Pandemic watchdog is probing Mnuchin, Cruz roles in Fed lending - A federal watchdog is looking into former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s decision to roll back the U.S. Federal Reserve’s emergency lending programs at the end of 2020, an issue that has become a point of partisan tension in Congress. The Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery is also inquiring into Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s role in persuading the central bank to expand the eligibility rules for the Main Street Lending Program to make it easier for oil and gas companies to apply for the low interest rate loans. The probes were revealed in the watchdog’s quarterly report released Monday. The investigations, led by Brian Miller — the special inspector general in charge of overseeing the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve’s response to the pandemic — could shed more light on Mnuchin’s decision and legal basis for winding down the programs, which Democrats say was politically motivated. The probes mark some of the biggest moves yet for Miller, a Trump appointee, who has said he struggled to begin his oversight work since he was confirmed by the Senate in June because of technical challenges and the time needed to hire experienced staff. Sarah Breen, a spokeswoman for SIGPR, said that Treasury responded to the inquiry about the Fed facilities on Jan. 19, the final full day of Trump’s administration. She said that any concerns abut the discontinuation of the Fed facilities was rendered moot because of the compromise lawmakers reached in the December stimulus legislation, though that position may not reflect the views of the current administration. Breen also said that they have not received a reply to the Jan. 6 letter about Cruz’s influence on the Main Street Lending Program. Cruz’s office didn’t have an immediate response. The future of the Fed’s emergency lending powers was a key point of debate leading up to passage of pandemic relief legislation in December. Republicans pushed to make it more difficult to revive the programs and Democrats wanted to preserve the emergency lending structures. The two parties eventually reached a compromise allowing Congress to approve similar facilities in the future after stalling the stimulus bill for days. Mnuchin in mid-November said at year’s end he would pull unused money authorized by the Cares Act in March to back Federal Reserve emergency-lending facilities. The Treasury also unveiled plans to park those funds, along with other left-over lending authorization — some $455 billion in all — into the department’s general fund, over which Congress has authority, rather than the Exchange Stabilization Fund, over which the secretary has greater discretion. Lawmakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi argued that the actions amounted to a misreading of the law and were politically motivated to hamstring the incoming Biden administration. The probe also looks into changes made to the Main Street lending process, which Senate Democrats have said allowed indebted oil and gas companies to qualify for loans that should have gone to other companies hampered by the pandemic. Energy companies accounted for 13% of all loans made through the Main Street program as of the end of November, according to BailoutWatch, a climate advocacy group tracking government stimulus spending. Several Trump administration officials, including Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and Mnuchin, worked with the Fed when the program was first being designed to allow for more mid-size companies, and therefore also energy companies, to access the facilities, Brouillette said in May. The Fed said at the time that it didn’t make modifications to the program to specifically accommodate energy companies. By law, its emergency facilities cannot target specific sectors.
"The Fed's Monetary Punchbowl Is Fueling Rampant Home Price Appreciation": AEI -- by Wolf Richter - During the press conference following the FOMC meeting last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell was asked by different reporters about the craziness going on in the stock market, the chaotic thingy with GameStop, corporate debt, and the housing market. The fact that he was asked several times about the exuberant nuttiness in asset prices shows that by now everyone has picked up on it. And people are increasingly incredulous that the Fed would continue with its monetary policies in face of these markets.Powell brushed off the GameStop thingy and gave his usual it’s-not-our-fault and it’s-never-ever-our-fault justifications for the exuberant nuttiness in the markets. The near-0% interest rates and $3 trillion in QE in just a few months had nothing to do with anything, but the drivers of the nuttiness have been the “expectations about vaccines” and “fiscal policy,” he said (transcript). “Those are the news items that have been driving asset values in recent months.” Upon hearing this, people globally were just rolling up their eyes. And a reporter challenged him softly about the housing market – the 9% surge in prices from already lofty levels. “Are you concerned about a bubble forming there yet? And is there a price increase that you’re looking at where it might change the level of mortgage-backed securities the Fed is buying?” That price surge “we think is a passing phenomenon,” he said. “There’s a one-time thing happening with people who are spending all of their time in their house. And they’re thinking either I need a bigger house, or I need another house, and a different house. Or a second house in some cases. So there’s a one-time shift in demand that we think will get satisfied, also that will call forth supply. And we think that those price increases are unlikely to be sustained for all of those reasons.” He said this after having said out of the other side of his mouth, “the housing sector has more than fully recovered from the downturn, supported in part by low mortgage interest rates. And he never responded to the question about changing – reducing – the mounts of mortgage-backed securities the Fed is buying. Quoting Powell’s “the housing sector has more than fully recovered from the downturn,” the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center said in a presentation this week that therefore “there is no justification for continuing or increasing investment in agency MBS.” Here are some of the points of the AEI’s presentation. It demonstrates how the Fed has gone nuts with its asset purchases and interest rate repression.
Fed more bullish on launch of real-time payments service— While other major government initiatives have been delayed or shelved due to the pandemic, the Federal Reserve says it has made substantial headway in the past year constructing the real-time payments system FedNow, and is now more optimistic about when it will launch. After predicting the service's core clearing and settlement functions would be available to financial institutions in 2023 or 2024, the Fed has narrowed that timetable to 2023 after “making fast progress,” said the central bank official leading the effort. Kenneth Montgomery, first vice president and chief operating officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said in an interview that the Fed has reached important benchmarks on building a clearing and settlement engine, improving security, coordinating with the private sector and working toward having interoperability with other real-time payments networks. "In the 15 months we’ve been at this, we have made considerable progress and achievements in terms of getting the product to market, and all during a pandemic," Montgomery said. Of course, the work on FedNow comes amid much criticism that the U.S. should have already adopted a standardized faster payments system years ago. The Fed's effort trails the development of the private sector's RTP network, operated by The Clearing House since 2017. FedNow is the Fed’s “top program priority,” a status that has afforded the project the resources needed to advance the timeline, said Montgomery. “We're taking this milestone-based approach, and as we started to forecast the progress that we're making, we were seeing that we're moving along at a very good pace,” he said. The Fed announced in 2019 it had decided to enter the real-time-payments business, after years of uncertainty about whether the central bank would develop its own network or instead leave it to the private sector. When FedNow comes online, any financial institution with an account at one of the Fed’s regional banks will be able to use the service to process payments 24 hours a day year round.
Fed’s Kashkari: Fed Shouldn’t Pull Back on Aid - The U.S. economy has a long way to go before it fully recovers and will need strong support from the Federal Reserve and the broader government to get there, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said Monday. “The key now is for the Fed to keep its foot on the monetary policy gas” to help the economy overcome the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Kashkari said. He also said it is critical that fiscal aid be in the mix as well, adding the central bank will use all available tools to help achieve its job and inflation targets...
U.S. Economy Is Expected to Reach Pre-Pandemic Peak by Mid-2021 – WSJ —The U.S. economy is expected to expand more rapidly in 2021 than officials projected in July, but it will take several years for output to reach its full potential and for the number of employed workers to return to its pre-pandemic peak, according to new economic projections released Monday. The Congressional Budget Office said it expects gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, to return to its pre-pandemic level by the middle of this year, thanks in part to a surge of relief spending Congress authorized in 2020, including aid for households and businesses. Gross domestic product is expected to grow 3.7% in the fourth quarter of 2021, compared with a year earlier, and to expand 2.4% in 2022. Growth is likely to average 2.6% a year through 2025, the CBO said. The agency said a roughly $900 billion relief bill enacted in December would add about 1.5% to the level of GDP this year and next. The latest projections will be closely watched by lawmakers weighing how much additional government support the U.S. economy might need as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic and its economic impact. Senate Republicans released new details of their roughly $618 billion coronavirus-relief proposal on Monday ahead of a meeting later in the day with President Biden. The GOP proposal is roughly one-third the size of Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan. The latest forecasts project a stronger economy this year than the CBO expected in July, “in large part because the downturn was not as severe as expected and because the first stage of the recovery took place sooner and was stronger than expected,” the agency said. But the CBO projects economic activity will remain below its potential—or maximum sustainable output—until 2025, suggesting the burst of activity expected this year could be followed by a long, slow recovery. The CBO also estimated the jobless rate will fall to 5.3% by the end of this year from 6.8% at the end of 2020. The number of people who are employed, however, won’t return to the level seen before the pandemic until 2024, the agency said. It also expects modestly higher inflation and higher interest rates over the coming years than anticipated in July.
CBO’s Outlook and the Output Gap - Menzie Chinn - CBO released its projections for GDP under current law, and potential GDP yesterday. Figure 1: GDP (black), CBO projection (red), and CBO estimate of potential GDP (gray), all in billions of Chained 2012$, SAAR. Source: BEA 2020Q4 advance, CBO, An overview of the Economic Outlook (Feb 1, 2021).To reiterate, the CBO projection is under current law, taking into account the December recovery package. This projection implies that the output gap in 2020Q4 was 3% and 2.3% in the current quarter. Does this mean we can sit on our hands? Consider:
- The projected output gap does not shrink to zero until the beginning of 2025.
- The projected output gap is 360 billion Ch.12$ in 2021 alone, and 670 billion through 2023 (that is $421 billion and $801 billion respectively in nominal terms).
- These calculations rely upon the CBO estimates of potential. An alternative measure of maximal output (per Delong and Summers, BPEA 1988, described here) implies a larger output gap of 553 billion Ch.12$, in 2021 alone.
Seven High Frequency Indicators for the Economy --These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment. The TSA is providing daily travel numbers. This data shows the seven day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019-2020 (Blue) and 2020-2021 (Red). The seven day average is down 64.4% from last year (35.6% of last year). (Dashed line) The second graph shows the 7 day average of the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US and several selected cities. This data is updated through January 30, 2021. Note that this data is for "only the restaurants that have chosen to reopen in a given market". Since some restaurants have not reopened, the actual year-over-year decline is worse than shown. Dining picked up during the holidays. Note that dining is generally lower in the northern states - Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York. Note that California dining is picking up now that the orders to close has been lifted. This data shows domestic box office for each week (red) and the maximum and minimum for the years 2016 through 2019. Blue is 2020 and Red is 2021. Movie ticket sales were at $9 million last week (compared to usually around $200 million per week at this time of year). This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. This data is through January 23rd. Hotel occupancy is currently down 30.6% year-over-year. This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows gasoline supplied compared to the same week of 2019. At one point, gasoline supplied was off almost 50% YoY. Red is for 2021. As of January 2nd, gasoline supplied was off about 18.1% (about 81.9% of the same week in 2019). This graph is from Apple mobility. From Apple: "This data is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions in select countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities." There is also some great data on mobility from the Dallas Fed Mobility and Engagement Index. This data is through January 30th for the United States and several selected cities. According to the Apple data directions requests, public transit in the 7 day average for the US is at 46% of the January 2020 level. It is at 35% in Chicago, and 54% in Houston - and mostly moving sideways. Here is some interesting data on New York subway usage. This graph is from Todd W Schneider. This is daily data since early 2020. This data is through Friday, January 29th. Schneider has graphs for each borough, and links to all the data sources.
Q1 GDP Forecasts -- Some forecasters have increased their 2021 forecasts significantly, and see possible further upside. However, there is ongoing concern about the pandemic, and the impact of the COVID variants. From Merrrill Lynch: 2021 is poised for a robust rebound in real activity, with growth likely to reach 6.0%. Strong fiscal support and a successful vaccine rollout will provide a spark particularly in 2Q and 3Q. [Q1 GDP of 4.0%] [Feb 5 estimate] From Goldman Sachs: We left our Q1 GDP tracking estimate unchanged at +5.0%. [Feb 5 estimate] From the NY Fed Nowcasting Report: The New York Fed Staff Nowcast stands at 6.8% for 2021:Q1. [Feb 5 estimate]And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNow: The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2021 is 4.6 percent on February 5, down from 6.0 percent on February 1 [Feb 5 estimate]
Schumer, McConnell reach deal on Senate organizing resolution - Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have reached a deal on the organizing resolution for running a 50-50 Senate. "I am happy to report ... that the leadership of both parties have finalized the organizing resolution for the Senate," Schumer announced from the Senate floor. "We will pass the resolution through the Senate today, which means that committees can promptly set up and get to work with Democrats holding the gavels," Schumer added. The deal is expected to largely mirror a 2001 agreement, the last time the Senate was evenly split, when bills and nominations were sent to the floor even when there were tie votes at the committee level. The new agreement comes after the Senate has been stuck in limbo since Jan. 20, the day Democrats took over the chamber's majority. Though Democrats have controlled the floor, Republicans still wielded power in Senate committees because the chamber hadn't passed a new organizing resolution for the 117th Congress. That resulted in some awkward dynamics over the past two weeks, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, publicly asking Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was still chairman because the Senate was functioning under last year's organizing resolution, to hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, President Biden's attorney general nominee. Graham denied that request, blaming the upcoming impeachment trial of former President Trump. "They could set the hearing and, unfortunately, I'm not officially the chairman of the committee. You know, we are in the majority because of the vote with the vice president, so I had to contact the chairman from the previous Congress, Sen. Graham, who's to be succeeded by Sen. [Chuck] Grassley, another Republican. It's a very complicated situation," Durbin told reporters. Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) said at a Tuesday hearing for Tom Vilsack, Biden's pick to be Agriculture secretary, that "the committee has no official chairman at the moment." "This hearing is a little bit different," Boozman said. Senators had speculated since late last week that Schumer and McConnell were close to an agreement, but a final deal remained elusive among last-minute hang ups. "Look, it was set back when Leader McConnell made an extraneous demand trying to tell our caucus how to run things when we're in the majority. But we're making progress and we're getting close," Schumer told reporters Tuesday when asked about the organizing resolution. The power-sharing deal was up in the air for days after McConnell demanded that the resolution include protections against nixing the 60-vote legislative filibuster, as progressive activists and a growing number of senators support going "nuclear." McConnell's effort frustrated Democrats, who viewed it as an attempt to box them in and believed that the GOP leader wouldn't have agreed to the same restriction if he was still in the majority. McConnell ultimately dropped his insistence on a formal agreement after two Democratic senators — Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — both reiterated that they oppose nixing the legislative filibuster.
Biden Meets Republicans to Discuss Their Covid-19 Stimulus Plan – WSJ —A group of Senate Republicans outlined their roughly $618 billion coronavirus-relief offer Monday, including a round of $1,000 direct checks for many adults, as Democrats began a process that would allow them to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan along party lines. The 10 Republican senators met with Mr. Biden Monday evening to discuss their proposal, which would provide $300 a week in enhanced federal unemployment benefits through June, versus the $400 a week through September in the Biden plan. The GOP proposal also outlines $20 billion each for child care and schools—both lower than the Biden proposal—as well as $50 billion for small-business relief and $160 billion for vaccines, testing and protective equipment, according to a summary released Monday morning. The proposal omits measures favored by many Democrats, such as aid for state and local governments and a plan to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.The meeting lasted roughly two hours, and Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) said the two sides explained their proposals further and agreed to keep talking. Nine senators joined in person, with Sen. Mike Rounds (R., S.D.) attending remotely. “It was a very good exchange of views. I wouldn’t say that we came together on a package tonight. No one expected that in a two-hour meeting,” Ms. Collins said outside the White House. After the meeting White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Mr. Biden and the Republicans had a productive discussion but emphasized that the president wants to move quickly with a large aid plan. “While there were areas of agreement, the president also reiterated his view that Congress must respond boldly and urgently and noted many areas which the Republican senators’ proposal does not address,” Ms. Psaki said.
Pelosi, Schumer set to ram COVID plan through GOP with Biden support — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday filed a resolution clearing the path for Democrats in Congress to ram through President Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan without any Republican support. Pelosi and Schumer announced their plan an hour before Biden was due to meet a group of 10 Republican lawmakers at the White House after they introduced a scaled back $600 billion relief deal.“Congress has a responsibility to quickly deliver immediate comprehensive relief to the American people hurting from COVID-19,” Pelosi (D-Calif) and Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement. “The cost of inaction is high and growing, and the time for decisive action is now.”The new resolution contains a provision for a process known as “budget reconciliation,” which allows for the passage of some spending bills by a majority of 51 votes in the Senate. With Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote in the 50-50 chamber, Democrats could override Republicans’ concerns about the enormous package.Earlier Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki repeatedly dismissed concerns that Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue plan is a Democratic wish list at a briefing where she also suggested the bill could be rammed through Congress without Republican support.Speaking at her daily briefing, Psaki was pressed by reporters on the fact that no GOP lawmakers had come out in favor of the huge bailout that the Biden administration insists is bipartisan. “The president has been clear since long before he came into office that he’s open to engaging with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress about their ideas and this is an example of doing exactly that,” Psaki said ahead of a White House meeting between Biden and GOP lawmakers.
Manchin says he doesn't support raising minimum wage to $15 per hour - Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Tuesday that he does not support increasing the minimum age to $15 an hour — a critical roadblock to including the proposal in the final coronavirus relief bill. “No I’m not. I’m supportive of basically having something that’s responsible and reasonable," Manchin told The Hill, asked if he is supportive of a $15 per hour minimum wage. Manchin added that for West Virginia, his home state, that would be $11 per hour, and adjusted to inflation. Manchin's opposition underscores the headaches awaiting Democrats as they try to craft a final coronavirus relief bill. Democrats are poised to pass a budget resolution this week that allows them to pass a subsequent coronavirus bill with only a majority, bypassing the 60-vote legislative filibuster. The budget resolution will greenlight a coronavirus bill of up to $1.9 trillion, the same amount backed by President Biden. Democrats are expected to craft legislation that largely mirrors Biden's proposal, which includes a $1,400 stimulus check, more state and local aid, unemployment assistance and an increase in the minimum wage to $15. Increasing the minimum wage has been a top priority and a memo from the staff director for incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) touted that the budget resolution would allow for a coronavirus bill that raises the federal minimum wage "from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to a living wage." Democrats have been split over whether the minimum wage provision will survive arcane Senate rules that determine what can, and cannot, be passed under reconciliation. But if it does, Manchin's opposition to a $15 per hour minimum wage underscores that specifics of the bill are likely to change during weeks-long negotiations.
Manchin rips Harris for pressuring senators to back COVID bill - Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin slammed Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of her meeting with a group of Senate Republicans on Monday on passing bipartisan COVID-19 relief. Manchin (D-W.Va.) denounced Harris for appearing on local TV stations in West Virginia and Arizona last week in what was effectively a targeted pressure campaign on senators from those states to support the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion relief package. Speaking to local station WSAZ on Friday, the same outlet where Harris urged West Virginia’s lawmakers to back their coronavirus legislation, Manchin argued that the vice president’s interview went against President Biden’s message of unity. “I saw [the interview], I couldn’t believe it. No one called me. We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, I think we need to,” the self-proclaimed conservative Democrat said. “We need to work together. That’s not a way of working together,” he continued.
Senate Democrats take first step toward big COVID-19 bill - Senate Democrats took a first step on Tuesday toward passing a coronavirus relief bill — with or without GOP support. The Senate voted 50-49 to proceed to a budget resolution that greenlights passing a separate coronavirus relief bill through reconciliation, avoiding a 60-vote legislative filibuster. The House is expected to pass its budget resolution Wednesday. The Senate will now need to go through tens of hours of debate and a marathon session known as a vote-a-rama, before they can hold a final vote on the budget resolution. Democratic leaders voiced confidence that they would have the support from within the caucus to get started. Because Democrats have a slim majority, they need the support from all 50 members of the caucus to advance and ultimately pass the budget resolution in the face of what is shaping up to be unanimous opposition from Senate Republicans. "The Senate must move forward today with a vote to begin debate on the budget resolution, and I'm optimistic that the motion to proceed will pass," Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said earlier Tuesday. Asked if Democrats had the 50 votes on the budget resolution, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Schumer's No. 2, added: "We haven't whipped it. But we've spoken to members and have a positive feeling. That's why we're going forward." The biggest question heading into Tuesday was if Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) would vote to support the budget resolution. He said in a statement that he would, but warned that he wants a targeted relief bill. "Let me be clear — and these are words I shared with President Biden — our focus must be targeted on the COVID-19 crisis and Americans who have been most impacted by this pandemic. The President remains hopeful that we can have bipartisan support moving forward. I will only support proposals that will get us through and end the pain of this pandemic," Manchin said. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with Senate Democrats, said they were continuing bipartisan negotiations but that they wanted to be prepared for the possibility that they wouldn't be able to get the support of 10 GOP senators — the number needed to overcome a filibuster. "As these negotiations continue and with time of the essence, I feel it’s important to prepare for all outcomes, including the possibility that there are not 10 Republican votes for legislation that sufficiently addresses the needs of the American people. The vote we took today does not preclude a bipartisan solution; if anything, I am hopeful that it could speed up negotiations and expedite an agreement," King said. President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke with Senate Democrats during their caucus lunch on Tuesday urging them to go big. “President Biden spoke about the need for Congress to respond boldly and quickly. He was very strong in emphasizing the need for a big, bold package. He said that he told Senate Republicans that the $600 billion that they proposed was way too small,” Schumer told reporters after the call. The call came after Biden met with a group of 10 Republican senators at the White House on Monday night, with both sides agreeing to keep talking. GOP senators are hoping they can talk Biden into supporting a smaller, bipartisan coronavirus package. But they also acknowledged that the president could go ahead if he has the votes of 50 Democrats.
Biden to discuss relief bill with House, Senate Democrats - President Biden on Wednesday will talk with congressional Democrats to discuss his economic relief proposal as the party weighs how to push forward with the White House's $1.9 trillion package. Biden will call into the weekly House Democratic Caucus meeting at 9:45 a.m. The president will then host some Democratic senators in the Oval Office for a meeting at 11:30 a.m. The White House said the meeting would include Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and a number of committee leaders. Vice President Harris will join the meeting with Democratic senators, according to guidance sent out by the White House. Biden's outreach to Democrats comes two days after he met with 10 Republican senators in the Oval Office to discuss their $600 billion economic relief proposal. Biden has repeatedly expressed a desire to have bipartisan support, but he and other White House officials have signaled they are prepared to move on their original proposal with or without Republican votes. Senate Democrats took a first step on Tuesday toward passing a relief bill, even if no GOP senators support it. The Senate voted 50-49 to proceed to a budget resolution that greenlights passing a separate coronavirus relief bill through reconciliation. The reconciliation process would require a simple majority to pass a bill, avoiding a 60-vote legislative filibuster. The House is expected to pass its budget resolution Wednesday. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who is seen as a key swing vote in whether the relief package can get to 50 votes, said Tuesday that he would vote to support the budget resolution, but warned that he wants a targeted relief bill.
Democrats push ahead on COVID-19 relief, Biden flexible on who gets checks (Reuters) - The Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress pushed ahead on Wednesday with a maneuver to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package without Republican support, as the White House said it was flexible on a key element of the plan. Biden told Democrats he would consider tighter limits on who would qualify for $1,400 checks, although he said he would not compromise on the size of the payments. That could possibly narrow the gap between his package and the $600 billion Republican proposal. Biden has promised to work with Republicans when possible, but he is also pressing Congress to move quickly before existing benefits expire in March. The House of Representatives approved a budget plan on Wednesday that would allow it to pass the coronavirus package without a single Republican vote if necessary. The Senate has yet to vote on the plan. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the budget plan did not make cooperation impossible but that Democrats needed to be able to act on their own if need be. “We must use every option at our disposal,” she said on the House floor.Representative Jason Smith, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said Democrats were using the maneuver to impose a “radical” agenda. “Their plans are to try and use this pandemic to seize more government control of your life,” he said on the House floor. The budget plan would allow Democrats to pass coronavirus aid with a simple 51-vote majority in the Senate, rather than the 60 votes needed to advance most legislation in the 100-seat chamber. The Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties, giving Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote. Republicans used the same budget maneuver to pass a $1.9 trillion tax cut in 2017.
Biden commits to $1,400 checks, but open to eligibility limits President Biden said during a call with House Democrats on Wednesday that he is committed to boosting stimulus checks to $2,000 by giving most Americans another $1,400 in direct payments in a new round of coronavirus relief. However, Biden did crack the door open to tightening income restrictions on which Americans are eligible to receive the checks. Under the relief package passed by Congress late last year, individuals making less than $75,000 and couples making less than $150,000 received the full $600 payment. “We can’t walk away from an additional $1,400 in direct checks that we proposed because the people need them,” Biden told Democrats, according to a source on the call. “We can better target them,” he said, “but I’m not going to start my administration by breaking a promise to the American people.” He took no questions during the five-minute call, but urged House Democrats to “go big, not small” on a new COVID-19 relief package — the first major legislative push of his presidency. Biden also called on Democrats to stick together as they sell his nearly $2 trillion stimulus plan to the American people, and he made clear that shifting toward the $618 billion plan offered by 10 GOP senators was “not in the cards.” "I'll have your back. I ask that you have mine,” Biden said. The president was expected to huddle with Senate Democrats at the White House later Wednesday to build support for his $1.9 trillion health and economic relief package, dubbed the American Rescue Plan. It addition to the bigger stimulus checks, Biden’s proposal includes $400 billion for more vaccines, testing and other measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic and to help reopen schools; $350 billion for cities, states and tribal governments; billions more for small businesses, rental assistance and increasing unemployment insurance; and raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. House and Senate Democrats are expected to pass a budget resolution this week that would give them the ability later this month to pass a massive COVID-19 package through the Senate with just a simple majority. That will be crucial given the Senate’s 50-50 split. While Biden’s stimulus plan is expected to cruise through the House, it is already facing some hurdles in the Senate, where Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is opposing the minimum wage hike.
U.S. Senate Democrats prepare to push through Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 package (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. Senate were poised on Thursday to take a first step toward President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief proposal, in a marathon “vote-a-rama” session aimed at overriding Republican opposition to the package. Senate Democrats need to pass a budget resolution to unlock a legislative tool called reconciliation, which would allow them to approve Biden’s proposal in the narrowly divided chamber with a simple majority. The House of Representatives approved the budget measure on Wednesday. Most legislation must get at least 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate to pass. But the chamber is divided 50-50 and Republicans oppose the Democratic president’s proposal. Reconciliation would allow the Senate’s 48 Democrats and two independents to approve the relief package with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris. Senate Democrats and the Biden administration have left the door open to Republican participation but have said they want comprehensive legislation to move quickly to address a pandemic that has killed over 450,000 Americans and left millions more jobless. “Seeing long lines of people waiting to get food around the country is something we should never see in the United States,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” program. “This is really an urgent need. And we need to act big. We need to make sure that we provide a bridge so that people aren’t scarred indefinitely by this crisis,” she said. But the Democrats’ march to add more assistance to last year’s $4 trillion in coronavirus relief could be complicated by the impeachment trial of Republican former President Donald Trump, which is set to begin next week and could distract from the legislation. Once adopted, the budget resolution would provide spending instructions to House and Senate committees charged with crafting COVID-19 relief legislation. The reconciliation measure is not a piece of legislation and does not require the president’s signature to take effect. If the Senate passes it without amendments, it will take effect immediately. If any amendments pass, the package would return to the House, which would need to vote on it again. In show of bipartisanship, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, this week pledged that consideration of the budget resolution would be open to amendments from both parties in a process known informally as a “vote-a-rama,” which could run to late Thursday night or early Friday. “We invite participation from both sides of the aisle,” Schumer on Thursday. “But I urge members not to lose sight of what this legislation will mean for the American people.” Republicans expect to offer up to 20 amendments on issues ranging from energy and federal land use to executive orders.
Senate approves budget for $1.9 trillion COVID relief package – CNET - After an overnight session, the Senate approved on Friday morning a budget resolution for President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package by a vote of 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. The budget resolution, which does not have the force of law, paves the way for Democrats to move forward on a subsequent COVID-19 relief bill that can bypass a filibuster in the Senate. It also potentially affects the timeline to send the third wave of stimulus checks out faster. Among the amendments that senators agreed to during a marathon legislative session were measures to block tax increases on small businesses and to create a fund that provides grants for restaurants impacted by the pandemic, according to The New York Times. There was also bipartisan support to restrict $1,400 direct payments in Biden's stimulus package from going to Americans with high incomes, though the amendment didn't specify what income level would be considered too high for a $1,400 stimulus check. Senators also agreed to a Republican proposal to prohibit minimum wage increases during the pandemic, according to the Times. This could signal trouble for part of Biden's stimulus package, which calls for raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. The budget resolution now heads back to the House, where lawmakers must pass the same version before they begin writing the final relief bill. That vote is reportedly expected to come as soon as Friday. Once the House approves the funding proposed by the Senate, Congress will use the approved budget as a blueprint to build Biden's bill, which is expected to come up for a vote in March, if not earlier.
15-hour ‘vote-a-rama’ got Senate Democrats closer to a relief bill. Yet much of the night was anything but. - - After a 15-hour stretch that kept lawmakers on the Senate floor until the wee hours of Friday morning, Democrats moved one step closer to passing President Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan. Yet most of the night — a marathon process known a “vote-a-rama” — had little to do with negotiating the makeup of the actual coronavirus relief package. By Thursday, Republicans had filed almost 900 budget amendments on everything from “developing technology to counter unmanned aircraft” to streamlining “permits for production of rare earth elements.” And among the roughly 45 amendments that were considered, the handful that passed also at times strayed from the pandemic response. Even amendments that were adopted would not have the force of law. But they could still resurface in future political ads. One amendment, for instance, aimed to ensure that the U.S. Embassy in Israel remains in Jerusalem. Another would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from banning fracking. The lengthy vote that dragged lawmakers, congressional aides and journalists into an all-night C-SPAN watch party was unusual in and of itself. Vote-a-ramas don’t happen every year. The late-night Senate tradition also brought Vice President Harris to the Senate floor to cast her first tiebreaking vote before most of Washington was even awake. The chaotic process ended with the Senate passing a budget resolution and moved the “budget reconciliation” process forward. Senate Democrats opened the process so they could pass Biden’s stimulus package in coming weeks with a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 votes typically required. As most Americans on the East Coast were probably getting ready for bed on Thursday, senators spent 25 minutes debating and voting on an amendment to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from banning fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting oil and gas that has increased U.S. fossil fuel production while contributing to drinking-water contamination, methane leaks and more-frequent earthquakes. Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who proposed the amendment, argued that fracking had helped the United States achieve energy independence and boosted the economy. Braun acknowledged in his remarks that Biden has promised not to ban fracking. Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) spoke against the bill, pointing out that Biden does not support a blanket ban on fracking and arguing that Braun’s amendment would prevent the federal government from regulating fracking emissions. The amendment passed by a vote of 57 to 43, but in the end was stripped out of the resolution by Democrats. One of the first amendments offered, by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), sought to block funding for schools that do not reopen for in-person learning once teachers have been vaccinated. It failed on a party-line vote. An amendment by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) aimed at ensuring that state and local jurisdictions cooperate with federal law enforcement authorities also failed along party lines. Democrats blocked an amendment by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) aimed at opposing packing the Supreme Court, and one from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that sought to block stimulus checks from going to prison inmates.
January jobs report shows ongoing economic disaster as US Senate strips minimum wage increase from the relief bill - The US Senate voted Friday morning to approve a budget bill, a key step toward enactment of the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. In securing passage of the budget bill the Democrats made several key concessions to Republicans, barring a rise in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour during the pandemic, putting a graduated income cap on the $1,400 stimulus payment to individuals and barring payments to undocumented immigrants. The action on the relief package came as new government economic figures show there was a net increase of just 49,000 jobs in January following a revised figure showing a loss of 227,000 jobs in December. November employment figures were also revised downward. For the week ending January 30 there were 779,000 new claims for unemployment benefits, a decline from the previous week, but still an unprecedented level. After the Senate vote the Democratic-controlled House passed a key procedural vote clearing the way for the lower chamber in Congress to pass the pandemic relief bill by the end of the month. The employment figures show the continued heavy economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on workers and their families. With the daily COVID-19 death toll running at over 3,000 and wide areas of the economy nonfunctional, millions are suffering destitution, hunger, the cutoff of medical benefits and the danger of eviction. The Democrats are using a parliamentary tactic, budget reconciliation, to advance the pandemic relief bill to avoid the threat of a Republican filibuster. However, despite having a working majority in both houses of Congress, the Democrats capitulated on the proposal for a phased-in increase of the minimum wage, set currently at the sub-starvation rate of $7.25 an hour, to $15 by 2025. This after one Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, threatened to vote “no.” The miserable $7.25 rate was set in the first year of the Obama administration and has not budged since then despite periodic cynical posturing by Democrats. Following the Senate vote Biden said it is likely the minimum wage increase would be dropped from the final relief bill after it emerges from the House-Senate reconciliation process. He claimed it would be put forward later as a separate measure, but passage even in a scaled-back form is extremely unlikely given the ability of Senate Republicans to block legislation using the filibuster. The refusal of the Democrats—in full control of Congress and the White House—to draw a line in the sand over the minimum wage increase, a measure that would potentially benefit 32 million workers, shows the insincere character of Biden’s claims, reiterated at a news briefing on the pandemic relief measure Friday, that he was prioritizing the needs of workers over the wealthy. A full time worker earning the current minimum wage takes home about $15,080 annually. That is well below the absurdly low official poverty level of $17,240 annually for a family of two and $21,720 for a family of three. Significantly, Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, now chairman of the Senate budget committee, supported the amendment by Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa saying that no minimum wage increase should take place during the pandemic. The callousness of this move is hard to overstate. Many of those workers who would be immediately benefited by a minimum wage increase are in food distribution and logistics and other essential, frontline services, where workers risk their lives daily for starvation rates of pay. In addition, eight Democrats also joined the entire Republican Senate delegation to impose a ban on the distribution of pandemic relief checks to undocumented workers.
Democrats clear path for approval of Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID package (Reuters) - President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress forged ahead with their $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package on Friday as lawmakers approved a budget outline that will allow them to muscle Biden’s plan through in the coming weeks without Republican support. By a party line vote of 219-209, the House of Representatives passed the budget plan, after the Senate approved it in a pre-dawn vote. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the first time. Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted the final COVID-19 relief legislation could pass Congress before March 15, when special unemployment benefits that were added during the pandemic expire. Meeting at the White House, Biden and top Democrats said they wanted to enact the massive aid package as quickly as possible to beat back a pandemic that has killed more than 450,000 Americans and left millions of jobless. Biden said he was open to compromise with Republicans as long as they did not slow things down. “If I have to choose between getting help right now to Americans who are hurting so badly and getting bogged down in a lengthy negotiation ... that’s an easy choice. I’m going to help the American people hurting now,” he said. Continued weakness in the job market, underscored by data released on Friday, proved the need for aggressive action, Biden said. Republicans have floated a $600 billion aid package, less than a third the size of the Democratic plan. Even some Democrats, like Larry Summers, an economic adviser to former President Barack Obama, have warned that Biden might be spending too much. Republican Representative Michael Burgess said Congress should wait until all of the previous $4 trillion in pandemic relief has been spent. He said $1 trillion has yet to go out the door. “Why is it suddenly so urgent that we pass another $2 trillion bill?” Burgess demanded. The budget resolution enables Democrats to pass Biden’s plan by a simple majority in the 100-member Senate instead of the 60 votes required for most legislation. That means Democrats, who control 50 seats in the 100-seat chamber, might not need Republican votes. Democrats have a 10-seat majority in the House. In its overnight session, the Senate voted to oppose an immediate increase of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour. Senators also backed a motion calling for direct payments of up to $1,400 to be tailored to low-income earners. The White House says it is open to that idea. The House vote Friday incorporated the Senate’s changes. The approved amendments do not carry the force of law in a budget blueprint, but can serve as guidelines for developing the actual coronavirus aid bill in coming weeks.
House aims to pass $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill within two weeks as budget reconciliation moves forward, Pelosi says The House aims to pass a coronavirus relief bill within two weeks, as Democrats push ahead with the process that enables them to approve a rescue package with no Republican votes, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday. The Senate passed a budget resolution early Friday after a marathon of votes on dozens of amendments. The House followed in the afternoon in a nearly party line vote, starting the reconciliation process that would allow President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion rescue package to get through the Democratic-held Senate with a simple majority. "On Monday we will begin working on the specifics of the bill," Pelosi told reporters after meeting with Biden and Democratic House committee chairs at the White House. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said it will have the votes to pass despite some concerns within the party about its cost. Democrats passed the budget resolution 51-50 in the evenly split Senate, as Vice President Kamala Harris had to cast her first tiebreaking vote. The party line vote after about 15 hours of considering politically thorny amendments underscores the divide in Congress on how to structure the next aid package. "I am so thankful that our caucus stayed together in unity," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said after the vote. "We had no choice given the problems facing America and the desire to move forward. And we have moved forward." He contended "this was a bipartisan activity" because the chamber adopted several amendments written by senators from both parties. While President Joe Biden has said he hopes to win Republican support for the aid plan, Democrats have started to set up the framework to pass the proposal as soon as possible without GOP support. Without using reconciliation, Democrats would have to win 10 Republicans over in a Senate split 50-50. Speaking after new data showed the U.S. gained only 49,000 jobs in January, Biden said he wants to work with Republicans, but the party is "just not willing to go as far as I think we have to go." He said he faces an "easy choice" between passing a bill now with only Democrats or getting "bogged down in a lengthy negotiation."
The macroeconomic implications of Biden’s $1.9 trillion fiscal package - brookings.edu -The Biden Administration recently proposed an additional $1.9 trillion in federal spending to address the ongoing pandemic. We estimate that the package would boost economic activity, as measured by the level of real gross domestic product (GDP), by about 4 percent at the end of 2021 and 2 percent at the end of 2022, relative to a projection that assumes no additional fiscal support. We project that if the Biden package were enacted, GDP would reach the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) pre-pandemic GDP projection after the third quarter of 2021, exceeding it by 1 percent in the fourth quarter. In the middle of 2022, GDP would show a temporary and shallow decline and then grow at an annual rate of about 1.5 percent, coming close to the path projected just before the pandemic (see figure 1). Without additional fiscal support, we project that real GDP would remain below the pre-pandemic level for the next several years. In the near term, without additional federal resources to contain the resurgence of the pandemic and distribute vaccines, the economy will face substantial headwinds. More broadly, millions of households will suffer as a result of waning fiscal support for the unemployed and households and businesses suffering financially. Indeed, Biden’s fiscal package should be judged primarily based on the extent to which it invests in COVID-19 containment and vaccination and provides needed relief to help households and businesses weather the pandemic. Nonetheless, an analysis of how the fiscal package would affect the overall economy is instructive, although subject to a great deal of uncertainty. In all, with the $1.9 trillion package, we project that cumulative real GDP between 2020 and 2023 would end up close to its pre-pandemic projection; over the next two years households and businesses would make up some of the economic activity foregone during the pandemic. By late 2021, we would likely see the economy operating above its maximum sustainable level. That positive output gap would likely put upward pressure on inflation, which the Federal Reserve has said would be welcome. A risk worth noting is that the return of GDP back to its maximum sustainable level may create a difficult economic period after 2021. While our estimates show a “soft landing,” with a temporary and shallow decline in GDP after the fourth quarter of 2021, the slowdown could be more abrupt and painful than our projections suggest.
House Puts $1.9 Trillion Stimulus on Fast Track, With No G.O.P. Votes - The House gave final approval on Friday to a budget blueprint that included President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, advancing it over unanimous Republican opposition as Democrats pressed forward with plans to begin drafting the aid package next week and speed it through the House by the end of the month. “Our work to crush the coronavirus and deliver relief to the American people is urgent and of the highest priority,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democrats shortly before the bill passed by a 219-to-209 margin. President Biden, speaking just before the House acted, cited a weak jobs report in justifying the use of a procedural device, called reconciliation, to ram through the measure if Senate Republicans oppose his effort to speed aid to families, businesses, health care providers and local governments. “It is very clear our economy is still in trouble,” Mr. Biden said during remarks at the White House — amping up the pressure on an upper chamber bracing for former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial next week. “I know some in Congress think we’ve already done enough to deal with the crisis in the country,” added Mr. Biden, who reiterated his commitment to fund $1,400 direct checks to low- and middle-income Americans. “That’s not what I see. I see enormous pain in this country. A lot of folks out of work. A lot of folks going hungry.” Mr. Biden’s comments came as the Labor Department’s reported on Friday that the economy added only 49,000 jobs in January, and just 6,000 in the private sector. The labor market remains 10 million jobs below its pre-pandemic levels. Hours earlier, as the sun rose over the Capitol dome, the Senate approved a fast-track budget measure, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting her first-ever tiebreaking vote after a grinding all-night session. The move, in theory, allows them to enact the package without any Republican votes. Senate leaders could begin working on their own bill in hopes of delivering a final package to Mr. Biden’s desk before supplemental unemployment benefits are set to expire in mid-March. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, cited poll numbers showing bipartisan support among American voters for the plan, brushing aside criticism the White House was sacrificing bipartisan solidarity for partisan celerity. “He didn’t run on a promise to unite the Democratic and Republican Party into one party in Washington,” she said in her Friday briefing at the White House. Still, Mr. Biden offered one olive twig on Friday, saying his plans could change to win over moderates in both parties, acknowledging that he favored restricting the direct payments to people earning less than $300,000. “I’m not cutting the size of the checks,” he said on Friday. “They’re going to be $1,400, period.”
