reinvestment Coalition, which sued the bureau last year to force a rulemaking on one of the last provisions of Dodd-Frank Act still to be implemented. Dodd-Frank requires that financial institutions collect, report and make public certain data on credit applications made by women-owned, minority-owned and small businesses. The data is similar to information that banks and lenders currently collect from mortgage applicants under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. In addition to exemptions for a lender's size, the bureau is considering three possible exemption thresholds for small-business loan volume: fewer than 25 loans or $2.5 million; 50 loans or $5 million; or 100 loans or $10 million. Yet for companies required to submit the data, the CFPB is considering adding certain discretionary data points. Dodd-Frank allows the bureau to include certain details at will. The agency said it is weighing whether to include things like loan price, the amount of time a small business has been in operation and its number of employees.
Fed to pitch CRA revamp of its own as regulators chart different paths— The Federal Reserve will meet Monday to discuss plans to revamp the Community Reinvestment Act, months after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized its own proposal to overhaul the 1977 law without the support of the other banking regulators. The meeting agenda says the Fed board will discuss an "advance notice of proposed rulemaking," which signals an upcoming regulation. Fed Gov. Lael Brainard, who is leading the central bank’s efforts to modernize CRA, will also speak and take questions about the Fed’s plan at an Urban Institute event Monday. Brainard came out against the OCC’s proposal in January. She objected to the national bank regulator's plan to combine several aspects of CRA evaluation into a single, final score based in part on the dollar value of CRA projects. The OCC's final rule watered down its proposed numbers-based measurements for CRA activity that community groups had blasted, returning some discretion to examiners to judge a bank's overall compliance. But the final revamp was still criticized over claims that the OCC rushed it through amid the coronavirus pandemic, and created a separate CRA regime from the rest of the regulators. Several banking organizations expressed concern that the rule’s data and recordkeeping requirements would cost the industry billions of dollars in compliance costs in the coming years. They also warned that the plan could result in regulatory arbitrage without the support of the other banking agencies. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. initially signed on to the OCC’s proposal in December, but it did not join the agency in finalizing the rule in May.
How a tweak to the Federal Home Loan banks could save cities - Today’s mayors face the dual challenge of expanding civic engagement and economic opportunity for all of their residents. This is especially acute now with the spread of COVID-19, a pandemic that affects everyone but devastates the most vulnerable. Like other mayors around the country, our cities — Little Rock, Ark., and Miami, Fla. — are focused on addressing systemic inequality and responding to COVID-19. Yet, we confront mounting financial pressure from costs associated with these efforts, lower tax revenue and an increasingly unfavorable municipal bond market. And whether the state is red or blue, our critical infrastructure projects are slowed or stopped by declining revenues and resources. Municipal bonds are an essential tool to help cities, counties and states recover from financial crises. The funding from these bonds supports everything from water treatment facilities and industrial development to hospitals, schools and other infrastructure. In Miami, we have leveraged our Miami Forever bond program to invest in climate adaptive infrastructure and economically inclusive policies. At a time when resources are being stretched, tax-exempt bonds can play a bigger role than ever in helping us to invest in our cities through new infrastructure projects, quality jobs and hope for a bright future. Our nation’s ability to fully recover depends on the ability of its state and local governments to issue bonds that will fuel economic recovery, putting members of their communities back to work. Governments at all levels are facing the potential of declining bond ratings that can significantly increase the cost of obtaining bond funding. As responsible public officials, we, like mayors across the nation, are looking to leverage every public policy option available to boost the ability of localities to borrow funds and to lower the cost of debt financing. This is why both of us — a Democratic mayor and a Republican mayor — are joining forces to ask our federal partners to put in place a series of much-needed, bipartisan legislative fixes that will ultimately improve the quality of life for working families and other city residents. We want Congress to allow financial institutions to better utilize the Federal Home Loan Bank System. The 11 Home Loan banks provide low-cost funding to more than 6,700 financial institutions, including many focused on community lending. The legislative fixes will not cost the taxpayer but can empower these institutions to do more. Today, lawmakers need to better position the Home Loan banks to help institutions serving their municipalities. Legislation being considered in Congress includes authorization allowing the banks to issue letters of credit to support tax-exempt bonds and protect deposits by local government entities. These letters would allow local depository institutions to receive state and local government funds in excess of federal deposit insurance levels. Moreover, these letters of credit could increase the marketability and lower the financing costs of tax-exempt bonds, despite uncertainty within the municipal bond market. This is the type of liquidity and support that mayors and municipalities around the country want Congress to bring off the sidelines and put into action to help fuel our nation’s economic recovery.
Calabria to Congress- If you don’t like crisis fee, then fund GSEs — Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's controversial "adverse market" fee at a virtual hearing with House lawmakers on Wednesday. Calabria testified before the House Financial Services Committee, where members of both parties questioned the fee imposed on refinancings. The added charge is meant to help Fannie and Freddie shoulder losses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, but the fee could raise costs by an estimated $1,400 for the average consumer. “Rather than allowing homeowners to take advantage of historically low mortgage rates, Director Calabria announced a new refinance fee that would take some of the savings that would have otherwise gone into the pockets of families and instead redirect that money into the pockets of Fannie and Freddie,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the top Republican on the committee, said that the fee’s rollout on Aug. 12 was problematic, but that he understood Fannie and Freddie need to meet their financial obligations. Fannie and Freddie originally planned to start charging the fee Sept. 1, but that was delayed to Dec. 1 after backlash from the mortgage industry. “The way this was announced and the initial three-week timing for its implementation doomed it from the start,” McHenry said. “Clearly, FHFA has a statutory obligation to ensure the GSEs operate in a safe and sound manner with sufficient resources to meet their obligations.” Calabria argued that the fee was necessary in order to cover roughly $6 billion in projected losses resulting from the pandemic, which the two companies are required to recoup by law. He also said that the fee, 0.5% on refinanced mortgages, was lower than the fee Fannie and Freddie had initially requested. The government-sponsored enterprises will also exempt mortgage loans with a balance of less than $125,000 from the additional cost. “By the charters of the GSEs, they are required to recapture those costs via income,” Calabria said. “This was Fannie and Freddie’s suggestion and as a safety and soundness regulator when I’ve got two multitrillion dollar entities coming to me and saying that if they aren’t allowed to increase their income that they are at the risk of distress, I simply have to take that seriously. I can’t simply ignore instability in the mortgage market.” Calabria indicated that Congress could prevent the fee by appropriating funds to the GSEs to cover coronavirus-related losses. The FHFA has suggested that Fannie and Freddie's losses would be derived in part from forbearance policies mandated by the recent Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. “Since this fee is resulting from costs that arise out of the CARES Act that are unfunded, of course Congress could fund that,” Calabria said. “I think it would have to be in the neighborhood of $10 billion that would make sure that we would not have to reassess any fees that would cover COVID costs.” Calabria clarified that he was not endorsing a possible decision by Congress to appropriate funds to Fannie and Freddie through legislation. He said the refinance fee was a reasonable step. “This fee amounts to about five basis points annually on the loan,” he said. “That’s less than mortgage rates have been fluctuating during the time this hearing has been going on.” Calabria was also pressed by members about extending the freezes on foreclosures and evictions that the FHFA announced early in the pandemic.
Black Knight: Number of Homeowners in COVID-19-Related Forbearance Plans Decreased --Note: Both Black Knight and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) are putting out weekly estimates of mortgages in forbearance.This data is as of September 15th. From Fourth Consecutive Week of Forbearance Improvement Overall, the total number of mortgages in forbearance continued to improve this week, as the number of active plans declined another 26K (-0.7%). This marks the fourth consecutive week of improvement, and declining volumes for 10 of the past 12 weeks. As of September 15, just under 3.7M homeowners remain in COVID-19-related forbearance plans. That’s down more than 22% from the peak of over 4.7M in late May. These loans represent 7% of the active mortgage universe, unchanged from last week. Together, they represent $781 billion in unpaid principal.Active forbearances are now down 266K (-7%) over the past 30 days, as servicers continue to proactively assess the 1.7M forbearance plans still set to expire in September for extensions and removals.Given the large number of plans in which September’s mortgage payment was the last payment covered under forbearance plan, we could see significant removal/extension activity over the next few weeks.
NMHC: Rent Payment Tracker Shows Decline in Households Paying Rent in September -From the NMHC: NMHC Rent Payment Tracker Finds 86.2 Percent of Apartment Households Paid Rent as of September 13: The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 86.2 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by September 13 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country.This is a 2.4-percentage point, or 279,457-household decrease from the share who paid rent through September 13, 2019 and compares to 86.9 percent that had paid by August 13, 2020. These data encompass a wide variety of market-rate rental properties across the United States, which can vary by size, type and average rental price.“While it remains clear that many apartment residents continue to prioritize their housing obligations and that apartment owners and operators remain committed to meeting them halfway with creative and nuanced approaches, the reality is that the second week of September figures shows ongoing deterioration of rent payment figures - representing hundreds of thousands of households who are increasingly at risk,” said Doug Bibby, NMHC President.“This sadly comes as little surprise given that Congress and the Administration have failed to come back to the table and extend the critical protections that supported apartment residents and the nation’s consumer base during the initial months of the pandemic.This graph from the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker shows the percent of household making full or partial rent payments by the 6th of the month.CR Note: This is mostly for large, professionally managed properties. It appears fewer people are paying their rent this year compared to last year - down 2.4 percentage points from a year ago - and also down 0.7 percentage points compared to last month at the same point (August 2020). Declining, but not falling off a cliff.
Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey - Mortgage applications decreased 2.5 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending September 11, 2020. This week’s results include an adjustment for the Labor Day holiday. ... The Refinance Index decreased 4 percent from the previous week and was 30 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 12 percent compared with the previous week and was 6 percent higher than the same week one year ago. “Mortgage rates held steady last week, and the 30-year fixed rate – at 3.07 percent – has now stayed near the 3 percent mark for the past two months. A 5 percent decline in conventional refinances pulled the overall index lower, but activity was still 30 percent higher than last year. With the flurry of refinance activity reported over the past several months, demand may be slowing as remaining borrowers in the market potentially wait for another sizeable drop in rates,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “Applications to buy a home also decreased last week, but the underlying trend remains strong. Purchase activity has outpaced year-ago levels for 17 consecutive weeks, with a stronger growth in loans with higher balances pushing MBA’s average loan size to a new survey high of $370,200.” ... The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($510,400 or less) remained unchanged at 3.07 percent, with points decreasing to 0.32 from 0.36 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.
NAHB: Builder Confidence Increased to 83 in September, Record High - The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported the housing market index (HMI) was at 83, up from 78 in August. Any number above 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor. From the NAHB: Builder Confidence Soars to an All-Time High, Lumber Risks Remain In a strong signal that housing is leading the economic recovery, builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes increased five points to hit an all-time high of 83 in September, according to the latest NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. The previous highest reading of 78 in the 35-year history of the series was set last month and also matched in December 1998. “Historic traffic numbers have builders seeing positive market conditions, but many in the industry are worried about rising costs and delays for building materials, especially lumber,” said NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke. “More domestic lumber production or tariff relief is needed to avoid a slowdown in the market in the coming months.” “Lumber prices are now up more than 170% since mid-April, adding more than $16,000 to the price of a typical new single-family home,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. “That said, the suburban shift for home building is keeping builders busy, supported on the demand side by low interest rates. In another sign of this growing trend, builders in other parts of the country have reported receiving calls from customers in high-density markets asking about relocating.”... All the HMI indices posted their highest readings ever in September. The HMI index gauging current sales conditions rose four points to 88, the component measuring sales expectations in the next six months increased six points to 84 and the measure charting traffic of prospective buyers posted a nine-point gain to 73. Looking at the three-month moving averages for regional HMI scores, the Northeast increased 11 points to 76, the Midwest increased nine points to 72, the South rose eight points to 79 and the West increased seven points to 85.
Housing Starts decreased to 1.416 Million Annual Rate in August - From the Census Bureau: Permits, Starts and Completions: Privately-owned housing starts in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,416,000. This is 5.1 percent below the revised July estimate of 1,492,000, but is 2.8 percent above the August 2019 rate of 1,377,000. Single-family housing starts in August were at a rate of 1,021,000; this is 4.1 percent above the revised July figure of 981,000. The August rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 375,000. Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,470,000. This is 0.9 percent below the revised July rate of 1,483,000 and is 0.1 percent below the August 2019 rate of 1,471,000. Single-family authorizations in August were at a rate of 1,036,000; this is 6.0 percent above the revised July figure of 977,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 381,000 in August.The first graph shows single and multi-family housing starts for the last several years. Multi-family starts (red, 2+ units) were up downAugust compared to July. Multi-family starts were down 15% year-over-year in August. Single-family starts (blue) increased in August, and were up 12% year-over-year. Total Housing Starts and Single Family Housing StartsThe second graph shows total and single unit starts since 1968. The second graph shows the huge collapse following the housing bubble, and then eventual recovery (but still historically low). Total housing starts in August were below expectations, however starts in June and July were revised up, combined.
Despite Record Builder Sentiment, Housing Starts Collapse Led By Rental Unit Crash - After yesterday's record-high homebuilder sentiment, it may seem odd that analysts' expectations were for a small drop MoM in Housing Starts (and only a modest rise MoM in Building Permits) in August. July's massive rebounds in both housing market measures may just have been the peak in the 'v'-shaped pent-up supply as Housing Starts plunged 5.1% MoM (-0.6% MoM exp) and Building Permits dropped 0.9% MoM (versus +2.0% MoM exp). Additionally, the data for July was revised notably lower... While single-family home starts rose, the rental units crashed in August...
- 4.1% jump in single family units from 981K to 1021M
- 25.4% drop in multi-family units from 503K to 375K
Similar pattern played out in Permits with rental units crashing...
- 6.0% jump in single-family units to 1.036MM, highest since 2007
- -17.4% drop in multi-family (rental) units to 381K
Finally, as a reminder, while homebuilders are exuberant about the future, homebuyers (despite a rebound) remain notably less enthused... Graphs Source: Bloomberg
Comments on August Housing Starts – McBride- Earlier: Housing Starts decreased to 1.416 Million Annual Rate in AugustTotal housing starts in August were below expectations, however starts in June and July were revised up, combined. The slight weakness in August was due to volatile multi-family sector. Low mortgage rates and limited existing home inventory have given a boost to housing starts. The housing starts report showed starts were down 5.1% in August compared to July, and starts were up 2.8% year-over-year compared to August 2019. Single family starts were up 12.1% year-over-year. The first graph shows the month to month comparison for total starts between 2019 (blue) and 2020 (red). Starts were down 5.1% in August compared to August 2019. Last year, in 2019, starts picked up towards the end of the year, so the comparisons were easy in the first seven months of the year.. Starts, year-to-date, are up 5.2% compared to the same period in 2019. This is below my forecast for 2020, but I didn't expect a pandemic! I expect starts to remain solid, but the growth rate will slow. Below is an update to the graph comparing multi-family starts and completions. Since it usually takes over a year on average to complete a multi-family project, there is a lag between multi-family starts and completions. Completions are important because that is new supply added to the market, and starts are important because that is future new supply (units under construction is also important for employment). These graphs use a 12 month rolling total for NSA starts and completions. The blue line is for multifamily starts and the red line is for multifamily completions. The rolling 12 month total for starts (blue line) increased steadily for several years following the great recession - then mostly moved sideways. Completions (red line) had lagged behind - then completions caught up with starts- although starts picked up a little again lately. The last graph shows single family starts and completions. It usually only takes about 6 months between starting a single family home and completion - so the lines are much closer. The blue line is for single family starts and the red line is for single family completions. Note the relatively low level of single family starts and completions. The "wide bottom" was what I was forecasting following the recession, and now I expect some further increases in single family starts and completions as the crisis abates.
Retail Sales increased 0.6% in August - On a monthly basis, retail sales increased 0.6 percent from July to August (seasonally adjusted), and sales were up 2.6 percent from August 2019. From the Census Bureau report: Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August 2020, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $537.5 billion,an increase of 0.6 percent from the previous month, and 2.6 percent above August 2019. Total sales for the June 2020 through August 2020 period were up 2.4 percent from the same period a year ago. The June 2020 to July 2020 percent change was revised from up 1.2 percent to up 0.9 percent.This graph shows retail sales since 1992. This is monthly retail sales and food service, seasonally adjusted (total and ex-gasoline). Retail sales ex-gasoline were up 0.6% in August. The second graph shows the year-over-year change in retail sales and food service (ex-gasoline) since 1993. Year-over-year change in Retail Sales Retail and Food service sales, ex-gasoline, increased by 4.0% on a YoY basis. The increase in August was below expectations, and sales in June and July were revised down, combined.
Real retail sales gains join industrial production in sharp deceleration -- Yesterday we saw that gains in industrial production had decelerated sharply in August. This morning we saw the same thing with real retail sales, one of my favorite indicators. Nominal retail sales were up +0.6% in August. Meanwhile July’s reading was revised downward by -0.3%. Since in July and August consumer inflation was up +0.6% and +0.4%, respectively, that means revised *real* retail sales rose +0.3% in July and +0.2% in August. Which means that the net result over two months was lower than previously thought for the month of July alone. Nevertheless real retails sales did establish a new record high, above any reading from before the pandemic: Historically consumption has led employment (/2) by several months (albeit with lots of noise), and has an even closer relationship with aggregate hours (all shown YoY below): Here is the short-term view of the past 9 months: Because sales have made a full recovery, I expect employment and hours worked to continue to show gains for the next several months, although at a slower pace, particularly if employers suspect - as most economic watchers including myself appear to - that the end of the emergency Congressional relief will lead to a renewed downturn in spending.
American chains are turning to Mexican toilet paper as they struggle to keep shelves stocked - Toilet paper is back on store shelves. But you may not recognize some of the brands. Demand for toilet paper has been so high during the pandemic that in order to keep their shelves stocked, retailers are buying up foreign toilet paper brands, mostly from Mexico. Major chains, across the country, including CVS, Piggly Wiggly, Safeway, 7-Eleven and others, are carrying the international brands. In recent weeks, a CVS in New York has been selling three Mexican brands: Regio, Hoteles Elite and Daisy Soft. Mexico's Petalo was on the shelves of a Piggly Wiggly in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. And a Safeway supermarket in Fremont, California, had those same brands, plus Vogue, whose label says in Spanish that it smells like chamomile. The stores said they needed to get creative during the pandemic and started working with new suppliers to get shoppers what they needed. But don't worry about popular U.S. brands like Charmin — they aren't going to disappear. Supply chain experts expect the Mexican and other foreign-made rolls to be on store shelves only temporarily, until U.S. manufacturers catch up with demand.
LA Area Port Inbound Traffic up to New Record High, Outbound Traffic Down Year-over-year in August - Note: The expansion to the Panama Canal was completed in 2016 (As I noted a few years ago), and some of the traffic that used the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is probably going through the canal. This might be impacting TEUs on the West Coast. Container traffic gives us an idea about the volume of goods being exported and imported - and usually some hints about the trade report since LA area ports handle about 40% of the nation's container port traffic. The following graphs are for inbound and outbound traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in TEUs (TEUs: 20-foot equivalent units or 20-foot-long cargo container). To remove the strong seasonal component for inbound traffic, the first graph shows the rolling 12 month average. On a rolling 12 month basis, inbound traffic was up 1.5% in August compared to the rolling 12 months ending in July. Outbound traffic was down 0.4% compared to the rolling 12 months ending the previous month. The 2nd graph is the monthly data (with a strong seasonal pattern for imports). LA Area Port TrafficUsually imports peak in the July to October period as retailers import goods for the Christmas holiday, and then decline sharply and bottom in February or March depending on the timing of the Chinese New Year (January 25th in 2020). Imports were up 16% YoY in August to a new record high, and exports were down 5% YoY.
"I've Never Seen Anything Like This": Shippers Using West Coast Ports Can't Book Rail On BNSF And Union Pacific - A Northern California logistics consultant was unable to book containers on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) or Union Pacific (UP) railroads for the first week of September going to and from U.S. West Coast ports and Midwest destinations. The consultant said, “I have been working in the industry for thirty years and I have never seen anything like this. It’s weird.” The result is that importers of low value products being shipped by containers such as tee shirts would be at an economic disadvantage transporting containers by truck as opposed to by rail between U.S. West Coast ports and Midwest destinations, because of the higher cost. The consultant explained that there is a huge shortage of rail capacity: “There are no rail cars and there are no chassis.” The consultant, who is not identified, was contracted to research container rail bookings on the UP and BNSF to and from U.S. West Coast ports including: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, & Seattle. The result of the research was that: “The railroads will not take any bookings right now and so all the containers going to and from the West Coast to places such as Chicago and Memphis must go by truck.” The consultant cited the following trucking rates per container as examples:
- Los Angeles/ Long Beach to Chicago: $7000.
- LA/LB to New Berlin, Wisconsin: $6,700.
- LA/LB to Nashville, Tennessee: $7,200.
- LA/LB to Dallas, Texas: $5000.
- LA/LB to Jacksonville, Florida: $8,800.
The consultant said that in the past it had been possible to truck a container coast-to-coast for $2,000: “But those days are gone.”In addition, “In the good old days you could ship a co ntainer from the West Coast to Chicago or Memphis by rail for $1000 dollars.”
Rail Week Ending 12 September 2020 - Still In Contraction But Remains On An Improving Trendline - Week 37 of 2020 shows same week total rail traffic (from same week one year ago) declined according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) traffic data. Total rail traffic has been mostly in contraction for over one year - and now is recovering from a coronavirus pandemic. Total rail traffic has two components - carloads and intermodal (containers or trailers on rail cars). Container exports from China are now recovering, container exports from the U.S. declined and remains deep in contraction. This week again intermodal continued in expansion year-over-year and continues on a strengthening trendline.However, carloads remain deep in contraction. But overall, rail is on an improving trendline. The intuitive sectors (total carloads removing coal, grain, and petroleum) contracted 13.9 % year-over-year for this week. We primarily use rolling averages to analyze the intuitive data due to weekly volatility - and the 4 week rolling year-over-year average for the intuitive sectors worsened from -9.8 % to -10.1 %.When rail contracts, it suggests a slowing of the economy.The following graph compares the four-week moving averages for carload economically intuitive sectors (red line) vs. total movements (blue line): Intermodal transport growth was weak and in contraction in 2019.This analysis is looking for clues in the rail data to show the direction of economic activity - and is not necessarily looking for clues of the profitability of the railroads. The weekly data is fairly noisy, and the best way to view it is to look at the rolling averages (carloads [including coal and grain] and intermodal combined). A summary for this week from the AAR:For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 474,785 carloads and intermodal units, down 9.9 percent compared with the same week last year.Total carloads for the week ending September 12 were 214,142 carloads, down 15.2 percent compared with the same week in 2019, while U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 260,643 containers and trailers, down 5 percent compared to 2019.One of the 10 carload commodity groups posted an increase compared with the same week in 2019. It was grain, up 3,098 carloads, to 21,550. Commodity groups that posted decreases compared with the same week in 2019 included coal, down 20,518 carloads, to 60,278; nonmetallic minerals, down 9,007 carloads, to 26,760; and metallic ores and metals, down 4,648 carloads, to 18,157.For the first 37 weeks of 2020, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 7,884,697 carloads, down 15.8 percent from the same point last year; and 9,158,459 intermodal units, down 6.9 percent from last year. Total combined U.S. traffic for the first 37 weeks of 2020 was 17,043,156 carloads and intermodal units, a decrease of 11.2 percent compared to last year.The middle row in the table below removes coal, grain, and petroleum from the changes in the railcar counts as these commodities are not economically intuitive.
The Airline Industry Collapse Part 4 – Total Paralysis Continues - Hubert Horan - Readers who had not seen the previous posts outlining the aviation crisis, or would find a summation of the critical issues useful, should take a look at my video interview with Izabella Kaminska of the Financial Times on Friday the 11th. Here is an alternative Youtube link to the video interview. Towards the end of the interview, Izabella noted that my main arguments were “depressing” and asked me to provide a bit of optimism by outlining potential solutions to the industry crisis. This might be a good place to clarify which parts of the crisis will be difficult and painful and which parts are legitimately “depressing.”This series has laid out data showing that the current crisis is staggering worse than any previous crisis in aviation history. A previous downturn that reduced traffic 6% put 75% of US industry capacity into bankruptcy. The current crisis has cut traffic by 75% and revenue by 85%. The critical corporate and international markets have completely collapsed, every carrier is hemorrhaging cash, and almost none of the major carriers can be considered viable going concerns.Since the collapse is greater and more widespread than anything the industry has ever faced, it logically follows that the actions needed to halt the collapse and restore sustainable operations will be more difficult and painful than anything the industry has ever required in the past.More importantly, of collapse of this magnitude fundamentally changes the nature of the problem, and changes how any solution would need to be structured. Past airline crisis were limited to fairly narrow industry segments (a couple carriers had foolishly overexpanded, supply and demand had gotten out of whack in a specific country or market), were known to be temporary and had not disrupted basic industry economics (recessions pass, and don’t structurally change the demand for travel) and there was still a large set of competitors and investors that could help restructure (or replace) the companies that could no longer meet their financial obligations. The current airline crisis is global, supply and demand are wildly out of balance everywhere, and the pandemic is likely to permanently reduce industry demand (due to videoconference, reduced global trade, and structurally higher fares). Competitors cannot step in to fix local problems; nobody wants to buy anyone’s excess aircraft and the number of competing airlines had already been radically reduced. The current collapse is a crisis for overall economic welfare. The industry’s ability to sustainably produce benefits for society as a whole (facilitating huge amounts of economic activity, employment, trade, etc.) is fundamentally broken. As the past months have demonstrated, multi-billion dollar cash drains will not magically go away by themselves. Allowing desperate airline investors to pursue their short-term self interest will not maximize long-run welfare benefits for other stakeholders or the rest of society.
Industrial Production Increased 0.4 Percent in August; Still 7.2% Below Pre-Crisis Level -- From the Fed: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization: Industrial production rose 0.4 percent in August for its fourth consecutive monthly increase. However, even after the recent gains, the index in August was 7.3 percent below its pre-pandemic February level. Manufacturing output continued to improve in August, rising 1.0 percent, but the gains for most manufacturing industries have gradually slowed since June. Mining production fell 2.5 percent in August, as Tropical Storm Marco and Hurricane Laura caused sharp but temporary drops in oil and gas extraction and well drilling. The output of utilities moved down 0.4 percent. At 101.4 percent of its 2012 average, the level of total industrial production was 7.7 percent lower in August than it was a year earlier. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector increased 0.3 percentage point in August to 71.4 percent, a rate that is 8.4 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2019) average but 7.3 percentage points above its low in April. This graph shows Capacity Utilization. This series is up from the record low set in April, but still well below the level in February 2020. Capacity utilization at 71.4% is 8.4% below the average from 1972 to 2017. The second graph shows industrial production since 1967. Industrial production increased in August to 101.4. This is 7.2% below the February 2020 level. The change in industrial production was below consensus expectations, however industrial production in June and July were revised up.
Industrial production improves in August, but with sharp deceleration - If the jobs report is the Queen of Coincident Indicators, industrial production is the King. It, more than any other metric, is found at the turning points where recessions both begin and end. This morning’s report of industrial production for August shows that the recovery from the bottom of the coronavirus recession has come close to stalling out. Overall industrial production grew by 0.4%, while July was revised higher by 0.5%. Manufacturing production grew just under 1.0%. July was likewise revised higher by 0.6%. Here are the overall totals:The good news is that manufacturing production has gained back almost 70% of its decline from March. Overall production has gained a little over half of its decline. The bad news, as is easily seen from the trajectories of the recoveries, is that there has been a sharp deceleration in them since June. Since production generally follows consumption (but is considerably more volatile), it is not a surprise that industrial production (blue) has continued to recover in the face of a total recovery in real retail sales (violet) (shown YoY): But with the expiration of supplemental Congressional unemployment aid, like most observers I am expecting that consumption rebound to end - and that will likely show up in the ending of the industrial rebound as well in several months.
NY Fed: Manufacturing "Business activity expanded at a solid clip in New York State" in September - From the NY Fed: Empire State Manufacturing Survey Business activity expanded at a solid clip in New York State, according to firms responding to the September 2020 Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The headline general business conditions index climbed thirteen points to 17.0....The index for number of employees held steady at 2.6, indicating little change in employment levels. The average workweek index rose fourteen points to 6.7, its first positive reading since the pandemic began, signaling an increase in hours worked. This was above expectations, and showed activity expanded in September.
Philly Fed Manufacturing "continued to expand" in September --Note: Be careful with diffusion indexes. This shows a rebound off the bottom - some improvement from May to September - but doesn't show the level of activity. Earlier from the Philly Fed: September 2020 Manufacturing Business Outlook SurveyManufacturing activity in the region continued to expand this month, according to firms responding to the September Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey. The survey’s current indicators for general activity, new orders, and shipments remained positive for the fourth consecutive month. The employment index improved in September and remained in positive territory for the third consecutive month. Nearly all of the future indexes increased, suggesting more widespread optimism among firms about growth over the next six months. The diffusion index for current activity fell 2 points to 15.0 in September, its fourth consecutive positive reading after reaching long-term lows in April and May… On balance, the firms reported increases in manufacturing employment for the third consecutive month: The current employment index increased 7 points to 15.7 this month. This was close to the consensus forecast. Here is a graph comparing the regional Fed surveys and the ISM manufacturing index: The New York and Philly Fed surveys are averaged together (blue, through September), and five Fed surveys are averaged (yellow, through August) including New York, Philly, Richmond, Dallas and Kansas City. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) PMI (red) is through August (right axis). These early reports suggest the ISM manufacturing index will likely not change much from the August level.
860,000 Americans Filed For First-Time Jobless Benefits Last Week - While some may celebrate the fact that initial jobless claims was below 1 million for the 3rd week in a row, the fact remains that a stunning 860,000 Americans filed for first time unemployment benefits last week... That is more than four times the pre-COVID 'normal' and well above any peak week during the great financial crisis collapse. And this is 7 months after the lockdowns began! Maybe it's time for Governors to start opening these states!!
"Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2019" - This survey was impacted by COVID, and the results are probably distorted (see last paragraph below). From the Census Bureau: Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2019 The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that median household income in 2019 increased 6.8% from 2018, and the official poverty rate decreased 1.3 percentage points. Meanwhile the percentage of people with health insurance coverage for all or part of 2019 was 92.0% and 8.0% of people, or 26.1 million, did not have health insurance at any point during 2019, according to the 2020 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). Median household income was $68,703 in 2019, an increase of 6.8% from the 2018 median. Between 2018 and 2019, the real median earnings of all workers increased by 1.4%, while the real median earnings of full-time, year-round workers increased 0.8%. The official poverty rate in 2019 was 10.5%, a decrease of 1.3 percentage points from 11.8% in 2018. This is the fifth consecutive annual decline in the national poverty rate. Since 2014, the poverty rate has fallen 4.3 percentage points, from 14.8% to 10.5%. The 2019 poverty rate of 10.5% is the lowest rate observed since estimates were initially published for 1959. The number of people in poverty in 2019 was 34.0 million, 4.2 million fewer people than 2018. ... While the Census Bureau went to great lengths to complete interviews by telephone, the response rate for the CPS basic household survey was 73% in March 2020, about 10 percentage points lower than in preceding months and the same period in 2019, which were regularly above 80%. The change from conducting first interviews in person to making first contacts by telephone contributed to the lower response rates and it is likely that the characteristics of people for whom a telephone number was found may be systematically different from the people for whom the Census Bureau was unable to obtain a telephone number.
By the Numbers: Income and Poverty, 2019 – EPI - Jump to statistics on:
• Earnings
• Incomes
• Poverty
• Policy / SPM
This fact sheet provides key numbers from today’s new Census reports, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019 and The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2019. Each section has headline statistics from the reports for 2019, as well as comparisons to the previous year, to 2007 (the final year of the economic expansion that preceded the Great Recession), and to 2000 (the historical high point for many of the statistics in these reports). […] Also, there are significant concerns about data quality, given the fall in survey response rates. It appears that nonresponse biased income estimates up and poverty statistics down so the actual reported improvement should be taken with a grain of salt.Median annual earnings for men working full time grew 2.1 percent, to $57,456, in 2019. Men’s earnings are up 3.0 percent since 2007, and are 3.6 percent higher than they were in 2000.Median annual earnings for women working full time grew 3.0 percent, to $47,299, in 2019. Women’s earnings are up 9.0 percent since 2007, and are 15.7 percent higher than they were in 2000.Median household income rose 6.8 percent, to $68,703, in 2019. Median household income is up 7.3 percent since 2007, and is 6.5 percent higher than it was in 2000.Median nonelderly household income rose 6.7 percent, to $77,873, in 2019. Median nonelderly household income is up 8.1 percent since 2007, and is 4.3 percent higher than it was in 2000.Median household income for white, non-Hispanic households rose 5.7 percent, to $76,057, in 2019.Median household income is up 8.2 percent since 2007, and is 8.2 percent higher than it was in 2000.Median household income for African American households rose 8.5 percent, to $46,073, in 2019.Median household income is up 6.3 percent since 2007 and is 1.4 percent higher than it was in 2000.Median household income for Hispanic households rose 7.1 percent, to $56,113, in 2019. Median household income is up 21.1 percent since 2007 and is 17.3 percent higher than it was in 2000.
Household income gains welcome in 2019 Census data, but may not be as strong as they first appear - EPI Blog - Yesterday’s Census Bureau report on 2019 income levels showed significant gains in median household income in 2019, but it doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. First, those gains may not be as strong as initially reported given survey non-response bias, which we explain below. Second, household incomes in 2019 provide little information on what is currently happening in the U.S. economy, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, as a measure of how strong the economy can get, there is still room for improvement in terms of overall growth as well as in narrowing economic inequality and closing racial gaps.According to the Census Bureau’s latest report, median household incomes rose 6.8% between 2018 and 2019. Ignoring the non-response concerns and taking this for face value, this represents a significant step towards reclaiming the lost decade of income growth caused by the Great Recession. The economy continued to grow in 2019 and the unemployment rate averaged 3.7% over the year. Increasing earnings as well as slowing inflation between 2018 and 2019 contributed to significant gains in household incomes.And, yet, there’s reason to put a big old asterisk on the data for 2019. Although the data release includes information about 2019 only, the data was collected between February and April of this year, right as the pandemic began to spread rapidly and most of the country was locked down. This Census paper discusses some of the impacts the pandemic had on data collection efforts. Overall, non-response increased significantly and was more strongly associated with income than in previous years, with non-response decreasing with income, meaning that income data could be skewed higher than it actually was. Respondents were also less likely to be Black and more likely to be white or Hispanic. Using that information, researchers at the Census provided new estimates for household income over the last four years, provided as a separate working paper and not adjusted in the official Census report. The figure below provides some perspective on those changes along with other data changes in the last several years. Solid lines are reported CPS ASEC data; dashed lines prior to 2013 denote historical values imputed by applying the redesigned income methodology in 2013 to past trends and the dotted lines since 2016 represent the new imputed values from the Census working paper on non-response rates.
Racial disparities in income and poverty remain largely unchanged amid strong income growth in 2019 - EPI - The Census Bureau report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in 2019 reveals impressive growth in median household income relative to 2018 across all racial and ethnic groups, but income gaps persist. While the Census cautions that the 2019 income estimates may be overstated due to a decline in response rates for the survey administered in March of this year, real median household income increased 10.6% among Asian households (from $88,774 to $98,174), 8.5% among Black households (from $42,447 to $46,073), 7.1% among Hispanic households (from $52,382 to $56,113), and 5.7% among non-Hispanic white households (from $71,922 to $76,057), as seen in Figure A.In 2019, the median Black household earned just 61 cents for every dollar of income the median white household earned (up from 59 cents in 2018), while the median Hispanic household earned 74 cents (unchanged from 2018). Based on EPI’s imputed historical income values (see the note under Figure A for an explanation), African American households finally surpassed their pre-recession median income 12 years after the start of the Great Recession in 2007—the last racial group to do so. Compared with household incomes in 2007, median household incomes in 2019 were up 21.1% for Hispanic households, 11.3% for Asian households, 8.2% for non-Hispanic white households, and 6.3% for African American households. Unfortunately, this recovery of income has been cut short by massive job losses, particularly among Black and Hispanic workers, during the current pandemic and recession. The 2019 poverty rates also reflect the strong income growth between 2018 and 2019, though the Census also cautions that the poverty estimates may be understated due to a decline in response rates. As seen inFigure B, poverty rates for all groups were down, but remained highest among African Americans (18.7%, down 2.0 percentage points), followed by Hispanics (15.7%, down 1.9 percentage points), Asians (7.3%, down 2.8 percentage points), and whites (7.3%, down 0.8 percentage points). African American and Hispanic children continued to face the highest poverty rates—more than one-quarter (25.6%) of African Americans and more than one-fifth (20.9%) of Hispanics under age 18 lived below the poverty level in 2019. African American children were more than three times as likely to be in poverty as white children (8.3%).
Over 13 million more people would be in poverty without unemployment insurance and stimulus payments: Senate Republicans are blocking legislation proven to reduce poverty --It is often underappreciated how effective public safety net spending and social insurance programs are in reducing poverty. Even in normal years, tens of millions of people are kept out of poverty only because of these programs. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year, the importance of public spending in averting poverty became even more evident. In its annual report on household income and poverty released Tuesday, the Census Bureau estimated that Social Security kept 26.5 million people out of poverty in 2019, and refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit reduced the number of people in poverty by 7.5 million. Unemployment insurance (UI) kept about 472,000 people from being in poverty (see Figure A) in 2019. The relatively small poverty reduction is due to the fact that few people received UI in 2019, both because of relatively low unemployment rates and because many low-wage workers are generally ineligible for UI benefits due to restrictive earnings eligibility requirements.In March of this year, as job loss began to accelerate, Congress temporarily strengthened the UI system as part of the CARES Act. Notably, it extended eligibility to low-wage, part-time, and self-employed workers, and it added an extra weekly UI benefit of $600. The law also provided a one-time Economic Impact Payment (EIP) of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child. New research by Jeehoon Han, Bruce Meyer, and James Sullivan estimates that EIP and UI payments between April and June substantially reduced the number of people in poverty, even when millions of workers were suddenly laid off or furloughed. Applying those results to the recently released Census data for 2019 shows that the number of people in poverty fell by 4.7 million between the end of 2019 and June 2020, from 34.0 million to 29.3 million.The fall in poverty is entirely due to the EIP and UI payments. The EIP alone reduced poverty by 8.2 million workers and the UI programs had a slightly smaller impact, lowering poverty by 7.2 million workers. Had both of those programs not been in place, the effects of the economic shock caused by the pandemic would have increased poverty by 13.2 million people to about 42.5 million people overall living in poverty. These are temporary poverty reductions effective the month of June 2020 because of the one-time nature of the $1,200 check and the July expiration of the supplementary $600 weekly UI benefit.
Tennessee law seeks to criminalize protests on public property - In late August, following weeks of protests in Nashville, the state capital, Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, signed a law making camping on state property a felony crime with a penalty of six years in prison and an accompanying loss of the right to vote. Tennessee joined a dozen other states whose legislatures are attempting to intimidate organizers and demonstrators participating in protests against police violence. House Bill 8005 passed almost exclusively on a party-line vote, 26-5 in the Senate and 71-20 in the House. Anyone convicted of a felony is automatically stripped of voting rights in Tennessee. A lengthy process is involved to have voting rights restored after serving even a one year prison sentence. Also included in the new law is a requirement that if arrested, a demonstrator must be held for 12 hours before being released. Republican House Majority Leader William Lamberth said the aim of the bill was to crack down on “criminal elements” and protect law enforcement officers. “It is to prevent what has happened in other cities like Portland and Washington, DC,” said Republican Lt. Gov. Randy McNally of the measure. Underscoring the law’s authoritarian character, McNally stated that it would punish “people [who] knowingly violate the law, knowingly thumb their nose at authority and don’t do what authorities have requested they do.” Protesters remained on state property after demonstrations began in June against police violence and in support of efforts to have the bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest removed from the state Capitol. As in many other cities, the demonstrations have been largely peaceful. “The ACLU of Tennessee opposes this legislation because it chills free speech, undermines criminal justice reform, and fails to address the issues of racial justice and police violence raised by the protesters currently outside the State Capitol,” Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the Tennessee American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a letter to Governor Lee before the bill was passed. Lee ignored her.
"The theology of police authority: the impact of Biblical text Romans 13" – Steve Horn reports, Real News Network video - A deep dive into the inner workings of a church in Kenosha, WI that espouses the scripture of Romans 13 to imbue police authority with the power of the word of God. The department's theology and misconduct is exposed by a former Kenosha police detective.
Homicides spike 52 percent in Chicago amid coronavirus pandemic - Homicides have increased more than 50 percent in Chicago since the coronavirus pandemic began, officials in Cook County said this week. The medical examiner’s office for the nation's second-largest county said 95 percent of the victims were people of color, and Chicago has already recorded more homicides this year than in all of 2019, USA Today reported. Some of the shootings during the pandemic have claimed the lives of children under 10 years old. President Trump has argued that Democratic mayors in cities like Chicago are to blame for much of the violence. In early June, Trump threatened to send the National Guard to Chicago. "That's not gonna happen. I will see him in court," Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) said in response to Trump. "It's not gonna happen, not in my city. And I'm not confident that the president has the power to do that. But we have our lawyers hard at work and if he tries to do that and usurp the power of our governor, and myself as the mayor, we will see him in court."
Mounting opposition to school reopenings as 55 New York City teachers test positive for COVID-19 - With schools slated to reopen across New York City next week, 55 teachers and school staff in the district have already tested positive for COVID-19. Since most of those that tested positive had to wait several days before receiving their test results, many had already reported to school buildings for preservice preparations with colleagues last week. Teachers across the largest school district in the United States returned to their buildings to prepare for the upcoming school year on September 8, after a deal was struck behind their backs between the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio. The deal, which highlights the collusion between the teachers unions in the US and both political parties in the reckless reopening of K-12 schools, sought to derail a widely anticipated teachers strike by delaying the resumption of in-person instruction until September 21. However, all the fundamental issues at stake in the reopening of New York City’s schools remain unresolved, and there is mounting opposition to this homicidal policy. Late last Wednesday, news began to surface that two teachers at two separate schools, PS 001 and MS 88, both located in District 15 in Brooklyn, had tested positive for COVID-19. According to initial reports, the teachers received their test results Tuesday evening, after they had reported to their respective schools earlier the same day. By Wednesday it was revealed that 16 teachers from 16 different buildings had tested positive, with most of the tests administered on September 2, a full eight days before being notified of their results and two days after they had been in contact with colleagues in school buildings. The explosion of COVID-19 positive cases among teachers across the city was entirely predictable given the widespread outbreaks that have taken place in K-12 districts and college campuses across the United States during the past month. Since August, at least six K-12 teachers have died from the coronavirus nationally, with countless others falling ill to the virus.
NYC Mayor Delays Start Of School For 2nd Time; Global COVID-19 Cases Near 30 Million- Live Update New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is once again caving to the teacher's unions by delaying the start of school for a second time, while also changing up the plan. According to the New York Times, the city will instead start bringing kids back "on a rolling basis", beginning next week. Instead, the city will phase students back into classrooms on a rolling basis, starting with the youngest children, who will report to schools next week. Students in pre-K classes and students with advanced special needs will return on Monday. On Sept. 29, elementary schools will open, and middle and high schools will open on Oct. 1. The sudden shift comes just three days before the nation’s largest school district was set to reopen. It is the second time that Mayor Bill de Blasio has delayed the start of in-person classes, which were originally set to begin on Sept. 10. According to the NY Post, de Blasio "caved to mounting pressre" from teachers unions and elected officials, all of whom have slammed the city's and the school district's lack of preparedness. The NYT says de Blasio will explain more during a Thursday press briefing, but with NYC's cases and hospitalizations and deaths all still near their all-time lows, we can't imagine a clear-cut data-driven argument for doing so. Looks like one more sop to the teacher's unions.One day after crossing the 5 million-case threshold, India has reported yet another record single-day jump in coronavirus cases, with 97,894 reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the country's total to 5.12 million, as the world is roughly one day away from topping the 30 million case mark. Indian cases are now climbing at roughly double the rate of the US.
Teachers say some parents drink, smoke, and appear half-dressed in online classroom | KOMO— In a school board meeting Wednesday, Boca Raton Elementary teacher Edith Pride delivered a colorful message to parents."Parents, please make sure that you have on proper clothing when you are walking behind your child’s computer because we've seen them in their drawers, their bras, and everything else," Pride said during public comment.Pride said she had plenty of issues to take up with the district, but dedicated her entire three minutes to this message."Parents, when you are helping your children at their computer please do not appear with big joints in your hands and cigarettes," Pride continued. "Those joints be as big as cigars. Oh yeah, we've seen it all."In a school board meeting Wednesday, Boca Raton Elementary teacher Edith Pride delivered a colorful message to parents. (WPEC) Though her comments drew laughter from the crowd, her message struck a chord with many local teachers who have had similar experiences navigating the sometimes unpredictable world of online lessons."I did have a parent who sat on the couch and we could see an ankle monitor on her leg," said one teacher, who wished to remain anonymous."I had a father, no shirt drinking a beer at 11:45 in the morning," another teacher said.While teachers say that most parents are respectful of online class time, they worry about the behavior some kids are being exposed to in the online classrooms."(Students) do see other things that they’ve probably never seen before so I know that is a challenge," one teacher said. A spokesperson said all classes are recorded in case students need to go back and review their lessons.