Even Biden’s $1.9 trillion isn’t nearly enough pandemic relief -President Joe Biden wants a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package; Senate Republicans only a third that much. Both proposals are too little for too short a time. Even more important, both propose too little for where help is needed most. The Republicans say America just can't afford more relief. Their skimpy plan would provide nothing for renters facing eviction, just the latest sign of how since Trump the Republicans have chosen to become the party of white skin privilege since it's Black and Latino renters most at risk of eviction. The GOP would do little for small business, offering only 10 cents on the Biden dollar; to reopen schools, 12 cents; for the jobless, 34 cents. Complaints that America can't afford the Biden relief package ring hollow. The Trump-Radical Republican tax cuts—passed in December 2017 without a single vote from a Democrat—used borrowed money to bestow $2.4 trillion in tax savings to large corporations and rich individuals. The 99% got crumbs. Biden's tax plan would raise $2.1 trillion over 10 years, taking back much of the savings from large companies and individuals making more than $400,000 per year. The COVID-19 relief package Trump signed into law last spring was heavily weighted to those who didn't need help. As the graphic below shows, such excess cash nearly doubled from when Trump assumed office and last May. Only a little of that money has been withdrawn, an indication that federal aid included a lot of welfare for the rich. Cash parked in institutional money market funds used by corporations almost doubled between Trump becoming president and soon after. During the pandemic, many millions of American households have reduced their debts and increased their savings because they had continued to be employed while their spending dropped. They don't need relief. Since your spending is my income, and vice versa, the people suffering because of the drop in spending do need help. Think of restaurant workers, barbers, gym trainers, and retail store clerks. In a nation whose political and economic power structure is largely white and in which large numbers of Americans have few to no minorities as neighbors, it's easy for those suffering the most to be invisible.
Key ex-Obama adviser says Biden stimulus is too big --Larry Summers, the top economic adviser to former President Obama, warned in an op-ed on Friday that President Biden’s proposed COVID-19 relief package is too big and could overheat the economy. Summers, the Treasury secretary under former President Clinton, wrote in The Washington Post that the proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus could ignite inflationary pressures “of a kind we have not seen in a generation.” He said the risk of inflation could have “consequences for the dollar and financial stability.” “Stimulus measures of the magnitude contemplated are steps into the unknown,” Summers wrote. Summers’s remarks are notable because Biden has received almost no pushback from Democrats in pursuit of his legislation. Some progressives have griped about Biden not going big enough, but Democrats are largely united behind the bill. Biden met with Republican senators this week pushing a scaled back $618 billion bill, but the administration and Senate Democrats have given every sign that they’re prepared to pass the $1.9 trillion stimulus without GOP support, if necessary. The Summers op-ed is likely to be seized upon by conservatives who argue Biden and Democrats are preparing to spend too much. A new jobs report on Friday, however, found the economy added 49,000 jobs in January, a low number likely to bolster calls for a large relief package. Senate Democrats approved a budget resolution early Friday that would allow them to pass the relief bill on a 50-50 party line vote, with Vice President Harris acting as the tiebreaker. Republicans would not be able to block the measure with a filibuster under those budgetary rules. In coming up with his analysis, Summers looked back at the Obama fiscal rescue package from 2009, which he said was far too small to address the magnitude of the Great Recession. Summers calculated that in 2009, the gap between actual and estimated potential output was $80 billion a month and that the Obama stimulus covered about half of the shortfall. At the moment, Summers estimates the gap to be at $50 billion a month and said the Biden stimulus would address three times that. Furthermore, Summers noted that in 2009, unemployment was skyrocketing and projections of future consumer spending looked bleak. In the current climate, unemployment is falling and economists believe consumers could be poised to start spending some of the $1.5 trillion in accumulated savings from the lockdown. “While the arguments for providing relief to those hurt by the economic fallout of the pandemic, investing in controlling the virus and supporting consumer demand are compelling, much of the policy discussion has not fully reckoned with the magnitude of what is being debated,” Summers wrote.M
Policy trolls: the Larry Summers edition -- Roger Gathmann - There's one thing about the meanstesting neolibs, who claim to be so compassionate towards the poors that they wanna means test any relief package so it doesn't benefit the nasty riches - that is, people who make btw 80- 100 thou. Many of these means testers come from Harvard, or Yale, or Stanford, or Chicago. Schools with amazingly high endowments, to which rich peeps give and get accordingly tax deductions. Many of them even teach there, or, in the case of Larry Summers, used to be the president there -of Harvard, in his case. Oddly, none of the means testers seem to notice that a small, poor college, Wabash College or something, and a multibillion dollar endowed university, Harvard, get - horrors! - the same tax exemption!Surely, these neolib centrists, who know all about that there economics, should be on the forefront of trying to get their alma maters taxed, and taking away tax exemption from those rich dudes with their "philanthropy". Means testing, if it means anything, means not only testing the positive recipients of government funding, but also the recipients of what Milton Friedman called negative taxation.But I've never yet read anything about this from the meanstestin' dudes. And I don't expect I will. It is one thing when you pretend to be all concerned that low income people receive the sole benefit from government funding, in order to block that funding at all - and quite another thing when you attack the mother ship for real. Larry Summers was booted from Harvard for being a sexist pig, but he woulda been booted much sooner if he made a big deal about shutting down Harvard's tax exempt status. What we can conclude about this is that these neolibs form a group that thinks of itself as wonky, but in reality, they are policy trolls. And their trolling has been a disaster.
Susan Sarandon slams Democrats for 'bait and switch' on $2,000 relief checks -- Actress Susan Sarandon blasted Democrats on Thursday, accusing them of pulling a "bait and switch" when it comes to the party's push for $2,000 coronavirus relief checks. The actress was responding to a video mashup shared on Twitter that shows President Biden, Vice President Harris and Democratic Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock all calling for speedy legislation granting the American people $2,000 checks at various campaign rallies. COVID-19 aid legislation passed late last year included $600 direct payments to taxpayers. Biden's current $1.9 trillion coronavirus proposal includes a round of $1,400 checks, meant to bring the total to $2,000. "Where are the $2K checks you promised @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris @ReverendWarnock @ossoff? At a time when only 39% of Americans could afford a $1,000 emergency & over 15 million have lost employer-sponsored health insurance, the diff between $1,400 & $2K is a matter of survival," Sarandon wrote. A budget resolution that would be the first step in passing the coronavirus relief bill while bypassing the 60-vote legislative filibuster cleared the Senate in a 50-50 party-line vote early Friday morning, with the tie broken by Harris. In addition to the $1,400 checks, Biden's plan calls for a $400 per week federal unemployment benefit, $350 billion for state and local governments, a minimum wage hike to $15 per hour and more money for child care and schools.
Pete Buttigieg becomes first openly gay cabinet secretary confirmed by U.S. Senate (Reuters) - Pete Buttigieg was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday on an 86-13 vote to head the U.S. Transportation Department, the first openly gay U.S. Cabinet secretary confirmed by lawmakers. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who challenged Joe Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, will oversee aviation, highways, vehicles, pipelines and transit, as well as efforts to ensure safe transportation in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. He will take a key role in a White House effort to dramatically ramp up infrastructure spending. Senator Maria Cantwell said Buttigieg understands the extent of significant unmet U.S. infrastructure needs, which she said the government has underfunded by at least $1.5 trillion over the last decade. “He dealt with infrastructure where the rubber meets the road, managing state, federal, and local resources, to help build infrastructure in his community,” Cantwell said. Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who heads the LGBTQ Victory Institute, said “Pete shattered a centuries-old political barrier with overwhelming bipartisan support and that paves the way for more LGBTQ Americans to pursue high-profile appointments.” Buttigieg will face questions about how to oversee the introduction of more drones, self-driving cars and other advanced technologies, as well as overseeing efforts to boost aviation safety after two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes. Biden, who entered the White House on Jan. 20, has proposed $20 billion in additional government assistance to help U.S. transit systems struggling with a massive drop in ridership amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Transit unions and a group representing transit systems on Monday asked for nearly $40 billion in government assistance, while other transportation interests have collectively sought more than $70 billion in additional government help. Congress has allocated $39 billion in emergency funding for transit systems, including $14 billion approved last month, and $65 billion in government loans and bailouts to U.S. passenger airlines. Lawmakers awarded $12 billion to airports and $2 billion to the Amtrak passenger train service. Buttigieg must decide whether to fund a planned $13 billion tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey in the heavily traveled Northeast rail corridor and whether to greenlight congestion pricing in Manhattan.
Senate confirms Mayorkas as secretary of homeland security over GOP objections - — The Senate on Tuesday approved the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas to become secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), confirming the former federal prosecutor and Obama-era immigration official to lead the department by a vote of 56 to 43. The final tally reflected opposition from some Republican senators to the new administration's immigration policies, as well as concerns about an internal 2015 DHS investigation into Mayorkas' actions as head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) under the Obama administration. Six Republican senators — Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Dan Sullivan, Shelley Moore Capito, Lisa Murkowski and Rob Portman — joined Democrats in voting to approve the nomination. Portman is the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has oversight authority over the department. As secretary of the sprawling department, Mayorkas will be tasked with tackling some of the nation's most pressing issues, including the coronavirus pandemic, domestic terrorism, cyberattacks and migration to the U.S. southern border. DHS is responsible for a diverse range of federal functions, ranging from immigration and border policy to transportation security and natural disaster management. A Cuban immigrant who arrived in the U.S. 1960s as a political refugee with his family, Mayorkas is the first immigrant and first Latino to lead the 240,000-person department, which was created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. He served as the head of USCIS from 2009 to 2013 before becoming the second-highest ranking official at the department as deputy secretary until 2016. Mayorkas' nomination stalled last week, after Republican senators contended he had not been adequately vetted on immigration policy and raised questions about a 2015 report by the DHS inspector general. The report found Mayorkas had pushed for the approval of applications in a visa program for wealthy immigrant investors on the behalf of well-connected Democrats when he served as USCIS director.
McConnell seeks to inflict political pain on budget votes --Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday announced that Republicans will force Democrats to take tough votes on issues ranging from stimulus checks for illegal immigrants to higher taxes on small businesses when the Senate moves a budget resolution this week. “We’ll be getting senators on the record about whether taxpayers should fund checks for illegal immigrants … whether Democrats should raise taxes on small businesses in the midst of this historic crisis … and whether generous federal funding should pour into school districts where the unions refuse to let schools open,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “This is just a small taste,” he added. Senate Republicans will have an opportunity to offer an unlimited number of nonbinding amendments to the resolution Democrats plan to vote on later this week — as long as the amendments are relevant to the budget. Leaders in both parties have often skipped the arduous process of passing budget resolutions in recent years because they want to avoid exposing their members to tough votes during these so-called vote-a-rama sessions. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), however, need to pass a budget resolution this year to trigger budget reconciliation protection for President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, which would allow it to pass the Senate with a simple majority vote. McConnell said Wednesday that he will use this week’s budget debate to attack Democratic priorities in Biden’s relief plan. “The American people will see Republicans are focused on smart and responsible policies to reopen the country,” he said. “And they’ll see Democrats who seem desperate to make their first act in power the same kind of massive, partisan, poorly-targeted borrowing spree that permanently wounded the last Democratic presidency right out of the gate.” The Senate is currently in the midst of 50 hours of floor debate on the budget resolution. Once that’s done, the vote-a-rama is expected to begin Thursday. In 2008, the Senate voted on 44 amendments during a budget vote-a-rama.
Garland could be stuck in Senate limbo for several more weeks - Merrick Garland, President Biden’s choice to head the Justice Department, could be in Senate limbo for several more weeks as Republicans say they will not agree to process Biden’s nominees during this week’s budget debate or next week’s impeachment trial. It’s an eerie sense of déjà vu for Garland, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was bottled up in the Senate for nearly a year in 2016, when Republicans refused to give him a hearing because they argued the winner of that year’s presidential election should fill the vacancy left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Newly minted Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says he will ask for consent from Republicans to hold a hearing for Garland on Feb. 8, but he’s not expected to get it, as he would need consent from Republican members of the Judiciary Committee to waive committee rules requiring hearings be noticed a week in advance. “I’m going to see if Sen. Grassley and I can reach an agreement,” Durbin said, referring to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is taking over as the ranking minority member of the Judiciary panel. Republicans are blaming Democrats for Garland’s holdup, arguing that their decision to move ahead with a partisan budget resolution — which would allow the Senate to pass a COVID-19 relief bill with a simple-majority vote later this year — and hold a second impeachment trial for former President Trump will force them to object to other business. “The Democrats have chosen the agenda and they’ve chosen to do the budget resolution, so if there’s delay in nomination it’s because it’s their choice,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Cornyn said it would take unanimous consent to process Biden nominees during the budget debate and added “it can’t be during the impeachment.” “That’s what I don’t understand, frankly, about some of the decisions they make, because while they’re saying they need to get the administration up and running and get some people confirmed, they are the single biggest impediment to that happening." The Senate is scheduled to take a recess during the week of Feb. 15, which means that Garland may not win confirmation until the last week of February. Durbin said that could pose a threat to national security. “It’s the last major element of our national security team. I think it should be a high priority,” he said. Senate Veterans Affairs’ Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said Tuesday that Republicans have shut down the processing of Biden’s nominees over the next two weeks before the recess. That means that Denis McDonough, Biden’s choice to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, could also be in limbo. His nomination unanimously out of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. “I talked to Chuck about it ... McConnell said we’re not going to do any noms during budget resolution or impeachment,” Tester said, referring to the message Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) relayed to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). “Other than just because he can do that, I don’t know why he would do that,” Tester said of McConnell blocking Biden’s nominees from the floor over the next two weeks.
GOP warns Biden nominees on hold until after impeachment - Top Senate Republicans said Wednesday that there are unlikely to be additional votes on Biden Cabinet picks until after the impeachment trial. Republicans are pointing to the schedule as the reason for the holdup, arguing that Democrats chose to take up the budget resolution, which will eat up the Senate’s schedule until at least Friday. The Senate is then poised to start former President Trump’s second impeachment trial next week. Senators are hoping the trial moves fairly quickly but haven’t locked themselves into a timeline. “We're not intentionally trying to slow it down but the Democrats have chosen the agenda, and they've chosen to do the budget resolution, so if there's a delay in nominations, it's because of their choice,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Cornyn added that Democrats also won’t be able to confirm nominees during the impeachment trial. Though the trial won’t start until the afternoon, Republicans have warned that they won’t provide consent to allow for additional legislation or nominations to be taken up during the morning. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) pointed to Monday as a potential day when, with cooperation, an additional nominee could be confirmed. Tom Vilsack, Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Agriculture, was one pick Thune said there was wide bipartisan support for. But otherwise Thune said that while trial negotiations are ongoing, “I think most of our members feel like until impeachment is done other business probably shouldn't get done now.” “There might be a window like on Monday before impeachment kicks in on Tuesday, when we can do a couple that are teed up. But I think once the trial starts ... it's probably unlikely,” Thune said about additional confirmations during the trial. Thune also confirmed that absent GOP consent additional nominations will not be taken up on the Senate floor during the budget debate. Biden has so far gotten six nominees confirmed including votes this week on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Several others are getting committee hearings or committee votes this week including Vilsack, Labor Secretary nominee Marty Walsh, and Gina Raimondo, his pick to lead the Department of Commerce. Biden was only able to get one confirmation on his first day in office — a historically sluggish pace. He's currently tied with Trump, who had six nominees confirmed by Feb. 1. But if Republicans put confirmations in limbo until after the impeachment trial ends he'll fall behind. Trump had 11 nominees confirmed by Feb. 13, 2017, a marker for how many Biden gets confirmed by the end of next week. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters that he will try to set up a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, Biden's attorney general nominee, in the Judiciary Committee for Feb. 8, squeezing it in before the trial starts Tuesday. Once the Senate passes its organizing resolution, Durbin will officially chair the committee. He had previously tried to get Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to schedule a hearing for Monday, but Graham had rejected the request.
Biden threatens U.S. sanctions after Myanmar coup, launches policy review (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday threatened to reimpose sanctions on Myanmar following a coup by the country’s military leaders and called for a concerted international response to press them to relinquish power. to be very clear. Biden condemned the military’s takeover from the civilian-led government on Monday and its detention of elected leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as “a direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law.” The crisis in Myanmar, also known as Burma, marks a first major test of Biden’s pledge to collaborate more with allies on international challenges, especially on China’s rising influence. That stance contrasts with former President Donald Trump’s often go-it-alone ‘America First’ approach. It also represented a rare policy alignment between Biden’s fellow Democrats and top Republicans as they joined in denouncing the coup and calling for consequences. “The international community should come together in one voice to press the Burmese military to immediately relinquish the power they have seized, release the activists and officials they have detained,” Biden said in a statement. “The United States removed sanctions on Burma over the past decade based on progress toward democracy. The reversal of that progress will necessitate an immediate review of our sanction laws and authorities, followed by appropriate action,” he said.
Iran top diplomat urges Biden to return to nuclear deal (Reuters) - Iran’s foreign minister urged Washington to act fast to return to the nuclear accord, pointing out that legislation passed by parliament forces the government to harden its nuclear stance if U.S. sanctions are not eased by Feb. 21. Mohammad Javad Zarif also referred to elections in Iran in June. If a hardline president is elected, this could further jeopardize the deal. “Time is running out for the Americans, both because of the parliament bill and the election atmosphere that will follow the Iranian New Year,” Zarif said in an interview with Hamshahri newspaper published on Saturday. Iran’s new year begins on March 21. The parliament, dominated by hardliners, passed the legislation in December that set a two-month deadline for an easing of sanctions. President Joe Biden’s administration is exploring ways to restore the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran signed with major world powers but that was abandoned in 2018 by former President Donald Trump, who restored sanctions. Iran retaliated by breaching the terms of the accord in a step-by-step response. Last month, it resumed enriching uranium to 20% - a level it achieved before the accord.
Pentagon purges advisory boards packed by Trump - The Biden administration’s recently confirmed defense secretary, General Lloyd Austin (ret.), has ordered the resignations of hundreds of Pentagon-appointed members of the Defense Department’s 42 civilian advisory boards, including a slew of last-minute appointees named by the Trump administration. The forced resignations are to take effect no later than February 16. The Pentagon described the move as part of a “zero-based review” of all the existing civilian advisory boards and commissions, whose activities will be suspended and evaluated. These include high profile panels such as the Defense Policy Board, the Defense Business Board and the Defense Science Board, as well as boards formed on issues ranging from Arlington National Cemetery to military families and sexual assault in the military. Among the boards is one recently formed to advise the Pentagon on changing the names of military installations that currently commemorate Confederate generals. “Advisory boards have and will continue to provide an important role in shaping public policy within [the Department of Defense],” Austin wrote in a statement to the Pentagon leadership. “That said, our stewardship responsibilities require that we continually assess to ensure each advisory committee provides appropriate value today.” The Senate confirmed Austin as defense secretary on January 22. His was the second nomination in four years to require a waiver by both houses of Congress because of a statute barring recently retired military officers from the position. General James Mattis, Austin’s predecessor as chief of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Donald Trump’s first defense secretary, also needed the waiver. Austin has also been required to leave his lucrative berth on the board of directors of top Pentagon arms contractor Raytheon. There was no question that the overriding consideration behind the purge of the advisory panels was the packing of these boards with Trump loyalists precisely during the period the former president was plotting a coup to overturn the 2020 presidential election and installing his loyalists in the most senior positions within the Pentagon.
Biden considers revoking Trump access to intelligence briefings - The Biden administration is considering revoking former President Donald Trump’s access to intelligence briefings just weeks after he left the Oval Office.White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Monday confirmed that President Biden’s national security team was reviewing Trump’s access when asked by a reporter if they would “continue to extend the privilege” of classified information to Trump.“This is a good question,” Psaki said. “It’s something obviously that’s under review.”Past presidents are traditionally given intelligence briefings and access to classified information, but some Democratic critics of Trump have argued he should not be trusted with state secrets in the wake of the deadly US Capitol siege. At Monday’s briefing, the same reporter pointed Psaki to “concerns among some Democrats” that Trump would either “misuse” the information “or leverage it to enrich himself.”
US Has Extended New START Nuclear Treaty With Russia For 5 Years: Blinken - Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced early Wednesday the US has formally agreed to extend the New START treaty with Russia for another five years."Extending the New START Treaty ensures we have verifiable limits on Russian ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers until February 5, 2026," Blinken said in a statement according to Reuters. The landmark treaty, which marks the last major arms control agreement between the US and Russia, limits the number of strategic nuclear weapons maintained by the former Cold War rivals to no more than 1,550 each. Blinken said in his statement:Especially during times of tension, verifiable limits on Russia's intercontinental-range nuclear weapons are vitally important. Extending the New START Treaty makes the United States, US allies and partners, and the world safer. An unconstrained competition would endanger us all.The prior agreement was set to expire on Feb.5 and its fate was anything but certain, given that both the INF and Open Skies treaties faltered under the past US administration. It was no secret that the Russians were waiting out Trump, anticipating that the former president's declared desire to pull out New START would be a moot point should Biden take the White House.
Top US Admiral Warns Nuclear War With Russia, China is a “Real Possibility” — The head of US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) warned that a nuclear war with Russia or China is a “real possibility” and is calling for a change in US policy that reflects this threat. “There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state,” Vice Adm. Charles Richard wrote in the February edition of the US Naval Institute’s monthly magazine.Richard said the US military must “shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility,’ and act to meet and deter that reality.” The STRATCOM chief said Russia and China “have begun to aggressively challenge international norms and global peace using instruments of power and threats of force in ways not seen since the height of the Cold War.” Richard hyped up Russia and China’s nuclear modernization, calling for the US to compete with the two nations. When it comes to China’s nuclear weapons, the US and Russia have vastly larger arsenals. Current estimates put Beijing’s nuclear arsenal at about 320 warheads, while Washington and Moscow have about 6,000 warheads each.Even if Beijing doubles its arsenal over the next decade, as the China hawks are predicting, it will still be small compared to Washington’s. The US would have to eliminate a good amount of its arsenal to convince Beijing to participate in arms control agreements.Since STRATCOM is the command post that oversees Washington’s nuclear arsenal, its commanders are always overplaying the risk of nuclear war and asking for more money to modernize the stockpile. But with the US prioritizing so-called “great power competition” with China and Russia and an increased US military presence in places like the South China Sea, the Arctic, and the Black Sea, the threat of nuclear war is rising.
Former CBP Head: Biden Has Decimated Border Protections With "Stroke Of A Pen" - Former Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan slammed the Biden administration Tuesday for undoing significant border protections put into place by President Trump. Morgan first took aim at White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki for trashing Trump’s efforts to secure the border, and attributing the infamous Obama/Biden ‘kids in cages’ and family separation policy to Trump. After Psaki had spoken, calling Trump’s border policies “horrific”, Morgan stated that “There isn’t enough time to address all the spin and misinformation that the Press Secretary just sent out.” Morgan outlined that agencies within the Trump administration have been “working tirelessly” to reunite families separated at the border. Morgan explained that the “broken immigration system was exploited” by human smugglers and cartels who knew US authorities could not detain children. Morgan further reeled off a list of actions by the Biden administration that have put border officers in grave danger. “Just in a couple of weeks [Biden has] decimated our ability to secure this border, and keep our country safe,” Morgan warned, adding that Biden has “completely dismissed” the pleas of those working on the border.
Biden on immigration orders: 'I'm eliminating bad policy' - President Biden on Tuesday defended his early reliance on executive actions as he signed three more orders focused on immigration. “There’s a lot of talk, with good reason, about the number of executive orders I’ve signed. I’m not making new law. I’m eliminating bad policy,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office. “What I’m doing is taking on the issues that, 99 percent of them, that the last president of the United States issued executive orders I thought were counterproductive to our national security, counterproductive to who we are as a country,” he added. “Particularly in the area of immigration.” Biden signed off on three orders on immigration. One established a task force focused on the reunification of migrant families separated at the southern border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. The task force will be led by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was confirmed by the Senate earlier Tuesday. The order also revokes a measure signed by former President Trump that halted certain separations and called on Congress to address the matter. “We’re going to work to undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families, their mothers and fathers, at the border,” Biden said. “And with no plan, none whatsoever, to reunify the children who are still in custody and their parents.” Another order directs agencies to undertake their own sweeping review of asylum policy in the U.S. The orders nix a number of Trump immigration executive orders while directing the Department of Homeland Security to review policies that require immigrants to wait in Mexico while filing asylum claims and limit the opportunity to apply for asylum to those who passed through other countries in trying to reach the U.S. It also outlines two prongs for dealing with migration patterns: a “root causes” strategy that primarily focuses on aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and a “collaboration strategy” to expand pathways for those fleeing those countries to access resources in neighboring ones. But it also opens more opportunities for people leaving those countries to join family members in the U.S. and suggests the Biden administration will expand the criteria for allowing people to apply for asylum in the U.S. It requires evaluating “whether the United States provides protection for those fleeing domestic or gang violence” — a nod to those who have been denied asylum because they don’t fit into current protections for those fleeing racial, religious or political persecution. A final order directs a review of Trump’s public charge rule, which limited immigration opportunities for those who might need to rely on assistance such as food stamps or other social programs.
Supreme Court cancels border wall, asylum policy hearings after Biden shifts - The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to cancel upcoming hearings challenging President Trump’s border wall and asylum policies after the Biden administration signaled its plans to reverse course on each. President Biden on his first day in office suspended construction of the border wall pending a review of its legality. The next day the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suspended Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, which blocked migrants from crossing the border to apply for asylum. The order places the cases in abeyance, essentially pausing litigation while the Biden administration reviews the legality of each policy and develops their own. The border wall case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Sierra Club and others and challenges $2.5 billion in Department of Defense spending that was diverted to complete construction. "The President has directed the Executive Branch to undertake an assessment of 'the legality of the funding and contracting methods used to construct the wall,'" the administration wrote to the court Monday. "It would therefore be appropriate for the court to hold further proceedings in this case in abeyance to allow for the completion of the process that the president has directed," it added. Trump’s remain in Mexico policy led DHS to return 68,000 individuals to Mexico, spurring a challenge from the ACLU and immigration advocacy groups on behalf of immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The White House has since ordered a sweeping review of immigration policies and has said it will overhaul the asylum process. Officials, however, have not yet outlined what that means for the tens of thousands of migrants waiting on pending asylum cases. One White House official said they would seek a policy “that enables them to pursue their cases and does not mean that they simply languish in Mexico.”
Bipartisan Support Grows for Domestic Terror Laws --Since the incident at the US Capitol Building on January 6th, calls for new domestic terror laws are growing. President Biden and plenty of other US politicians have made it clear that they view the demonstrators who entered the Capitol as “domestic terrorists.” In Congress, there is bipartisan support to increase penalties for domestic terror convictions that put them on the same level as laws targeting international groups, like ISIS and al-Qaeda. On Thursday, a bipartisan majority of the House Homeland Security Committee endorsed the idea of domestic terror laws. US lawmakers heard from so-called experts who claimed there was a “high likelihood” that another “domestic terrorist attack” would occur soon. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers calling for new domestic terror laws. “I think it sends a strong message about where Congress is, that we’re going to treat domestic terrorism on an equal plane as international terrorism,” he said. Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, suggested that the threat would linger for “10 to 20 years.” Domestic terror legislation has been introduced in Congress that would establish domestic terror offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI. But with talks of increasing penalties for domestic terror convictions in Congress, more legislation could be introduced that would have grave implications for free speech and the First Amendment.
In the 1980s, a Far-Left, Female-Led Domestic Terrorism Group Bombed the U.S. Capitol - Amidst the social and political turmoil of the 1970s, a handful of women—among them a onetime Barnard student, a Texas sorority sister, the daughter of a former communist journalist—joined and became leaders of the May 19th Communist Organization. Named to honor the shared birthday of civil rights icon Malcolm X and Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, M19 took its belief in “revolutionary anti-imperialism” to violent extremes: It is “the first and only women-created and women-led terrorist group,” says national security expert and historian William Rosenau. M19’s status as an “incredible outlier” from male-led terrorist organizations prompted Rosenau, an international security fellow at the think tank New America, to excavate the inner workings of the secretive and short-lived militant group. The resulting book, Tonight We Bombed the Capitol, pieces together the unfamiliar story of “a group of essentially middle-class, well educated, white people who made a journey essentially from anti-war and civil rights protest to terrorism,” he says. After their formation in 1978, M19’s tactics escalated from picketing and poster-making to robbing armored trucks and abetting prison breaks. In 1979, they helped spring explosives-builder William Morales of the Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN and Black Liberation Army organizer Assata Shakur (née Joanne Chesimard) from their respective prisons. (Both Shakur and Morales remain on the FBI’s wanted lists for terrorism and are thought to live in Cuba.) Eventually, M19 turned to building explosives themselves. Just before 11 p.m. on November 7, 1983, they called the U.S. Capitol switchboard and warned them to evacuate the building. Ten minutes later, a bomb detonated in the building’s north wing, harming no one but blasting a 15-foot gash in a wall and causing $1 million in damage. Over the course of a 20-month span in 1983 and 1984, M19 also bombed an FBI office, the Israel Aircraft Industries building, and the South African consulate in New York, D.C.’s Fort McNair and Navy Yard (which they hit twice.) The attacks tended to follow a similar pattern: a warning call to clear the area, an explosion, a pre-recorded message to media railing against U.S. imperialism or the war machine under various organizational aliases (never using the name M19).
Democratic senators introduce bill to limit Section 230 protections Senate Democrats introduced a bill Friday that seeks to rein in the power of a landmark internet law by allowing lawsuits to be brought against tech platforms for some third party content posted on their sites. The measure, introduced by Sens. Mark Warner (Va.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), marks the latest congressional effort to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and could make platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter legally accountable for content on their sites that pose real-world harm. The legislation would make changes to the 1996 law that grants a liability shield for tech companies over content posted on their platforms by third parties. The bill would remove some of those protections by allowing users who face cyber-stalking, targeted harassment and discrimination to seek legal action against the platforms. “Section 230 has provided a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card to the largest platform companies even as their sites are used by scam artists, harassers and violent extremists to cause damage and injury,” Warner said in a statement Friday. “This bill doesn’t interfere with free speech – it’s about allowing these platforms to finally be held accountable for harmful, often criminal behavior enabled by their platforms to which they have turned a blind eye for too long.” The proposed changes to Section 230 would not guarantee that platforms are held liable, but they would allow alleged victims an opportunity to raise legal claims without the law barring efforts in certain cases. The bill would also make clear that Section 230 does not allow for impairing the enforcement of civil rights laws or statutes that address cyber-stalking and harassment. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Anti-Defamation League said they support the Democratic proposal. Section 230 has come under fire from both sides of the aisle, albeit for different reasons. Democrats have widely criticized platforms for not taking enough action on hate speech and misinformation posted on their websites. Republicans, however, have called for the reform or repeal of the law over unsubstantiated allegations that tech giants consistently remove or block content with an anti-conservative bias. Former President Trump sought to repeal Section 230, but was unsuccessful. President Biden said during the 2020 campaign that he supports revoking Section 230, but has not spelled out his plans regarding the law.
Everything About The Biden Administration Is Fake - Caitlin Johnstone -A new exclusive from The Daily Beast titled “White House Reporters: Biden Team Wanted Our Questions in Advance” reports that the White House press corps is being pressured to provide briefing questions ahead of time in a way that makes even mainstream media journalists uncomfortable.“While it’s a relief to see briefings return, particularly with a commitment to factual information, the press can’t really do its job in the briefing room if the White House is picking and choosing the questions they want,” one White House correspondent told The Daily Beast. “That’s not really a free press at all.”“It pissed off enough reporters for people to flag it for the [White House Correspondents Association] for them to deal with it,” another source reportedly said.While Obama’s deputy press secretary Eric Schultz calls the move “textbook communications work” designed to ensure that Biden’s press secretary has answers ready instead of having to “repeatedly punt questions”, clearly the reporters on the job feel differently.“The requests prompted concerns among the White House press corps, whose members, like many reporters, are sensitive to the perception that they are coordinating with political communications staffers,” writes the Beast.Having questions in advance would indeed be a good way to help insulate press secretary Jen Psaki (for whom liberals are already developing an unwholesome celebrity crush) from hard questions. This would avoid sticky situations like when Psaki deflected inquiries about treasury secretary Janet Yellen’s conflict of interest with the Citadel controversy by babbling about Yellen being the first woman in her position and claiming that receiving $800,000 in speaking fees from that company is no reason for her to recuse herself. So this is just one more item on the steadily growing pile of fake things about this administration. Everything about it is phony. This is the Astroturf Administration.
Trump aides say they lost parental leave benefits during transition -A number of political appointees hired during the Trump administration were surprised to learn that their parental leave benefits ended with the inauguration of President Biden, a Politico investigation found.Numerous appointees across the federal government told the news outlet that they had been under the impression that the incoming Biden administration would effectively keep them employed for the remainder of their federal maternity or paternity leave benefits, which some were exercising during the transition period.“I got completely screwed,” Vanessa Ambrosini, a former deputy communications director at the Commerce Department, told Politico. “There were no caveats in that language saying anything about if the administration turns, you get nothing and of course, that happened and so I got nothing.”Other officials who would not give their names provided emails to Politico from federal officials indicating that their parental leave benefits would be treated the same as career agency employees, followed by later emails apologizing for an error and stating that their benefits would end Jan. 20. “This is not what you were hoping to hear but I think you also knew that this was the most likely outcome,” an email to one couple who appealed the Department of Homeland Security's decision to end their benefits read. “I am sorry to be the bearer of this news and I am sorry I don’t have other news.”
How Many House Republicans Believe the Jews Attacked California With a Space Laser? - On Thursday, it was reported that freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had endorsed a theory that wealthy Jewish bankers had started California’s 2018 Camp Fire by firing a laser from space in order to benefit themselves financially.You can read her Facebook post, uncovered by Media Matters reporter Eric Hananoki, here. In it, Greene postulates that the “Vice Chairman of Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm” may have used “space solar generators … beaming the sun[’]s energy back to Earth” to fire a “laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth” to “cause” the 2018 Camp Fire in California in order to manipulate the stock market and line the pockets of “Rothschild Inc,” “Solaren,” and Sen. Dianne “Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum.” Feinstein and her husband are Jewish, and conspiracy theories involving the Rothschilds are a long-standing anti-Semitic trope. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean and director of global social action of the Wiesenthal Center, told me “anyone who used the term ‘Rothschild banker,’ that’s shorthand for Jews.” Cooper called on Greene to apologize and said she should not be on the House Committee on Education and Labor. When told of a video Greene once posted on social media in which a narrator says “an unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists, and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation, with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands,” Cooper said: “This is clearly a person that has an anti-Semitism problem.” Democrats have been calling for weeks to expel Greene from the House of Representatives, based on her anti-Semitism, conspiracy-mongering, and insurrection-backing. Given her popularity with former President Donald Trump and with the QAnon movement, and its overall interest in owning the libs, the institutional Republican Party has been much more reluctant to respond. But after the latest revelations, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called the comments “disgusting” and said there is “no place for anti-Semitism in our party” and that the comments “should be looked into.” And a spokesperson for California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, told Slate, “These comments are deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the Congresswoman about them.”
House to vote Thursday to drop Greene from all committees - House Democratic leaders are gearing up to vote Thursday on legislation stripping Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee spots — unless Republican leaders do it first. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) spoke with his counterpart, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), about Greene's fate Wednesday morning, with Hoyer suggesting afterwards that the GOP leader is not ready to remove the controversial conservative firebrand from a pair of top committees. "I spoke to Leader McCarthy this morning, and it is clear there is no alternative to holding a Floor vote on the resolution to remove Rep. Greene from her committee assignments," Hoyer said in a statement. "The Rules Committee will meet this afternoon, and the House will vote on the resolution tomorrow." The proposal, sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), would remove Greene from two plum committee assignments — Budget, and Education and Labor — for the remainder of this Congress. McCarthy, the House Republican leader, had huddled with Greene in his office in the Capitol on Tuesday evening. Afterwards, McCarthy hosted a second meeting with the GOP Steering and Policy Committee to discuss Greene's fate. No decisions were made, but leaders are expected to meet again on Wednesday, and the full Republican conference also has a planned gathering at 4 p.m, when the topic is sure to be a major focus. Hoyer has already spoken with McCarthy about Greene at least once this week. Democratic leaders remain in the dark about how McCarthy will proceed, according to a Democratic leadership aide, but they're insisting that GOP leaders remove Greene from both committees, or Democrats will take that step themselves by moving the Wasserman Schultz bill. "He needs to take similar action to what he took against Steve King," the aide said, citing Hoyer's message to Democrats on the caucus call. Two years ago, McCarthy had stripped King of his committee assignments after the Iowa Republican defended white supremacy in an interview with The New York Times. King was defeated in his GOP primary last year and is no longer in Congress. The uproar surrounding Greene has been even more heated, after reports emerged that the first-term conservative firebrand had posted a series of violent and racist messages on social media in recent years. The list of controversial posts includes an adherence to the QAnon conspiracy theory and the endorsement of calls to assassinate prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.).
Greene lashes out over attempts to remove her from committees - Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) lashed out over a reported proposal to remove her from one of her committees amid her past controversial comments. Greene railed against a reported proposal by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to remove her from the Education and Labor Committee in exchange for Democrats dropping a vote to take her off that panel as well as the Budget Committee. Her rebuke of McCarthy’s offer comes ahead of a House Republican Conference meeting on Wednesday, during which past violent and racist statements are expected to be discussed. “No matter what @GOPLeader does it would never be enough for the hate America Democrats,” she tweeted. “They are only set out to destroy Republicans, your jobs, our economy, your children’s education and lives, steal our freedoms, and erase God’s creation. And the bloodthirsty media are their henchmen who help them by relentlessly attacking anyone in their path.” Her staunch defense comes as Republicans mull how to handle past comments that have thrown her into hot water with Democrats and various groups. Among the remarks that have come under scrutiny is a 2018 message in which Greene said that the “stage is being set” in response to a post calling for the killings of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Obama. Greene in January 2019 also liked a Facebook comment that stated “a bullet to the head would be quicker” for removing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from office. Prior to the recently resurfaced comments, Greene had made offensive remarks about Muslims and Jewish people and voiced support for the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that Democrats, members of the media and celebrities are part of an underground child sex trafficking ring. Those remarks have led to an array of calls from Democrats, ranging from urging Republicans to strip her of her committee assignments to pushing for a House-wide vote to expel her.
David Hogg: Greene should apologize to families of shooting victims that have 'permanently empty bedroom' - Parkland shooting survivor and gun control activist David Hogg on Friday urged Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to issue an apology directly to the families who lost loved ones and who now have a “permanently empty bedroom” following reports of past comments Greene has made about mass shootings. Greene has faced backlash in recent days over unearthed remarks made on social media in which she said the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018 that killed 17 people was staged. She was also filmed taunting Hogg and other survivors who were in Washington, D.C., advocating for gun reform, specifically calling Hogg a “coward.” On Friday, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota asked Hogg about Greene’s previous remarks in which she said she could relate to his experience because she said that she was also a survivor of a school shooting. The March for Our Lives co-founder said he was less concerned with the statements directed at him, and more so “the real people that she offended, which are the families in Parkland and Las Vegas and Sandy Hook that have a permanently empty bedroom, that have a permanently empty place at the dinner table.” “They’re the people that are the real victims here that deserve the apology, not me. And that’s really what upsets me is that she’s detracting from their suffering and their experience because she can’t know their pain.” Hogg went on to say that these families “had the worst possible thing in the world happen to them.” “They are the ones that deserve an apology,” he added. Hogg had previously called for more action to be taken against Greene over her past remarks and last month specifically urged House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to denounce Greene. “My message to Kevin McCarthy is this: Take her committee assignments away,” Hogg said on CNN at the time. “Along with that, also, don’t support her when she runs for reelection again and try to get her primaried.” “If you say this is not your party, actually call it out and hold her accountable,” Hogg continued. “Republicans always act as if they’re the party of decency, respect, but would the party of decency and respect question whether or not school shootings happened? Would they harass the survivors of these shootings for having a different opinion than them? I don’t think so."
Parler CEO Fired By 'Rebekah-Mercer-Controlled Board' -John Matze, CEO of beleaguered Twitter competitor Parler, has been fired by the board of directors amid a highly contentious period for the conservative-friendly platform. "On January 29, 2021, the Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler. I did not participate in this decision," wrote Matze in a statement obtained by Fox Business. "I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement." Matze wrote that over the past few months he has been met with "constant resistance" to his original vision for the social media platform following Amazon Web Services' decision to shut Parler down for failure to moderate "egregious content" related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. -Fox Business"Over the past few months, I’ve met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed. For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation," Matze's statement continues. "I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands," he continued.
DOJ, FBI pressed by Senate Judiciary for answers on Capitol Hill riot -The top two lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee are pressing the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI for answers regarding security failures during the Jan. 6 riot at Capitol Hill. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the incoming chairman and ranking member of the panel, respectively, sent a letter to acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson and FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting answers to a series of questions regarding the security situation during the insurrection. They also announced that Wray will testify before the committee on March 2, Wray’s first congressional appearance since the storming of the Capitol. “We are writing to gather additional information regarding the security posture and planning provided in advance of and during the January 6, 2021, Joint Session of Congress. ... The security failures that enabled the January 6 attack span multiple agencies, and emerging reports raise serious concerns about the adequacy of preparations by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),” wrote Durbin and Grassley. “It is essential that we obtain a complete accounting of your preparation for and response to the events of January 6,” they wrote. Durbin and Grassley pressed Wilkinson and Wray to explain what precautions their departments took prior to Jan. 6, if any coordination with other intelligence agencies took place and what information they possessed regarding the threat of violence before the riot. They also asked what role the DOJ and FBI played in the immediate response to the insurrection and what steps they’re taking “to disrupt threats of future violence by domestic violent extremist movements.” The two lawmakers requested the information no later than Feb. 16. Durbin and Grassley are the two latest lawmakers to request information regarding the preparation for and the response to the riot after law enforcement appeared woefully unprepared for an event intelligence had suggested could be violent. The insurrection led to the deaths of several people, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was killed by rioters and will lie in honor in the Capitol later Tuesday. The pro-Trump mob, which was whipped into a frenzy by former President Trump and other speakers at a rally earlier in the day on Jan. 6, took over the Capitol, temporarily stalling the congressional certification of the Electoral College results.
Trump’s acting secretary of defense disarmed D.C. National Guard 48 hours before the fascist assault - A recently published memo issued by former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller two days before the January 6 fascist assault on the US Capitol confirms that the leadership of the Pentagon deliberately disarmed National Guard soldiers on the eve of the coup attempt. The memo ensured that soldiers would be unable to protect themselves, much less the Capitol, allowing thousands of pro-Trump neo-Nazis and white supremacists to overwhelm the Capitol Police, who themselves had been deliberately underdeployed.The memo approved the use of only 340 National Guard soldiers and imposed extraordinary limitations. It stated:
- Without my subsequent, personal authorization, the DCNG is not authorized the following:
- * To be issued weapons, ammunition, bayonets, batons, riot control agents or ballistic protection equipment such as helmets and body armor.
- * To interact physically with protesters, except when necessary in self-defense or defense of others.
- * Prohibited from sharing “equipment with law enforcement agencies” or seeking support from any non-DC National Guard units.
- * Forbidden from conducting “searches, seizures, arrests, or other similar direct law enforcement activity.”
- * Forbidden from using “Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance assets” or to conduct “Incident, Awareness and Assessment activities.”
- * No helicopters or “any other air assets.”
Trump fires team of defense lawyers in run-up to Senate trial - Former President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he had fired the five lawyers who had agreed to be his defense team in the upcoming Senate trial for inciting an insurrection on January 6. Late Sunday, Trump’s office in Florida announced that two new lawyers, David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr., had agreed to take the case. The abrupt change in the legal team was reportedly driven by Trump’s demand that his lawyers defend his actions on January 6 by claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by the Democrats. The first legal team balked and pressed for Trump to confine his defense to arguments that the Senate trial of an ex-president, now a private citizen, would be unconstitutional. According to the New York Times, “Mr. Trump had pushed for his defense team to focus on his baseless claim that the election was stolen from him, one person familiar with the situation said. A person close to Mr. Trump disputed that that was the case but acknowledged that there were differences in opinion about the defense strategy.” CNN reported, “Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and it was stolen from him rather than focus on proposed arguments about constitutionality.” It is not clear whether the divisions within the Trump camp on legal tactics have been resolved, or whether the new legal team has agreed to put forward Trump’s lies about a stolen election as part of the Senate trial. The statement announcing their appointment referred only to the constitutional claim and made no reference to the 2020 election. “Schoen has already been working with the 45th President and other advisors to prepare for the upcoming trial, and both Schoen and Castor agree that this impeachment is unconstitutional—a fact 45 Senators voted in agreement with last week,” the press release says. The two new lawyers are both well established litigators with close political ties to the Republican Party. Schoen has represented civil rights groups and victims of police violence, among his many clients, but recently represented Trump crony Roger Stone in his criminal trial for perjury. It is likely that Stone put Schoen in contact with Trump. Schoen is a board member of the Zionist Organization of America, one of the most right-wing pro-Israel lobbies. The other lead attorney, Castor, was district attorney of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for eight years (2000–2008), and has been active in state Republican Party politics for two decades. He is best known for a case he declined to prosecute, the sexual abuse and rape charges against comedian and actor Bill Cosby. The controversy over this decision contributed to Castor’s defeat in a 2015 election in which he sought to return to office as district attorney.
Jared Kushner gets Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Israeli deals --Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their roles helping to strike deals normalizing the relations between Israel and four Arab nations.The two former deputies were nominated by Alan Dershowitz, an attorney who defended former President Donald Trump at his first impeachment trial.Dershowitz is able to make a Nobel nomination since he is a professor emeritus of Harvard Law School.Kushner and Berkowitz, the Middle East envoy, played vital parts in negotiating the four deals, known as the “Abraham Accords,” establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.The deals, announced in the latter half of last year, marked the most significant diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East in 25 years.President Joe Biden is expected to review all Trump-era national security deals, including arms packages for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
PPP loans reach $72.7 billion in new round with big lenders - The number of Paycheck Protection Program loans to U.S. small businesses more than doubled in the third week of the latest round of pandemic relief aid, as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase each processed more than $1 billion in funding. The Small Business Administration approved 891,044 loans worth $72.7 billion through Jan. 31, up from the 400,580 loans totaling $35 billion a week prior, according to data released Tuesday. The pace picked up after a slow start following the program’s opening in Jan. 11 with another $284 billion from Congress as part of a stimulus package for the economy. Bank of America moved to the top lender slot in the past week, with about 35,000 loans worth $1.9 billion, followed by JPMorgan. Small lenders and fintech companies, including Zions Bancorp NA and Itria Ventures, continued to outlend big banks including PNC Financial Services Group and Wells Fargo. After the first week was dedicated exclusively to community financial institutions and small lenders, there’s sign of pent-up demand at large banks waiting for their applications to be processed. Wells Fargo has received about 77,000 applications for more than $4 billion, spokesman Manuel Venegas said by email. As of Jan. 31, the San Francisco-based bank had received approval for 18,272 loans, SBA data shows. Overall, about three-quarters of the loans approved by the SBA are for borrowers who already received one last year. Under a law passed by Congress in December, companies can apply for a second loan if they can show revenue loss. The average loan size was $81,635, with first-draw loans being much smaller on average. First-time business applicants received an average loan of $21,157 while second-time recipients got $102,228.
Fast-tracked PPP forgiveness provided unexpected earnings lift - Through Jan. 12, the SBA had forgiven more than $100 billion in PPP loans, triggering fee payments to the lenders. Expedited forgiveness bolstered the bottom lines at hundreds of banks during the fourth quarter, providing a bright spot at a time of anemic core loan growth and uncertain credit quality resulting from the pandemic. The fees, which ranged from 1% to 5%, are accounted for as net interest income. As they find their way to lenders’ bottom lines, the revenue will provide a lift to capital as banks weigh strategic options and mull charge-offs for troubled credits. "Accelerated PPP forgiveness fees seem to be the only real driver of outperformance,” “It’s income at a time when income is hard to come by,” “It gives banks dry powder for other opportunities that may come up. To the extent that they can take a temporary gain and turn it into something more permanent, I think investors would look favorably on that.” The net interest margin at Level One Bancorp in Farmington Hills, Mich., widened by 47 basis points from a quarter earlier to 3.27%. The $2.4 billion-asset company said its margin would have been relatively flat absent the forgiveness of $102 million of PPP loans. At the $6.6 billion-asset Heritage Financial, fees from $159 million of PPP loans turned what would have been 6 basis points of margin compression into 15 basis points of expansion, Chief Financial Officer Donald Hinson said during the Olympia, Wash., company’s earnings call. The decision by legislators to increase the cutoff for streamlined forgiveness to $150,000 could fast-track more fees. About 28% of the PPP volume from 2020 mets that threshold, along with 38% of the volume from this year, according to the SBA. The SBA released a one-page application last month that simply requires borrowers to certify they were eligible to receive a PPP loan, spent it on permissible expenses and correctly calculated the requested forgiveness. PPP lenders insist the changes will produce even bigger forgiveness numbers in the first quarter. “The borrower essentially has the ability to self-certify or create a process that leads to full forgiveness,” . “That will accelerate loans off our balance sheet, accelerate capital and leave a very happy customer on the other end with a grant as opposed to a loan.” While generally pleased with the fees’ contribution to banks’ bottom lines, industry observers noted that PPP revenue will be unpredictable each quarter, based on the pace of forgiveness, and, despite a new round that began last month, will go away when the program concludes.
Small businesses give fintechs low marks for pandemic relief - Small-business owners who received loans from the Paycheck Protection Program last year gave high marks to community development financial institutions for overall service and low ones to fintechs that bill themselves as speedier alternatives to traditional lenders. The grades were more mixed for banks and credit unions, according to a Federal Reserve survey of more than 15,000 small businesses released Wednesday. Six in 10 business owners said they were satisfied with the support they received from small banks — those with less than $10 billion of assets — but less than half said the same about large banks and credit unions. The Fed has been conducting its small-business credit survey since 2016. The 2020 survey was focused heavily on the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on credit conditions and was conducted in September and October, several weeks after the first round of PPP lending closed. Another round of PPP lending opened up last month and so far lenders have made nearly $73 billion of emergency loans to small businesses. Big banks took early criticism for slow response times and prioritizing existing customers when PPP first launched in April. Online lenders had been hyped as alternatives for small businesses looking to quickly navigate the PPP process, but the Fed survey showed that speed was not necessarily a measure of customer satisfaction. “That is not the case for many small businesses that don’t have specialized staff on hand who can easily devote time to completing an application or digitizing all of their records,” a Federal Reserve official, who asked not to be named, said on a call with reporters Wednesday. About 42% of small-business owners who turned to online lenders for a PPP loan or other service during the coronavirus pandemic were dissatisfied with the support they received, and just 18% reported being satisfied. Fintechs were also less likely than banks and credit unions to approve PPP loan applications, the survey found. About 47% of those who applied for PPP assistance through an online lender got the full amount they applied for, compared to 78% who got what they were hoping for through a small bank and 70% from a large bank. Sixty-three percent of credit union borrowers and 44% of CDFI borrowers said they received the amounts they requested. The survey also found that fewer small businesses are turning to online lenders for financing than in years past. Of those surveyed, 20% said they applied to a fintech company for financing last year, down from 33% in the 2019 survey.
Banks remain wary about releasing reserves -- Sometimes headlines from early in bank earnings season can be deceiving. JPMorgan Chase commanded attention last month when it said it had released nearly 9% of loan-loss reserves between Sept. 30 and Dec. 31, and some other big banks trimmed the stockpiles they had built since the pandemic recession hit. The reductions perhaps were a sign of optimism about the economy. However, U.S. Bancorp and Truist Financial held their reserves steady, and they weren’t the only cautious ones. Total allowances for loan losses at 13 of the largest U.S. banks declined on aggregate 4.5% in the fourth quarter from the height of the buildup six months earlier, according to company filings. Some analysts had expected more. “Some banks are holding back,” said Scott Siefers, managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Sandler, citing the uneven pace of the economic recovery and the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Many banks aren’t expecting any return to normalcy until the second half of the year, he said. Reserves held specifically for consumer debt, like auto loans and credit cards, were largely left untouched across the industry. Speeding up vaccinations is viewed as key to getting the 10.7 million unemployed Americans back to work and to ease concerns of the estimated 7.3 million who are no longer seeking jobs, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Delays in getting shots in arms have dampened earlier, more upbeat outlooks about the 2021 economy. “One of the keys is that we see a pickup in the rollout of vaccinations,” Bryan Jordan, CEO of the $84.2 billion-asset First Horizon, said on a Jan. 22 call with analysts. “I would say, to date, it's been woefully inadequate, and it's got to pick up for us to see a much stronger back half of the year.” Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp is looking closely at public health data and the level of state and local limits on business activity and public gatherings, Chief Financial Officer Terry Dolan said on a Jan. 20 call with analysts.
Investors Not Reassured by Apollo Trying to ‘Splain Leon Black’s $188 Million in Payments to Serial Child Rapist Jeffrey Epstein - Yves Smith -Apollo’s efforts to contain the fallout from co-founder and now former CEO Leon Black having paid boatloads in fees and loans to Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted of child prostitution are not succeeding.As we’ll discuss shortly, Apollo had commissioned an whitewash investigation by law firm Dechert to reassure investors that nothing too unsavory had happened, and get them to stop their capital strike against the giant fund. However, the Financial Times reported yesterday that the UN’s pension fund is keeping Apollo on a watch list and the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System is sticking to its guns: From the Financial Times: A report by lawyers for Apollo Global Management into the ties between Leon Black and the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is “not enough” to remove the company from a watch list of investments that require extra scrutiny, a top UN pension fund official has said…Apollo was put on the UN Joint Staff Pension Fund’s watch list in July 2019 after reports of Mr Black’s ties to Epstein, a UN official said. The $80.3bn pension fund has invested with Apollo since at least 2013…The Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, which said in October it was not considering any new investments with Apollo, showed no sign of reconsidering its position in the wake of the Dechert review. “I refer you to our previous comment . . . and decline further comment,” said Steve Esack, a spokesman for the fund.The $40bn Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds said it had “reviewed Apollo this spring and determined, based on a variety of due diligence criteria, they did not meet our standards for making a new capital commitment”. In fairness, the pink paper did say that the report plus some governance changes at Apollo, like changing the dual-class share structure so as to reduce Black’s grip on the company, were enough to placate some investors, like UK’s South Yorkshire Pensions Authority which had made close to £29 million in commitments to three Apollo funds from 2013 to 2019. But the UN pension fund reaffirming its Apollo red flags will sway other pension funds. So why are many, and perhaps most, big pension fund investors not satisfied with the Apollo report? The short version is bad headlines plus bad details. The scandal grew to an entirely new level last October, when the New York Times broke the story that insiders reported that Black had paid at least $50 million and perhaps over $75 million in fees to Epstein from 2012 to 2017. After Black’s mumbled denials and foot shuffling failed to calm rattled investors, Apollo commissioned Dechert to poke around and put the best possible spin on the facts.
Flash-mob finance – James Hamilton - GameStop is a brick-and-mortar retail chain that was losing money even before the pandemic. Yet the price of its stock increased 1,900% in January on the basis of no particular improvement in fundamentals. The rocketing price seems to be a classic short squeeze, with a new twist: the grip of the squeeze came not from a deep-pocketed individual but by the internet-coordinated action of a large number of small investors. To understand what a short squeeze is all about, let’s start with a simple example in which the issues will hopefully be very clear. Suppose there is a company that you are convinced is going to be able to make one more dividend payment of $1 to each shareholder before it goes out of business next year. Even though the company is headed for bankruptcy, the stock has some intrinsic value, namely the $1 that each owner of a share will receive as dividend. If the stock sells for $2, it would be overpriced, and you might try to profit by selling the stock short. To do that, you could try to borrow a share from a dealer so that you can sell a share for $2. If after your short sale other market participants start buying a lot of shares and drive the price up, you’ll have to put up more funds to prove to the lender that you still are able to buy back at the higher price to fulfill your original sell. The buy orders from the closed-out shorts can then add to the buy orders from the rest of the market to drive the price skyward. In the case of GameStop, the buy orders that drove the squeeze came from large numbers of people getting information from financial news discussion sites. So do the squeezers profit at the expense of the shorts? Let’s follow our hypothetical example one step further. Suppose that the shorts had it exactly right — the hypothetical company is about to go out of business. Next year the squeezers who bought the stock get their $1 dividend, but that’s all they’ll get. And they paid much more than a dollar to buy each share, for their buy orders were what originally drove the price up. They can only make a profit if before the company goes bankrupt they sell the stock to somebody else who’s willing to pay more than a dollar for it.And to whom do they sell the stock? As Shakespeare might say, aye, there’s the rub. If they sell to the original shorts, there’s no squeeze — the whole operation only works if the shorts can’t find anybody to sell to them. So where will the squeezers find the person who’s willing to pay more than $1 for the security? Another chat room, perhaps?In our hypothetical example, every buy order in the original squeeze paid more than $1 to acquire something whose value, if held to maturity, was only $1. The mob as a whole therefore had to lose money. The shorts whose positions were closed out certainly also lost money. So who gained? The answer is, the people who bought into the squeeze early and then sold their positions to the gullible parties farther back in the mob. The mechanics are basically those of a chain letter. The original buyers may make some handsome profits, but only if they sell in time. The followers, on whose participation the whole process depends, must lose big. A profitable squeeze requires some gullible victims who end up absorbing the losses that are a necessary component of the strategy.
Meet Keith Gill, the man who drove the GameStop Reddit mania and made millions --Meet Keith Gill, the newly minted millionaire and financial folk hero who sparked the GameStop trading frenzy that caused big losses for established hedge funds this week. He’s a 34-year-old Massachusetts dad who wears cat T-shirts and a collection of headbands while running his “Roaring Kitty” YouTube channel from the basement of his rented residence. Known as “DeepF---kingValue” on the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, Gill worked in marketing for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. before sending shock waves through the financial firmament. “I didn’t expect this,” Gill told the Wall Street Journal in his first interview since his GameStop evangelizing made him incredibly rich in the span of a few days. “I thought this trade would be successful,” he said, “but I never expected what happened over the past week.” Gill shared a screenshot of his brokerage account Wednesday showing a roughly $20 million daily gain on his GameStop stock and options after the company’s shares hit intraday high of $380, The Journal reported. After Thursday’s market close, Gill’s E*Trade account held around $33 million, including GameStop stock, options and millions in cash, The Journal reported. Gill has championed GameStop for months and posted a celebratory YouTube video Jan. 22 when its stock closed at $65 per share after hovering around $19 at the start of January. Wearing his signature headband, matching wristband and aviator sunglasses, he sipped from a flute of Prosecco and thanks his fellow traders for their insights and “ongoing support.” “Thank you, to all of you, for so much,” he said. “It’s really important you understand how I feel and how my family feels.” Beyond Gill’s promotion of GameStop, the retail traders who flocked to the stock this week also were drawn by the bearish bets hedge fund managers made. Those positions, known as shorts, presented an opportunity — if enough small time buyers managed to push GameStop’s price above a certain point, the hedge fund managers would be forced to exit their positions at a loss. The squeeze scheme worked, turning Gill into an everyman icon. “(Gill) will go down as the greatest legend in the history of WallStreetBets,” Jon Hagedorn, a 34-year-old training supervisor based in Ronkonkoma, N.Y., told WSJ. “He’s the original OG,” Hagerdorn said. “This story is so much bigger than me,” Gill told The Journal. “I support these retail investors, their ability to make a statement.”
GameStop Promoter Keith Gill Was No “Amateur” Trader; He Held Sophisticated Trading Licenses and Worked in the Finance Industry - Pam Martens - January 30, 2021 ~ Yesterday evening, CNN’s Erin Burnett told millions of viewers that it was “amateur traders” who had taken on the powerful Wall Street hedge funds to pump up the share price of GameStop. The New York Post also called Keith Gill, the man who initiated the frenzy in GameStop shares, an “amateur investor.” This characterization of Gill fits with the broader mainstream media narrative that this is an exciting David versus Goliath story. Unfortunately, the facts keep getting in the way of that narrative. Wall Street On Parade has confirmed that Keith Patrick Gill, a man holding highly sophisticated licenses to trade and supervise others on Wall Street, is the same man using multiple identities to promote GameStop on social media platforms. Gill, and a member of his family, have confirmed to other media outlets that Gill used the identity of DeepF***ingValue on Reddit’s WallStreetBets message board to promote GameStop and that he used the identity of Roaring Kitty on his YouTube channel and Twitter page to help engineer a short squeeze against the hedge funds that were betting the price of GameStop would fall. Gill was a clean cut Registered Rep at MassMutual by day and a long-haired, head-banded, fast-talking stock promoter on social media by night, sending out video promotions for GameStop that were filmed at a trading desk he had set up in his basement. (See this YouTube video by Gill. It has a caption suggesting GameStop could go from $5 to $50.) This is highly likely to be a serious problem for both Gill and MassMutual. A genuine amateur trader could plead ignorance of industry rules about hyping stocks to the public. A heavily licensed industry professional cannot. The fact that Gill passed all those exams means that he knows what the rules are. In addition, the broker-dealer unit of MassMutual, MML Investor Services LLC, that employed Gill as a Registered Rep, could potentially face charges of failure to supervise. Wall Street’s self-regulator, FINRA, shows on its publicly available BrokerCheck, that Keith Patrick Gill holds the following licenses: a Series 7 that allows him to trade stocks and corporate bonds for clients; a Series 3 which allows him to trade commodities for clients; and a Series 24 which allows him to function as a branch manager of a brokerage firm and supervise other licensed traders. Gill passed his exam for the commodities license eight years ago. He obtained the Series 7 and Series 24 licenses more than four years ago. Gill’s FINRA record indicates that he began working for the unit of MassMutual on or about April 5, 2019 and is presently employed there. (He has previously worked as a licensed Registered Rep at other broker-dealers.) Some media outlets have reported that Gill worked at MassMutual until recently. MassMutual has 30 days to file a separation/termination report with FINRA for a licensed broker. This is known as a U5 form and must indicate the reason for the resignation or termination of the broker. One can imagine that MassMutual’s entire legal department will be pulling their hair out over what to write in that space.
Robinhood is still severely limiting trading, customers can only buy one share of GameStop - Restrictions on Robinhood traders got tighter throughout the day on Friday, only allowing clients to buy a single share of GameStop. The stock trading app also expanded its list of restricted stocks from 13 earlier in the day to 50. "The table below shows the maximum number of shares and options contracts to which you can increase your positions," Robinhood wrote. CNBC recreated the table. The restricted list tells clients how many shares and options contracts they can buy pertaining to a particular security. Robinhood customers can only buy one share and up to five options contracts of GameStop; however, if a customer already owns one or more share of GameStop, they are not able to buy any more shares. Robinhood's restrictions could take the wind out of point-and-click traders trying to jack up the price of GameStop. Robinhood, however, will not sell any client's shares of GameStop that are already over the one-share limit from a previous position. The stock, which closed up 67%, was off its highs of the session as the new more severe limits were implemented. Earlier in the day, clients could buy five shares of GameStop. The most shares clients could buy of any of the 50 stocks was five. Clients without existing shares can only buy one share and 10 options contracts in AMC Entertainment, which is down from an earlier 115 shares. Shares of AMC Entertainment closed up 53% but also well off their highs of the day. Clients can only buy one share of American Airlines, Bed Bath & Beyond and Koss. The stock trading app has also expanded its list of restricted stocks. Some of the new names include Advanced Micro Devices, Starbucks, Novavax, General Motors and Beyond Meat. On Thursday, Robinhood told clients it was only allowed to sell shares, not buy new ones, in certain securities that were garnering social media attention from Reddit crowds. The firm also raised margin requirements, or the amount of money in a client's account when they will be using leverage to buy a security. Robinhood's decision was met with outrage, with many users taking their grievance to Twitter.
Elizabeth Warren told the SEC to 'grow a backbone' and regulate hedge funds in the wake of the GameStop-Wall Street saga - In the wake of the GameStop trading frenzy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren says the US Securities and Exchange Commission needs to introduce more regulation to keep hedge funds from playing markets to their advantage. And it should "grow a backbone" to enforce those rules, she told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "We've got a real problem on Wall Street, and it's time to fix it," she added. Day traders have banded together on Reddit to bump up the prices of several stocks, most notably GameStop but also AMC and Nokia, after noticing that hedge funds were betting against them. GameStop stock has gained massively in recent weeks — from below $5 late last year to a peak of more than $450 a share on Thursday. Warren wrote to the SEC on Friday urging it to investigate the saga and asking how it would prevent similar incidents. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is similarly pushing the SEC to launch an investigation "ASAP." In a statement Wednesday, Warren also slammed hedge funds and investors, saying they had treated the stock market "like their own personal casino." She echoed this on CNN on Sunday, saying the system favored large players rather than individual investors, but noted that "we actually don't know who all the players are in all this" or "whether there's big money on both sides." She added that the SEC should clamp down on market manipulation and certain questionable trading practices.
Elizabeth Warren’s Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Robinhood/GameStop Intervention --Yves Smith -- We initially despaired when Ted Cruz and AOC got into a dustup holding hearing about the short squeeze controversy focused on trading app Robinhood and GameStop. Elizabeth Warren has now weighted via a letter to the SEC (embedded at the end of this post) and a follow-up round of media appearances. The wee problem is her intervention comes off as if she’s trying to get in front of a mob and call it a parade.While Warren’s missive does ask some good questions, it’s not remotely as tight or pointed as letters I’ve seen from her in the past while she was head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, or at the Senate, when seeking answers from the Fed, Treasury, and the SEC. It may simply be that she and her staff have usually focused on consumer finance, as in credit products and banking services, and the stock market is less familiar terrain.More important, her questions demonstrate an underlying confusion about the objectives for having publicly traded stocks, which in fairness reflects confused American policies. The only real justification is to lower the cost for companies to issue new stock to raise funds for their operations. The reason for having liquid secondary markets is to facilitate these new issues, meaning provide for price discovery and assure investors that they can exit their position down the road. Even through the business press, taking its lead from self-interested parties like intermediaries, touts more liquidity as ever and always good, there’s pretty much no evidence for this view. In fact there’s counter-evidence. As we’ve discussed, the SEC has pursued some objectives at the expense of others. As we saw, starting from our early years on Wall Street, when dinosaurs strode the earth and spreadsheets were prepared by hand on green accountants’ ledger paper, the agency has fetishized liquidity when there is every reason to think that’s benefitted Big Finance over Main Street. Even though the simple computation of trading activity shows average stock periods of around 11 seconds, various analysts try to exclude various types of profitable churn to come up longer average holding periods for “end” investors that are still on the order of months. By contrast, in my childhood, the average holding period for a stock was nearly two years. This picture is made worse by years of super low interest rates. They have most benefitted businesses where interest rates are the biggest cost, meaning financial firms and leveraged speculators. And the agency has bizarrely allowed practices like corporate stock buybacks, high frequency trading, and dark pools.
SEC studies social media posts for signs of fraud in GameStop frenzy: Bloomberg (Reuters) - The U.S. securities regulator is reviewing social media posts for signs of potential fraud in frenzied trading of GameStop Corp’s and other companies’ shares, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The Securities and Exchange Commission's examination of online posts is being done in tandem with a review of trading data to assess whether such posts were part of a manipulative effort to drive up share prices, the report said. A Reddit-driven rally has inflated stock prices for a number of previously downtrodden companies. (bloom.bg/3jgts2R)A spokesperson for the SEC did not respond immediately to request for comment.Earlier in the week, the SEC’s acting chair Allison Herren Lee said the agency is working “around the clock” to root out any potential market manipulation in the market volatility. Lee said in an interview with National Public Radio earlier this week that the current situation may be a “little bit more challenging” than the SEC’s typical work.Users in the Reddit forum WallStreetBets have been encouraging buying of GameStop, AMC and other stocks, causing short-term surges in shares. Shares of GameStop rallied nearly 400% and have since tumbled about 80% from last week’s highs. U.S. securities law bars the dissemination of any false or misleading information aimed at manipulating investors into buying or selling securities, and regulators have been expected to explore whether Reddit was used to do so.
Yellen Gets Ethics Waiver To Lead Regulator Meeting On Gamestop Insanity After Taking $810K From Citadel - Once it became clear - just a few seconds after AOC first rage-tweeted about RobinHood refusing to let "the people" trade more shares of $GME and $AMC before adding that she'd support a public hearing on what had just happened - that all the key players in the "WallStreetBets"/"Gamestop" trading saga would soon be dragged in front of Congress like a gaggle of tech CEOs, the newly elected Democrats and their hand-picked economic team were faced with a critical question: who exactly was going to preside over these proceedings on the regulatory side, since they are virtually all compromised by key connections to the financial services industry, and not just the big banks. Over the past decade, a new category of financial beast has arisen. At Zero Hedge, we have been writing about them for years. They're alternatively called "high frequency traders" "high freaks", and "orderflow frontrunners" for those enjoy speaking the truth, or "market makers" for the political correct, but after the events of last week, millions of people were either asking Google, or their one IBD analyst friend, to explain what 'Citadel' is, and how it works.... the same Citadel whichthreatened to sue Zero Hedge last June for accusing it of frontrunning orders, just weeks before regulators punished Citadel for frontrunning orders (oops). Now, barely days after being confirmed as President Joe Biden's new Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen must preside over a major media circus and the most glaring indication yet of just how broken the US stock market is (thanks in large part to her actions while she was head of the Fed).... and is why one month ago, Yellen pledged in an ethics form that she will recuse herself for one year "from when she last made paid speeches to the companies." And yes, her last speech to Citadel was last October.
Opinion | The Trouble With GameStop Is That the House Still Wins – Alexis Goldstein – NY Times --Last week, an alluring narrative coalesced around a band of Davids taking on the Goliaths of finance. Thousands of so-called retail traders who came together on Reddit have been using apps like Robinhood to buy stock and options of GameStop, the beleaguered video game retailer, jacking up its value some 1,700 percent last month. In the process, they’ve blown up a few hedge funds that had bet on GameStop’s failure. The appeal of such a narrative is obvious. Wall Street profits have blasted off during the pandemic, while Main Street endures intense and prolonged suffering, a phenomenon that economists call a “K-shaped” recovery. Americans have waited 10 months and counting for consistent relief from the government. So the idea of “get rich quick” schemes, especially ones animated by a zeal for revenge against the billionaire class, are more compelling than ever. But the unfortunate irony is that this desire to stick it to the fat cats of high finance is likely only to spur higher profits for big banks and hedge funds. The real solution to breaking the power of finance is to rebalance the recession-wracked economy. Rather than gambling on the dubious promise of more Americans gaining access to the casino, it’s time to rewrite the rules to ensure that the house doesn’t always win. Wall Street’s edge over retail traders remains, as always, structural: superior data; sophisticated, high-frequency trading software. More important, its traders have access to “dark pools,” private exchanges where they send large orders quietly to avoid moving the market against the trade, and “over the counter” markets, where they trade with one another rather than on public exchanges. They pour money into research and rumor chasing, all in an attempt to determine the positions of their competitors. Armed with its high-frequency trading algorithms and privileged market data, Wall Street will always win out over the thousands of people posting their positions and their plans on public message boards. These retail traders betting on GameStop’s rise may have blown up hedge funds like Melvin Capital, which lost 53 percent of its value in January after betting that GameStop’s stock would fall. But other hedge funds are likely to profit off its troubles in the long run by scooping up a stake in Melvin Capital’s future revenues in exchange for an emergency cash infusion. One such hedge fund, Citadel LLC, further benefits from the actions of the Robinhood traders. Citadel’s market-making arm and other Wall Street institutions offer Robinhood money to execute its clients’ orders, an arrangement called “Payment for Order Flow.” Citadel then profits by trading ahead of Robinhood users. It’s possible that banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are also riding high on the GameStop surge, just as they did in the second quarter of the pandemic, when JPMorgan Chase saw record trading revenue because of its ability to profit from market swings. In this way, the largest Wall Street firms run “flow trading” desks that act as middlemen. They act as both a buyer and a seller of stocks, options and other financial products, while offsetting their own risks through “hedges.”
Citadel Didn’t Just Bail Out a GameStop Short Seller; Citadel Also Had a Big Short Position in GameStop - Pam Martens - Politico reported yesterday that the House Financial Services Committee plans to call Vlad Tenev to testify on February 18. That’s the CEO of the online trading app known as Robinhood that has played a role in the controversy surrounding the bull raid (now turned bear raid) in the shares of GameStop. If that’s to be the only witness, you might as well call Ken Griffin’s personal shopper to testify.Griffin is the billionaire founder, CEO and majority owner of Citadel, which has been operating in the GameStop saga like a maestro from an orchestra pit. (For our previous profile of Griffin and Citadel, see here.)As Melvin Capital, a major short seller in the shares of GameStop was about to collapse as the stock soared, Griffin and Citadel’s hedge fund rode to the rescue, injecting $2 billion in cash into Melvin to save its hide. The first question for the House Financial Services Committee is exactly what was the motivation for Griffin to prop up a competing hedge fund. Then there is the fact that as all of those millennials and Gen-Zers at Reddit’s WallStreetBets message board were strategizing on their bull raid against the short sellers, Griffin’s Citadel Execution Services had a telescopic view of what was happening because Citadel Execution Services executes a big chunk of both stock and option trades for Robinhood. That unit of Citadel can see both the direction and the dollar volume of money heading to push a stock up or down. And, it gets to see all of that before it executes the trades, raising speculation that it might be tempted to front-run these trades for its own account.This is known as payment-for-order-flow and it’s probably not a comforting thought that this is what Bernie Madoff’s broker-dealer was doing while Bernie was running the largest Ponzi scheme in history.According to Robinhood’s 606 form that it filed with the SEC for the final quarter of last year, Citadel Execution Services paid it tens of millions of dollars a quarter for the privilege of executing its stock and option trades. The really big bucks resulted from Robinhood’s option trades, not its stock trades. The 606 form shows that in just the month of December 2020, Citadel Execution Services paid Robinhood $28 million for directing its option trades to Citadel.Now we have just learned that Citadel Advisors LLC (one of the sprawling tentacles of Citadel) had a large net short position in GameStop but also stood to make money as the stock whipsawed up and down. According to Citadel Advisors LLC’s most recent 13F form filed with the SEC for the quarter ending September 30, 2020, it owned puts on 2.5 million shares of GameStop (which are option bets that the stock price will decline); it owned calls on 2 million shares of GameStop (option bets that the price will rise); and it owned 111,805 shares outright of GameStop. Unfortunately, the 13F does not provide the strike prices or expiration dates of the puts and calls. (That information is missing on all 13F forms and the SEC needs to include that information in the interest of transparency.)Here is where things get very interesting about Citadel Advisors LLC. Its Form ADV which was filed on January 15 of this year, shows that it has just 19 clients for which it manages a total of $234,679,962,503. That’s $12.35 billion per client. So let’s get this straight: Citadel Execution Services is allowed by the SEC to pay for order flow so that it can trade against the dumb money coming in from Robinhood while another tentacle of Citadel is managing money for 19 clients who can cough up $12.35 billion each. Welcome to the most lop-sided playing field in the history of markets.
SEC: 621,000 Shares in GameStop Trades Had Not Properly Settled by January 14 - Pam Martens -- “Why monitor a problem if you don’t fix it?” That line reflects the attitude of the Securities and Exchange Commission under the past two SEC Chairs, Mary Jo White and Jay Clayton, both of whom hailed from giant law firms representing the largest trading firms on Wall Street. The SEC had a front row seat at the serial crimes being committed by these firms; it monitored them in real time; and it did nothing to stop the serial crimes from reoccurring. This morning we decided to take a look to see if the SEC was potentially aware of naked short selling in the shares of GameStop – the subject of House and Senate investigations and a hastily called meeting of regulators yesterday by U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, who also holds the position as Chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council. It turns out that GameStop shows up on the SEC’s list of “Fails-to-Deliver,” a report that raises suspicions (but not conclusive proof) that somebody was engaging in naked short-selling in the shares of GameStop.GameStop’s market cap spiked from $2 billion to $22.6 billion in a matter of days in January. Along the way, a large hedge fund, Melvin Capital, which was short the stock (a bet that the price would decline) had to be bailed out by Ken Griffin’s Citadel hedge fund, while a related company, Citadel Advisors, was also net short the stock. This week GameStop shares have been plunging back to earth. Adding to the cries of foul play, devotees of a Reddit message board, WallStreetBets, who had been hawking GameStop’s future prospects and buying the stock, had restrictions placed on their ability to buy any sizeable number of shares by their favored trading app, Robinhood, which directs the bulk of its trades to Citadel Securities for execution. According to the latest Securities and Exchange Commission data for Fails-to-Deliver, GameStop has been experiencing huge fails to deliver since at least December 18, when an aggregate of 872,523 shares had failed to deliver on their settlement date. The figure of fails had been 10,874 just two days earlier, on December 16. The SEC reports the fails to deliver data twice a month. The most recent data runs through January 14 of this year. On that date, GameStop still had an aggregate of 621,483 shares that had failed to deliver. According to Yahoo Finance, GameStop has 69.75 million shares outstanding, meaning that it has not only far exceeded the 10,000-share threshold but that it has also exceeded the 0.5 percent of outstanding shares threshold.It’s time for Sherrod Brown, the new Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and Maxine Waters, the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to do far more than whisper to the SEC, “Do something.”
Clubhouse’s stock is surging. It’s the wrong Clubhouse.--We’ve already seen The Elon Effect on dogecoin, bitcoin, and GameStop (and OK yes, Tesla too). And now, The Elon Effect has reached Clubhouse.In the wake of Mr Elon Musk tweeting on Sunday that he would be talking live on the social media audio app currently taking the world by storm at 10pm that night, stocks in Clubhouse Media Group soared by more than 100 per cent in early trading on Monday, before easing back a bit to trade up a modest 83 per cent up on the day at pixel time.Have a little look at the three-year chart: The only problem is that . . . it’s the wrong Clubhouse. The Clubhouse that is currently mooning is in fact pink-sheet Clubhouse Media Group Inc, ticker $CMGR, which according to Bloomberg “provides medical treatment, scientific research, teaching, prevention, and healthcare services”.So Clubhouse Media Group Inc is a healthcare company that used to be called Tongji Healthcare Group and which is based in Guangxi, China. Why is a Chinese healthcare company called Clubhouse Media Group?Well according to a press release from the company, Tongji Healthcare in August acquired West of Hudson Group Inc, owner of “The Clubhouse,” “a collection of content creation houses located in the scenic mansions of Southern California that houses [sic] some of the most prominent and widely followed social media influencers, together carrying an estimated base in excess of 70 million followers across all the Clubhouse influencers”. So there you have it. The company that doubled in value earlier on Monday is actually a company dealing in “content creation houses” (alas, yes, those really do exist) that is owned by what appears to be a shell company in China. It has no connection to the Clubhouse app launched in 2020, which is a private company that was valued at $100m last May after investment from Andreesen Horowitz.
Ripple fights back against SEC securities complaint - Ripple is fighting back against a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit that accused the company of selling an unregistered security and, along with the company’s founders, of profiting from undisclosed sales of it. Ripple is a San Francisco vendor of cross-border software and issuer of the digital asset XRP. In an answer filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Ripple said XRP isn’t an investment contract and instead functions as a virtual currency that doesn't require a registration statement. “It is not a security, and the SEC has no authority to regulate it as one,” according to the answer. Stuart Alderoty, chief counsel at Ripple, was critical of the murkiness of U.S. securities law in an interview Friday after the answer was filed. “What we have been asking for is regulatory clarity here in the U.S., and it's what we don't have,” Alderoty said. “We have it in Singapore. We have it in Switzerland. We have it in the U.K. The fact that we are still in a place in the U.S. where we’re left to guess what may be considered good and what may be considered not good and having regulators like the SEC pick winners and losers is just not a sustainable framework for an industry to operate in.” In late December, the SEC charged Ripple with nine violations of the Securities Act of 1933. The company sold more than 14.6 billion units of XRP for $1.38 billion to fund Ripple’s operations, and to enrich the company’s founders and current CEO, without registering those offers and sales of XRP with the commission, the lawsuit said. Chris Larsen, Ripple’s initial CEO and current chairman, and Brad Garlinghouse, its current chief executive, made $600 million in profits from unregistered sales of XRP, according to the lawsuit. Garlinghouse did so while repeatedly saying publicly that he was “very long” on XRP, the complaint said. Ripple’s answer acknowledged that Garlinghouse and Larsen have sold some XRP but didn’t specify how much. It said that Ripple has sold XRP in exchange for fiat or other currencies but says it has also raised money in other ways.