Parents sent child to Massachusetts school despite positive COVID-19 test A pair of Massachusetts parents sent their child to school despite the high schooler having tested positive for the coronavirus days before, according to the town's mayor. Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux sj(D) aid in a Facebook post Wednesday that a student who had tested positive for the coronavirus had been in school Monday, urging other parents not to make the same mistake. The parents found out their child tested positive on Sept. 11 but thought that they could go to school after quarantining for several days, the mayor told CNN. "The parents used very poor judgment, it's very frustrating," Heroux told the outlet. "The school department did everything they were supposed to do." Attleboro High School Superintendent David Sawyer sent a letter to parents notifying them that a student who tested positive for COVID-19 attended class on Monday but that the school was not aware of the diagnosis until the next day, according to CNN. The superintendent reportedly said 28 students who had close contact with the infected person have been notified and asked to quarantine for 14 days.
One-third of schools in Knox County, Tennessee have at least one positive COVID-19 case -Schools in Knox County, Tennessee, which includes the city of Knoxville, concluded their third week of school last week with over one-third of schools in the district having reported a positive case of COVID-19. Across the county, 31 of 88 schools have at least one confirmed COVID-19 case. The growing spread of the deadly virus is the direct outcome of the “herd immunity” policies that have been pursued by every level of government in the US from the Trump administration down to the local Board of Education in the county. The public health protocols in the county mandate that principals of individual schools contact staff and parents after a confirmed case of COVID-19. The schools then collaborate with public health officials to conduct contact tracing, and anyone that has been within six feet of someone infected with COVID-19 for 15 minutes or longer is required to quarantine for two weeks. Within the last few weeks, Knox County Health Department has reported some of the largest daily increases in COVID-19 cases in the country since the start of the pandemic. The department reported 222 new cases on September 6, 219 new cases on September 15 and 189 new cases on September 12. According to the Knox County School website, as of September 15 there are 50 active COVID-19 cases associated with the school district, including 39 students and 11 staff members. In a reflection of the failure to implement adequate social distancing measures within the schools, 917 students and 69 staff members were in isolation or quarantine on the same day. Prior to the school year resuming, over a hundred teachers in the county refused to return to in-person instruction, opting to either retire or resign from their positions. By early July, over 18,000 students—roughly 30 percent of the 59,235 total enrollment—were registered for virtual learning. Last week, the Knox County School Board announced that they were in need of more substitute teachers in order to continue with in-person classes. The school board has acknowledged that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic the district had been experiencing a shortage of substitute teachers, and that the situation has worsened as a result of staff needing to be quarantined. The Executive Director of Human Resources at Knox County Schools, Scott Bolton, stated last week, “We’re seeing issues because of contact tracing or people having to quarantine. We’re having to fill those vacancies. Now, while staff members are quarantined, they’re still providing remote instruction into the classroom. However, the issue is we need someone in that particular classroom to monitor students and to assist with any kind of technology, and that’s what we use our subs for in that scenario.”
Anchorage School District plans to bring kids back to in-person classes in phases starting Oct. 19 - The Anchorage School District announced a plan on Wednesday to gradually phase its students back in to school buildings, beginning with its elementary and high-needs students. Anchorage schools closed in March as the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of Alaska. Schools have remained closed since, although online classes resumed at the beginning of the school year on Aug. 20. “We are confident that while we cannot eliminate the virus, we can effectively mitigate its spread using the most up-to-date information and best practices from the medical and science experts from around the world,” the district wrote.In-person classes will resume on Oct. 19 for pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, and all students will attend school five days a week for 5 1/2 hours each day, according to a district-wide message. Students in self-contained special education programs will also return to school buildings Oct. 19.The district said in-person classes for first-year middle school students will begin Nov. 12-13, for grades six or seven, depending on the school. All other middle school students will begin classes on Nov. 16, according to the email.
George Washington Enrollment Drops 17% in Pandemic Setback - - George Washington University’s enrollment is down about 17% from last year, an early indication of the impact of Covid-19 on U.S. higher education.President Thomas LeBlanc told a faculty senate meeting that preliminary undergraduate enrollment is about 1,000 students below its target of 10,126, a spokeswoman said Monday. Last year, the school in Washington, D.C., drew 12,031 undergrads in the fall, including 1,416 from abroad, and 11,008 were full-time students.Provost Brian Blake said in an interview that he expects the enrollment drop to be lessened when final numbers are tabulated next month.The university was already planning to decrease the size of its undergraduate population over several years, but the pandemic accelerated the drop, according to the spokeswoman.Colleges have feared that fewer students would show up this term, with masks, virus testing and limited interactions for in-person attendees. Many schools are going all or mostly virtual, while others have sent students home after outbreaks.Some 67% of schools expected enrollment to decrease, and most forecast lower tuition revenue, according to a poll last month by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Those with big international populations forecast the steepest declines.
Surge in COVID-19 infections as in-person classes resume at many Illinois college campuses - As with schools across the US, many Illinois college campuses have seen a spike in coronavirus infections since the decision by state authorities to permit in-person classes. While some universities in the state have switched to online learning or to an in-person/online hybrid model, others have brought students back onto campus and are holding regular classes. Despite promises made to students and faculty that universities would open safely, the return to campus has resulted in massive outbreaks. Lack of administrative action and reports of poor and unsafe conditions, hasty student quarantines and general negligence have evoked a substantial backlash by students. The University of Illinois (U of I) at Champaign-Urbana, the largest university in the state with 48,000 students, opened August 24 with students on campus, but with classes being held through a hybrid model of both online and face-to-face. U of I even developed its own COVID-19 test. The test is saliva-based and is faster, easier to administer and far cheaper than standard tests. Despite this, there has been a surge of COVID-19 cases among faculty and staff. More than 1,900 cases have been reported on campus, the vast majority among undergraduate students. Undergraduates have been urged to restrict their activities to essential ones only. This includes going out to buy groceries, attending religious events, seeking urgent medical help and receiving their twice-weekly COVID test. This temporary quarantine is set to last only until the 16th of this month. After that time, the plan is to resume normal functions, with the potential for a new outbreak. Some Illinois colleges with later start dates are attempting to implement measures aimed at convincing students that a return to campus will be safe, without providing plans that could realistically provide a safe environment. For example, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, which is set to begin classes September 24, is not admitting first- and second-year students on campus (with few exceptions) and is having them conduct all their classes online. But, third- and fourth-year students are being welcomed on campus and have the choice of taking classes in person, through a hybrid model, or completely online. Northwestern is also requiring students who plan to return to campus to get tested before arriving and regularly throughout the fall.
University of Illinois at Chicago workers go on strike against low wages and unsafe conditions - Workers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have gone on strike as of this morning. The workers, who are in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), include nearly 4,000 maintenance, clerical, professional, technical, and service employees at the university. Workers unanimously voted to strike earlier in the month after the year-long contract negotiations between SEIU and UIC management failed to meet workers’ most basic demands in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Workers are striking to demand adequate staffing to ensure safety of staff, patients, and students, proper personal protective equipment (PPE), including universal masking and N95s in the hospital, an increase in the base minimum pay to $15 per hour, improvements to workload and time off, and language in the contract that prohibits outsourcing work. Many workers are angered by the university’s failure to provide decent pay as they are risking their lives and those of their families. Sharon Geddis, a service worker at UIC, said: “I am going on strike because I deserve a living wage to be able to enjoy things like any other hard-working person in America. I shouldn’t have to struggle from paycheck to paycheck when I’m working every day. President Killeen doesn’t have to struggle, why should I?” The president of the University of Illinois, Timothy Killeen, makes $835,000 a year. He received a 40 percent pay raise only a week after the University of Illinois trustees unanimously approved a tuition hike of 1.8 percent at Urbana-Champaign and Chicago. Other workers are protesting on similar grounds, demanding that UIC provide PPE to all workers on site. Jonna Mchugh, a student advisor, said: “I’m going on strike because when I have to go back to working on site, I want to be sure that UIC will pull out all the stops to protect me and my coworkers from COVID-19. This includes providing proper PPE to ALL who are on site, ensuring safe staffing levels so that we are not expected to take on more workers with fewer resources, and receiving fair pay for our work.” The Illinois Nurses Association (INA) at the University of Illinois hospital has also been on strike since Saturday, after a three-year contract between UIC and the INA expired. Healthcare workers are striking to demand a limit to the number of patients a single nurse can care for at one time, as there is currently no cap. They are also protesting the hospital’s attempt to freeze nurses’ pay for three years, which has been met with ferocious hostility by nurses who are working amidst the deadly pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 900 nurses in the United States have died from COVID-19.
The University of Iowa and Iowa State University students and staff unite to oppose in-person learning - Iowa students and faculty at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University have united together to oppose the reckless reopening plans of the universities. The students and faculty are planning a sickout today after over 900 students at the University of Iowa participated in a similar action September 2. The demands of those involved in the protest are to end all in-person classes and have all learning be done online until the pandemic is under control. The protest is being organized by two groups, UIowa Sickout at the University of Iowa and Iowa Student Action at Iowa State. Representatives from Iowa Student Action told Iowa State Daily, “The Board of Regents and [University President] Wendy Wintersteen made the decision to open, prioritizing their own profit and not the health and safety of the community." The students continued: "They knew it would be unsafe to reopen but did so anyway. They care more about our tuition money and residence hall money than our lives." Both schools are seeing massive outbreaks of COVID-19. In Story County, where Iowa State is located, 3,119 individuals have tested positive for COVID-19. Iowa has the country’s worst outbreak of the pandemic per capita. As of this writing, there have been 74,767 confirmed cases in the state. Its positivity rate for those who have been tested is close to 10 percent, and six counties have a positivity rate of over 15 percent. So far 1,218 Iowans have died from COVID-19. The University of Iowa has reported a staggering 1,804 total cases. The University has done everything in its power to downplay the severity of the outbreak. Meanwhile, the University of Iowa students are reporting difficulties getting tested for the virus and have been provided few resources to handle the outbreak. One student, Will Luebke, told The Daily Iowan that even after he had come into contact with another student who had tested positive for COVID-19 he could not get tested since he was not yet showing any symptoms.
University of Wisconsin-Madison and La Crosse quarantine students after infections - After a reported surge in COVID-19 cases among the student body at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM), the school administration ordered 2,230 students living on campus in the Witte and Sellery dorms into a two-week quarantine. A total of 1,800 students have now tested positive for COVID-19 at UWM. The affected students were given the choice of returning home to live with their families or remain on campus and live in the crowded COVID-infested residence halls for the duration of the quarantine period. For the less privileged students, those with no other housing option, or for those who did not want to risk infecting their families, there was no other option but to quarantine on campus and risk COVID-19 infection. The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL), which has a student body of around 10,500, is having a similar outbreak of COVID-19 cases. On the same day as the UWM quarantine orders, UWL also issued a “shelter in place.” Students living in the Coate residence hall are under restrictions after dozens of students tested positive for COVID-19. With the sudden announcement at UWM, panic and uncertainty quickly set in as it was unclear to students how they would acquire basic necessities. Many of them rushed to the nearest grocery stores to stock up on supplies. Others resigned themselves to their predicament and took the time to take one last leisurely walk. As the restrictions went into effect, students found they were only allowed to leave their dorm floors for scheduled food deliveries three times a day. These meals will cost students $4.99 apiece. The university is claiming students get a selection of many different entrées along with appropriate sides and a fountain drink. Students, however, are reporting that the meal is less than adequate. Sometimes consisting of only sandwiches on some days while on others breakfast was water and a banana or muffin.
San Diego State University seeks to shift blame to students for coronavirus outbreaks following reopening - The number of COVID-19 cases in California is approaching 770,000, with a death toll nearing 15,000. Despite these staggering figures, the state’s major universities, including the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) systems, have moved forward with “hybrid models” of school reopening. The plans include a combination of in-person and online courses, placing three-quarters of a million students at risk of contracting the virus, along with hundreds of thousands of staff. Since opening, hundreds of cases among college students have been reported every day, and many campuses have become outbreak hotspots. In Southern California, San Diego State University (SDSU) continues to make national headlines, with an explosion of cases that has created a community health disaster. SDSU is the leader among California schools, with the highest number of COVID-19 cases, which increased by more than 200 cases since last week. As of Tuesday, over 648 COVID-positive students have been reported at the university, 73 percent of whom are undergraduates. Responding to the negative press on skyrocketing cases, the CSU Chancellor’s office issued an announcement on Monday that the majority of classes will continue online for the spring 2021 semester. The administration continues to hail preparations made for the current fall semester as a success. Unsurprisingly, campus life continues as “normal.” Brian, a freshman SDSU resident living in the dorms, told the WSWS that there is a lack of information, testing and personal protective equipment (PPE). “It feels like they're keeping us in the dark,” he said. “The school has been giving out information on testing, and yet it is still not mandatory for students to get tested. Also, there are no places on campus to obtain proper PPE and cleaning gear.” For weeks, many students avoided voluntary testing for fear of social stigma, repercussions from the school, and the horrific conditions of the isolation dorms that have been leaked on social media in a now viral tweet. Attempting to respond to demands of mass testing, the university announced on Tuesday an end to their stay-at-home advisory and boasted a new nominally required testing plan. Reportedly, students living on campus will be told at random to report for testing, and receive a $5 Starbucks gift card as an incentive. This public relations stunt will do little to nothing to stop the spread of the virus.
"The Virus Isn't Going Away... Campuses Need To Reopen", Northeastern Uni President Warns - With many colleges and universities across the country shifting to remote learning for the fall semester, and even the spring semester, one college president is arguing that campuses need to reopen. Joseph Aoun, president of Northeastern University in Boston wrote in a Washington Post op-ed titled, "The virus isn’t going away. That’s why campuses need to reopen," that he believes schools need to reopen, and explained why he himself worked tirelessly to ensure Northeastern students could return to their classrooms this fall. He argues that the coronavirus is going to be a constant threat, and states that the world cannot hit the pause button. “The pandemic, we realized, is going to be endemic: an ongoing threat to manage, not a brief blip in history, cleanly wiped out by a miracle vaccine. The science will take time. But the world cannot,” Aoun explains after consulting with various epidemiologists, biologists, and scientists from the Northeastern faculty. “Manufacturing enough doses to vaccinate the entire country, let alone the world, will take many months. And we don’t yet know the strength and duration of the immunity that will be conferred, making it likely that the world will experience covid-19 outbreaks, albeit at lower levels, for years," Aoun continued. Auon states that the coronavirus will likely be a "four-to-five-year problem" and explains that putting a pause on in-person learning would "be devastating to colleges and their students."“This will likely make COVID-19 at least a four-to-five-year problem, epidemiologists say. Pausing in-person education that long would be devastating to colleges and their students. And even a one-year delay would be a substantial challenge.It would disproportionately hurt low-income students who spent the spring continuing their studies online, without adequate technology, sometimes in overcrowded and even traumatic living conditions. And it would impair universities’ ability to discover solutions that would make the world safer — from this pandemic, and from ones that are yet to come.”
The governor ‘tweaked’ a Harvard COVID map. Their experts say the state’s changes are flawed. - In August, Gov. Jim Justice introduced West Virginia’s parents, teachers and coaches to a new Saturday night ritual: refreshing a state website for updates to the color-coded map that would determine whether ballfields and schoolhouses would be open the following week. State officials modeled the map after one developed by the Harvard Global Health Institute, which places counties into one of four risk levels — green, yellow, orange or red — based on the number of COVID-19 cases per capita. The map developed by West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources looks similar to the Harvard map, lending a veneer of academic rigor to the state’s school reopening plans. But they are never the same. West Virginia officials have relied on outdated data, raised the cutoff that determines each county’s risk level and altered the methodology for determining the total number of cases. The pandemic has become more deadly as West Virginia leaders have downplayed the risks. In recent months, West Virginia’s death toll has risen faster and faster, hitting a record in August of 98 deaths. The state now has had one of the highest COVID “reproductive rates” – the number of people an infected person will spread the disease to, on average – in the nation.Members of the Harvard team that developed the metric said West Virginia was misusing their work.“That doesn’t follow the public health guidance,” said Dr. Thomas Tsai, a health policy researcher and surgeon at Harvard. “It’s like they’re saying you have five downs now, instead of four,” he added, borrowing an analogy from football. Tsai said the goal of the Harvard team, made up of ethicists, policy researchers and public health experts, was to create a single, clear metric that could be used by cities and counties across the country to assess the extent of their coronavirus outbreak. But that scientific consensus proved incompatible with the desires of West Virginia leaders, who wanted to get athletes back onto the field and students back into school as quickly as possible. For weeks, the most obvious similarity between the two maps has been the color palette, and even that disappeared when Justice alchemized five orange counties into “gold” on Tuesday.
More than 15,000 attend University of Texas football game amidst coronavirus pandemic - The University of Texas (UT) at Austin held a football game Saturday between the Texas Longhorns and the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). More than 15,300 people attended the game under conditions in which confirmed cases of COVID-19 continue to spread throughout the state. Free COVID-19 tests were required only for students who purchased “The Big Ticket” season pass. All other ticket purchasers from UTEP or non-students were exempt and could not get the free tests, accounting for the roughly 14,000 people at the stadium. A UT Austin spokesperson confirmed that only 1,198 attendees were tested before the game. Out of these, 95 tested positive, or nearly 8 percent. This indicates that the UT Austin student population has an incredibly high incidence of COVID-19. Prior to the game, the university issued a list of wholly inadequate “precautions,” including markings in the stadium for social distancing, a mask mandate, and a ban on tailgating. They also reported that 225 hand sanitizer stations had been set up. Fans at the college football game in Austin, Texas, on September 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton) It is well known that people wearing masks in close proximity for long periods can still acquire the virus. It has also been stated by experts and scientists ad infinitum that any large gathering of people, especially where shouting will take place, has the potential to become a “super spreader” event in which large numbers of people become infected with the virus. In fact, the state of Texas has a ban on gatherings of over 10 people. The exception to the requirement was made by the Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. He has also exempted various business re-openings and issued a mandate that schools reopen for in-person classes eight weeks after their normal start date. In a press conference Wednesday, Mark Escott, the Austin Public Health interim health authority, citing the occupancy limit set for the game, put it mildly: “Having 25,000 people in one space is a concern.” On the same day, three COVID-19 clusters were reported with about 100 cases.UT Austin already has a high number of COVID-19 cases, ranking fourth in Texas universities. The COVID-19 dashboard on UT Austin’s website lists 814 cases, with 633 students and 181 staff infected since March 1. The reported positivity rate of 1.3 percent, which is terrible in itself, is most likely an undercount, especially given the case numbers among students attempting to attend the game.
Big Ten universities announce football will resume - The presidents and chancellors of the universities that make up the Big Ten college football conference announced Wednesday morning that they had unanimously voted to reverse their earlier decision to postpone the football season. The Big Ten’s season is set to begin on October 24 with each team playing eight games, one each week, and a final championship game on December 19. After the initial decision to postpone, it was speculated that the season would not resume until the spring at the earliest. However, political pressure, including the intervention of President Donald Trump and huge financial interests, pushed the schools to have a rapid resumption of the 2020 football season. The conference includes the largest public universities across the main centers of US industry, and, not coincidentally, states vital to the outcome of the 2020 elections: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. The decision flies in the face of the advice of the Big Ten’s own medical advisers, who up until the last few weeks were in agreement that holding football games would be far too dangerous until at least 2021. Now the Big Ten leaders are claiming that they have achieved a plan that will prevent an outbreak. President of Purdue University Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana, remarked, “Things we all learned, along with some technological advances, have produced a plan that is safer for our players and staff than it would have been originally.” The Big Ten plan stipulates that players will receive daily testing for COVID-19 and that players who do test positive will have to sit out for 21 days before being able to return to the field. If a team records a positivity rate of over 5 percent then they will halt their games and practices. In addition, players who are positive for COVID-19 must pass a series of heart tests including a cardiac MRI. The heart screening component was added after news broke that a large percentage of college athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 had developed myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that can be deadly when untreated. Even if these measures are implemented properly, of which there is serious doubt, it is not believable that holding football games under the present circumstances can be done safely. Not only will dozens of young athletes be in direct physical contact with one another, but there will be hundreds of additional support staff and TV crews present at the games. There have been at the very least 8,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at Big Ten schools. Several schools in the Big Ten, including the universities of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin, have become epicenters of the pandemic. After large outbreaks on campuses, several schools, including the University of Wisconsin, have adopted restrictive isolation rules for their students to attempt to lower their number of cases before the football season is set to begin. Students have been ordered to remain in their dorms in what they are describing as prison-like conditions with poor food and without basic necessities.
Pac-12 moves toward 'return to competition' after Big Ten announces resumption of football season - The Pac-12 Conference's commissioner said late Wednesday that its college football teams would move to resume practices and “return to competition” amid the coronavirus pandemic after the Big Ten Conference announced that it would go ahead with a fall football season. Larry Scott said in a statement shared on Twitter that “state public health officials will allow for contact practice and return to competition," adding that “there are no state restrictions on our ability to play sports in light of our adherence to strict health and safety protocols and stringent testing requirements, including our recently announced partnership with Quidel which will enable daily rapid results testing.” “We are eager for our student-athletes to have the opportunity to play this season, as soon as it can be done safely and in accordance with public health authority approvals,” Scott said. Scott also called on the California and Oregon universities in the conference to reach out to county and other local health officials for guidance on how to safely return to practice and competition. The announcement came hours after the Big Ten said it would officially start its football season the weekend of Oct. 23. It initially postponed games last month due to the pandemic. President Trump took to Twitter Wednesday to praise the Big Ten’s decision to start its football season and later urged the Pac-12 to follow suit. "I want to recommend that the Pac-12 also get going because there's no reason why Pac-12 shouldn't be playing now," Trump said. "Pac-12, you're the only one now. Open up. Open up, Pac-12. Get going."
University of Michigan graduate students vote to extend strike as opposition erupts at campuses throughout the US - Striking University of Michigan graduate instructors voted Sunday to extend their strike against the reopening policies of the university into the coming week. The students in the UM Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) concluded their initial four-day strike on Friday. At a meeting late Friday evening, the GEO announced that its steering committee was recommending the extension of the strike by another week as the demands of the instructors had not been met by the university. The membership had the weekend to cast their vote for the extension of the strike. The results were released late Sunday night showing overwhelming support, with 80 percent voting in favor of the extension. The strike has garnered immense support from undergraduate students, Residential Advisors, faculty, university staff, local workers and high school students, as well as students and workers from campuses across the country. The groundswell of support is an indication of the immense opposition that exists in the working class to the reckless drive to reopen schools and workplaces as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep through the country. A report published Friday morning by USA Today gives indisputable evidence that the reopening of colleges and universities leads to an increase in infections throughout the community. The report showed that 19 of the 25 largest outbreaks in the US are in communities with colleges that have reopened for in-person learning. Yesterday, news broke of virus outbreaks at Michigan State University (MSU), just an hour away from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Opposition is brewing among students and staff at MSU over the same issues at the center of the strike at UM, and the closure of both of these campuses would save countless lives throughout the region.
University of Michigan president seeks court injunction to force graduate student instructors back to work - The University of Michigan is responding with a new round of threats and intimidation to the overwhelming vote Sunday by graduate students to extend their strike. On Monday, UM President Mark Schlissel sought a restraining order and court injunction to break the strike against the university’s reckless reopening of campus and in-person classes amidst the coronavirus pandemic. In a video statement to “the campus community,” Schlissel said that the university can no longer allow the “profound disruption to the education we’ve promised our undergraduate students.” What contemptible hypocrisy! It is the university’s own policies that will cause not only a “profound disruption” to the education of students but to their lives and the lives of their families and “the campus community” at large. Schlissel went on: “We want our great classes to continue, our students to learn without interference and we don’t want anyone to feel threatened simply for wanting to go to class.” Again, the “threat” comes from the fact that undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty are exposed to the coronavirus with the initiation of in-person classes. “Going to the court,” Schlissel claimed, “was our only choice after learning the strike would continue. We’d much rather our classes be in session while we work out our differences.” The rest of Schlissel’s video response was dominated by the usual hollow phrases and platitudes about welcoming the “opportunity to discuss the issues” and being “committed to addressing them,” all the while feigning that their main concern is the students’ education. The action by the university administration is a direct threat to the striking students and workers. For all the talk about “wanting to talk things out,” Schlissel has a clear position on the strike: End it or face fines and expulsion.
Isolation, Addiction, and Drug Use in the Covid-19 Moment -- In our new era of nearly unparalleled upheaval, as a pandemic ravages the bodies of some and the minds of nearly everyone, as the associated economic damage disposes of the livelihoods of many, and as even the promise of democracy fades, the people whose lives were already on a razor’s edge — who were vulnerable and isolated before the advent of Covid-19 — are in far greater danger than ever before.Against this backdrop, many of us are scanning the news for any sign of hope, any small flicker of light whose gleam could indicate that everything, somehow, is going to be okay. In fact, there is just such a flicker coming from those who have been through the worst of it and have made it out the other side. I spoke with Rafael Rodriguez of Holyoke, Massachusetts… “Covid-19 has made it more and more apparent how stigmatizing it is to be less fortunate,” he said. As we spoke, the number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits had just ticked up to around 30 million, or about one in every five workers, with nearly 15 million behind on their rent, and 29 million reporting that their households hadn’t had enough to eat over the preceding week. Rodriguez is an expert in what happens after eviction or when emergency aid dries up (or there’s none to be had in the first place) — what becomes, that is, of those in protracted isolation and despair. Drug-overdose deaths were up 13% in the first seven months of this year compared to 2019, according to research conducted by the New York Times covering 40% of the U.S. population. More than 60% of participating counties nationwide that report to the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program at the University of Baltimore saw a sustained spike in overdoses following March 19th, when many states began issuing social-distancing and stay-at-home orders. This uptick arrived atop a decades-long climb in drug-related fatalities. Last year, before the pandemic even hit, an estimated 72,000 people in the United States died of an overdose, the equivalent of sustaining a tragedy of 9/11 proportions every two weeks, or about equal to the American Covid-19 death toll during its deadliest stretch so far, from mid-April to mid-May.What people do in the face of protracted isolation and despair is turn to whatever coping strategy they’ve got — including substances so strong they can be deadly. “I think of opioids as technologies that are perfectly suited for making you okay with social isolation,” said Nancy Campbell, head of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and author of OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose. Miraculously, an opioid overdose can be reversed with the medicine naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan. But you can’t use naloxone on yourself; you need someone else to administer it to you. That’s why Campbell calls it a “technology of solidarity.” The solidarity of people looking out for one another is a necessary ingredient when it comes to preserving the lives of those in the deepest desolation.
Measures to control coronavirus have brought flu infections to 'historic lows.' Scientists want to keep it that way. - Lockdowns and protective measures like the widespread wearing of face masks as a result of the coronavirus pandemic have driven influenza infections to record lows, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.The authors of the study urge such measures to remain in place in order to keep the flu from returning, as it customarily does with colder weather, which will soon drive people indoors across much of the U.S. “If extensive community mitigation measures continue throughout the fall, influenza activity in the United States might remain low and the season might be blunted or delayed,” the researchers write in their new study. The findings show an astonishing drop in influenza infections both at home and abroad. In the U.S., for example, there was a 98 percent decline in samples testing positive when comparing the October 2019-February 2020 period with March-May 2020, a sharper and more pronounced reduction than the nation has seen in recent years. And even though seasonal drops in flu infections are to be expected, the new study says that “interseasonal circulation” of the influenza virus “is now at historic lows.”The weekly average of positive lab results is now 0.2 percent, compared with 2.35 percent in 2019. The positive rate is usually between 1 and 2 percent. The new study points to “growing evidence” that masks not only keep an infected person from spreading viral particles but also keep healthy people from getting sick.
Potential COVID-19 drug azithromycin may increase risk for cardiac events - Debates over whether hydroxychloroquine should be taken to help lessen the duration and impact of COVID-19 have revolved around the drug's reputation for causing cardiac events such as abnormal heart rhythms or beats and cardiac arrest. Because of this, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has revoked emergency use authorization for the drug in treating COVID-19. Another drug, azithromycin -- a commonly-prescribed antibiotic -- also is being investigated as a potential treatment for COVID-19. Azithromycin's association with cardiac events also has been debated. In 2012, the FDA issued a warning for azithromycin stating that it had been linked to cardiac events, but subsequent studies have yielded mixed results. Now, researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago have found that azithromycin by itself is not associated with an increase in cardiac events; however, if the drug is taken with certain other drugs that affect the electrical functioning of the heart, then cardiac events increased. "Our findings should give researchers and clinicians looking at azithromycin as a potential treatment for COVID-19 pause," said Haridarshan Patel, a researcher in the department of pharmacy systems, outcomes and policy at the UIC College of Pharmacy and corresponding author on the paper. "We found that if taken together with drugs that affect the electrical impulses of the heart, the combination is linked with a 40% increase in cardiac events, including fainting, heart palpitations and even cardiac arrest." Their findings are published JAMA Network Open. Drugs that affect the electrical impulses of the heart, specifically the interval in the electrical rhythm called the QT interval, are called QT-prolonging drugs. These drugs include blood pressure medications such as ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers, some antidepressants, anti-malaria drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, opioid medications and even muscle relaxers.
Mortality Rates From COVID-19 Are Lower In Unionized Nursing Homes | Health Affairs - ABSTRACT: More than 40% of all reported coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths in the United States have occurred in nursing homes. As a result, health care worker access to personal protective equipment (PPE) and infection control policies in nursing homes have received increased attention. However, it is not known if the presence of health care worker unions in nursing homes is associated with COVID-19 mortality rates. Therefore, we used cross-sectional regression analysis to examine the association between the presence of health care worker unions and COVID-19 mortality rates in 355 nursing homes in New York State. Health care worker unions were associated with a 1.29 percentage point mortality reduction, which represents a 30% relative decrease in the COVID-19 mortality rate compared to facilities without health care worker unions. Unions were also associated with greater access to PPE, one mechanism that may link unions to lower COVID-19 mortality rates. [Editor’s Note: This Fast Track Ahead Of Print article is the accepted version of the peer-reviewed manuscript. The final edited version will appear in an upcoming issue of Health Affairs.]
Air pollution linked to 9% higher virus death rate -- - Breathing common airborne toxic chemicals could raise the risk of death from COVID-19, researchers conclude in a new study. The study links a modest increase in cumulative exposure to dozens of hazardous air pollutants — as measured by a gauge known as the respiratory hazard index — to a 9% jump in COVID-19 mortality, according to the peer-reviewed paper published online today in the journal Environmental Research Letters. To varying degrees, the connection also held for several individual pollutants such as acetaldehyde, a widely used organic chemical that EPA deems a "probable human carcinogen," and particulate matter in diesel exhaust. "Possibly, chronic exposure to these pollutants at very low levels, while not causing observable respiratory system damages, do reduce the body's ability to recover from COVID-19 in some way," the paper says. The findings may also help explain why residents of rural counties in states like Georgia and Louisiana have suffered higher death rates from the disease caused by the novel coronavirus than their urban counterparts, the researchers add. The paper marks the latest addition to an expanding body of scientific literature tentatively tying air pollution exposure to higher odds of a fatal encounter with COVID-19, which has now killed more than 190,000 people in the United States. To date, most studies have looked at the potential impact of ozone, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter — three pollutants for which EPA sets National Ambient Air Quality Standards. At a scientific conference last month, for example, Emory University scientists linked a modest bump in nitrogen dioxide exposure to an 11% higher death rate (Greenwire, Aug. 27). But the Clean Air Act classifies almost 190 other pollutants as hazardous because they may cause cancer or other serious health effects. The new study draws on data from EPA's 2014 National Air Toxics Assessment released in 2018.While diesel-related particulate matter is not officially listed as a hazardous air pollutant under the law, it is measured in the air toxics assessment, The respiratory hazard index covers 40 to 50 pollutants, he said. Along with Petroni and other scientists at the Syracuse, N.Y.-based school, the study's authors include a data researcher for the investigative online news outlet ProPublica, which incorporated the findings into a story published today.
NIH ‘Very Concerned’ About Serious Side Effect in Coronavirus Vaccine Trial - The Food and Drug Administration is weighing whether to follow British regulators in resuming a coronavirus vaccine trial that was halted when a participant suffered spinal cord damage, even as the National Institutes of Health has launched an investigation of the case. “The highest levels of NIH are very concerned,” said Dr. Avindra Nath, intramural clinical director and a leader of viral research at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, an NIH division. “Everyone’s hopes are on a vaccine, and if you have a major complication the whole thing could get derailed.” A great deal of uncertainty remains about what happened to the unnamed patient, to the frustration of those avidly following the progress of vaccine testing. AstraZeneca, which is running the global trial of the vaccine it produced with Oxford University, said the trial volunteer recovered from a severe inflammation of the spinal cord and is no longer hospitalized. AstraZeneca has not confirmed that the patient was afflicted with transverse myelitis, but Nath and another neurologist said they understood this to be the case. Transverse myelitis produces a set of symptoms involving inflammation along the spinal cord that can cause pain, muscle weakness and paralysis. Britain’s regulatory body, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, reviewed the case and has allowed the trial to resume in the United Kingdom. AstraZeneca “need[s] to be more forthcoming with a potential complication of a vaccine which will eventually be given to millions of people,” said Nath. “We would like to see how we can help, but the lack of information makes it difficult to do so.” Any decision about whether to continue the trial is complex because it’s difficult to assess the cause of a rare injury that occurs during a vaccine trial — and because scientists and authorities have to weigh the risk of uncommon side effects against a vaccine that might curb the pandemic. “So many factors go into these decisions,” Nath said. “I’m sure everything is on the table. The last thing you want to do is hurt healthy people.” The NIH has yet to get tissue or blood samples from the British patient, and its investigation is “in the planning stages,” Nath said. U.S. scientists could look at samples from other vaccinated patients to see whether any of the antibodies they generated in response to the coronavirus also attack brain or spinal cord tissue. Such studies might take a month or two, he said. The FDA declined to comment on how long it would take before it decides whether to move forward.
CDC Director Redfield suggests masks may be more effective than a coronavirus vaccine In testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield stressed the importance of face masks to reduce the spread of coronavirus, and suggested that they could be more effective than a vaccine. Video Transcript: REDFIELD: Face masks, these face masks, are the most important powerful public health tool we have, and I will continue to appeal for all Americans, all individuals in our country, to embrace these face coverings. I've said it, if we did it for 6, 8, 10, 12 weeks, we'd bring this pandemic under control. These actually-- we have clear scientific evidence they work, and they are our best defense. I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine because the immunogenicity may be 70%. And if I don't get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will. So I do want to keep asking the American public to take the responsibility, particularly the 18- to 25-year-olds, where we're seeing the outbreak in America continue to go like this because we haven't got the acceptance, the personal responsibility that we need for all Americans to embrace this face mask.
Is the company with a 20-second coronavirus test for real? -Rapid and reliable coronavirus tests have so far defeated the combined research skills and financial firepower of the richest countries and corporations.Yet a company with four employees, whose head office is registered in the village of Toddington*, 40 miles north of London, claims to have developed a saliva test that takes just 20 seconds to process.If it works, it could offer a route out of the coronavirus crisis and prove a remarkable testament to the ingenuity of a man with no formal scientific education.But the early excitement also shows people’s collective desperation for a silver bullet and willingness to suspend disbelief. The “Virolens” test was unveiled last week by an obscure British tech company called iAbra. People take a simple mouth swab, which is dropped into a black box. Inside the box, iAbra says, is a digital camera attached to a microscope that can examine the sample and see if it contains any Covid-19 virus. It displays the answer within seconds. The device is manufactured in Hartlepool, in the north-east of England, by a listed UK company, TT Electronics, whose share price rose more than 40 per cent on last week’s announcement, valuing it at £439m. Heathrow airport and Leidos, a $13bn US software company, were touted as the test’s “launch customers”. Greg Compton, iAbra’s 33-year-old chief executive and the lead architect of the test, last week said the company had also seen “huge demand from universities in the US” and declared the test “a significant step forward in the battle against Covid-19”. As it hosted the product launch last week, Heathrow was certainly enthusiastic. John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s chief executive, said iAbra’s technology was “potentially more accurate” than standard PCR tests, and encouraged the government to “fast track this technology”. But both Heathrow and Leidos said they had not actually placed any orders for the test, though Leidos said it was in “active negotiations”.
US COVID Herd Immunity Calculated At 12% Of The Population - When discussing long-term solutions to the covid pandemic, which is clearly not going to go away on its own while about half the population may refuse to be vaccinated, epidemiologists argue that if 60% or more of the population gains immunity the disease can be contained without policy actions. However, according to Bank of America's latest assessment, even under the most optimistic assumptions relatively few communities are approaching “herd immunity.” As BofA chief economist Ethan Harris writes, consider the extreme example of New York City, which has recorded 236,647 cases and 23,720 deaths due to COVID. That amounts to 2.7% and 0.3% of the population respectively. Clearly the number of true infections is much higher than the recorded cases due to low testing rates early in the crisis. So let’s focus on the more reliable death statistics. By making assumptions about the true death rate from the disease, BofA backs out the implied infection rate. Thus if the true death rate is 0.5% (which in light of co-morbidities may be far higher than the real rate) then the true number of infections is 4.7 million (= 23,720/.005). That amounts to 54% of population. The good news is that New York might therefore be approaching herd immunity if it could close its borders and assuming true infections almost always create immunity. Unfortunately, as Harris concludes, at the national level the same calculation suggests that only 12% of the population has immunity, which is far below the critical 60% threshold. So if herd immunity is out, or at least delayed indefinitely, then what? As Harris notes next, at times the COVID crisis is presented as a one-for-one trade-off between the economy and public health, although as experience across the world shows "nothing could be further from the truth" and explains: There is a good reason that China was at first hit the hardest, but has had a V-like recovery: It first denied the crisis and then adopted a very strong mitigation strategy. A similar story applies for a number of other countries in Asia. The US is near the other end of the spectrum, with a poor mitigation strategy. The economy has not done worse than the rest of the world, but that is because of the massive policy stimulus in the US. .
Johns Hopkins researchers question controversial study linking Sturgis rally to COVID-19 spike -Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are raising doubts about a study that estimated that a massive motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, last month led to more than 260,000 new cases of coronavirus nationwide.The study, released late last week by four economists associated with the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University, also found that the annual event resulted in more than $12 billion in health care costs stemming from the infections. The study has drawn considerable public attention in part because it seemed to confirm concerns expressed by health officials prior to the rally — which drew nearly 500,000 attendees over 10 days — about the potential risks of such a large gathering. The San Diego center's research also appeared to show a much larger coronavirus outbreak due to the Sturgis event than other sources. The Associated Press reported finding just 290 cases of coronavirus among people who attended the event nationwide. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who declined to restrict the event despite concerns about spreading the virus, has derided the study as "fiction."In a paper posted Friday, the Johns Hopkins researchers say the data collected by the San Diego center's economists (who represent three different universities) in fact support one main thrust of the study — that the Sturgis event led to a spike in COVID-19 cases in the county that hosted the rally as well as in surrounding areas."The case data show relatively stable trends prior to the event and clear changes around the event, with little reason to believe that the changes in cases could have been caused by anything but the event," the Johns Hopkins researchers write. "The overall conclusions that the Sturgis event caused a large increase in COVID-19 cases and infections are likely to be relatively robust to the specific statistical methodologies used." But the paper also called the model used to reach the study's specific finding of nearly 267,000 new cases of COVID-19 nationwide "relatively weak." As a result, the San Diego study should be "interpreted cautiously."
CDC reverses controversial coronavirus guidance that said people without symptoms may not need a test - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday reversed controversial coronavirus testing guidance that said people who were exposed to an infected person but weren't showing any symptoms did "not necessarily need a test." The new guidance said that people without symptoms who have been in close contact with an infected person "need a test." The CDC defines "close contact" as being within 6 feet of a person with a confirmed Covid-19 infection for at least 15 minutes. "Please consult with your healthcare provider or public health official. Testing is recommended for all close contacts of persons with SARS-CoV-2 infection," the new guidance said. "Because of the potential for asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission, it is important that contacts of individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection be quickly identified and tested." Numerous studies have shown that people can carry and spread the virus without showing symptoms — both in the presymptomatic stage and in cases where they never develop symptoms. Public health specialists and officials at the World Health Organization have repeatedly emphasized the importance of testing people who don't have symptoms in order to cut off chains off transmission. Many public health specialists criticized the CDC's change in testing guidance in August for appearing to downplay the significance of testing people who don't have symptoms but who might be spreading the virus. The CDC called the shift in guidance a "clarification" and noted the "the need to test asymptomatic persons."
Study shows high prevalence of fatigue following COVID-19 infection independent of disease severity Research being presented at the ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Disease (ECCVID, held online from 23-25 September) shows that persistent fatigue occurs in more than half of patients recovered from COVID-19, regardless of the seriousness of their infection. The study is by Dr Liam Townsend, St James's Hospital and Trinity Translational Medicine Institute, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, and colleagues. As the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to grow worldwide, the number of patients recovering, and also experiencing post-infection problems, is also growing. "Fatigue is a common symptom in those presenting with symptomatic COVID-19 infection. Whilst the presenting features of SARS-CoV-2 infection have been well-characterised, the medium and long-term consequences of infection remain unexplored," explains Dr Townsend. "In particular, concern has been raised that SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to cause persistent fatigue, even after those infected have recovered from COVID-19. In our study, we investigated whether patients recovering from SARS-CoV-2 infection remained fatigued after their physical recovery, and to see whether there was a relationship between severe fatigue and a variety of clinical parameters. We also examined persistence of markers of disease beyond clinical resolution of infection." Of the patients assessed in this study,71/128 (55.5%) were admitted to hospital and 57/128 (44.5%) were not admitted. "Fatigue was found to occur independent of admission to hospital, affecting both groups equally," explains Dr Townsend. There was no association between COVID-19 severity (need for inpatient admission, supplemental oxygen or critical care) and fatigue following COVID-19. Additionally, there was no association between routine laboratory markers of inflammation and cell turnover (white blood cell counts or ratios, lactate dehydrogenase, C-reactive protein) or pro-inflammatory molecules (IL-6 or sCD25) and fatigue post COVID-19. Female gender and those with a pre-existing diagnosis of depression/anxiety were over-represented in those with fatigue. Although women represented just over half of the patients in the study (54%), two-thirds of those with persistent fatigue (67%) were women. And while only 1 person of the 61 (1.6%) without fatigue had a history of anxiety or depression, this proportion was 13.4% (9/67) in those with persistent fatigue.
Thousands of New York ‘Long Haulers’ Struggle with COVID-19 Months After Diagnosis - The illness was supposed to last for three weeks, doctors told her. But weeks four through six of COVID-19 were the worst for Holly MacDonald. Her low-grade fever morphed into an all-around fatigue. She began having trouble speaking. And when she stood up, her legs and feet turned purple. “I’d walk too far and then I’d need to be in bed for three days,” said MacDonald, who is 29 and lives in Crown Heights. She had to take administrative leave from her job at a nonprofit where she builds social-media campaigns. A month after getting sick in early March, MacDonald was back in the ER, frustrated as she tried to convince her doctors she was mired in her second month of what, she’d been told, was a three-week respiratory virus. She’s still not fully recovered. MacDonald is one of upwards of 70,000 New Yorkers struggling with unexplained long-term symptoms of COVID-19, according to a range of estimates provided by several New York City-area doctors and hospitals contacted by THE CITY. “The hidden number could be more,” said Dr. Zijian Chen, who directs Mount Sinai’s Center for Post-COVID Care. “We’re looking at patients who are still testing positive day to day, so this is a population that’s going to continue to grow.” The growing numbers of so-called long-haulers underscore what patients and doctors describe as an increasing struggle on multiple fronts. Patients who experience symptoms long after three weeks sometimes are hit harder by the physical ravages of the virus than when they first contracted COVID-19. In some cases, patients say, their doctors don’t believe them. That can add to the struggle for those seeking to get their medical expenses covered — especially after losing work because of their illness or the pandemic-slammed economy.
Nashville Officials Concealed Low COVID-19 Numbers Coming From Bars And Restaurants- Leaked Emails -- Leaked emails between the senior adviser to Nashville's Mayor and a health department official reveal a disturbing effort to conceal extremely low coronavirus cases emanating from bars and restaurants, while the lion's share of infections occurred in nursing homes and construction workers, according to WZTV Nashville.On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.Leslie Waller from the health department asks “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor’s Office?"“Correct, not for public consumption.” Writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. -WZTVFour weeks later, Tennessean reporter Nate Rau asked the health department: "the figure you gave of “more than 80” does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesn’t that mean restaurants and bars aren’t a very big problem?"To which health department official Brian Todd scrambled for an answer - asking five health department officials: "Please advise how you respond. BT."The response - from an official whose name was omitted from the leaked email: "My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site," adding "We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be "because that number is increasing all the time and we don’t want to say a specific number."" According to a metro staff attorney asked by city councilmember Steve Glover to verify the authenticity of the emails, "I was able to get verification from the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Health that these emails are real." Glover told WZTV: "They are fabricating information. They’ve blown there entire credibility Dennis. Its gone i don’t trust a thing they say going forward ...nothing."
Coronavirus dashboard for September 14: cases in the Midwest surge; the Northeast still lags Canada (graphics) I continue to expect the pandemic to wax and wane in relative terms at least until next January 20, as the public reaction in various States varies between panic and complacency. Let’s start by comparing the rates of cases and deaths in the US with the North American standard – Canada: In contrast with the US, Canada averaged 18 cases per day per million people in the last 7 days (vs. 105 for the US), and 0.1 deaths (vs. 2.2 for the US). That is what we could have as well if there were competent Federal leadership. The Top 10 States for infections have shifted to the Midwest: These are rates that are virtually out of control (the worst was about 500 cases per day for NY and Arizona at their peaks). The South (and the territories of Guam and the Virgin Islands) is still leading in deaths per capita: Since the rate of infections in the South, at least officially, has declined, this can be expected to shift to the midwest as well in the next several weeks. The Bottom 10 States for infections remain dominated by the Northeast, plus several Mountain States The Bottom 10 for deaths are almost exclusively in the Northeast: But even the Northeast is stubbornly not doing as well as Canada, as shown in the below graph comparing the rate of NY infections and deaths with Canada’s: This is depressing, and as I stated at the outset, I do not expect it to change for at least 4 more months.