OCC approves trust charter for second crypto firm A second cryptocurrency platform has received permission from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to operate a national trust bank. The OCC announced Friday that it has granted conditional approval to the Seattle-based Protego Trust Co. to use a federal charter to serve investors’ digital-asset needs. The proposed Protego Trust Bank will be limited in scope. It won’t make direct loans or take deposits, but it will provide custody services for clients to hold digital currencies such as bitcoin and stablecoins. Users of Protego's platforms will also be able to use their digital assets to engage in person-to-person lending and trading. Even without the full powers of a bank, Protego said it expects to be busy serving a need for investors that currently have scant options for storing crypto-related assets. “The demand from institutional investors for secure and compliant access to digital assets, led by Bitcoin, is growing every day,” Chris Hunter, Protego’s head of business development, said Friday in a press release. "I think that’s one reason why we have already secured commitments for more than $1.5 billion in assets under custody at launch.” The OCC decision allows Protego to convert its Washington state trust charter, which was granted in June, into a federal charter. However, the company has 18 months to satisfy the terms of its OCC approval. The conditions include that Protego must apply for membership in the Federal Reserve System and purchase adequate bond coverage. Protego will operate out of its headquarters in Seattle and sales offices in New York and Boston, and online. Protego is the second digitally focused trust company to receive a conditional charter from OCC in 2021. Last month the agency approved an application by Anchorage Digital Bank in South Dakota.
Fed terminates 2017 enforcement action against Santander - The Federal Reserve has terminated a three-year-old enforcement action with Santander and Santander Consumer, resolving its last remaining regulatory matter. The enforcement action, issued in March 2017, was the last of three written agreements the U.S. arm of Spain's Banco Santander had to settle with the Federal Reserve. In this case, the Fed ordered Santander U.S., the Boston-based holding company, to strengthen its oversight of the $64 billion-asset Santander Consumer, its Dallas-based auto lending unit. In particular, the regulator said Santander Consumer needed to address deficiencies in its compliance risk management program and beef up board and senior management oversight of that function. The agency outlined its concerns in a 2015 written agreement, but issued the 2017 order because it said Santander had not made sufficient progress on those matters. Santander has “made significant progress in strengthening board oversight, compliance, risk management, capital planning and liquidity risk management” since 2015, the company said Thursday. “Today's announcement is an important milestone for Santander in the U.S. and speaks to the hard work and dedication of our colleagues across the US and particularly at” Santander Consumer, Tim Wennes, the CEO of Santander U.S., said in a press release. Having resolved its last outstanding regulatory matter, the $150 billion-asset Santander U.S. is now free to pursue acquisitions or open new branches, activities from which it had been restricted. In 2018, Santander resolved a separate regulatory matter with the Fed concerning firm wide deficiencies in board oversight, capital planning, risk management, compliance and liquidity risk management. That same year, Santander Consumer settled charges by California authorities that it failed to properly disclose certain referral fees to borrowers. In December, Santander Consumer paid a $4.7 million penalty to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over Fair Credit Reporting Act violations. In that case, the bureau said that between June 2016 and August 2019 the auto lender knowingly supplied the three major credit reporting agencies with inaccurate consumer credit data. In May 2020, Santander Consumer reached an agreement with a group of state attorneys general in which it paid $65 million in restitution and forgave nearly $500 million in car loan debt.
Court rules lawsuit challenging CRA rule can proceed A judge ruled that a lawsuit seeking to invalidate recent reforms of the Community Reinvestment Act can proceed. Judge Kandis A. Westmore of the U.S District Court for the Northern District of California denied a motion by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency seeking to throw out the lawsuit by three advocacy groups. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the California Reinvestment Coalition and Democracy Forward sued the OCC in June, alleging that the agency's CRA reform rule would "gut" banks' obligations to invest in their communities. They also argued that the rulemaking process violated the Administrative Procedure Act. In an order Friday, Westmore indicated that the case had merit, noting concerns about the transparency of the OCC's process. The OCC "failed to publish research it claimed supports issuance of the rule and data obtained in a request for information and failed to provide any substantive records of calls [former] Comptroller of Currency Joseph Otting had with CEOs of 17 large banks,” Westmore wrote. Otting, a Trump administration appointee, had spearheaded the OCC's writing of the CRA rule without support from other regulators who advocated different approaches to CRA reform. He stressed the need to modernize the decades-old anti-redlining law, but critics said the resulting regulation fell short of the law's original intent. The two reinvestment coalitions and Democracy Forward applauded Westmore’s decision. “The harm caused by the Trump administration’s unlawful evisceration of anti-redlining rules is real and urgent,” they said in a joint press release. “We are pleased the court rejected the Trump administration’s shameful attempt to evade accountability for gutting a crucial anti-redlining law.” In its motion to dismiss the suit, the OCC claimed had that the community advocates’ claims were not ripe in part because the agency has not fully implemented a new CRA scoring methodology. But Westmore rejected that premise, arguing that the agency’s ongoing rulemaking process for scoring thresholds “certainly does not mean that the Final Rule at issue is not arbitrary and capricious or procedurally improper.”
Acting CFPB chief signals tougher stance against redlining -Banking attorneys are bracing for an immediate sea change in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's approach to fair-lending cases even before the Biden administration's nominee to run the agency is confirmed. Many in the industry view lending discrimination probes as a primary focus of acting Director Dave Uejio's tougher stance toward financial institutions compared to his predecessor. Observers expect Uejio to revive the agency's controversial "disparate impact" standard — used to punish lenders that unintentionally discriminate against minorities — that the industry has long criticized. They expect him to fast-track investigations that could be reviewed by Rohit Chopra, once he is Senate-approved as the permanent director, for possible fines and other penalties. “The playbook is to use the fair-lending hook to go after big banks and mortgage lenders whenever possible,” said Brian Levy, of counsel at the law firm Katten & Temple. Uejio made clear his intent in a recent blog to be aggressive despite his interim appointment, taking a page from other interim appointees such as former acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, who was an outspoken chief of the bureau until he passed the baton to Kathy Kraninger upon her Senate confirmation. While Mulvaney and Kraninger slowed enforcement activity, and fair-lending cases in particular, Uejio signaled a return to Obama-era policies. More aggressive enforcement of fair-lending laws points to interest among Biden-appointed regulators in addressing racial-equity issues. Uejio's post said the CFPB will consider using the disparate impact legal standard to punish lenders for discriminatory effects that result even from neutral policies. “The country is in the middle of a long overdue conversation about race, and as we all know, practices and policies of the financial services industry have both caused and exacerbated racial inequality,” Uejio wrote last week. “I am going to elevate and expand existing investigations and exams and add new ones to ensure we have a healthy docket to address racial equity.” And such investigations will not be limited to mortgages and other consumer loans, he said. Lenders that took part in the Paycheck Protection Program to dispense government-backed loans to small businesses seeking pandemic relief could also be in the CFPB’s crosshairs. "Examiners found that the widely used policy of banks only taking PPP applications from pre-existing customers may have a disproportionate negative impact on minority-owned businesses," he said.
CFPB considers halting implementation of QM, debt collection rules - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking to delay the implementation dates of the Qualified Mortgage and debt collection rules and will resume collecting data on home loans, credit cards and prepaid cards. Acting CFPB Director Dave Uejio wrote in a blog post late Wednesday that the CFPB needs more time to consider rules that were implemented — but have not yet gone into effect — under the Trump administration. “I will be assessing regulatory actions taken by the previous leadership and adjusting as necessary and appropriate those not in line with our consumer protection mission and mandate,” Uejio wrote, adding that changes include ways to “explore options for preserving the status quo with respect to QM and debt collection rules.” In June, the CFPB extended the QM rule until April 2021, further delaying an exemption from strict underwriting guidelines given to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the last financial crisis. The changes are not a surprise. Many had expected the CFPB under President Biden would move to delay the effective dates of several rulemakings started under former CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger, including two recent debt collection rules finalized in October and December. The debt collection rules for the first time would restrict how often debt collectors can call borrowers, to seven calls per week, and would require collectors to provide detailed disclosures on old debts that have exceeded the statute of limitations. To aid consumers and military veterans suffering financially from the coronavirus pandemic, Uejio also directed the bureau’s research division to resume collecting Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data that had Kraninger put on hold in March. The CFPB originally required quarterly HMDA reporting to understand when markets are under stress or in flux and some experts saw the suspension of quarterly data collection as a mistake. The CFPB said it will also resume data collection for credit cards, small-business and clean energy loans to help better understand who is receiving credit and assess how borrowers are faring during the pandemic. Uejio made clear that he is moving quickly to implement changes even before Rohit Chopra, President Biden’s nominee to lead the agency, is confirmed. Chopra, a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, also has shown an interest in small-businesses' access to credit.
Black Knight Mortgage Monitor for December -Black Knight released their Mortgage Monitor report for December today. According to Black Knight, 6.08% of mortgages were delinquent in December, down from 6.33% of mortgages in November, and up from 3.40% in December 2019. Black Knight also reported that 0.33% of mortgages were in the foreclosure process, down from 0.46% a year ago. This gives a total of 6.54% delinquent or in foreclosure. Press Release: Black Knight: 24% of Active Forbearance Plans Scheduled to End in March, When More than 600,000 Homeowners Face 12-Month Expirations:As the final, 12-month expiration point for many forbearance plans quickly approaches, this month’s report looks at how the slowdown in improvement in recent months may present new challenges to recovery for seriously delinquent homeowners. According to Black Knight Data & Analytics President Ben Graboske, the end of March 2021 is shaping up to be an inflection point for the industry. “For the roughly 6.7 million Americans who have been in COVID-19 related mortgage forbearance at some point since the onset of the pandemic, the programs have represented an essential lifeline,” said Graboske. “The vast majority of plans have a 12-month cap on payment forbearance, though. And the various moratoriums which have kept foreclosure actions at bay over the past 10 months may be lulling us into a false sense of security about the scope of the post-forbearance problem we will need to confront come the end of March. Last year saw the largest number of homeowners – nearly 3.6 million – become 90 or more days past due since 2009, and as of the end of December, 2.1 million remained so. Here is a graph from the Mortgage Monitor that shows Black Knight's estimate of inventory over the last several years. From Black Knight:
• Severe inventory shortages persist across the country, with the number of homes listed for sale down 40% from last year, representing a 450K decline in the number of homes available for sale compared to the same time last year
• Even factoring in a slight downward trend in new listings in recent years, volumes for 2020 suggest that more than 750K homeowners chose to forego listing their homes for sale in 2020 because of the pandemic (a 16% decline year-over-year)
• Nearly 2/3 of the shortage of listings came in Q2 2020 alone, which was down more than 470K new listings from the year prior
• By December, new listings were flat year-over-year, suggesting that volumes may be normalizing to some degree; even so, a return to the status quo would still leave us at a significant deficit should buyer demand remain strong.
• December saw another modest improvement in mortgage delinquencies, with the national mortgage delinquency rate falling by 3.9% for the month to 6.08%There is much more in the mortgage monitor.
• Serious delinquencies (90+ days) also improved in December, falling to 3.43M from 3.56M the month prior
• Nearly 40% of the pandemic-related rise in overall delinquencies has now been reversed, but only 11% of the rise in serious delinquencies, providing a more accurate representation of the true recovery to date
MBA Survey: "Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Remains Unchanged at 5.38%" - Note: This is as of January 24th. From the MBA: Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Remains Unchanged at 5.38%: The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest Forbearance and Call Volume Survey revealed that the total number of loans now in forbearance remained unchanged relative to the prior week at 5.38% of servicers’ portfolio volume as of January 24, 2021. According to MBA’s estimate, 2.7 million homeowners are in forbearance plans....“The share of loans in forbearance was unchanged in the prior week, with a gain in the portfolio/PLS loan segment offset by declines in the Ginnie Mae and GSE investor loan categories. When servicers buy out delinquent loans from Ginnie Mae pools, they are reclassified as portfolio loans, which can lead to a decrease in the Ginnie Mae forbearance share and an increase in the portfolio/PLS share,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “While new forbearance requests dropped slightly, the rate of exits from forbearance was at the slowest pace since MBA began tracking exit data last summer.” Fratantoni added, “Overall, the forbearance numbers have been little changed over the past few months. Homeowners still in forbearance are likely facing ongoing challenges with lost jobs, lost income, and other impacts from the pandemic.” This graph shows the percent of portfolio in forbearance by investor type over time. Most of the increase was in late March and early April, then trended down - and has mostly moved sideways recently. The MBA notes: "Total weekly forbearance requests as a percent of servicing portfolio volume (#) decreased relative to the prior week: from 0.07% to 0.06%."
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 February 2nd. From Black Knight: End of January Sees Reduction Of 45k Forbearance Plans, But Overall Recovery Remains Stalled: New data from our McDash Flash Forbearance Tracker shows that the end of the month brought about an expected reduction of 45,000 (-1.6%) active forbearance plans, driven by month-end expirations. Servicers still have an additional 47,000 plans with Jan. 31 expiration dates on their books, which opens up the potential for additional modest declines in volumes over the next few days as these plans are reviewed for extension/removal. ... As of Feb. 2, there are now 2.72 million homeowners in active COVID-19-related forbearance plans. This is 5.1% of all U.S. mortgage-holders. While this is the lowest such volume of forbearances seen since late April, volumes have been stuck in the 2.72-2.81 million range since early November. As we move toward the middle of February, it will be worth focusing on the trend of mid-and late month increases in active forbearance plans. Looking ahead to February’s month-end, some 390,000 plans are set to expire, representing one (and potentially the last) moderate opportunity for improvement in forbearance volumes before the first wave of plans is set to reach their 12-month expiration at the end of March. At Black Knight, we will be especially interested in what the next couple months bring as far as forbearance-related recovery and will continue to closely monitor the data. The number of loans in forbearance has moved mostly sideways for the last few months.
Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey --Mortgage applications increased 8.1 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending January 29, 2021.... The Refinance Index increased 11 percent from the previous week and was 59 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 0.1 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 8 percent compared with the previous week and was 16 percent higher than the same week one year ago.“After increasing for three consecutive weeks, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate dropped 3 basis points to 2.92 percent. The one-week reversal in the recent upswing in rates drove an increase in both conventional and government refinance activity, as borrowers continue to lock in these historically low rates. MBA’s refinance index hit its highest level since March 2020 and jumped 60 percent year-overyear,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “Purchase activity was unchanged last week, with a 1 percent increase in conventional applications offset by a 3 percent decline in government applications. Average purchase loan amounts in early 2021 continue to rise across all loan types, driven by a strong pace of home sales, tight housing inventory and high homeprice growth. Conventional, FHA and VA purchase loan sizes all set new survey records last week.”...The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($510,400 or less) decreased to 2.92 percent from 2.95 percent, with points remaining unchanged at 0.32 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.
Mortgage Rates still near Record Lows - From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: Mortgage Rates Hold Steady to Start New Week The average mortgage lender offered rates that were at least as good as Friday's withpurchases still seeing 2.5-2.625% and no-cash-out refis in the 2.75-2.875% neighborhood (this assumes a top tier conventional 30yr fixed loan with at least 20% equity, 740+ credit, and no other negative loan level price adjustments).
CoreLogic: House Prices up 9.2% Year-over-year in December - Notes: This CoreLogic House Price Index report is for December. The recent Case-Shiller index release was for November. The CoreLogic HPI is a three month weighted average and is not seasonally adjusted (NSA). From CoreLogic: Onward and Upward: Annual US Home Price Appreciation in 2020 Outpaced 2019 Levels by 50%, CoreLogic Reports: CoreLogic® ... today released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for December 2020, providing a lookback at the state of the housing market and the pandemic’s impact on home price performance throughout 2020. The housing market exceeded expectations in 2020, closing out the year with the highest annual home price gain since February 2014 in December at 9.2%. Despite a blip in April, home-purchase demand surged as record-low mortgage rates persuaded first-time homebuyers to enter the market. Meanwhile, the consequences of the pandemic were seen in the dwindling supply of homes — dropping, on average, 24% below 2019 levels — as homeowners delayed selling. These factors translated to significant home price growth in 2020, surpassing the previous year’s levels with an average monthly year-over-year gain of 5.7%, compared with 3.8% in 2019. However, with the severe shortage of for-sale homes, we may see rising affordability concerns and some prospective buyers priced out of the market in 2021. “At the start of the pandemic, many braced for a Great Recession-era collapse of the housing market,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “However, market conditions leading into the crisis — namely low home supply, desire for more space and millennial demand — amplified the rapid acceleration of home prices.” “Two record lows are fueling home price gains: for-sale inventory and mortgage rates,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at CoreLogic. “Prospective sellers with flexible timetables have opted to delay listing their home until the pandemic fades or they are vaccinated. We can expect more inventory to come available in the second half of the year, leading to slowing in price growth toward year-end.”
Home Ownership Rate: 65.6% in Q4 - The Census Bureau has now released its latest quarterly report with data through Q4 2020. The seasonally adjusted rate for Q4 is 65.6 percent, down from Q3. The nonseasonally adjusted Q4 number is 65.8 percent, also down from the Q3 2020 67.4 percent figure. Over the last decade, the general trend has been consistent: The rate of homeownership continued to struggle. The recent recession as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic has caused a massive, but brief, jump in homeownership due to grossly reduced spending. Here's an excerpt from the press release: Announcement: Due to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), data collection operations for the CPS/HVS were affected during the fourth quarter of 2020, as in-person interviews were only allowed for portions of the sample in October (100 percent), November (98 percent), and December (84 percent). If the Field Representative was unable to get contact information on the sample unit, the unit was made a Type A noninterview (no one home, refusal, etc). We are unable to determine the extent to which this data collection change affected our estimates. See the FAQ for more information. National vacancy rates in the fourth quarter 2020 were 6.5 percent for rental housing and 1.0 percent for homeowner housing. The rental vacancy rate of 6.5 percent was not statistically different from the rate in the fourth quarter 2019 (6.4 percent) and not statistically different from the rate in the third quarter 2020 (6.4 percent). The homeowner vacancy rate of 1.0 percent was 0.4 percentage points lower than the rate in the fourth quarter 2019 (1.4 percent) and not statistically different from the rate in the third quarter 2020 (0.9 percent). The homeownership rate of 65.8 percent was 0.7 percentage points higher than the rate in the fourth quarter 2019 (65.1 percent) and 1.6 percentage points lower than the rate in the third quarter 2020 (67.4 percent). The Census Bureau has been tracking the nonseasonally adjusted data since 1965. Their seasonally adjusted version only goes back to 1980. Here is a snapshot of the nonseasonally adjusted series with a 4-quarter moving average to highlight the trend.
Construction Spending Increased 1.0% in December; 4.7% Annual Increase -- From the Census Bureau reported that overall construction spending increased: Construction spending during December 2020 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,490.4 billion, 1.0 percent above the revised November estimate of $1,475.6 billion. The December figure is 5.7 percent above the December 2019 estimate of $1,410.3 billion. The value of construction in 2020 was $1,429.7 billion, 4.7 percent above the $1,365.1 billion spent in 2019. Both private and public spending increased: Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,137.6 billion, 1.2 percent above the revised November estimate of $1,124.4 billion. ... In December, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $352.8 billion, 0.5 percent above the revised November estimate of $351.1 billion. This graph shows private residential and nonresidential construction spending, and public spending, since 1993. Note: nominal dollars, not inflation adjusted. Residential spending is 2% above the bubble peak (in nominal terms - not adjusted for inflation). Non-residential spending is 8% above the previous peak in January 2008 (nominal dollars), but has been weak recently. Public construction spending is 8% above the previous peak in March 2009, and 35% above the austerity low in February 2014. The second graph shows the year-over-year change in construction spending. On a year-over-year basis, private residential construction spending is up 20.7%. Non-residential spending is down 9.8% year-over-year. Public spending is up 3.0% year-over-year. Construction was considered an essential service in most areas and did not decline sharply like many other sectors, but it seems likely that non-residential, and public spending (depending on disaster relief), will be under pressure. For example, lodging is down 25% YoY, multi-retail down 21% YoY, and office down 3% YoY. This was slightly above consensus expectations of a 0.9% increase in spending, and construction spending for the previous two months was revised up. A strong report.
Update: Framing Lumber Prices Almost Double Year-over-year -Here is another monthly update on framing lumber prices. This graph shows CME framing futures through Feb 2nd. This is up 93% year-over-year - Almost double. There is a seasonal pattern for lumber prices, and usually prices will increase in the Spring, and peak around May, and then bottom around October or November - although there is quite a bit of seasonal variability. Clearly there is another surge in demand for lumber.
Underlying Inflation Gauge: December Update -- Here is the latest from the NY Fed:
- The UIG "full data set" measure for December is currently estimated at 1.5%, a 0.1 percentage point increase from the previous month.
- The "prices-only" measure for December is currently estimated at 2.1%, unchanged from the previous month.
- The twelve-month change in the December CPI was +1.4%, a 0.2 percentage point increase from the previous month.
- For December 2020, trend CPI inflation is estimated to be in the 1.5% to 2.1% range, which is a tad bit narrower than the currently estimated November 2020 range. Note that the COVID-19 outbreak continues to impact data collection for the CPI release.
Economists at the NY Federal Reserve Bank introduced a new measure of trend inflation in September 2017, the Underlying Inflation Gauge (UIG), meant to complement the current standard measures. Investors and policymakers alike have an interest in the behavior of inflation over longer time periods. The trend component of inflation is not an observed measure and a proxy measure is required to calculate it. To calculate trend inflation, transitory changes in inflation must be removed such as volatile components or specific items. Core CPI, which is the most widely used and accepted form of estimating trend inflation, only focuses on price components. The UIG derives trend inflation from a large set of data that extends beyond price variables. Additionally, it has shown higher forecast accuracy than traditional core inflation measures.
Hotels: Occupancy Rate Declined 29.6% Year-over-year - From CoStar: STR: Top 25 Markets Notch Lower Occupancies: U.S. weekly hotel occupancy remained relatively flat from the previous week, according to STR‘s latest data through Jan. 30.Jan. 24-30, 2021 [percentage change from comparable week in 2020]:
• Occupancy: 40.4% [-29.6%]
• Average daily rate [ADR]: US$89.62 [-29.8%]
• Revenue per available room [RevPAR]: US$36.23 [-50.6%]
The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average. The red line is for 2021, black is 2020, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2009 (the worst year since the Great Depression for hotels prior to 2020). Even when occupancy increases to 2009 levels, hotels will still be hurting. Seasonally we'd expect that business travel would start to pick up in the new year, but there will probably not be much pickup early in 2021.
Q4 2020 GDP Details on Residential and Commercial Real Estate - The BEA has released the underlying details for the Q4 advance GDP report. The BEA reported that investment in non-residential structures increased at a 3.0% annual pace in Q4. This followed four consecutive quarterly declines (weakness started before the pandemic). On an annual basis, investment in non-residential structures was off 9.5% in 2020 from 2019. Investment in petroleum and natural gas structures increased sharply in Q4 compared to Q3, but was still down 37% year-over-year. On an annual basis, investment in petroleum and natural gas structures was off 39% in 2020 compared to 2019. The first graph shows investment in offices, malls and lodging as a percent of GDP. Investment in offices decreased in Q4, and was only 6.1% year-over-year. Investment in multimerchandise shopping structures (malls) peaked in 2007 and was down about 19% year-over-year in Q4 - and at a record low as a percent of GDP. The vacancy rate for malls is still very high, so investment will probably stay low for some time. Lodging investment decreased in Q4, and lodging investment was down 23% year-over-year. All three sectors - offices, malls, and hotels - are being hurt significantly by the pandemic. The second graph is for Residential investment components as a percent of GDP. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, RI includes new single family structures, multifamily structures, home improvement, Brokers’ commissions and other ownership transfer costs, and a few minor categories (dormitories, manufactured homes). Even though investment in single family structures has increased from the bottom, single family investment is still low, and still below the bottom for previous recessions as a percent of GDP. Investment in single family structures was $337 billion (SAAR) (about 1.6% of GDP), and up 16.2% year-over-year. Investment in multi-family structures increased in Q4. Investment in home improvement was at a $306 billion Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) in Q3 (about 1.4% of GDP). Home improvement spending has been solid during the pandemic. Note that Brokers' commissions (black) increased sharply as existing home sales increased in the second half of 2020, and was up 32% year-over-year in Q4.
U.S. Courts: Bankruptcy Filings Decline 29.7% in 2020 - From the U.S. Courts: Annual Bankruptcy Filings Fall 29.7 Percent: Bankruptcy filings fell sharply for the 12-month period ending Dec. 31, 2020, despite a significant surge in unemployment related to the coronavirus (COVID-19). Annual bankruptcy filings in calendar year 2020 totaled 544,463, compared with 774,940 cases in 2019, according to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. That is a decrease of 29.7 percent. Only one category saw an increase in filings. Chapter 11 reorganizations rose 19.2 percent, from 6,808 in 2019 to 8,113 in 2020. Of those, 7,561 involved business reorganizations.The number of total filings was the lowest since 1986, when 530,438 bankruptcies were filed. Filings fell sharply in the early months of the pandemic, starting in March 2020, when many courts offered limited access to the public. In addition, bankruptcy filings can lag behind other economic indicators. Following the Great Recession, which began in 2007, new filings escalated until they peaked in 2010. This graph shows the business and non-business bankruptcy filings by calendar year since 2001.The sharp decline in 2006 was due to the so-called "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005". (a good example of Orwellian named legislation since this was more a "Lender Protection Act").Due to the pandemic, bankruptcy filings fell sharply in 2020 to the lowest level since 1986. It is likely that bankruptcy filings will increase in 2021.
The richest 20% of America are the real pandemic supersavers --During the worst year for economic recovery since 1946, Americans socked away money at a historically high pace. But those savings largely stayed in the pockets of higher earners, while everyone else held close to nothing by the end of 2020.U.S. households accumulated around $1.6 trillion in excess savings over the last 10 months, according to an analysis by Oxford Economics. But the top 20% of earners — and to a lesser extent the second 20% —account for all the current accumulated cash. Meanwhile, the bottom 60% have spent most of the savings they accumulated in the pandemic from direct payments and unemployment benefits.“All of the savings buffer is essentially now in the hands of the top 40%,” Gregory Daco, Oxford Economics’ chief U.S. economist, told Yahoo Money. “Whereas the bottom 60% have essentially spent most of their fiscal transfers.”The top quintile of households has saved an average of $50,000 since the pandemic started, while for the second quintile averaged $9,000, the analysis found. For the rest of the population, their savings are currently at their pre-pandemic levels or, in some cases, lower.The personal savings rate reached a historic high of 33% in April and remains elevated at 13.4% in the fourth quarter of 2020, which would be the highest quarterly rate since 1975 if second and third quarters of 2020 are excluded.The savings rate for the bottom 60% of earners, though, is now at its pre-pandemic levels or lower, while it remains higher for high-income earners, according to Daco.And while lower-income households held a larger share of the savings in the spring months when the bulk of the $1,200 stimulus checks were disbursed and the extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits under the CARES Act was available, that money quickly disappeared.“Even though the fiscal transfers did lift the savings rate to 33% back in April, a lot of that was was fairly rapidly spent,” Daco said.
January Vehicles Sales increased to 16.63 Million SAAR - The BEA released their estimate of light vehicle sales for January this morning. The BEA estimates sales of 16.63 million SAAR in January 2021 (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate), up 2.5% from the December sales rate, and down 1.5% from January 2020. This was above the consensus estimate of 16.3 million SAAR.This graph shows light vehicle sales since 2006 from the BEA (blue) and the BEA's estimate for January (red).The impact of COVID-19 was significant, and April was the worst month.Since April, sales have increased, but are still down year-over-year,The second graph shows light vehicle sales since the BEA started keeping data in 1967.Note: dashed line is current estimated sales rate of 16.63 million SAAR.This was the highest sales rate since before the start of the pandemic, and a solid start for 2021 (although down year-over-year).
Trade Deficit Decreased to $66.6 Billion in December -- From the Department of Commerce reported: The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that the goods and services deficit was $66.6 billion in December, down $2.4 billion from $69.0 billion in November, revised.December exports were $190.0 billion, $6.2 billion more than November exports. December imports were $256.6 billion, $3.8 billion more than November imports.... For 2020, the goods and services deficit increased $101.9 billion, or 17.7 percent, from 2019. Exports decreased $396.4 billion or 15.7 percent. Imports decreased $294.5 billion or 9.5 percent. Both exports and imports increased in December. Exports are down 10.2% compared to December 2019; imports are unchanged compared to December 2019. Both imports and exports decreased sharply due to COVID-19, and have now bounced back (imports much more than exports), The second graph shows the U.S. trade deficit, with and without petroleum. The blue line is the total deficit, and the black line is the petroleum deficit, and the red line is the trade deficit ex-petroleum products. Note that the U.S. exported a slight net positive petroleum products in recent months. Oil imports averaged $38.30 per barrel in December, up from $35.68 per barrel in November, and down from 51.48 in December 2019. The trade deficit with China increased to $27.2 billion in December, from $24.83 billion in December 2019.
AAR: January Rail Carloads down 2.1% YoY, Intermodal Up 12.1% YoY -- From the Association of American Railroads (AAR) Rail Time Indicators. Graphs and excerpts reprinted with permission. U.S. rail volumes in January 2021 weren’t exemplary, but they were encouraging. Total carloads averaged 232,576 per week in January, the highest weekly average for any month in a year. Ten out of 20 carload categories had higher volumes in January 2021 than in January 2020. In January 2021, U.S. intermodal volume and carloads of chemicals were both higher than ever before (on a weekly average basis); carloads of grain were higher than in any month since October 2007 and the eleventh most for any month on record; and carloads for several other major carload categories, including primary metal products, lumber, paper, and iron and steel scrap, were higher than they’ve been since the pandemic began. Total carloads excluding coal were up 2.3% in January 2021 over January 2020, their second yearover-year increase in a row following 22 straight year-over-year monthly declines. This graph from the Rail Time Indicators report shows the six week average of U.S. Carloads in 2018, 2019 and 2020: U.S. railroads originated 930,303 total carloads in January 2021, down 2.1% (19,799 carloads) from January 2020. January 2021 was the 24th consecutive month with a year-over-year decline for total carloads, but 2.1% is the smallest percentage decline in 21 months. The second graph shows the six week average of U.S. intermodal in 2018, 2019 and 2020: (using intermodal or shipping containers):U.S. railroads originated 1.17 million intermodal containers and trailers in January 2021, an average of 293,305 per week — a new all-time record and up 12.1% (126,548 units) over January 2020. Note that rail traffic was weak prior to the pandemic, however intermodal has come back strong.
January Regional Fed Manufacturing Overview -- Five out of the twelve Federal Reserve Regional Districts currently publish monthly data on regional manufacturing: Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia. Regional manufacturing surveys are a measure of local economic health and are used as a representative for the larger national manufacturing health. They have been used as a signal for business uncertainty and economic activity as a whole. Manufacturing makes up 12% of the country's GDP. The other 6 Federal Reserve Districts do not publish manufacturing data. For these, the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book offers a short summary of each districts’ manufacturing health. The Chicago Fed published their Midwest Manufacturing Index from July 1996 through December of 2013. According to their website, "The Chicago Fed Midwest Manufacturing Index (CFMMI) is undergoing a process of data and methodology revision. Significant revisions in the history of the CFMMI are anticipated." Five out of the twelve Federal Reserve Regional Districts currently publish monthly data on regional manufacturing: Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia. The latest average of the five for January is 13.6, up from the previous month's 11.5. It is well below its all-time high of 25.1, set in May 2004.
ISM Manufacturing index Decreased to 58.7 in January --The ISM manufacturing index indicated expansion in January. The PMI was at 58.7% in January, down from 60.5% in December. The employment index was at 52.6%, up from 51.7% last month, and the new orders index was at 61.1%, down from 67.5%. From ISM: Manufacturing PMI® at 58.7%; January 2021 Manufacturing ISM® Report On Business: "The January Manufacturing PMI® registered 58.7 percent, down 1.8 percentage points from the seasonally adjusted December reading of 60.5 percent. This figure indicates expansion in the overall economy for the eighth month in a row after contraction in March, April, and May. The New Orders Index registered 61.1 percent, down 6.4 percentage points from the seasonally adjusted December reading of 67.5 percent. The Production Index registered 60.7 percent, a decrease of 4 percentage points compared to the seasonally adjusted December reading of 64.7 percent. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 59.7 percent, 0.6 percentage point above the December reading of 59.1 percent. The Employment Index registered 52.6 percent, 0.9 percentage point higher from the seasonally adjusted December reading of 51.7 percent. The Supplier Deliveries Index registered 68.2 percent, up 0.5 percentage point from the December figure of 67.7 percent. The Inventories Index registered 50.8 percent, 0.2 percentage point lower than the seasonally adjusted December reading of 51 percent. The Prices Index registered 82.1 percent, up 4.5 percentage points compared to the December reading of 77.6 percent. The New Export Orders Index registered 54.9 percent, a decrease of 2.6 percentage points compared to the December reading of 57.5 percent. The Imports Index registered 56.8 percent, a 2.2-percentage point increase from the December reading of 54.6 percent."This was below expectations. This suggests manufacturing expanded at a slower pace in January than in December.
Markit Manufacturing Hits Record High in January -- The January US Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 59.2, up 2.1 from the 57.1 final December figure. Here is an excerpt from Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit in their latest press release: “US manufacturing started 2021 on an encouragingly strong footing, with production and order books growing at the fastest rates for over six years. “Demand from both domestic and export customers picked up sharply in January, buoyed by several driving forces. Consumer demand has improved while businesses are investing in more equipment and restocking warehouses, preparing for better times ahead as vaccine roll outs allow life to increasingly return to normal over the course of 2021.“Manufacturers are encountering major supply problems, however, especially in relation to sourcing inputs from overseas due to a lack of shipping capacity. Lead times are lengthening to an extent not previously seen in the survey’s history, meaning costs are rising as firms struggle to source sufficient quantities of inputs to meet production needs. These higher costs are being passed on to customers in the form of higher prices, which rose in January at the fastest rate since 2008. These price pressures should ease assuming supply conditions start to improve soon, but could result in some near-term uplift to consumer goods price inflation.” [Press Release] Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012.
U.S. Manufacturing Growth Continued Early in 2021 – WSJ -- U.S. manufacturing continued to recover in January, a bright spot for the U.S. economy as services companies continue to struggle with the coronavirus pandemic. Two purchasing managers surveys on manufacturing activity released Monday pointed to continued growth, adding to evidence a pickup in demand for goods is helping U.S. factories. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index ticked lower in January, to 58.7 from 60.5 in December, but remained in growth mode. A reading above 50 indicates activity is expanding across the manufacturing sector, while below 50 signals contraction. While the pace of expansion slowed slightly last month, Tim Fiore, who oversees the ISM survey of factory purchasing and supply managers, said he is “feeling really bullish” about 2021, adding “the issue is how long it’s going to take to get the vaccine deployed” to ease strains in attracting and retaining labor at companies and facilities. Meanwhile, a final January IHS Markit manufacturing survey for the U.S. released Monday rose to 59.2, from 57.1 in December. That was the index’s highest reading since the series began in 2007, as output and new orders rose. “Manufacturing sector prospects for 2021 are upbeat, with solid consumer goods demand, inventory restocking, gradual business reopenings, and additional federal pandemic relief all set to keep activity on a firm footing,” said Oren Klachkin, an economist at Oxford Economics, in a note to clients. U.S. industrial production also increased solidly in December, the Federal Reserve reported last month, citing manufacturing as a driving factor. Globally, the manufacturing industry’s pace of expansion cooled slightly in several major economies in January as they continued to battle Covid-19 restrictions. January surveys of factories in Europe showed manufacturing in the eurozone remained in expansionary territory for the seventh consecutive month, although at a slower pace. The eurozone manufacturing purchasing managers index was 54.8 for January, down slightly on December’s 55.2, but still one of the highest figures seen over the past 2½ years, according to IHS Markit. U.K. manufacturing PMI was 54.1 in January, a three-month low.
GM Joins Nissan & Ford In Suspending Production Due To Semi Shortage - General Motors has announced it is the latest victim of the global semiconductor shortage in the auto industry. Mid-day on Wednesday the U.S. automaker announced that the shortage would "impact production in 2021", according toStreetInsider. The company said in a statement that "semiconductor supply for the global auto industry remains very fluid".It continued: "Our supply chain organization is working closely with our supply base to find solutions for our suppliers’ semiconductor requirements and to mitigate impacts on GM. Despite our mitigation efforts, the semiconductor shortage will impact GM production in 2021."The automaker said it is "currently assessing the overall impact, but our focus is to keep producing our most in-demand products – including full-size trucks and SUVs and Corvettes – for our customers. The company said the following GM assembly plants will take downtime on all shifts the week of Monday, Feb. 8:
- Fairfax (Kansas)
- CAMI (Ingersoll, Ontario)
- San Luis Potosi (Mexico)
"In addition, we will take downtime at our Bupyeong 2 assembly plant in Korea and operate at half capacity beginning the week of Feb. 8." the company announced. "Due to the fluidity around the availability of parts, our current plan is to update the plants each week. Our intent is to make up as much production lost at these plants as possible. Importantly, this issue will not impact our commitment to an all-electric future. We will provide further details on this matter when we report our 2020 earnings on Feb. 10." Recall, we wrote just days ago how the industry was "panicked" about the semi shortage. Major players like VW, Toyota and GM are still suffering from a shortage of chips that are becoming more common in everyday vehicles, we noted. The drain on the supply chain has come from a corresponding rise in the sales of gaming consoles, TVs and computers - mostly as a result of the pandemic. The chips are now being used in everything from vehicle entertainment centers to anti-lock brakes.
Ford F-150 production cut due to semiconductor chip shortage - Ford Motor is significantly cutting production of its highly profitable F-150 pickup trucks due to an ongoing semiconductor chip shortage plaguing the global automotive industry. The automaker said Thursday that its Dearborn Truck Plant in Michigan will drop to one shift from three for a week beginning Monday, while truck production at its Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri will drop to two shifts from three. Ford spokeswoman Kelli Felker said both plants are expected to return to three shifts the week of Feb. 15. "We are working closely with suppliers to address potential production constraints tied to the global semiconductor shortage and working to prioritize key vehicle lines for production, making the most of our semiconductor allocation," she said in an emailed statement. Shares of Ford appeared to be unaffected by the cuts, trading up by about 3% during intraday trading late Thursday morning. The automaker is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter earnings and give guidance for 2021 after the market closes Thursday. Automakers and parts suppliers began warning of a semiconductor shortage late last year after demand for vehicles rebounded stronger than expected following a two-month shutdown of production plants due to the coronavirus pandemic. Semiconductors are extremely important components of new vehicles for areas ranging from infotainment systems to more traditional parts such as power steering. They're also used in consumer electronics. Ford's confirmed plans come a day after General Motors said it would take down production next week at four assembly plants in Fairfax, Kansas; Ingersoll, Ontario, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. GM will also run a plant in South Korea at half capacity that week. Ford and other automakers — from Nissan Motor to Volkswagen — have previously cut vehicle production due to the chip shortage. Kumar Galhotra, Ford president of the Americas and international markets, described the chip shortage earlier this week as a "very dynamic situation." He said the company has been working with its suppliers to mitigate impact to its plants and resolve the issue as quickly as possible. "It's changing all the time, but we think we will be dealing with it for at least the first half of this year," he told CNBC. ‘
ISM Services Index Increased to 58.7% in January -- The December ISM Services index was at 58.7%, up from 57.7% last month. The employment index increased to 55.2%, from 48.7%. Note: Above 50 indicates expansion, below 50 contraction. From the Institute for Supply Management: Services PMI® at 58.7%; January 2021 Services ISM® Report On Business® "The Services PMI® registered 58.7 percent, 1 percentage point higher than the seasonally adjusted December reading of 57.7 percent. This reading is the highest since February 2019 (58.8 percent) and indicates the eighth straight month of growth for the services sector, which has expanded for all but two of the last 132 months. This was above expectations, and solid improvement for the employment index.
January Markit Services PMI: "Sharp upturn in business activity amid stronger client demand" The January US Services Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 58.7 percent, up 3.9 from the final December estimate of 54.8. The Investing.com consensus was for 57.4 percent.Here is the opening from the latest press release:"A strong start to the year for manufacturing was accompanied by a marked upturn in the service sector, driving business activity growth to the fastest rate for almost six years during January. The improving data set the scene for a strong first quarter, and a rise in business expectations for the year ahead bodes well for the recovery to gain traction as the year proceeds. Companies have become increasingly upbeat amid news of vaccine roll-outs and hopes of further stimulus.“The downside is that prices have risen sharply. Rising costs have fed through to higher prices charged for goods and services, which rose in January at a rate not seen since at least 2009. Inflation therefore looks likely to be pushed higher in the near-term. However, some of these price pressures reflect short -term supply constraints, which should ease in coming months as the recovery builds and more capacity comes online.” [Press Release]Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012.
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decreased to 779,000 -The DOL reported: In the week ending January 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 779,000, a decrease of 33,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised down by 35,000 from 847,000 to 812,000. The 4-week moving average was 848,250, a decrease of 1,250 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised down by 18,500 from 868,000 to 849,500.This does not include the 348,912 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that was down from 403,590 the previous week.The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased to 848,250. The previous week was revised down.The second graph shows seasonally adjust continued claims since 1967 (lags initial by one week). At the worst of the Great Recession, continued claims peaked at 6.635 million, but then steadily declined.Regular state continued claims decreased to 5,188,141 (SA) from 5,446,993 (SA) the previous week and will likely stay at a high level until the crisis abates. Note: There are an additional 7,217,713 receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) that decreased from 7,343,682 the previous week (there are questions about these numbers). This is a special program for business owners, self-employed, independent contractors or gig workers not receiving other unemployment insurance.
Unemployment claims topped 1.1 million last week: Congress must pass bold relief measures to keep crucial programs from expiring - EPI Blog - Another 1.1 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 779,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 349,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). The 1.1 million who applied for UI last week was a decrease of 88,000 from the prior week, but the four-week moving average of total initial claims ticked up by 51,000—back to where it was in mid-October.Last week was the 46th straight week total initial claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims—because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession—initial claims last week were still greater than the third-worst week of the Great Recession.) I should note that throughout this post I use seasonally adjusted data where I can, but for comparisons to the Great Recession I use not-seasonally-adjusted data, since the Department of Labor (DOL)’s improved seasonal adjustments aren’t available before the week ending August 29, 2020.Most states provide just 26 weeks of regular benefits, meaning many workers are exhausting their regular state UI benefits. In the most recent data (the week ending January 23), continuing claims for regular state benefits dropped by 193,000. After a worker exhausts regular state benefits, they can move onto Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is an additional 24 weeks of regular state UI (theDecember COVID-19 relief bill increased the number of weeks of PEUC eligibility by 11, from 13 to 24).However, in the most recent data available for PEUC, the week ending January 16th, PEUC claims dropped by 290,000. I expect that to rise again in coming weeks. Over 3.5 million people had exhausted the original 13 weeks of PEUC by the end of December (see column C43 in form ETA 5159 for PEUC here). These workers are eligible for the additional 11 weeks, but they need to recertify. PEUC numbers will continue to swell as this occurs.Extended Benefits (EB) is another program that workers in some states can get on after they’ve exhausted PEUC. EB has rose 376,000 between December 26th and January 16th. It appears that some workers who had exhausted the original 13 weeks of PEUC are getting on EB before they get their additional 11 weeks of PEUC. This is likely due to the delays getting PEUC fully operational again after the lapse that occurred while former President Trump delayed signing the December relief bill.Continuing claims for PUA dropped by 126,000 in the latest data, the week ending January 16th. I expect that to rise again in coming weeks. The December bill extended the total weeks of PUA eligibility by 11, from 39 to 50 weeks. As workers who exhausted PUA before the extensions were signed get back on PUA, we can expect the PUA numbers to swell further.
ADP: Private Employment increased 174,000 in January --- From ADP: Private sector employment increased by 174,000 jobs from December to January according to the January according to the December ADP National Employment Report®. ... The report, which is derived from ADP’s actual payroll data, measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month on a seasonally-adjusted basis. “The labor market continues its slow recovery amid COVID-19 headwinds,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Although job losses were previously concentrated among small and midsized businesses, we are now seeing signs of the prolonged impact of the pandemic on large companies as well.” This was well above the consensus forecast of 45,000 for this report. The BLS report will be released Friday, and the consensus is for 50 thousand non-farm payroll jobs added in January. Of course the ADP report has not been very useful in predicting the BLS report.
January Employment Report: 49 Thousand Jobs, 6.3% Unemployment Rate - From the BLS: The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 6.3 percent in January, while nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+49,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The labor market continued to reflect the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it. In January, notable job gains in professional and business services and in both public and private education were offset by losses in leisure and hospitality, in retail trade, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing. ... The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised down by 72,000, from +336,000 to +264,000, and the change for December was revised down by 87,000, from -140,000 to -227,000. With these revisions, employment in November and December combined was 159,000 lower than previously reported. The first graph shows the year-over-year change in total non-farm employment since 1968. In January, the year-over-year change was negative 9.603 million jobs.Total payrolls increased by 49 thousand in January. Private payrolls increased by 6 thousand. Payrolls for November and December were revised down 159 thousand, combined.The second graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms. The current employment recession is by far the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms, and is still worse than the worst of the "Great Recession".The third graph shows the employment population ratio and the participation rate. The Labor Force Participation Rate decreased to 61.4% in January. This is the percentage of the working age population in the labor force.The Employment-Population ratio increased to 57.5% (black line).The fourth graph shows the unemployment rate.The unemployment rate decreased in January to 6.3%.This was below consensus expectations, and November and December were revised down by 159,000 combined. On the annual benchmark revision: The total nonfarm employment level for March 2020 was revised downward by 250,000(on a not seasonally adjusted basis, -121,000 or -0.1 percent). Not seasonally adjusted, the absolute average benchmark revision over the past 10 years is 0.2 percent. The over-the-year change in total nonfarm employment for March 2020 was revised from +808,000 to +577,000 (seasonally adjusted).
January 2021 jobs report: a strong divergence between very weak job gains, but a big drop in unemployment; but the only critical number is the doses of vaccine administered --For the past several weeks, based on the increase in initial jobless claims, I have warned that the December employment report might have a negative number, or at very least a very weak positive. Once again this was an accurate forecast. There was a strong divergence between the household and establishment reports this month. And to cut to the chase, the only real critical number is the amount of vaccinations administered. HEADLINES:
- 49,000 million jobs added, only 5,000 of which were in the private sector and 43,000 in government. The alternate, and more volatile measure in the household report indicated a gain of 201,000 jobs, which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below.
- U3 unemployment rate declined 0.4% at 6.3%, compared with the January 2020 low of 3.5%.
- U6 underemployment rate fell -0.6% to 11.1%, compared with the January 2020 low of 6.9%.
- Those on temporary layoff decreased 293,000 to 2,746,000.
- Permanent job losers increased by 133,000 to 3,503,000.
- November was revised downward by 72,000. December was also revised downward by 87,000 respectively, for a net loss of 159,000 jobs compared with previous reports.
- the average manufacturing workweek increased to 40.4 hours. This is one of the 10 components of the LEI.
- Manufacturing jobs declined by 10,000. Manufacturing has still lost -592,000 jobs in the past 11 months, or 5% of the total. About 60% of the total loss of 10.6% has been regained.
- Construction jobs decreased by 3,000. Even so, in the past 11 months -256,000 construction jobs have been lost, 3% of the total. About 80% of the worst loss of 15.2% loss has been regained.
- Residential construction jobs, which are even more leading, *rose* by 3,600. Since February there have now been actual job *gains,* and employment in this sector is at another new 10 year+ high.
- temporary jobs increased by 80,900. Since February, there have still been 241,100 jobs lost, or 8% of all temporary help jobs.
- the number of people unemployed for 5 weeks or less declined by -626,000 to 2.278 million, compared with April’s total of 14.283 million.
- Professional and business employment rose by 97,000, which is still 825,000, or about 4% below its February peak.
- Average Hourly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose $0.03 from $25.15 to $25.18, which is a 5.4% YoY gain. This is a level not seen in the past 10 years outside of the first months of this pandemic. Relative gains in this measure reflect that job losses during the pandemic have occurred primarily among lower wage earners.
- the index of aggregate hours worked for non-managerial workers rose by 0.5%. In the past 11 months combined this has nevertheless fallen by about 5.5%.
- the index of aggregate payrolls for non-managerial workers rose by 0.6%. In the past 11 months combined this has nevertheless fallen by about 2.5%. Still, over 90% of the loss from February to April has been made back up.
- Full time jobs gained 301,000 in the household report.
- Part time jobs declined 456,000 in the household report.
- The number of job holders who were part time for economic reasons decreased by 216,000 to 4.567 million. This is still an increase since February of 1,556,000.
- UPDATE: The pandemic has had a singular effect on food and drink establishments. Since October, there have been 446,400 jobs lost. “Only” 19,400 of those were in January - so that is at least “less awful.”
SUMMARY: Once again the household and establishment reports strongly diverged. The household report, from which unemployment rates and the number of full time vs. part time workers are taken, showed strong gains, driven by both increased employment and a slight decrease in the number of people in the jobs market. The establishment report, by contrast, showed weak gains or outright losses, depending on the employment sector. What stands out is the huge gains in temporary employment, which is a leading sector, but also strongly suggests that employers are not willing to make permanent commitments in this volatile environment. But for the vaccines, the December and January reports together would strongly suggest that a “double dip” recession has started, due to the tremendous surge in new COVID cases during the past 3 months. I suspect, however, that competent policy from the Biden Administration and the continuing improvement I the number of vaccines administered daily, plus the onset of warmer weather in spring, will end these week numbers in a month or two.
The economy Trump handed off to President Biden: 25.5 million workers—15.0% of the workforce—hit by the coronavirus crisis in January -- EPI Blog –The unemployment rate rate was 6.3% in January—matching the maximum unemployment rate of the early 2000s downturn—and the official number of unemployed workers was 10.1 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). However, these official numbers are a vast undercount of the number of workers being harmed by the weak labor market. In fact, 25.5 million workers—15.0% of the workforce—are either unemployed, otherwise out of work due to the pandemic, or employed but experiencing a drop in hours and pay. Here are the missing factors:
- Some workers are being misclassified as “employed, not at work” instead of unemployed. BLS has discussed at length that there have been many workers who have been misclassified as “employed, not at work” during this pandemic who should be classified as “temporarily unemployed.” In January, there were 0.8 million such workers. (Wonky aside: Some of these workers may not have had the option of being classified as “temporarily unemployed,” meaning they weren’t technically misclassified, but all of them were out at work because of the virus.) Accounting for these workers, the unemployment rate would be 6.9%.
- The number of officially unemployed is undercounted, even in normal times (and is probably worse now). Rigorous research that addresses issues like the fact that survey nonresponse is nonrandom—and that missing individuals are more likely than the general population to be unemployed—finds that the official unemployment rate was understating the unemployment rate by 1.5 percentage points at the start of 2020. Accounting for that undercount yields 2.7 million unemployed workers who are misclassified as not in the labor force. This is conservative, given that there is good evidence that this problem is likely substantially worse in the coronavirus era. (Another wonky aside: this research also finds that the official labor force participation rate was understating labor force participation by 1.9 percentage points at the start of 2020, or by 4.8 million workers.)
- Some workers who are out of work as a result of the virus are being counted as having dropped out of the labor force instead of as unemployed. In order for a person without a job to be counted as unemployed, they must be available to work and actively seeking work. However, during the COVID-19 crisis, many people who are out of work as a result of the crisis do not meet those criteria. For example, many workers are out of work because of care responsibilities as a result of COVID-19 (e.g., a young child’s school being remote, or an elderly parent’s day care closing), or because potentially being exposed to the virus at work is not safe for them. These workers would not be counted as officially unemployed but are nevertheless out of work because of the coronavirus shock. To calculate how many there are, I estimate what the labor force level would be if the labor force participation rate had not dropped since February 2020—the month before the pandemic hit the U.S. labor market—by multiplying the February 2020 labor force participation rate by the January 2021 population level. I then subtract this “counterfactual” labor force from the actual labor force. This yields an additional 5.1 million workers out of the labor force as a result of the crisis.
- Millions of employed workers have seen a drop in hours and pay because of the pandemic. BLS reports that 6.8 million people who were working in January had been unable to work at some point in the last four weeks because their employer closed or lost business due to the coronavirus pandemic, and they did not receive pay for the hours they didn’t work. These workers have clearly been directly harmed by the coronavirus downturn.
Adding up all but the last quantity above, that is 10.1 million + 0.8 million + 2.7 million + 5.1 million = 18.7 million workers who are either unemployed or otherwise out of the labor force as a result of the virus. Accounting for these workers, the unemployment rate would be 11.0%. Also adding in the 6.8 million who are employed but have seen a drop in hours and pay because of the pandemic brings the number of workers directly harmed in January by the coronavirus downturn to 25.5 million. That is 15.0% of the workforce.
Comments on January Employment Report - The headline jobs number in the January employment report was below expectations, and employment for the previous two months was revised down significantly. In addition, the annual benchmark revision showed 250 thousand fewer jobs in March 2020 than previously reported. Leisure and hospitality lost 61 thousand jobs in January due to the pandemic. In March and April of 2020, leisure and hospitality lost 8.2 million jobs, and then gained about 60% of those jobs back. However, leisure and hospitality lost jobs in December and January, and is now down 3.9 million jobs since February 2020. Earlier: January Employment Report: 49 Thousand Jobs, 6.3% Unemployment Rate In January, the year-over-year employment change was minus 9.603 million jobs.This graph shows permanent job losers as a percent of the pre-recession peak in employment through the December report. This data is only available back to 1994, so there is only data for three recessions.In January, the number of permanent job losers increased to 3.503 million from 3.370 million in December. 
Since the overall participation rate has declined due to cyclical (recession) and demographic (aging population, younger people staying in school) reasons, here is the employment-population ratio for the key working age group: 25 to 54 years old.The prime working age will be key in the eventual recovery.The 25 to 54 participation rate increased in January to 81.1% from 81.0% in December, and the 25 to 54 employment population ratio increased to 76.4% from 76.3% in December. From the BLS report: "The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons, at 6.0 million, changed little in January. This measure is 1.6 million higher than the February level. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs."The number of persons working part time for economic reasons decreased in January to 5.954 million from 6.170 million in December. These workers are included in the alternate measure of labor underutilization (U-6) that decreased to 11.1% in December. This is down from the record high in April 22.9% for this measure since 1994.
This graph shows the number of workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more.According to the BLS, there are 4.023 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks and still want a job.This does not include all the people that left the labor force. This will be a key measure to follow during the recovery.Summary: The headline monthly jobs number was below expectations, and the previous two months were revised down 159,000 combined. The headline unemployment rate was declined to 6.3%. This report was worse than it appears. The not-seasonally-adjusted decline in employment was at the usual levels for January - even though employment was already depressed (we'd expect fewer seasonal layoffs than normal). Also, the weather appeared mild in January (the SF Fed will provide weather adjusted employment soon). Overall, this was another disappointing report.
American Airlines Warns It Will Cut Another 13,000 Jobs As It Burns Through Latest Bailout In Just One Month - If you thought that in exchange for the billions in taxpayer funds that Congress gave to the largest US commercial airlines, these same companies would put layoffs on hold for at least a few months, you'd be wrong, because in a letter from American Airliens CEO Doug Parker, the largest US carrier warned that starting this Friday, the company which has now received two rounds of bailouts, will begin issuing aptly titled "Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification" (WARN) notices covering approximately 13,000 team members. As a reminder, WARN notices may be required by law in advance of potential furloughs in certain locations, and while American is quick to note that "these notices do not necessarily equate to furloughs" the reality is that another 13,000 American airlines are about the be let off. Why the sudden reversal from the company which in December was so giddy about the bright future, it had to wear shades? Because as it lays out in the letter "we are nearly five weeks into 2021, and unfortunately, we find ourselves in a situation similar to much of 2020. As we closed out last year with the successful extension of the Payroll Support Program (PSP), we fully believed that we would be looking at a summer schedule where we’d fly all of our airplanes and need the full strength of our team. Regrettably, that is no longer the case. The vaccine is not being distributed as quickly as any of us believed, and new restrictions on international travel that require customers to have a negative COVID-19 test have dampened demand." Translation: "we need another few billion in PPP aid, because we already burned through the money we received just two months ago."
Kroger grocery chain closes Southern California stores due to new “hero pay” laws leading to worker protests -About 20 grocery store workers rallied in Long Beach, California recently to protest the closure of two Kroger supermarkets. Management at the supermarket chain announced that, in response to a $4-an-hour pay raise to all supermarket employees, it would close those two markets in mid-April and lay off and/or transfer the 200 workers employed at both stores. At the rally, workers carried homemade signs denouncing corporate greed, demanding hazard pay and calling on all workers to speak out. Long Beach is an industrial port and logistics city in Los Angeles County. As of last weekend, the city had reported 48,824 cases and 698 deaths from the coronavirus. It lies directly southwest of the city of Los Angeles, which for several weeks has been the worldwide epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic with more than 17,000 deaths and more than one million positive cases as of this writing. The Long Beach City Council mandated the $4-an-hour “hero pay” wage supplement two weeks ago, in response to the pandemic. The order will last 120 days. Similar ordinances are being proposed in other California cities. The LA City Council is discussing a $5-an-hour hazard pay as are other Los Angeles suburbs. Last week, the board of supervisors in Santa Clara County also voted to draft a $5-per-hour measure. Similar measures are being considered in San José and the San Francisco Bay Area. The Long Beach wage supplement applies to supermarkets and all grocery stores with at least 300 employees nationally or more than 15 employees at each store. Kroger management denounced the Long Beach rule, charging the city with interfering in the wage-bargaining process, and for treating other large retailers unequally. Long Beach exempted retail giants Target and Walmart from the rule, even though both those chains sell groceries. A company statement declared that both stores had been “long-struggling.” A company spokesperson indicated that underperforming stores in other cities would also close if forced to pay the extra amount.
U.S. chicken industry accused of conspiring to keep immigrant wages down --Companies producing more than 90% of America’s chicken have conspired to depress wages for a largely immigrant workforce in some of the nation’s most dangerous jobs, according to a lawsuit.The case filed last week is mostly based on interviews with former employees, and it alleges that a conspiracy among 18 companies, their subsidiaries and affiliates and two consulting firms continues today. It was filed on behalf of three former workers but seeks class-action status for hundreds of thousands, many with limited language skills and few other prospects for employment.Since 2009, leaders of the firms’ human resources and compensation departments have held annual secret meetings at a Destin, Fla., hotel to discuss pay and benefits for line and maintenance workers at about 200 plants, according to the complaint in federal court in Baltimore. Using consulting agencies as intermediaries, the suit says, they share detailed wage information. It says plant managers also cooperate, for example, by calling each other when one announces an expansion to find out what new positions will pay. Chicken producers aren’t new to being on the receiving end of litigation. Three years ago, a class-action lawsuit filed by Maplevale Farm, a food distributor, accused them of price fixing enabled by the Indiana-based data company Agri Stats Inc. Lawsuits from consumers, distributors, grocery chains and food companies followed, and this summer the Justice Department intervened. It asked the court to halt proceedings while it pursued its own criminal investigation.
Amazon will pay $61.7 million to settle claims it withheld tips from delivery workers - Amazon will pay $61.7 million to settle allegations by the Federal Trade Commission that it failed to pay Flex delivery drivers the full amount of tips received from customers. The commission voted 4-0 in favor of the settlement, which was announced Tuesday. In the complaint, the FTC alleges that Amazon in 2016 shifted from paying drivers the promised rate of $18 to $25 per hour, plus tips, to paying drivers a lower hourly rate. Amazon “intentionally failed” to notify drivers of this change and used the tips to make up the difference between the promised rate and the new lower hourly rate, according to the FTC. “Rather than passing along 100% of customers’ tips to drivers, as it had promised to do, Amazon used the money itself,” said Daniel Kaufman, acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. “Our action today returns to drivers the tens of millions of dollars in tips that Amazon misappropriated, and requires Amazon to get drivers’ permission before changing its treatment of tips in the future.”
The Super Bowl super-spreader and holding a mirror up to American society -- With the death toll in the COVID-19 pandemic approaching half a million in the US, the holding of the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl championship game this Sunday between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs and its manufactured “festive” atmosphere are grotesquely and staggeringly inappropriate. One would be hard pressed to exaggerate the callousness of the organizers of this event, with its attendant inanities and pre-packaged “Super Bowl Experience.” The NFL website suggests, “While things will look a little different this year, we’re committed to delivering the ultimate fan experience in the safest way possible.” People wait in line for an exhibit at the NFL Experience, Feb. 4, 2021, in Tampa, Florida [Credit: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel] The pretense that things are merely “a little different,” along with the apparent hope that the population will forget the country is in the midst of social tragedy without precedent, tells one more about the character of the NFL owners and corporate America in general than anything else. By any rational standard that takes public health into account, the game should not be held at all. Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, which ordinarily seats 65,000 spectators, will still have 25,000 people in the stands. The crowd Sunday will include some 7,500 vaccinated health care workers provided free tickets by the NFL. The tickets are intended as a thank you gift. The best way by far to reward such workers would be to cancel the unnecessary and hazardous event. Stephen Kissler, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, told CNBC, “My biggest concern for when COVID-19 might spread at the stadium is not necessarily when people are sitting in their seats... It’s actually when they are mixing in other parts of the stadium.” Not only are the 25,000 fans in danger of contracting a lethal virus, along with the players, coaches, staff and stadium employees, and all those with whom they come into contact during their travels, but the event will spawn thousands of parties across the country (and, indeed, internationally) that will also no doubt lead to further illness and misery. This has been the outcome of every major holiday or special event that has occurred over the course of the pandemic so far.
Unpaid Energy Bills Bring Calls for Utility Relief - When the pandemic hit in March, as millions lost jobs and struggled to pay their bills, 34 states ordered mandatory moratoriums on utility shutoffs — measures that were all more critical as families were asked to stay home. The lockdowns translated into higher utility bills: One economist estimated that residential electricity use spiked 10% on average between April and July 2020, leading to households spending nearly $6 billion on extra usage. Another home energy monitoring company reported that April demand increased 22% from 2019.Yet despite the need never dissipating, most states eventually lifted their utility shutoff moratoriums; by the end of October, just 16 states and Washington, D.C., had active moratoriums in place, covering 40 percent of the U.S. population, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association. Other states regularly halt utility shutoffs in winter, or when the temperature reaches a particularly cold level. NEADA estimates that 13 states are now relying primarily on these annual seasonal respites. Even in households that still have their heat on and water running, millions of customers are racking up significant debts as unpaid bills mount. And advocates worry that shutoffs, like evictions, are just being kicked down the road. A new economics working paper from Duke University released last week underscored the public health dimension of their concerns: Researchers estimated that, had Congress implemented a nationwide moratorium on utility shutoffs between March and November, Covid-19 infections could have been reduced by 8.7%, and Covid-19 related-deaths by almost 15%. The patchwork of shutoff moratoriums that did exist during that time, the economists found, reduced infections by nearly 4%, and mortality rates by 7.4% by making it easier for people to shelter at home. Without water or electricity, households can be forced to stay with relatives or other families, exacerbating crowding and disease transmission. “Ensuring that people have access to housing and essential services for water and electricity within their housing is necessary in any adequate government response to the housing precarity created by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the researchers wrote.
Epidemic of Despair Could Haunt America Long After COVID - - Long before the virus, many Americans were sinking under waves of despair. Without transformative policies, that despair, with the added fuel of the pandemic, may turn into a tsunami. The aftermath could leave communities under rubble for decades to come.Just in the 21st century, Americans have been threatened by everything from foreign and domestic terrorism to an increasingly aggressive and militarized police. Unable to count on jobs, adequate safety nets, or health care, they have watched the affluent make a killing on Wall Street. They have been spoken down to by politicians and the media, sensing that unless they are rich, the political system will ignore their voices. As research has shown time and time again, they were right. Accused of being bitterly divided, when Americans agreed on something, like a single national program to provide health care coverage run by the government, their preferences were dismissed by their representatives (including the new president) as radical or impossible. Things that make life worthwhile and bearable, like an affordable education or a dignified retirement, grew increasingly out of reach. The middle class was turning into a relic. The people watched America devolve into what looked like a third-world country, with two separate economies in which experiences, prospects and even life spans diverged. Life expectancy in America dipped for the first time in decades in 2015. Experts hoped it was a fluke. It wasn’t. It happened again in 2016. And again in 2017. Not since the Spanish flu had such a decline lasted so long. Many suspected economic inequality was a driving factor, noting that while poor and middle-class Americans were dying younger, the richest were not only living it up, but living longer. A recent Danish study shows that from 2001 to 2014, the life expectancies of wealthy Americans grew 140% faster than those in low-income groups – an outlier among nations.
Milwaukee Cops Left 4-Year-Old in Freezing Car Overnight - Milwaukee police officers left a 4-year-old girl in an impounded car overnight after arresting the girl's mother on suspicion of drunk driving. On Tuesday, lawyers for the family filed a lawsuit against the city and the police sergeant of Milwaukee, as well as five officers involved in the incident, which occurred in November 2018.Police had responded to a call about a minivan pulled over on the side of the road and wound up taking the girl's mom into custody. The girl, identified by the initials F.K., was sleeping in the back of the van—and her aunt told police this, the suit against the city claims. But police ordered the aunt (who had also been in the vehicle) to leave the car and did not bother checking for the child, according to the girl's lawyers. Instead, the officers—who did not have their body cameras turned on—let the vehicle be towed to a nearby impound lot, on a night where the temperature dropped below freezing. The girl was discovered the next day when someone working in a nearby tow lot heard her "very upset and crying," said Jeff Polenske, a city engineer, at a press conference about the incident. She was taken to a local hospital emergency room. The girl's mother was criminally prosecuted for child neglect and driving under the influence and sentenced to 10 months in prison. She was also ordered to have no contact with her children. Local news reports at the time portrayed the girl's abandonment in the vehicle overnight as the mother's fault.
Rochester Police officers handcuff and pepper spray 9-year-old girl while responding to a call of 'family trouble' - A 9-year-old girl was handcuffed and pepper sprayed by police officers responding to a report of "family trouble" in Rochester, New York, on Wednesday, according to Rochester Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson.Two body camera videos of the incident released by the police department on Sunday show officers restraining the child, putting her in handcuffs and attempting to get her inside the back of a police vehicle as she is heard repeatedly crying and calling for her father. Officers are then seen pepper spraying the girl after she doesn't follow commands to put her feet inside the car.The girl was transported to Rochester General Hospital where she was later released, Anderson said. Police say they were responding to a report of 'family trouble'.Officers were called to a home on the afternoon of January 29 for a report of "family trouble," Anderson said Sunday.The officers were told the girl was "suicidal" and that she had "indicated that she wanted to kill herself and she wanted to kill her mom," the deputy chief explained.The girl tried to flee from officers, Anderson said, and video released by police shows an officer chase her and attempt to provide assistance.Afterward, he said, her mother arrived and the body camera video shows the two arguing.Anderson said officers then decided to remove the child from the situation and transport her to an area hospital. But the girl refused to get inside a police vehicle, "thrashed around," and kicked an officer, knocking his body camera around, according to Anderson. The body camera video shows the girl repeatedly crying out for her father, while being physically restrained by officers. She is seen screaming before her head is held down against the snow-covered ground and is handcuffed. A struggle ensues between the girl and officers as they attempt to get her inside the back of a police vehicle.At one point, one officer says, "You're acting like a child," to which the girl can be heard responding, "I am a child!" Later in the video, a female officer is seen talking to the girl, eventually saying, "This is your last chance, otherwise pepper spray's going in your eyeballs." About a minute later, another officer can be heard saying, "Just spray her at this point." The female officer is seen shaking a can that appears to be pepper spray and the child continues to scream.
Rochester, New York police pepper sprayed handcuffed nine-year-old girl -- Officers from the Rochester, New York police department were involved in a brutal assault which was recorded on their body cameras on Friday of last week. The victim of the attack was a nine-year-old African American girl who was handcuffed and subsequently pepper sprayed by police. The mother of the child had called the police because of a domestic disturbance in the home, which precipitated the nine-year-old leaving the house. The footage shows the police capturing and bringing the girl back to the police car. After a scuffle between the mother, police and child, another officer arrived to manhandle the child by pushing her down into the snow next to the patrol car. The officers that were on top of her then flipped her over while still on the ground and handcuffed her. There were several police cars dispatched to the scene, and none of the officers that were seen in the video were wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. After being forcefully thrown into the back of a police car and tortured by two officers, and only seconds before officers attacked her with pepper spray as she called out for her father, in the body cam footage one officer says, “You’re acting like a child.” She responded, “I am a child.” The use of pepper spray on minors could have long lasting negative effects according to a New York University Langone Health pediatrician Purvi S. Parikh who spoke with North Carolina Health News in November, “Any chemicals in your eyes, nose or lungs isn’t good, but it’s especially worrisome for kids because their organs are still developing. It has the potential of causing long-term effects.” “Had they had to go and push further, and use more force, there’s a good chance she could have been hurt worse,” Rochester Police Locust Club president Michael Mazzeo noted, declaring that the police would have been justified in meting out an even more brutal beating. The union is named after the species of tree from which their truncheons were produced.
Democrats reintroduce bill aimed at curbing school discrimination - House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Robert Scott (D-Va.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation on Tuesday aimed at holding schools accountable for discrimination.The Equity and Inclusion Enforcement Act would allow families to bring disparate impact claims against schools under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.The House passed the bill by a 232-188 vote in September, though it has a better chance of becoming law now that Democrats have also captured the White House and the Senate, where Republicans may seek to filibuster it. It would also require schools to designate a person to serve as their Title VI monitor, who would investigate any complaints of discrimination based on race, color or origin.The legislation would also require the secretary of Education to appoint an assistant secretary to advise the department on matters relating to equity and inclusion consistent with Title VI. In the 2001 Supreme Court case Alexander v. Sandoval, the court ruled 5-4 that the federal government, but not private citizens, can bring disparate impact claims under Title VI against schools.
Betsy DeVos Is Gone, But Her Education Agenda Is Rolling Out Across the Country - Supporters of public education and school teachers were relieved to see Betsy DeVos leave her job as head of the Department of Education, knowing full well the education policies she and former President Trump supported would go nowhere in a President Biden administration. But they should remain incensed over how her efforts to privatize public schools are being rolled out in state legislatures across the country. In states as politically diverse as Washington, Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, and New Hampshire, state legislators are introducing bills to increase the number of charter schools and create new school voucher programs or greatly expand current ones. According to the Educational Freedom Institute (EFI), a think tank that advocates for vouchers, charter schools, and other forms of “school choice,” there are at least 14 states actively considering legislation to pour greater sums of taxpayer dollars intended for public education into privately operated schools. Many of the bills have been introduced since the November 2020 elections, which ousted Trump and DeVos but resulted in big gains for Republicans down-ticket. These proposals to privatize public schools are taking on new forms that are less transparent, would be easier to pass through legislation, and take larger sums of money from public schools, which educate between 80 and 90 percent of American children. Further, the bills are surfacing when public education is highly vulnerable due to the pandemic and the ensuing economic havoc it is wreaking. In Florida, Missouri, Iowa, and Indiana, lawmakers are considering new bills that condense various “school choice” proposals into a “package” of legislation that can be passed with one vote rather than be subjected to public scrutiny one proposal at a time. In Florida, Republican legislators have proposed a bill, SB 48, that would expand the state’s school voucher programs, the Orlando Sentinel reports, and “spend more money on them.” Among the many proposals in the bill is to combine the state’s five voucher programs under a single taxpayer-funded source that the Miami Herald describes as “the holy grail in the school-choice movement.” Funding for Florida vouchers, often called “scholarships,” has come via a program that rewards tax credits to corporations and individuals who donate to a scholarship agency. Under the provisions in SB 48, funding would instead come from government-established educational savings accounts (ESAs) for families to use to pay for educational expenses. During her tenure as secretary, DeVos repeatedly included a proposal for a federal ESA program in her annual budget, and she advocated for the federal government to create an ESA program for military families. ESAs are popular with school choice proponents because they expand the range of education services that can be purchased with public funds, from private school tuition to tutoring, digital devices, and internet access.
Milwaukee school board approves plan to reopen schools - Milwaukee Public School Board unanimously approved a plan to begin the phased reopening of schools at their board meeting last Tuesday. The plan allows for 300 special needs students and their teachers to voluntarily return to in-person instruction on February 8. Further, it sets tentative return dates in mid-April for roughly 4,300 teachers and 75,000 students. Under the proposal, 23,000 Pre-Kindergarten through 2nd grade students will return on April 12, 32,000 3rd through 8th graders on April 19, and finally 19,000 high school students will return on April 26. A similar tiered reopening schedule was utilized in Chicago and other districts to divide educators and attempt to stifle opposition. In Chicago, Pre-Kindergarten and Special Education teachers were ordered back into the classroom on January 4th while the rest of the district is remote. The proposal is incredibly reckless and unnecessary, as it would have students back for little over a month before the school year ends. The board will meet again in March to determine whether to fully reopen in April or postpone based on the prevalence of COVID-19 and the state of vaccination of the population. The Wisconsin Department of Health will allow educators to begin receiving the vaccine on March 1. However, it could be weeks before the vaccine is available. The slow nationwide roll-out of vaccines is particularly sluggish in Wisconsin. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 0.8 percent of the state’s overall population has received the first dose of the vaccine. Last week Milwaukee received 2,200 doses, only 44 percent of its weekly request. Wisconsin is receiving 70,000 doses per week, approximately one-third of the amount needed to achieve the state’s goal of vaccinating 80 percent of the population by June. At the current rate, it will take roughly two and a half years to reach this goal. The Board’s decision comes after an outpouring of support to continue remote learning. In a district-wide survey last week, 39 percent of parents stated that they “would prefer to continue with virtual learning this school year for my child.” A petition against reopening received over 3,800 signatures.
Washington D.C. public schools begin in-person instruction as Virginia teachers resist return -Public school teachers in Washington D.C. have been ordered back to in-person classes this week after an arbitration court on Saturday ruled against a last-minute complaint filed by the teachers union. On Sunday, a major snowstorm forced the city to backtrack on its plans for Monday in-person classes. With consummate cynicism, Democratic Mayor Muriel E. Bowser resisted canceling classes until the last moment, even as the city declared a citywide emergency, which will last until Tuesday. Students and teachers have been told to be in class Tuesday. As many as 15,000 pre-kindergarten and elementary school students will begin returning to classes in the nation’s capital this week, which marks the beginning of the DC Public School (DCPS) system’s third quarter. In addition, 4,200 school staff workers are obligated to report in-person this week. While DCPS teachers have been cleared to receive doses of the vaccine, last week DC health director LaQuandra Nesbitt told reporters that the city’s vaccination program was operating at a “dismal” level. As of Saturday, only 1,330 DCPS teachers and 800 charter staff have received the vaccine, which could take weeks before providing full protection. Even if timely vaccinations of school staff were possible, children could still become infected and pass COVID-19 to their parents and each other. The Washington Teachers Union (WTU) filed a last-minute claim against the District last month alleging that the city administration had failed to honor conditions in the plan struck in December between the WTU and DCPS. The WTU stated that DCPS had not provided proof that it had repaired its ailing HVAC systems, or conducted satisfactory walkthroughs at each school. In its ruling, the city arbitration panel found that DCPS had failed to honor its agreement in certain instances, but it did not justify delaying the re-openings. The panel ruled that two schools, Calvin Coolidge High School and Watkins Elementary, would have to delay their openings to provide satisfactory walkthroughs for city staff before reopening.
Chicago educators call for a strike as district begins partial lockout -- The struggle of Chicago educators to prevent the deadly reopening of schools is intensifying each day and continues to be the focal point of the class struggle in the United States. In defying the dictates of the Chicago Democratic Party political machine headed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, teachers and school workers are giving voice to the strivings of millions of workers across the US and globally to implement measures to contain the pandemic and save lives. With schools slated to reopen Monday, Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Janice Jackson held a press conference Sunday evening in which they falsified science and threatened teachers to try to cow them into submission. Due to widespread opposition, including from parents and students, city and school officials acceded to teachers’ demands to restrict classes to remote-only on Monday but insisted they conduct online instruction from school buildings or face retribution. The 62,000 K-8 students district officials said would return to in-person classes Monday are being taught remotely today. The district has threatened to take punitive action against teachers who did not show up at buildings, locking them out of their Google Classroom accounts to prevent them from teaching remotely. Lightfoot and Jackson no doubt have a direct line of communication with the White House, which is acutely aware of the importance of reopening the third largest district in the US to help Biden implement his stated goal to reopen all schools across the country. The Democratic president is pursuing this policy at the worst stage of the pandemic, as hospitals are saturated and more dangerous variants of COVID-19 spread largely undetected throughout the country. After falsely claiming that CPS schools are “safe,” Lightfoot menacingly declared Sunday, “We expect all of our teachers who have not received a specific accommodation to come to school tomorrow. Those who do not report to work, and I hate to even go there, but we’re going to have to take action.”
Wall Street Journal demands Biden crack down on Chicago teachers - In a statement by its editorial board Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal angrily criticized President Joe Biden for being too soft on Chicago teachers, who are defying Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s order to resume in-person classes even as the pandemic continues to spread in the city of nearly 3 million residents. The newspaper complains that any vacillation by the Democratic president will only encourage educators across the country to resist his administration’s plans to reopen schools by mid-April. The angry broadside by the Journal, the mouthpiece of America’s financial oligarchy, exposes the feigned concern about the educational and emotional needs of children as the motivation for reopening schools as so much hot air. The newspaper is filled with anxiety because the reopening of schools is seen as critical to reopening the economy and putting parents back to work, where they can continue pumping out profits for Wall Street and the major corporations. While the Journal complains about the perceived timidness of the new administration, Biden, a capitalist politician with decades of experience, shares the same basic aim. He spelled this out in a news conference last week, during which he said opening schools would have the “added advantage” of “putting millions of people back to work. All those mothers and fathers that are home, taking care of their children rather than go to work, even when they can work. So, this is about generating economic growth overall as well.” The editorial board statement is headlined “Where’s Biden on Opening Schools?” and includes the underline “So far he’s buckling to the unions that won’t return to classrooms.” The newspaper, which was an early proponent of Trump’s “herd immunity” policy and opponent of any lockdowns, writes: “Perhaps you've heard, a few thousand times, that the Biden Administration will listen to the science. Well, the science says schools can safely reopen, but the White House is still listening, make that bowing, to the non-scientists who run the teachers unions.” The assertion that “science says schools can safely open,” has been repeated ad nauseam by the New York Times, Washington Post and virtually every other corporate media outlet. On Wednesday, Biden’s new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, told reporters, “There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated.” Only last week, as the Journal editorial board complained, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki “wobbled” about the results of the widely publicized study by CDC researchers, which was based on small rural Wisconsin districts where all children wore three-layered cloth masks and were supervised by researchers. The findings, Psaki admitted, were “not reflective of every school district and community in the country.”
Omaha Public Schools pushes for fully in-person learning despite widespread opposition - As COVID-19 test positivity rates in Omaha, Nebraska hit over 25 percent and deaths approach 600, Omaha Public Schools (OPS) Superintendent Dr. Cheryl Logan recently announced that schools will resume fully in-person learning this month. OPS is Nebraska’s largest school district, with over 50,000 students. A smaller school district adjacent to Omaha, Ralston Public Schools (RPS), will resume fully in-person schooling this month. These moves force educators and students into deadly working conditions coincides with the news that Nebraska’s teachers are not likely to get vaccines until as late as April, according to WOWT 6 News. OPS was remote at the beginning of the semester in August, but since September the district has been following a hybrid model. Groups of students come to school based on their last names, with Wednesday being an alternating day for the two halves of the alphabet. The model is not based on numbers of students, so if the first or second half have an especially large number of students, this is not taken into consideration. The district began its second semester virtually and went back to this hybrid model on January 19. Within the first two weeks of this semester, the dashboard of COVID-19 cases on the OPS website reported 38 staff and 60 students with active cases, and 110 staff and 354 students in quarantine. This only accounts for the cases that get reported and documented and is likely a significant undercount. In the 2020 fall semester, COVID-19 outbreaks were severe enough to temporarily shut down multiple schools. The Omaha World Herald reported that at least three of OPS’ schools had to close due to major outbreaks. As a district, OPS serves some of the poorest and most vulnerable students in the city, with 75 percent receiving free or reduced lunch. RPS followed a similar hybrid model, but the Omaha World Herald reports that Superintendent Mark Adler wrote to parents that the district “decided to return to full classroom learning for several reasons, among them to improve upon student academic performance and growth.” The reopening of Omaha and Ralston schools has been pushed forward despite enormous opposition and protests from students and teachers since last summer, including some who put together an open letter and a petition clearly stating the dangers posed. The petition by students and teachers has over 3,400 signatures. In the open letter, which has been signed by hundreds of students and educators, they note the long-term damage of COVID-19 and concerns for educators’ and students’ safety. One of the student signatories, senior Micah Gilbert, states, “I’ve thought about the school districts’ plans to reopen school and what the results may be. There’s a simple fact that I don’t really think I had internalized until today: Teachers will die.” One teacher says in the letter, “I miss my kids. I miss my classroom. I miss my colleagues. But going back to school puts my kids, my colleagues, and myself at risk. I am immunocompromised, and I’m scared I’m going to die. In preparation for my return to school, I have filled out a Living Will as well as a Medical Power of Attorney. These things should not be on my ‘Back to School’ list… We are teachers, not martyrs.”