U.S. New Cases Quicken; French Minister Infected: Virus Update - U.S. new cases of Covid-19 accelerated slightly compared to the one-week average. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed itself and recommended people get tested if they come in contact with an infected person even if they don’t have symptoms.New York Mayor Bill de Blasio voiced confidence that students can return to schools at the end of September after two delays. Deaths in California fell below the 14-day average. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire became the most senior French politician and one of the most prominent in Europe to test positive for the virus. Lockdowns loomed larger as French daily cases jumped by 13,000, the most since May, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson weighed whether the U.K. needs to “go further” with national restrictions. Coronavirus cases in the U.S. increased 0.7% as compared with the same time Thursday to 6.7 million, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News. The increase compares with an average daily increase of 0.6% over the past week. Deaths reached 198,114.
- Florida reported 677,660 cases on, up 0.5% from a day earlier, compared to an average 0.4% increase in the previous seven days. Deaths reached 13,225, an increase of 1.1%, or 139.
- Arizona reported 1,281 new virus cases, below Thursday’s spike of 1,753, but the 0.6% increase was still double the rate of the prior seven-day period. The state now has 212,942 cases. Arizone recorded 42 new Covid-19 deaths, bringing the toll to 5,451.
- Alaska experienced a 3.3% increase in the number of cases from the same time yesterday, bringing the total to 6,644, according to the data.
President Donald Trump said his administration expects to be able to vaccinate every American against the novel coronavirus by April.“We’ll have manufactured at least 100 million vaccine doses” by the end of the year, Trump said at a news conference on Friday. “We expect to have enough vaccines for every American by April.”Trump’s timetable is more ambitious than those of drug industry executives and health officials including Anthony Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, who have said most Americans shouldn’t expect a shot before mid-2021.
Covid-19 Fatality Rates Rising Again - Not good news. Not that it was so great even before this. Figure 1: Weekly fatalities due to Covid-19 as reported to CDC for weeks ending on indicated dates (black), excess fatalities calculated as actual minus expected as of 9/16 vintage (green), as of 9/9 vintage (teal), fatalities as tabulated by The Covid Tracking Project/Atlantic (dark red). Light green shading denotes CDC data that are likely to be revised. Source: CDC 9/16/2020 vintage, OurWorldinData accessed 9/16/2020 and author’s calculations.Note that excess fatalities as of 9/16 vintage far exceed the officially designated Covid-19 fatalities for most of the sample.Further note that both of the CDC series – Covid-19 Fatalities and Excess Fatalities – drop off dramatically in recent weeks. If you didn’t read the notes attached to the CDC spreadsheet, you’d conclude that we’ve won! But inspection of the spreadsheet reveals notes that indicate that the most recent data is incomplete. To illustrate, I show the previous vintage’s estimated excess fatalities (teal, 9/9 vintage), indicating substantial additions to estimated fatalities occur in just a week. I show in this post that about the four-five most recent weeks worth of data are going to be substantially revised. I shade this period in green in the above graph. Another hint that this is a substantial problem is provided by comparing the trajectory of the unofficial tally compiled by the Our World in Data, which indicates a much smaller decline. That means it is possible that “excess fatalities” — our proxy measure for Covid-19 fatalities — is still increasing (although officially designated Covid-19 fatalities are probably declining, as the Our World in Data series not subject to really large revisions). Finally, even officially designated fatalities are rising over the last week ending 9/12.
COVID-19 Update: US Death Toll Hits 200,000; Virus May Have Circulated in US as Early as December; and More - Docwire News - The United States, long the epicenter for the novel coronavirus, has hit another grim milestone. There are over 200,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in the US, according to Worldometer. The US has over 6.7 million confirmed infections, which also leads the world. The US states with the most confirmed cases are:
- California: 768,601 confirmed cases; 14,615 deaths.
- Texas: 704,813 confirmed cases; 14,730 deaths.
- Florida: 668,846 confirmed cases; 12,788 deaths.
- New York: 479,184 confirmed cases; 33,141 deaths.
- Georgia: 296,833 confirmed cases; 6,398 deaths.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus may have arrived and spread in the US as early as December, according to researchers from UCLA – about a month early than previously believed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study, which appeared last week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found a statistically significant spike in clinic and hospital visits from patients who reported respiratory illness as early as the week of December 22.The COVID-19 infection rate in New York is back down after briefly climbing above 1%. According to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, there 652 positive cases of COVID-19 across the state on Wednesday, which translates to a .87% infection rate. Philanthropist and former head of Microsoft Bill Gates said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that the US Food and Drug Administration has lost credibility since the COVID-19 pandemic. “We saw with the completely bungled plasma statements that when you start pressuring people to say optimistic things, they go completely off the rails. The FDA lost a lot of credibility there,” Dr. Anthony Fauci believes that a national mask mandate “probably would not work.” “There is such a degree of variability of accepting mandates throughout the country, Fauci said, via a CNN report.
COVID - Why Terminology Really, Really Matters - Since the start of the COVID pandemic I have watched almost everyone get mission critical things wrong. In some ways this is not surprising. Medical terminology is horribly imprecise, and often poorly understood. In calmer times such things are only of interest to research geeks like me. Were they talking about CVD, or CHD? However, right now, it really, really, matters. Specifically, with regards to the term COVID ‘cases.’ Every day we are informed of a worrying rise in COVID cases in country after country, region after region, city after city. Portugal, France, Leicester, Bolton. Panic, lockdown, quarantine. In France the number of reported cases is now as high as it was at the peak of the epidemic. Over 5,000, on the first of September. But what does this actually mean? Just to keep the focus on France for a moment. On March 26th, just before their deaths peaked, there were 3,900 ‘cases’. Fourteen days later, there were 1,400 deaths. So, using a widely accepted figure, which is a delay of around two weeks between diagnoses and death, 36% of cases died. In stark contrast, on August 16th, there were 3,000 cases. Fourteen days later there were 26 deaths. Which means that, in March, 36% of ‘cases’ died. In August 0.8% of ‘cases’ died. This, in turn, means that COVID was 45 times as deadly in March, as it was in August? This seems extremely unlikely. In fact, it is so unlikely that it is, in fact, complete rubbish. What we have is a combination of nonsense figures which, added together, create nonsense squared. Or nonsense to the power ten. To start with, we have the mangling of the concept of a ‘case’. Previously, in the world of infectious diseases, it has been accepted that a ‘case’ represents someone with symptoms, usually severe symptoms, usually severe enough to be admitted to hospital. Here, from Wikipedia…. ‘In epidemiology, a case fatality rate (CFR) — sometimes called case fatality risk or disease lethality — is the proportion of deaths from a certain disease compared to the total number of symptomatic people diagnosed with the disease.’ Note the word symptomatic i.e. someone with symptoms. However, now we stick a swab up someone’s nose, who feels completely well, or very mildly ill. We find that they have some COVID particles lodged up there, and we call them a case of COVID. Sigh, thud!
Oxford and AstraZeneca resume coronavirus vaccine trial - Oxford university and AstraZeneca are to resume the international clinical trial of their proposed coronavirus vaccine candidate. Speculation that there might be a significant delay in the much-watched study turns out to have been unjustified. The trial was paused last Sunday when a participant fell ill in the UK, the university said this afternoon, though news that it had been put on hold did not leak out till Wednesday.A rapid review by the trial’s independent safety review committee and national regulators has now concluded that it is safe to resume inoculating new participants. All follow-up appointments with people already vaccinated continued as normal during the week’s pause, the university said.Altogether 18,000 individuals have received the AZD1222 vaccine as part of the trial, which is taking place in the UK, US, South Africa and Brazil. “In large trials such as this, it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety,” Oxford said in a statement. Several people associated with the trial said the condition that led the trial to be paused was a suspected case of transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord that has a known, but very rare, association with vaccination. Oxford and AstraZeneca on Saturday refused to disclose any medical information “for reasons of participant confidentiality”. On Thursday the company’s chief executive Pascal Soriot said a vaccine “by the end of this year, early next year” was still possible if the trial resumed quickly — as indeed it has.
Nearly Half of Russians to ‘Never’ Vaccinate Against Coronavirus – Poll - Moscow Times - Nearly half of Russians say they will never vaccinate against the coronavirus regardless of its country of production, according to a survey cited by the RBC news website Friday. The current share of coronavirus skeptics (45.6%) has increased from the last time Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE) polled Russians at the height of the pandemic in June, when 37.7% said they would “never” vaccinate against Covid-19. Study author Ruslan Artamonov said that skepticism toward the vaccine has risen as the number of new cases has declined since its peak in late spring and early summer. “In fact, the virus threatened many people only in theory,” Artamonov said. “But people felt both economic difficulties and all the restrictions associated with self-isolation.” Yaroslav Ashikhmin, adviser to the CEO of the Moscow International Medical Cluster healthcare ecosystem project, said “people have begun seeing the coronavirus as a less dangerous threat.” “The skepticism has increased because scientists can’t clearly explain yet why there wasn’t a coronavirus outbreak after the borders were opened and whether there will be a pronounced second wave. There are also no overcrowded clinics,” Ashikhmin told RBC. Russia introduced stay-at-home measures in late March and began to gradually lift the restrictions in mid-May. According to the HSE study, more Russians now believe that the danger of the pandemic has either been exaggerated or “invented,” going from 32.8% in late May to 43.4% in early September. The share of respondents who say they are willing to vaccinate has decreased from 15.8% in June to 13.2% this month. Almost 19% said they’d rather wait until next year before deciding, RBC cited the HSE study as saying. Russia has confirmed more than 1 million coronavirus infections, the world’s fourth-highest caseload. After counting less than 5,000 daily infections for three weeks, Russia has registered more than 5,000 new cases for each of the past eight days.
New cases of COVID-19 reach a one-day high of nearly 308,000 worldwide - The World Health Organization (WHO) reported Monday a record one-day high of 307,930 new cases of COVID-19. According to all COVID-19 tracking dashboards, the globe is soon set to surpass 30 million infections. The United States, Brazil, and India have remained at the epicenter of the global pandemic for several weeks running, accounting for the majority of daily new cases. The Worldometer COVID-19 dashboard estimates there have been almost 930,000 deaths in little more than eight months since the first victim died on January 11 in Wuhan, a 61-year-old-man who was a regular customer at the now infamous wet market. The seven-day moving average of daily deaths has exceeded 5,000 since mid-July, meaning that in approximately two weeks, the total number of deaths worldwide will exceed one million. The crude global case fatality rate (total deaths divided by total cases) stands at an astounding 3.18 percent. However, this also doesn’t account for the excess deaths that have been consistently reported in almost every country, which would put the mortality much higher. There is no legitimate debate either over the deadliness of this contagion or the warnings of epidemiologists and other medical scientists that society’s resources must be fully mobilized to contain and suppress this pandemic. The predictions for the next several months are dire. If the working classes of every nation do not resist the policy of herd immunity that the ruling classes have thoroughly implemented to ensure the economy is operating at full speed, it will only accelerate the toll in lives and health.
Israel to set new nationwide lockdown as virus cases surge - — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday announced a new countrywide lockdown will be imposed amid a stubborn surge in coronavirus cases, with schools and parts of the economy expected to shut down in a bid to bring down infection rates. Beginning Friday, the start of the Jewish High Holiday season, schools, restaurants, malls and hotels will shut down, among other businesses, and Israelis will face restrictions on movement and on gatherings. “Our goal is to stop the increase (in cases) and lower morbidity,” Netanyahu said in a nationally broadcast statement. “I know that these steps come at a difficult price for all of us. This is not the holiday we are used to.” The tightening of measures marks the second time Israel is being plunged into a lockdown, after a lengthy shutdown in the spring. That lockdown is credited with having brought down what were much lower infection numbers, but it wreaked havoc on the country’s economy, sending unemployment skyrocketing. The lockdown will remain in place for at least three weeks, at which point officials may relax measures if numbers are seen declining. Israelis typically hold large family gatherings and pack synagogues during the important fast of Yom Kippur later this month, settings that officials feared could trigger new outbreaks. A sticking point in government deliberations over the lockdown was what prayers would look like during the holidays. While the details on prayer during the lockdown were not nailed down in the government decision, what were expected to be strict limits on the faithful. That prompted Israeli Housing Minister Yaakov Litzman, who represents ultra-Orthodox Jews, to resign from the government earlier Sunday. Israel has had more than 150,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 1,100 deaths. Given its population of 9 million, the country now has one of the world’s worst outbreaks. It is now seeing more than 4,000 daily cases of the virus.
Israel becomes first country to impose second national COVID-19 lockdown - On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Blue and White coalition approved a full national lockdown to start on Friday morning, just before the Jewish New Year. It is the first government in the world to impose a second national lockdown. The government put in place tight restrictions in early March. But in late April, as the infection rate began to fall, Netanyahu announced the phased reopening of schools, workplaces, restaurants, bars, clubs, swimming pools and hotels in the interest of corporate profits. He did so without putting in place any measures to guard against or deal with a second wave, despite recommendations from a team of experts, headed by Professor Eli Waxman from the Weizman Institute of Science. His team recommended that the government reconsider its decision to restart the economy if the daily number of infections rose above 200, which the government ignored. Within days of the government lifting restrictions on schools’ class sizes, there was a resurgence of the virus. In July, Siegal Sadetzki, Israel’s director of public health services, resigned, saying that insufficient safety precautions in schools, as well as large gatherings like weddings, had fueled a “significant portion” of second-wave infections. Seven months into the crisis, it is still difficult to gain access to testing or get speedy results. After months of claiming it had a contact-tracing system in place, the health ministry handed over responsibility to the army which is now appealing for help from private companies and saying it will not be ready until November at the earliest. Sunday’s decision came amid a soaring infection rate. Israel now tops the world rankings in the number of new COVID-19 cases per capita, with 157,000 confirmed cases—between 3,000 to 4,000 new cases are being recorded every day—and 1,136 deaths in a country of 9 million people. The vast majority of cases have occurred since May when Netanyahu famously told people that the lockdown was over, and people should “go out and have a good time.” In the West Bank, 35,663 cases have been confirmed along with 214 deaths. This includes 8,550 cases in East Jerusalem, while the Hebron governorate has been the hardest hit. The Palestinian Authority has imposed lockdowns on badly-affected areas and a ban on public gatherings including weddings and graduation parties. In Gaza, 1,631 cases have been reported and 11 deaths. The first cases of community transmission were recorded on August 24, and since then the authorities have imposed a strict lockdown.
Dramatic spike in Philippines’ coronavirus death toll - The Philippines recorded a sudden surge in deaths caused by COVID-19 on Saturday, along with a continued rise in case numbers. The death toll rose by 186, a new record and an alarming leap from the country’s average of around 50 deaths per day over the past week. It is the highest single-day fatality rate recorded so far in Southeast Asia. The spike was attributed to incorrect figures provided by local authorities. The Department of Health said 128 cases previously reported as “recovered” were discovered to be 126 deaths and two active cases. The classifications cover data going back to April. President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration explained the discrepancy in recorded deaths as an inevitable product of the country’s continuing validation process, in which reported cases are often duplicates or erroneous entries. It is not the first time, however, that Philippine authorities have been found to conceal or alter data recording the spread of the virus. From June 12 to August 21, more than 4,000 cases were removed from the COVID-19 tally, apparently because of encoding errors. There were also corrections that revealed 309 deaths, earlier announced as recovered cases. The official death toll reached 4,371 on Saturday, but this record suggests that the real total could be much higher. The national government’s pandemic response has been marked by a lack of any serious efforts to detect, trace or isolate the disease. In public televised addresses, Duterte has by turns downplayed the threat of the virus and advocated unscientific methods, including washing face masks with petrol. Confronting the worst coronavirus outbreak in both Southeast and East Asia, the Philippines has seen cases double over just five weeks. After an increase of nearly 5,000 new infections on Saturday, the figures have risen to 261,216 cases. It was the fifth consecutive day on which over 3,000 additional cases were tallied. Of Saturday’s reported cases, 2,619 came from capital city Manila’s overpopulated metropolitan area, which has accounted for around half of total coronavirus figures. At least 82 percent of the newly confirmed cases dated back as far as August 30. The government had previously said it was expecting an “irregularly high number of cases this week,” due to the slow arrival of reports from overworked laboratories.
Asia Today: India cases climb to 4.75M as recovery improves | PBS — India has registered a single-day spike of 94,372 new coronavirus cases, driving the country’s overall tally to 4.75 million. The Health Ministry on Sunday also reported 1,114 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking total fatalities up to 78,586. Even as infections are growing faster in India than anywhere else in the world, the number of people recovering from the virus has also risen sharply. The country’s recovery rate stands at 77.77% and nearly 70,000 recoveries have been reported every day in the month of September, according to the Health Ministry. The ministry attributed India’s COVID-19 recovery pace to aggressive testing and prompt surveillance, but experts say India needs to test more due to its huge population. It’s climbed to the second worst-hit country behind the United States, and is now testing more than 1 million people every day. India’s Parliament is expected to resume work on Monday with strict physical distancing. Parliament adjourned in March just before a nationwide lockdown was announced to contain the pandemic. The harsh lockdown caused a severe economic crisis, with India’s economy contracting nearly 24% in the second quarter, the worst among the world’s top economies.In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:
- — South Korea says it will ease stringent social distancing rules in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, following a gradually declining number of new coronavirus infections. Health Minister Park Neung-hoo told an online briefing Sunday that the greater Seoul area recorded about 80-110 new virus cases each day last week, down from 110-180 in the previous week.
- — Domestic air travel in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, has returned to pre-pandemic levels. The virus was first detected in Wuhan late last year and the city underwent a draconian 76-day lockdown as its hospitals struggled to deal with a tidal wave of cases that required the rapid construction of field hospitals. Since reopening in early April, life has gradually returned to normal and numbers of domestic flights serving the city, as well as the number of passengers, had both fully recovered,
- — A coastal county in eastern China says seven Filipino sailors aboard a Cyprus-flagged ship have tested positive for the coronavirus and been transferred to a hospital onshore. A statement released Sunday by the government of Daishan county in Zheijiang province said it first received a notice on Sept. 9 that crew members on board the ship that was undergoing repairs had fallen ill and tested positive for the coronavirus. One close contact on shore who had delivered water to the sailors was placed under monitoring but tested negative for the virus.
Coronavirus live updates: India records world's highest increase in new COVID-19 cases - India confirmed 97,894 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, marking the highest single-day increase in infections worldwide since the coronavirus pandemic began. An additional 1,132 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded. The country's cumulative total now stands at 5,118,253 cases and 83,198 deaths, according to the latest data from the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. India has the second-highest tally of COVID-19 cases in the world and the third-highest death toll in the coronavirus pandemic, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. The relatively low death toll in a vast county of 1.3 billion people is raising questions about how it's counting coronavirus fatalities. India has reported more than one million cases this month alone. Based on the current rate of infection, India is expected within weeks to become the pandemic's worst-hit nation, surpassing the United States, where more than 6.6 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19. India's health ministry has attributed the surge in infections to increased testing. The country is conducting more than one million COVID-19 tests per day.The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has surpassed 30 million worldwide.There are 30,019,763 cases globally as of Thursday evening, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The total number of cases has doubled in the two months since July 22, when the globe crossed the 15 million mark, based on the university's tally. It took about six months to reach 15 million cases from the time the pandemic began near the start of the year. The United States has the highest number of COVID-19 cases, followed by India.
Singapore grapples with coronavirus in migrant workers' dormitories (Reuters) - Singapore is battling new clusters of coronavirus infections in migrant dormitories that had won the all-clear from authorities, highlighting the difficulty of stamping out the disease, even in a closely monitored population. As the wealthy city-state tumbled into recession, officials facing intense pressure to revive the economy are opting for limited isolation measures rather than the wide clampdowns earlier, but most low-wage workers are still penned in. “There is little choice,” said Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious diseases expert at the city’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital. “We need to be realistic. We need the economy to go on.” The dormitories, home to more than 300,000 workers in industries such as construction and shipbuilding, with several allocated to a room, contribute nearly 95% of Singapore’s tally of more than 57,000 infections. When authorities uncovered the virus raging through the dormitories they sealed off their occupants, launched vigorous testing and ordered a nationwide lockdown. Still, an average of 45 daily new infections has shown up there since authorities declared last month that all residents had recovered or been shown by testing to be virus-free. Outside, the daily average is just two local cases. “It points out just the difficulty in smothering this virus,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota, who tracked Singapore’s campaign.
Czech Republic Suffers Another Record Jump In COVID-19 Cases As Florida Deaths Drop To Just 8 - During our coverage of the resurgent coronavirus outbreak that's spreading across the EU, and outside it as well, we warned yesterday that Central and Eastern Europe have seen record numbers emerge in a handful of countries in the area, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Austria and elsewhere.That trend became even more pronounced on Sunday, as the Czech Republic reported its latest in a series of record increases. Local health officials reported 1,541 new cases, bringing the country's tally to a new total for a third-straight day. It was also the fifth day in a row with new infections above 1,000 for the country of 10.7 million, which is experiencing one of the fastest rates of infection in the entire EU. Nearby Austria is also experiencing the start of a second wave of coronavirus infections, as Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has warned, and on Sunday, officials reported 869 new cases, the highest daily tally since March. Kurz has warned that tough months may lie ahead as Europe battles its latest surge. India, meanwhile, just registered a single-day spike of 94,372 new confirmed coronavirus cases, driving the country's overall tally to 4.75 million. Indian Ministry of Health officials counted 1,114 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the country's death toll to 78,586. While India continues to lead the world in the pace of new infections, Al Jazeera points out that the country has also seen a surge in recoveries.Circling back to Europe, Italy's health ministry reported 1,501 new coronavirus cases and six more deaths, bringing the total number of cases to more than 286,000 and at least 35,603 deaths, as of Sunday. Infections have been climbing steadily for the past six weeks, with traveling Italians returning home being once again blamed for the outbreak. According to the ministry, the number of patients in intensive care is also rising, with the total rising to 182 from 121.According to the ministry data, infections have been steadily increasing for the past six weeks, mostly among Italians returning from vacation. The number of people in intensive care has also increased from 121 to 182 in recent weeks, as Italy has seen the number of new cases being reported steadily climb over the last 6 weeks.In Asia, Chinese officials celebrated as Wuhan - the global epicenter of the virus - reportedly has seen domestic air travel return to its pre-pandemic levels. In South Korea, officials elaxed social-distancing rules in the Seoul area amid a drop in cases. Thailand, meanwhile, has tightened border controls to stop the virus spreading from other countries.Finally, in the US, the CEO of Pfizer said in an interview that a vaccine should be ready by the end of the year, while Florida reported eight new resident deaths, its lowest tally since June 15. That compares with 98 deaths among residents the prior day and a daily average of 107 for the seven preceding days. The state also reported 2,423 new cases, a 0.4% increase, bringing its total to 663,994, in line with its recent average.As of Sunday, more than 4.93 million Floridians have been tested for COVID-19 statewide for an overall positivity rate of 13.47%, state data show. Fewer than 3,000 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 statewide, with 2,635 the exact total.
Madrid residents facing localised lockdown doubt curbs will work (Reuters) - A partial lockdown aimed at stemming a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases is set to begin in some of Madrid’s poorer districts next week, but resident’s of one of the worst-hit neighbourhood’s said on Saturday they doubted the new measures would work. Vallecas, a southern district with a lower average income and higher immigrant population, has one of the highest infection rates in the Spanish capital - almost six times higher than in Chamberi, a wealthier, northern district.“These restrictions are completely useless because we have to travel from one area which has a lot of cases to another which has less and we are going to spread it,” said Feli, 48, a civil servant who lives in Vallecas.Under the restrictions, announced by Madrid’s regional government on Friday, movement between and within six districts that are home to about 850,000 people will be restricted from Monday, but people will still be able to go to work.Regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso said the areas had been chosen because contagion levels there exceeded 1,000 per 100,000 people. Police would be deployed to enforce the lockdown, authorities said on Saturday.“People are not going to obey because many people do not even have a bank book. If they fine them, how are they going to get the money?” said Lola, 56, a cleaner. Mercedes, 45, a teacher, backed the measures but said poverty was more dangerous than COVID-19.
UK records 4,422 new daily cases; Poland reports record rise - as it happened - Here the latest key developments at a glance:
- France reported 13,498 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday, setting another record in daily additional infectionssince the disease started to spread in the country.
- The UK reported 4,422 new daily cases of coronavirus on Saturday, 100 more new cases than on Friday and the highest daily total since 8 May.
- The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has warned that the English capital needs fresh Covid restrictions by Monday if it is to avoid a big spike in infections, as doctors are urging the government to introduce stronger coronavirus measures in England to drive down case numbers and avoid another national lockdown.
- Brazil recorded 33,057 additional confirmed cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 739 deaths from the disease.
- The World Health Organization has endorsed a protocol for testing African herbal medicines as potential treatments for coronavirus and other epidemics.
- The Philippines reported 3,962 new coronavirus infections and 100 additional deaths, with both numbers the highest in five days.
- Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, is cracking down on private social gatherings as coronavirus cases surge.
- After Poland reported record daily new coronavirus cases on Saturday, neighbouring Lithuania and Slovakia also logged their largest daily tallies since the pandemic began.
- A partial lockdown is set to begin in some of Madrid’s poorer districts next week, but residents of one of the worst-hit neighbourhood’s said today they doubted the new measures would work.
The Rise of Ultra-Processed Foods and Why They’re Really Bad for Our Health - Many traditional foods used in cooking today are processed in some way, such as grains, cheeses, dried fish and fermented vegetables. Processing itself is not the problem.Only much more recently has a different type of food processing emerged: one that is more extensive, and uses new chemical and physical techniques. This is called ultra-processing, and the resulting products ultra-processed foods.To make these foods, cheap ingredients such as starches, vegetable oils and sugars, are combined with cosmetic additives like colours, flavours and emulsifiers. Think sugary drinks, confectionery, mass-produced breads, snack foods, sweetened dairy products and frozen desserts.Unfortunately, these foods are terrible for our health. And we’re eating more of them than ever before, partially because of aggressive marketing and lobbying by “Big Food”.So concludes our recent literature review. We found that more ultra-processed foods in the diet associates with higher risks of obesity, heart disease and stroke, type-2 diabetes, cancer, frailty, depression and death.These harms can be caused by the foods’ poor nutritional profile, as many are high in added sugars, salt and trans-fats. Also, if you tend to eat more ultra-processed foods, it means you probably eat fewer fresh and less-processed foods.Industrial processing itself can also be harmful. For example, certain food additives can disrupt our gut bacteria and trigger inflammation, while plasticisers in packaging can interfere with our hormonal system.Certain features of ultra-processed foods also promote over-consumption. Product flavours, aromas and mouthfeel are designed to make these foods ultra-tasty, and perhaps even addictive. Ultra-processed foods also harm the environment. For example, food packaging generates much of the plastic waste that enters marine ecosystems.
Toxic metals can affect student health performance, say scientists from RUDN university - A group of medical and environmental researchers from RUDN University evaluated the level of heavy metals in the organism of first-year university students from different countries of the world. The results of the screening helped the scientists to reveal a relationship between a region of residence and the level of toxic metal in organism. According to their opinion, increased heavy metal levels in the organism of students from Africa and Latin America can have a negative impact on their health and performance. The results of the study were published in theEnvironmental Science and PollutionResearch journal. The group of heavy metals contains over 40 elements, the most poisonous of which are cadmium, lead, mercury, arsenic and nickel. The main source of heavy metals is industrial facilities: lead is used to produce batteries and electric cables, cadmium is an element of anti-corrosive coatings and electrodes, and semiconductor materials called arsenides are based on arsenic. Heavy metal compounds pollute water, soil, and air and from there get into the human body. RUDN medics and ecologists studied the concentration of heavy metals in the hair and urine of students from 48 countries and analyzed the effect of pollution on their health. The highest levels of cadmium and lead were found in the samples taken from African and Latin American students. The latter also had the highest concentration of mercury in their hair. As for urine samples, Middle Eastern and Latin American students had the highest mercury levels, and African students - the highest levels of lead. According to the researchers' opinion, it might be due to the fact that Latin American countries are largely involved in electronic waste processing and artisanal gold mining, while a lot of heavy industrial facilities are located in the Middle East."High levels of heavy metals induce toxic effects and interfere with adaptive reactions. In addition to the high levels of psychological stress that foreign students live under, increased heavy metal exposure may result in higher incidence of diseases in their first-year of studies. In the future, we plan to evaluate the effect of heavy metals on the health and performance of RUDN University students,"
China Slaps German Pork With Export Ban As African Swine Fever Infects First Wild Boar - Coronavirus continues raging all over the world right now, making headlines in India, Europe, South and North America, and Australia. At this point, the global virus pandemic shows no signs of abating as the Northern Hemisphere summer is coming to an end in the coming weeks, just as the flu season approaches. Meanwhile, African swine fever is hitting the news again, this time in Europe, as the first wild boar just tested positive. The development of "pig ebola" in Germany prompted China to ban imports from the European country on Saturday, reported Reuters. The ban comes as China's pig farms were devastated by the African swine fever as there is no vaccine nor treatment, which means once it hits a farm, the only thing that can be done is to conduct mass cullings so that it won't spread elsewhere. We noted, in late 2019, at least half of China's breeding pigs died or were slaughtered to mitigate the spread of the disease. The decimation of China's pig herd resulted in hyperinflation of pork prices - and to this day, prices remain elevated. The ban on all pork-based products from Germany is another blow to China and could send prices even higher. The reason is the European country supplies at least 14% off China's pork imports, which may end up pushing demand for US and South American pork. Here are the China pork imports from top suppliers (via Refinitiv data): The ban, effective from Friday (Sept. 11), was put in place by China's General Administration of Customs, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Here is what they said: "All pigs, wild boars, and their products from Germany shipped from the date of this announcement shall be returned or destroyed." DW News confirmed Germany's Food and Agriculture Ministry has been notified about the trade halt. German officials have been in talks with their Chinese counterparts this weekend, in attempt to resolve the matter. There are attempts to limit the ban to certain areas in the country as the disease does not appear widespread, yet. Reuters notes the ban comes "two days before Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a meeting via video link with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union leaders."
Another famine coming? China struggles to meet basic food demands --The Yangtze River basin, which accounts for 70 percent of China’s rice production, has seen the worst floods since 1939, damaging millions of acres of cropland. According to the China Meteorological Administration, the country has experienced a 20 percent increase in heavy rainfall since 1961, taking the water level of more than 400 rivers above the flood control line, with 33 of them reaching record highs. The heavy rain has ravaged vast swaths of industrial and agricultural land, and experts warn the worst may be yet to come. Soaring prices of agricultural products are stoking food-security jitters in China. According to the China’s National Bureau of Statistics, food prices went up by 13 percent in July, compared to the previous July; the price of pork rose about 85 percent. On a year-on-year basis, food prices have increased by 10 percent in 2020 — the price of corn is 20 percent higher and the price of soybeans, 30 percent.According to global financial group Nomura, China’s agricultural GDP could fall by nearly a percentage point in the July-September quarter, rendering losses of $1.7 billion (USD) in the agriculture output. Chinese brokerage firm Shenwan Hongyuan has anticipated that China could lose 11.2 million tons of grains this year, compared to last year. Although Xi claimed that the country’s grain output increased this year, imports of grains have gone up almost 22 percent, to 74 million tons in the first half of this year. Imports of wheat went up by a whopping 197 percent during the period.This has forced Beijing to release 62.5 tons of rice, 50 tons of corn, and 760,000 tons of soybeans from its strategic reserve — the amount is significantly higher than last year. Insect infestations also have caused great damage to China’s food sector. An invasion of fall armyworms and locusts devoured millions of acres of wheat and corn crops this year. African swine fever has forced authorities to kill more than 180 million pigs, or about 40 percent of China’s swine population, causing prices to soar. Imports of meat have jumped significantly in just one year. The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia are among the top exporters of agriculture commodities to China. Despite its dispute over tariffs with the U.S., China still remains heavily dependent on the United States to meet its food demand. China’sagricultural imports in 2019 were pegged at $13.8 billion (USD), up from $9.1 billion in 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even during the first quarter of 2020, China imported farm products from the U.S. worth $5.08 billion, while its exports dropped by 17.2 percent in January and February and 6.6 percent in March.
Hundreds of Americans Planted 'Chinese Mystery Seeds' - In late July, America was briefly enthralled with “Unsolicited Seeds from China,” which started showing up in mailboxes in all 50 states. These mystery seeds prompted warnings from the USDA, which said people should not plant them, and should instead alert their state agricultural authority and mail them to the USDA or their local officials. Many Americans heeded this advice. Many more decidedly did not. According to documents obtained by Motherboard from state departments of agriculture, at least hundreds, perhaps thousands of Americans planted the seeds. Since the seed story originally broke, I have been obsessed with learning more. To do this, I filed 52 freedom of information requests; one with each of the departments of agriculture (or their state-level equivalent) in all 50 states plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico. I also filed requests with the USDA and several of its labs. Thousands of pages of emails, spreadsheets, reports, and documents, as well as audio voicemail recordings, have been trickling in for the last month, and they have been enlightening in many ways. Based on documents I’ve read, the scale of the mystery seed operation was much larger than I had originally suspected and than was originally reported. Conservatively, it is safe to say that tens of thousands of Americans received what they perceived to be Chinese mystery seeds in July. Some states, like North Carolina, had more than 1,000 people contact the department of agriculture having received unsolicited seeds. Others, like New Mexico, had roughly 100 recorded seed receivers. Many of these seed receivers, regardless of location, panicked. . Some people ate the seeds, according to the documents. Some people called 911. Emergency meetings and calls were held. The USDA’s Smuggling Interdiction and Trade Compliance group (SITC), Customs and Border Protection, and the FBI began investigating. In the initial days of this mystery, the agricultural departments of many states were overwhelmed with emails and calls from residents who were unsure of what they’d gotten in the mail and what they should do with the seeds. “Our call center was completely overwhelmed with calls,” Brad Deacon, director of the office of legal affairs for Michigan’s Department of Agriculture, said. “There were 5-600 Facebook posts, direct messages …” “People were planting them and have planted them,” Jennifer Holton, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, told Motherboard in a phone call. “Our plant person was not able to keep up with the calls.” According to a spreadsheet compiled by Michigan, 677 people filed official complaints with the state about the receipt of unsolicited seeds; 30 reported planting them. “I planted them in my hydroponic system in my home, I thought they were the strawberry seeds I ordered from Amazon. They turned Black and green mold, so I threw them away,” one person wrote. “If I had known these seeds were going to originate from China, I would not have purchased them from Amazon. I am still waiting on at least 4 other orders of seeds. Will burn them if they come.”
World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature – UN report - The world has failed to meet a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems in the last decade, according to a devastating new report from the UN on the state of nature.From tackling pollution to protecting coral reefs, the international community did not fully achieve any of the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets agreed in Japan in 2010 to slow the loss of the natural world. It is the second consecutive decade that governments have failed to meet targets.The Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, published before a key UN summit on the issue later this month, found that despite progress in some areas, natural habitats have continued to disappear, vast numbers of species remain threatened by extinction from human activities, and $500bn (£388bn) of environmentally damaging government subsidies have not been eliminated.Six targets have been partially achieved, including those on protected areas and invasive species. While governments did not manage to protect 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of marine habitats, 44% of vital biodiverse areas are now under protection, an increase from 29% in 2000. About 200 successful eradications of invasive species on islands have also taken place.The UN said the natural world was deteriorating and failure to act could undermine the goals of the Paris agreement on the climate crisis and thesustainable development goals.The UN’s biodiversity head, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, said humanity was at a crossroads that would decide how future generations experience the natural world.“Earth’s living systems as a whole are being compromised. And the more humanity exploits nature in unsustainable ways and undermines its contributions to people, the more we undermine our own wellbeing, security and prosperity,” she said.The report is the third in a week to highlight the devastating state of the planet. The WWF and Zoological Society of London (ZSL)’s Living Planet Report 2020said global wildlife populations were in freefall, plunging by two-thirds, because of human overconsumption, population growth and intensive agriculture. On Monday, the RSPB said the UK had failed to reach 17 of the Aichi targets and that the gap between rhetoric and reality had resulted in a“lost decade for nature”.
Avian botulism kills 40,000 birds, threatens millions more in Klamath Refuge — The worst outbreak of avian botulism in 40 years at the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge has killed more than 40,000 waterfowl and shorebirds, biologists say. The outbreak is a product of sustained hot weather, warm water, receding wetlands from lack of freshwater and crowding. “This has turned out to be a really bad year for botulism,” said John Vradenburg, supervisory biologist for the refuge. “Every wetland in the basin is dealing with some level of botulism outbreak.” Amid the epidemic, with three airboats, crews have rescued more than 2,000 birds for rehabilitation and release. Vradenburg said it will take consecutive freezing nights to quell the bacteria, and hopes cold weather arrives soon, as it often does here in early September. Avian botulism does not affect humans, but it can paralyze waterfowl such as ducks and geese, and shorebirds such as stilts and grebes. It is a bacteria that lives in the soil, where sustained warm weather, receding water and decaying vegetation can cause a flare up. Birds can be infected through their food, and it can be spread by birds that have died from the disease and have become infested with maggots, which other birds might eat. The outbreak ignited in late July, just as many waterfowl started molting — shedding and then replacing their feathers — and for a month, lost the ability to fly to clean water. Additionally, some 50,000 ducklings hatched during summer and are unable to fly for about two months. “If the ducks can’t fly, they can be stuck in a contaminated area,” Vradenburg said.
Hundreds of Thousands of Migratory Birds 'Falling Out of the Sky' in the Southwest - The American Southwest is witnessing a horrific and inexplicable phenomenon: hundreds of thousands of migratory birds are dying off. The birds seem to be just "falling out of the sky," as The Guardian reported.An eerie scene was captured on video and posted to the Las Cruces-Sun News in New Mexico. Journalist Austin Fisher was out on a hike on Sunday when he encountered a trail of dead birds. The New Mexico Game & Fish department has been inundated with calls from residents concerned about all the dead birds they are seeing. "We started receiving calls a week ago on Tuesday the eighth and they haven't really stopped since then from all across the state," said Game & Fish Department spokeswoman Tristanna Bickford, as The Santa Fe New Mexican reported. "We can't say any official cause at this time. That would be pure speculation." The die-off isn't just happening in New Mexico. According to The Guardian, clusters of various dead birds, including flycatchers, swallows, bluebirds, blackbirds, sparrows and warblers have been spotted in Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. "It's just terrible," said Martha Desmond, a professor at the New Mexico State University's department of fish, wildlife and conservation ecology, to CNN. "The number is in the six figures. Just by looking at the scope of what we're seeing, we know this is a very large event, hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of dead birds, and we're looking at the higher end of that." "To see this and to be picking up these carcasses and realizing how widespread this is, is personally devastating. To see this many individuals and species dying is a national tragedy." While the New Mexico Game & Fish Department started receiving calls on Sept. 8, Desmond's timeline goes back to Aug. 20 when a large number of dead birds were spotted at the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range and White Sands National Monument. "On the missile range we might in a week find, get a report of, less than half a dozen birds," Trish Butler, a biologist at the range, told KOB, the NBC News affiliate in Albuquerque. "This last week we've had a couple hundred, so that really got our attention." According to NBC News, why exactly the mass die-off is happening is a mystery. Desmond suggested that a cold front that hit New Mexico or a recent drought might play a part. She added that the wildfires burning across the west may be a factor. "There may have been some damage to these birds in their lungs. It may have pushed them out early when they weren't ready to migrate," she said to NBC News. Besides the smoke damaging their lungs, it is possible that the wildfires forced the birds to change their pattern away from resource-rich coastal areas to a desert where the food and water they need to refuel are much more difficult to find, according to The Guardian. In other words, they may be starving, dehydrated and exhausted.
Hundreds of thousands of migratory birds dead in one of the Southwest's largest bird die-offs on record, U.S. - Mystery ensues across New Mexico as hundreds of thousands of migratory birds have been found dead across the state in one of the Southwest's largest bird die-offs in recent memory. Scientists are examining the reason behind the alarming event, looking at possible factors such as the wildfires on the West Coast, the cold snap in the Mountain West, or the drought in the Southwest. "It's just terrible," said Professor Martha Desmond from the New Mexico State University, noting that the figures are larger than ever seen before. "The number is in the six figures. Just by looking at the scope of what we're seeing, we know this is a very large event, hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of dead birds, and we're looking at the higher end of that."The mysterious deaths began around August 20, when a large number of dead birds were discovered at the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range and White Sands National Monument. Scientists initially believed that it was an isolated incident, but it turned out to be a bigger problem when hundreds more dead birds were seen in other regions across the state, including Doña Ana County, Jemez Pueblo, Roswell, and Socorro. Residents reported seeing birds behaving unusually prior to their deaths. For instance, birds that are commonly seen in trees and shrubs have been found on the ground chasing bugs. Many birds appeared lethargic and unresponsive while on the ground until they get hit by cars. Desmond, along with other biologists from White Sands Missile Range, started identifying, cataloging, and analyzing around 300 dead birds to learn more about their condition when they died. Among the species of dead migratory birds found were warblers, sparrows, bluebirds, blackbirds, the western wood pewee, and flycatchers. Some were also found in Colorado, Texas, and Mexico. One of the factors being considered by biologists is the wildfires on the West Coast, which may have forced the birds to migrate earlier. "Birds who migrated before they were ready because of the weather might have not had enough fat to survive," Desmond explained. "Some birds might have not even had the reserves to start migrating so they died in place." She added, "We began seeing isolated mortalities in August, so something else has been going on aside the weather events and we don't know what it is. So that in itself is really troubling."Some of the birds will be examined at the US Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory in Oregon to identify their exact cause of death, but it would take some time to get the results. Desmond remarked that climate change played a role in mass deaths. "This is devastating," she continued, "We lost three billion birds in the U.S. since 1970, and we've also seen a tremendous decline in insects, so an event like this is terrifying to these populations and it's devastating to see."
Painting one turbine blade black reduces bird fatalities by 72%, says study - Scientists in Norway have found that painting one of the three blades on a wind turbine black reduces avian deaths by 72%. If this “contrast painting” were to be implemented at new onshore and offshore wind farms, it could reduce public opposition, speed up permitting processes and enable wind farms to be built at sites previously thought to be too problematic, they write in a scientific paper. The study by researchers at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research examined bird death data collected between 2006 and the end of 2016 at Statkraft’s 152.4MW Smøla wind farm on the bird-rich island of the same name off Norway’s west coast. Four turbines at the Smøla project had a single blade painted black in August 2013, so avian fatalities were recorded for seven-and-a-half years before the painting and three-and-a-half years afterwards. Trained sniffer dogs were used to find bird carcasses and feathers at the bottom of turbines at the wind farm, with dead birds found by wind farm personnel and passers-by also recorded. The data showed that there was “an average 71.9% reduction in the annual fatality rate after painting at the painted turbines relative to the control [ie, unpainted] turbines”. In the paper, the scientists explain why birds are susceptible to flying into rotating turbine blades and why a single black blade helps them to perceive the rotor as an obstacle. “Relative to humans, birds have a narrow binocular [eg, using both eyes to focus on one object] frontal field of view and likely use their monocular [using each eye independently] and high‐resolution lateral fields of view [ie, having eyes on opposite sides of their heads] for detecting predators, conspecifics [ie, birds of the same species], and prey,” the authors write. “Within an assumed open airspace, birds may therefore not always perceive obstructions ahead, thereby enhancing the risk of collision. To reduce collision susceptibility, provision of ‘passive’ visual cues may enhance the visibility of the rotor blades, enabling birds to take evasive action in due time.”
EPA, in limiting guidance, undermines past administration policy, critics say - The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday finalized a rule that gives the public the ability to weigh in on guidance documents from the agency that further outline how it is implementing various rules — something critics say is a new avenue for gutting the work of prior administrations. It’s the latest move from the agency to limit guidance documents, which the Trump administration fought with an executive order last October, arguing they can be an end-run around the rulemaking process that allow agency heads to push ahead policy decisions without going through the lengthy formal process. “This rule sheds light on guidance document development and provides for public participation in the process for the first time,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said while announcing the new rule at a Federalist Society event. He called the new rule a transparency measure that is “probably the biggest change in a generation” for how the agency conducts its administrative procedures. Critics, however, see the measure as one that could give industry groups more avenues to challenge policies they don’t like. Guidance documents, though technical in nature, can fill in gaps for those regulated by EPA, giving more specific advice on how a regulation will be implemented and what is expected of industry and others. The EPA has already withdrawn more than 1,000 guidance documents from prior administrations, but the new rule tees them up for removing even more. The rule requires the EPA to respond to requests to withdraw a guidance within 90 days, an unusual case of an agency — rather than Congress — imposing a legally enforceable deadline. “While it could have benefits for the public seeking to withdraw harmful EPA guidance, it’s far more likely to be used and abused by industry seeking to disrupt and worsen a regulatory system that has relied upon guidance for decades,” John Walke, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said when the rule was first proposed in May. “EPA is establishing a process where industry could drag EPA and all EPA regulations into court for new opportunities to challenge those rules.” Jeff Holmstead, a former deputy administrator at the EPA under the George W. Bush administration who emceed the Federalist Society event, also questioned Wheeler on whether the new rule would leave the agency tied up in court. “Maybe it's because I'm a lawyer, I think of bringing lawsuits, but I assume that if EPA doesn't follow that [90-day deadline] regulation then someone could attempt to bring a lawsuit,” he said, adding that the EPA could be “inundated with petitions.”
EPA postpones speaker series on racism after White House order - EPA this week postponed an internal speaker series on environmental problems faced by racial minorities and low-income communities after the White House issued a government wide order for agencies to stop certain “un-American” race-related training.The move comes as many Democrats — including presidential candidate Joe Biden — have used broader racial tensions in the U.S. to highlight the heightened risks that pollution and environmental threats pose to communities of color, indigenous peoples and low-income areas. EPA’s postponement of the "environmental justice" series was because of a Sept. 4 memo from the Office of Management and Budget that cited a directive from President Donald Trump for agencies to halt any “divisive, un-American propaganda training session.”That includes anything “that teaches, trains or suggests the following: (1) virtually all White people contribute to racism or benefit from racism (2) critical race theory (3) white privilege (4) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country (5) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil (6) Anti-American propaganda.” POLITICO first reported last week that the Education Department is conducting a broad review of training materials, workshops and even employee book clubs pursuant to the OMB memo.It also follows EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s vow during a recent speech at the Nixon Library in California to heighten EPA’s focus on environmental justice in a second Trump term. Wheeler's call for action would include greater coordination between EPA's air, land and water offices to provide communities with a more holistic approach to environmental protection. The Trump administration’s budgets have routinely called for slashing EPA’s environmental justice spending; this year's proposal sought to cut $4.8 million of EPA's $9.5 million environmental justice enforcement budget. The hourlong EPA event, which was to have been held virtually on Tuesday afternoon, was part of a speaker series open to all EPA staff on "Structural Racism and Environmental Justice." The series aimed to highlight "how addressing structural racism is indeed highly relevant to EPA’s mission and key to advancing the integration of EJ. The series will feature groundbreaking cutting-edge work in ways to better advance EJ by addressing structural racism."
How conservative ideology could hamstring enforcement -- Monday, September 14, 2020 -- A White House memo intended to rein in federal enforcement reflects ideas offered by far-right groups, which are often skeptical of mainstream climate science. The memo from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs directs federal enforcement officers to follow a series of protocols — including requiring "Officers of the United States," likely political appointees, to sign off on some administrative enforcement actions, a move critics called problematic for an administration filled with former industry executives (Greenwire, Sept. 1). "The whole thing is suspect," "It could throw a lot of sand in enforcement gears." The memo, dated Aug. 31, stems from a May executive order calling for reduced regulations to boost an economy shattered by the pandemic (E&E News PM, May 19). That order followed one from last fall meant to protect Americans from a "secretive" bureaucracy (E&E News PM, Oct. 9, 2019). Proponents say the new memo increases government accountability. But critics say it reads like a corporate defense attorney's wish list. "The memo's tone is one that seems to presume bad faith and lack of integrity on the part of agency enforcement personnel and agency adjudicators," environmental law professor Robert Glicksman wrote in an email. He pointed to the terms "improper government coercion" and "retaliatory or punitive motives or the desire to compel capitulation." Glicksman said, "'Compel capitulation?' Really? Due process demands a decision by a neutral agency adjudicator." The Supreme Court has enunciated that agency adjudicators are neutral, he added. "This memo appears to reverse that presumption.," he said. The memo — written by OIRA chief Paul Ray — reinforces the continuing influence of conservative ideology in U.S. government policy. It contains ideas long pushed by the Federalist Society, and some of the language appears to be lifted from previous comments submitted by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which at its core believes "the administrative state is a threat to our civil liberties." Jeffrey Wood, who headed the Justice Department's environment division in an acting capacity in 2017 and 2018, generally expressed support, noting the memo's inclusion of the principle of lenity, or the practice of applying any ambiguous statute in a light that is favorable to the defendant. He also welcomed more political accountability. "This will place pressure on the agencies to either fish or cut bait when it comes to bringing enforcement cases," Another provision would prevent government enforcement agents from pursuing additional inspections of suspected polluters that are outside the specific violation that is alleged. And agents would be required to present all the incriminating evidence to an alleged offender as in criminal cases.
How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled - Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. for buyers. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. She sends the soda bottles to the state. But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn't want to hear it."I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage," she says, "and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You're lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It's gold. This is valuable."But it's not valuable, and it never has been. And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true.
Death toll from wildfires reaches 33 on the West Coast — Nearly all of the dozens of people reported missing after a devastating blaze in southern Oregon have been accounted for, authorities said, as crews continued to battle wildfires that have killed at least 33 victims from California to Washington state. The flames have destroyed neighborhoods, leaving a barren, gray landscape in their wake, driven tens of thousands of people from their homes and cast a shroud of smoke over the region. The crisis has come amid the coronavirus outbreak, the economic downturn and nationwide racial unrest that has led to protests in Portland for more than 100 days. “What’s next?” asked Danielle Oliver, who had to flee her home outside Portland. “You have the protests, coronavirus pandemic, now the wildfires. What else can go wrong?” Late Saturday, the Jackson County Sheriff’s office said that four people had died in the wildfire that burned in the Ashland area. Authorities earlier this week said as many as 50 people could be missing from the blaze. But they said the number of people unaccounted for is now down to one. At least 10 people have been killed in the past week throughout Oregon. Officials have said more people are missing from other blazes, and the number of fatalities is likely to rise. Twenty-two people have died in California, and one person has been killed in Washington state. Among the people killed was Millicent Catarancuic, who was found near her car at her five-acre home in Berry Creek, California. At one point she was ready to evacuate with her dogs and cats in the car. But she changed her mind as the winds seemed to calm and the flames stayed away. Then the fire changed direction, rushing onto the property too quickly for her to leave. She died, along with her animals. Fire-charred landscapes looked like bombed-out cities in Europe after World War II, with buildings reduced to charred rubble piled atop blackened earth. People caught in the wildfires died in an instant, overcome by flames or smoke as they desperately tried to escape..
Millions in the US choke on hazardous air as West Coast fires continue to rage --As fires continue to rage across the West Coast of the United States, millions of people have suffered from the destruction of their homes, the deaths of loved ones and animals, mass evacuation, and the health risks posed by hazardous air quality. The 2020 fire season has quickly spiraled into a social and environmental catastrophe, far surpassing California’s last historic Camp Fire in 2018.Roughly 100 large fires, some of which have merged into massive complexes, have broken historical records as 3.4 million acres have burned in California, joined by over one million acres in Oregon and over 600,000 acres in Washington.Experts can only describe the fires as “unprecedented” in their size, speed, and destruction. To give a sense of the nature of these flames, 900,000 acres burned in a single 72-hour period in Oregon alone.Thirty-three confirmed deaths have been counted as of Sunday, including a one-year-old boy in Renton, Washington. Dozens were missing in Oregon over the weekend, with rescue crews working to identify them.Further, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, sometimes scrambling in a matter of minutes as flames quickly approach their neighborhoods. About 12 percent of the Oregon state population, or more than 500,000 people, were given varying degrees of evacuation alerts for the weekend. “We didn't know what to grab. We didn’t pack. Who knows what to do when you're going through this?” Nailah Garner told KOMO News regarding her husband’s and her experience fleeing their home in a small forested town of Vida, Oregon. After the fires swept through the area and she returned to the apocalyptic scenes, Garner commented, “It's all gone, and it looks like a war zone hit it.” Many have sought refuge with family members or friends who lived in less risky areas, soon after being forced to pack up again and travel further as evacuation orders expanded. Others have traveled to evacuation sites that were hastily set up at churches, schools, fairgrounds, and event centers. The Oregon State Fairgrounds is currently housing 500 animals and 1,500 families.
Massive Wildfires in the West: Who Could’ve Guessed? - Menzie Chinn - Sixteen years ago, the G.W. Bush White House suppressed for four years this report on global climate change impacts, which discussed, among other things, the increased prevalence of wildfires. This was discussed in this post, entitled “What the Administration Considered Too Dangerous to Release for Four Years”. And released only under threat of a court order: “Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States” (summary). From Reuters: (Reuters) – The Bush administration released a climate change assessment on Thursday — four years late and pushed forward by a court order — that said human-induced global warming will likely lead to problems like droughts in the U.S. West and stronger hurricanes. This is an encouraging development for those who believe knowledge-based policymaking is a good idea. Some day, I might even see this White House admit that mercury is toxic, and we are not on the right hand side of the Laffer Curve. But one day at a time.Here’s the entire report (large PDF). The still-operational link to the report is here. Just a reminder that the anti-science faction has dominated the Republican party for a very long time…I just couldn’t have imagined how much worse the anti-science tendencies would become.
Opinion: Trump refuses to do anything about climate change, even as California and the West burn - Los Angeles Times Editorial Board - President Trump arrived in California Monday to offer his own assessment of the wildfires that have left vast swaths of the West charred and smoky. It’s not climate change driving the ever worsening fires, in the president’s view. It’s the exploding trees. And all those dried leaves piled up on the ground. If California would just clean up its messes and do more forest management, Trump suggested, the problem could be solved.If only it were that easy.Yes, California and other Western states could be doing a lot more to make forestsmore resilient to wildfires. But as Gov. Gavin Newsom pointed out, the federal government owns 57% of the forest land in California. The state owns just 3% and the rest is in private hands.Despite that lopsided ownership ratio, California spends five to six times more than the federal government does on fires and forestry in the state, according to a briefing Newsom gave to Trump. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spent $3 billion in 2018 on fire management. The U.S. Forest service budgeted $500 million for the state. So, yes, there does need to be a lot more forest management done — by the federal government, in partnership with the states and private land owners. None of this will be simple or fast. Decades of fire suppression by land managers and fire departments prevented the regular, low-level wildfires that once served as natural forest management. Returning the forests to better health will be labor intensive, time consuming and really expensive. Trump can talk about more effective forest management as much as he wants. It will come to pass only if he works with Congress to budget a lot more money for the U.S. Forest Service. It’s also worth remembering that some of the most destructive fires in recent years have been in the chaparral-covered hills, such as the Woolsey fire in Malibu. Forest management is important, but it’s not the one-size-fits-all solution to California’s worsening fire season. Beyond that, Trump’s myopic focus on forest management misses the big picture. Climate change is undeniably behind the worsening fires. The number of days with extreme wildfire weather in California has more than doubled since the early 1980s, primarily due to warming temperatures drying out vegetation, The Times reported. Wildfires have raged through geography usually considered at low risk of severe fire, such as the cool, damp coastal redwood forests near Santa Cruz. And all of this is happening now. Imagine how much worse it could get as the world continues to burn fossil fuels and warm the planet. We have a president who is not just pooh-poohing the threat, he’s exacerbating the problem by aggressively promoting the use of fossil fuels. In fact, when California’s Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot pressed Trump to not ignore the impact of climate change on the state’s wildfires, the president responded, “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.”
Oregon's Firefighting Helicopters Are Deployed in Afghanistan as the State Burns - Huge swaths of Oregon are on fire, and the state has evacuated 500,000 residents. Teams of firefighters are battling the blaze, but more than 900,000 acres of forest have already been lost to the fire. Key to the fight against a large wildfire like this are helicopters—Black Hawks and CH-47 Chinooks are critical for moving people and deploying water to help contain the blaze. The Oregon National Guard has four Black Hawks and six Chinooks, but the Chinooks aren’t available to fight the fire right now because they’ve been deployed to Afghanistan. In July, the National Guard published an article titled "Oregon National Guard members train to battle wildland fires." That article notes that the Oregon National Guard "has HH-60M Black Hawk helicopters and the newer F-Model CH-47 Chinook helicopters to support the Oregon Department of Forestry" in the fight against wildfires. These Chinooks were "equipped with water buckets" and deployed in 2018 to fight forest fires in the state. But the Chinooks are currently in Afghanistan, not helping Americans here at home. The Oregon National Guard sent 60 soldiers and six of its Chinooks to Afghanistan in May. “With the potential to drawn down troops, Chinooks are important for their heavy lift capabilities as they can carry equipment from one location to another efficiently,” Chinooks are workhorses. They’re popular in Afghanistan because much of the terrain is treacherous and high altitude. Moving at speeds up to 188 miles per hour, the Chinook can transport up to 44 people and carry a payload of 26,000 pounds. It’s also great at evacuating people from wildfire stricken areas and carrying bambi buckets to extinguish flames. Chinooks carry large bambi buckets capable of holding 2,000 gallons of water. The 18,000 pounds of water can cover 100 meters of forest. And at almost 200 miles per hour, the Chinooks can dump a lot of water very quickly. But Oregon doesn’t have its Chinooks because it sent them to Afghanistan in May, just months before the start of wildfire season. The Oregon National Guard is instead relying on six smaller Black Hawks and one UH-72 Lakota. Five of the Black Hawks are carrying bambi buckets while the other does search and rescue. The Black Hawks are faster but can only carry around 10 people and support a weight of 2,600 pounds. A Black Hawk’s bambi bucket only carries 600 gallons of water, significantly less than the 2,000 gallons of the Chinook.
West Coast fires and evacuations expected to fuel the spread of COVID-19 - At least 87 fires are still burning in 11 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In Oregon, at least 22 people are missing because of the wildfires, which have claimed 10 people in the state, including a 13-year-old and his grandmother. Officials fear more deaths will be confirmed in the coming days and have established a mobile medical examiner facility, essentially a mobile morgue, in Linn County east of Corvallis. A child was killed also in Washington state. In California, at least 24 people have died in the wildfires. The North Complex Fire alone has taken 15 lives, destroyed 723 structures and burned more than 260,000 acres across four counties. It is only 39 percent contained. Seven victims of the North Complex Fire have been identified by the Butte County Sheriff’s Office, ranging in age from 16 to 70. Firefighter Cody Carter battles the North Complex Fire in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on Monday, Sept. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) The August Complex Fire, which started last month, has burned more than 755,000 acres across Mendocino and Humboldt counties and is only 39 percent contained. The Creek Fire in Fresno County has now burned more than 220,000 acres and is 16 percent contained. The Dolan Fire, south of Big Sur, is only 40 percent contained and has burned almost 120,000 acres. Across Oregon and Washington, 28 large fires have burned over 1.5 million acres. The Beachie Creek Fire, east of Salem, reported no new growth from the previous day as officials are cautiously optimistic that expected precipitation can help firefighting efforts. Washington Governor Jay Inslee said that “virtually the entire state is covered by a cloud of smoke that’s unbelievably irritating, downright unhealthy and dangerous.” Many parts of the West Coast continue to have some of the worst air quality in the world, according to the air quality group IQAir. The fires are now so widespread that parts of the East Coast, including New York City and Washington, D.C., are now registering smoke from the infernos. There are now nine major wildfires burning across Washington state, with the two largest, the Pearl Hill and Cold Springs fires, burning more than 412,500 acres, according to the Washington Department of Natural Resources. As wildfires continue to spread throughout the Western United States, health officials are warning that COVID-19 will also infect evacuees at shelters and evacuations sites that are now dealing with two public health emergencies. Because the physical ailments associated with smoke inhalation are so similar to the symptoms associated with the virus, there is a growing concern that hospitals may be inundated with people suffering from both. Even worse, those at risk of contracting COVID-19 at an emergency shelter may forgo evacuating at all.
California Offers Path For Inmate Firefighters To Expunge Criminal Records - California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law legislation which would expunge criminal convictions for inmate firefighters so they can qualify for civilian firefighting jobs after their release from prison. "Inmates who have stood on the frontlines, battling historic fires should not be denied the right to later become a professional firefighter," Newsom, as he signed the law on Friday which allows prisoners to petition courts to expunge their convictions after receiving "valuable training and place themselves in danger assisting firefighters to defend the life and property of Californians."CA’s inmate firefighter program is decades-old and has long needed reform.Inmates who have stood on the frontlines, battling historic fires should not be denied the right to later become a professional firefighter.Today, I signed #AB2147 that will fix that. pic.twitter.com/15GJ7Gijt7 — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 11, 2020 The law would also allow inmate firefighters to qualify for paramedic certification, a requirement by civilian fire departments which prevents those with convictions from achieving."Rehabilitation without strategies to ensure the formerly incarcerated have a career is a pathway to recidivism," said Democratic Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, who added "We must get serious about providing pathways for those that show the determination to turn their lives around."
Smoke from west coast wildfires has drifted to New York and Washington DC - Smoke from wildfires in the western US has drifted as far east as New York and Washington DC, with residents there observing hazy skies and unusual sunrises. Skies above the US capital have taken on a hazy din. New York Metro Weatherpredicted that murky air seen in New York City this week would become moreeven pronounced throughout Tuesday. Smoke from the fires has spread across the country and around the world, with reports of haze as far away as Canada and Europe, while images captured by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing smoke being pulled into a cyclone far out in the Pacific Ocean.The unprecedented wildfires, which have burned some 4.5m acres (1.8m hectares) as of Tuesday, have torn through towns in Oregon while also devouring forests in California, Washington and Idaho. The resulting blanket of ash and smoke has made the region’s hazardous air quality among the worst in the world.Hardest hit is Oregon, where tiny bits of smoke and ash known as particulates have reached the highest levels on record in Portland, Eugene, Bend, Medford and Klamath Falls, the state’s department of environmental quality said on Tuesday.Air quality in five major cities in Oregon was the worst on record as the state continues to be blanketed by thick smoke, state environmental officials said.Air this week in all five cities was rated “hazardous” according to air quality standards, and in Bend, the air quality index topped 500, exceeding the air quality scale altogether, the department said.In Seattle, a two-game series between the San Francisco Giants and Mariners in Seattle that was scheduled to start Tuesday was postponed due to air quality. The smoke prompted Alaska Airlines, along with its regional carrier Horizon Air, to suspend all flights in and out of Portland, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington, and several smaller airports until Tuesday afternoon.A growing body of research paints a bleak picture of the effects of wildfire smoke on the human body. “Wildfire smoke can affect the health almost immediately,” a study showing that, within an hour of fire smoke descending upon the Vancouver area during recent wildfire seasons, the number of ambulance calls for asthma, chronic lung disease and cardiac events increased by 10%.
CA Wildfires Emit Record Amounts Of Carbon Dioxide As Smoke Reaches NYC - Less than two weeks ago, an analysis by Carbon Brief showed that the COVID-19 pandemic was on track to cause the largest ever annual fall in global C02 emissions. Now, thanks to 'neglect and mismanagement,' California - and in fact much of the West Coast, is on fire and spewing record amounts of carbon dioxide, according to Bloomberg. So much, in fact, the smoke is reaching New York City. In some spots, the intensity of fires this year has been up to hundreds of times higher than the average from 2003 to 2019, according to a statement from Europe’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, which observes blazes and the resulting smoke from space. The thick layer of smoke from the fires has crossed the continental U.S., graying out New York skies, and the agency forecasts it will reach northern Europe later this week. –Bloomberg "The fact that these fires are emitting so much pollution into the atmosphere that we can still see thick smoke over 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) away reflects just how devastating they have been in their magnitude and duration," said Mark Parrington, CAMS senior scientist and wildfire expert. California fires have emitted an estimated 79.6 million metric tons of CO2 this year through September 14, while Oregon fires have produced 26.8 million metric tons, with Washington coming in third at 5.1 million metric tons, according to CAMS.In the entire US, wildfire emissions for 2020 have reached 200 million metric tons, some 28% higher than all of 2019. Comparatively speaking, however, the US emitted 4.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2019, while the entire world emitted 33.1 billion metric tons, according to the International Energy Agency.Still, it's difficult not to point out the irony of California - which has some of the harshest environmental restrictions in the country, has caused over 1/3 of America's C02 pollution YTD thanks in large part to their own mismanagement.
Satellites show smoke from US wildfires reaches Europe (AP) — Satellite images show that smoke from wildfires in the western United States has reached as far as Europe, scientists said Wednesday. Data collected by the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service found smoke from the fires had traveled 8,000 kilometers (almost 5,000 miles) through the atmosphere to Britain and other parts of northern Europe. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which operates some of the Copernicus satellite monitoring systems, said the fires in California, Oregon and Washington state have emitted an estimated 30.3 million metric tonnes (33.4 million tons) of carbon. AdChoices “The scale and magnitude of these fires are at a level much higher than in any of the 18 years that our monitoring data covers, since 2003," Mark Parrington, a senior scientist and wildfire expert at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said. Parrington said the smoke thickness from the fires, known as aerosol optical depth or AOD, was immense, according to satellite measurements. “We have seen that AOD levels have reached very high values of seven or above, which has been confirmed by independent ground-based measurement,” he said. “To put this into perspective, an AOD of one would already indicate a lot of aerosols in the atmosphere.”
Brazil’s Pantanal Wetland is On Fire, Joining Other Places Where Wildfires Rage or Have Recently Burned Out of Control - - Jerri-Lynn Scofield - The West Coast apocalypse has crowded out much discussion of other wildfires. And as the southern hemisphere moves into its summer season, Australia is bracing itself that it doesn’t repeat last season’s armageddon. But many people are not aware that Brazil’s Pantanal – the world’s largest wetland which is only one of the natural wonders of that country, is on fire and has been burning since July, joining the Amazon in flames. In Brazil, it’s not just the Amazon that is burning. The world’s largest wetland is on fire too. Over to Reuters: A fire has been burning since mid-July in the remote wetlands of west-central Brazil, leaving in its wake a vast charred desolation bigger than New York City. A team of veterinarians, biologists and local guides arrived in late August to prowl the bumpy dirt road known as the Trans-Pantanal Highway in pickup trucks, looking to save what injured animals they could. Jaguars were wandering the blackened wasteland, they said, starving or going thirsty, with paws burnt to the bone, lungs blackened by smoke. They saw bodies of alligator-like caiman, jaws frozen in silent screams, the last act of creatures desperate to cool off before being consumed by flames. This massive fire is one of thousands of blazes sweeping the Brazilian Pantanal – the world’s largest wetland – this year in what climate scientists fear could become a new normal, echoing the rise in climate-driven fires from California to Australia. The fires are now threatening one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, biologists say. The Pantanal is home to roughly 1,200 vertebrate animal species, including 36 that are threatened with extinction. Across this usually lush landscape of 150,000 square kilometers (57,915 square miles) in Brazil, rare birds flutter and the world’s densest population of jaguars roam.
Lightning strikes kill 42 people in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India(news video) - At least 42 people lost their lives in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India, after getting struck by lightning on September 15, 2020. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) warned of further rains in most parts of the country over the next three days. Lightning strikes killed 29 people and injured 11 others in various districts across Bihar, while 13 deaths were reported in Uttar Pradesh, bringing the toll to 42, according to media. Kaimur District in southern Bihar accounted for five deaths. Three each were reported in Rohtas, Bohjpur, and Gopalganj districts. 15 fatalities were reported in 10 other districts. The government said most of the victims were working in crop fields when they were hit by lightning. Governor Phagu Chauhan and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expressed grief and extended condolences over the loss of lives. Financial assistance of 400 000 rupees or around 5 400 dollars will be provided to the relatives of the deceased, Kumar announced, adding that those injured will also receive free treatment. Meanwhile, 13 people died in Uttar Pradesh after getting struck by lightning. Four fatalities were reported in Ghazipur, three in Kaushambi, two each in Kushinagar and Chitrakoot, and one each in Jaunpur and Chandauli.Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordered district officials to compensate the families of the victims with the same amount. IMD warned of more heavy rains over the next three days, but there will be no significant changes in the maximum and minimum temperatures.
Deadly flooding hits Praia after 3 months' worth of rain in just one day, Cabo Verde - Heavy rains triggered flash flooding in Praia, Cabo Verde, on Saturday, September 12, 2020, resulting in property damage in several districts and one casualty. The city recorded 80 mm (3 inches) of rain in a 24-hour period, which is nearly three times its average rain for the month of September. Flooding hit Praia and other parts of the Santiago Island, blocking major roads. The government reported damage in several districts, including Achada Mato, Fonton, Jamaica, and Sao Paulo, particularly to farmlands, cars, buildings, and bridges. The floods came after Praia received 80 mm (3 inches) of rain in 24 hours, which was three month's worth of rain. The average rainfall the city receives for the month of September is 29 mm (1.1 inches). The government reported at least one casualty, who was identified as a six-month-old infant. "The baby was swept away and died immediately," said Renaldo Rodrigues, the president of the West African country’s National Civil Protection Service. Cabo Verde’s Interior Minister Paulo Rocha said the government promptly held an emergency meeting on the same day to assess the damage. "After convening the Crisis Office yesterday morning, the Executive received the necessary information to set up an emergency program, which is primarily aimed at clearing the roads, cleaning and rebuilding the infrastructure that has been hit, particularly the walls and others."
Floods inundate Sudan amid escalating economic crisis - A month of torrential rains has brought record-breaking floods to Sudan, killing at least 100 people, injuring 46, and destroying more than 100,000 homes. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost everything they owned. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that more than 557,000 people had already been “affected” by this year’s floods. As Sudan’s rainy season lasts from June to October and always brings flooding—last year’s floods affected 400,000 people—the country is likely to face more rains and displacement. The OCHA warned that the humanitarian situation in Sudan is worsening and that the supplies needed to respond to the crisis are running out, while the destruction of roads has made it difficult to deliver aid to communities in need. Access to clean water has been affected, with around 2,000 water sources broken or contaminated, increasing the danger of water borne diseases. The hardest hit has been the capital Khartoum, where the Blue and White Nile Rivers meet, as the Nile burst its banks, demolishing everything in its way. Blue Nile and River Nile states have seen similar devastation, while the Gezira, Gadarif, West Kordofan, and South Darfur regions have reported damage. At least 16 of Sudan’s 18 states have seen some flood damage. The level of the Blue Nile hit a record high of 17.58 metres due to heavy seasonal rains in Sudan and Ethiopia, the source of the Blue Nile that accounts for about 80 percent of its waters. It is the highest since the 1912 flood in Sudan when the level reached 17.14 meters. Further heavy rains are forecast for neighbouring Ethiopia and parts of Sudan. The volume of rain has been the highest on record. Marwa Taha, a climate change expert, told Al Jazeera, “But this year we’ve seen an increase in the amount of rainfall because of climate change and so the Nile has flooded more than before. In addition, a lot of trees have been cut down to make place for residential areas near the Nile, affecting the valleys where the water would flow through.” The rising Nile floodwaters could also inundate one of Sudan’s ancient archaeological sites at Al-Bajrawiya, the capital of the Kushite Kingdom of 2,600 years ago that also includes the famous Meroe pyramids, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Marc Maillot, head of the French Archaeological Unit in the Sudan Antiquities Service, said, “The floods had never affected the site before.”
More than 30 people dead or missing after floods and landslides hit Nepal - More than 30 people are dead or missing after floods and landslides triggered by heavy downpour hit Sindhupalchok District in Nepal from September 12 to 13, 2020, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA). Around 17 households have been affected while a dozen houses have been buried or washed away. Heavy rains struck the district overnight, causing landslides and flooding that killed around 11 people and injured five others. NDRRMA added that 20 people are still missing, and crews from the military and police have been deployed to conduct relief and rescue operations. However, the efforts were being hampered by the ongoing severe weather. At least 17 families have been affected so far, while around 11 houses have been swept away in floods or buried in landslides. "We fear more landslides as the soil has grown weaker after the earthquake," said Bahrabise mayor Nimphunjo Sherpa. Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology said the weather station at nearby Gumthang registered 77.6 mm (3 inches) of rain on September 12 and 141.2 mm (5.5 inches) on September 13. The recent tragedy came weeks after Baglung District was hit by severe flash floods and a massive landslide that killed at least 14 and left 41 others missing.Home ministry official Murari Wasi told Reuters that the event was "the biggest natural disaster of the year" for Nepal.Since the monsoon season began in June, at least 314 people have already lost their lives, 111 people went missing, and 160 have been injured.
Tens of thousands in southwest Louisiana remain without power two weeks after Hurricane Laura - More than two weeks since Hurricane Laura, the strongest hurricane to hit Louisiana since the antebellum era, made landfall, the picture of the social and ecological crisis wrought in its wake is coming into focus. With the total economic cost of recovery expected to be in the tens of billions of dollars, over 100,000 homes and businesses are still without electricity and access to clean water; over 10,000 evacuees are still scattered throughout the area; and with Tropical Storm Sally on its way to Louisiana, the impact of the storm has exposed the underlying social disaster in the state 15 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. As of this writing, the death toll in Louisiana stands at 28, and eight in Texas. In Louisiana, nine deaths were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning from improper usage of a portable generator, and eight due to a heat-related illness, including heatstroke. This underscores the fact that many are trying to endure the dangerous summer heat levels in and around the hardest hit areas, such as Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes in southwest Louisiana, without electricity for fans or air conditioning. Due to the speed with which Laura strengthened into a category 4 hurricane, mandatory evacuation orders were enforced on more than half a million residents in the hurricane’s path. Louisiana state government is still sheltering around 12,000 people in hotels throughout the state, with the number expected to grow. The Department of Children and Family Services stated that 10,000 people are in hotels in New Orleans, around 1,000 in the capital of Baton Rouge and the cities of Shreveport and Houma, and around 500 in congregate shelters. As many as 10,000 have been placed in hotels in Texas, who have been advised to stay there due to declining vacancies in Louisiana. Over a dozen hospitals and nursing homes had to evacuate their patients and residents, with many others running off backup generator power. The Lake Charles Memorial Hospital had to evacuate its patients after the city’s water supply and electricity went offline, forcing the hospital to import up to 100,000 gallons of water a day and run off of generator power to maintain limited emergency services. “Fully back to normal is really going to come down to the water supply and the electricity,” spokesman Matt Felder told the New Orleans Advocate. Over 50,000 people remain without power in Louisiana as a result of the hurricane’s impact on the electrical grid. About 500 electrical towers were downed in the Lake Charles area, home to over 75,000 people. The hurricane caused over two dozen community water systems to go out across the state. Additionally, water wells, lines, and treatment facilities already outdated and under-maintained before the hurricane have been heavily damaged, leaving thousands without access to clean or even running water, and placing thousands under boil water advisories where there is still power to run the water systems.
Hurricane Laura caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to Louisiana schools, officials say – Hurricane Laura caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage to the schools in its path, officials said Wednesday. Karl Bruchhaus, superintendent of the Calcasieu Parish school system, estimates rebuilding could cost more than $300 million. “This was [the equivalent of] a 40-mile-wide tornado that hit Calcasieu Parish,” he said, speaking at a meeting of the state Senate’s education committee. Charley Lemons, who is the education superintendent in Cameron Parish, said the system would need $250 million “to be whole.” “We’re still waiting on reimbursements from [Hurricane] Rita,” which struck in 2005, Lemons said. State Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed said 13 campus sites suffered damage from Hurricane Laura. At McNeese State University in hard-hit Lake Charles, 50 campus buildings lost their roofs and repairs could cost $200 million, school president Daryl Burckel said, noting that construction costs often rise following a disaster. SOWELA Technical Community College suffered between $75 million and $100 million worth of damage, chancellor Neil Aspinwall said. Sen. Ronnie Johns, who is an insurance agent by trade, said Hurricane Rita was about a $4 billion event for the industry. For Laura, the initial estimate is $12 billion, he said. As for the taxpayer costs, the federal government currently is committed to picking up 75 percent. State officials expect to easily exceed the $662 million threshold required to move to a 90/10 split. State officials are asking the federal government to cover the full cost, which happened after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said Lynne Browning with the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. She said that decision is up to the president’s discretion.
Hurricane "Paulette" intensifying on its way toward Bermuda - Tropical Storm "Paulette" formed at 15:00 UTC on September 7 as the earliest 16th named Atlantic storm, breaking the previous record set by Philippe on September 17, 2005. The storm intensified into a hurricane at 03:00 UTC on September 13 -- the 6th of the 2020 Atlantic season to date. The average full Atlantic hurricane season has 6 hurricanes. A Hurricane Warning is in effect for Bermuda. Paulette is expected to approach Bermuda as a hurricane on Sunday, September 13, and be near the island Sunday night (LT) and Monday, NHC warns. A prolonged period of strong winds, storm surge, and heavy rainfall is expected on Bermuda beginning Sunday evening. Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion. Swells produced by Paulette are affecting portions of the Leeward Islands, the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the east coast of the United States. These swells could cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions. At 06:00 UTC today, the center of Hurricane "Paulette" was located 535 km (330 miles) SE of Bermuda, heading WNW at 22 km/h (14 mph). Its maximum sustained winds were 120 km/h (75 mph), making it a Category 1 hurricane. The storm's minimum central pressure was 981 hPa. A turn toward the north with a decrease in forward speed is forecast on Monday, September 14, followed by a northeast motion Monday night (LT) and Tuesday. The center of Paulette is expected to move near or over Bermuda Monday morning (LT), possibly as a Category 2 hurricane or even Category 3. If Paulette makes landfall in Bermuda, it will be their first landfall since October 2014 hurricanes Fay and Gozalo. "Despite Bermuda's strict building codes, property damage and power outages are likely even if Paulette brushes the islands, and more widespread damage and power outages are expected if the storm makes a direct hit as a Category 2 hurricane or higher," AccuWeather meteorologists said.
Potentially Historic? Five Cyclone Storms In Atlantic At Once - 2020 keeps up its craziness with five cyclones spinning at once in the Atlantic Basin. NOAA’s tropical experts are monitoring six potential tropical systems in the Atlantic Basin, and five of them thus far are named.The five systems are Hurricane Paulette, Hurricane Sally, Tropical Storm Teddy, Tropical Storm Vicky, and Tropical Depression Rene. With an additional six being monitored which hasn’t been named yet. All were spinning in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean on Monday.The U.S. Gulf Coast is facing Hurricane Sally, which is expected to slow down before landfall and be a major flood threat. Hurricane Paulette is approximately over Bermuda right now. Rene has weakened to a tropical depression while Teddy strengthened to a tropical storm. The latest tropical depression (TD21) has formed west of the African continent. According to Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach, there was one other time we saw this many tropical storms — cyclones, hurricanes, tropical storms and/or tropical depressions — in the Atlantic was in 1971.For the 2nd time on record, the Atlantic has 5+ tropical cyclones (tropical depression (TD) or stronger) simultaneously: #Hurricane #Paulette, TD #Rene, Tropical Storm #Sally, Tropical Storm #Teddy and TD21. Other time was from September 11-14, 1971.pic.twitter.com/9ET1OoxE6f— Philip Klotzbach (@philklotzbach) September 14, 2020 Hurricane Sally is expected to hit along the coast of Louisiana or Mississippi late Tuesday or early Wednesday as a Category 1 strength, the hurricane center said. Sally is forecast to bring a storm surge and 30 inches or more of rain in parts of the Gulf Coast according to Accuweather.If Sally’s coming impact wasn’t enough, Tropical Storm Teddy could become a major hurricane in the next few days. By Tuesday, it was packing maximum sustained winds of 60 miles per hour and located 1,030 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. Teddy is expected to be far more dangerous in comparison to Tropical Storm Vicky, the 20th named storm of the 2020 season, which is expected to be short-lived. Current forecasts have the storm weakening by Tuesday and becoming a remnant low risk on Thursday.Hurricane Paulette made landfall in Bermuda on Tuesday with the storm’s strongest sustained winds measuring at 85 mph. Rene, which had been a tropical storm that was downgraded to a tropical depression, dissipated late Monday.
Hurricane Sally slows, gathering a deluge for the Gulf Coast (AP) — Hurricane Sally, a plodding storm with winds of 85 mph (137 kph), crept toward the northern Gulf Coast on Tuesday as forecasters warned of potentially deadly storm surges and flash floods with the heaviest downpours dumping nearly 2 feet (0.6 meters) of rain. Forecasters said the storm’s sluggish pace made it difficult to predict precisely where the storm’s eye would make landfall. But they kept nudging the predicted track eastward, easing fears in New Orleans, which was once in Sally’s crosshairs. By late morning Tuesday, hurricane warnings stretched from east of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to Navarre, Florida, and forecasters said Sally should reach land near the Alabama-Mississippi state line by late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Rainfall of up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) was forecast near the coast, with a chance the storm could also spawn tornadoes. Stacy Stewart, a senior specialist with the National Hurricane Center, said Tuesday that people should continue to take the storm seriously since “devastating” rainfall is expected in large areas. People could drown in the flooding, he said. “This is going to be historic flooding along with the historic rainfall,” Stewart said. “If people live near rivers, small streams and creeks, they need to evacuate and go somewhere else.”
Hurricane Sally makes landfall: Part of Pensacola bridge collapses amid 30 inches of rain; 'catastrophic flooding' in Alabama, Florida – Part of bridge collapsed in Pensacola as 30 inches of rain and storm surge turned streets into white-capped rivers Wednesday morning after Hurricane Sally lurched ashore the Gulf Coast. Sally's strong winds battered Florida and Alabama as the center moved near the states' border as of mid-morning. In Pensacola, Florida, a section of the Pensacola Bay Bridge collapsed, and downtown was largely underwater. Flooding as the slow storm dumped intense rains has proven to be Sally's most serious danger: "Historic and catastrophic flooding, including widespread moderate to major river flooding, is unfolding," forecasters say. Photos and video from coastal areas showed trees downed, debris and boats thrown about and streets flooded. Around 9 a.m. local time, a water level station in Pensacola reported inundation around 5.5 feet above sea level, the National Hurricane Center said. Flash flooding emergencies were in effect and rescue efforts underway for parts of southeastern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle as the storm could dump up to 35 inches of rain in isolated pockets. Sally made landfall at 4:45 a.m. with winds of 105 mph near Gulf Shores, Alabama. The storm's center, picking up in speed at 5 mph as it moves north-northeast, will head across southeastern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle through early Thursday, and will weaken to a tropical depression by Thursday morning. Sally is forecast to head inland Wednesday night across southeastern Alabama before reaching Georgia on Thursday and the Carolinas on Friday. Around 10 to 20 inches of rain could be dumped on parts of Alabama and Florida, with isolated pockets getting up to 35 inches. Sally is the eighth named storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. this year — the most through Sept. 16 in recorded history. Around 500,000 homes and businesses are without power, according to the utility tracker poweroutage.us.Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan confirmed a section of Three Mile Bridge is missing, the largest reported damage to date from Hurricane Sally. Santa Rosa County Emergency Management tweeted a photo showing the missing section of bridge. Images indicate a crane fell on the bridge and knocked away a section of the road way. The brand new Three Mile Bridge, or Pensacola Bay Bridge, connects the city to Gulf Breeze. The Florida Department of Transportation said it has been unable to assess any possible damage to the bridge due to ongoing high winds. On Tuesday, a construction barge broke loose, struck the fishing pier and lodged itself under the Three Mile Bridge, forcing the closure of the bridge.
Hurricane Sally weakens into a CAT 1, brings 'catastrophic' flooding to Florida Panhandle and Alabama -- Sally made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama early Wednesday morning as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph. Maximum sustained winds have since decreased to 80 mph, which is Category 1 strength. The hurricane is moving north-northeast at 3 mph and is said to be about 15 miles west-northwest of Pensacola, Florida. The hurricane is expected to weaken more as it moves farther inland. It should be a tropical depression by Thursday. Forecasters said catastrophic and life-threatening flooding is likely from Sally in portions of the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama. "Life-threatening storm surge is occurring along portions of the coastline from Alabama to the western Florida Panhandle," the NHC said. "On the forecast track, the center of Sally will move across the extreme western Florida panhandle and southeastern Alabama through early Thursday, and move over central Georgia Thursday afternoon through Thursday night." Nearly 332,000 homes and businesses had lost electricity across Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana by Wednesday morning, according to thepoweroutage.us site. The site says about 192,000 of those outages were in Alabama while more than 78,000 were in Florida. Meanwhile, Teddy is located about 775 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. It is currently a CAT 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, the NHC said. Some strengthening is forecast during the next few days and Teddy is likely to become a major hurricane by late Wednesday. It could then reach Category 4 strength on Thursday. Paulette is now a strong extratropical cyclone and continues to swirl in the Atlantic. The NHC said that it has maximum sustained winds of 85 mph and that further weakening is forecasted over the next few days.Vicky is reportedly located about 795 miles west-northwest of the Cabo Verde Islands. It is moving toward the west-northwest near 9 mph. It is said to have maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. Additional weakening is forecasted. It should become a tropical depression on Thursday and then a remnant low on Friday, eventually dissipating on Saturday. There are three other disturbances being monitored by the NHC. They said that an area of low pressure over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico is producing showers and thunderstorms. These have become a little better organized on Wednesday and development is 60 percent likely over the next five days. They expect it to be a tropical depression later this week or over the weekend. There is also a disturbance a few hundred miles south-southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands. Showers and thunderstorms are associated with an area of low pressure there and environmental conditions are conducive for further development. The NHC said that it has a 70 percent of development over the next five days. A tropical depression is likely to form over the next few days while the system moves generally westwards at 10 to 15 mph. Finally, there is a third disturbance -- a non-tropical area of low pressure -- over the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, a few hundred miles northeast of the Azores. The NHC said that it only has a 20 percent of development over the next five days.
Hurricane Sally Floods Homes, Businesses in Alabama, Florida; Downtown Pensacola Covered in Water - Parts of Pensacola, Florida, are underwater as storm surge and flooding from Hurricane Sally inundates neighborhoods, homes and businesses. "We believe that this is an epic proportion flooding event," Escambia County Public Safety Directdor Jason Rogers told WEAR-TV Wednesday morning. "There is extremely high water, moving water that is very dangerous. We don't believe that we have yet seen the worst of the flooding." Sheriff David Morgan said in a mid-morning news conference that high water vehicles and boats were being used to take people out of flooded homes. “We anticipate the evacuations could literally be in the thousands," Morgan said. There were reports that the Pensacola Bay Bridge, also known as the Three-Mile Bridge, was damaged by a collapsed crane. Separately, Interstate 10 was closed from the Alabama state line through the Escambia Bay Bridge due to flooding. Escambia County's emergency management agency said on Twitter that the fire department, sheriff's office and the National Guard were "actively working on water rescues and life saving measures" in one area with 269 homes. No mandatory evacuation orders were issued in Escambia County, but Rogers said those in low-lying areas should evacuate if they can. The Pensacola Bay Center was opened as a shelter ahead of the storm. More than 2 feet of rain was reported in Pensacola, which took the brunt of the weather on the east side of the storm. Storm surge there rose at least 5.5 feet. Emergency crews in Okaloosa County, about 60 miles to the east, were also responding to calls for rescues, according WEAR. Hurricane Sally made landfall early Wednesday morning near Gulf Shores, Alabama. Officials where the storm came ashore in Baldwin County warned of an "extremely dangerous situation" amid severe widespread damage as the sun rose and the extent of the storm's impacts became clearer. Drone video from the area showed walls blown out of a high-rise condominium, neighborhoods flooded and roofs damaged.More than 400,000 homes and businesses were without power across the upper Gulf Coast as of about 8:15 a.m. CDT Wednesday, according to poweroutage.us. More than 238,000 homes and businesses were without power in Alabama, nearly all of them in Mobile and Baldwin counties. Video showed damage from winds and flooding in Gulf Shores, on a barrier island at the mouth of Mobile Bay. The pier at Gulf State Park was destroyed. Several bridges and roadways were shut down, including the Bankhead Tunnel in Mobile. In Baldwin County, the Highway 59 bridge, Foley Beach Express toll bridge and Perdido Pass bridge all closed. Officials said those on the barrier island would have to remain until the storm passes. Sections of U.S. Highway 98, including the bridge that crosses the state line, were closed in both Florida and Alabama.
Florida: Sally drenched parts of state with '4 months of rain in 4 hours,' officials say - Hundreds of people near the Florida-Alabama border were being rescued from floodwaters brought on by Sally on Wednesday and authorities fear many more could be in danger in coming days. "We had 30 inches of rain in Pensacola -- 30-plus inches of rain -- which is four months of rain in four hours," Ginny Cranor, chief of the Pensacola Fire Department, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. Sally has weakened since making landfall as a Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday morning but its devastating toll was visible across Southern states by nightfall. By Wednesday night, it was a tropical depression, according to the National Hurricane Center. Located about 10 miles northwest of Troy, Alabama, it had maximum sustained winds of 35 mph and was moving northeast at 9 mph. While all watches and warnings have been discontinued, Sally is still causing torrential rain over eastern Alabama and western Georgia. Pensacola and other parts of Florida and Alabama were submerged by flooding, rivers were approaching dangerous levels and numerous counties were under curfews to keep residents safe. "We are still in an evaluation and lifesaving recovery mission, and we need to be able to do that job," said Robert Bender, commissioner in Escambia County, Florida. Sally unleashed up to 30 inches of rain from the Florida Panhandle to Mobile Bay, Alabama, leading to "historic and catastrophic flooding" there and threatening even more communities as it moves north, the National Hurricane Center said. In Escambia County, which includes Pensacola, at least 377 people have been rescued from flooded neighborhoods, Jason Rogers, the county's public safety director, told reporters in a news briefing. "It's going to be a long time, folks ... to come out of this thing," Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said earlier Wednesday, warning there could be thousands of evacuations. "Looks like a war zone," Doris Stiers told CNN. "Lots of destruction, homes destroyed, roofs gone. I have not had any service, power or internet. Bad night."