CDC director: Vaccinating teachers 'not a prerequisite' for safe school reopening - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky emphasized Wednesday that vaccinating teachers is not required for safely reopening schools, citing data from her agency to say it is possible to return to in-person classes as long as other precautions are taken. “Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools,” Walensky said during a press briefing. She added that while a CDC advisory committee has put teachers in the “1B” category for getting vaccines — the second priority group for vaccination — “I also want to be clear that there is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that ... safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely.” The comments come as a fierce debate plays out over returning students to in-person learning. Some teachers unions are calling for teachers to be vaccinated before they return to school. Republicans have seized on the issue to argue the Biden administration is not following the science, and is instead caving to their political allies, by not urging an immediate return to in-person classes. “Apparently Big Labor’s talking points have already displaced Dr. Fauci as the White House’s go-to source,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said on the Senate floor Wednesday. The White House argues that more funding is needed to allow schools to safely reopen. “President Biden has been very clear that he wants schools to reopen, and actually to stay open, and that means that every school has the equipment and the resources to open safely,” Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, added after Walensky’s comments during the press briefing. “Congress has to do its part to make sure that we can safely reopen schools and keep them open,” he added, calling for Congress to pass Biden’s coronavirus response plan, which includes an additional $170 billion for items like testing in schools, better ventilation and allowing for smaller class sizes. Republicans point out Congress already passed $82 billion for schools in the package approved in December. The CDC said in an article last week there is “little evidence” of widespread coronavirus transmission in schools if proper precautions like universal masking, spreading students out and ensuring proper ventilation are taken.
Opposition mounts to San Francisco school board approval of racialist renaming of schools - The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) board of education voted last Tuesday to approve the renaming of 44 schools in the district on the basis of racialist politics. The list of school names to be removed includes monumental revolutionary figures such as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The renaming of schools on the basis of racialist politics and the falsification of history must be rejected as an attack on historical truth and the immensely progressive and democratic legacy of the Founding Fathers and Lincoln, and the world revolutionary significance of the American Revolution and the Civil War. The former gave the world the Declaration of Independence, which declared that “all men are created equal,” and the latter put an end to slavery in the American South. On the basis of making skin color the measure of all things, the SFUSD denigrates truly progressive historical figures by removing their names while continuing to promote political stooges of the ruling class and wealthy business people by keeping their names on schools in the district. The school sites on the list for removal will have less than three months to provide input on potential new names, and the board-appointed SFUSD School Names Advisory Committee will present to the school board a list of 44 new names for approval in April. Last Tuesday’s 6–1 vote is the outcome of a 2018 resolution that called for a formal process to rename schools named after historical figures that district officials and the advisory committee deemed to have “significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” The contributions to human progress by Lincoln and the Founding Fathers are presented as meaningless by district officials, and these figures are ripped from their historical contexts and slandered as garden variety racists. Meanwhile, capitalists responsible for the exploitation of workers who fall in line with the committee’s racialist politics—such as Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini and Willie L. Brown, the first African-American mayor of San Francisco and political patron of Vice President Kamala Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom—will continue to be honored within the district. When, at a public online meeting last August, advisory committee chairman Jeremiah Jeffries listed Abraham Lincoln High School, committee members shouted, “Yes!” They then burst into laughter as Jeffries typed “yes” next to Lincoln’s name and moved on to the next. The entire “discussion” lasted five seconds. The public is expected to review the committee’s “research” on a Google spreadsheet, which, in the case of Lincoln, argues that he is responsible for “discriminatory and damaging policies, like placing Indians on reservations” and “the Dakota 38+2, largest mass hanging in US history.” As the WSWS explained in its essay on Lincol n and the Dakota 38, this tragic event was also the largest ever act of executive clemency, in which Lincoln saved the lives of 265 Dakota men.
Two major teachers' unions call on GOP leadership to remove Greene from Education Committee - The two largest teachers’ unions in the U.S. released a joint statement on Tuesday calling for controversial GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) to be removed from the House Education Committee. The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) released a letter addressed to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) imploring him to remove Greene from the Education Committee, saying she lacked the “judgment, empathy or wisdom” to have responsibility over learning environments. “On behalf of the nation’s two leading teachers’ organizations, representing more than 4 million educators nationwide, we request that you immediately rescind the appointment of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to serve on the House Committee on Education and Labor,” the statement reads. “Conspiracy theories do not belong in our schools. Hate, racism and anti-Semitism do not belong in our schools. Bullying and harassment do not belong in our schools,” the letter continues. “Greene has trafficked in all of these heinous activities. She has therefore disqualified herself from serving on the committee that plays a crucial role in the teaching and learning of America’s children and in ensuring their safe learning environments.” The letter made note of a video that surfaced last week showing Greene harassing David Hogg, survivor of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that killed 17 people. Hogg has since become a prominent gun control activist. Greene has previously referred to the Stoneman Douglas shooting as a “false flag." “It is one thing to disagree with the advocacy that Parkland, Fla., students chose to engage in, but quite another to castigate and threaten them for it. How much more can society traumatize victims of violence? And this was a U.S. representative,” the NEA and AFT said in their letter. “The fact is, if any educator harassed students and called horrifying shootings false flags, there would be serious consequences. There should absolutely be consequences for a member of Congress, as well." In a statement provided by her office, Greene said that "Democrats and their spokesmen in the Fake News Media" are "coming after" her and "want to take me out." The statement did not address the contents of the unions' letter.
Teacher calls Bernie Sanders' mittens 'lesson in white privilege' in op-ed --A San Francisco high school teacher wrote an op-ed claiming Sen. Bernie Sanders “manifests privilege” for wearing his meme-evoking inauguration outfit.Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, a former UC Berkeley professor, wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle that the Vermont senator’s choice of recycled wool mittens was integrated into her class discussion on US diversity and discrimination.Initially, on Inauguration Day, Seyer-Ochi said her class talked about the deeper meanings of the historic day — including “the vulnerability of democracy” and “the power of ritual” and gender.Sanders, the teacher said, was not even on their radar until he became an instant internet sensation for his mittens and brown parka.“I puzzled and fumed as an individual as I strove to be my best possible teacher. What did I see? What did I think my students should see?” Seyer-Ochi wrote.“A wealthy, incredibly well-educated and -privileged white man, showing up for perhaps the most important ritual of the decade, in a puffy jacket and huge mittens.”The senator, she said, “manifests privilege, white privilege, male privilege and class privilege, in ways that my students could see and feel.”Seyer-Ochi said in the op-ed that many people without privilege would not be able to dress like Sanders did on such an occasion.“I don’t know many poor, or working class, or female, or struggling-to-be-taken-seriously folk who would show up at the inauguration of our 46th president dressed like Bernie,” she said.
DOJ drops discrimination case against Yale University - The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday requested the dismissal of its Trump-era case against Yale University that accused the school of admissions discrimination against white and Asian Americans. Prosecutors submitted a notice to drop the case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, saying the government’s dismissal was “voluntary.” The lawsuit, which was filed in October after a two-year investigation, argued that the Ivy League university had violated federal civil rights law for “at least 50 years” by using admissions practices that favored Black and Hispanic students. DOJ had asserted that Asian Americans and white students were one-eighth and one-fourth as likely to be accepted, respectively, when compared to Black applicants. The legal battle represented one of the Trump administration’s moves to challenge affirmative action programs aimed at increasing diversity on campus, which some conservatives consider unfair and illegal. Yale, which staunchly defended its admission practices, praised the DOJ’s decision to drop the case in a statement, saying it was "gratified" by the decision. "Our admissions process has allowed Yale College to assemble an unparalleled student body, which is distinguished by its academic excellence and diversity,” the university said. “Yale has steadfastly maintained that its process complies fully with Supreme Court precedent, and we are confident that the Justice Department will agree.” The Trump administration made several moves to prevent universities from considering race as a factor during admissions, including joining a previous similar lawsuit against Harvard University. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held up race-based affirmative action programs in the past. But with the highest court now firmly conservative after Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed last year, some think the practices could be in more danger.
These Are The Words Colleges Don't Want You To Say -Amid a nationwide movement to remove statues, symbols, and words in the name of inclusion, Campus Reform rounded up recent examples of words that have been banned on college campuses.
- 1. MSU eliminates the terms 'foreign' and 'alien': Michigan State University announced it would no longer use the terms “foreign” and “alien” in order to create a more inclusive environment. In October, Provost Teresa Woodruff addressed the Associated Students of MSU general assembly to announce the new “non-pejorative” language. Woodruff stated that moving forward, international students should be referred to as “non-domestic” or “international” to help “create a culture of not us vs. them, but of each other.”
- 2. UPitt scraps “homecoming king” and “homecoming queen” titles - After the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Association called for a policy change to end the use of the terms “king” and “queen,” the university announced in October that it will no longer use the traditional titles. Vice Chancellor for Alumni Relations Nancy Merritt called the terms “antiquated” language. Instead, the school will provide a “Spirt of Pitt" award to homecoming royalty.
- 3. UC tells students ‘do not’ say ‘Chinese Virus' and do not allow others to say it. In March, the University of California’s Council of Chief Diversity officers released a “guidance document” regarding how to hold a “positive and inclusive” campus climate during the pandemic. The list tells students and faculty to “reject racism, sexism, xenophobia and all hateful or intolerant speech, both in person and online.” It also instructs students to not use terms such as “Chinese Virus” and to not allow the use of these terms by others.
- 4. UVA instructor wants to ban the term ‘student-athlete’ -An instructor at the University of Virginia called to abolish the phrase “student-athlete," claiming it has "arguably racial" undertones. In an op-ed, Molly Harry defended calling the term racially charged by saying that “today, the majority of revenue-producing athletes in the sports of football and men’s basketball are Black. They are coached mostly by White men.” She also pointed out that the man who coined the term student-athlete was a White man.
- 5. Vanderbilt lists "sexual reassignment surgery" as an "outdated" term. In December, Vanderbilt University published a "Gender Affirmation Toolkit" for its employees in an effort to create a safe work environment. The toolkit explains how to properly use terms like "gender identity," "gender expression," and "sexual orientation.” It also listed "sexual reassignment surgery" on its list of "outdated" and "demeaning" words.
- 6. Leading ‘anti-racist’ prof calls the term ‘legal vote’ ‘racist’ -In November, Boston University's Director of the Center for Anti-Racist Research Ibram Kendi said the phrase "legal vote" is racist. He said it is "as fictionally fraught and functionally racist as the terms 'illegal alien' and 'race neutral' and 'welfare queen' and 'handouts' and 'super predator' and 'crackbaby' and 'personal responsibility' and 'post racial."
U.S. should prepare for a COVID-19 hospital consolidation surge - The COVID-19 pandemic has created a buyer’s market for large health systems looking to acquire struggling hospitals hard-hit by the pandemic. Despite claims that mergers bring greater efficiencies and more coordinated care, research suggests that consolidation increases health care costs and does not meaningfully improve quality. In addition to continuing antitrust investigations, three policy options can help maintain competition in U.S. health care markets. The pandemic has brought many hospitals to their knees. With a dramatic reduction in routine procedures and the added costs of caring for COVID-19 patients, U.S. hospitals and health systems suffered an estimated $202.6 billion in total losses between March and June alone.Hospitals in rural and low-income areas are particularly vulnerable to these losses. Even before the pandemic, 25 percent of rural hospitals were experiencing financial strain and were at “high risk of closing.” These rural hospitals are important for maintaining health care access in the surrounding communities. The federal government has passed billions of dollars in pandemic bailout funds to aid hospitals, but distribution of the funds has been unbalanced, favoring larger, wealthier hospital systems. As a result, some of the hard-hit small independent hospitals may close after the pandemic, leaving patients with fewer options for care. Rather than close their doors during times of financial distress, independent hospitals can choose to merge with larger health systems. This is a growing trend in the U.S. health care system, which is becoming increasingly consolidated — dominated by fewer, larger health care organizations.Now, with financial conditions deteriorating for hospitals during the pandemic, there is even more incentive for smaller independent hospitals to merge with the dominant health systems or risk going out of business.Hospital administrators and national hospital associations defend mergers and acquisitions, claiming they will lead to better coordination, lower costs, and improved patient care. The American Hospital Association has published research on mergers’ consequences, which found reductions in operating expenses at acquired hospitals, reductions in readmission and mortality rates, and savings for health plans.However, most evidence from antitrust experts suggests that hospital mergers lead to price increases and higher premiums for patients because there is less competition in the marketplace.
Can You Get Reinfected with Covid? -- The Incidental Economist (video with Dr Aaron Carroll)--Reports have surfaced of individuals being re-infected with Covid-19, raising questions about immunity via natural infection as well as questions about the utility of vaccines. Here we take a look at the data to see how common reinfection is and what that means in the grand scheme of things.
Study shows young COVID survivors can get reinfected—Being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 is not a foolproof shield against reinfection, a small preliminary study warns. The finding stems from tracking nearly 3,250 young U.S. Marine recruits between May and October. Of those, 189 had previously tested positive for the SAR-CoV-2 virus. During the six-week study itself, 10% of those who had tested positive got reinfected. "You don't have a get-out-of-jail-free card just because you have antibodies from a previous infection," said study author Dr. Stuart Sealfon. He's a professor of neurology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, which conducted the study in collaboration with the Naval Medical Research Center. The findings were recently published in the preprint server medRXiv and have not been peer-reviewed. All the Marines were beginning basic training and were initially held in Navy quarantine for two weeks, after two weeks of at-home quarantine, according to the study. Once training began, recruits were tested for COVID-19 every two weeks over a six-week period. The result: 19 of the 189 recruits who already had COVID tested positive for a second infection during the study. Researchers said first- and second- infections involved the same strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and none involved the new, more transmissible U.K., South African or Brazilian strains that have raised alarm in recent weeks. Of 2,247 recruits who had not previously had COVID, 1,079 (48%) became infected during the study. That means recruits with a prior COVID infection "had about a fifth the risk for getting infected again when in basic training, compared with Marines who had not been previously infected and didn't have antibodies," Sealfon said. All those who tested positive during the study had "mild" symptoms, he said. None were hospitalized. But symptom risk and length of infection were the same, regardless of prior COVID history.\
Children and COVID-19 spread Harvard Med - In the most comprehensive study of COVID-19 pediatric patients to date, a research team led by HMS scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital has found that children may play a larger role in the community spread of COVID-19 than previously thought. The researchers found that infected children, even those with mild or no symptoms, carried high levels of the virus in their respiratory secretions, especially in the first two days of symptoms, and that age did not affect the ability to carry high amounts of virus. The higher the level of virus a person carries, known as the viral load, the greater the risk of transmitting the virus to others. The team found that infected children in the asymptomatic or early infection phase had significantly higher viral loads than hospitalized adults with severe COVID-19. They also found that although younger children had lower levels of ACE2, the receptor protein that SARS-CoV-2 targets to enter human cells, than older children and adults, the lower levels did not correlate with decreased viral load. According to the researchers, this suggests that children can carry a high viral load, and thus remain contagious, regardless of their susceptibility to developing COVID-19 infection.
What One Covid-19 Cluster on an Airplane Tells Experts About Risk Factors While Flying - After an 18-hour flight from Dubai to New Zealand, seven passengers tested positive for Covid-19 while under managed isolation and quarantine. Analysis of the virus’ genetic code—along with details about the passengers’ symptoms and behavior throughout their trip—indicates that one passenger infected at least four others while aboard the plane, according to a study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases.Air travel has been difficult to study because different airlines and countries have different safety policies, and all policies rely on passengers’ willingness to follow the rules. The cluster of cases shows how precautionary measures, like obtaining a negative Covid-19 test result before a flight, aren’t enough to prevent transmission of the virus if other safety measures like mask-wearing aren’t strictly followed, Harvard Medical School physician Abraar Karan writes for Vox. It also shows how the managed isolation and quarantine, or MIQ, system successfully prevented the travelers from sparking new community spread of the disease, the researchers write.The study found that two people, travelling together, got on the flight in Dubai who had gotten a test for Covid-19 four days earlier. Their tests came back negative before the flight, but one of them began showing symptoms two days after arriving in New Zealand, and another test on the third day returned a positive result for both individuals. The pair said that they wore masks and gloves while on the plane, but took their masks off when they were seated, sleeping or eating, Marc Daalder reports for the New Zealand-based Newsroom.On such a long flight, people need to eat and drink, but each instance makes it more likely that the virus will spread. “It is surprising and not surprising, on an 18-hour flight, that an outbreak would occur,” says Karan to the New York Times’ Benedict Carey. “It’s more than likely that more than just those two people took off their mask at some point.”
Infectious disease expert: double-masking 'can do more harm' -- A top infectious disease expert has warned thatwearing two masks can “do more harm” if one of the face coverings isn’t being worn correctly.Michael Osterholm, who was an adviser to President Biden’s transition team, said the problem occurs with masks that have an “already compromised fit or filtration capacity,” allowing respiratory droplets to escape out of holes.“If you add on another mask, you may actually make it tougher for the air to move through the two-cloth area, and then at that point it causes more air to actually leak around the sides, which actually enhances your ability to get infected,” Osterholmtold NBC anchor Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” Sunday.Osterholm said there are cases where double-masking can be an effective tool against the coronavirus. “But at the same time, there are many [where] you may do more harm,” said the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.Osterholm said what’s “very important” to him is to stop people from wearing the mask under their nose.“You know, that’s like fixing three of the five screen doors in your submarine,” he said.“We’ve got to get people to start using these right, that would help right there tremendously,” he added.
‘A waste of money’: The home Covid-19 test funded by the Biden administration is too costly and complex, critics say For months, U.S. public health experts have called on the federal government to approve and fund cheap and fast at-home Covid-19 tests, to help bring the spread of infection under control. But when the Biden administration this week announced a $231.8 million deal to ramp up production of the first fully at-home test, the experts’ response was, to say the least, unenthusiastic. One dismissed it as “a spit in the ocean.” It’s not that home testing with a 15-minute turnaround time isn’t a good idea, they said, it’s just that the rollout of this initial kit is too little and too late, and the test too expensive and complicated, to help extinguish the raging pandemic fire. A number of experts called on the Biden administration to subsidize the home test for consumers, and said the Food and Drug Administration needs to do more to make such tests widely available. The first fully over-the-counter Covid test, a rapid antigen test produced by the Australian company Ellume, was granted an emergency use authorization in December. On Monday the administration said it would provide funding to build a factory in the U.S. that will eventually make millions of tests every month, but will take time to scale up.
Line cooks, agriculture workers at highest risk of COVID-19 death: study - Essential workers in kitchens and in agricultural settings are most at risk of death from the coronavirus, according to a study that adds a new urgency to the race to vaccinate those on the front lines of the pandemic. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of California-San Francisco, examined the occupations of those who have died in California since the beginning of 2016. In the past year, researchers found an especially high rate of excess mortality — the measure of how many people died over what might have been an ordinary period — among those who work in proximity to others. Line cooks experienced the most substantial number of excess death in 2020, the study found, followed by agriculture workers, bakers and construction laborers. Those who work in delivery occupations — shipping clerks, truck operators and delivery drivers — also experienced higher rates of death last year.The risk of death for those groups was between 30 and 60 percent greater than in an otherwise normal year, the study found. Deaths spiked especially in the months after California began reopening its economy. The authors said death rates were especially high for minorities serving in those jobs. Black and Hispanic workers are more likely to hold service jobs that put them in close contact with the general public than are white workers, who are more likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home. “In California, per-capita excess mortality is relatively high among Blacks, Latinos, and individuals with low educational attainment,” the authors wrote. “These populations face unique occupational risks because they may disproportionately make up the state’s essential workforce and because essential workers often cannot work from home.” Among people of Asian descent, the greatest risk increase came in health care workers. The authors noted California has an especially large population of Filipino Americans working in the nursing profession.
80% of COVID-19 Patients May Have Lingering Symptoms, Signs -Eight of 10 COVID-19 patients had lingering symptoms or signs 14 or more days after acute infection, a systematic review and meta-analysis showed. More than 50 symptoms tied to SARS-CoV-2 infection persisted, most commonly fatigue (58%), headache (44%), attention disorder (27%), hair loss (25%), dyspnea (24%), and anosmia (24%) were identified, according to Sonia Villapol, PhD, of Houston Methodist Research Institute in Texas, and colleagues. The findings were reported in a medRxiv preprint and have not undergone peer review. "We estimated that a total 80% of the patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 developed one or more long-term symptoms," Villapol said. "Preventive measures, rehabilitation techniques, and clinical management strategies designed to address prevalent long-term effects of COVID-19 are urgently needed," she told MedPage Today. To date, there's no established diagnosis for the slow, persistent condition that people with lasting effects of COVID-19 experience; terms like "long COVID," "long haulers," and "post-acute COVID-19" have been used, Villapol and colleagues noted. In their review, they referred to lingering symptoms and signs as "long-term effects of COVID-19." Last year, a widely-cited CDC survey showed 35% of COVID-19 patients had not returned to usual health 2 to 3 weeks after testing positive, but those were mild, outpatient cases. Early in 2021, a study in the Lancet showed that 6 months after illness onset, 76% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, China, reported at least one symptom that persisted, mostly fatigue or muscle weakness. In their meta-analysis, Villapol and colleagues included 47,910 people with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis in 15 studies that had evaluated symptoms, signs, or laboratory parameters 2 weeks or more week post-viral infection. Each study had a minimum of 100 patients. Nine studies were from Great Britain or Europe, three were from the U.S. Six studies focused only people hospitalized for COVID-19; the others included mild, moderate, and severe cases. Patients ranged from ages 17 to 87 years, and follow-up time ranged from 14 to 110 days. Fatigue was the most common symptom of both long and acute COVID-19, Villapol and colleagues noted: "It is present even after 100 days of the first symptom of acute COVID-19." During follow-up, 34% of patients had an abnormal chest x-ray or CT. Elevated markers also were seen, including D-dimer (20%), NT-proBNP (11%), C-reactive protein (8%), serum ferritin (8%), procalcitonin (4%), and IL-6 (3%). Other lingering symptoms were pulmonary (cough, chest discomfort, reduced pulmonary diffusing capacity, sleep apnea, pulmonary fibrosis), cardiovascular (arrhythmias, myocarditis), or neurologic or psychiatric (memory loss, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders).
Long-Haul Covid Cases Cast New Light on Chronic Fatigue Sufferers - Four weeks after San Diego pediatric nurse Jennifer Minhas fell ill with Covid-19 last March, her cough and fever had resolved, but new symptoms had emerged: chest pain, an elevated heart rate and crushing fatigue. Her primary care physician told her she was just anxious, and that none of her other Covid patients had those issues. “That wasn’t what I needed to hear,” Minhas said. At times, she’s been too exhausted to hold up her head. “I was kind of a zombie for months, shuffling around unable to do much of anything.”The clinical term for the flattening fatigue Minhas describes is “post-exertional malaise.” It is a common symptom among patients who have not recovered from Covid. It is also consistent with a standard feature of another chronic illness: myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS.ME/CFS patients also report cognitive impairment — “brain fog” — and orthostatic intolerance, in which standing upright produces a racing heart rate and lightheadedness. Minhas has experienced these symptoms, as have many other “long haulers,” the tens of thousands of post-Covid patients who haven’t recovered.The percentage of Covid patients who become long haulers is hard to pin down — in part because many early Covid patients were not tested in time to detect the virus. But “long Covid” is potentially an enormous problem. A recent study of 1,733 Covid patients in Wuhan, China, found three-quarters of them still had symptoms six months after being released from the hospital. As of January, doctors had documented more than 21 million cases of Covid in the United States. “If just 5 percent develop lingering symptoms,’’ — about 1 million cases — “and if most of those with symptoms have ME/CFS, we would double the number of Americans suffering from ME/CFS in the next two years,” Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Anthony Komaroff wrote recently in the Harvard Health Letter. The cause of ME/CFS is unknown, but multiple studies have found it follows acute infections with viruses — everything from the 1918 “Spanish” flu to Ebola. “A certain percentage of people don’t recover,” said Leonard Jason, a researcher at DePaulUniversity. Scientists are trying to figure out the mechanisms of the disease and why it develops in certain people and not others. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ME/CFS shares certain characteristics with autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system attacks healthy tissue in the body. Multiple studies are underway to explore this and other potential causes.
Understanding Coronavirus Variants, Mutations and Vaccines -- In my laboratory I study the molecular structure of RNA viruses – like the one that causes COVID-19 – and how they replicate and multiply in the host. As the virus infects more people and the pandemic spreads, SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve. This process of evolution is constant and it allows the virus to sample its environment and select changes that make it grow more efficiently. Thus, it is important to monitor viruses for such new mutations that could make them more deadly, more transmissible or both.The genetic material of all viruses is encoded in either DNA or RNA; one interesting feature of RNA viruses is that they change much more rapidly than DNA viruses. Every time they make a copy of their genes they make one or a few mistakes. This is expected to occur many times within the body of an individual who is infected with COVID-19.One might think that making a mistake in your genetic information is bad – after all, that's the basis for genetic diseases in humans. For an RNA virus, a single change in its genome may render it "dead." That's not too bad if inside an infected human cell you're making thousands of copies and a few are no longer useful.However, some genomes may pick up a change that is beneficial for the survival of the virus: Maybe the change allows the virus to evade an antibody – a protein that the immune system produces to catch viruses – or an antiviral drug. Another beneficial change may allow the virus to infect a different type of cell or even a different species of animal. This is likely the pathway that allowed SARS-CoV-2 to move from bats into humans.Any change that gives the virus's descendants a competitive growth advantage will be favored – "selected" – and begin to outgrow the original parent virus. SARS-CoV-2 is demonstrating this feature now with new variants arising that have enhanced growth properties. Understanding the nature of these changes in the genome will provide scientists with guidance to develop countermeasures. This is the classic cat-and-mouse scenario.In an infected patient there are hundreds of millions of individual virus particles. If you were to go in and pick out one virus at a time in this patient, you would find a range of mutations or variants in the mix. It's a question of which ones have a growth advantage – that is, which ones can evolve because they are better than the original virus. Those are the ones that are going to become successful during the pandemic.
Alarming COVID variants show vital role of genomic surveillance --2021 is shaping up to be the year of COVID-19 variants. In the past two months, scientists have identified several fast-spreading variants that have prompted government restrictions in many countries — and new variants are being detected more frequently. The pandemic has ushered in an era of genomic surveillance in which scientists are tracking genomic changes to a virus at a speed and scale never seen before. But surveillance is patchy globally, particularly in the United States, which has the world’s largest COVID-19 outbreak, and in many low- and middle-income countries. Scientists warn that worrying variants are probably spreading undetected in these regions. “Genomic epidemiology has come of age during this pandemic,” says Oliver Pybus, who studies infectious disease evolution at the University of Oxford, UK. It has transformed from a “theoretical backwater” to a tool that helps drive public-health decisions quickly, he says. But to be as effective as possible, surveillance needs to be widespread, standardized and embedded in national pandemic-prevention programmes, scientists say. The key to good surveillance is the sequencing and sharing of enough genomes to track mutations and variants of concern as they arise. In the past year, more than 360,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes have been sequenced and stored on GISAID, a non-profit online database for sharing viral genomes. Geographic distribution of the sequences on GISAID is broad, covering more than 140 countries. But most countries have uploaded only a small number of sequences. Two exceptions are the United Kingdom and Denmark, which respectively account for 45% and 7% of SARS-CoV-2 genomes on the database. The number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes that the United States has shared on GISAID is less than 0.3% of its total number of COVID-19 infections. That compares with nearly 5% for the United Kingdom, 12% for Denmark, and almost 60% for Australia (see ‘Global surveillance’). A new variant in the United States would probably be detected quickly in certain states that have lots of active sequencing labs, such as New York and Washington, but would take a while in places that don’t. This is a problem because the more a virus circulates, the more opportunities it has to change.
More contagious UK variant of COVID gains in South Florida - South Florida leads the state in cases of the highly contagious UK variant of the COVID-19 virus, with Broward County showing the biggest numbers.Broward had 39 cases, Miami-Dade had 35 and Palm Beach County had 17, with those counties’ cases totaling more than the rest of the state combined, according to the Florida Department of Health. The actual number of UK variant cases in each county is actually many times higher, since these numbers represent only the fraction of cases selected for additional testing. But they indicate that South Florida is experiencing the worst so far of a variant thought to be twice as contagious as the more familiar COVID virus. The UK variant, technically known as B117, is one of several strains, including ones first detected in Brazil and South Africa, that could spread and kill more efficiently than their predecessors, making it more difficult for the world to emerge from the pandemic. “If we get a virus that is much more transmissible, what we could see, potentially, is an upswing in case numbers, with impacts on hospitals,” said Dr. Glenn Morris, director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute. “If we pick up a vaccine that has more virulence, we could start to see a rising death rate.”Florida has the highest known number of cases, followed by California, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The UK variant is likely to be the dominant strain in Florida and southern California within weeks, according to a California company called Helix that tests for the strain.
Dangerous new coronavirus strains may incubate in COVID-19’s sickest -- Among the 100 million people around the world who have battled coronavirus infections, scientists are turning to the case of a 45-year-old COVID-19 patient in Boston to understand how the virus is able to outwit humans.During his 154-day illness — one of the longest on record — the patient’s body became a crucible of riotous viral mutation. He offered the world one of the first sightings of a key mutation in the virus’ spike protein that set off alarm bells when it was later found in strains in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.In the U.K. strain, the genetic change known as N501Y is thought to help enhance the virus’ transmissibility by about 50%. In the South Africa strain, it may reduce the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Tests of its effect on the Brazil variant are still in progress.The Boston patient is now being viewed as an important harbinger of the coronavirus’ ability to spin off new and more dangerous versions of itself. Though he died over the summer, the medical file he left behind is helping experts anticipate the emergence of new strains by focusing on the role of a growing population of patients with compromised immune systems who battle the virus for months. Among the sickest of COVID-19 patients, this population of “long haulers” appears to play a key role in incubating new variants of the coronavirus, some of which could change the trajectory of the pandemic.The mutations that arose from this single patient are “a microcosm of the viral evolution we’re seeing globally,” said Dr. Jonathan Z. Li, an infectious-disease specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who treated him. “He showed us what could happen” when a germ with a knack for genetic shape-shifting stumbles upon conditions that reward it for doing so.Indeed, situations in which patients can’t clear a viral infection are “the worst possible scenario for developing mutations,” said Dr. Bruce Walker, an immunologist and founding director of the Ragon Institute in Boston.
Fauci: Still time to prevent mutant virus strains from becoming dominant - Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious diseases doctor, on Wednesday said there is still time to prevent new variants of the coronavirus from becoming the dominant strain in the United States. "One of the ways you prevent the further evolution of virus to become mutational, the way you do that is to suppress the replication of the virus," Fauci said in an appearance on NBC's "Today" show. That approach is twofold, Fauci said. "One, continue to double down on the public health measures to prevent spread from person to person and get as many people as you possibly can," he said. "The more people you have that are protected the less opportunity you give to the virus to mutate. It can't mutate if it doesn't replicate. So the more you suppress it, the less it does." Host Savannah Guthrie then asked Fauci who is winning the "race between virus and vaccine." "We sill have a demand [for vaccine] that far exceeds the supply," Fauci replied. A number of variants of the coronavirus have been reported in states across the country in recent days and they are believed to be more contagious than the original strain. Public health experts remain optimistic, however, that approved coronavirus vaccines such as those made by drugmakers Moderna and Pfizer are effective against newer strains of the virus. Fauci said if the virus is able to spread itself more rapidly through the passage of nonvaccinated people, an upgrade or enhancement to current vaccines may need to be made in the weeks and months to come. “The mutants are here in the United States. They are not dominant yet. We can prevent them from becoming dominant by trying to suppress the replication," Fauci said. "But if they do become the dominant we may need to upgrade the vaccine. That's the direction we're going in right now."
B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant is picking up a worrisome new mutation. -As the world races to get vaccines into arms, one of the most concerning coronavirus variants appears to be getting a little more concerning.Researchers in the UK have detected at least 15 cases of B.1.1.7 variants carrying an additional mutation: E484K, a mutation already seen in other concerning variants and one that may make current vaccines less effective at preventing infection. The B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the United Kingdom, is already known to spread more easily among people than earlier strains of the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. And according to some preliminary evidence, it may cause more severe disease. So far, B.1.1.7 variants carrying E484K appear rare. On Monday, Public Health England reported in a technical briefing that it had detected E484K in just 11 B.1.1.7 variants among more than 200,000 viruses examined. For now, it’s unclear if the augmented mutants will take off and become dominant in the population or fizzle out. It’s also not entirely clear what the addition of E484K means for B.1.1.7 in people. Preliminary laboratory experiments suggest the mutation alone, and its presence in B.1.1.7 specifically, may help the virus evade immune responses. But more studies and clinical data are necessary to understand the full effect of the new addition.Still, without doubt, the new mutation in B.1.1.7 signals again that the pandemic coronavirus is not done trying to outwit us, even as numerous vaccines prove they can thwart infection and prevent severe disease. As long as we continue to let the virus spread rampantly among us, the virus will have ample opportunities to hone its disease-causing and vaccine-evading capabilities—and it will use them. The findings highlight once again that we must continue to use proven mitigation efforts—physical distancing, mask wearing, hand hygiene, good ventilation, and avoiding crowds and enclosed areas—to reduce transmission as much as possible while vaccination efforts are underway. In fact, given the current state of the pandemic and what we know about the virus already, some researchers say finding E484K in B.1.1.7 is not at all surprising. It may have just been a matter of time.
Study shows UK coronavirus variant with potentially vaccine-resistant mutation - A variant of the coronavirus first found in the United Kingdom has gained a mutation that could make it more resistant to vaccines, according to a new analysis from Public Health England. The mutation, known as E484K, is linked to strains in Brazil and South Africa that have proved more resistant to existing vaccines. According to the analysis, estimated rates for cases with the mutation are 25 to 40 percent higher than estimated attack rates for other strains. The variant, known as B.1.1.7, was first discovered in December and spread rapidly across the U.K. It has since turned up in 72 countries. It is much more transmissible than other strains, and there is some evidence it could cause more deaths. In the U.S., the variant has been discovered in 32 states, though experts believe it is likely much more widespread and could become the dominant strain by March. The existing vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer are effective against the B.1.1.7 strain, but the variant found in South Africa is more problematic. Trial data from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax show their COVID-19 vaccines are not as effective against it. That South African variant known as B.1.351 has been reported in 31 countries and at least two states so far. According to Public Health England, preliminary investigation has found the E484K mutation appearing more than once among the B.1.1.7 variants. If that's the case, it is a sign that the mutation is a relatively easy way for the virus to gain an advantage. Experts say the best way to prevent further mutations and more potentially dangerous variants is for people to get vaccinated as quickly as possible, because more immune people means less chance for the virus to spread and evolve.
What If the COVID Pandemic Never Really Ends? - What if it never really ends, just recedes? There are, at the moment, a number of encouraging signs about the near-term course of things: Caseloads and hospitalizations are falling dramatically, perhaps as a sign of seasonal effects turning a corner; vaccine deployment, while still suboptimal, is improved from a month ago; there has been good news about additional vaccines, with AstraZeneca (already approved in the U.K. but facing an FDA roadblock here) reporting fantastic results against severe disease. But thanks to a combination of higher herd-immunity estimates, stubbornly high vaccine “hesitancy,” and the arrival of new coronavirus variants that render existing vaccines less effective, the second year of the American pandemic is beginning to look less like a page-turning, book-slammed-shut bang and more like a long and indefinite whimpering into the future — in which many are protected but the disease, undefeated, still circulates, perhaps forever. That the coronavirus would become endemic, like the common cold, has always been one possible outcome, though less appealing than true elimination. The arrival of new variants has made that kind of near-term future, with enduring reservoirs of virus throughout the country, seem less appealing still. In December, Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch estimated that the current bundle of vaccines would likely prove between 50 and 70 percent effective against transmission. What does that mean in terms of herd immunity? A sort of median estimate of the natural reproduction rate (or “R0”) for the classic COVID-19 strain is around 3 — on average, each person infected in a totally unexposed population would infect three others. Assuming an R0 of 3 yields an estimated herd-immunity threshold of 67 percent exposure, which, Bloomberg’s Justin Fox points out, would require between 96 percent and 134 percent of the population be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. At the end of last year, Anthony Fauci somewhat controversially revised his own estimate of the threshold of herd immunity, first from between 60 and 70 percent to “70, 75 percent,” then to “75, 80, 85 percent,” then to “80-plus percent,” and then all the way to 90 percent. Mathematically, you simply cannot achieve 90 percent protection from a vaccine that offers even 70 percent protection, let alone 50 percent, and while the vaccines might somewhat outperform Lipsitch’s back-of-the-envelope calculations, the new variants are driving their efficacy in the other direction, pushing herd immunity even further out of reach
Global vaccine trust rising, but France, Japan, others skeptical (Reuters) - People’s willingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is rising around the world and more than half of those questioned said they would take the shot if it were offered next week, an updated survey of global vaccine confidence found on Thursday. But attitudes and confidence vary widely in the 15 countries covered in the survey, with France showing high levels of scepticism and some Asian countries showing declining trust in vaccines, while some European nations see rising confidence. Overall, vaccine confidence is higher than in November, when the same survey - conducted in 15 countries and covering 13,500 people each time - found that only 40% would be willing to get vaccinated. The survey, co-led by YouGov and Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI), found that people in Britain were the most willing to have a COVID-19 vaccine, at 78%, followed by Denmark at 67%. France had the highest proportion of respondents who said they would not take a vaccine, at 44%, but saw a doubling in the proportion who strongly agreed that they would take a vaccine, from 15% in November to 30% in January. In Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, willingness to take a vaccine has dropped off since November, with Japan showing the least preparedness, followed by Singapore. “As vaccines will play a vital role in controlling the pandemic, leaders must act now to help more people understand the benefits of being vaccinated against COVID-19 and make sure that no one is left behind,”
Britain trial to test combining Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines in two-shot regimen (Reuters) - Britain on Thursday launched a trial to assess the immune responses generated if doses of the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc are combined in a two-shot schedule. The British researchers behind the trial said data on vaccinating people with the two different types of coronavirus vaccines could help understanding of whether shots can be rolled out with greater flexibility around the world. Initial data on immune responses is expected to be generated around June. The trial will examine the immune responses of an initial dose of Pfizer vaccine followed by a booster of AstraZeneca’s, as well as vice versa, with intervals of 4 and 12 weeks. Both the mRNA shot developed by Pfizer and Biontech and the adenovirus viral vector vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca are currently being rolled out in Britain, with a 12-week gap between two doses of the same vaccine. It is expected more vaccines will be added to the trial when they are approved and rolled out. Recruitment for the study starts on Thursday, with over 800 participants expected to take part, the researchers said. That makes it much smaller than the clinical trials that have been used to determine efficacy of the vaccines individually. The trial will not assess the overall efficacy of the shot combinations, but researchers will measure antibody and T-cell responses, as well as monitor for any unexpected side effects.
Exclusive: Oxford kept COVID-19 vaccine trial volunteers in dark about dosing error, letter shows (Reuters) - - About 1,500 of the initial volunteers in a late-stage clinical trial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine were given the wrong dose, but weren’t informed that a mistake had been made after the blunder was discovered, documents obtained by Reuters show. Instead, the dosing mishap was presented to the trial participants in a letter dated June 8 as an opportunity for University of Oxford researchers to learn how well the vaccine works at different doses. The letter was signed by the trial’s chief investigator, Oxford professor Andrew J. Pollard, and sent to the trial subjects. As Reuters reported on Dec. 24, participants were given about a half dose due to a measuring mistake by Oxford researchers. The Pollard letter didn’t acknowledge any error. Nor did it disclose that researchers had reported the issue to British medical regulators, who then told Oxford to add another test group to receive the full dose, in line with the trial’s original plan. Reuters shared the letter – which it obtained from the university through a Freedom of Information request – with three different experts in medical ethics. The ethicists all said it indicates the researchers may not have been transparent with trial participants. Volunteers in clinical trials are supposed to be kept fully informed about any changes.