Hundreds of thousands still without power in Sally cleanup— Hundreds of thousands of people were still without power Friday along the Alabama coast and the Florida Panhandle in the aftermath of Hurricane Sally as officials assessed millions of dollars in damage that included a broken bridge in Pensacola and ships thrown onto dry land. While the cleanup pressed on, the record-shattering hurricane season notched another milestone: Forecasters ran out of traditional names for storms after three new systems formed in about six hours. That forced them to begin using the Greek alphabet for only the second time since the 1950s. In Loxley, Alabama, Catherine Williams lost power and some of her roof to Sally. The storm also destroyed three pecan trees in her yard that she used to try to make ends meet. “There’s no food, no money. I took my last heart pill today,” said Williams, who has been laid off twice from her job as a cook because of the economic problems caused by COVID-19. Two people in Alabama were reported killed — a drowning and a death during the cleanup in Baldwin County. In Florida, authorities were looking for a missing kayaker who was feared dead in Escambia County. The supercharged Atlantic hurricane season has produced so many named storms that scientists ran out of traditional names as Tropical Storm Wilfred developed in the eastern Atlantic. It was only the second time that has happened since forecasters standardized the naming system in 1953. Wilfred was weak and far from land. Two hours after Wilfred took shape, the National Hurricane Center moved to the Greek alphabet when Subtropical Storm Alpha formed just off the coast of Portugal. It was followed later in the day by Tropical Storm Beta, which formed in the western Gulf of Mexico. The same practice will govern storm names for the rest of hurricane season, which lasts until the end of November. The only other time the hurricane center dipped into the Greek alphabet was the deadly 2005 hurricane season, which included Hurricane Katrina’s strike on New Orleans.
Teddy strengthens into Category 4 hurricane, forecast to approach Bermuda this weekend - Tropical Storm "Teddy" formed at 09:00 UTC on September 14, 2020, as the earliest 19th Atlantic named storm on record. The previous record for the 19th named storm was October 4 (2005) -- this was initially an unnamed storm, added in post-season reanalysis. Teddy strengthened into a hurricane at 06:10 UTC on September 16 -- the 8th hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season to date. Only 3 Atlantic hurricane seasons on record have had 8 hurricanes by September 16 -- 1893, 2005, and 2012.
- Teddy is expected to approach Bermuda as a hurricane this weekend and make its closest approach to the island late Sunday or Monday, September 21. While the exact details of Teddy's track and intensity near the island are not yet known, the risk of strong winds, storm surge, and heavy rainfall on Bermuda is increasing.
- Large swells produced by Teddy are expected to affect portions of the Leeward Islands, the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the southeastern United States during the next few days. These swells could cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.
Teddy became a major hurricane -- Category 3 -- at 15:00 UTC on September 17, when its center was about 1 865 km (1 155 miles) SE of Bermuda. It was moving NW at 19 km/h (12 mph) and a minimum central pressure of 957 hPa. By 21:00 UTC on the same day, Teddy strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane, with additional strengthening forecast into September 18. At 09:00 UTC on September 18, the center of Category 4 Hurricane "Teddy" was located about 1 510 km (935 miles) SE of Bermuda. It had maximum sustained winds of 215 km/h (130 mph) and a minimum central pressure of 947 hPa. The cyclone was moving NW at 19 km/h (12 mph) and this general motion is expected to continue for the next couple of days, followed by a turn to the north by early next week.
Tropical Storm "Beta" forms in the Gulf of Mexico, heavy rainfall expected along northwest Gulf Coast -- Tropical Storm "Beta" formed in the Gulf of Mexico at 21:00 UTC on Friday, September 18, 2020. This is the 23rd named storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season and the 10th so far this month -- a record for September. Storm Surge and Tropical Storm or Hurricane Watches will likely be required for portions of the western Gulf coast tonight or on Saturday, NHC forecasters said.
- The storm is currently moving NNE at 15 km/h (9 mph). However, a slow-motion toward the west is expected by Saturday night (LT), September 19, and into the next week.
- Heavy rainfall and flooding is expected along the northwest Gulf Coast starting Sunday, September 20, and lasting for several days as the storm tracks slowly toward and along or offshore of the coast.
- Beta could briefly strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the western coast of the Gulf of Mexico late Sunday or Monday, September 21.
Beta's center was located about 545 km (335 miles) ENE of Tampico, Mexico, and 450 km (280 miles) ESE of the mouth of the Rio Grande at 21:00 UTC on September 18. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 65 km (40 mph) and a minimum central pressure of 1 004 hPa. Swells are expected to increase and reach the coast of Texas and the Gulf Coast of Mexico over the weekend, generated by a combination of Beta and a cold front entering the northern Gulf of Mexico. These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.
Tropical storms Beta, Alpha, Wilfred break hurricane records - Tropical Storm Beta formed in the Gulf of Mexico Friday, right after Tropical Storm Wilfred and Subtropical Storm Alpha in the Atlantic, bringing the hyperactive 2020 hurricane season up to 23 named storms. That’s the first time since possibly 1893 that three new storms were named in one day and definitely the first time that’s happened since 1953 when storms were first named, the National Hurricane Center said. The three storms that formed on Aug. 15, 1893, were storms 4, 5, and 6, according to hurricane center meteorologist Dennis Feltgen. The hurricane center has reliable records for storms going back to 1851, he said. It’s just the second time in history that forecasters have had to turn to the Greek alphabet for storm names. Although Wilfred is expected to fizzle out early next week before approaching any land and Alpha is closer to Europe than the U.S., Beta could become a hurricane while moving slowly over the Gulf of Mexico during the next few days, according to the National Hurricane Center. It is a serious threat to the Texas coast. As of 5 p.m. Friday, the storm was 335 miles east-northeast of Tampico, Mexico. It had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and was moving northeast at 9 mph. The forecast track has the storm curving toward Texas sometime Sunday, when it could be at or near hurricane strength. After Beta, the next storms will be Gamma and Delta and Epsilon. This has only ever happened once before — during the record-shattering 2005 hurricane season that produced Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. In that year, Tropical Storm Zeta formed on Dec. 30, the 28th named storm. Forecasters are monitoring other systems, as well. Hurricane Teddy is expected to approach Bermuda as a hurricane this weekend, bringing an increasing risk of strong winds, storm surge and heavy rainfall, the National Hurricane Center said. Large swells are expected to affect areas including the Southeast U.S. in the next few days. At 8 p.m. Friday, Teddy was about 770 miles southeast of Bermuda, which is under a tropical storm watch. Teddy was moving northwest over the open Atlantic at 14 mph with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph. Teddy is a massive storm with hurricane-force winds extending 60 miles from the center, and its tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 230 miles. As a result, huge swells are reaching the Lesser Antilles and the northeastern coast of South America, and may spread west to the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the east coast of the United States by the weekend. The swells will bring life-threatening surf and rip current conditions, the hurricane center said.
Tropical Storm Beta expected to hit Texas coast at hurricane strength by Monday - With parts of the Alabama coast and Florida Panhandle still reeling from Hurricane Sally, a hurricane watch was in effect early Saturday for a 300-mile stretch of Texas coast as Tropical Storm Beta gathered strength in the Gulf of Mexico. At least two deaths were blamed on Sally, which roared ashore on Wednesday morning, and hundreds of thousands of people were still without power Saturday. Beta, which is expected to reach hurricane strength by Sunday, is among three active storms in an exceptionally busy Atlantic hurricane season. At 1 p.m. CDT, Beta was about 305 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas, moving northwest at 2 mph with sustained winds of 60 mph. Both the city of Galveston and Galveston County on Saturday issued voluntary evacuation orders ahead of Tropical Storm Beta. Mayor Pro Tem Craig Brown said in a statement that high tides and up to 10 inches of expected rainfall would leave roads impassable, especially along the city’s west end and low-lying areas. County Judge Mark Henry said during a Saturday news conference that his concern is also based on rising waters creating a storm surge and that a mandatory evacuation is not expected. “If you can survive in your home for three or four days without power and electricity, which we’re not even sure that’s going to happen, you’re OK,” Henry said. “If it’s uncomfortable or you need life support equipment, maybe go somewhere else.” As the tropical storm pushed toward the Texas and Louisiana coast, the National Hurricane center issued a Hurricane Watch along a 285-mile stretch of coast from Port Aransas to High Island. The center said hurricane conditions were possible in the watch area by Monday night.
Northern Hemisphere just had its hottest summer on record -It’s been a remarkably steamy, record-setting last three months for Mother Earth. Not only was August 2020 the second-warmest August on record, but the Northern Hemisphere had its warmest summer, and the globe as a whole had its third-hottest three-month season, too. Here are highlights from NOAA’s latest monthly global climate report: Climate by the numbers According to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, the average global land and ocean surface temperature in August was 1.69 degrees F (0.94 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average of 60.1 degrees F (15.6 degrees C), making it the second-hottest August in the 141-year record, behind August 2016. The Northern Hemisphere had its hottest August on record with a temperature departure from average of 2.14 degrees F (1.19 degrees C), besting the previous record set in August 2016. Globally, the 10 warmest Augusts have all occurred since 1998 — with the five warmest occurring since 2015. Globally, the YTD (January through August) ranked as 2nd hottest recorded, at 1.85 degrees F (1.03 degrees C) above the 20th-century average of 57.3 degrees F (14.0 degrees C) — just behind the record set in 2016. The Northern Hemisphere’s YTD tied with 2016 as the hottest since global records began in 1880. According to a statistical analysis done by NCEI scientists, 2020 is very likely to rank among the five-warmest years on record.
Trump's climate change rollbacks to drive up U.S. emissions – POLITICO - President Donald Trump's rollback of Obama-era climate regulations will cause the United States to pump an extra 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere between now and 2035, at a time when scientists say the world needs to slash its carbon pollution dramatically to avoid catastrophe, researchers said Thursday.The forecast from the climate research firm Rhodium Group is one of the most detailed and comprehensive estimates to date of how Trump’s regulatory U-turn will affect the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide coming from tailpipes, leaking oil and gas wells, power plants and refrigerants. It concludes that if Trump's rollbacks remain in place, U.S. climate pollution 15 years from now will be 3 percent higher than current projections indicate. The cumulative additional amount of greenhouse gases would exceed the current annual output of Russia, the world’s fourth-biggest carbon polluter. The United States is No. 2, behind China.If anything, Rhodium researchers said their figures probably underestimate the increase because they could not accurately forecast how the effects from some Trump policies would play out. Those include the changes in carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's power plants allowed by the weakening of the Obama administration’s pollution rules.Despite scientific evidence that has grown only stronger in recent years that man-made pollution is driving up the Earth's temperatures and worsening disasters like the wildfires in the Western U.S., hurricanes battering the coasts and floods submerging the Midwest, Trump has steadfastly denied that climate change is real."It'll start getting cooler, you just watch," Trump told California officials this week on a visit to discuss the fires there. "I don't think science knows, actually."
Biden's Energy Plan Could Kill 5 Million Blue-Collar Jobs, by Stephen Moore - Joe Biden just can't get his story straight on his green energy promises. In Pittsburgh, in front of union workers last month, he declared: "I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again. I am not banning fracking. No matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me." But that is far from what he was saying earlier this year. During a March Democratic primary debate exchange between Sen. Bernie Sanders and Biden, Sanders started by saying: "I'm talking about stopping fracking as soon as we possibly can. I'm talking about telling the fossil fuel industry that they are going to stop destroying this planet — no ifs, buts and maybes about it." "So am I," Biden replied. After that famous Biden-Sanders debate, the Biden campaign issued a retraction, meaning this isn't really what the former vice president meant to say. And, admittedly, he's old; he loses his train of thought; he can't be expected to remember his latest official position on fracking every week. His latest flip and flop is no drilling permits on federal lands. But what is unambiguous and in big, bold writing in the Biden "buy America" plan is his signature pledge to the climate change crusaders to end fossil fuel use in America by 2035. This, of course, is a de facto ban on fracking, because if we aren't going to use the energy, why would anyone drill for it? That Biden zero-carbon emissions target requires a glide path to no fossil fuel production and consumption 15 years from now. Given that we currently get about 80% of our energy from oil, gas and coal, according to Daniel Yergin, a world expert on energy, getting down to zero is going to be a gut-wrenching experience for blue-collar workers. There are a lot of them. The oil, gas and coal industry accounts for somewhere between 5 and 10 million jobs, depending on how you count them. These are almost all high-paying blue-collar jobs — the kind that Biden laughingly says he wants to bring back home to America — and hundreds of thousands of them are in battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado. How the left ever thinks it will turn Texas blue by promising to ban oil is one of life's great mysteries. Liberals must really believe Texans are stupid people.
BlackRock votes against 49 companies for lack of climate crisis progress - BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has disclosed that in the past year it has voted 55 times against directors at 49 companies for failing to make progress on tackling the climate crisis. The firm announced its sustainability focus in January, when it said it would be getting tough on companies that did not meet its expectations on dealing with climate risk, and would vote against them at annual shareholder meetings. It announced in its annual investment stewardship report that it cast more than 5,100 votes against company directors in the past 12 months to hold management to account for failing to make headway on a range of issues, from environmental goals and corporate strategy to board diversity. This was 300 more than in the previous year. The fund manager said in July it had identified 244 companies that were not making progress on the climate emergency, and voted again 53 of them. The list of those it voted against was dominated by energy companies, including the oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron, and also featured the vehicle manufacturers Volvo and Daimler, and the German airline Lufthansa.BlackRock put the remaining 191 companies “on watch”, the first time it had disclosed the number of firms it was reviewing, thereby warning them they risked having votes cast against them at 2021 shareholder meetings unless they made significant progress in the interim.Larry Fink, the chief executive of the investment firm, wrote in his annual letter to chief executives in January that the company would offer investors more choice, divest from thermal coal and vote against companies that did not make progress. BlackRock, which manages assets worth $7.3tn (£5.5tn), including large holdings in major oil producers such as BP, Shell and ExxonMobil, has previously been accused by environmental campaigners of hypocrisy for routinely voting against shareholder motions that directed boards to take action on the climate crisis.
Groups Say Duke Energy's 15-Year Plan Fails To Lower Costs, Address Climate Change- Environmental and social justice groups say a new 15-year energy plan filed this month by Duke Energy would bring higher rates and still fall short of addressing climate change. The nine groups say the Charlotte-based energy giant's integrated resource plan doesn't do enough to keep down costs for low-income customers or to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy. Tyler Fitch of the group Vote Solar said most of the options outlined in Duke's plan continue to expand the use of fossil fuels, including natural gas."We know that by investing in renewable energy, a grid that is both cleaner and cheaper is possible,” Fitch said in a press release. “Duke is setting up a false dichotomy between keeping rates low and achieving climate goals. The truth is that Carolina ratepayers can and should have both.”Vote Solar isn't alone. Appalachian Voices, Clean Air Carolina, Conservation Voters of South Carolina, MountainTrue, NC WARN, North Carolina Justice Center, North Carolina League of Conservation Voters and the North Carolina Conservation Network also all issued statements critical of Duke's plan.In its filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commssion on Sept. 1, Duke said adding more solar farms and other new technologies would require higher rates.In an interview, Duke's Glen Snider said adding more renewable energy, retiring coal-fired plants and halting construction of new gas-fired plants could add as much as $50 a month by 2035 to the bill of a typical customer using 1,000 kilowatts of electricity. He said the 15-year plan "is going to provide policymakers with some of the trade-offs that they were looking for in terms of what's possible and at what cost." Others expressed concern at the prospect of higher rates. “Duke makes no attempt to keep costs low for ratepayers in this plan and ignores no-brainer efficiency measures that would benefit low-moderate income customers,” said Josh McClenney of Appalachian Voices. Eliza Stokes of MountainTrue said Duke's plan doesn't adequately address climate change.
Fortistar, Rumpke begin construction on Ohio RNG project - Fortistar, a privately-owned investment firm that addresses global challenges, and Rumpke Waste & Recycling, one of the nation’s largest privately-owned residential and commercial waste and recycling firms, announced commencement of construction of the Noble Road Landfill Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) Project, a $33 million transportation decarbonization project in Shiloh, Ohio. The project will extract and capture waste methane from the Noble Road landfill in Ohio and transform it into renewable natural gas (RNG). The RNG will be distributed through a key partner, Chesapeake Utilities Corp. affiliate Aspire Energy’s pipelines. The fuel will be dispensed in fueling stations for natural gas vehicles via Trustar Energy, a Fortistar portfolio company. Like carbon dioxide, methane is a greenhouse gas (GHG) that contributes to climate change, but is 30 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas. The Noble Road Project will capture 20,323 tons of methane emissions, the equivalent of 49,940 tons of carbon dioxide, per year and produce RNG. Instead of simply flaring or burning the methane, the naturally occurring gas will generate sustainable energy and jobs in the community. It will produce 6.9 million gallons of gasoline gallon equivalents (GGE) per year, which is enough to fuel 725 biofuel trucks—displacing diesel fuel for those vehicles—and creating approximately 35 to 40 construction jobs and three permanent green operations jobs to ensure the ongoing production of this sustainable energy source.
EPA sides with farmers on ethanol, rejects refinery waivers - Federal regulators on Monday handed a victory to corn farmers and the renewable fuels industry by refusing to allow a group of petroleum refiners in 14 states to forego requirements to blend ethanol into the gasoline they make. Members of Congress from farm states have heavily lobbied President Donald Trump to reject the waiver requests for months. Those representing oil-producing states supported the waivers, which were originally designed to help small refineries that struggled financially to meet federally mandated ethanol targets. In recent years, however, larger refineries also have received exemptions from the Trump administration. The petroleum refiners had sought 54 exemptions retroactively, some as far back as 2011, that would have allowed the petroleum industry to remove hundreds of millions of gallons of corn-based ethanol from the market. Significant exemptions from the congressional requirement of blending at least 15 billion gallons of ethanol a year into the nations fuel supply began after Trump took office and appointed Andrew Wheeler as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. By agreeing to reject the waivers the Trump administration is essentially fixing a problem it created. Congressional Republicans including Iowa Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley nevertheless lauded Trump for the decision. “I applaud President Trump for keeping his word and supporting our farmers and biofuel producers,” Grassley said in a statement. Democratic Rep. Abby Finkenauer agreed the EPA decision will help Iowa farmers but called out the Trump administration for waiting “until 50 days before an election to finally take even this modest action.” A petroleum industry group response was critical of EPA and Trump. “The notion that this administration is ‘following the rule of law’ through its latest betrayal of U.S. refinery workers is laughable,” said Chet Thompson, CEO of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade group for producers of fuel and petrochemicals used in many products.
Adel biomass threatens South Georgia -Averting climate disaster isn’t going to be easy, and if we don’t save our forests, it may prove impossible. Unfortunately, Georgia forests are, literally, in the line of fire as the result of a planned expansion of the woody biomass industry in our state. Right now, 12,000 acres of forested land per year are at risk from a new plant in South Georgia where a group from Texas is hoping to build a pellet plant in Adel. They plan to produce 500,000 tons of wood pellets per year for shipment to the European Union. Production of such a volume will require cutting nearly 12,000 wooded acres each year across a sourcing radius of about 75 miles. But we can put a stop to it if we act quickly. In just the last few years, the Southeastern U.S. has become Europe’s primary source for whole trees turned into wood pellets, often referred to as “biomass.” These pellets are burned for energy in the EU, where the biomass industry stays afloat with massive government subsidies as part of a “renewable energy” plan. Now, the industry wants to further expand its piece of the energy-generation pie to the U.S. market and they’re counting on the government to help them compete with true renewables like wind and solar. They are also counting on local government officials to turn a blind eye to the negative impact biomass plants have on communities the industry always targets — poor, rural and typically populated by people of color. These are known as environmental justice communities and they are overwhelmingly where polluting industries of all stripes locate their plants and their pollution. As a result, these communities have far higher rates of asthma, cancer and other serious, life-shortening illnesses. It takes 50-100 years for natural forest to regenerate completely. Meanwhile, rain on land without forest runs off faster, carries more sediment and pollution, damaging fishing and wildlife. Floods also become more likely.
Energy giant Neste sees a 'K-shaped' recovery for its business, CEO says — Finnish energy company Neste is seeing a so-called "K-shape recovery" from the coronavirus pandemic, with different segments of its business going in opposite trajectories, CEO Peter Vanacker said on Tuesday. "If I look at the recovery right now, people refer to (it) as V-shape, W-shape, L-shape, I've heard yesterday on the summit, K-shape," he told CNBC's Capital Connection as an attendee of the Singapore Summit, which is being held virtually this year. That's what Vanacker said he's seeing in his business right now. "The recovery in renewables, that was extremely fast," he said. "But then on the other hand side, everything that has to do with, for example, oil and oil refineries, is actually not recovering." Neste is the world's leading producer of renewable diesel. It used to be a classic oil-refining company but later developed sustainable fuel. Vanacker said there's a "big difference" between these two sides of the business at this point. There was a "quick recovery" for what is sustainable and renewable, while oil-based products are still "suffering" and not recovering. He said that could continue into 2021 and 2022. The circumstances are "extremely challenging" for oil refineries that are not selling as much as they can produce, and may need to restructure. "There have not been a lot of refinery rationalizations this year," he said. "We would expect there should be some next year and the year afterwards, because the situation currently is just not sustainable." Neste on Monday announced plans to restructure two refineries in Finland to focus on non-oil operations. The firm's expansion project at a refinery in Singapore has also experienced delays because of coronavirus-related lockdowns.
The struggle to crack down on a cottage industry sabotaging vehicle pollution controls -- When officials at the Environmental Protection Agency began investigating Freedom Performance, LLC, they didn’t have to look very hard for evidence that the company was violating the Clean Air Act. According to legal documents, the Florida car parts distributor literally advertised violations on its website. “The road to hell is often paved with good intentions,” stated one ad for a kit to remove federally-required emissions controls from diesel trucks. It identified a particular emissions control system that “is certainly noble in its intent,” but “in reality it is putting your engine through hell … The best solution is deletion.” According to the EPA, Freedom Performance was advertising defeat devices—hardware and software that bypass or eliminate emission controls. The Clean Air Act forbids tampering with these controls, and violations carry heavy fines. But defeat devices—also known as “delete devices”—are popular with many vehicle owners. Shops advertise that delete kits will improve mileage and extend the lifespan of expensive components, saving customers thousands of dollars. In recent years, a lucrative cottage industry of defeat devices has exploded across the U.S. as repair shops, online retailers, and manufacturers feed, and generate, consumer demand. The EPA estimates that more than 500,000 diesel pickup trucks have been “deleted” since 2009. The EPA claims that these illegally modified vehicles produced hundreds of thousands of tons of excess nitrogen oxide—the equivalent of adding nine million more trucks to the road. Public health advocates say that diesel emissions contribute to increases in fine particulate matter and other airborne pollutants that have been linked to higher rates of cancer, heart attacks, strokes and neurodegenerative diseases.
Charging discount: EV owners can now charge for 20% less - New electric rates approved by Vermont regulators allow owners of electric vehicles to charge their batteries for the equivalent of paying about $1 per gallon of gas, according to Green Mountain Power. The new off-peak EV rates are more than 20 percent less than traditional residential power rates. When you sign up for Rate 72, as the new offer is known, Green Mountain Power alerts you to energy peaks. The peaks usually last a few hours and usually start around 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. There are generally five to seven peaks per month. As long as you don't charge during those peaks, you'll pay $0.133 per kilowatt hour to charge your EV, which works out to about $1.03 per gallon of gas. If you choose to charge during a peak, you'll pay $0.168 per kilowatt hour. Green Mountain Power also announced a discount of more than $2,500 for customers who buy or lease a Chevy Bolt at Alderman's Chevrolet in Rutland. When combined with rebates from Green Mountain Power and General Motors, as well as the state of Vermont, the Bolt could be discounted by as much as $20,000, according to Green Mountain Power. Mark Alderman of Alderman's Chevrolet said in a statement his dealership has brought in "extra Bolts" in anticipation of "a lot of interest from customers."
Electric vehicles can save lives, health care costs in New Jersey, report shows - A wholesale conversion to electric cars by 2050 could eliminate nearly 170 premature deaths in New Jersey each year, a new report from the American Lung Association shows. “The Road to Clean Air” report released Tuesday said the Garden State could prevent 10,725 lost workdays, avert more than 2,300 asthma attacks and save more than $1.9 billion in public health benefits annually if gas- and diesel-fueled cars were swapped for electric vehicles. Kevin Stewart, the association’s director of environmental health, said the conversion represents a powerful and practical opportunity to benefit the planet, the economy and public health. “The transportation sector is a leading contributor to air pollution and climate change,” Stewart said. “We have the technology to transition to cleaner cars, trucks and buses, and by taking that step we can prepare New Jersey for the future while also seeing the health and economic benefits forecasted in ‘The Road to Clean Air.’” Early this year, Gov. Phil Murphy approved legislation authorizing electric vehicle rebates of up to $5,000 per vehicle over the next 10 years. One of the nation’s largest rebate packages, the legislation also includes money for new electric vehicle charging stations in urban areas and near highways. Just this week, Murphy signed another bill requiring charging stations in housing developments with 25 or more units. Electric vehicles charged on a low-carbon grid are responsible for less than a third of the 13 pounds of carbon dioxide an average gas-powered vehicle produces per day, U.S. Department of Energy records show. While emissions from individual vehicles are relatively low, the millions of cars, buses, trains, boats and planes that pass through New Jersey each year make those sources the largest contributors to air pollution in the state, according to New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection records.
Ford invests $700M in Rouge complex to build all-electric F-150 - Ford Motor Co. revealed Thursday an audacious plan to build a $700 million plant at the Rouge complex that would create the first all-electric F-150, the nation's bestselling vehicle. The new Rouge Electric Vehicle Center will add 300 jobs as part of the project, which will support battery assembly and production of the F-150 PowerBoost hybrid and fully electric F-150.Ford is just beginning to build its redesigned 2021 F-150 at the Rouge complex and Kansas City Assembly with plans to ship to dealerships starting in November. This latest announcement about the electric version comes despite economic challenges worsened by the pandemic, and keeps a commitment to new jobs and investment plans negotiated as part of the four-year UAW labor contract."When we had our agreement in the fall with the UAW, this was part of our total plan," Gary Johnson, Ford chief manufacturing and labor affairs officer, told reporters prior to the event. "From a manufacturing standpoint, I didn't have any discussions with the current (U.S. presidential) administration. It was all part of our UAW national contract." While Ford had mentioned a significant planned investment in southeast Michigan previously, this is the first time the company has confirmed its location and announced a new plant.
Construction workers tell feds they don't feel safe at SK Battery site- Construction workers at the SK Battery America plant in Jackson County tell the government contractors are ignoring safety concerns to finish the job on schedule. Kimel Brantley worked as a safety officer for Eastern Corporation, one of the big contractors at the electric car battery plant. “They’re sacrificing people’s safety for production,” he said. Kimel Brantley worked as a safety officer for two contractors at the SK Battery plant. His OSHA complaint accuses both companies of ignoring safety rules to get the plant finished by 2021. (photo by Kimel Brantley) Brantley held the same safety officer job at MiDong, a subcontractor at the plant, before quitting earlier this month. He has since filed a complaint with the Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration or OSHA. And he’s not the only worker worried. “It’s a wonder someone hasn’t been killed already,” said Randy Gregory about other subcontractors. He’s one of the workers installing the elevators on the multi-billion dollar facility. SK Battery is a Korean-owned company that landed $300 million in tax breaks and free land to locate the electric car battery plant in Jackson County. They promise more than 2,000 good jobs when it opens in 2022. But when the FOX 5 I-Team watched the various contractors at the job site last month, most of the workers were from overseas, doing jobs that union leaders said unemployed American pipefitters or electricians could easily handle. “All I hear is 2,000 jobs,” complained David Cagle from Local Union 72. “Does the construction industry not matter? The average common man that works with his hands?” In May, Customs said it caught 33 Koreans trying to get into the country with fake papers to work at the battery plant. SK Battery said it’s hired 1,000 Americans to build the plant so far and “told its contractors from the start to place a priority on hiring local American workers.” But Kimel Brantley said he saw Koreans repeatedly hired instead. Half Korean himself, Brantley said he tried to stress safety on the job site, but because he couldn’t speak Korean his advice went nowhere. He said he got no support from his bosses at either Eastern or MiDong.
Plans for Lake Erie wind farm clear a major hurdle, as ‘poison pill’ restriction is lifted - cleveland.com -Plans to build the nation’s first freshwater wind farm in Lake Erie northeast of Cleveland took a major – and unexpected – step forward Thursday, as state regulators reversed their previous decision to limit the nighttime operation of the proposed wind turbines. But despite the Ohio Power Siting Board’s decision, there are still details that need to be worked out regarding how to mitigate the harm to animals from Icebreaker Wind, a $126 million, 20.7-megawatt pilot project that has been in the works for more than a decade. During a virtual meeting that involved a level of discussion and debate unusual for the Power Siting Board, board members unanimously voted to rescind part of an order they issued last May that approved construction of the wind turbines only if the turbine blades didn’t move at night between March 1 and Nov. 1, on the grounds that they would harm bats and birds. Such a limit would be a “poison pill” that would make the project financially infeasible, according to Dave Karpinski, president of Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., the non-profit developer of the wind farm. However, the board now still needs to approve LEEDCo’s plans to address a variety of topics, from mitigating harm to birds, bats, and fish to how to eventually decommission the wind farm. “We just have to do what we can to try to see if there’s a way that they’ll be addressed in a timely fashion,” Karpinski said, adding it’s unusual for the Power Siting Board to vote on such plans instead of handing the matter over to staff to work out.Board members have also been under pressure from state lawmakers to remove the nighttime limits. Thirty-two Northeast Ohio lawmakers from both partiessigned a letter urging the board to reconsider their earlier decision, including that the board offered “no compelling evidence” to override a recommendation by Power Siting Board staff and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to approve the project without the limit.ODNR Director Mary Mertz, a member of the Power Siting Board, said during Thursday’s meeting that project supporters “presented some valid objections" to the night limit. “I’m sure we will tighten restrictions if the data shows we need to do that,” Mertz said.
Ratepayers On Hook for Portion of Block Island Wind Farm Cable Mess — National Grid and Deepwater Wind, now Ørsted, were given a break by Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) when the agency granted the use of a cost-saving method for burying the Block Island Wind Farm power cables at a New Shoreham beach. Both companies now likely regret that decision. National Grid, which owns the high-voltage power line from Block Island to Narragansett, expects to pay $30 million for its share of the reconstruction, which will require horizontal directional drilling. The state’s primary electric utility will recover the expense through an undetermined surcharge on ratepayers’ bills. The power line from the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm reaches shore at Fred Benson Town Beach and leaves New Shoreham for Narragansett at Crescent Beach to the north. But keeping portions of the cable buried at Crescent Beach has been a struggle.Ørsted, owner of the 12-inch transmission cable from the offshore wind facility to Block Island, won’t say how much it expects to spend on the project, but the Denmark-based energy developer intends to make good on its portion of the cost.“Ørsted will pay for the repairs to our Block Island Wind Farm cable, as our power contract does not provide for passing any such costs on to ratepayers,” company spokesperson Meaghan Wims said. “We are not disclosing our costs to make those repairs.”Approval of the lower-cost jet plow to bury the cable at Crescent Beach was granted against the advice of CRMC’s in-house staff and former executive director Grover Fugate. CRMC’s governing board, however, gave the process the green light and even allowed the cable to be buried at a depth of 4 feet; CRMC staff recommended a depth of 8-10 feet. Within months of completion in 2016, portions of the cable were exposed close to the Block Island shore.Ørsted and National Grid were issued enforcement orders by CRMC to fix the problem. Over the course of nearly two years, the companies tried several fixes and proposed others, but they eventually returned to CRMC’s original recommendation of using horizontal directional drilling to bore deeper into the rocky shoreline, a process that was used where the cables make landfall in Narragansett. The cost of horizontal drilling will likely be higher than the original cost, because the 34,500-volt power lines entering and leaving the island will need to be spliced and lengthened — up to a half-mile — to be buried into a deeper trench.
Critics say Michigan utility needs to show its work on solar energy rate - Consumers Energy failed to develop data and facts to justify slashing solar credits almost in half, challengers say.Michigan solar advocates say Consumers Energy has failed to justify a proposed cut in the rate it pays for solar power generated on customers’ rooftops.The criticism comes as Michigan regulators consider the utility’s latest rate case, which calls for significantly decreasing the solar rate while also increasing how much residential customers pay for grid electricity. “Excess energy that’s put on the grid creates some value, and it creates some costs,” said attorney Margrethe Kearney of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. As she sees it, Consumers Energy has made “broad and unsubstantiated claims about the impact that excess solar has on the grid, but the truth is they haven’t quantified any of that.”By law, utilities bear the burden of proving to regulators that regulatory rates are justified. “In Michigan, we base rates on data — not rhetoric or politics or shareholder demands,” Kearney said.A spokesperson for the utility, which serves about 1.8 million electric customers in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, said the company is committed to increasing the amount of power it gets from renewable sources, but that customer-owned rooftop solar is not the best value for customers overall.A 2016 Michigan law called for an end to the state’s net metering policy, in which residential customers are credited for unused solar power at the same rate they pay for electricity from the grid. Instead, it mandates a shift to a distributed generation program with an inflow/outflow tariff. The amount customers are credited for solar power flowing back onto the grid must be determined in individual rate cases. Consumers’ proposal would decrease the rate for unused solar power by roughly 46%. It would also increase residential rates by roughly 14%t, in part to cover the cost of distribution infrastructure but also to help offset a proposed 6.7% rate decrease for industrial customers.
Solar farms could produce clean energy in the future, but at what environmental cost? - An unnamed developer is currently seeking a deal with Horry County officials to build five solar farms in the county in coming months, aiming to break ground in mid-2021.The developer is seeking to build the solar farms across five properties in three separate locations in western Horry County, supplying the county with power for hundreds of homes.The potential deal could net the county up to $16.6 million over 30 years, funds that some County Council members say could go toward a recreation center in western, rural Horry County.Altogether, the solar farms could generate up to 138 megawatts of power annually.But a big question remains: What to do with the solar panels when they become obsolete? By current industry standards, most solar panels are built to function for 30 years, on average. But some council members said they worry that the materials contained in the solar panels, once the panels are disposed of, could one day have detrimental environmental effects in Horry County or elsewhere.“There’s not a landfill in the country that will take these things,” County Council member Johnny Vaught said at a recent council meeting. “The financial thing looks really good, it looks really nice, but I’m thinking about my grandchildren and children down the road, where are these materials going to go when they’re done with them?”
Farm owners get intervenor status in Southington solar project deliberations— The local family that farms an East Street parcel eyed by a renewable energy developer for a possible solar panel array will now have a seat at the table while the proposal is discussed.The Connecticut Siting Council, which has approval authority over such proposals, last week granted Michael and Diane Karabin’s request for intervenor status as it takes up the application for Southington Solar One, as the project has been called.The Karabins have farmed the 103-acre plot at 1012 East St., which is owned by the Catholic Cemeteries Association, for years. Verogy LLC, a Hartford-based solar developer has proposed developing a 4.7 megawatt solar farm across a portion of the site, while maintaining some agricultural use of the remaining land by allowing sheep grazing and a pollinator habitat on the undeveloped portions.Verogy has claimed the potential electrical output of the proposal would provide enough electricity to power more than 1,100 homes. Paul Zagorsky, an attorney representing the Karabins, said the newly granted intervenor status enables his clients to directly argue during proceedings that the proposal would adversely affect the environment and agriculture. At least one state agency, the Council on Environmental Quality, has questioned whether farmland, once it has been developed into a solar farm, can be restored as farmland after solar arrays have been decommissioned. Zagorsky and others also have questioned whether sheep grazing is an adequate substitute use of fertile farmland.
Wildfire Smoke Decreases California Solar Energy Output - Thick layers of ash and smoke in California have made it harder for solar panels to absorb sunlight, decreasing their energy output by as much as around 20% over the last few days, according to theCalifornia Independent Service Operator (California ISO), which oversees the state’s electricity supply.Most large-scale solar grids are out in the desert, where smoke isn’t as concentrated, said Severin Borenstein, director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. But if that smoke were to gather over those major grid systems, it could reduce solar output even more.“There is a concern that as smoke and ash spread ... that does lower the output from solar plants,” Borenstein said.Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, an industry group, defended the performance of renewables under overcast skies.“Even with the orange skies overhead, solar panels were producing 80, or more, percent of the electricity that we rely on them to produce,” Del Chiaro said.Unlike the deadly heat wave the state experienced over Labor Day weekend, temperatures this week have been cooler, as the ash and smoke that cast an apocalyptic orange hue in the Bay Area also acted as a shield against the sun, reducing energy needs.When temperatures are lower, “people aren’t running their air conditioners as much,” Del Chiaro said. “And they’re just not using as much energy, so usually there’s a correlation between the down output of solar and less demand for electricity.”Renewable energy doesn’t contribute to climate change, a driving force behind the longer and more extreme wildfire seasons so currently evident up and down the West Coast. Still, California’s reliance on renewable energy has come under scrutiny this summer, as business groups blamed the state’s use of solar and wind for contributing to rolling power outages when demand has soared during heat waves.“California, in many ways, is the canary in the coal mine,” Todd Snitchler, president and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association, told The Wall Street Journal. “Many of the natural-gas units that some in California would like to see go away have been exactly what’s needed to keep the system operating.” But the outages were not a consequence of an overreliance on renewable energy, Borenstein said; rather, they were the result of poor planning.
SC utility overseers to review rules about selling ratepayer data -- State regulators this week are set to take up a proposal that would put tighter guardrails on the practice of selling private information about utility ratepayers without their express consent. The S.C. Office of Regulatory Staff, an agency charged with protecting utility consumers, submitted the new rule for consideration in December, saying it could help protect residents from misleading advertisements. Simply put, it would make it illegal for a power company or other utility to sell private information unless the customer agrees. The S.C. Public Service Commission has scheduled a virtual hearing on the matter for Wednesday.Currently, utilities and many other companies have some degree of freedom to sell or share data about their customers. That could include names, contact information and energy usage, according to the ORS.Duke Energy and Dominion Energy, the two largest regulated electric providers operating in South Carolina, have sent letters of support to the commission, quibbling only with definitions of customer data. The new rules "will provide robust protection for customer data while allowing for an efficient and workable administrative process," wrote Katie Brown, an attorney for Charlotte-based Duke. Dominion sent comments asking for changes to the proposed regulation in March.. A lawyer for the Richmond, Va.-based company said concerns were resolved.
Fossil fuels account for the largest share of U.S. energy production and consumption - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - Fossil fuels, or energy sources formed in the Earth’s crust from decayed organic material, including petroleum, natural gas, and coal, continue to account for the largest share of energy production and consumption in the United States. In 2019, 80% of domestic energy production was from fossil fuels, and 80% of domestic energy consumption originated from fossil fuels.The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes the U.S. total energy flow diagram to visualize U.S. energy from primary energy supply (production and imports) to disposition (consumption, exports, and net stock additions). In this diagram, losses that take place when primary energy sources are converted into electricity are allocated proportionally to the end-use sectors. The result is a visualization that associates the primary energy consumed to generate electricity with the end-use sectors of the retail electricity sales customers, even though the amount of electric energy end users directly consumed was significantly less.The share of U.S. total energy production from fossil fuels peaked in 1966 at 93%. Total fossil fuel production has continued to rise, but production has also risen for non-fossil fuel sources such as nuclear power and renewables. As a result, fossil fuels have accounted for about 80% of U.S. energy production in the past decade.Since 2008, U.S. production of crude oil, dry natural gas, and natural gas plant liquids (NGPL) has increased by 15 quadrillion British thermal units (quads), 14 quads, and 4 quads, respectively. These increases have more than offset decreasing coal production, which has fallen 10 quads since its peak in 2008.In 2019, U.S. energy production exceeded energy consumption for the first time since 1957, and U.S. energy exports exceeded energy imports for the first time since 1952. U.S. energy net imports as a share of consumption peaked in 2005 at 30%. Although energy net imports fell below zero in 2019, many regions of the United States still import significant amounts of energy. Most U.S. energy trade is from petroleum (crude oil and petroleum products), which accounted for 69% of energy exports and 86% of energy imports in 2019. Much of the imported crude oil is processed by U.S. refineries and is then exported as petroleum products. Petroleum products accounted for 42% of total U.S. energy exports in 2019.The share of U.S. total energy consumption that originated from fossil fuels has fallen from its peak of 94% in 1966 to 80% in 2019. The total amount of fossil fuels consumed in the United States has also fallen from its peak of 86 quads in 2007. Since then, coal consumption has decreased by 11 quads. In 2019, renewable energy consumption in the United States surpassed coal consumption for the first time. The decrease in coal consumption, along with a 3-quad decrease in petroleum consumption, more than offset an 8-quad increase in natural gas consumption.EIA previously published articles explaining the energy flows of petroleum, natural gas, coal, and electricity. More information about total energy consumption, production, trade, and emissions is available in EIA’s Monthly Energy Review.
CMP Corridor Opponents Launch 2nd Referendum Bid Aimed At Killing The Project | Maine Public -Opponents of Central Maine Power’s proposed corridor launched a second referendum bid on Wednesday intended to pressure lawmakers to overturn the $1 billion project, but it could face issues similar to an initial bid struck from the 2020 ballot.The corridor through western Maine that would take hydropower from Quebec to the regional grid is a few federal permits and local approvals away from construction after a prior referendum scheduled for November was deemed unconstitutional by Maine’s high court last month.Defiant opponents of the project who were behind that referendum bid and the one filed Wednesday are still pursuing challenges that could theoretically upend or slow the project, including lawsuits holding that the Legislature had to approve a key state land lease and challenging a permit from the state’s environmental protection agency.This latest effort looks to bypass the issues its predecessor ran into and would essentially serve as an advisory referendum by asking the lawmakers to change state law. It would require the Maine Legislature to take a two-thirds vote to approve any transmission lines in the future and require another two-thirds vote to approve the use of public lands for such projects. That latter provision would be retroactive to projects passed in the last six years, which would allow the question to affect the corridor. However, it could run into similar problems as the last challenge in the high court, where justices challenged the ability of lawmakers and Maine citizens to overturn executive branch decisions on permitting. The Legislature has also turned back bills that would have created higher approval thresholds for the corridor before.
'Game-Changer' FERC Order Opens Up Wholesale Grid Markets to Distributed Energy Resources The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has passed a long-awaited order to open up the country’s wholesale energy markets to distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar, behind-the-meter batteries and electric vehicles. Now comes the hard part: creating market rules that allow these DERs to play in bulk energy markets while retaining the role of state regulators and utilities to maintain the soundness of their distribution grid operations and retail DER programs. Order 2222, passed by a 2-1 vote Thursday during FERC’s open meeting in Washington, D.C., is the culmination of years of work on how to allow DER aggregations to compete in the energy, capacity and ancillary services markets operated by the regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) that manage the transmission grids carrying electricity to about two-thirds of the country. The new order is an outgrowth of FERC Order 841, passed in 2018 to set similar rules for batteries and other energy storage systems to serve in wholesale markets. But with its much broader scope, Order 2222 could have an even more profound impact on the value of DERs in U.S. markets, as well as the operations of its wholesale markets. “DERs can hide in plain sight in our homes, businesses and communities, but their power is mighty,” FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee said at Thursday’s meeting. Projections indicate that from 65 gigawatts to more than 380 gigawatts of DERs could be added to the country’s power grids over the next four years, he noted. “Today’s order is designed to capitalize on those shifts,” he said. “[It] will help us increase competition and efficiencies in our markets. It will enhance grid flexibility and reliability attributes. And it will stimulate the kind of innovation that’s needed to keep pace with our ever-evolving energy demand.” DERs do participate in wholesale energy markets today, but almost exclusively undertraditional demand-response constructs that limit their full effectiveness, he said. This status quo represents a violation of FERC's responsibility to assure "just and reasonable" rates for electricity consumers, which serves as the basis of issuing the new order, according to Chatterjee. Aggregated rooftop solar, batteries, EV chargers, grid-responsive water heaters and air conditioners, and other DERs can be installed much more quickly than large-scale resources in locations where “price signals indicate they’re most needed,” driving down congestion costs and reducing market inefficiencies that add to customers’ electricity bills, Chatterjee said.
Murray Energy Exits Bankruptcy, Rehires Union Miners - Coal mining giant Energy Corp. has emerged from bankruptcy with a new name and a commitment to rehire all of its former union employees, according to anews release from the United Mine Workers of America.UMWA President Cecil Roberts said on Wednesday that a new collective bargaining agreement has been finalized between the coal miners union and American Consolidated Natural Resources Inc., which took over Murray Energy’s assets. Murray Energy was formerly the largest privately-owned underground coal mining company in the country with a substantial footprint across the Ohio Valley. The company produced low-cost bituminous coal at mines located close to its customers — largely coal-fired power plants. As coal-fired generators have closed, that has posed challenges for the company’s business model.Founder and CEO Bob Murray has close ties to President Donald Trump, including appearing at events in West Virginia with the president and donating $300,000 to his inauguration. Murray has helped shape the administration’s environmental agenda, including promoting policies that loosened restrictions on the U.S. coal industry.The Ohio-based company declared bankruptcy last fall, citing billions of dollars in debt, healthcare and pension liabilities. In court filings, company executives said tough market conditions for coal was one of the major factors that pushed the coal giant toward bankruptcy. The court process unearthed new information about spending by Murray executives, including multi-million dollar cash bonuses, and what some creditors described as a “disturbing pattern of self dealing and abuse of corporate resources.”