The COVID-19 vaccine should change the way we think about obesity -- I'm 24, I'm not an essential worker, and I'm in good health, so I assumed that I would be one of the last people to get the vaccine. As I filled in the pre-registration survey, one question listed several chronic conditions, including cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, sickle cell disease, smoking, and obesity, among others. I was asked to check a box if any of these conditions applied. My Body Mass Index (BMI) is over 30, meaning that I'm obese – so, I indicated on the survey that I did, indeed, have one of the chronic conditions listed. As a result, I was placed in the coveted "priority group 1C." I felt guilty, like I was given a gift I didn't deserve simply for existing in the body I've always had. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) determines obesity based on BMI, which was never intended to be a holistic metric of individual health. Still, as Johns Hopkins University health disparities researcher Dr. Michelle Ogunwole puts it, "It's better than a coin flip. Obesity does increase your risk of diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and a host of other issues. But there are some people who have obesity, but don't have any other medical problems." Personal health is intimate, especially when it comes to something as stigmatized as our weight. I find it hard to articulate, especially on a COVID-19 pre-registration survey, that I can be fat, yet healthy – that weight is one indicator of health, but not the only indicator. When I discovered my priority group, I couldn't help but feel unsettled that I'd get the vaccine sooner than 64-year-olds deemed "normal" by BMI, or immunocompromised people whose conditions aren't considered a priority. I talked to health journalist Julia Métraux, 23, who has a rare form of systemic vasculitis. This chronic illness causes blood vessel inflammation, so if she were infected with the coronavirus, she could suffer serious complications. "[The CDC is] not going to look at my type of autoimmune disorder, because it's rare," she explains. "It's frustrating. I couldn't help but feel guilty that my weight would allow me to get vaccinated sooner than someone like Julia. But as a fat woman, guilt feels familiar. When we talk about who deserves to get vaccinated for a lethal, contagious virus first, it makes sense that people like me would feel conditioned to believe that we've been handed an undeserved gift. But after talking with several public health experts, I learned why obesity is included as a chronic condition.
Should You Worry About Covid Vaccine Side Effects? – Dr Aaron Carroll, video - As the vaccine to protect against Covid-19 continues to roll out to more and more people, interest in side effects is high. This can lead to lots of media coverage when people experience side effects, particularly when serious side effects occur. We’re here to talk about side effects and put some of these stories in context, which will hopefully leave less room for disiformation and scare tactics to be part of the conversation.
Far-right protesters temporarily shut down COVID-19 vaccinations at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles --On January 30, the mass COVID-19 vaccination site at Los Angeles’s Dodger Stadium, one of the largest in the United States, was shut down for about an hour by about 50 demonstrators who blocked the entrance. The group organizing the protest, Shop Mask Free Los Angeles, designated the event a “Scamdemic Protest/March” directed “against everything COVID, Vaccine, PCR Tests, Lockdowns, Masks, Fauci, Gates, Newsom, China, digital tracking, etc.” Participants were advised to “please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags but informational signs only.” Signs included “END THE LOCKDOWN,” “COVID=SCAM,” “TAKE OFF YOUR MASK,” and “DON’T BE A LAB RAT.” As people sat in their vehicles waiting to be vaccinated, protesters shouted at them to turn around and tossed leaflets into open windows. Virtually none of the protesters wore a mask, even though the City of Los Angeles has ordered that all people outside of their homes must wear them. Shortly before 2:00 p.m., the Los Angeles Fire Department, which manages the vaccination site, announced that the demonstration was forcing their closure of the entrance to the stadium. Several Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers responded, but no arrests were made. Dating back at least to the Watts riots almost 60 years ago and continuing through the George Floyd-inspired antipolice violence demonstrations last summer, the LAPD has garnered an international reputation for repression of free speech and brutality. In this instance, however, the far-right demonstrators were allowed to disrupt a major public health operation by impeding the flow of traffic into the vaccination site while LAPD officers stood by and watched. Once the gates were reopened around 3:00 p.m. and protesters began to leave, one of the organizers thanked LAPD officers, who waved back. This demonstration was not unexpected. It was promoted publicly on social media for several days. The LAPD was not caught off guard. They deliberately chose not to act.
AstraZeneca vaccine slows virus transmission, researchers say --Initial testing of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, developed in partnership with Oxford University, shows that it slows virus transmission in addition to protecting recipients, researchers announced on Tuesday.Their study, which has not been peer-reviewed, indicated that the AstraZeneca vaccine could cut transmission by almost two-thirds.The research is the first to find evidence that a vaccine could cut down on coronavirus spread. Matt Hancock, the British health secretary, celebrated the initial research on Wednesday, telling the BBC that a vaccine that decreases transmission “will help us all get out of this pandemic.”The data analysis, which experts told The New York Times needs to be further confirmed, also determined that a single dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine was 76 percent effective at protecting a person from contracting COVID-19 90 days after it was administered. The results also suggested that the amount of time between the two doses affected the effectiveness. At least a three-month delay between doses resulted in 82 percent effectiveness, while efficacy dropped to 55 percent with less than six weeks between shots. Researchers noted that providing the doses three months apart “may be the optimal for rollout of a pandemic vaccine when supplies are limited in the short term.”
White House announces some COVID-19 vaccines will be sent directly to pharmacies -The Biden administration on Tuesday announced that it will begin providing COVID-19 vaccines directly to pharmacies around the country in an effort to expand access. The vaccines will be available in 6,500 pharmacies to start with, said Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. Supplies will be limited at first, with 1 million vaccine doses per week given to pharmacies starting Feb. 11. In addition, the administration is increasing by 5 percent the vaccine doses given to states each week, to 10.5 million per week. That is on top of a 16 percent increase announced last week. The moves are part of a drumbeat of announcements from the Biden administration in its first weeks around the vaccine effort, a daunting challenge where officials are trying to demonstrate they are moving urgently to boost the number of vaccinations. Still, Zients was careful to temper expectations that far from everyone will be able to walk into a CVS for a vaccine in the near future. “This will be limited when it begins next week,” he said. Some pharmacies “may have very limited supply,” he added. As supply from the manufacturers increases, officials hope to expand the program, up to as many as 40,000 pharmacies nationwide. The increase in vaccine supply to states and the extra doses given directly to pharmacies are due to Moderna and Pfizer scaling up their production capabilities, Zients said. States across the country have been eager for more doses, saying they have capacity to administer more than they are currently getting, but manufacturing capacity is a limitation. Finally, the administration is increasing reimbursement to states for expenses like using the National Guard, dating back to the start of the pandemic last year. That totals $3 billion to $5 billion, which Zients said is a small share of the funding states need, and the administration is asking Congress for much more.
CDC director: COVID infections, hospitalizations falling - New coronavirus cases in the U.S. have fallen to pre-Thanksgiving levels, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Wednesday, and infection rates are continuing to decline. "We now appear to be in a consistent downward trajectory" for both cases and hospital admissions, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters during a White House COVID-19 briefing. Cases have declined since hitting a peak on Jan. 8, dropping 13.4 percent to an average of nearly 144,000 per day from Jan. 26 to Feb. 1, Walensky said. Deaths are continuing to increase, but the pace is slowing. Fatalities are a lagging indicator, so it will take time before they reflect the lower infection and hospitalization rates. "The recent decline in hospitalizations gives us hope that the number of deaths should start to decrease in the coming weeks," Walensky said. The decreasing number of infections has led states and cities to begin rolling back some of the restrictions that have been in place since before the December holiday period, such as prohibitions on indoor dining. Despite the relatively positive news, infection numbers are still twice as high as the peak number of cases over the summer, and the U.S. is still averaging more than 3,000 deaths a day. Walensky cautioned Americans not to let their guard down, especially as variants that likely have increased transmissibility continue to multiply. Experts say the best way to prevent the spread of the variants is for people to follow basic public health precautions like avoiding large crowds, mask wearing and physical distancing, and to get vaccinated as soon as they are eligible. Walensky specifically warned against people gathering indoors in large groups for Super Bowl parties this weekend, saying that people should instead gather virtually or with immediate household members.
New Covid Cases Plunge 25% or More as Behavior Changes -- A dozen states are reporting drops of 25% or more in new covid-19 cases and more than 1,200 counties have seen the same, federal data released Wednesday shows. Experts say the plunge may relate to growing fear of the virus after it reached record-high levels, as well as soaring hopes of getting vaccinated soon. Nationally, new cases have dropped 21% from the prior week, according to Department of Health and Human Services data, reflecting slightly more than 3,000 counties. Corresponding declines in hospitalization and death may take days or weeks to arrive, and the battle against the deadly virus rages on at record levels in many places. Health officials, data modeling experts and epidemiologists agreed it’s too early to see a bump from the vaccine rollout that started with health care workers in late December and has, in many states, moved on to include older Americans. Instead, they said, the factors involved are more likely behavior-driven, with people settling back home after the holidays, or reacting to news of hospital beds running out in places like Los Angeles. Others are finding the resolve to wear masks and physically distance with the prospect of a vaccine becoming more immediate. A single reason is hard to pinpoint, said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. She said it may be due in part to people hoping to avoid the new, more contagious variants of the virus, which some experts sayappear to be deadlier as well. She also said so many people got sick in the last surge that more people may be taking precautions: “There’s a better chance you know someone who had it,” Casalotti said. She also said the national trend, with even steeper drops in California, also reflects restrictions in that state, which included closing indoor dining and a 10 p.m. curfew in hard-hit regions. She said those measures take a few weeks to show up in new-case data. “It is a very unstable equilibrium at the moment,” Lee wrote in the email. “So any premature celebration would lead to another spike, as we have seen it time and again in the US.”
Dr. Michael Osterholm warns of massive spring surge of coronavirus in the US -- In a recent interview on “Meet the Press,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of Joe Biden’s coronavirus transition team, warned that the United States had to prepare for a potentially massive surge that could hit the country in the next few weeks. Currently, there have been 26.8 million cases of COVID-19 reported and 453,000 deaths directly attributed to the virus. Since their peak in early January, cases have been declining to reach early December levels, with the seven-day moving average registering at 150,000 cases per day, a 32 percent decline over two weeks. Deaths are at their peak with over 3,300 per day on a seven-day moving average. It is expected that these will follow the decline in cases as they lag behind new infection numbers by two to three weeks. Cell phone data has shown a slowdown in the population’s movement since the holidays contributing to these trends. As hospitals and health care workers have seen a break in the punishing number of cases that have left them exhausted and shaken, governors and state officials are seizing on these trends to begin relaxing mitigation measures. For example, Michigan and Illinois have opened up indoor dining. Illinois will allow parties of 10 people to sit inside restaurants and bars. Foremost on the minds of politicians is seeing schools return to in-person education. However, attempts at bringing teachers back into schools are meeting with fierce opposition in Chicago. Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Biden adviser Dr. Michael Osterholm said, “We’re all loosening up right now. We all want to end our pandemic fatigue and our pandemic anger that don’t believe the pandemic’s even real. But we have got to turn that ship around, too. … As fast as we are opening restaurants, we’re likely to be closing them in the near term.” Having previously recommended keeping vaccinations on track with two-dose regimens per their schedule, Dr. Osterholm is now calling for giving as many people, especially the most vulnerable, one dose of the vaccine before the next surge that he said is surely coming. Dr. Osterholm voiced genuine concern that the spring wave will have a catastrophic impact on health care systems, worse than the winter surge, with peaks in hospitalizations reaching over 130,000 admissions. Recognizing that a lockdown is not forthcoming from this administration, he explained that even with the single dose’s reduced efficacy, it would help avert death and severe illness for those at the highest risk. The urgency to administer these vaccines immediately is paramount, he emphasized..
Nine-year-old schoolboy dies from COVID-19 in Texas - On Tuesday, January 29, 9-year-old J.J. Boatman of Vernon, Texas, died from COVID-19. His parents fear that he acquired the virus while at school, which he had attended the previous Friday, just four days prior to his death. As late as Sunday night, J.J. was playing at home and seemed in good health. J.J., who had celebrated his birthday earlier in January, died on the same day as another Texas child—a one-year-old in Tarrant County, the youngest person to die from COVID-19 in the county. These two deaths of young children were among 29 deaths in the county on that day alone. J.J.’s father, Jason Boatman, described his son as “the life of this house,” and told a local ABC News affiliate, “I can’t imagine living without that boy here.” Jason said that on Monday morning J.J was wheezing. After leaving for work, his son’s health took a turn for the worse. His wife Priscilla told him that J.J. was “purple, blue and screaming that he couldn’t breathe. He was yelling for help.” She rushed him to the local hospital in Vernon, where doctors performed CPR. They quickly made the decision to move him to a better-equipped hospital, and J.J. was flown to Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth. Upon arriving, physicians determined that J.J.’s lungs were filled with fluid. They told his parents that his brain had swollen due to lack of oxygen, and that he had tested positive for COVID-19. Jason told the media, “The nurse came in and told me that his heart was failing, and that’s what happened.” The young boy was placed on a ventilator and died 12 hours later.
Missouri teen who beat cancer three times dies from COVID-19 --A Missouri teen who beat cancer three times has died from COVID-19 complications, her family said. Aspen Deke, 17, of Kansas City, succumbed to the virus Saturday following a months-long battle that began with her diagnosis in November, news station Fox4 reported. The high school junior had survived a rare form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer that impacts white blood cells. When she was diagnosed with cancer at age 4, she had been given a poor prognosis, the outlet said. But she went on to beat cancer three times after four rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, Fox4 reported. During her battle with coronavirus, she was admitted to Children’s Mercy Hospital, where she had been in the pediatric intensive care unit since New Year’s Eve. Her family said COVID-19 was in some ways more terrifying than her previous health woes. “At least with cancer, as bad as it sounds and it is scary, but there’s a lot that you know about it,” her father, Eric Deke, told the news station. “They can say, ‘This is how bad it is, this is what we are going to do. This is what we expect.’ But with this, everything is unknown.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 267 children have died since the beginning of the pandemic — accounting for less than 1 percent of total deaths.
Nine nuns die from COVID-19 outbreak in Michigan - Nine nuns died in January from a COVID-19 outbreak that struck their retirement home in southern Michigan, officials said. The women were retired from active ministry and lived at the campus of the Adrian Dominican Sisters in Adrian, 75 miles southwest of Detroit, news station WDIV reported. “We spent nine months keeping the coronavirus at bay. Right before Christmas, it slipped in,” Sister Pat Siemen told the outlet. But Siemen said the virus managed to infiltrate the home, despite the protocols in place. “It slips in. That’s the heartache of this virus,” Siemen said. “We’ve had no guests on campus. Our sisters have not seen their family members. They haven’t even seen our other sisters who live off campus since this started in the middle of March. And yet that virus is very sneaky.” The outbreak infected at least 48 of the more than 200 residents who live there. Most of the sisters who died were high risk for other health complications, Siemen said. The sisters — Dorothea Gramlich, 81, Helen Laier, 88, Jeannine Therese McGorray, 86, Charlotte Moser, 86, Esther Ortega, 86, Mary Lisa Rieman, 79, Ann Rena Shinkey, 87, Margaret Ann Swallow, 97, and Mary Irene Wischmeyer, 94 — died between January 11 and 26, WDIV reported. “It’s numbing,” Siemen said. “I have a much deeper appreciation for all of the other families who have gone through this. The hundreds of thousands of families. And until it personally touches you, I don’t care how much we can have a sympathetic heart, it’s different when you’ve been there and you’ve lost someone.”
Cases of COVID-19 in nursing homes have steadily fallen since the US rolled out vaccines, the latest data shows - New cases of COVID-19 in nursing homes dropped 45% in the four weeks following the first US vaccination, government data suggests.The latest government data on COVID-19 cases shows that new infections have steadily dropped in nursing homes since the US began rolling out vaccines. The US gave its first coronavirus vaccine on December 14 to critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay. That week, ended December 20, the US recorded more than 32,500 new cases in nursing homes, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data shows. That number has fallen every week since and for the week ended January 17, the most recent week for which data has been released, the US recorded 17,584 new cases. That is a drop of more than 45% in four weeks. The decline roughly mirrors a nationwide trend outside of nursing homes, Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told The New York Times. Cases in nursing homes are driven by infections in the community, he said. But the fact that cases in nursing homes have dropped faster, and began dropping earlier, than the rest of the country suggests the vaccine rollout is having its desired effect, Jha said. Nursing home residents and staff have been among the first to receive their vaccinations: As of Saturday, more than 3.5 million vaccines have been given in nursing homes, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed, per the Times. Nonetheless, the rollout has been slower than hoped, Jha told the Times. Once all nursing home residents are vaccinated, "then we should feel really confident that these declines will continue and we will not see a spike back up, even if we see one in the national picture," he said. Long-term care facilities account for 5% of US COVID-19 cases but more than 35% of deaths, data compiled by the Times suggests.
February 2 COVID-19 Test Results and Vaccinations --Note: Bloomberg has great data on vaccinations. "In the U.S., more Americans have now received at least one dose than have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began. So far, 33.7 million doses have been given, according to a state-by-state tally. In the last week, an average of 1.32 million doses per day were administered."Also check out the graphs at COVID-19 Vaccine Projections The site has several interactive graphs related to US COVID vaccinations including a breakdown of how many have had one shot, and how many have had both shots. The US is now averaging close to 2 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, for adequate test-and-trace (and isolation) to reduce infections, the percent positive needs to be under 5% (probably close to 1%), so the US has far too many daily cases - and percent positive - to do effective test-and-trace. There were 1,375,084 test results reported over the last 24 hours.There were 115,619 positive tests. Over 5,000 US deaths have been reported in February. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here.This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.And check out COVID Act Now to see how each state is doing. (updated link to new site) This graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported and daily hospitalizations. The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 8.4%. The percent positive is calculated by dividing positive results by total tests (including pending). It seems likely cases and hospitalizations have peaked, but are declining from a very high level.
Experts warn Hawaii on the brink of major outbreak and hospital overcrowding catastrophe - Despite its relatively low case numbers, the state of Hawaii is on the verge of a major COVID-19 outbreak which is just weeks away. The Healthcare Association of Hawaii warned Hawaii Public Radio on January 8 that by February 19 hospitals would reach full capacity, noting that hospitalizations were up by 77 percent in the previous two weeks. The warnings about a coming wave of cases has faced a near media blackout as the state pushes to reopen schools. The site Covidactnow.org, which tracks statistics, has labeled Maui as being on the verge of an outbreak with zero ICU capacity available. The Hawaii State Department of Health (DOH) reported 92 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the statewide total to 26,187. Significantly, Hawaii’s effective reproduction rate (Rt) was 1.12 according to data gathered from rt.live on January 27—the second highest within the United States. This means that every infected person is spreading the virus to 1.12 other people. The data collection site rt.live is owned by Instagram, and recently stopped publicizing data. It projects a message on its page arguing that with the administration of vaccines, the Rt figure is no longer of value and that one should “never rely too heavily on a single metric.” The suspension of this aggregated data raises concern, particularly since the virus is still spreading out of control throughout the United States, and it remains undetermined to what degree the vaccines—which have so far only been administered to a small segment of the population—slow the spread of infection in the population. Adding to the concern is the February 2 announcement by DOH officials that analysis pointed to the possible spread of the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 UK variant in Hawaii. The DOH says it will release definitive proof by the end of this week once the genome sequencing is completed. However, state officials and the media have sought to downplay the news and insist that no changes to current health and safety protocols are necessary at this time. Just last week, Hawaii acting epidemiologist, Dr. Sarah Kemble, announced that scientists have also detected a variant associated with California outbreaks among seven patients on Oahu, one on Maui and one on Kauai, proving that opening travel to and from the mainland has resulted in increased infections. In mid-October, Hawaii arbitrarily reduced its quarantine period from 14 to 10 days, allowing travelers with a 72-hour-old negative coronavirus test to bypass quarantining altogether. Traveling to Oahu from another Hawaiian island requires no test nor a quarantine. Significantly, all four COVID-19 deaths reported on Wednesday were from Oahu.
February 4 COVID-19 Test Results and Vaccinations –Note: The Covid Tracking Project will end daily updates on March 7th. Heroes that filled a critical void! Quality government data will be available soon. From Bloomberg on vaccinations as of Feb 4th. "In the U.S., more Americans have now received at least one dose than have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began. So far, 32.7 million doses have been given, according to a state-by-state tally. In the last week, an average of 1.34 million doses per day were administered." Also check out the graphs at COVID-19 Vaccine Projections The site has several interactive graphs related to US COVID vaccinations including a breakdown of how many have had one shot, and how many have had both shots.The US is now averaging close to 1.5 million tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, for adequate test-and-trace (and isolation) to reduce infections, the percent positive needs to be under 5% (probably close to 1%), so the US has far too many daily cases - and percent positive - to do effective test-and-trace. There were 1,678,444 test results reported over the last 24 hours.There were 123,907 positive tests.Almost 14,000 US deaths have been reported in February. See the graph on US Daily Deaths here.This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.And check out COVID Act Now to see how each state is doing. (updated link to new site) This graph shows the 7 day average of positive tests reported and daily hospitalizations.The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 7.4%. The percent positive is calculated by dividing positive results by total tests (including pending). It seems likely cases and hospitalizations have peaked, but are declining from a very high level.
US records record 5,077 COVID deaths after audit -- The US recorded its deadliest day of the pandemic Thursday — tallying 5,077 COVID-19 deaths and exceeding the previous pandemic peak set in January by more than 600, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The staggering death toll appears to be largely due to a backlog of data released Wednesday from Indiana, which identified 1,507 more cases since the beginning of the pandemic, the Guardian reported. The previous record was set on Jan. 12 when 4,466 coronavirus deaths were recorded. Indiana Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box said the deaths — including 302 since the beginning of the year — were found during a year-end audit of coronavirus deaths, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that the newly identified deaths will be added to the state’s tally of about 9,700 COVID-19 fatalities. “This isn’t going to be the last time we audit. And by the way, I would suggest 49 other states continue to do regular audits,” said Gov. Eric J. Holcomb, according to the news outlet. On Thursday, 122,473 new cases of the virus also were recorded, down from the previous daily high of 300,282 from Jan. 2, JHU data shows. However, cases and hospital admissions are on a downward trend, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a Friday White House COVID task force briefing.Walenksy said cases were down 61% on Wednesday, which saw about 121,000 new infections, since the peak on January 8. “Similarly, the number of new hospital admissions reported on February 2, approximately 10,500, was down nearly 42% since the hospitalization peak of 18,000 reported on January 5,” Walensky explained. Deaths also appear “to be slowing,” Walenksy continued, citing a seven day average showing a 6.7% decline in fatalities from January 28 through February 3, which doesn’t include Thursday’s record-breaking death count.
Virginia surpasses 500,000 COVID-19 cases: A product of the “herd immunity” policies of the state’s Democratic Party government - Late last month, Virginia topped 500,000 COVID-19 cases. According to an InsideNoVa report from January 31, the state has increased its count from 400,000 earlier in the month. Indicative of the acceleration of sickness as states across the country recklessly reopen schools and businesses, the report notes that this happened within a span of 19 days. According to the Virginia Department of Health, the state has registered nearly 520,000 cases. Additionally, there have been over 6,500 deaths since March. Based on the current rate of new infections, the state will most likely record 600,000 cases before the end of the month. This situation will be exacerbated by the homicidal policy of reopening schools now being spearheaded by the Democratic Party. According to a local Fox News affiliate, Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam stated, “All of our school divisions need to be making plans about how to reopen schools” in the near future. In the heavily populated suburbs of northern Virginia there have been almost 92,000 cases of COVID-19. Fairfax County, where officials have announced plans to reopen K-8 schools on February 16, has had almost 39,000 cases, resulting in over 600 deaths. On Thursday, Alexandria City Public Schools officials announced they too would plan to reopen classes to their 16,000 students on February 16. This follows both Fairfax County and Loudoun County, which combine for a total of 270,000 students between them. Arlington County recently announced plans to keep its students online, with Superintendant Francisco Durán stating case numbers exceeded the county’s “highest risk” category. The push for reopening occurs as the vaccination effort in the state has broken down. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that “wait lists for vaccine appointments grow[s] by the thousands each day in some jurisdictions” in Maryland and Virginia. The latter state “ranked among the worst performing states in getting doses out.” Even as Northam has demanded schools reopen in Virginia’s most populated areas, last week Fairfax County was forced to suspend shots for educators slated to return for in-person instruction. According to a model from the University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute cited in the InsideNoVa report, the state will most likely see tens of thousands of cases in the coming period, peaking at 98,000 cases this month. This peak would be three to four times the current caseload. The UVA report stated that “[c]old weather, time indoors, and pandemic fatigue, spurred by holiday travel and gatherings, increase the risk of transmission.” According to the report, viral spread will increase by 15 percent if weather remains cold. This would mean “total COVID-19 cases in Virginia [would increase] to 700,000, or 10 percent of the state’s population” by midyear.
Tennessee reports record-high 203 new COVID-19 deaths on Friday - — The Tennessee Department of Health reported 101 new COVID-19 cases, seven new deaths, and 159 new inactive/recovered cases in Northeast Tennessee while the state reported a record 203 new deaths statewide on Friday. Over the last seven days, Northeast Tennessee has added 864 new cases. During the seven days prior, the region reported 1,066 new cases. There have been 47,108 cases reported in Northeast Tennessee since the pandemic began. Over the last seven days, Northeast Tennessee has reported 59 new deaths. During the previous seven-day period, 55 deaths were reported. There have been 916 deaths reported in Northeast Tennessee since the pandemic began. There are currently 1,467 active cases in Northeast Tennessee, down 65 from yesterday. This marks the fifth day of declining active cases. The current number of active cases is the lowest since Oct. 14.
Covid Road to Hell Paved with Good Intentions - Access to COVID-19 vaccines for many developing countries and most of their people will have to wait as the powerful and better off secure earlier access regardless of need or urgency. More profits, by manufacturing scarcity, will surely cause even more loss of both lives and livelihoods. To induce private efforts to develop and distribute vaccines, the WHO initiated COVAX to ensure more equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. However, interest by vaccine companies has been limited, while some governments – especially from better-off upper middle-income countries – pursue other options.COVAX has been co-led with GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Buoyed by their earlier success with advance market commitments (AMC), they have extended the same approach in very different circumstances.AMC was originally conceived to induce the development of vaccines for ‘neglected diseases’. Such infectious diseases remain threats in poor countries and among poor people. Hence, prospective sales revenue was believed to be too small for needed investments by profit-seeking vaccine companies.By guaranteeing and subsidising sales, the AMC effectively promises the vaccine developer to make the research and development effort profitable, typically with early payments and subsidies to enhance the inducement.In the Covid-19 pandemic context, however, the COVAX AMC is not a ‘white knight’ coming to the rescue of an orphaned, typically tropical disease. Instead, it competes with other buyers, mostly of greater means.To put it bluntly, the Covid-19 pandemic context is quite different from the ‘neglected diseases’ problem which the AMC was conceived to address, i.e., contemporary Western R&D efforts presumed to be driven primarily, if not exclusively by the prospect of profits.The highly infectious ‘aerosol-borne’ virus quickly achieved a global reach. Apparently more likely to be lethal with advancing age, mass vulnerability to infection ensured a broad, inclusive, international market for Covid-19 vaccines from the outset. Recognising the extent and impact of the pandemic threat, vaccine developers expect to sell their vaccines very profitably. They made advance sales to many rich-country governments, rather than, or even while committing to COVAX. Unsurprisingly in these circumstances, the COVAX AMC approach has not worked well, let alone equitably.
China sending 10M vaccine doses to developing nations - China's government announced Wednesday that it plans to deliver 10 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing nations around the world as part of the World Health Organization's (WHO) COVAX program.The Associated Press reported that the announcement was made at a press briefing held by China's Foreign Ministry. It wasn't initially clear if the plan includes a monetary incentive for China or whether Beijing would donate the vaccines.“We hope countries in the international community with the capability will swing into action, support COVAX through practical actions, support the work of the World Health Organization, assist developing countries in obtaining vaccines in a timely manner and contribute to ... conquering the pandemic at an early date,” said Weng Wenbin, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, according to the AP.Two Chinese companies have manufactured COVID-19 vaccines that are on the market, though just one is approved for emergency use within China's borders currently, the news service noted. The two vaccines are seen as slightly less effective in preventing infections than other Western-made variants, but have fewer storage requirements, thus allowing them to be transported easier. Cold storage requirements for vaccines such as the one manufactured by Pfizer and BioNTech were seen as hurdles standing in the way of delivering and distributing the vaccine to remote areas, particularly in countries where infrastructure is lacking. The Trump administration declined to join COVAX, the WHO's global effort to distribute vaccines to low-income nations, last year, but officials in President Biden's administration last month indicated that they will join the effort.
Macron: AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine seems to be 'quasi-ineffective' for over 65s - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine appeared not to be effective for people over 65 years of age. Speaking to reporters only hours before the European Medecines Agency (EMA) recommended the vaccine for adults of all ages, Macron said there was "very little information" available for the vaccine developed by the British-Swedish company and Oxford University. "Today we think that it is quasi-ineffective for people over 65," he told the reporters, his office confirmed to AFP. "What I can tell you officially today is that the early results we have are not encouraging for 60 to 65-year-old people concerning AstraZeneca," he said. Macron said he was awaiting the EMA's verdict - which came later Friday - and also that of France's own health authority "because they have the numbers". The French expert decision on the vaccine is expected at the start of next week, according to sources close to the health authority. "I don't have any data, and I don't have a scientific team of my own to look at the numbers," Macron acknowledged. Meanwhile, Germany's vaccine commission on Friday maintained its advice against using AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccines on older people. "The reason is because there is currently insufficient data on the effectiveness of the vaccines on people above 65 years old," said the commission known as STIKO. The advice by the panel of medical experts will be taken into account by the government as it officially draws up its decree on usage of the vaccine. The discussion about the right target age group for the vaccine has compounded controversy surrounding AstraZeneca's vaccine. The European Commission Friday published a redacted version of its contract with the drugs giant, hoping to prove the company had breached a commitment on vaccine deliveries. Brussels is furious with the pharmaceuticals company after it warned that it would only be able to deliver a fraction of the doses the EU had been expecting once the vaccine is approved for use in the bloc.
The right to breathe: COVID-19 and the scarcity of medicinal oxygen for the developing world - The singularly most important treatment for patients with severe COVID-19 is medicinal oxygen. However, this life-saving treatment is not ubiquitous as it has tragically been shown. Recent reports that oxygen supplies were exhausted in Manaus, Brazil, and Egypt, while patients suffocated in their pulmonary fluid, shocked the world that a lack of oxygen so plentiful in the world could be in short supply. Patients with severe or critical COVID-19 cannot get enough oxygen into their bloodstream by simply breathing in room air. They need a higher concentration of oxygen and support to get it into their lungs to survive. But these particular types of equipment and supplies are lacking in much of the developed world. The oxygen demand is so high in COVID-19 patients that even the United States, the wealthiest nation on the planet, took stock of the oxygen crisis that put Los Angeles hospitals in extremis in the first week of January when hospitals were overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases.The first month of the new year was horrifically brutal. There were 18.75 million new cases of COVID-19 and over 400,000 further deaths worldwide. The most recent global tally stands at 103.3 million cases of COVID-19 and 2.23 million deaths. During the initial onslaught, many patients with low blood oxygen levels were immediately placed on ventilators, leading to difficulties weaning them off the breathing device and extensive lung injury from the high pressures that had to be used. The move to delivering oxygen through helmets, masks and nasal tubes shifted the survival curves. Patients found to be stable are now being sent home from hospitals with portable oxygen canisters and asked to monitor their symptoms and oxygen levels with affordable pulse-oximeters. The rate of hospitalized COVID-19 patients on ventilators has declined from a high of 18.6 percent in March to 1.5 percent in September. Additionally, the use of blood thinners and steroids have contributed significantly to survival. But, as witnessed over the winter surge, the health system’s lack of capacity, despite these measures, increased the fatality rate. In countries with direly limited health resources, a rapid rise in cases can be catastrophic. A report published last week in the Wall Street Journal notes, “As COVID-19 cases increase sharply in much of the world, a scarcity of oxygen is forcing hospitals to ration it for patients and is driving up the coronavirus pandemic’s death toll. The problem is especially acute in the developing world.”
Flu cases 'almost completely wiped out' this winter in England, but COVID-19 continues to soar - As coronavirus cases continue to surge in England this winter, the number of people suffering from flu has plunged to levels not seen in more than 130 years, experts told the Sunday Times.Medical experts said flu appears to have been "almost completely wiped out" after rates plummeted by a whopping 95%.According to data obtained by the Times, the number of those who reported influenza-like illnesses to their GPs was 1.1 per 100,000 people, compared to a five-year average rate of 27.The data comes from the second week of January, which is normally the peak time of the influenza season in which thousands of people are hospitalized.The number of hospital admissions in England for flu was zero as of mid-January."I cannot think of a year this has happened," Simon de Lusignan, a professor of primary care at the University of Oxford told the Times. John McCauley, director of the World Health Organization's collaborating center in London told the Times that the collapse in numbers was "unprecedented."But while this might be good news overall, some scientists who are developing a vaccine for next year's flu season are struggling because of the few samples they now have to work on. "It's a nightmare to work out what comes next," said McCauley. "If you have flu away for a year, then immunity will have waned. It could come back worse."Experts have previously said that flu rates have been lower this yeardue to ongoing lockdown restrictions and social distancing measures.The low flu numbers in the country offer a stark difference to its coronavirus cases.
Portugal records worst rate of Covid-19 cases in the world - The people of Portugal are suffering the terrible fate of leading the world in terms of new coronavirus infections and deaths. Around 15,000 new infections and 250 deaths per 1 million inhabitants occurred last month, compared to the European Union (EU) average of 4,200 and 103. A record 16,432 new cases and 303 deaths from the virus were reported on January 28. In the month of January alone, nearly half of the 726,321 infections and 12,757 deaths since the start of the pandemic were reported. Hospitals across the country of just over 10 million people are reportedly on the verge of collapse, with ambulances queuing for hours due to the lack of beds. The Garcia de Horta Hospital in Almada is operating at more than 300 percent of its capacity. Socialist Party (PS) Health Minister Marta Temido admitted, “We are putting all means to work in all sectors, but there is a limit. And we are very close to the limit.” Last Friday, Portugal’s air force flew three critically ill COVID-19 patients from Lisbon to the island of Madeira, where there are spare hospital beds. On Sunday, Austria agreed to take Portuguese intensive-care patients and Germany agreed to airlift military medics, paramedics and equipment. International flights have been curtailed and Portugal's sole land border with Spain closed. The newly re-elected conservative President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, warned that the lockdown announced in mid-January in response to the surge in infections and deaths would probably last until the end of March and possibly into the summer. PS Prime Minister, António Costa, told reporters that the situation was not just “bad” but “terrible”: “There’s no point in feeding the illusion that we are not facing the worst moment. And we’ll face this worst moment for a few more weeks, that is for sure.” Costa said the reason for the surge in infections was his government's relaxation of restrictive measures at Christmas and the appearance of a more infectious COVID-19 variant first detected in Britain. In a de facto warning to the working class throughout Europe, experts estimate the British variant accounts for up to 40 percent of all new cases. There has also been an increase in a new variant from Brazil, a former colony, the people of which still have close connections with Portugal. But Costa sought to shift his government's responsibility for continuing the chronic underfunding of Portugal's public health system (SNS), saying it was down to his confusing “messages”.
Europe nears 750,000 COVID-19 deaths as governments move to end lockdown restrictions -The European continent, including Russia and Ukraine, is approaching the horrific toll of three quarters of a million deaths due to COVID-19. As of Friday evening, 729,201 people had already perished. Total infections passed 31 million in Europe on Tuesday, with over 180,000 new cases recorded daily on Wednesday and Thursday this week. In the UK, there have been over 111,000 deaths, in Italy 90,618, in France 77,952, in Russia 75,732, in Germany 61,161 and in Spain 61,386. These deaths are measured by governments based on various criteria but are around 20 percent lower than the real figure, according to a study of excess deaths by Nature magazine, meaning that Europe may be closer to a million deaths. Around 5,000 people a day are dying in Europe and the pandemic is undergoing a dramatic resurgence in parts of the continent. The mass loss of life continues amid escalating moves to end lockdown and restrictions by governments. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has announced a “roadmap” out of its current limited lockdown, beginning February 22—with around 20,000 new infections announced daily and an average of over 1,000 deaths. Lockdowns are being ended in the knowledge that not only are new and more deadly variants of the virus developing, including the UK’s B117, but they continue to infect, and at a higher rate. On Friday, a million people in Liverpool, Preston and Lancashire in the North West of England were advised to get a Covid test, including for a far wider range of symptoms than the original strain, with more than 100 cases of a new mutated strain (E484K) of the virus detected in the region. In some countries, B117, first detected only last September, has become the dominant variant. In the last week, 1,854 lives have been lost to Covid in Portugal, an average of 264 a day. By Wednesday, over the previous seven days, almost 850 new coronavirus cases were recorded for every 100,000 inhabitants. Last month, Portugal recorded the worst rate of per capita COVID-19 new infections in the world. According to health authorities, 43 percent of the country’s overall COVID-19 infections and 44 percent of all related deaths were recorded in January alone. Hospitals are unable to offer care for those sick and dying of Covid, with Deutsche Welle reporting Wednesday that with the “country's intensive care units (ICUs) already treating around 850 patients there are almost no vacant beds for the treatment of severe new coronavirus cases.” “Approximately 6,700 other patients are being looked after in normal hospital wards and triage tents have even been erected outside some hospitals. Here doctors decide which patients to treat first on the basis of oxygen levels and body temperature. Field hospitals, too, are being speedily set up to take in more sick people.”
The Latest: Mexico sees near-record daily coronavirus deaths — Mexico reported a near-record 1,707 confirmed coronavirus deaths Wednesday, as the country runs out of vaccines. The Health Department reported Mexico’s COVID-19 deaths now total 161,240, and confirmed infections rose by 12,153 to nearly 1.89 million. Estimates based on excess-death statistics suggest the real death toll is over 195,000. Mexico approved Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine Tuesday, but has not yet signed a purchase contract and does not have a firm date for its first delivery. The government had hoped to get 400,000 doses by the end of February. Mexico has received about 766,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and has administered about 686,000 shots, with much of the remainder set aside for second doses. The next Pfizer shipment is not expected until mid-February. Meanwhile, the government website set up to register people for vaccines when they do arrive was overwhelmed and inoperable for a second straight day.
The Coronavirus Vaccine Fail and International Elites - Dean Baker - The vaccine rollout process has been painfully slow in the United States. More than 40 days after the first vaccine was approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, just over 6.0 percent of our population has been vaccinated. And that is with just the first shot, very few having gotten the two shots needed to hit the targeted levels of immunity. Thankfully the pace of the vaccination program is picking up, both as kinks are worked out and now that we have an administration that cares about getting people vaccinated.But we still have to ask why the process has been so slow. We have an obvious answer in the United States, the Trump administration basically said that distribution wasn’t its problem. As Donald Trump once tweeted, he considered the distribution process the responsibility of the states and gave the order “get it done.” If we can explain the failure to have more rapid distribution in the United States on Trump’s Keystone Cops crew, what explains the failures in other wealthy countries? As bad as the U.S. has done so far, we have vaccinated a larger share of our population than any country in Europe with the exception of the United Kingdom. That’s right, countries like Denmark, France, and even Germany have done worse in vaccinating their populations than the United States. And these countries ostensibly have competent leaders and all have national health care systems. Nonetheless, they have done worse far worse in the case of France and Germany, than Donald Trump’s clown show. The pandemic is a worldwide crisis, that requires a worldwide solution. This is a classic case where there are enormous benefits from collective action and few downsides. This is not a case, like seizing oil or other natural resources, where if the United States gets more, everyone else gets less and vice-versa. Sharing knowledge about vaccines, treatments, and best practices for prevention is costless and the whole world benefits if the pandemic can be contained as quickly as possible. This point is being driven home as new strains develop through mutation, which may spread more quickly and possibly be more deadly and vaccine-resistant. The logical path would have been to open-source all research on treatments and vaccines, both so that progress could be made as quickly as possible, and also intellectual property rights would not be an obstacle to large-scale production throughout the world. This would have required some collective agreement where countries agreed to both put up some amount of research funding, presumably based on size and per capita income, and also that all findings, including results from clinical trials, would be quickly posted on the web. This way, the information would be quickly shared so that researchers and public health experts everywhere could benefit. The big problem, of course, is that going this route of open-source research and international cooperation could call into question the merits of patent monopoly financing of prescription drug research. After all, if publicly funded open-source research proved to be the best mechanism for financing the development of drugs and vaccines in a pandemic, maybe this would be the case more generally. And, no one in a position of power in American politics wanted to take this risk of a bad example.
Toxic Metals Contaminate All Baby Foods Tested: New Government Report - A new Congressional report presents some disturbing information about the contents of popular baby foods, including some organic brands.Toxic metals arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury were all present at levels beyond what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers safe for other products. Yet infants are particularly susceptible to these toxins, which can impair their neurological development and have lifelong impacts on their ability to earn a living and avoid criminal behavior."No level of exposure to these metals has been shown to be safe in vulnerable infants," Linda McCauley, dean of the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University, told The New York Times.The report was published Thursday by the House Oversight Committee's subcommittee on economic and consumer policy. It was prompted by a 2019 report from Healthy Babies Bright Futures, which found that heavy metals were present in 95 percent of commercially available baby foods."What they did was take food off store shelves and test it. We said we should go straight to the companies and ask for their materials," subcommittee Chair Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) told The Washington Post.The subcommittee requested internal testing data from Nurture, Beech-Nut, Hain, Gerber, Campbell, Walmart and Sprout Foods. The first four companies agreed to the request, while Campbell, Walmart and Sprout did not.Arsenic, lead, and cadmium were found in the products of all the responding companies, while mercury was found in products from Nurture, the only company that tested for it.The impacted products were:
- Nurture (HappyBABY), which sold products with as much as 180 parts per billion (ppb) arsenic, 641 ppb lead, more than five ppb cadmium and as much as 10 ppb mercury.