Governor's coal company may get a break from WVDEP on water pollution fines - West Virginia environmental regulators are proposing to reduce the fines that a coal company owned by the state’s governor could pay for water pollution violations that are the focus of a federal court case. The move comes after the company stopped paying penalties required as part of a settlement four years ago to clean up its mines across the Appalachian coalfields. Environmental groups allege that the Red Fox Mine, a large strip-mining site in southern West Virginia owned by Gov. Jim Justice’s Bluestone Coal Corp., continues to exceed discharge limits for harmful substances. The suit could result in substantial payouts — the maximum potential federal penalties are nearly $170 million — that would go to the U.S. Treasury.In the weeks before a trial in the case, lawyers for Bluestone filed documents detailing a draft deal worked out separately with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The state agency, whose administrator is appointed by Justice, has agreed to settle the violations for a fine of $125,000, according to a court filing by the environmental groups’ lawyers. (State and federal governments share the authority to enforce water pollution rules.)Lawyers for Bluestone are asking the judge to throw out the federal case, saying the state settlement and hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal fines the company already paid for the same violations should resolve the matters. Lawyers for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and other groups say the state settlement doesn’t moot their suit, and they urged a federal judge not to grant Bluestone’s request to throw out the case. They called the state action “a self-dealing administrative order” and said the proposed penalties “are insufficient to deter future violations, leaving a realistic prospect of continued noncompliance.” At best, the lawyers say, the amount paid would offset potential fines in the federal court action. The fight to force Justice’s empire to follow pollution rules, the groups say, symbolizes the larger ongoing fight over how aggressively to regulate an industry that remains politically powerful, even as its economic influence declines.The state’s environmental regulators are seen as friendly to coal companies, so the reduced fines are in keeping with prior actions. In one significant example from a decade ago, a $20 million federal settlement with Massey Energy revealed that West Virginia officials were not even reviewing disclosures that Massey had filed reporting thousands of water pollution violations.“Coal companies pollute,” said Vivian Stockman, executive director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “There seems to be little consequence to carrying on business in disregard for the law. This has been the case over decades.” The proposed settlement is the latest in which government agencies overseen by Justice have had to regulate businesses owned by Justice, a billionaire whom Forbes has labeled the richest person in the state. He owns a vast array of businesses, including coal mines,resort hotels and agricultural interests, many of them regulated by the state agencies that report to him.
Witness on proposal to make Duke Energy share coal-ash costs - Charlotte Business Journal -Rebuttal witnesses for Duke Energy Carolinas argued on financial and regulatory grounds Tuesday against a proposal to make the company pay half of its $490 million coal-ash cleanup costs. That meant much of the afternoon session of the hearing on Duke’s requested rate hike was held in closed session. The N.C. Utilities Commission closed the session as attorneys for the Public Staff challenged the propriety of spending on specific projects involved in cleaning up coal-ash operations. Before the closed session, Duke presented four witnesses who largely focused on reasons they contend the commission should reject all of the proposals made by the Public Staff, the state's utility customer advocate. Sean Riley, a partner with consulting and accounting firm PwC (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers), testified that he is aware of no regulators elsewhere in the nation that have approved or considered the kind of “equitable sharing” of coal costs the staff proposes. He noted that utilities and regulators across the country are facing the question of how to recover significant coal-ash costs imposed by recent changes to federal requirements for the handling and disposal of ash at coal-fired power plants. He said the way that is generally being handled is through the process the commission adopted for Duke in a 2018 rate case. That involves the utility tracking its coal-ash costs and presenting those actually incurred for reimbursement through rates. He testified that adopting the Public Staff’s proposal would have a significant impact on the financial stability of parent Duke Energy Corp. The sharing proposal and other reductions of coal-ash recovery proposed by the staff would amount to the disallowance of billions of dollars worth of costs for Duke Carolinas in the long term. “Obviously there would be a charge to earnings immediately in the income statement, and that would flow through to a significant reduction in equity for the company,” he said. “Ultimately the financial strength of the company would be severely impacted, given the magnitude of that level of disallowance.” Public Staff attorney William Grantmeyer sought to dispute the severity of the impact. He contended the charge to earnings would involve hundreds of millions of dollars in the current rate case, but not the utility’s share of roughly $7 billion in coal-ash spending Duke Carolinas and sister Duke Energy Progress says it must yet recover in this and future years.
Trump’s Promise to Revive Coal Thwarted by Falling Demand, Cheaper Alternatives – WSJ - President Trump hasn’t been able to bring back “beautiful, clean coal” as he promised four years ago. As mines and power plants continue to close, the question many are asking in the diminishing American coal industry is—what now? Coal companies and their workers experienced a brief renaissance during the first two years of Mr. Trump’s term despite declining domestic consumption, thanks in part to a surge in demand from countries such as India and South Korea. Exports have since fallen. U.S. coal output and consumption are now on pace to decline at faster annual rates, on average, under President Trump than under President Obama. The use of coal to generate electricity in the U.S. is expected to fall more than a third during Mr. Trump’s first term, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show, as a glut of cheap natural gas unlocked due to fracking and increasingly competitive wind and solar sources gained market share. More than half of that drop happened before the new coronavirus outbreak. That compares with a decline of about 35% in coal consumed for power generation during Mr. Obama’s eight years in office. Last year, the U.S. consumed more renewable energy than coal for the first time since the 1880s, federal data show. That includes coal and renewables used for electricity, as well as for purposes such as steelmaking and transportation. In the power sector, the EIA expects coal will generate just 20% of U.S. electricity this year, down from 31% in 2016. Another 20% is forecast to come from renewables, up from around 15% four years ago. “Coal isn’t coming back. You can’t legislate it,” said Karla Kimrey, previously a vice president at Wyoming-based coal producer Cloud Peak Energy Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection last year. Domestic demand has continued to drop as utilities retire coal power plants and turn to cheap natural gas and renewables to make electricity, trends that have only accelerated as economies have slowed due to the pandemic. With less demand for power, many utilities have cut back on coal generation first, as it is generally more expensive.
Democrat asks for probe of EPA's use of politically appointed lawyers - Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) on Tuesday called for an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) use of political officials instead of career employees to defend some of its rules in court. Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, called for an inspector general probe into why nine agency legal filings list only political appointees as those representing the agency. “My office has been informed by several people knowledgeable about EPA OGC [Office of General Counsel] typical practice that using political appointees solely as the attorneys of record in these briefs is extraordinary,” the Delaware senator wrote. “The absence of career officials listed on these filings could be regarded as a conspicuous signal that the normal process of obtaining dispassionate legal analysis on these cases, conducted by experienced career EPA attorneys, has been discarded,” he added. Carper said that the nine filings in question, a small fraction of the almost 2,000 federal briefs and hundreds of district court briefs filed by the Trump EPA, contain only the signatures of either General Counsel Matthew Leopold and Principal Deputy General Counsel David Fotouhi together, or Fotouhi alone. They also pertain to some of the most high-profile and controversial environmental rules promulgated by the Trump administration. Two of the briefs were in defense of the administration’s repeal of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which regulated coal-fired power plant pollution, replacing it with a less burdensome rule. Other briefs in question pertained to the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which limited the scope of the government’s power to regulate water pollution. Carper’s letter also relayed allegations from an unnamed source who claimed that career lawyers refused to sign at least one of the filings “because they likely presented arguments that have no legal merit at all and perhaps represent a violation of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”
Seabrook nuclear power plant’s license extension upheld, with conditions - – After nearly a year of analysis, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board upheld the operating license amendment to NextEra Energy’s nuclear power plant in Seabrook. The board in its 207-page ruling Friday, Sept. 11, however, imposed four additional conditions to address further on the alkali-silica reaction (ASR) concrete degradation issues within the plant’s structures. The amendment, requested by NextEra Energy Seabrook in 2016, relates to monitoring the physical impact ASR will have on the safe operation of the plant as it ages. The ASL Board concluded the additional conditions are necessary to ensure adequate health and safety protections for the public, according to the ruling released to the public. ASR is a slow-developing type of degradation found in some concrete when moisture is present. It was discovered at Seabrook Station about 10 years ago, just as NextEra was applying for a 20-year extension of its original 40-year operating license. The license amendment was filed by NextEra following its license extension application to indicate how the company will address ASR’s progression in its concrete walls as the plant ages. ASR manifests as micro-cracking, staining and deformation of concrete. So far, the NRC’s repeated inspections determined ASR in Seabrook Station’s structures poses no immediate public safety concerns because of the significant safety margins built into the plant. Seabrook Station is the only American nuclear power plant exhibiting ASR, although it has been found in nuclear plants elsewhere in the world. The phenomenon is often found in dams and bridges.
There’s a lot of important stuff in Ohio House Bill 6 besides the nuclear bailout - cleveland.com —As state lawmakers start the process of repealing House Bill 6 following ex-House Speaker Larry Householder’s bribery scandal, most attention has been given to the law’s $1 billion-plus ratepayer bailout of two Northern Ohio nuclear power plants. But there are a lot of other things HB 6 does in addition to the nuclear bailout, including offer subsidies to specific coal and solar plants around the state, dismantle the state’s green-energy standards for utilities, and allow FirstEnergy Corp. and other utilities to lock in a guaranteed level of ratepayer revenue for years to come. HB6 has a grab-bag of other measures as well. It allows county fairs to halve their yearly electric bills, makes more mid-sized wind farms exempt from property taxes and puts them under local control, and requires Ohio to spend a larger portion of federal grant money for low-income heating assistance on home weatherization work instead of bill assistance. Here’s more on the lesser-known parts of House Bill 6, including how the controversial law is already affecting you (and your bank account):
- Expanded coal-plant subsidies: Starting last January, ratepayers around Ohio have been paying a fee of roughly 58 cents per bill for residential customers and 85 cents per 1,000 kilowatt-hour for commercial and industrial customers. All this money goes to subsidize two coal-fired power plants – the Kyger Creek plant in Ohio and the Clifty Creek plant in Indiana – run by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation. The money goes to the utilities that co-own OVEC, which include American Electric Power, Dayton Power & Light, and Duke Energy.
- Goodbye green-energy standards: House Bill 6 kills a 2008 law stating that by 2027, utilities must obtain 12.5 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind and solar, as well as slash customers' power usage by 22 percent through energy-efficiency programs. HB 6 ends the state’s energy-efficiency mandate at the end of this year, meaning utilities no longer have to maintain programs which offer things like reduced-price LED bulbs, rebates on smart thermostats and energy-saving appliances, and financial incentives to build energy-efficient homes).
- Decoupling: House Bill 6 allows Ohio-based utilities to lock in, with state regulators' approval, a guaranteed yearly revenue from residential and commercial customers. It’s called “decoupling,” because the idea is to allow utilities to “decouple” the amount of money it makes from how much electricity they sell.
- Solar-plant subsidies: Starting next January, House Bill 6 requires the state to pay $20 million per year until 2028 to support the construction of six solar-power projects in Southern Ohio.
- Help for county fairs: HB6 requires utilities to set a fixed monthly fee or charge for county fairs, resulting in fairs' electric bills being slashed by nearly half.
- Rules for federal aid: Under federal law, only up to 15% of the federal government’s Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program’s money a state gets can be used for home weatherization projects. House Bill 6, though, directs the state starting this fiscal year to request a waiver from the feds every year so it can spend 25% of its LIHEAP money on weatherization.
Editorial: Still plenty of HB 6 nonsense to be sorted out - Opinion - The Columbus Dispatch - This editorial represents the opinion of the Dispatch editorial board. As the U.S. Justice Department continues its investigation of what it says are the corrupt origins of Ohio’s now-infamous House Bill 6, we’re glad others are raising questions about this lousy legislation, too. Two examples: The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel wants to know whether the $60 million the feds say went to the fund that former House Speaker Larry Householder controlled came from utility ratepayers; and environmental and consumer groups are calling hooey on HB 6 backers’ claim that it saves ratepayers money. To review: HB 6 provided a $1.3 billion bailout for two nuclear power plants formerly owned by Akron-based FirstEnergy, which was dubious but debatable. The Dispatch and many others opposed it strongly because it set Ohio back immeasurably, by gutting the state’s incentives for clean and renewable energy and even propping up two dirty coal-fired plants. . In July, a news bomb dropped that could sink it: An FBI affidavit alleged that HB 6 was the result of a multiyear illegal coordination between Householder and a company that isn’t named, but is clearly identifiable as FirstEnergy. Householder and four associates were indicted on federal racketeering and bribery charges and the investigation continues. Anyone with even passing acquaintance with politics assumed that FirstEnergy likely was the money behind Generation Now, the 501(c)3 group that bankrolled the pro-HB 6 campaign. The illegal part, according to the FBI, is that Householder personally controlled Generation Now, directing its spending to support other House candidates who would support him for speaker. That put him in the position to make HB 6 happen. Now, while many are calling for HB 6 to be repealed, the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, a ratepayers’ watchdog, wants the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to audit FirstEnergy to determine whether any of the $60 million that fueled Generation Now came, improperly, from ratepayer funds collected for a specific purpose.We second the OCC’s motion. The PUCO has earned a reputation for favoring utilities over consumers; it could counter that by taking a good look at some highly questionable dealings. And beyond the nickels and dimes is the more important issue of Ohio’s economy and environment. Both would be far better served by robust investment in energy technologies of the future than by propping up the past. Regardless of Householder’s guilt or innocence, HB 6 was birthed in deception and nonsense. If the PUCO isn’t interested in rooting it out, we trust the FBI and the U.S. district attorney are.
HB6 Opponents Say Poll Shows Little Public Support For Nuclear Bailout Law – WOSU - A group calling for the repeal of Ohio's nuclear bailout law says they have public opinion on their side. The coalition of organizations against HB6 says polling shows little support for the legislation at the center of a federal corruption investigation. The Coalition to Restore Public Trust – a group of environmentalists, government watchdogs and energy producers – is advocating for HB6 to be repealed following the federal indictment of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others over an alleged $60 million racketeering scheme.The coalition asked Clout Research for a survey on support for HB6. Pollster Fritz Wenzel says the results show a majority of voters wouldn't support a legislator who voted in favor of the bailout. “That just screams that it doesn't matter what the value of the policy is, whether it's good public policy anyway," Wenzel says. "Voters don't like it." The poll found 80% of respondents supported some sort of repeal of HB6, with 44% calling for an outright repeal.Supporters of HB6 argue the law, which creates subsidies for nuclear, coal and solar while cutting renewable energy and energy efficiency mandates, is still good policy, despite the controversial process. They also argue that the bill saves jobs at Ohio's two nuclear plants and protects zero-carbon-emitting energy generation. Repeal advocates say lawmakers should scrap the law and go back to the drawing board on energy policy that deals with those issues. Both the Ohio House and Senate have begun hearings on how to repeal and possibly replace HB6, which Gov. Mike DeWine says he supports.
Ohio regulators decline to force FirstEnergy to hire an independent auditor - Regulators are requiring FirstEnergy to show that its Ohio utility ratepayers didn’t foot the bill, “directly or indirectly,” for political or charitable spending in support of the state’s nuclear and coal bailout bill. Yet that order is much more lenient than the state’s official consumer advocate had sought. Questions about possible improprieties arose after former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, was arrested on July 21. That case involves an alleged criminal conspiracy by him and others to pass House Bill 6 last year and then to defend it against a citizens’ referendum. The federal complaint and indictmentallege that the defendants received approximately $60 million from “Company A” — apparently FirstEnergy — and its subsidiaries and affiliates. Repeal bills are pending in the General Assembly. Meanwhile, on Sept. 8, the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel asked the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to require an independent audit of FirstEnergy’s political and charitable spending. Before FirstEnergy’s utilities filed any formal response, the PUCO opened a new case and issued its Sept. 15 order.The PUCO told FirstEnergy’s utilities “to show cause, by September 30, 2020, demonstrating that the costs of any political or charitable spending in support of Am. Sub. H.B. 6, or the subsequent referendum effort, were not included, directly or indirectly, in any rates or charges paid by ratepayers in this state.”“We are reviewing the PUCO order and will respond by September 30 as required,” said FirstEnergy spokesperson Jennifer Young. She added that the company was “not aware of the criminal allegations, affidavit or subpoenas before July 21,” and that it is cooperating fully in the federal investigation.Critics aren’t willing to take FirstEnergy’s word for it that the company did nothing wrong. “Ohioans deserve an open, transparent investigation and an audit by an independent, third party into the actions taken by FirstEnergy — not just a report from FirstEnergy itself to the PUCO,” said Miranda Leppla, vice president of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund. “Ohioans have a right to know that state-approved monopolies, like our electric utilities, are not misusing dollars collected from Ohioans’ electric bills, and if they are, that the PUCO acts swiftly to crack down.”
Columbia Gas pipeline project would move gas under the Scioto River - Columbia Gas of Ohio is planning an expansion project that would transport gas under the Scioto River north of Columbus. The project is necessary to ensure that supplies of natural gas remain adequate to serve growing areas northwest of the city. Columbia Gas of Ohio is planning to expand its pipeline system to meet growing demand for gas in an area that extends from northwestern Franklin County into Delaware and Union counties. The routes that the natural gas distribution company is considering for the project would transport natural gas under the Scioto River. Called the Northern Loop, the project begins at Hyatts Road in Delaware County, where earlier segments of the Northern Loop end. It extends to U.S. 42 and down to U.S. 33 to McKitrick Road near Hyland Croy Road in Union County, where gas will enter existing lines. The project will bring natural gas from pipelines on the eastern side of Franklin County, where supplies are abundant, to areas north and west of Columbus. Columbia Gas expects construction to begin in 2022. The cost is projected at $100 million to $110 million. “It ensures upstream capacity is available to meet the growth that continues to occur in the northwest part of our system,” said Vince Parisi, president and chief operating officer of Columbia Gas of Ohio. Several phases of the project already have been completed, bringing the line to Delaware County. The final phase loops from southern Delaware County to southeastern Union County, where it will connect to the existing gas distribution system. The project will consist of 11 miles of 24-inch pipe and 4 miles of 16-inch pipe.
Fitch downgrades Encino Acquisition Partners' ratings to B from B+ -- Fitch Ratings on Sept. 14 said it has lowered the long-term issuer default ratings for Encino Acquisition Partners LLC and Encino Acquisition Partners Holdings LLC to B from B+. The ratings outlook is negative. The rating agency also downgraded the two companies', or Encino's, senior secured second-lien term loan to B/RR4 from BB-/RR3, according to a news release. Fitch said the downgrades reflect the agency's expectations that Encino's production may be lower than planned due to decreased drilling following a drop in natural gas and NGL prices early this year. Encino, the second-largest producer in the Ohio Utica Shale, has recorded a 25% production increase since it acquired Chesapeake Energy Corp.'s Utica Shale assets in 2018, according to the release. Fitch anticipates Encino's production to increase by 20% more during the year. Additionally, the rating agency said it does not expect Encino to be able to generate positive free cash flow this year and in 2021, which may lead to an increase in its borrowings on its revolver due in 2023. Fitch said Encino's anticipated inability to generate positive free cash flow and its "challenged ability to access debt capital markets" are expected to potentially impact the companies' capacity to refinance its revolver and term loan due in 2025. Encino has a $2 billion reserve-based credit facility due 2023, of which roughly $465 million has been drawn as of June. Encino was formed by Encino Energy LLC and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
EQT Corp. in Talks With Chevron for Assets in Appalachia - EQT Corporation has keen interest in Chevron Corporation’s stakes in the Appalachian basin and a pipeline asset, per Reuters. The leading U.S. natural gas producer has offered $750 million for the properties, added the source. Notably, the assets Chevron is willing to sell comprise roughly 800,000 acres in the prolific Marcellus and Utica shale plays along with a 31% non-operating stake in Laurel Mountain Midstream. The midstream firm provides services to the Marcellus shale area through its intrastate and gathering pipelines. According to the source, Chevron is now evaluating the company’s bid for the assets. The latest bid probably reflects EQT Corp.’s willingness to purchase the assets at bargain prices since the challenging business scenario has slashed commodity prices. However, the source added that although the companies are discussing the potential transaction, there is no assurance that Chevron will divest the properties. The source added that on a per-day basis, the Appalachian properties produced 262 million cubic feet of natural gas in 2019.
Exclusive: EQT bids for Chevron U.S. shale-gas assets in Appalachia - sources (Reuters) - EQT Corp, the largest U.S. natural gas producer by volume, has placed a bid on Chevron Corp’s Appalachia gas properties and a pipeline stake, people familiar with the matter said. EQT offered $750 million (578.53 million pounds) for the properties, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Chevron last year said it was considering sale of the properties and took an $8.17 billion charge to earnings to write down their value and an unrelated U.S. offshore project. Most of the impairment charge was for the gas properties. Chevron is marketing about 800,000 acres in the Marcellus and Utica shale basins of Pennsylvania and neighboring states and a 31% non-operating interest in Laurel Mountain Midstream, which has intrastate and gathering lines servicing the Marcellus shale area. EQT declined to comment. EQT Chief Executive Toby Rice in July described Appalachia shale as “a buyer’s market,” and called consolidation an opportunity for the Pittsburgh-based company. Bids for the properties were received on Aug. 12 and are being evaluated, Chevron said in response to inquiries. It declined to comment on the bids. There is no guarantee the talks will lead to a sale to EQT or another company. The shale assets are from Chevron’s purchase of producer Atlas Energy for $4.3 billion including debt in 2010, a time when shale gas fields were selling at large premiums. A year earlier, Exxon Mobil Corp. agreed to pay $30 billion for XTO Energy, then a large Appalachian shale basin operator. The deals soured for both companies. In addition to Chevron’s writedown, Exxon later took a $2 billion writedown on the value of its natural gas assets. U.S. natural gas futures are trading at about $2.27 a million British Thermal Units (BTUs) and have languished well below their peak 12 years ago when gas traded as high as $12.78 per million British Thermal Units. The Appalachian assets last year produced 262 million cubic feet of natural gas, on a net daily basis. EQT had average daily sales volumes of about 4.1 billion cubic feet equivalent.
More Drops in Gas, Oil Production in Utica, Marcellus – Oil and gas production in the Utica and Marcellus shale formations is expected to decrease again next month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports. The agency said in its monthly drilling productivity report that natural gas production across the Appalachian basin is projected to drop by 162 million cubic feet per day in October compared to September. Much of the Utica shale is drilled in eastern Ohio, while the Marcellus shale is found mostly in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Collectively, the EIA refers to both plays as the Appalachian Basin. The EIA reported that the region should produce 32.835 billion cubic feet of gas per day in October, down from 32.997 billion cubic feet this month. Six of the seven major shale plays across the country are projecting lower output next month compared to September, according to the EIA. A single shale play, the Permian Basin in Texas, was the sole region that is projected to post an increase in October. Oil production is also expected to drop in Appalachia. The Utica and Marcellus are projected to yield 134,000 barrels of oil per day, down by 1,000 barrels from September, the agency reported. The EIA reports five of the seven shale regions expect decreases in oil production next month.
New fracking wells are down in Pennsylvania, but natural gas production hits record - More natural gas was fracked from Pennsylvania wells in 2019 than in any previous year, although the number of new wells drilled declined, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Meanwhile, DEP reported environmental violations in 14% of its inspections, and collected fines of $4.1 million. The DEP’s 2019 Oil and Gas Annual Report, released Monday, shows 6.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas was produced last year from the state’s Marcellus and Utica shale gas formations, topping the 2018 production total of 6.2 trillion cubic feet and continuing an upward trend that has gone on for more than a decade. Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas in the U.S., behind Texas.
Natural gas production in Pennsylvania hits record high - Pennsylvania’s natural gas drillers extracted the largest volume of gas on record for a single year in 2019, according to the Department of Environmental Protection’s latest annual report on the industry. Unconventional drillers extracted 6.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas last year, a more than 10 percent increase from 2018. The number of new wells drilled with hydraulic fracturing has been on a downward trend since a peak in 2014. Companies drilled 615 new wells in 2019, down from 777 the year before. Pennsylvania doesn’t tax the gas companies extract, but charges a per-well impact fee. That fell last year, according to the state’s Independent Fiscal Office. The IFO also reports the rate of growth for gas production has been ticking down since a high point in mid-2018, likely due to persistently low prices. Gas company representatives tout the industry’s growth and 90 percent drilling fluid recycling rate as good for the state’s economy and environment. “And we’re doing so with an exceptional inspection compliance rate, reflecting our commitment to safety, operational excellence and public health,” said Marcellus Shale Coalition president David Spigelmyer. A recent grand jury report detailed numerous health and environmental impacts of the natural gas industry and called out state regulators as unprepared to corral the industry during the start of the gas rush. DEP conducted more than 35,000 inspections across both conventional and unconventional well sites and collected $4 million in fines. The agency found 985 compliance violations out of nearly 19,000 inspections at unconventional sites. At conventional sites, inspectors found 1,763 violations from 12,000 visits. Conventional operators drill vertical wells that are shallower compared to unconventional operators, which use horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to reach deeper deposits of oil and natural gas in rock formations like Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale. The state’s more than 70,000 conventional wells produced about 71 billion cubic feet of gas in 2019. There are about 8,400 active unconventional wells. The latest report also documents nearly 12,000 abandoned wells. DEP estimates there could be as many as 200,000 of them, many of which predate regulatory oversight. The orphan wells can leak methane into the air and possibly contaminate groundwater or surface water.
State orders reroute of part of natural gas pipeline (AP) — State environmental authorities have ordered Sunoco to reroute a portion of its Marine East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline in southeastern Pennsylvania following last month's spill of more than 8,000 gallons of drilling fluid into a wetland area. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection halted drilling stopped after the Aug. 10 spill into wetlands and a tributary of Marsh Creek Lake in Chester County. About 33 acres of the 535-acre lake, located in a state park, were placed off limits to boating and fishing during cleanup. Secretary Patrick McDonnell called it “yet another instance where Sunoco has blatantly disregarded the citizens and resources of Chester County with careless actions while installing the Mariner East 2 pipeline." “We will not stand for more of the same," he said in a statement. “An alternate route must be used.” Lisa Coleman, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer, which owns Sunoco, said the company was examining the order and would work closely with the department “as we have done throughout the duration of this project." “Our first priority remains the safe completion and then operation of this important infrastructure project,” she said. Sunoco has 30 days to file an appeal that would send the matter to the state Environmental Hearing Board, department spokesperson Virginia Cain said. Sunoco had to propose an alternate route for the 20-inch pipeline in 2017 after a spill that year, and Friday's order directs the company to use that route, she said. The new route would run for a little over a mile in an area north of where the current pipeline drilling is taking place. It would still cross two waterways and forested wetlands, and would be closer to five homes, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Exploration firms drilling in the booming Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale fields ship natural gas liquids through the Mariner East pipelines to Marcus Hook refinery and export terminal near Philadelphia, helping the U.S. become the world’s leading ethane exporter.
Pennsylvania orders Sunoco to reroute section of Mariner East 2 NGL pipe(Reuters) - Pennsylvania environmental regulators ordered Energy Transfer LP’s Sunoco Pipeline unit to reroute a section of the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline after spilling 8,000 gallons of drilling fluid in Marsh Creek State Park in August. Analysts at Height Capital Markets said on Monday the reroute could delay an upgrade to the already operating Mariner East 2 project that was expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2021. Officials at Energy Transfer were not immediately available for comment. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said late Friday the Marsh Creek spill caused the park to close 33 acres (13 hectares) of the lake from boating and other recreational uses. “These incidents are yet another instance where Sunoco has blatantly disregarded the citizens and resources of Chester County with careless actions while installing the Mariner East II Pipeline,” DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell said in a statement. The reroute order was the latest in a long series of sanctions against the company for violations of its permits during construction of Mariner East 2. Since May 2017, Pennsylvania has issued 115 notices of violation to Mariner East, mostly for drilling fluid spills, including one in September. Pennsylvania has fined the company and stopped construction on the pipe several times. Several politicians and local groups have long urged the state to stop work again and shut the pipe. Mariner East transports liquids from the Marcellus and Utica shale in western Pennsylvania to customers in the state and elsewhere, including international exports from Energy Transfer’s Marcus Hook complex near Philadelphia. Sunoco started work on the $2.5 billion Mariner East expansion in February 2017 and had planned to finish the 350-mile (563-km) pipeline in the third quarter of 2017. But completion was delayed until December 2018 due to several work stoppages by state agencies.
Over 43,000 Demand Feds Reject Extension of Fracked Gas Pipeline Permit Timeline — Water and climate advocacy organizations submitted comments and signatures from more than 43,000 people demanding the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) deny the fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline more time to construct the pipeline. Developers of the controversial project, which is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule, asked FERC for a two-year extension of a certificate it needs to continue construction. Planned to run over 300 miles through West Virginia and Virginia, state inspectors have already identified hundreds of violations of commonsense water protections, and MVP has paid millions of dollars in penalties. There are also questions about whether MVP is accurately reporting how much of the project has been completed. The comments and petition signatures were collected by the Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth Action, Beyond Extreme Energy, 198 Methods, and the NC Alliance to Protect Our People and the Places We Live. They represent people from West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. The Sierra Club and several of its allies also moved to intervene in the proceeding and submitted comments opposing the extension request. Additionally, senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner have asked FERC to extend the public comment period on MVP’s request, asking for 30 days because the 15 currently granted are “inadequate.” In response, the following coalition organizations fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline issued the following statements:
Top Marcellus CEO urges government help to boost infrastructure projects - A key Pittsburgh-based natural gas CEO told the presidential's economic adviser and the U.S. energy secretary that natural gas producers need government help in building infrastructure in the face of strong and effective environmental opposition.Richard D. Weber, the chairman and CEO of PennEnergy Resources, said the Marcellus and Utica Shale revolution of the past 15 years has created clean, low-cost energy with the three-state region of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio producing about 32 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. It's the largest natural gas field in the world and a big reason why the United States being the largest producer of natural gas on Earth. But, Weber said, production exceeds the local markets. "We have to be able to move our product around the country and also overseas," Weber said Thursday afternoon at the virtual National Gas Summit that was held by the U.S. Department of Energy.Weber said opponents in the environmental sector are well-funded and have targeted infrastructure projects — mainly pipelines but also liquified natural gas export terminals — as an effective way to stop natural gas production. He pointed to the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline over the summer after billions of dollars already invested. He called the Mountain Valley Pipeline, owned by Pittsburgh-based Equitrans Midstream Corp. (NYSE: ETRN) and stalled by lawsuits and regulatory action, at risk due to opposition. "What we need as an industry, we need support from the federal government to permit intelligent infrastructure development and that also includes the ability to export our products," Weber said.Other panelists at the summit agreed. Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, likened activists as trying to "step on the hose" between supply and demand. Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said that Oregon was blocking western states' attempts to ship natural gas overseas via terminal on what she called "ideological opposition." Weber's request found a welcome reception in the host, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, and the moderator, Larry Kudlow, director of the United States National Economic Council and a key adviser to President Donald J. Trump. "What is challenging us, and what I think is challenging the industry, is an infrastructure problem," Brouillette said. "We need more pipelines, we need more export facilities. We have to improve our permitting processes so we can allow this infrastructure to be built quickly and more efficiently."
DEQ required Dominion to pay $1.5 million for potential, actual damage from Atlantic Coast Pipeline - Dominion Energy paid more than $1.5 million to the NC Department of Environmental Quality to offset potential and actual damage from the construction and operation of the now-defunct Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The payment, made in February 2018 to the Division of Mitigation Services, was part of a state program for impacts to water quality and stream and river buffers. Both state and federal regulators require developers to pay a third-party or conduct mitigation themselves if their projects unavoidably damage waterways or buffers. Under the state’s in-lieu fee mitigation program, a state agency like DMS, or a nonprofit organization, sells credits to developers, in this case, Dominion. The payment is required in advance of construction, and DMS or the nonprofit is responsible for the mitigation project’s success. In some instances, the developer chooses to hire a contractor and pay for its own mitigation. Just under half of the funds Dominion paid to DMS — $719,240 — were allocated for buffer projects in Upper Tar River and Fishing Creek sub-basins. This area includes the cities of Rocky Mount, Nashville and Enfield, where the pipeline would have routed. Another $849,000 was allocated to buffer projects in the Upper Neuse River and Contentnea sub-basins, which include Smithfield, Selma and Wilson, also along the proposed route.
Enbridge Asks to Start Up Compressor in Two Weeks - Less than a week after workers vented an unspecified amount of natural gas as part of an emergency shutdown, energy giant Enbridge asked federal regulators for the green light to start up a Weymouth compressor station in two weeks.The company filed a request Wednesday to place the station on the banks of the Fore River, between densely packed neighborhoods in Quincy Point and North Weymouth, in service by Oct. 1, asking for a decision by Sept. 24 so its customers have a chance to prepare for gas supplies. "In order to meet the needs of our project customers ahead of the upcoming winter heating season, we are requesting approval to place the Weymouth Compressor Station in service by October 1, 2020," Enbridge spokesman Max Bergeron wrote in a Thursday morning email. "The Weymouth Compressor Station will enable three local gas utilities in Maine and one in Canada to benefit from additional access to natural gas, helping homes and businesses switch from higher-emitting fuels to cleaner-burning natural gas."The station is currently in the testing process after a lengthy permitting fight. On Friday, a gasket failure prompted crews to trigger an emergency shutdown and release at least 10,000 cubic feet of natural gas. Following the incident, Congressman Stephen Lynch urged the U.S. Department of Transportation to shut down the project immediately for additional oversight before work proceeds, warning that it poses "an immediate public safety threat to the residents of Weymouth and its surrounding communities." Massachusetts Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides said Enbridge followed the proper safety and notification protocols after the gasket failure, and rather than shutting down Enbridge is angling to ramp up operations. Enbridge is seeking the Weymouth station as part of its Atlantic Bridge pipeline infrastructure.
Natural gas line explosion leaves crater-sized hole near Piedmont— Numerous agencies responded to the scene of a natural gas explosion Wednesday night near Piedmont. Officials said a 12-inch pipeline running under Waterloo Road near Piedmont Road exploded, creating a crater all across the roadway. Police told KOCO 5 that it's a rural area and very few residents live nearby. The police chief said there are no injuries that he knows of and no evacuations were issued. The police chief said there could be a lot of other intersecting power lines near the initial line that was ruptured, which could impact power. Cimarron Power responded to the scene, and police said other agencies will be notified if they are affected. The explosion left behind a crater-sized hole that's roughly 35 feet long and 20 feet wide. Crews were still putting out hot spots Thursday morning. Officials with CimarronElectric Cooperative said they lost six power poles in the pipeline explosion.
Cause of natural gas line fire under investigation in Fort Smith — Investigators from the Arkansas Oklahoma Gas Corp. were at the intersection of Massard Rd. and Zero street to determine the cause of a natural gas fire that broke out last night. "We're looking at every possibility to define what actually caused the incident," said Fred Kirkwood, AOG Chief Customer Officer. "It's basically a gathering point for a number of gas lines as they come into one point for monitoring, measuring and distribution back into the system." The fire was first reported to Fort Smith dispatchers shortly after 9:00 Wednesday evening. The Fort Smith fire chief said a high pressure transmission line carrying natural gas ruptured and resulted in the fire. The line was owned by Arkansas Oklahoma Gas and crews were battling flames until the company could shut it down. Crews worked about four hours to suppress the flames while they were waiting for the gas company to turn the gas off. "They had to get the situation under control where it was safe to go in and shut the gas off," said Kirkwood. Shawn Fuller, incident commander and fire battalion chief in Fort Smith, said their main focus was protecting nearby buildings and nearby transmission lines. Fuller said there were five other transmission lines, owned by five other gas companies, that needed protection from the flames. "It's safer for the fire to be burning because you know where the gas is at that point so you can protect the exposures around it," said Mark Talley, Division Chief of Operations, for the Fort Smith Fire Department. "If the fire's out and the gas is leaking, you don't know where it's going. It could or it will find an ignition source."
U.S. natgas futures rise near 2% as output falls ahead of Hurricane Sally (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures rose near 2% on Monday as liquefied natural gas exports continued to rise and output dipped as Gulf Coast producers shut some production before Hurricane Sally smashes into the Gulf Coast. Sally is expected to hit near the Louisiana-Mississippi border early on Tuesday. Entergy Corp , the biggest power company in Louisiana and Mississippi, still has about 50,000 customers without service from Hurricane Laura in southwestern Louisiana since late August. After falling to a four-week low last week, front-month gas futures rose 4.1 cents, or 1.8%, to settle at $2.310 per million British thermal units. Data provider Refinitiv said output in the Lower 48 U.S. states was on track to slide to a two-week low of 86.1 billion cubic feet per day on Monday due to a near 1-billion-cubic-feet-per-day (bcfd) decline in the Gulf Coast. Traders noted futures rose despite a decline in overall demand as the weather turns mild. Refinitiv projected demand, including exports, would slide from 85.3 bcfd this week to 82.4 bcfd next week. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants, meanwhile, was on track to average 5.1 bcfd in September. That is the most in a month since May and up for a second month in a row for the first time since hitting a record high of 8.7 bcfd in February. The LNG-export gain comes as Cheniere Energy Inc's Sabine Pass in Louisiana ramps up after shutting in late August for Hurricane Laura and as global gas prices rise, making U.S. gas more attractive in Europe and Asia following months of U.S. cargo cancellations due to coronavirus demand destruction. Cameron LNG's export plant in Louisiana, however, has remained shut since Aug. 27 due to lingering power outages from Laura. Some analysts say the plant could remain shut through mid October.
U.S. natgas up over 2% as producers cut output for Hurricane Sally (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures gained over 2% on Tuesday as output fell after producers shut some Gulf of Mexico wells before Hurricane Sally smashes into the coast. That price rise came despite forecasts for milder weather and lower cooling demand over the next two weeks and a continued rise in liquefied natural gas exports. Sally is expected to hit near the Mississippi-Alabama border early Wednesday - far from any operating LNG export plants. There were no power outages from Sally yet. But Entergy Corp, the biggest power company along the Gulf Coast, still has about 50,000 customers without service in southwestern Louisiana since late August from Hurricane Laura, including the Cameron LNG export plant. Front-month gas futures rose 5.2 cents, or 2.3%, to settle at $2.362 per million British thermal units. Data provider Refinitiv said output in the Lower 48 U.S. states was on track to slide to a 16-week low of 84.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Tuesday due to Sally-related shutdowns. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said almost 0.8 bcfd, or 28%, of Gulf of Mexico gas production was shut-in. With cooler weather coming, Refinitiv projected demand, including exports, would fall from 84.8 bcfd this week to 81.9 bcfd next week. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants, meanwhile, has averaged 5.2 bcfd so far in September. That is the most in a month since May and up for a second month in a row for the first time since hitting the 8.7-bcfd record high in February. The LNG-export gain comes as Cheniere Energy Inc's Sabine Pass in Louisiana ramps up after shutting in late August for Hurricane Laura and as global gas prices rise, making U.S. gas more attractive following months of U.S. cargo cancellations due to coronavirus demand destruction.
U.S. natgas futures fall to four-week low on mild weather forecasts (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures fell 4% to a four-week low on Wednesday on forecasts for milder weather and lower cooling demand over the next two weeks. The price decline came despite a continued rise in liquefied natural gas exports and a drop in output to its lowest in two years as producers shut wells for Hurricane Sally. Sally, now a tropical storm, knocked out power to around 570,000 homes and businesses in Alabama and Florida after smashing into the Alabama coast early Wednesday. The storm is expected to stay far from LNG export plants as it moves toward Georgia and South Carolina. Front-month gas futures fell 9.5 cents, or 4.0%, to settle at $2.267 per million British thermal units, their lowest since Aug. 13. After the close, prices fell over 5%. Data provider Refinitiv said output in the Lower 48 U.S. states was on track to fall to 84.1 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd), its lowest since August 2018, due to Sally-related shutdowns. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said 0.8 bcfd, or 30%, of Gulf of Mexico gas production was shut-in. With cooler weather coming, Refinitiv projected demand, including exports, would fall from 85.2 bcfd this week to 81.8 bcfd next week. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants, meanwhile, averaged 5.3 bcfd so far in September. That was the most in a month since May and was up for a second month in a row for the first time since hitting a record 8.7 bcfd in February as global gas prices rise, making U.S. gas more attractive following months of U.S. cargo cancellations due to coronavirus demand destruction. Cameron LNG's export plant in Louisiana, however, remained shut since Aug. 27 due to lingering power outages from Hurricane Laura. Some analysts say the plant could be getting closer to returning to service.
U.S. natgas futures dive nearly 10% to 6-week low on big storage build (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures tumbled almost 10% to a six-week low on Thursday as a bigger-than expected storage build last week kept stockpiles on track to reach record highs by the end of October. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said utilities injected 89 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas into storage in the week ended Sept. 11. That is higher than the 79-bcf build analysts forecast in a Reuters poll and compares with an increase of 82 bcf during the same week last year and a five-year (2015-19) average build of 77 bcf. Even before the EIA released its report, prices were already under pressure with output expected to rise from a two-year low as producers return wells shut-in for Hurricane Sally and on forecasts calling for milder weather and lower cooling demand over the next two weeks. Front-month gas futures fell 22.5 cents, or 9.9%, to settle at $2.042 per million British thermal units, their lowest since July 31. That was the contract's biggest one-day percentage loss since January 2019. "The magnitude of today’s decline strongly suggested some margin call selling as remaining recently acquired speculative longs were forced to liquidate," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois. In recent weeks, speculators had boosted their net long positions to the highest in almost three years despite expectations record stockpiles would make price spikes and gas shortages unlikely this winter. Data provider Refinitiv said output in the Lower 48 U.S. states was on track to rise to 85.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Thursday from a two-year low of 84.8 bcfd on Wednesday due to Sally-related shutdowns. With cooler weather coming, Refinitiv projected demand, including exports, would fall from 85.3 bcfd this week to 81.9 bcfd next week.
US working natural gas volumes in underground storage rise by 89 Bcf: EIA | S&P Global Platts Total additions to US natural gas in storage last week surprised to the upside, prompting a selloff in the Henry Hub prompt futures market with a much smaller declines seen for the winter 2020-21 contracts. Storage inventories increased by 89 Bcf to 3.614 Tcf for the week ended Sept. 11, the US Energy Information Administration reported the morning of Sept. 17. The injection was significantly higher compared with S&P Global Platts' survey of analysts calling for a 77 Bcf build. Responses to the survey ranged from an injection of 68 Bcf to 80 Bcf. The injection was also more than the 82 Bcf build reported during the same week last year and 12 Bcf above the five-year average gain of 77 Bcf, according to EIA data. Storage volumes now stand 535 Bcf, or about 17%, above the year-ago level of 3.079 Tcf and 421 Bcf, or 13%, higher than the five-year average of 3.193 Tcf. Following release of the EIA's storage report, the Henry Hub prompt-month futures contract dropped by over 20 cents to trade in the low $2/MMBtu area, data from the CME Group showed. The downward pressure extended only partially to the November futures contract, which dropped about 14 cents to around $2.50/MMBtu. The December, January and February contracts came under significantly less pressure during morning trading, falling only about 5 cents. While total US storage volumes continue to hover well above five-year average levels, the additional underground supply hasn't countered the market's bullish sentiment for winter 2020-21. Since the start of August, the winter gas contracts have gained about 20 cents and continue to trade in the low-$3/MMBtu area. The upward pressure comes as dramatic cuts in drilling budgets and rig counts this year have left US gas production sputtering around 87 Bcf/d – about 8 Bcf/d, or more than 8%, below its record-high monthly average recorded in November 2019. At current activity levels, US output would remain around its current 87 Bcf/d level through at least mid-2021, recent forecasts from S&P Global Platts Analytics show. On Sept. 17, the US rig count was estimated at 293 amid a modest but bumpy rebound from its 15-year low level at just 279 rigs in July. In January 2020, the US rig count had totaled over 840 rigs – already significantly below a prior, multiyear high at nearly 1,200 rigs in early 2019, data from Enverus DrillingInfo showed. Heading into mid- to late-September, upcoming storage reports from the EIA could add more bullish sentiment to a market already concerned over recent upstream supply cuts. For the week currently in progress, the EIA is likely to announce an injection of just 66 Bcf, according to a recent forecast from Platts Analytics. Assuming the forecast holds, the injection to US stocks for the week ending Sept. 18 would fall short of the five-year average by 14 Bcf.
U.S. natgas holds near 7-wk low as rising output offsets higher LNG exports (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures held near a seven-week low on Friday as rising output in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Sally offset an increase in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. Front-month gas futures rose 0.6 cents, or 0.3%, to settle at $2.048 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). On Thursday, the contract closed at its lowest since July 31. That put the front-month down about 9% for the week and helped boost the November futures premium over October NGV20-X20 to a record 61 cents per mmBtu. Data provider Refinitiv said output in the Lower 48 U.S. states rose to 86.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Thursday from a three-month low of 84.8 bcfd on Wednesday as producers started returning Gulf of Mexico wells shut-in for Sally. The storm smashed into the Gulf Coast near the Alabama-Florida border early Wednesday. With cooler weather coming, Refinitiv projected demand, including exports, would fall from an average of 85.5 bcfd this week to 82.7 bcfd next week before rising to 83.9 bcfd in two weeks as LNG exports increase. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants was on track to reach 7.6 bcfd on Friday, its highest in a day since April. For the month, LNG feedgas averaged 5.5 bcfd so far in September. That was the most in a month since May and was up for a second month in a row for the first time since hitting a record 8.7 bcfd in February as global gas prices rise, making U.S. gas more attractive. Cameron LNG's export plant in Louisiana, however, remained shut since Aug. 27 due to lingering power outages from Hurricane Laura. Sempra Energy, one of Cameron's partners, said it expects the facility will be in full operation in six weeks.
U.S. natural gas exports have been declining since April - In 2017, the United States exported more natural gas than it imported on an annual basis for the first time in nearly 60 years, making it a net natural gas exporter. Since then, U.S. net natural gas exports have more than doubled every year: from 0.3 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2017 to 2 Bcf/d in 2018 and to 5.2 Bcf/d in 2019. Although growth in net natural gas exports continued in the first six months of 2020 (compared with the same period in 2019), net exports began declining in spring 2020 as a result of a global economic slowdown amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and related containment efforts. Starting in April, U.S. natural gas traded as liquefied natural gas (LNG) and by pipelines declined significantly, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) recently released Natural Gas Monthly, which includes data through June 2020.The United States is a net exporter of LNG and natural gas by pipeline to Mexico and is a net importer of natural gas by pipeline from Canada. In the first half of 2020, net exports of natural gas averaged 7.3 Bcf/d, or nearly 80% (3.2 Bcf/d) more than during the same period last year. In the first six months of 2020, net LNG exports increased by almost 60% (2.4 Bcf/d), net pipeline exports to Mexico increased by 4% (0.2 Bcf/d), and net imports by pipeline from Canada declined by 12% (0.6 Bcf/d) compared with the first six months of 2019.Between 2017 and 2019, growth in LNG exports led the increase in net natural gas exports. Since the first LNG cargo was exported from the Lower 48 states in February 2016, both U.S. LNG export capacity and volumes have grown substantially. In 2020, U.S. LNG export capacity continued year-over-year growth as the third trains atFreeport LNG and Cameron LNG were placed in service. EIA estimates that U.S. LNG baseload operating liquefaction capacity currently stands at 8.9 Bcf/d (10.1 Bcf/d peak) across six LNG facilities with 14 full-size trains and 10 small-scale moveable modular liquefaction system trains.U.S. LNG exports continued to grow in the first three months of 2020, averaging 7.9 Bcf/d, a 3.9 Bcf/d (98%) increase compared with the same period last year. LNG exports started to decline in April amid global reduction in natural gas consumption and a decline in global natural gas and LNG prices. In June 2020, U.S. LNG exports averaged 3.6 Bcf/d, or less than half of January’s LNG exports, and they continued to decline in July to 3.1 Bcf/d. U.S. LNG imports in the first half of 2020 were similar to imports in the first half of 2019, averaging 0.2 Bcf/d. About one-half (56%) of LNG imported in the first six months of 2020 went to the Everett LNG terminal (located offshore from Boston, Massachusetts), primarily to meet New England’s winter space heating demand. Several LNG cargoes were also imported to Cove Point terminal in Maryland and Elba Island terminal in Georgia.
How Much Oil Did Hurricane Laura Spill? Answer Is Still Unknown, But Sheen Is Widespread - Hurricane Laura made landfall near more than 1,400 active and more than 480 orphaned oil wells on the Louisiana coast, and recent aerial photos show a sheen of oil spanning miles floating on top of the storm’s receding water. Louisiana’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) spokesman Patrick Courreges says it’s too soon to tell how much oil spilled due to Hurricane Laura, as investigation continues into orphaned wells. Photographer Julie Dermansky joined David Levy, owner of Petrotechnologies and founder of the Free Iberian Press, on a flight to photograph the coast from above. Dermansky says that she photographed oil sheen along at least 20 miles of marsh and bayous of the Louisiana coast near the Texas border. As the storm approached, the DNR requested oil and gas industry operators to take preventative measures to reduce impacts and spills. The state can hold accountable any operators who failed to take appropriate action if environmental impacts later followed. However, Courreges explained, “If you are asking for a 100% infallible protection system that absolutely guarantees nothing can go wrong ever, even in the face of 150-plus mph winds and hurricane-grade storm surge, I don’t think any agency or policy can promise that. The state and the operators do what they can to prepare for such things, and to mitigate potential impacts, but total prevention of damage is probably not achievable.” The DNR makes orphaned sites a priority, and is now in the process of assessing each of the abandoned sites in Laura’s path. Courreges said it’s likely that no one other than the state will be checking on orphaned wells, as they no longer have an operator or owner to report leaks. The DNR also responds to active oil wells that have experienced issues as they’re reported. Langley clarified that while several spill reports have been filed, no major oil spills have been observed. According to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report reviewed by New Orleans Public Radio, the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center had received 31 reports of oil and chemical spills related to Hurricane Laura by Aug. 29, most of which occurred in coastal waters. Two of those calls came from the BioLab Inc. chemical plant in Westlake, Louisiana, which caught fire and released chlorine gas into the air during the storm. Another report was made about a crude oil spill in Cameron Parish, in which an unknown quantity of crude oil was spilled into a marsh. The report detailed that the spill was blocked by “secondary containment,” so it didn’t spread further than the marsh. Langley said that cleanup entails containing each leak, assessing environmental impact and, if possible, identifying a responsible party. "If a responsible party is found, they are ordered to submit a cleanup plan and provide resources to carry out the plan. If there is not a responsible party, as with an orphan drum, one of the cleanup funds may be used to pay for the work," he explained. The low-lying Louisiana coastline is particularly vulnerable to the perils of climate change and rising sea levels. The state loses about a football field of coast per day according to a U.S. Geological Survey conducted in 2019. Louisiana is the ninth largest oil producer in the U.S., producing about 120,300 barrels per day.
U.S. oil producers, exporters tally damages from Hurricane Sally, begin restarts (Reuters) - Storm-tossed U.S. offshore energy producers and exporters began clearing debris on Thursday from Hurricane Sally and booting up idle Gulf of Mexico operations after hunkering down for five days. The storm toppled trees, flooded streets and left about 570,000 homes and businesses from Mississippi to Florida without power. Sally became a tropical storm and spread heavy rains overnight from Alabama to Georgia. Crews returned to at least 30 offshore oil and gas platforms. Chevron Corp began restaffing its Blind Faith and Petronius platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, a deepwater oil port that handles supertankers, reopened its marine terminal after suspending operations over the weekend. Sally had shut 508,000 barrels per day of oil production and 805 million cubic feet of natural gas, more than a quarter of U.S. Gulf of Mexico output, and halted petrochemical exports all along the Gulf Coast. About 1.1 million bpd of U.S. refining capacity were offline on Wednesday, according to the U.S. Energy Department, including two plants under repair since Laura and another halted by weak demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The storm helped lift U.S. oil and gasoline futures. U.S. crude rose more than 4% on Wednesday and gasoline gained nearly as much. Phillips 66, which shut its 255,600-bpd Alliance, Louisiana, oil refinery ahead of the storm, said it was advancing planned maintenance at the facility and would keep processing halted. Royal Dutch Shell’s Mobile, Alabama, chemical plant and refinery, reported no serious damage from an initial survey, the company said. Chevron said its Pascagoula, Mississippi, oil refinery operated normally through the storm.
Industry groups argue Fifth Circuit should reverse panel decision on coastal lawsuits – A federal appeals court should reverse a three-judge panel's decision that lawsuits seeking to make oil and gas companies pay for alleged environmental damage belong in state court, several industry groups argued in briefs filed Tuesday. Failing to do so could muddy the waters for future cases and undermine the “unique relationship” between the federal government and the oil industry, they said. In 2013, some local governments in Louisiana’s coastal region filed lawsuits against more than 200 oil and gas companies, seeking compensation for damage they say the companies caused to the region’s wetlands. Most local governments on the coast did not file lawsuits. Plaquemines Parish, one of the governments that did, in 2018 produced an expert report indicating at least some of the alleged damage dates back to World War II. At that time, the companies say they were under strict wartime regulation and essentially were acting as officers of the federal government. That raises a federal issue, which means the cases should be heard in federal court, they say. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit unanimously ruled that the companies failed to make their argument in time. They said the relevant evidence had been included in court records long before the 2018 report. The companies contend that the older documents only referenced serial numbers for certain wells and didn’t identify when they were drilled. In a brief filed in support of the companies’ position, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers says that limited information doesn’t meet the court’s previously established standard of “unequivocally clear and certain” evidence for removal to federal court.
Cooper Urges Trump to Protect the NC Coast - Gov. Roy Cooper in a letter Tuesday urged President Donald Trump and his administration to include North Carolina in the recently announced moratorium on oil drilling for the next 10 years.The president Sept. 8 announced during an event in Jupiter, Florida, the presidential order to extend the moratorium on offshore drilling on Florida’s Gulf Coast and expanding it to Florida’s Atlantic Coast, as well as the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. In 2018, Trump announced plans to open nearly all federal waters to offshore drilling in his draft five-year program for oil and gas development on the Outer Continental Shelf. He later granted Florida an exemption from that program after objections from Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, per a past report. “I am deeply concerned and disappointed that you did not include North Carolina in the moratorium,” Cooper wrote. “Offshore drilling threatens North Carolina’s coastal economy and environment and offers our state minimal economic benefit. Accepted science tells us that there is little, if any, oil worth drilling for off North Carolina’s coast, and the risks of offshore drilling far outweigh the benefits.”Cooper adds in the letter that knowing oil spills do not respect state lines and knowing the state’s history of hurricanes “should give us all pause before contemplating opening the waters off our coast to drilling, as the risk of storm damage to drilling and production equipment and subsequent spread of oil to other states on the Atlantic Coast is ever more likely, especially as climate change causes increasingly severe storms.” “Opposition to offshore drilling is bipartisan and widespread across our state,” he continued. Forty-five North Carolina communities have adopted formal resolutions opposing the expansion of drilling. Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C. said in an email response to Coastal Review Online, “Having spoken with my coastal constituents over the last year they are not in favor of seismic testing and offshore drilling. Unless the issue becomes one of national security, I will not support drilling off the shores of North Carolina.”
Whitmer says Line 5 easement decision coming in ‘very near future’ -— An extensive state review of Canadian energy giant Enbridge’s compliance with easement requirements for its Line 5 pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac is wrapping up soon, according to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.Whitmer said the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which holds the easement title, is finishing its review during remarks to the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center, which held virtual gala on Thursday, Sept. 10.The DNR review has been pending since last summer.“We know a break in that pipeline would be an utter disaster,” Whitmer said. “As the DNR is wrapping up its easement review, I think it’s really very likely there will be a determination on that particular front in the very near future.”Whitmer added that she remains “aligned with the attorney general and the work that she’s doing because I want to get this pipeline out of the water at the earliest possible moment.”Whitmer has been criticized by environmental groups in Michigan for moving slowly to shut down Line 5. Pipeline opponents want her to revoke the 1953 easement that gives Enbridge authority to use the state-owned lake bottom to transport oil and gas.Mike Shriberg, regional director for the National Wildlife Federation, criticized Whitmer in a Bridge Magazine column this month for failing thus far to decommission the pipeline.“Governor Whitmer’s political legacy will be decided in part by Line 5,” wrote Shriberg, who served on a pipeline advisory board created by Gov. Rick Snyder. “The legal underbrush has largely been cleared and the time for studies has passed – it’s now time for a decision.”The DNR told MLive on Thursday that it’s “working with the governor’s office to finalize the review” but it did not have a definitive timeline for completion.Whitmer ordered the DNR in June 2019 to undertake a comprehensive review of Enbridge’s compliance with the 1953 easement. Environmental groups have argued for years that Enbridge has violated terms of the easement in the past by allowing, among other things, erosion to create large unsupported spans in the dual underwater line.A DNR recommendation that Michigan revoke the easement is seen as a crucial legal hurdle that would be necessary before Whitmer could move to shut the line down. Any attempt to revoke the easement is likely to be met by resistance in court from Enbridge, which maintains that the 67-year-old pipeline is safe even as itseeks permits necessary to build a tunnel under the straits that would house a new, replacement pipeline.
Editorial: We recommend Chrysta Castañeda for Railroad Commission – Houston Chronicle - Texas and Houston depend mightily on a thriving oil and gas industry, and that’s why it’s so important that the Railroad Commission of Texas be led by experienced, capable commissioners.Fortunately, as an engineer and a lawyer, Democrat Chrysta Castañeda has the combination of knowledge and experience to help the RRC shepherd the crucial industry through one of the most challenging economies in decades.As the founding law partner of the Castañeda Firm, which focuses on oil and gas litigation, she also understands the importance of crafting and enforcing regulations to protect the state’s environment.That is why we recommend Castañeda, 57, in the statewide Railroad Commission race in the Nov. 3 election. If elected, she would join two Republican commissioners who, like her opponent, can be counted on to give the industry’s needs top billing over environmental concerns. What’s really needed is a balance between helping the industry thrive and minimizing its harmful impacts.Republican Jim Wright, a South Texas rancher and oil field service company owner who knocked off Commissioner Ryan Sitton in the GOP primary, is also on the ballot, as is Libertarian candidate Matt Sterett, who runs a small software company based in Austin.While Wright also would bring experience to the job, it would be solely from the industry side. Texas needs at least one member of the Railroad Commission who takes to heart both the mandate that the commission promote the oil and gas industry and its charge to safeguard the water and air Texans drink or breathe.Castañeda will do just that. Launching her campaign with a focus on the wasteful and damaging practice of flaring — the burning of surplus gas from oil wells — she is better positioned to steer a course for the 21st century.
Chesapeake Energy to cut 200 from its workforce Friday, CEO's email states Chesapeake Energy Corp. plans to lay off 200 tomorrow. Employees were notified of the planned job cuts in an email sent Thursday afternoon. The cut amounts to about 15% of Chesapeake's current workforce, which numbers about 1,500. Doug Lawler, Chesapeake’s CEO, told employees in the email Chesapeake was forced to make the difficult decision to eliminate the positions because of a continued downturn in global oil markets. He said the layoffs will primarily affect the company’s Oklahoma City workforce. Employees in Oklahoma City affected by the reduction in force will be notified by phone, given the company’s campus remains closed, except for its child development center. Affected field employees were notified Thursday afternoon. All employees being let go, Lawler noted, would be eligible to receive a severance package that includes a cash payment and optional career transition assistance. “While Chesapeake is not alone in reducing staff during this challenging time, we recognize that does not dampen the disappointment in receiving this news,” Lawler wrote. Gordon Pennoyer, Chesapeake Energy’s spokesman, declined to get into specific details about the layoffs or Lawler’s email on Thursday afternoon. “We continue to prudently manage our business and staffing levels to adapt to challenging market conditions,” Pennoyer said.
BLM offers New Mexico public land for oil and gas -- As the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) prepares to lease about 6,000 acres of public land to the oil and gas industry for extraction operations next year, public comments on the sale were scheduled to be accepted through next week. The BLM opened public comments on Monday for its January 2021 lease sale and will accept the comments until Sept. 24. The period is intended to solicit feedback from local stakeholders and organizations to inform the final decision making for the parcels to be offered in the sale. The sale was planed for Jan. 14, 2021. As of Wednesday, the sale offered 33 parcels of land totaling in about 6,442 acres in Eddy and Lea County in New Mexico and in Wise County, Texas. Records show about 720 acres or 11 percent of the land offered in the sale was in Eddy County, while 5,223 acres or 81 percent of the land was offered in Lea County. A single, 500-acre parcel was offered in Wise County, Texas – about 8 percent of the sale. States that offer public land in the sales receive 48 percent of the sale revenue, with the rest going to the U.S. Treasury, per a BLM news release. The states also receive half the revenue generated when oil and gas is produced on the leased land. Through its Environmental Analysis (EA), the BLM reported it found the lease sale would not have a significant impact on air quality and emissions, greenhouse gases, surface and groundwater or threatened species in the area such as the dunes sagebrush lizard or the lesser prairie chicken.The BLM estimated the leases in Eddy and Lea counties would result in 32 horizontal wells and 144 acres of surface disturbance and about 5.4 million barrels of oil produced along with about 31.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The EA noted that “extensive” oil and gas development already exists in the area contributing to its local economy.
More call for pause as US weighs New Mexico drilling plan (AP) — Environmentalists want federal land managers to suspend efforts to amend a plan that would guide oil and gas development and other activities near Chaco Culture National Historical Park. They sent a letter Thursday to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, saying the coronavirus pandemic has prevented meaningful in-person consultation with Native American tribes and others who would be affected by the decision. A coalition of more than 50 groups signed the letter. They argue that low-income and minority communities will be disproportionately harmed as they are located on the frontlines of oil and gas development in the San Juan Basin. “Environmental justice must be served,” the groups said in the letter. “In the midst of the public health and economic emergency caused by the COVID-19 crisis, we urge you to protect the most vulnerable New Mexicans from the dangers and insecurity that result from the public health crisis, not take advantage of our inability to engage in ... decision making.” Legislation that would make federal land within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius of the park off-limits is pending in Congress. New Mexico pueblos with ancestral links to the region around Chaco park have been outspoken about their desire to halt oil and gas drilling in the area, saying they fear culturally significant sites beyond the park boundaries would be at risk with added development. In recent years, they joined with environmentalists who have long been critical of drilling in northwestern New Mexico. Meanwhile, the Navajo Nation, which controls large swaths of land in the basin, has been more reserved with its stance on amending the resource management plan for the area. The tribe supports a smaller buffer around the park, as revenue from development on adjacent tribal land and parcels owned by individual Navajos account for a significant source of revenue for the impoverished area. The request from environmentalists for a pause in the process comes just weeks after a coalition of tribes and members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation asked federal officials for more time to consider the proposal.
Colorado could OK first-of-its-kind air-quality rule for oil, gas well sites - Colorado could once again lead the way on oil and gas regulations if the state approves proposals meant to control emissions from well sites earlier than is now required under a mandate to revamp rules.The Colorado Air Quality Control Commission opened a hearing Thursday on proposed rules, including ones that would require monitoring emissions and air quality from the start of construction of a well and over the first six months of production. The nearly continuous monitoring of so-called preproduction, a phase that can produce high emissions of chemicals and health complaints from the public, would be a new requirement..“Colorado, like it did in 2014, being the first to implement methane rules, now is once again at the head of the pack on figuring out ways to incentivize new technology and address oil and gas emissions. It’s a big deal,” said Jon Goldstein with the Environmental Defense Fund in Denver.In 2014, Colorado became the first state in the nation to pass regulations limiting methane emissions from oil and gas operations. A federal methane rule, which has been loosened by the Trump administration, was modeled on Colorado’s regulation. Garry Kaufman, director of the state air pollution control division, said he’s not aware of any other state with the kind of monitoring program Colorado is considering.“These monitoring devices have been deployed in other states on a case by case basis, but it’s not something that’s been required of the whole industry, that I know of,” Kaufman said.The rule is part of the implementation of the Senate Bill 181, approved in 2019 to overhaul the regulation of oil and gas. The law changed the state’s mission from fostering oil and gas development to regulating it in a way that protects public health, safety and the environment.Both the air quality control commission and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission are writing rules to carry out the new mandate. The air quality board proposal would require nearly continuous, or what Kaufman calls “high-frequency,” monitoring of oil and gas sites as soon as well construction starts. Monitoring would continue through drilling, hydraulic fracturing and what’s called flowback, which is when groundwater and fluids used in fracking are brought to the surface and disposed of.
DAPL court disputes could linger post-election - A federal judge overseeing a longstanding legal battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline isn’t likely to decide until late this year or early next year whether to order the flow of oil to cease. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg earlier this year issued a shutdown order that was overturned by a federal appeals court that concluded he hadn’t justified the move. American Indian tribes who sued over the pipeline four years ago are making a renewed push as the legal battle continues in both U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Tribes want Boasberg to issue an "injunction on continued pipeline operations." An injunction is an order prohibiting something. In this case, it would stop pipeline developer Energy Transfer from operating the pipeline while the legal fight plays out. Attorneys for the tribes and the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday submitted a proposed schedule for briefs, or written arguments, that extends to Dec. 18, after which Boasberg would rule, should he sign off on the schedule. Much could happen before then. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which permitted the pipeline, is expected to decide by mid-October whether to continue allowing Dakota Access to move oil. Boasberg in July invalidated the federal easement that allows the line to cross under the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The means the pipeline is now considered an "encroachment" on federal property. Tribes don’t believe the Corps will order a shutdown, so they’ve turned to Boasberg. Meanwhile, the Corps last week launched an environmental review of the pipeline that Boasberg ordered in March. It’s expected to take more than a year. The Corps and Energy Transfer have asked the appeals court to reverse Boasberg's rulings ordering the study and revoking the easement during the review. They argued in court documents late last month that the risk of an oil spill feared by the tribes is low, and that Boasberg erred by giving too much weight to opposition of the $3.8 billion pipeline that moves North Dakota oil to a shipping point in Illinois. Tribes and environmentalists fear water pollution from a spill. Prolonged protests in 2016 and 2017 drew thousands of people to camps near the Missouri River crossing and resulted in hundreds of arrests. The tribes late Wednesday filed a response with the appeals court saying "the Corps failed to address the detailed technical critiques of its methods and assumptions that underpinned its conclusions regarding the risk of oil spills."
Docs: Trump aides pushed EPA for fewer methane checks -- Friday, September 18, 2020 -- EPA bowed to White House pressure during interagency review of an oil and gas emissions rule by reducing requirements for a segment of the natural gas supply chain to monitor and repair methane leaks.Correspondence released this week after the emissions rule was published in the Federal Register on Monday shows that officials from the White House pressed EPA staff to halve the frequency of the rule's monitoring requirements for well sites and natural gas compressor stations. It made that request in June as a rule easing restrictions on methane was being completed.The so-called technical rule EPA finalized last month rejected White House efforts to weaken the agency's proposal to have gas producers monitor their well sites once a year. But EPA changed its requirements related to monitoring and leak repair for compressor stations, which push natural gas from the well sites through pipelines.When the rule traveled to the Office of Management and Budget for review in late May, the measure required quarterly monitoring at compressor stations. When it was released to the public three months later, the requirement had been changed to twice annually."It's clear that politics supersede what policy analysis would indicate is the best way to fashion EPA regulations," said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate at Public Citizen.In its written comments in June, the White House seemed determined that the final rule should differ from the Obama-era rule it was designed to replace."This cannot stay the same as the 2016 rule," insisted an unnamed White House official in correspondence released as part of the rule's docket.EPA had retained the Obama-era monitoring schedule for wellheads and compressor stations in the final draft of the rule it sent to OMB. Both rules required well sites that produce at least 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day to monitor for possible leaks twice a year. And they both required compressor stations to check for fugitive emissions quarterly.But the White House urged EPA to cut monitoring requirements for both source categories in half. That tracked with comments submitted to the rule's docket on July 1, 2019, by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. The trade group has long urged EPA to discard direct regulation of methane in favor of a more limited rule for volatile organic compounds (VOCs), to exclude transmission and storage from regulation, and to lighten monitoring requirements. But EPA's technical support document for the rule showed that the original monitoring requirement met EPA's standard for cost-effectiveness as measured by dollars per ton of a pollutant reduced.
A Secret Recording Reveals Oil Executives’ Private Views on Climate Change - The New York Times - Last summer, oil and gas-industry groups were lobbying to overturn federal rules on leaks of natural gas, a major contributor to climate change. Their message: The companies had emissions under control. In private, the lobbyists were saying something very different. At a discussion convened last year by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, a group that represents energy companies, participants worried that producers were intentionally flaring, or burning off, far too much natural gas, threatening the industry’s image, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by The New York Times. “We’re just flaring a tremendous amount of gas,” said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, at the June 2019 gathering, held in Colorado Springs. “This pesky natural gas,” he said. “The value of it is very minimal,” particularly to companies drilling mainly for oil. A well can produce both oil and natural gas, but oil commands far higher prices. Flaring it is an inexpensive way of getting rid of the gas. Yet the practice of burning it off, producing dramatic flares and attracting criticism, represented a “huge, huge threat” to the industry’s efforts to portray natural gas as a cleaner and more climate-friendly energy source, he said, and that was damaging the industry’s image, particularly among younger generations. “What’s our message going forward?” Mr. Ness said. “What’s going to stick with those young people and make them support oil and gas?” The recording runs 1 hour 22 minutes, opening with a moderator’s remarks and concluding with a panel discussion that covered a wide range of issues including job creation, the threats posed by solar and wind energy, and the federal leasing of oil and gas rights. The audio was provided by an organization dedicated to tracking climate policy that said the recording had been made by an industry official who attended the meeting.Neither the organization nor the official was willing to be identified, out of concerns for industry retaliation, but three people heard in the recording, including the event’s moderator, Ryan Ullman of the Independent Petroleum Association, said that it reflected their comments. Jennifer Pett Marsteller, an association spokeswoman, confirmed the meeting’s date, location and speakers’ list, which matched the recording. She declined to comment on the speakers’ remarks, saying there was no official recording.
California Dems Give Up On New Oil Safety Regulations - Steve Horn - Big money from Big Oil and industry-tied unions has helped to kill a legislative effort to create environmental protections for communities living near oil and gas operations in California.On August 5, a 5-4 Senate committee vote struck down consideration of legislation calling for consideration of a 2,500-foot setback between future oil wells and homes, schools and playgrounds. Only one of those votes came from a Republican. It was the second time in as many years that the bill -- Assembly Bill 345 -- failed to pass, and it failed to do so even after several rounds of significant amendments had watered down the legislation. With that, a years-long activist-led legislative movement went up in smoke for 2020. And then came the historically large wildfires. Within a matter of days, the state’s northern half caught fire at an epic scale, wildfires made worse from climate change and fueled by unfettered fossil fuel drilling. California oil is some of the dirtiest, from a climate change perspective, in the United States.Drilling for oil in the state also has major public health repercussions, an impetus driving AB 345. Recent studies have linked oil drilling in California to health impacts, including low birth weight and small gestational age, as well as preterm births. Research has also linked higher levels of industrial pollution to higher contraction rates of COVID-19. Despite these impacts, the bill attracted a core group of Democratic legislators who ultimately oversaw the bill’s demise. Three of those who spoke out the most strongly against AB 345 at the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water hearing on August 5 before voting against it -- Sen. Ben Hueso, Sen. Andreas Borgeas and Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg -- have received high dollar contributions and other support from oil interests that lobbied against AB 345. The lobbying and influence campaign efforts waged by the oil industry and labor against AB 345 illustrates the difficulty in crafting climate policy and environmental protections -- even in a state with a super-majority Democratic Party legislature that bills itself as a global leader on fighting climate change. A big part of the difficulty is the contradiction of the center of it all: California is the sixth biggest oil producer nationwide and the largest west coast oil refiner.
Shell Offshore files plans to return to Alaska’s North Slope - Anchorage Daily News --A supermajor oil company is looking to advance its position on Alaska’s North Slope. Shell Offshore Inc. has applied to form the West Harrison Bay Unit in state waters just offshore from the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska with plans to drill the area in search of oil in the coming years, according to documents submitted to the state Division of Oil and Gas.If the Dutch oil industry giant can secure a partner to share in the costs and risks of remote offshore North Slope exploration, it expects to drill exploration wells in the West Harrison Bay Unit with at least one sidetrack each in 2023 and 2024, Shell’s initial unit plan of exploration states. According the application, Shell has been trying to find a partner to work on the West Harrison Bay leases for at least a year, and the company was making progress towards that end before the coronavirus pandemic hit in late winter. As a result, Shell is asking the state for its exploration plan to be valid for five years, which would allow the company to secure a partner and better analyze the area’s development potential. Shell holds a 100 percent working interest in 18 leases covering more than 78,000 acres in the proposed unit. The wells would target the popular Nanushuk oil formation first pinpointed by the Repsol-Armstrong Energy partnership in the Pikka Unit. The shallow, conventional Nanushuk formation also forms the basis of ConocoPhillips' large Willow oil prospect to the south of Harrison Bay and is believed by many in the industry to be prolific across much of the western North Slope. Shell infamously spent more than $7 billion to drill the Burger J exploration well much further offshore in the Chukchi Sea before abandoning its domestic Arctic drilling program in 2015. The work was beset by legal challenges and protests where vessels and equipment were staged at Pacific Northwest ports, as well as the grounding of the Kulluk drilling rig near Kodiak Island in 2013 while being towed south from Unalaska.
Weekly Crude Inventory Data Shows Surprise Draw of 4.4 Million Barrels - U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 13.5 million barrels per day during the week ending September 11, 2020 which was 0.7 million barrels per day more than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 75.8% of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production decreased last week, averaging 8.8 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased last week, averaging 4.4 million barrels per day. U.S. crude oil imports averaged 5.0 million barrels per day last week, down by 416,000 barrels per day from the previous week. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 5.3 million barrels per day, 20.1% less than the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 600,000 barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 112,000 barrels per day. U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 4.4 million barrels from the previous week. At 496.0 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 14% above the five year average for this time of year. Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 0.4 million barrels last week and are about 3% above the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories decreased while blending components inventories increased last week. Distillate fuel inventories increased by 3.5 million barrels last week and are about 22% above the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 1.2 million barrels last week and are about 9% above the five year average for this time of year. Total commercial petroleum inventories increased by 4.3 million barrels last week. Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 18.1 million barrels a day, down by 15.5% from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.7 million barrels a day, down by 8.7% from the same period last year. Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.6 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, down by 9.1% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was down 45.6% compared with the same four-week period last year.
Fuel demand rises as schools open, commuters shun public transport (Reuters) - Traffic picked up in cities across the globe as the summer season ended and schools opened, giving a boost to fuel demand, but the prospect of recovery remained weak as many commuters still worked from home and vehicle sales were down. The reliance on isolated forms of travel including private cars seemed to be the main factor boosting demand, analysts and traders said, as most people avoided public transport for fear of the coronavirus. Road traffic in New York, London and Paris was on a slow but steady recovery, data provided to Reuters by location technology company TomTom showed. In Moscow and Beijing, traffic was as high as pre-lockdowns levels. Fuel demand usually falls in September as the summer driving season ends, but this year, analysts expect fuel demand in September to be almost on par with August. “Over the first 10 days of September road fuels demand has added 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) after remaining flat over the summer months. The acceleration is mostly visible in Europe,” said Artyom Tchen, senior oil market analyst at Rystad Energy. Traffic in some small European cities such as Geneva has even exceeded 2019 levels, TomTom data showed. Data provided to Reuters by the app Transit showed public transport in many cities making a much slower recovery in September compared to road traffic. People in the United Kingdom avoided public transport far more than French, data from Transit showed, while use of public transport in the United States remained low. (Graphic: How COVID-19 is disrupting public transport How COVID-19 is disrupting public transport, ) However, analysts and traders said they did not expect a significant rise in fuel consumption in the coming months, since short trips in cities do not burn as much fuel as long holiday journeys.
Germany won't abandon its massive gas pipeline with Russia yet, analysts say - Germany has come under increasing pressure to pull the plug on its controversial giant gas pipeline project with Russia, following the suspected poisoning of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Experts say Berlin is unlikely to do so for now, however, given the Nord Stream 2 project is over 94% completed after almost a decade's construction, involves major German and European companies, and is necessary for the region's current and future energy needs. In this case, economic and commercial interests could trump political pressure to punish Russia. "I don't see Germany pulling out of the project just yet," Carsten Brzeski, chief economist for the euro zone and global head of macro at ING, told CNBC Thursday. "But the domestic debate of the last days has made it clear that patience is running low. Many are still in favor of it. But they will need Moscow to clearly demonstrate that pragmatic cooperation is possible and can actually bear fruit – for instance regarding managing the situation in Belarus," he said. Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas hinted last Sunday that Russia had to play its part during the investigation into the attack on Navalny. A fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny was left critically ill after a suspected poisoning with a Novichok nerve agent. "I hope the Russians won't force us to change our position regarding the Nord Stream 2" pipeline, Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Germany has been reluctant to link the fate of its involvement with Nord Stream 2 to the Navalny incident so far, and Maas conceded that stopping the building of the pipeline would hurt not only Russia but German and European firms. "Anyone calling for the project to be halted needs to be aware of the consequences. Nord Stream 2 involves over 100 companies from twelve European countries, and about half of them from Germany," he said. Jane Rangel, a gas analyst at Energy Aspects, told CNBC Wednesday that she and her colleagues are "watching the situation because it's evolving" and noted that the Navalny poisoning "does put Germany in a tough position." "It's another challenge for the project to be finished and it certainly raises the risk that Germany could take action, one of the most obvious solutions could be Germany refusing to grant regulatory approval" for the pipeline, she added. German Chancellor Angela Merkel could opt to tell Bundesnetzagentur, the official body that's responsible for authorizing the pipeline, not to grant approval for the project, Rangel said. "At that point, we'd assume that Gazprom would bring it to court if it didn't get regulatory approval. Then the court could possibly overturn it and that means the German government scores its political point but the project eventually gets approved."
Nornickel says it collected more than 90% of fuel leaked by Arctic spill (Reuters) - Russia’s Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) said on Friday that it had collected more than 90% of fuel leaked into rivers during its Arctic fuel spill earlier this year, or about 12,000 tonnes. The spill occurred on May 29 after a fuel tank lost pressure and released 21,000 tonnes of diesel into rivers and subsoil near the city of Norilsk in Siberia. Greenpeace has compared the incident to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska. “As of today, it can be assumed that what we have collected and separated is exactly the (amount of) fuel that got into the water,” Nornickel first vice-president Sergey Dyachenko told reporters. Some environmental campaigners have said they doubt Nornickel’s assertions that it has been able to recover 90% of the leaked diesel, citing similar clean-ups in the past around the world. Earlier this week, Russia’s state environment watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor filed a lawsuit against a power business owned by Nornickel, the $41-billion mining giant, to claim $2 billion for environmental damage caused by the leak. Nornickel disagrees with a formula used by the watchdog to estimate the $2 billion damage from the spill, which, Nornickel said, was based on more than 19,000 tonnes of fuel leaked into the rivers, Dyachenko said. Nornickel believes that filing the lawsuit was premature as it was hoping for an out-of-court settlement. It had already set aside $2 billion in reserves, which caused a slump in its first-half net profit. The size of the damages claim is unprecedented both for Russia and emerging markets. For Russia, money from this claim would help the state budget amid the coronavirus pandemic and send a message to other companies that underinvestment in maintenance is unacceptable, analysts have said. Fitch ratings agency said earlier this week that the damage claimed from Nornickel indicates growing financial exposure of commodity companies operating in emerging markets to environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.
Venezuela's PDVSA confirms oil leak into sea – Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA on Saturday confirmed an oil leak from an oil line and a gas pipeline into the Caribbean Sea near the largest refining center in the country, but said it had begun repair and cleanup efforts. PDVSA discovered the spill in the Golfete de Coro area in Falcon state during an aerial inspection, a statement from the company said, adding that despite the leak it guaranteed it will continue to supply crude to the Paraguana Refining Complex (CRP), which includes the Amuay and Cardon refineries. Both Amuay and Cardon have experienced multiple outages in recent years that the opposition blames on mismanagement and lack of maintenance. In recent days fishermen and experts had sounded the alarm about a slick in the Golfete area, known for pristine beaches and nature preserves in the northwest of the country. The incident comes a month after a spill covered swathes of Morrocoy National Park. Authorities say they addressed that oil slick, but have given no details about its size or origin. Carlos Carmona, a researcher and member of the Venezuelan Ecology Society, said dead fish were found where the Golfete slick was discovered in an area that is home to shorebirds, nesting sea turtles and a black mangrove reserve. Hit by U.S. sanctions that have exacerbated an acute fuel shortage crisis, Venezuela's government on Friday announced a new fuel distribution initiative and said it was planning new refining projects, without providing further details.
Shell recorded 46.6 per cent reduction in oil spills in 2019 - Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) has said it reduced operational spills to the lowest levels in 2019. Records made available by SPDC show that only seven operational spills were reported in 2019, a 46.6 per cent decrease over the previous year, 2018, when the company recorded 15 operational spills. The company also reported a significant reduction in breaches from wellhead, and clean-up of more spill sites than ever before, in 2019. However, there was an increase in cases of theft and sabotage in 2019, according to records made available by the company. SPDC said identified leaks were cleaned promptly, adding that it was working towards totally eliminating spills from its operations. ”The data available showed that in 2019, theft and sabotage resulted in 156 spills. In 2018, the figure was 109. The SPDC JV has a policy that when a leak is identified, the team responds to contain any spilled oil and clean up. In 2019, SPDC JV remediated 130 sites. “The SPDC JV is working to eliminate spills from its operational activities, remediate past spills and prevent spills caused by crude oil theft, sabotage of pipelines or illegal oil refining. “While SPDC operates to the same technical standards as other Shell companies globally, illegal activities continue to inhibit a normal operating environment. “Past spills from operational and illegal activities have been well documented, resulting in a clean-up programme and, where appropriate, compensation,” the company added. SPDC, in the same vein, noted that there is still much work to do to get the company to its target of ‘Goal Zero’ in all spills, including those arising from operational and third-party vandalism. “But through a solid strategy, active partnerships, closer community engagements, bold security and new surveillance equipment, the company is steadily making good progress,” the company said. Specifically, SPDC said it has made progress in areas such as improving performance, preventing illegal activity, response and investigation, improving remediation and clean-up in Ogoniland. SPDC disclosed that it was working with the relevant stakeholders to implement the 2011 United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Report on Ogoniland. According to the company, over the last eight years, it has taken action on all, and completed most, of the UNEP recommendations addressed specifically to it as operator of the joint venture.
Shipping authority lists causes of Mauritius oil spill - A shipping authority on Friday released a list of factors that caused a Japanese bulk carrier to hit a coral reef and cause an oil spill off Mauritius' coast last month. The MV Wakashio was owned by a Japanese company but Panama-flagged. The Panama Maritime Authority said that the lack of supervision and control of navigation equipment, and "overconfidence" caused the ship to run aground, according to local daily Le Mauricien. The crew told investigators that the ship deviated from its planned course and that a birthday celebration was being held on board when it ran aground. “Appropriate analysis of the situation would have made it possible to take the necessary measures to correct the direction and avoid the accident, the wrong electronic nautical chart was used and with the wrong scale, which made it impossible to correctly verify the approach to the coast and shallow water,” local daily Le Mauricien quoted the Panama Maritime Authority as saying. Speaking on Friday at a press conference Junichiro Ikeda, CEO of Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd, the company that charted the ship, said that the ship was using the wrong nautical charts just as outlined in the Panama Maritime Authority report. Ikeda who blamed the lack of awareness of the crew for the accident announced funding of 1 billion yen (roughly $9.4 million) to help the East African island nation in the cleaning processes. In Mauritius, thousands of people will hold a march on Saturday to highlight the harmful effects on marine life due to the oil spill. Meanwhile, the government has put a ban on seafood caught at Pointe-d'Esny and Deux-Frères regions after a test carried out on the fish found traces of hydrocarbons.
Thousands march in Mauritius to protest disastrous oil spill— Thousands of people protested in Mauritius again Saturday over the government’s handling of an offshore oil spill that has become the Indian Ocean island nation’s worst environmental disaster in years. New details indicate the Japanese ship that struck a coral reef in late July and leaked some 1,000 tons of fuel oil near protected coastal areas had strayed miles off course because the captain wanted to move closer to shore so crew members could get a mobile phone signal to call their families. “The change of course could be related to the birthday celebration of one of the crew members,” said a report this week by the maritime authority of Panama, where the MV Wakashio is registered. It said preliminary investigations also suggested that a navigation system and a nautical chart were mishandled. Last month, nearly one-tenth of the population of Mauritius marched peacefully in the capital, Port Louis, expressing outrage over the disaster and the discovery of dozens of dead dolphins weeks after the spill. It is not immediately clear what killed the dolphins, but some experts say water-soluble chemicals in the fuel might have been to blame. The government has called it a “sad coincidence.” Protesters have called for top officials to step down. Saturday’s march took place in Mahebourg, one of the most affected coastal villages. The island nation of 1.3 million people relies heavily on tourism and already had taken a severe hit due to travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday, the Japanese operator of the bulk carrier said it will provide 1 billion yen ($9 million) to fund environmental projects and support the local fishing community. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines said the Mauritius Natural Environment Recovery Fund will be used for mangrove protection, coral reef recovery, protection of seabirds and rare species, and research by private and governmental groups.
Japanese ship operator to put $9.4m toward Mauritius - The operator of a Japanese-owned bulk carrier that crashed into a reef in late July, causing a widespread oil spill in Mauritius, will pay at least $9.4 million over several years to fund environmental projects and support local fishing communities. The spill took place near the coastal areas of southeast Mauritius, an area of international importance because of its environmentally protected ecosystems and wetlands. Experts say about 1,000 tons of fuel leaked from the ship into the surrounding blue lagoons — a favorite location for the filming of numerous Bollywood movies because of its turquoise waters, which now are stained black. Mauritius previously asked Japan to provide at least $34 million to assist with the lasting ramifications of the spill. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines said Friday that the Mauritius Natural Environment Recovery Fund would be used to support mangrove protection, coral reef restoration, and the protection of seabirds and rare species. In addition, the company said, it will continue to support local fishing and tourism, though details of that support have not been announced. The Mauritius government has estimated the country has sustained $30 million in damage as a result of the spill. Early this week, the maritime authority of Panama, where the ship is registered, announced it was in the early stages of an investigation into the spill and suggested human error caused the accident. The ship's captain and first officer have been arrested and charged with endangering safe navigation. Recently, tens of thousands of individuals protested in Mauritius over the government's slow response to the spill and the discovery of dozens of dead dolphins, whose cause of death has not yet been determined.
Japan sending team to probe Mauritius ship grounding (Reuters) - Japan said on Friday it will send a five-person team to Mauritius to investigate the grounding of a Japanese-owned ship off the country’s coast that led to an environmental crisis. A bulk carrier owned by Japan’s Nagashiki Shipping and chartered by Mitsui OSK ran aground on a reef off Mauritius on July 25 and later began leaking oil into the pristine waters around the Indian Ocean island. The Japanese government said in a statement that it would send a team of five people to Mauritius on Sept. 20. Japan previously told Mauritius it would offer support on an “unprecedented scale.” The Panamanian-flagged MV Wakashio began spilling fuel oil on Aug. 6, prompting the Mauritian government to announce an environmental emergency. The captain and another member of the crew have been arrested by Mauritius police. Scientists say the full impact of the spill is still unfolding but the damage could affect Mauritius and its tourism-dependent economy for decades. Mitsui OSK last week said it would contribute about 1 billion yen ($9.4 million) to help Mauritius.
MbPT to upgrade its oil spill contingency plan for Mumbai - Following the devastating oil spill in Mauritius, called the country’s worst ecological disaster, authorities in Mumbai are also looking at preparing and upgrading a comprehensive oil spill contingency plan that can be put into effect, in case of an emergency in the city. The Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), which owns the eastern waterfront area in Mumbai, has floated a tender to appoint an agency to create a Tier-1 oil spill response facility for Mumbai and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) harbour. According to the tender details accessed by HT, the consultant will be asked to carry out a quality risk assessment of oil spill, assess the oil spill trajectory in the worst-case scenario given different weather and sea conditions, carry out sensitivity mapping of the areas most likely to be affected, do a gap analysis of the required and available sources among various other parameters. The consultant will also be asked to prepare a contingency plan with the specific role and functions of the agencies involved. Captain Bhabatosh Chand, deputy conservator, head of marine department, MbPT, said, “We have a plan in place in case of an oil spill for the past five years. As the contract is ending, we are looking for a new agency. We are looking to upgrade it [the plan] and looking at new technology. A ready plan will aid us to control the situation in case of an emergency.” Recently, a Japanese bulk carrier ran aground on a reef on the south-east coast of Mauritius. MV Wakashio struck a coral reef on July 25, spilling about 1,000 tonnes of fuel and endangering corals, fish and other marine life in what some scientists have called the country’s worst ecological disaster. India has also sent equipment and personnel to help Mauritius contain the oil spill.
IEA says oil demand recovery set to slow for rest of 2020 -(Reuters) - The International Energy Agency (IEA) trimmed its 2020 oil demand forecast on Tuesday, citing caution about the pace of economic recovery from the pandemic. The Paris-based IEA cut its 2020 outlook by 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 91.7 million bpd in its second downgrade in as many months. “We expect the recovery in oil demand to decelerate markedly in the second half of 2020, with most of the easy gains already achieved,” the IEA said in its monthly report. “The economic slowdown will take months to reverse completely ... in addition, there is the potential that a second wave of the virus (already visible in Europe) could cut mobility once again.” Renewed rises in COVID-19 cases in many countries and related lockdown measures, continued remote working and a still weak aviation sector are all hurting demand, the IEA said. China - which emerged from lockdown sooner than other major economies and provided a strong prop to global demand - continues a strong recovery, while a virus upsurge in India contributed to the biggest demand drop since April, the IEA said. Increasing global oil output and the downgraded demand outlook also mean a slower draw on crude oil stocks which piled up at the height of lockdown measures, it added. The agency now predicts implied stock draws in the second half of the year of about 3.4 million barrels per day, nearly one million bpd less than it predicted last month, with July storage levels in developed countries again reaching record highs. However, preliminary data for August showed industry crude oil stocks fell in the United States, Europe and Japan. As output cuts eased among producers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies such as Russia, global oil supply rose by 1.1. million bpd in August.
IEA cuts 2020 oil demand forecast, sees 'treacherous' path ahead with rising coronavirus cases — The International Energy Agency on Tuesday cut its forecast for 2020 oil demand growth, citing a "treacherous" path ahead amid weakening market sentiment and an upsurge in the number of coronavirus cases reported across the globe. In a closely-watched monthly report, the IEA trimmed its outlook for worldwide oil demand growth to 91.7 million barrels per day. That marks a contraction of 8.4 million bpd year-on-year, more than the 8.1 million bpd contraction predicted in the Paris-based energy agency's August report. "We expect the recovery in oil demand to decelerate markedly in the second half of 2020, with most of the easy gains already achieved," the IEA said. "The economic slowdown will take months to reverse completely, while certain sectors such as aviation are unlikely to return to their pre-pandemic levels of consumption even next year." International benchmark Brent crude traded at $40.21 a barrel on Tuesday morning, up around 1.5%, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) stood at $37.90, roughly 1.7% higher. Oil prices have dropped around 40% since the start of the year. "I think the main message that we put across in the report is that sentiment seems to be weakening," Neil Atkinson, head of the oil industry and markets division at IEA, told CNBC's "Street Signs Europe" on Tuesday. "We have seen oil prices very, very range-bound since roughly the middle to the later part of June, between $40 and $45 a barrel for Brent. But, just recently we have seen $40 a barrel tested and it does look as if the rebound in recovery is beginning to stall." Atkinson said the upsurge of coronavirus cases across Europe, in particular, reflected "a cause for concern," before adding: "It does look as if we are not out of the woods yet." Renewed weakness The report comes shortly after OPEC cut its forecast for oil demand growth in 2020, citing a weaker-than-expected recovery in India and other Asian countries. The oil-producing group also warned on Monday that risks would remain "elevated and skewed to the downside" for the first half of 2021. The IEA echoed this sentiment on Tuesday, saying "renewed weakness" in India reflected a cause for concern. However, China, which emerged from lockdown sooner than other major economies, continued to recover "strongly," the group said. Energy market participants have become increasingly anxious about a faltering economic recovery and stumbling fuel demand in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The global health crisis has coincided with an unparalleled energy demand shock this year, with the IEA previously warning the fall in oil demand growth in 2020 could be the largest in history. Looking ahead, the IEA said it expected worldwide oil demand to grow by around 5.5 million bpd next year, climbing to an average of 97.1 million bpd in 2021.
Oil could see another demand shock, adding to the 'extraordinary' destruction this year - — The next big shock to the oil industry could be yet another hit to demand, analysts said. That would add to the destruction already seen this year as measures taken to combat the pandemic prevented people from commuting and traveling – drastically reducing oil usage. Speaking at S&P Global Platts' Platts Asia Pacific Petroleum Virtual Conference (APPEC) 2020 on Monday, analysts pointed to the possibility of a second wave of Covid-19. "A lot of us, we're talking about another demand shock. It's like fighting the last battle," said Ed Morse, managing director and global head of commodities research at Citi. During a panel discussion at the conference, he warned that oil producing countries could experience a big setback. "We're seeing countries that are overly dependent on oil earnings, that can't pay for the civil service, can't pay for healthcare…education…security," Morse said. "The rate of concern we're going to see … dipped in demand and the gigantic build in inventories … I think the biggest worry is what happens to the fragility of the oil producing countries." Earlier this year, the May contract for U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude dived deep into negative territory for the first time in its history, amid lockdowns and a lack of storage as oil inventory rapidly built up. "I think it is still all about the demand, the demand destruction this year has been extraordinary," Martin Fraenkel, president of S&P Global Platts, which projected that the contraction in global oil demand will be 8 million barrels a day by the end of this year. "That's a huge contraction year-on-year in a typical year …. Now we've come off the summer driving season in the U.S., we're expecting that demand to taper off a little bit, and of course we're seeing an uptick in infections of Covid-19 in many parts of the world … and that is a concern," he said. "By the end of 2021, oil demand will still be below where the world was in 2019," Fraenkel added, speaking to CNBC on Monday. OPEC+ has a "delicate maneuvering act" if demand does not bounce back, Fraenkel added, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies.In July, OPEC+ put in place historic supply curbs of 10 million barrels a day, but agreed to ease them to 7.7 million barrels a day from August."If demand doesn't come back, how long is OPEC+ going to be able to sustain cohesion to keep supply under control when prices are hovering around $40 per barrel? While we think prices can go up in 2021 modestly, (will) demand growth keep coming back? It's by no means an assured route," he said.
Global oil demand may have passed peak, says BP energy report BP has called time on the world’s rising demand for fossil fuels after finding that demand for oil may have already reached its peak and faces an unprecedented decades-long decline. Demand for oil may never fully recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the oil firm, and may begin falling in absolute terms for the first time in modern history. BP’s influential annual report on the future of energy, published on Monday, says oil will be replaced by clean electricity from windfarms, solar panels and hydropower plants as renewable energy emerges as the fastest-growing energy source on record. Spencer Dale, BP’s chief economist, said the company’s vision of the world’s energy future had become greener due to a combination of the Covid-19 pandemic and the quickening pace of climate action, which has hastened “peak oil”. The report in effect sounds a death-knell for the growth of global oil demand after two of the report’s three energy scenarios for the next 30 years found that demand reached a peak in 2019. In BP’s third scenario, showing a world in which climate action does not accelerate, oil demand plateaus at similar levels seen in 2019 through the 2020s before declining from 2035. The report has confirmed a chorus of warnings from independent energy economists that the impact of coronavirus will bring forward the start of the oil industry’s terminal decline from the end of the decade. BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, said the findings would help the company to “better understand the changing energy landscape” and would be instrumental in helping it develop its plans to become a net zero energy company by 2050. He admitted earlier this year that he would “not write off” the possibility that coronavirus had brought forward the global peak in oil demand, and was “more convinced than ever” BP must embrace a low-carbon future.
Oil Demand May Have Peaked in 2019, BP Report Says - We may have already passed peak demand for oil. This suggestion comes from an unlikely source: fossil-fuel giant BP. The company released its annual Energy Outlook report Monday, and found that oil demand may have already peaked in 2019, as the rise inrenewable energy intersects with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, The Guardian reported. "(The energy transition) would be an unprecedented event," BP chief economist Spencer Dale told journalists, as Reuters reported. "Never in modern history has the demand for any traded fuel declined in absolute terms." The report outlines three possible energy scenarios for the next 30 years.
- The Rapid Transition Scenario (Rapid): This envisions a scenario in which energy-based greenhouse-gas emissions decline 70 percent by 2050, in line with limiting global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
- The Net-Zero Scenario (Net Zero): This scenario imagines the policies adapted in the Rapid scenario are augmented by widespread lifestyle changes, and energy emissions decline by more than 95 percent by 2050, limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
- The Business-as-Usual Scenario (BAU): This imagines that climate policies continue at a pace consistent with the past several years, and emissions only decline to less than 10 percent of 2018 levels by 2050.
In the first two scenarios, BP concluded oil demand would already have peaked in 2019, according to The Guardian. In the third, it would plateau after 2019 and peak sometime in the mid-2020s, according to BP. However, all three scenarios show oil and gas on the wane and renewable energy on the rise, Reuters reported. They show fossil fuels falling from 85 percent of energy demand in 2018 to 20 to 65 percent by 2050. Meanwhile, they show renewable technologies like wind and solar expanding from five percent of energy demand in 2018 to 20 to 60 percent by 2050, according to Reuters and The Guardian. "In all three of these scenarios the share of renewable energy grows more quickly than any energy fuel ever seen in history," Dale told The Guardian.
Lost in transition: Big Oil searches for purpose as peak demand looms - The oil industry is about to enter its final phase: managed decline. Even if there is a strong post-pandemic economic recovery that boosts oil prices at some in the 2020s, it will be Big Oil’s ‘last hurrah’ before global demand peaks definitively and gradually tapers off. Some say this might have happened already thanks to Covid-19, while others see the tide turning between now and 2030.Either way, it is coming, and some oil companies are finally starting to wake up. BP acknowledged peak demand by committing to reduce its oil production by 40% within ten years, in a landmark new 2030 strategy that stole the headlines last week.The British oil major, unlike many of its peers, has realised that doubling down and chasing market share in a declining commodity is a road to ruin. Instead, it will focus only on the cheapest, least carbon-intensive barrels in its portfolio, and sell the rest—even if prices pick up in the near-term.In the first half of 2020, BP wrote off USD 9.7 billion in exploration expenditures after lowering its forward oil price assumptions by around 30% and concluding that a large chunk of its undeveloped acreage will never be commercially viable.BP previously valued its exploration intangibles at USD 14.2 billion, so the company has effectively written off almost 70% of its exploration portfolio. The write-offs were spread across Angola, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, India and the US Gulf of Mexico.On top of this, lower price assumptions prompted BP to write down the carrying value of upstream assets to the tune of USD 12 billion. And the company has identified another USD 43 billion of assets at risk of further impairment if assumed forward prices change again within the next financial year.In the meantime, BP is aiming to sell USD 25 billion of out-of-the-money assets by 2025, and is laying off some 10,000 people from its global workforce. Even for a company with a total marketcapitalisation of USD 58 billion, these are big moves. BP realises that thereafter, the risk of such assets becoming stranded increases significantly with anticipated higher carbon taxes, waning demand and softening prices as the world shifts inexorably towards cleaner fuels. The clock is already ticking, even for cleaner-burning natural gas—Big Oil’s much-heralded ‘bridge’ fuel to a net zero emissions future.
Oil Demand Has Collapsed, And It Won’t Come Back Any Time Soon - 2020 is shaping up to be an extraordinarily bad year for oil. In the spring, pandemic lockdowns sent oil demand plummeting and markets into a tailspin. At one point, U.S. oil prices even turned negative for the first time in history. But summer brought new optimism to the industry, with hopes rising for a controlled pandemic, a recovering economy and resurgent oil demand. Those hopes are now fading. In a report Tuesday, the influential advisory body called the International Energy Agency revised its forecasts for global oil consumption downward, warning that the market outlook is "even more fragile" than expected and that "the path ahead is treacherous." It's the latest in a flurry of diminished forecasts from major energy players. On Monday, oil cartel OPEC slashed its expectations of oil demand, just as Trafigura, a large oil trading company, warned that another large oil glut is building. And energy giant BP, which has grabbed headlines with its new carbon-neutral commitments, raised the possibility that the world might never again use as much oil as it did before the pandemic. A pair of recent OPEC reports reflect the rapid shift in mood. Its August oil forecast assumed that by 2021, "COVID-19 will largely be contained globally with no major disruptions to the global economy." OPEC also predicted that economic activity would be rebounding steadily and oil demand would be recovering. But on Monday, OPEC released a much grimmer forecast. "[S]tructural changes to the global economy are forecast to persist," the oil cartel wrote. Travel and tourism "are not expected to achieve pre-COVID-19 levels of activity before the end of 2021." The IEA, a well-regarded source of global energy data, agreed with the oil cartel's latest assessment, writing that "it is becoming increasingly apparent that COVID-19 will stay with us for some time." "There's some negative vibes out there," said Neil Atkinson, the head of Oil Industry and Markets Division at the IEA. "It just doesn't appear to be a simple case of this horrible thing comes along in the first six months of the year and then mercifully goes away again and we can all go back to normal. It's just not happening like that."
Oil mixed as storm threatens U.S. gulf production - Oil prices were mixed on Monday with U.S. crude rising as a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico forced rigs to shut down, but the gains were kept in check by wider concerns about excess supply and falling demand for fuels. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up 9 cents, or 0.2%, at $37.42 a barrel by around 0050 GMT. Brent crude was down 3 cents at $39.80 a barrel. Both contracts ended last week lower, a second consecutive week of declines. Tropical Storm Sally gained in strength in the Gulf of Mexico west of Florida on Sunday and was poised to become a category 2 hurricane. The storm is disrupting oil production for the second time in less than a month after hurricane Laura swept through the region. Typically oil rises when production is shut but with the coronavirus pandemic getting worse demand concerns are to the fore, while global supplies continue to rise. "A lackluster driving season in the U.S. has seen the market reassess its view of U.S. demand," ANZ Research said in a note. Also "with U.S. refiners now shutting down for maintenance, crude demand is likely to remain soft." The U.S. is the world's biggest oil consumer and producer. BP Plc and Equinor ASA evacuated staff from some offshore platforms on Sunday after similar moves by Chevron Corp and Murphy Oil Corp the day before. In Libya, commander Khalifa Haftar committed to ending a months-long blockade of oil facilities, a move that would add more supplies to the market, although it was unclear if oil fields and ports would begin operations.
Oil edges lower, shrugging off Gulf of Mexico shut-ins (Reuters) - Oil prices slipped slightly on Monday amid concerns about a stalled global economic recovery and with Libya poised to resume production, and failed to get support from an impending storm which has disrupted U.S. output. Brent crude settled down 22 cents, or 0.6%, at $39.61 a barrel while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were down 7 cents, or 0.2%, at $37.26 a barrel. Both contracts ended last week lower, falling for a second week in a row. “The storm is taking production offline in the Gulf of Mexico, and the market doesn’t care - that shows just how bad the situation is,” said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures for Mizuho in New York. Hurricane Sally gained in strength in the Gulf of Mexico, west of Florida on Sunday and was poised to become a category 2 hurricane. The storm forced energy firms to shut 21.4%, or 395,790 barrels per day (bpd), of offshore crude oil production in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. government said on Monday. The storm is disrupting oil production for the second time in less than a month after Hurricane Laura swept through the region. Typically oil prices rise when production is shut down, but with the coronavirus pandemic getting worse, demand concerns are to the fore, while global supplies continue to rise. The path towards global fuel demand recovery is likely to be rocky, several senior industry executives said. “(Coronavirus) infection rates are on the rise again, there are localized lockdowns introduced in a growing number of countries hindering regional economic growth and the number of unemployed is failing to fall significantly,” oil broker PVM’s Tamas Varga said. “This leads to dismal oil demand growth.”The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Monday that world oil demand would tumble by 9.46 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, a sharper decline than it predicted in a report a month ago.
Oil edges higher but bleaker demand outlook weighs - Oil prices edged slightly higher on Tuesday, but forecasts of a slower than expected recovery in global fuel demand due to the coronavirus pandemic weighed. Brent crude was up 55 cents, or 1.4%, at $40.16 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up 61 cents, or 1.6%, at $37.87 a barrel. Both contracts fell on Monday. The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Tuesday trimmed its 2020 outlook by 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 91.7 million bpd, citing caution about the pace of economic recovery. "We expect the recovery in oil demand to decelerate markedly in the second half of 2020, with most of the easy gains already achieved," the IEA said in its monthly report. Its revision chimes with forecasts from major oil industry producers and traders, with OPEC downgrading its oil demand forecast and BP saying demand might have peaked in 2019. World oil demand will tumble by 9.46 million bpd this year, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in a monthly report on Monday, more than the 9.06 million bpd decline OPEC expected a month ago. Still, a meeting of the OPEC+ joint ministerial committee on Thursday is not expected to make recommendations for deeper output cuts, but rather focus on compliance and compensation mechanisms for its current cuts, sources told Reuters. Concerns over supply disruptions in the United States from Hurricane Sally provided some price support. Energy companies, ports and refiners raced on Monday to shut down as Hurricane Sally grew stronger on its approach to the central U.S. Gulf Coast, the second significant hurricane to shutter oil and gas activity in the past month. Meanwhile, China's crude oil throughput in August rose from a year ago, reaching its second-highest level on record, as refineries worked to digest record imports earlier this year.
Oil prices climb as Hurricane Sally nears Mississippi - Oil prices climbed Tuesday as Hurricane Sally bore down on the Mississippi coast as a Category 1 storm. West Texas Intermediate crude oil was trading up 60 cents at $37.86 per barrel while RBOB Gasoline edged up 0.82 cents to $1.115 per gallon. “Hurricane Sally is a powerful slow-moving storm that can prove to be a nightmare for the U.S. energy Infrastructure,” Hurricane Sally, which has sustained winds of 85 miles per hour, down from 110 miles per hour, is expected to make landfall in the area east of Gulfport, Miss. Sally’s path is similar to that of Hurricane Laura, which hit Louisiana as a Category 4 storm last month and took about 80% of U.S. production offline. In preparation for the storm, U.S. refineries and offshore production facilities have begun shutting down. Phillips 66 Co. on Monday shut its 255,600 barrel per day refinery in Alliance, La., while Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell plc were among the companies that idled facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. About 16% of U.S. refinery capacity, or about 3.1 million barrels per day, are in the path of the storm. “The possibility of damaging flash floods will put pipelines and refineries in jeopardy and of course will also stop imports and exports in the Gulf Of Mexico,” A refinery takes one to two weeks to return to full capacity so long as there is no flooding nor power outages. U.S. gasoline and diesel inventories are well stocked ahead of the storm due to the demand destruction caused by lockdowns aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19. Gasoline inventories are up 1% to 2% from a year ago while diesel stockpiles are higher by 30%, according to Andrew Lipow, president of the Houston-based oil consulting firm Lipow Associates.
Oil rises over 2% as U.S. Gulf Coast braces for hurricane (Reuters) - Oil prices rose more than 2% on Tuesday, supported by hurricane supply disruptions in the United States, but demand concerns loomed as energy industry forecasters predicted a slower-than-expected recovery from the pandemic. Brent crude gained 92 cents, or 2.3%, to settle at $40.53 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose $1.02, or 2.7%, to settle at $38.28 a barrel. Both contracts fell on Monday. Futures gained ahead of Hurricane Sally’s expected landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast. More than a quarter of U.S. offshore oil and gas production was shut and key exporting ports were closed as the storm’s trajectory shifted east toward western Alabama, sparing some Gulf Coast refineries from high winds. “Harsh weather events in the U.S. cause some unpredictability about its oil production and that’s always good news for prices,” said Bjornar Tonhaugen, Rystad Energy’s head of oil markets. The outlook for oil demand remained weak, capping price gains. The International Energy Agency (IEA) trimmed its 2020 outlook by 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 91.7 million bpd, citing caution about the pace of economic recovery. “We expect the recovery in oil demand to decelerate markedly in the second half of 2020, with most of the easy gains already achieved,” the IEA said in its monthly report. The agency said commercial oil stocks in the developed world hit an all-time high of 3.225 billion barrels in July, and cut its forecast for implied stock draws for the second half of the year. The IEA's demand revision aligns with forecasts from major oil industry producers and traders. OPEC downgraded its oil demand forecast and BP BP.L said demand might have peaked in 2019. World oil demand will tumble by 9.46 million bpd this year, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in a monthly report on Monday, more than the 9.06 million bpd decline OPEC expected a month ago. Still, a meeting of the OPEC+ joint ministerial committee on Thursday is not expected to make recommendations for deeper output cuts, but focus rather on compliance and compensation mechanisms for its current cuts, sources told Reuters. Meanwhile, China’s crude oil throughput in August rose from a year ago, reaching its second-highest level on record, as refineries worked to digest record imports earlier this year.
Oil gains as hurricane shuts U.S. output, stockpiles fall - Oil prices rose on Wednesday, extending gains from the previous session, as a hurricane disrupted U.S. offshore oil and gas production and an industry report showed a big drop in U.S. crude stockpiles. Brent crude was trading up 15 cents, or 0.4%, at $40.68 a barrel by 0055 GMT, while U.S. crude gained 18 cents, or 0.5%, to $38.46 a barrel. Both contracts rose by more than 2% on Tuesday. More than 25% of U.S. offshore oil and gas output was shut and export ports were closed on Tuesday as Hurricane Sally sat just off the U.S. Gulf Coast. "Our current estimate for the total outage associated with the Sally weather system is between 3 million and 6 million barrels of oil over approximately 11 days," Rystad Energy said in a note. That is likely to help reduce stockpiles although refineries were also shut down, cutting demand for oil. U.S. crude oil inventories fell by 9.5 million barrels last week, although gasoline inventories increased, data from industry group the American Petroleum Institute showed on Tuesday. Analysts had expected oil stocks to increase by 1.3 million barrels. Official data on U.S. stockpiles is due out later on Wednesday and often conflicts with the industry figures. Meanwhile, oil producers and traders are painting a bleak picture for a recovery in fuel demand globally as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on, hammering economies.
Oil Jumps On Sally and Surprise Stock Draw, But Analysts Continue Bearish Stance - Hurricane Sally may be destructive, but she worked her magic on oil prices for a second session on Wednesday, causing them to jump nearly 5 percent, supported by a surprise decline in U.S. inventories that further discredits the analytical conviction of demand declining in a Covid-19 world. Nearly 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of offshore production has been taken offline due to the Category 2 hurricane, and this caused Brent to rise $1.69, or 4.17 percent, to $42.22 per barrel; West Texas Intermediate jumped $1.88, or 4.9 percent, to settle at $40.16 per barrel. Analysts previously convinced that rising Covid infections were causing demand destruction were jubilant when the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday reported a stock draw of 4.4 million barrels last week to 496 million barrels, compared to expectations for a 1.3 million barrel rise. Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group Inc., said, "The inventory numbers are significant - refineries seemed to jump back to activity, gasoline demand jumped back, so that's definitely positive. "It seems that we're back on the track of the drawdown on supplies." Still, worry persisted over demand during the pandemic, and Reuters on Wednesday published a list of oil companies - including BP, and Exxon Mobil Corp - that were either trying to maintain, considering closing, or were permanently shutting certain operations. The news agency wrote, "Consumption has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, and lower travel may be here to stay." Concern was also expressed on Wednesday that stockpiles of diesel and jet fuel are continuing to swell and impacting profit margins, giving refiners little incentive to run their plants harder: "If they don't crank up the run rate, they will never burn off the crude oil overhang already in storage," said Bob Yawger, director of the future division at Mizuho Securities USA. As is rapidly becoming the norm, despite analytical hand-wringing the global economic recovery as well as a prospective end to the pandemic continued to show promise on Wednesday, with markets responding strongly to the U.S. Federal Reserve's vow to keep interest rates near zero - a spur to economic activity - until at least 2023.
Oil jumps nearly 5% in best day since June as inventories fall, hurricane hits output - Oil prices jumped more than 4% on Wednesday, following a drawdown in U.S. crude and gasoline inventories and as Hurricane Sally forced a swath of U.S. offshore production to shut. Brent crude rose $1.69, or 4.17%, to $42.22 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude gained $1.88, or 4.9%, to settle at $40.16. U.S. crude stocks fell 4.4 million barrels last week to 496 million barrels, their lowest since April, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said, compared with analysts' expectations in a Reuters poll for a 1.3 million-barrel rise, U.S. gasoline stocks fell 400,000 barrels, the EIA said, more than double the draw forecast, despite a 4 percentage point hike in refining utilization rates. "The inventory numbers are significant - refineries seemed to jump back to activity, gasoline demand jumped back so that's definitely positive," said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. "It seems that we're back on the track of the drawdown on supplies." Sally, which made landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast as a Category 2 hurricane, also boosted oil prices as more than a fourth of offshore output shut due to the storm. Nearly 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of offshore crude oil production was taken offline in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, according to the U.S. Interior Department, roughly a third of the shut-ins caused by Hurricane Laura, which landed farther west in August. Oil collapsed to historic lows as the coronavirus crisis hit demand. A record supply cut by OPEC and its allies, a grouping known as OPEC+, and an easing of lockdowns have helped Brent recover from a 21-year low below $16 in April. Prices have sunk in September, pressured by rising coronavirus cases and concerns about demand. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and International Energy Agency both cut their demand outlooks this week. A panel of OPEC+ oil ministers meets to review the supply pact on Thursday and is unlikely to recommend further output curbs despite the price drop, sources told Reuters.
Oil reverses losses to gain 2% as OPEC urges compliance with production cuts -Oil prices rose about 2% on Thursday, turning positive as OPEC and its allies said the producer group would crack down on countries that failed to comply with output cuts and planned to hold an extraordinary meeting in October if oil markets weaken further. Brent oil futures extended their gains to trade up 2.3% at $43.21 a barrel. U.S. crude futures settled 81 cents, or 2%, higher at $40.97 per barrel. Both contracts rose more than 4% on Wednesday. The panel of major producers, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, did not recommend any changes to their current output reduction target of 7.7 million barrels per day (bpd), or around 8% of global demand, according to a draft press release and an internal report. The panel pressed laggards such as Iraq, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates to cut more barrels to compensate for overproduction in May-July, while extending the compensation period from September to the end of December, according to three OPEC+ sources. "They were coming down hard on the UAE," said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group in New York. The expectation that output could fall as the UAE and others trim production bolstered prices, he said. The OPEC news overshadowed the restart of U.S. offshore production after Hurricane Sally passed through the Gulf of Mexico and bearish U.S. economic news. U.S. energy companies were starting to return crews to offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico after Sally halted operations for five days, shutting down nearly 500,000 bpd of output. Prices were also under pressure from the slow economic recovery from the pandemic. Global coronavirus cases are expected to pass 30 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally. The U.S. Labor Department's report showed the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, but remained at extremely high levels as the labor market recovery shifts into low gear and consumer spending cools. Even OPEC+ cautioned that the pandemic could continue to curb demand. An OPEC+ technical panel warned that a rise in coronavirus cases in some countries may curb oil demand despite signs of economic recovery and initial indications of a decline in oil stocks, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.
Oil jumps more than 10% for the week following OPEC meeting, decline in U.S. inventory - Oil prices were mixed on Friday, weighed after a Libyan commander said a blockade on the country’s oil exports would be lifted for a month, while supportive signals from an OPEC+ meeting lifted futures. Both the U.S. and Brent crude benchmarks posted weekly gains after Saudi Arabia pressed allies to stick to production quotas, Hurricane Sally cut U.S. production, and banks including Goldman Sachs predicted a supply deficit. Brent fell 15 cents to settle at $43.15 a barrel, but rose 8.3% for the week. U.S. oil futures rose 14 cents to settle at $41.11 a barrel, and gained 10.1% for the week. Market sentiment fell on Friday after eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar announced he would lift his blockade of oil output for one month. The blockade slashed Libyan production to just over 100,000 barrels per day now from around 1.2 million bpd previously. It was unclear how quickly Libya could ramp up production. Oil futures also tracked U.S. stock indexes, which broadly fell. “A risk-off mentality is sprinkling down to oil. There are still concerns demand might get worse,” said Phil Flynn, analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. On Thursday, though, the key panel for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies pressed for better compliance with oil output cuts against the backdrop of falling crude prices. Saudi Arabia’s Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told a gathering on Thursday that the OPEC+ producer group could hold an extraordinary meeting in October if the oil market soured because of weak demand and rising coronavirus cases, according to an OPEC+ source. “The alliance showed strength and reassured the market that if further action will be needed to discipline sub-compliers and balance the market, it would be taken,” said Bjornar Tonhaugen, Rystad Energy’s head of oil markets. Goldman Sachs predicted a market deficit of 3 million bpd by the fourth quarter and reiterated its target for Brent to reach $49 by year end and $65 by the third quarter of 2021.
Oil sector could face more distress during coronavirus crisis as it struggles to draw investments— Oil prices have plunged during the pandemic and the sector's crisis could get worse as new investments are unlikely to flow in, experts said at an energy conference this week. Pandemic-related movement restrictions stopped people from commuting and traveling, drastically reducing oil usage. Earlier this year, the May contract for U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude plunged deep into negative territory for the first time in its history. Overall, oil prices have dropped around 40% since the start of the year. With the poor performance across the industry, analysts at the S&P Global Platts' Platts Asia Pacific Petroleum Virtual Conference (APPEC) 2020 this week flagged that drawing investment to the sector would be a problem. Who is going to fund our next investment cycle? Indeed, is anyone going to be incentivized to fund us? Returns on the E&P companies as an investment have been poor. Ben Luckock, co-head of oil trading at commodity trading company Trafigura, said that it might be "hard to see where the investment comes from." Speaking at the APPEC conference, he pointed out that, as a result of the fall in oil prices and corporate valuations, capital expenditure in exploration and production (E&P) companies in the energy sector have plummeted. Such companies are involved in the early stages of energy production, which includes searching and extracting oil and gas. "Who is going to fund our next investment cycle? Indeed, is anyone going to be incentivized to fund us? Returns on the E&P companies as an investment have been poor," Luckock said. While returns on the S&P 500 have boasted a 70% increase since 2015, he pointed out returns of E&P companies fell by 70% over the same period. "From a funding perspective, the energy sector in general faces two key problems. One is the relatively low shareholder return, and the second is the squeezed margins across the value chain," "This phenomena in the energy sector … poses key challenges for where financing is going to come from, and particularly so in a period of acute crisis." In a report earlier this year, research firm Rystad Energy projected that E&P companies could lose as much as $1 trillion in revenues this year — a 40% decline year on year. Last year, the industry made $2.47 trillion in revenues. "It doesn't bear comparison, people don't want to put their money into the E&Ps with good reason. That still leaves the world with a major problem," Luckock said. "Regardless of when peak demand happens, which is now harder to forecast than ever, we'll still need tens of millions of barrels of oil a day for years to come. And we need to see investment happen in order to find, develop and produce those barrels," he concluded.
OPEC and non-OPEC allies to review oil production cuts after dire demand warnings — A group of some of the world's most powerful oil-producing nations on Thursday met to review production policy, amid a faltering recovery from the pandemic-driven rout and a bleak outlook for energy demand. During the meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC allies, sometimes referred to as OPEC+, ongoing flexibility was emphasized as oil prices continue to trade at depressed levels. "The JMMC [Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee] observed that the recovery has not been even across the world and an increase in COVID-19 cases has appeared in some countries," a statement from OPEC read. "In the current environment, the JMMC emphasised the importance of being pro-active and pre-emptive and recommended that participating countries should be willing to take further necessary measures when needed." OPEC+ did not announce additional output cuts at Thursday's meeting, which was in-line with analyst expectations. The energy alliance agreed in July to cut output by 7.7 million barrels per day from August through to December, in an effort to prop up oil prices by limiting supply. Iraq and others also pledged to pump below their quotas in September to offset overproduction earlier in the year. "The JMMC reiterated the critical importance of adhering to full conformity and compensating overproduced volumes as soon as possible," OPEC officials said. OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC leader Russia, the two biggest producers in the alliance, have both pushed for full conformity in recent months. Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman has previously used OPEC meetings to publicly press recalcitrant members to stick to the pledged output cuts. International benchmark Brent crude advanced nearly 3% to $43.46 a barrel on Thursday afternoon, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude stood at $41.12, for a gain of 2.4% Oil prices have dropped more than 35% since the start of the year. "I do not believe we should expect any material change of course out of the OPEC meeting this week when they review market fundamentals, in part because compliance with previously agreed production cuts has been high," Tim Bray, senior portfolio manager at GuideStone Capital Management, told CNBC via email.
Sanctions against Turkey over Mediterranean gas drilling wouldn't achieve much, former EU ambassador says - — The European Union will not go as far as to impose sanctions on Turkey, one regional expert told CNBC, despite Ankara's controversial activity in the Mediterranean Sea. Turkey, Greece and Cyprus have been at odds over the former's exploration of energy resources in parts of Eastern Mediterranean waters that both Athens and Nicosia claim are part of their own territory. The countries and territories of this region include Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Libya. The dispute, which goes back over four decades, has escalated in recent weeks. Turkey's pursuit to expand its oil and gas resources in the Eastern Mediterranean even resulted in a minor collision between two frigates last month. Greece, increasingly angry at what it describes as "illegal" activity by Turkey, has called on its EU partners to impose "tough sanctions" on Ankara. EU leaders will be discussing the standoff between NATO members at an emergency meeting in two weeks' time. For its part, Turkey has claimed it has every right to prospect in the contested waters and accuses Greece of trying to grab an unfair share of maritime resources. "Leaders cannot do anything else but reinstate their solidarity with Greece," Marc Pierini, a former EU ambassador to Turkey, told CNBC earlier this month. "Sanctions would not give much result here," he said. Turkey's economy has struggled in recent years and the global recession has added further pressure to the embattled nation. In addition, the political party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost its traditional dominance in the country. Vassilis Ntousas, a policy expert at Chatham House, told CNBC that Erdogan was looking to "cement" his legacy by adopting a more assertive regional policy. He added that Turkey was looking "to play a stronger role in the region and it is willing to play hard ball."
Greece buys billions in French arms amid war tensions with Turkey - On Saturday, conservative Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a purchase of billions of euros in French weaponry and a large increase in the size of the Greek military. This massive increase in military spending, by a country which the European Union (EU) has devastated with billions of euros in draconian cuts to social spending over the last decade, marks a major escalation in Greece’s ongoing military standoff with Turkey. Mitsotakis indicated that Greece will purchase 18 Rafale fighter jets, four French naval frigates with naval helicopters, and a large supply of anti-tank weapons, torpedoes and missiles. It will also ask French firms to upgrade four Greek frigates that are already in service. Finally, Mitsotakis said that 15,000 more soldiers would be recruited to the Greek armed forces. “The time has come to reinforce our armed forces. … This is an important program that will form a national shield,” Mitsotakis declared in a speech in Thessaloniki. The sale comes after months of escalating threats and one direct collision last month between Greek and Turkish warships in the eastern Mediterranean, as Athens and Ankara lay competing claims to territorial waters and oil-rich seabeds in the region. In this dispute, Paris has aggressively backed Athens, sending several warships and fighter jets to the eastern Mediterranean to counterbalance Turkey’s numerical superiority over Greece. Paris also is seeking to undercut Turkey’s position in Africa and specifically in Libya, where French President Emmanuel Macron backs warlord Khalifa Haftar and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan backs the Government of National Accord (GNA). Haftar and the GNA currently lead the two main factions in the decade-long civil war in Libya triggered by NATO’s war against the country in 2011. On Thursday, Macron had met other southern European heads of state in a so-called Med7 summit (with Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Malta and Cyprus) in the Corsican city of Ajaccio. Beyond discussing the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen the southern European powers seek new EU bailout funding, they pledged to renew France’s plans for a Union of the Mediterranean, vetoed by Berlin a decade ago. They also issued joint criticisms of Turkey’s maritime claims in waters also claimed by Greece or Cyprus. The Med7 states adopted a statement calling to “renew the southern partnership between the European Union, its member states and our southern neighbors. We await with interest the November 27 regional forum of the Union of the Mediterranean.” They also pledged to coordinate policy in the Sahel, where they aim to prevent African refugees from reaching Europe and to assist France’s ongoing bloody war in Mali.
Large Number Of Russian Warships Seen Deployed Between Syria & Cyprus -A large number of Russian warships were recently tracked off the coasts of Syria and Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean region, the Russian publication Avia.Pro reported Thursday. According to the online publication, “experts are seriously concerned about the presence of at least 15 Russian warships and submarines off the coast of Syria. This is the first time such a large military formation has been seen here, which raises suspicions about whether Russia plans to engage in a military special operation against jihadists using the navy.In a maritime tracking image shared on their site, the 15 Russian warships and submarines can be seen positioned between the island nation of Cyprus and nearby Syria, along with some ships north of Egypt and another near the central part of the Mediterranean.According to the Telegram channel, Hunter Notes, “one of the last to appear off the coast of Syria was the tanker of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy ‘Akademik Pashin’; boats, and, obviously, this is far from the final number of ships of the Russian Navy located in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea.”This Russian naval buildup also comes at a time of increased tension between Turkey, Cyprus and Greece in the eastern Mediterranean, as the latter two countries have accused Ankara of encroaching on their territorial waters. Turkey's Erdogan has recently threatened external countries, warning them not to hinder Turkish hydrocarbon exploration vessels operating off Cyprus.
The Bahrain-Israel Mutual Recognition - This freshly announced mutual recognition follows the one between the UAE and Israel, which set a new pattern, with Bahrain and possibly others (Oman?) predicted to follow. I see three reasons why Bahrain was most likely to be next, although there are really two fundamental ones with the third arising from those. The most fundamental one is that of the 6 members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), now largely in shatters due to the sanctions on one of them (Qatar) by several others (Saudi Arabia (KSA), UAE, and Bahrain), is the only one where a Sunni minority is ruling over a Shia majority, with the Sunni-Shia conflict a central part of the conflict with Iran that many of them have, with Iran run by Shia, of course, where they are a majority. The Shia of Bahrain have been restive and rose up against King Hamad during the Arab Spring that began in 2011, only to be violently put down. But, unsurprisingly, the king and those around him are especially worried about the Shia and have strongly supported the anti-Iran coalition, which includes Israel. It is this alliance that is at the heart of the new round of recognitions, with UAE leader, Prince Zayed, arguably the leader of the anti-Iran group in the GCC, along with KSA Crown Prince, MbS, although due to opposition of the Saudi religious leaders who are concerned about the Palesrtinians, MbS himself is not seen as likely to follow UAE and Bahrain to recognize Israel, although there is clearly a de facto alliance against Iran between them.A second reason Bahrain was more likely to be next is that it is more subject to US pressure as it hosts the home base in the Persian Gulf of the US Navy’s 5th fleets, something rarely mentioned in the media, and has been since the 1950s. That dates back to when what is now the UAE was still being ruled by UK as the Trucial States. On top of that Bahrain is the smallest of the GCC members and also is the one that has been running out of oil more than the others (all of them produce at least some oil). In short, King Hamad is much more susceptible to US pressure to recognize Israel, although given his unhappiness with his Shia population and support for the anti-Iran coalition, he has been more inclined to go along anyway. Another reason, which basically follows these others, is that Bahrain is indeed part of the GCC group that is sanctioning/boycotting fellow GCC member, Qatar, for its apparent unwillingness to join the anti-Iran coalition. Indeed, Qatar and Iran have a joint deal for managing certain natural gas fields in the Gulf, and Qatar, which has the world’s highest per capita income, also hosts al=Jazeera, which has reported on dissident movements in several of its GCC partners, another source of anger. Of course, while Trump initially forgot about this as MbS and Jared Kushner pushed him into supporting the anti-Qatar sanctions, Qatar hosts a major US air base, so the US military did manage to get to Trump to back off overtly supporting the anti-Qatar boycott, although the US has failed to bring that conflict to a conclusion.
Indian, China troops exchanged gunshots twice last week as tensions rose (Reuters) - Indian and Chinese border troops had an exchange of gunfire last week just days before a meeting of their foreign ministers, Indian officials said on Wednesday, in a further breach of a decades-old restraint at the frontier. Indian soldiers stand in a formation after disembarking from a military transport plane at a forward airbase in Leh, in the Ladakh region, September 15, 2020. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui The two sides have had a long-standing agreement for troops not to use firearms at the poorly defined Line of Actual Control or the informal border and for 45 years no shot has been fired. But since late last month, there have been three incidents of warning shots fired in the western Himalayas where troops are locked in a faceoff over competing territorial claims, often in close proximity, officials aware of the situation told Reuters. “In all these cases shots were fired in the air and not at each other thankfully,” said one of the officials. One of them occurred on the north bank of the bitterly contested Pangong Tso lake in the run-up to a meeting between Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow last Thursday. The shooting which neither side has made public was the most intense, a second official said. The official said he was not in a position to provide more details but the Indian Express newspaper said 100-200 rounds were fired. The two sides are jockeying for advantageous positions on the undemarcated mountain border in the Ladakh sector which adjoins Tibet. Last Monday, troops had fired in the air on the southern bank of the lake, the two sides said.
RBI chief says India's recovery not entrenched, will only be gradual (Reuters) - Some high frequency indicators are pointing towards stabilisation in economic activity in India but the recovery is still not entrenched and will only be gradual, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday. The major economy hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, India has been forecast by most leading economists and banks to contract by around 10% in the fiscal year ending in March. “High frequency indicators of agricultural activity, the purchasing managers index and certain private estimates on unemployment point to some stabilisation of economic activity in the second quarter of the current year,” Das told members of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry’s national executive committee. “The recovery is not yet fully entrenched,” he said. “By all indications, the recovery is likely to be gradual as efforts towards re-opening of the economy are confronted with rising infections.” Despite India seeing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world, the country has crossed 5 million COVID-19 infections, and has the world’s second highest number of cases. Das also underlined the need to regulate non-bank finance companies (NBFCs) or shadow banks better, while highlighting the positive impact of the measures taken by the RBI to lowering borrowing costs for the government and corporates. The RBI has all these years followed a light touch regulation policy with regards to NBFCs, Das said, adding that it has now taken measures to ensure no large entity failed as IL&FS did in 2019.
France imposes return to school without protections against COVID-19 - In order to return the economy to normal despite the pandemic, the French government is abandoning whatever safety measures were previously taken for the restart of classes. This is proceeding despite the recent surge in cases of COVID-19, with over 10,000 cases discovered on September 12 in France alone. What this policy signifies can clearly be seen in Spain where the resurgence of COVID-19 is also well underway. The right-wing Madrid regional prime minister, Isabel Ayuso, declared: “It is probable that practically all children, in one way or another, will be infected by the coronavirus.” That is what is in store for children and their families across Europe if the working class does not oppose the forced reopening of schools. In the case of France’s September restart of the school year, distance learning has been abandoned: all pupils must be present in overcrowded classrooms. And while teachers moved between classrooms during the partial school reopening in June, now pupils will have to move between classes through overcrowded corridors. This “intermingling,” to which the minister was previously opposed, is now accepted. As for school buses, recreation periods and meals, “intermingling” is also the rule. Everything is returning to pre-lockdown conditions, with minor adjustments. An epidemic explosion in schools is in the making, with masks being the only protective barrier, and only then for middle and high school pupils. In any case, masks are not very effective in environments where social distancing is lacking. To force parents back to work at all costs, no plans are made to look after pupils whose classes are forced to close due to cases of COVID-19. Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer bluntly told BFM-TV on September 7: “We are planning for parental leave in the event of school closures.” Parental leave is time off work without pay and therefore an enormous cost to workers’ families. Nevertheless, infections are rising rapidly. The government announced last Thursday it would reactivate payments for partially laid-off workers in the private sector, authorized absences of public sector workers, and absences for one parent only if schools or classes are shut down. The obvious aim is to avoid a social explosion. The criteria for closures of classes and schools are vague. The decision is in the hands of local government officials in consultation with regional health authorities. The ministry refuses to communicate the list of classes and schools closed and only provides limited vague data on classes and establishments concerned.
Schools at epicentre of UK’s coronavirus explosion - COVID-19 is spreading out of control in Britain, with levels of infection not seen since May being recorded. Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday all saw above 3,300 cases daily. A further 2,621 cases and nine deaths were recorded on Monday, a normal “weekend-dip” in reports—followed by 3,105 cases and 27 deaths on Tuesday. The virus is resurgent in workplaces, schools, and communities, with the R (reproduction) value rising last Friday to between 1.0 and 1.2. In London and the North West of England, R is between 1.1 and 1.3, higher than the UK’s other regions. According to official figures, an average of 2,998 daily infections are being recorded daily—an amount that has nearly doubled in two weeks from the seven-day rolling average of 1,323 on August 31. The real numbers infected is far larger as many thousands of people are unable to get a test after showing symptoms. Official deaths in Britain stand at 41,637. But this is sharply contradicted by Office for National Statistics figures published yesterday, showing that 57,528 fatalities with COVID-19 mentioned on the death certificate were registered in the UK up to September 4-6. Other authoritative assessments of the COVID-19 death toll, based on excess deaths, are over 65,000. Such is the spread of coronavirus that Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, which adopted a strategy of herd immunity at the beginning of the pandemic, has been forced to impose new national restrictions. Its policy of “local lockdowns” were so porous they only contributed to the spread of the infection over wide areas of the country. On Monday, social gatherings of more than six people were made illegal, as the “rule of six” came into force. This too will do little or nothing to stop the spread of the virus. The rule is not even being applied uniformly across the UK. In England, it applies indoors and outdoors and includes children; in Scotland indoors and outdoors and excludes children; in Wales indoors only and excludes children; and in Northern Ireland indoors only and includes children. Tens of millions of workers, including all educators and pupils, will remain exposed to the virus, with the government stating that “education and work settings are unaffected” by the “rule of six.” True to their naked class bias, the Tories had to delay their announcement by several days while mulling over what to do with grouse shooting during the season. They determined that six people cannot mingle at a birthday or Christmas party and that two families of four stopping for a talk in the street would be illegal “mingling.” But parties of up to 30 people can don their flat caps, Barbour jackets, tweeds and wellies, and spend a costly day on the moors with their wealthy chums.
Brexit: Snake Eyes by Yves Smith - It is hard to fathom how the EU and UK can extricate themselves from the Brexit mess that Boris Johnson has engineered, particularly given that EU leaders had lots of antipathy for Johnson even before he became Prime Minister. They seem more inclined to throw him an anchor rather than a bone. For those of you who tuned out of this melodrama and missed the latest episode, the land border in Ireland was the Achilles heel of Brexit. The Good Friday Agreement is a tricky set of compromises and fudges that has been a tremendous success in practice. No one wants to touch this third rail except the ideologues in power in Great Britain. Even US Congresscritters have cleared their throats and said the UK can kiss its US trade deal goodbye if it messes with the GFA. Yet Boris Johnson is proceeding to advance a bill through Parliament that would negate commitments he agreed to in the Withdrawal Agreement, the very same deal he touted as a great win for the UK when he pushed it through shortly after moving into No. 10. Johnson is blowing up the Ireland compromise he’d agreed to, of having Northern Ireland subject to EU restrictions on state aid, which for businesses that operated in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, would wind up applying to all of their UK activities. Johnson also wants to nix the Exit Declarations that Northern Ireland businesses would have to file for shipments into Great Britain. Johnson, when called out on the issue at the time of the vote on the Withdrawal Agreement, handwaved them away as “light touch checks“.The Government admitted then it had no idea how much compliance would cost Northern Ireland businesses. And in blowing up that arrangement, Johnson risks blowing up getting any sort of EU trade deal by year end. We are back to a Brexit Groundhog Day tape loop, a digitally enhanced version of the “no deal Brexit” scenario. And there has been so much talk of “hard Brexit” and crash-outs that the general public has become inured to what it might mean. Admittedly, with Covid having already killed air travel, that’s one sector out of the Brexit line of fire. But even with all of the extra prep time, there’s plenty of UK downside. Goldman not only argues that the hit would be much larger than for Covid, but that it would also be possible to identify the magnitude of botched Brexit damage. From CNBC: The blow to the U.K. of failing to reach a trade deal with the European Union would be more costly than dealing with the coronavirus, Goldman Sachs economists have warned. In fact, the investment bank said the fallout of a no-deal outcome was likely to be “two to three times larger” than that of “the worst pandemic witnessed in post-war history.”…Some analysts have suggested that these costs would blend in with the hit to the U.K. economy from the global pandemic, making it difficult to determine what will be the real source of economic pain in the years to come. However, Goldman Sachs economists disagree.“We are sceptical of the argument that the sheer scale of the economic fallout from Covid-19 will obscure the economic impact from a breakdown in Brexit negotiations,” they said in a research note Monday.The investment bank argued that the industries hit hardest by the coronavirus — such as recreational, food and drink, and wholesale businesses — are different from the sectors mostly likely to be punished by the U.K.’s departure from the European Union, which include chemicals, textiles and electrical equipment businesses. Mind you, negotiations had not been going well but the EU’s position was it was ready to talk up until the last possible minute, which in theory is sometime October but in practice is probably as late as mid-November. But Johnson has done terrible damage to the interpersonal dynamics, which already weren’t great due to Johnson being so well known to them, in a bad way, not just as a major EU basher, but as utterly unprincipled. But as a head of state, EU leaders were forced to treat Johnson as a man of his word even though they suspected otherwise. Craig Murray pointed out that in October 2019,he wrote that Johnson was laying plans to break the Withdrawal Agreement:
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