- Hain (Earth's Best Organic), which sold products with as much as 129 ppb arsenic and used ingredients with as much as 309 ppb arsenic. It also used ingredients containing as much as 352 ppb lead and 260 ppb cadmium.
- Beech-Nut, which used ingredients that included as much as 913.4 ppb arsenic, 886.9 ppb lead and 344.55 ppb cadmium.
- Gerber, which used rice flour containing more than 90 ppb arsenic, ingredients with as much as 48 ppb lead and carrots with as much as 87 ppb cadmium.
The FDA has currently only set one legal limit for toxic metals in baby food, according to The New York Times. It requires that rice cereal not have more than 100 ppb arsenic. However, many of the ingredients tested far exceeded the legal limits set by the government for drinking water. The FDA limits for bottled water are 10 ppb inorganic arsenic, 5 ppb lead, and 5 ppb cadmium, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has mandated there be no more than 2 ppb mercury in drinking water.
How Some Drugs Can Turn Into a Cancer-Causing Chemical in the Body --When consumers get a prescription drug from the pharmacy, they assume that it's been tested and is safe to use. But what if a drug changes in harmful ways as it sits on the shelf or in the body? One dangerous result has been the creation of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a probable carcinogen, in certain drugs. NDMA is found in chlorinated water, food and drugs in trace amounts. To minimize exposure, the Food and Drug Administration has set an acceptable level of NDMA in each pill at less than 96 nanograms. But over the past few years the FDA has found excessive amounts of NDMA in several drugs for hypertension, diabetes and heartburn. As a result, the agency has initiated recalls to protect the public. These products were contaminated with NDMA during the manufacturing process. The FDA recommended best practices for manufacturers to minimize this risk going forward. Unfortunately for the buying public, emerging evidence suggests that NDMA can also be created as some pills sit on the store shelf or medicine cabinet, or even after the patient swallows it. Thus, there is no way to test for its presence in the factory. I am a pharmacist and distinguished professor who has written extensively about manufacturing issues and FDA oversight associated with both drugs and dietary supplements in the past, including the issue of NDMA contamination. In a new article, I discuss how NDMA can end up in a patient's medication if it wasn't put there during its manufacture. Ranitidine (Zantac) was a commonly used heartburn and ulcer prescription and over-the-counter medication for decades before it was recalled by the FDA on April 1, 2020. It may now be the canary in the coal mine for the post-manufacturing creation of NDMA.In one study, investigators found that ranitidine contained only 18 nanograms of NDMA after it was manufactured. However, when stored at 158°F for 12 days – as if the drug had been left in a hot car – NDMA dosages rose above 140 ng. This is only slightly above the 96 ng limit the FDA has deemed safe, but this was only 12 days later. In another study, storing ranitidine where it was exposed to higher temperatures or high humidity enhanced the creation of NDMA over time. This suggests that some medications can leave the factory with a safe amount of NDMA but if kept for too long at home or on the store shelf can exceed known acceptable limits by the time patients use them. In a new study in JAMA Network Open, investigators simulated the stomach environment and found that when ranitidine was exposed to an acidic environment with a nitrite source, these chemicals could create more than 10,000 ng of NDMA. These results support a clinical study in which urine samples were collected from 10 adults both before and after using ranitidine. After people swallowed ranitidine, the urinary NDMA doses rose from about 100 ng to more than 40,000 ng over the next day.
New Charges Over Flint’s Water Crisis Offer Only a Trickle of Justice - No punishment has yet fit the crime of the Flint water crisis, complete with its child poisoning and lethal outbreak of Legionnaire's disease. After a prior investigation fell apart in 2019, Michigan state prosecutors unveiled a slew of fresh charges against nine figures involved in the fateful penny-pinching move to switch Flint's water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River in 2014. The river's waters, made corrosive from decades of industrial pollution, ate at Flint's old water pipes, releasing lead into drinking water and into the brains of thousands of children.Lead is a neurotoxin with irreversible effects and is not safe to ingest at any level. The New York Times and Education Week reported in 2019 that the percentage of Flint's school children who qualified for individualized special education services more than doubled from 13 percent before the crisis to 28 percent after. Add to those victims, the one dozen people who did not survive their bouts with Legionnaire's disease, a type of pneumonia that scientists linked to the water supply switch. The PBS program Frontline determined in 2019 that a total of 115 Flint residents had died of pneumonia during the outbreak, suggesting deaths attributed to Legionnaire's had been undercounted, potentially by up to a factor of nearly 10.Seven of the nine defendants — which include former state health and communications officials, former state-appointed emergency managers, and an ex-Flint public works manager — are staring down 5 to 15 years in prison for crimes including involuntary manslaughter and perjury. Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, however, only faces two relatively minor counts of willfully neglecting to intervene in his underlings' incompetence and failing to adequately protect the public against disaster.In theory, Snyder could end up in prison for a year, and prosecutors say it is possible he could face more charges. Without them, he would be getting off easy for being asleep at the wheel during one of the greatest instances of environmental injustice in recent American memory. Or was he truly "asleep"? Snyder's excuse during the crisis and ever since is that he never knew enough to stop the falling dominoes of decisions and cover-ups happening underneath him. Yet plenty of circumstantial documentation begs the contrary…
EPA Dismisses Harmful 'Secret Science' Rule -A federal judge vacated the so-called "secret science" rule that limited EPA's ability to use public health research to craft policy on Monday.The Biden administration had determined the justification proffered, unsuccessfully, by the Trump administration for its hasty publication of the rule was legally indefensible.The rule, originally conceived by the tobacco industry in the 1990s, would have restricted EPA's ability to use studies that cannot make their underlying data — like participants' medical histories — public.Such research includes bedrock epidemiological studies upon which EPA has relied for decades, and the implementation of the rule would have made it dramatically more difficult to enact public health and environmental protections. EPA spokeswoman Lindsay Hamilton said the Biden administration was "pleased" with the ruling, adding, "EPA is committed to making evidence-based decisions and developing policies and programs that are guided by the best science."
Court tosses Trump EPA's 'secret science' rule - A federal court has vacated the Trump administration's "secret science" Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule, which critics had said would undermine the use of public health studies in agency rulemaking. The decision comes after the Biden administration asked the court to throw out the rule restricting the EPA’s use of studies that don’t make their underlying data publicly available. In his order vacating the rule and remanding it to the EPA, Montana federal District Judge Brian Morris noted that the agency argued that a prior court ruling eliminated the rule's legal basis. "Defendants explain that in light of the Court’s conclusion that the Final Rule constitutes a substantive rule, the Environmental Protection Agency lacked authorization to promulgate the rule pursuant to its housekeeping authority, which is the only source of authority identified in the Final Rule," said the order from Morris, an Obama appointee. The Trump EPA classified the rule as procedural, rather than substantive, which allowed it to become effective immediately under the agency’s housekeeping authority rather than having to wait for the standard 30 days after Federal Register publication. Morris, in a decision last week, ruled against this, determining that the rule was substantive, not procedural, terminating the agency's fast-track of it. “The Final Rule’s status becomes particularly clear when one examines what it is missing — any kind of procedure. EPA itself noted in its rulemaking that it would have to issue future guidance on how the rule operates procedurally,” he wrote at the time. That decision delayed it from going into effect, making it subject to a Biden administration freeze and review on Trump-era rules that were not yet effective. Prior to the court decision on Monday, the rule appeared to be under White House review. Trump administration officials had billed it as a transparency measure and a way to combat "secret science." Opponents warned that it could hamstring the use of major health studies that keep their data under wraps for legitimate reasons including privacy. The rule didn’t eliminate the use of all studies with private data but gave preference to those with public data. An EPA spokesperson said in an email that the agency was "pleased" with the decision to vacate the rule. "EPA is committed to making evidence-based decisions and developing policies and programs that are guided by the best science," the spokesperson said. Meanwhile, environmentalist groups that had sued over the rule celebrated the court order. "Today’s decision is great news for EPA’s ability to use rigorous, lifesaving science to protect all Americans from dangerous pollution and toxic chemicals,” said Environmental Defense Fund senior attorney Ben Levitan in a statement.
Recompose, the first human-composting funeral home in the U.S., is now open for business --Somewhere in Kent, tucked anonymously into acres of warehouses and light-industrial workshops, the first full-service human-composting funeral home in the United States is operational.After nearly a decade of planning, research and fundraising — not to mention a successful campaign to change state law — Recompose is finally converting people into soil.Outside, the entrance to Recompose looks like most of its neighbors — just another unit in a tall, almost block-sized building with plain metal siding and big, roll-up warehouse doors. But inside, it feels like an environmentalist’s version of a sleek, futuristic spaceship: spare, calm, utilitarian, with silvery ductwork above, a few soil-working tools (shovels, rakes, pitchforks) on racks, bags of tightly packaged straw neatly stacked on shelves, fern-green walls, potted plants of various sizes.One immense object dominates the space, looking like an enormous fragment of white honeycomb. These are Recompose’s 10 “vessels,” each a hexagon enclosing a steel cylinder full of soil. One day in mid-January, eight decedents were already inside eight vessels, undergoing the process of natural organic reduction (NOR) or, more colloquially, human composting. One vessel contained the remains of Ernest “Ernie” Brooks II, a renowned underwater photographer. Organic-farming pioneer Robert “Amigo Bob” Cantisano lay in a second. A third held Paulie Bontrager, a committed environmentalist, vegan and nature lover from West Virginia who died unexpectedly while visiting her daughter in Burien. The Recompose process takes 30 days in a vessel full of wood chips and straw, then another few weeks in “curing bins,” large boxes (one per person) where soil is allowed to rest and continue exhaling carbon dioxide. Once that process is complete, friends and chosen family can either retrieve the soil themselves, or donate it to an ecological restoration project at Bells Mountain near Vancouver, Washington. So far, most have elected to donate. Recompose costs $5,500 for everything: the body pickup (in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties), the paperwork, the process itself and an optional service. (Body transport from further away can be arranged, for an extra fee, and Recompose has already accepted bodies from California and the East Coast.)
A Quarter of Known Bee Species Haven’t Been Seen Since 1990 - The number of wild bee species recorded by an international database of life on earth has declined by a quarter since 1990, according to a global analysis of bee declines. Researchers analyzed bee records from museums, universities and citizen scientists collated by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, (GBIF) a global, government-funded network providing open-access data on biodiversity.They found a steep decline in bee species being recorded since 1990, with approximately 25 percent fewer species reported between 2006 and 2015 than before the 1990s.Although this does not mean these species are extinct, it may indicate that some have become so scarce that they are no longer regularly observed in the wild.“With citizen science and the ability to share data, records are going up exponentially, but the number of species reported in these records is going down,” said Eduardo Zattara, the lead author and a biologist from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue and Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council. “It’s not a bee cataclysm yet, but what we can say is that wild bees are not exactly thriving.”A separate series of scientific studies into global insect declines this month warned that the abundance of insects was falling by 10 to 20 percent each decade, an “absolutely frightening” loss that threatened to “tear apart the tapestry of life”.In the US, a study in 2020 found that a lack of bees in agricultural areas was limiting the supply of some food crops. In Britain, the government this month allowed farmers to use neonicotinoids on sugar beet crops despite the bee-killing pesticides having been banned across the EU in 2018 with the UK’s backing.The new study, which is published in the journal One Earth, analyzed records from three centuries of collections that include more than 20,000 known bee species around the world.It found that declines were not evenly distributed across bee families. While records of Halictid bees, the second most common family, have declined by 17 percent since the 1990s, those for Melittidae–a much rarer family–have plummeted by more than 41 percent. Scientists have warned that a lack of scientific data on insect declines in tropical countries is hampering their understanding of global bee declines, with most GBIF records covering North America and Europe.
Biden Urged to Help Save American Bumblebees From Extinction - Warning that threats including the climate crisis and pesticides are pushing the American bumblebee toward extinction, two conservation groups on Monday urged the Biden administration to give federal protections to the native pollinator."We're asking President [Joe] Biden to be the hero that steps up and saves the American bumblebee from extinction," said Jess Tyler, an entomologist and staff scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. "It's unthinkable that we would carelessly allow this fuzzy, black-and-yellow beauty to disappear forever."To stave off that scenario, Tyler's group joined the Bombus Pollinator Association of Law Students of Albany Law School in urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the American bumblebee as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).Keith Hirokawa, a professor of law at Albany Law School, called it "unfortunate that we're forced to call upon the Endangered Species Act to protect a species so fundamental to human and ecosystem health.""It is our hope," said Hirokawa, "that the Biden administration grasps the gravity of this moment."The groups' 72-page petition [pdf] to the agency describes the gravity in clear terms, pointing in part to how the species — referring to the pollinators known as both Bombus pensylvanicus and Bombus sonorous — have gone from being once common and dominant to suffering a "devastating loss" of abundance. Bolstering the groups' argument for ESA protections is international recognition of the American bumble's plight, with the petition citing as an example the IUCN's "vulnerable" classification. Further, the groups add, "The American bumblebee has not been protected under any state endangered species statute." Simply put, the species "urgently needs the protections that only ESA listing can provide. Without these necessary protections, the American bumblebee will continue to precipitously decline," the groups wrote.
Biden delays Trump rule that weakened wild bird protections - The Washington Post— The Biden administration said Thursday it was delaying a rule finalized in former President Donald Trump’s last days in office that would have drastically weakened the government’s power to enforce a century-old law protecting most wild birds. The rule could mean more birds die, including those that land in oil pits or collide with power lines or other structures, government studies say. But under Trump, the Interior Department sided with industry groups that had long sought to end criminal prosecutions of accidental but preventable bird deaths. While the new rule had been set to take effect Monday, Interior Department officials said they were putting it off at President Joe Biden’s direction and will reopen the issue to public comment. The migratory bird rule was among dozens of Trump-era environmental policies that Biden ordered to be reconsidered on his first day in office. Former federal officials, environmental groups and Democrats in Congress contend many of the Trump rules were meant to benefit private industry at the expense of conservation. “The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a bedrock environmental law critical to protecting migratory birds and restoring declining bird populations,” Interior spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said. “The Trump administration sought to overturn decades of bipartisan and international precedent in order to protect corporate polluters.” A federal judge in August had blocked a prior attempt by the Trump administration to change how the bird treaty was enforced. But the administration remained adamant that the law had been wielded inappropriately for decades to penalize companies and other entities that kill birds accidentally.
Traffic Sounds Make It Harder for Birds to Think, Scientists Find -- A study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Wednesday found that traffic noises can impair the ability of songbirds to learn. In some cases, birds took twice as long to figure out new skills when listening to road sounds. "While our expectation was that noise would reduce cognitive performance, I was a bit surprised by the extent of the effect we observed," A growing body of research shows that noise pollution can have a major impact on non-human animals, BBC News reported. A study published in September 2020 found that the relative quiet of lockdown enabled male white-crowned sparrows in San Francisco to sing a higher quality song that was more attractive to females. Under the sea, shipping noises have been shown to stop humpback whales from singing. However, Wednesday's study was the first to show how noise pollution harms cognitive ability in animals, its authors told AFP. To achieve their results, the researchers gave zebra finches a series of tasks that mimic the process of searching for food, BBC News explained. These included finding food beneath flipping lids designed to resemble leaves or figuring out how to access food in a cylinder. The researchers had the birds attempt the tasks without noise and also while a recording of traffic sounds played in the background. (The level of noise resembled road noise in a semi-rural area, AFP explained.) They found that the background noise had a big impact on the birds' ability to complete the tasks. "In some cases, we observed that it took animals more than twice as long to learn new skills when they heard road traffic played at natural sounds levels," Templeton told i. "For example, learning to remember the location of a hidden food reward took control birds about nine trials, but those exposed to traffic noise took on average 18 trials to learn the same task." The birds' performance was also impaired on tasks that required them to control impulses, distinguish different colors and learn from each other. The only ability that was not impacted was their ability to link a color to a food reward.
Human Noise Pollution Is Harming Ocean Creatures -- Humans are changing the way the ocean sounds, and it is having a profound impact on marine life. A major new literature review published in Science on Thursday found that noise from vessels, sonar, seismic surveys and construction can damage marine animals' hearing, change their behaviors and, in some cases, threaten their ability to survive. "When people think of threats facing the ocean, we often think of climate change, plastics and overfishing," Neil Hammerschlag, a University of Miami marine ecologist who was not involved with the paper, told The Associated Press. "But noise pollution is another essential thing we need to be monitoring." Sound is key to how ocean animals communicate with each other and navigate their environments. Underwater, it is only possible to see for tens of yards and to detect a chemical signal from hundreds of yards away, The New York Times explained. Sound, on the other hand, can travel thousands of miles, which is why many marine creatures have evolved to detect and emit it. However, the singing of whales and groaning of coral reefs contribute to an underwater soundscape that is significantly changing because of human activity. To better understand, a 25-author research team reviewed more than 10,000 papers on the topic. For one, the researchers wrote, overfishing and habitat loss have decreased the sounds generated by ocean life. "[T]hose voices are gone," Carlos Duarte, study lead author and Red Sea Research Center marine ecologist, told The Associated Press. The climate crisis is also altering sounds from geophysical sources such as sea ice and storms, the study found. Then there is the noise humans have added through shipping traffic, fossil fuel exploration and even intentional attempts at deterrence. Evidence shows that these noises harm marine mammals, but several studies show that they impact fish, invertebrates, sea birds and reptiles as well.
Somalia declares state of emergency over new locust invasion, infestation persists in Saudi Arabia-- Somalia has announced a state of emergency on Wednesday, February 4, 2021, as the nation battles a new generation of desert locust swarms that have already caused major damage to farmlands. Meanwhile, infestations are ongoing in Saudi Arabia, posing risks that any locusts that escape control could form adult groups that would likely move inland. Somalia is facing humanitarian needs never witnessed before as the country is battling locusts, as well as flooding and the COVID-19 pandemic. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initially warned that the fleet of anti-locust aircraft in Kenya and Somalia could be grounded as the funding fell short of 38 million dollars. The intensity of the locust outbreak over the East African region has been blamed on climate change. The state of emergency declared in Somalia is in effect particularly in the southern areas. In a statement, FAO said, "rains and winds are two of the most favorable conditions for desert locusts to multiply rapidly and spread to areas where they had been under control." "In Somalia, hopper bands are present on the northwest coast and in the northeast where some have started to fledge and will be forming immature swarms. Intensive control operations are underway to reduce the number of new swarms that will form this month." Swarms that develop on the northwest coast are likely to move to the plateau and adjacent areas of eastern Ethiopia, while swarms in the northeast are forecast to spread west along the plateau, where they could mature and produce another generation of breeding from mid-March onwards, especially if more rain will fall.
Exports empty Canada's canola bins, driving prices to near records (Reuters) - Canada, the world’s biggest canola grower, is running short of the oilseed six months before the next harvest, with strong export demand driving prices to nearly 13-year highs last week. Supplies of major commodity crops are dwindling worldwide as buyers hoard food supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. China is loading up on grains and oilseeds that it can feed to animals, raising food inflation and causing some nations to restrict exports of their crops. Canola, known for its bright yellow flowers, is crushed mainly for oil to make French fries, mayonnaise and salad dressings. Its meal is also fed to livestock like pigs. To Manitoba farmer Bill Craddock, it seemed like a good decision in autumn to sell all of his canola at high prices, only to see them spike even more this month. The roots of Canada’s canola shortage trace back to the autumn, when farmers reaped their smallest harvest in five years. Strong export demand for canola seed and oil then drove a late-summer rally that prompted farmers to sell more crop earlier than usual. Those early deliveries to commercial handlers have helped Canada export nearly 33% more canola year-to-date over last year, according to government data. Top buyer China more than doubled purchases to 1.2 million tonnes as of December, despite continuing restrictions against Canadian exporters Richardson International and Viterra. Other exporters can still ship Canadian canola, helping meet China’s voracious demand for animal feed as its hog herd recovers from a deadly disease. With the market soaring, canola importers locked in their purchase prices under terms of their sales agreements last week, fearing even higher prices, said Tony Tryhuk, manager of commodity trading at RBC. That forced Canadian exporters on the other ends of those sales to buy canola futures at high prices to fill them, likely registering big losses in the process, he said. ICE canola futures retreated late in the week to less than C$700 per tonne, remaining close to levels unseen since the record 2008 commodity boom. Strong canola oil demand has also spurred Canadian crush plants to process brisk volumes domestically, further straining supplies. Both crush plants and exporters may already be short canola to fulfil orders, a Canadian exporter said. Archer-Daniels-Midland Co, Bunge Ltd and Richardson, major crushers, declined to comment. Cargill Inc did not respond. The canola rally is not necessarily over, Tryhuk said. Bigger than usual futures positions for November delivery indicate that seed exporters and crushers are already worried about the shortage continuing through the next harvest, he said.
Pakistani Universities Promoting Moringa to Fight Malnutrition -- Aga Khan University and Sindh Agriculture University are jointly promoting Moringa tree planting in Pakistan's Thar desert to fight malnutrition, according to multiple media reports. Moringa has gained popularity as superfood in the West in recent years. People of drought-stricken Tharparkar have been suffering from malnutrition and disease in the middle of a long-running drought in the region. Sindh Agriculture University, Tando Jam, and the Aga Khan University will plant 40,000 moringa tree seedlings in Matiari, a rural district in central Sindh, in an effort to improve the health of malnourished mothers, children and adolescents in the area. The moringa tree plantation campaign has been funded by the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Fund for the Environment, a $10 million fund dedicated to practical solutions to environmental problems. There is high incidence of stunting and wasting among children in Tharparkar district and elsewhere in rural Sindh due mainly to their very limited diet of daal-roti (lentils and bread) which does not supply essential nutrients such as vitamins and minerals for good health and early development. Moringa tree packs 92 essential nutrients, 46 antioxidants, 36 anti-inflammatories and 18 amino acids which help your body heal and build muscle. Native to South Asia, the hardy and drought-resistant Moringa tree can contribute to everything from better vision and stronger immune system to healthier bones and skin. Moringa has 25 times more iron than spinach, 17 times more calcium than milk, 15 times more potassium than bananas and nine times more protein than yoghurt, according to Dr. Shahzad Basra of the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad, Pakistan. “It also has seven times more vitamin C compared to oranges, over 10 times more vitamin A compared to carrots and three times more vitamin E compared to almonds", he added. No wonder the powder made from Moringa leaves is sold as superfood in the West.
Three of World's Largest Sugar Pine Trees Are Found in California - Three of the world's largest sugar pine trees have been discovered in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.More specifically, the trees clock in as the planet's second, third and sixth largest known sugar pines. Michael Taylor, a professional tree hunter who has been seeking large trees for more than 30 years, found the green giants in October 2020."I want to document these trees before they're all gone," Taylor told The Sugar Pine Foundation (SPF).Taylor recorded the second and third largest sugar pines in Tahoe National Forest west of Lake Tahoe, The Associated Press reported. The two trees are slightly shorter than the length of a football field. The largest of the two stretches 267 feet and six inches tall and is appropriately dubbed "Redonkulous." Its diameter at 4.5 feet from the ground — known as its diameter breadth height — is 10.5 feet. The second tallest of the two, and the third tallest known sugar pine, is 267 feet and 1.8 inches.The third pine is located in Stanislaus National Forest, near Yosemite National Park. As the world's sixth-largest sugar pine, it rises 253 feet and two inches above the ground. Sugar pines are the world's largest species of pine tree, the SPF explained. They are native to the mountains of California and Oregon, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). They can live up to 500 years and are second only to giant sequoias in total volume.
Biden Backs Trump Decision to Strip Gray Wolf of Protections (Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration is standing by a Trump-era decision to strip the gray wolf of endangered species protections, arguing the move was backed by sound science, even though it is being fought by conservationists in court.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service defended the delisting call in a letter to Earthjustice, one of the environmental groups challenging the move.“We made our delisting determination using the best scientific and commercial data available,” Gary Frazer, the assistant director for ecological services, said in the letter. “Our delisting action recognizes the successful recovery of one of the most iconic species to our nation’s natural heritage, which currently numbers more than 6,000 wolves, greatly exceeding our recovery goals for the Northern Rocky Mountains and Western Great Lakes populations.”When the Trump administration announced the decision last October, it called the move an Endangered Species Act success story. After more than 45 years of protection under the statute, gray wolf populations had recovered enough to warrant the shift, the Fish and Wildlife Service said at the time.However, in January, six environmental groups filed a lawsuit in a California-based federal district court challenging the decision, saying the Fish and Wildlife Service had only evaluated the health of wolf populations in the Midwest, overlooking the species’ status in California, Washington, Maine and other states.
New endangered whale species identified in Gulf of Mexico - A new species of whale has been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico — but scientists warn the animal is critically endangered. The newly-identified species of baleen whale has been dubbed “Rice’s whale” after American biologist Dale Rice, who was the first to recognize the mammal. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) previously thought the whales were a subspecies of the Bryde’s whale, however, the agency announced that it was actually a new species entirely in a paper published in Marine Mammal Science. The discovery was made after examining the skull of a Rice’s whale that washed up on a Florida beach in 2019. Differences in the whale’s skull clearly separated Rice’s whales from Byrde’s whales, which are closely related to the blue and humpback whale, marine biologists said. Rice’s whales are filter feeders that can weigh up to 60,000 pounds and grow up to 42 feet long. Sadly, however, there are estimated to be fewer than 100 left in existence. The species is listed as critically endangered under the Endangered Species Act and is protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Its biggest threats include include vessel strikes, ocean noise, energy exploration and production, oil spills, entanglement in fishing gear, and ocean debris, according to the NOAA.
Mysterious California sea lion deaths linked to toxic synthetic chemicals - Sea lions in California had been dying of a mysterious cancer for decades. Now, scientists say they have finally uncovered the likely cause: toxic chemicals from industrial trash, pesticides and oil refinery waste. A team of mammal pathologists, virologists, chemists and geneticists have concluded that sea lions with higher concentrations of DDT, PCBs and other chemicals in their blubber are more prone to cancer triggered by a herpes virus. The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, are the result of 20 years of research, gleaned from tissue samples collected from 394 sea lions. “[Sea lions are] predisposed to cancer by these high levels of legacy compounds that are still in the environment,” Frances Gulland, a University of California, Davis, researcher who studied the animals for decades at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, told the Los Angeles Times. Gulland and other scientists studied sea lions that died of various causes along the Sausalito coast. The levels of pollutants found in the sea lions blubber are “among the highest recorded in any marine mammal” the researchers said, likely because of the high levels of dumping along the California coast in the 1970s. DDT, the insecticide which was banned in the US in 1972, takes generations to break down and can accumulate easily in fat tissue. While the findings begin to answer longstanding questions about what has been plaguing sea lions off California’s coast, it also raises concerns about the effects of ocean pollution on other mammals, including humans. “Sea lions, they’re coming up on the beach, using the same waters that we swim and surf in, eating a lot of the same seafood that we eat,”
Chemical Dumping Linked to California Sea Lions’ High Cancer Rates -- California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) have one of the highest rates of cancer of all mammals, andscientists have long wondered why.The answer, published in Frontiers in Marine Science in December 2020, is complex. But a key component is exposure to toxic chemicals, from when the California coast was an industrial dumping ground."It is extraordinary, the level of pollutants in these animals in California. It is a big factor in why we're seeing this level of cancer," study coauthor and Marine Mammal Center pathologist Dr. Pádraig Duignan told the Los Angeles Times.In the past 40 years, 18 to 23 percent of the sea lions treated at the Marine Mammal Center hospital in Sausalito, California died of a particular type of cancer, the center wrote in a press release. This is unusual, as wild mammals tend not to develop this disease. In fact, the California sea lions have the highest rate of a single type of cancer of any mammal, including humans. This shocked study lead author Frances Gulland when she first started to work at the Marine Mammal Center 26 years ago. "Wildlife should not be getting cancer like this, that's crazy!" Gulland told the Los Angeles Times. But the 250,000 or so California sea lions breed on islands off the Central California coast, the study authors noted. This is the same area that saw dumping of DDT in the 1960s, and pollution from industrialization and urbanization in the following decades. Industrial trash, radioactive material and waste from oil refineries was also dumped into the ocean, the Los Angeles Times reported."With all the dumping since the Second World War, right up to the 1970s, that's a lot of stuff out there," Duignan told the Los Angeles Times. "These legacy chemicals haven't broken down anything appreciable in intervening years, and nobody knows if they ever will. This is something that they're going to have to be exposed to for who knows how long."
Snow, wind hammer U.S. Northeast in 'life-threatening' blizzard (Reuters) -A powerful winter storm engulfed the U.S. Northeast on Monday, blanketing much of the region in heavy snow, blasting coastal areas with high winds and bringing New York City and other major urban centers to nearly a standstill. The nor’easter - an East Coast storm with winds blowing from the northeast - could bring accumulations of 1 to 2 feet (31 cm to 61 cm) to the country’s most densely populated region before tapering off on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. By early Monday evening, the nor’easter had dumped as much as 27 inches (68 cm) of snow in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and 17 inches (43 cm) in parts of New York City. More than 13 inches (33 cm) covered Manhattan’s Central Park, as bands of snow began moving north into New England. By early evening, Boston reported a mix of snow and rain, the Weather Service’s forecaster Marc Chenard said. But just a few miles inland from the New England coast, up to 12 inches (30 cm) of snow were reported, he said. By Tuesday morning, some areas could see 15 inches (38 cm). If the winter storm achieves its maximum potential, it would be the first to bring more than 2 feet of snow in New York City since 2016, when a record-breaking blizzard dumped 27.5 inches (70 cm) on the country’s most populous city, according to the weather service.
Major winter storm slams Northeast U.S. with heavy snow and freezing rain (videos) - A powerful winter storm blasted the U.S. Northeast on Monday, February 1, 2021, bringing heavy snow and high winds that led to power outages for more than 22 000 customers throughout the region. The National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts the heaviest snow over parts of northern New York into northern Maine on Tuesday, February 4, with freezing rain over parts of coastal New England. This major Nor'easter prompted advisories and warnings from Tennessee to Maine, with a snow emergency issued for Philadelphia and a state of emergency declared for New York City and New Jersey on Sunday night. "It’s the storm of the century," said New Jersey snowplow operator James Carew, who has been in the field of work for 30 years. Power outages driven by heavy wind and snow cut power to more than 14 000 customers in Massachusetts solely, 4 000 in New Jersey, 3 000 in New York, and 1 200 in Connecticut According to PowerOutage, about 4 994 customers remain without power in Massachusetts, as of 14:00 UTC today. More than 1 600 flights have been canceled at major airports in the Nor'easter's path, including Newark Liberty International Airport, John F Kennedy Airport, and Philadelphia International Airport. In New York, Central Park received more than 38.1 cm (15 inches) on late Monday, placing the storm in the top 20 snowstorms in the city's recorded history. The highest snowfall total recorded on the East Coast was in Newton, New Jersey, with up to 81 cm (31 inches) of snow. In New Jersey, state police reported Monday night that they responded to more than 660 motor vehicle crashes and more than 1 000 motorist aids. "Motorist aids can be anything from flat tires, mechanical breakdowns, spin-outs, etc. We urge residents to remain off of the roads," the state police said. The NWS forecasts snow to continue across northern New England on Tuesday, with the heaviest snow over parts of northern New York state into northern Maine. Additionally, freezing rain will form over parts of coastal New England, with snow ending overnight Wednesday, February 3, across the Central Appalachians or Mid-Atlantic and wane over the Northeast on Thursday, February 4.
'Snow Droughts' Increasing in the Western U.S. --Most of us know a bad drought when we see one: Lakes and rivers recede from their normal water lines, crops wither in fields, and lawns turn brown. Usually we think of these droughts as being triggered by a lack of rain, but scientists also track drought in other ways."The common ways to measure droughts are through precipitation, soil moisture and runoff," says Laurie S. Huning, an environmental engineer at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent work adds another dimension to that by looking at water stored in snowpack.Huning is the co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with U.C. Irvine colleague Amir AghaKouchak, which developed a new framework for characterizing "snow droughts." These can occur when there's an abnormally low snowpack, which may be triggered by low precipitation, warm temperatures or both.Their research is timely. This winter, southwestern states have received just a quarter to half of the average snow-water equivalent — the amount of water held in the snowpack — the key metric for determining a snow drought.And that can have sweeping impacts. The water content of a snowpack can change the amount and timing of when runoff occurs, and that has implications for wildlife, ecosystems, water resources, flood control, hydropower and drought mitigation.Snow droughts can also have far-reaching effects on agriculture — and economies. California's Central Valley, the heart of its agriculture industry, relies on snow melt from the Sierra Nevada. The state saw $2.7 billion in losses in the sector following low precipitation and warm temperatures during 2014-2015.
Big Sur road collapse: A huge piece of California's Highway 1 was washed out - A huge piece of California's Highway 1 was washed out this week by a winter storm that brought heavy rain and snow. California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) officials said in a statement Friday a debris flow from the hillside above the roadway "overwhelmed drainage infrastructure, flowed across the highway, and eroded the road resulting in the complete loss of a segment of Highway 1" at Rat Creek, about 15 miles south of Big Sur, a mountainous stretch of the state's central coast. Caltrans crews discovered the debris flow on Thursday, and issued an emergency contract to Papich Construction in San Luis Obispo County to assist with the repair. At daybreak Friday, Caltrans crews and emergency contractors arrived at the scene and found "both lanes of the highway had washed out."The damage assessment team will continue to work through the weekend, Caltrans' statement said. It's unclear how long the repair could take and the road will remain closed in the meantime. The area where the road collapsed is about a mile south of the burn scar left behind by the Dolan Fire, one of the wildfires that ravaged the state last summer, Caltrans said. Another stretch of Highway 1 reopened in July 2018, after a massive mudslide in May 2017 heaped tons of rocks on a quarter mile section of the highway, making it impassable and adding 13 acres to the coastline.California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties in response to winter storms that "threatened to cause mud and debris flows," forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents, according to the declaration.At least 25 structures in Northern California have been damaged as a result of mudslides and debris flow caused by a powerful atmospheric river-fueled storm. Most of the impacted areas are where burn scars exist from earlier wildfires.
Major storm leaves 2 dead, takes out massive chunk of Highway 1 in California, U.S. --Massive storms that barrelled through Northern California over the weekend brought heavy rains and snow, causing floods and landslides and leaving at least 2 people dead. Meanwhile, a front approaching the Northwest will move onshore on Monday, February 1, and advance eastward to Southern California by Wednesday, February 3, producing rain and high elevation snow over parts of the northern region.The atmospheric river-driven storms hit Northern California on Thursday, January 28, unleashing damaging mudslides, widespread flooding, and heavy snow, which led to the evacuation of thousands of residents.At least two people were killed in the storms' onslaught. On Thursday, a skier's body was retrieved in deep snow near a chairlift and intersecting trails at Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada.On Friday afternoon, January 29, seven people were trapped in an inundated drain system near a Mexican border crossing, one of them was confirmed dead. On the same day, governor Gavin Newsom issued an emergency proclamation for the counties of Monterey and San Luis Obispo.Due to heavy rains, a portion of the iconic Highway 1 collapsed into the ocean on Friday. In a video posted by the Monterey County Sheriff's Office, a large part of the highway was still covered with debris from mudslides.At the point of the collapse, both lanes of the road completely disappeared, with a huge hole sloping toward the Pacific Ocean in its place. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, upstream of the washout site is a large area burnt by wildfires, particularly by the Dolan Fire, which scorched an area of about 52 000 ha (128 500 acres) from August 18, 2020. "Rat Creek drains an area partially burnt by the fire," Dr. Dave Petley of The Landslide Blog said in an analysis. "The images of the aftermath of the washout show large volumes of timber, which would be as expected for a post-wildfire mudflow," he wrote. "Of course the amount of overland flow generated in wildfire areas means that the gully will have dealt with a larger than normal volume of flow, with a higher density, generating the unusual level of erosion. The roadbed was on erodible material, possibly weathered rock and some fill."
Ice jam pushes St. Clair River to record levels, triggers devastating floods in Michigan, U.S. - Houses and main roads in southeastern St. Clair County, Michigan, were flooded on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, after ice jams pushed the St. Clair River to a record high of 176.3 m (578.5 feet).U.S. and Canadian coast guards have sent icebreaking ships to the St. Clair River after ice build-up caused devastating floods to southeastern St. Clair County, from Algonac to Port Huron."I’ve lived here for about 45 years now and the water is higher than I’ve ever seen it," said Algonac resident Bill Gratopp. High waters were also reported in East China Township and Marine City.According to a statement from the U.S. coast guard, the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Griffon was underway on Tuesday evening, February 2, flushing ice that is contributing to the significant floods. A flood warning has been issued by the St. Clair County after the river reached record levels of 176.3 m (578.5 feet)Coast Guard officials added that they began to get calls from residents this week regarding flooding in various towns along the river and that the water was "threatening homes and businesses," said spokesman Jeremiah Schiessel.Mark White, deputy director for the St. Clair County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said the waters rose quickly."We have four cutters working that river, so there's a lot of real estate to cover but we're hopeful that they can get things accomplished.""[The towns] are experiencing some super high water. A lot of coastal flooding. Yards are totally flooded out. Driveways totally impacted and quite a few cars impacted as well."Meanwhile, Schiessel assured that crews are working to relieve the flooding situation. However, "Mother Nature is a pretty powerful force," he said. "When you're talking about trillions of gallons of water that is basically trying to go through a funnel, it can wreak havoc even with all of our resources..."
Heavy rains hit New South Wales, Australia - Heavy rains hit New South Wales, Australia A broad band of rain and storms hit New South Wales, Australia on February 1 and 2, 2021. The Bathurst region was drenched by nearly a month's worth of rain in about eight hours-- up to 43.4 mm (1.7 inches) fell from 08:30 UTC (19:30 LT on Monday, February 1) to 17:00 UTC (04:00 LT on Tuesday), close to the long-term February average of 57.8 mm (2.3 inches). There has been 54.2 mm (2 inches) of rain recorded for the month so far, with the additional 9.8 mm (0.4 inches) registered on February 1. The heavy rain came after Bathurst fell short in January. Last month, the region only registered 36.2 mm (1.4 inches)-- the long-term average for January is 68.3 mm (2.7 inches)-- this despite there being more rainy days, nine, compared to the average of 7.5 days. According to Weatherzone, 56.8 mm (2.2 inches) was recorded to February 2-- there were 11 rain days in that period in 2020 and 2021. The wettest February on record in Bathurst was recorded in 1971 with 235.5 mm (9.3 inches). Its wettest February 24-hour period is 101.1 mm (3.4 inches) registered in 1950. Orange registered 69 mm (2.7 inches) in 24 hours to 09:00 LT on Tuesday, February 2 -- close to its monthly average of 74 mm (2.9 inches). This already makes this February its wettest since 2014.
Destructive flash floods hit Izmir after more than a month's worth of rain in just 6 hours, Turkey - Destructive flash floods lashed the Turkish Aegean coastal province of Izmir on Tuesday, February 2, 2021, resulting in heavy damage, one fatality, and another person missing. Authorities called the situation a disaster, advising residents to stay indoors and only leave their homes when necessary. A weather station in Güzelyali recorded 126 mm (4.9 inches) of rain in 24 hours, Izmir municipality reported. Of the total amount, 113 mm (4.4 inches) fell from 03:00 to 09:00 LT, February 2 -- more than Izmir's average for the entire month of February (102.3 mm (4 inches)). The resulting flash flooding blocked main roads in the downtown area and surrounding districts of Aliaga, Foca, and Dikili, killing one person and leaving another one missing. The two individuals were trapped in a vehicle that was washed away by rising water in the town of Menderes. Mayor Tunc Soyer said the situation was a disaster as the flood caused heavy damage in the province, prompting a half-day leave to public employees. In Balcova district, several streams overflowed, affecting many residences and businesses in Karabaglar and Bayrakh. "I have been living here for 30 years and have never seen such a disaster," said Balcova resident Mehmet Akyol. In his area, a stream was clogged with debris and floodwaters drifted away vehicles, leaving them piled up on each other.
Britain’s flood defences continue to deteriorate - Last year, over 3,400 crucial flood defence structures across England were deemed to be in poor condition. The research arm of the environmental charity Greenpeace, Unearthed, published a report on January 24 noting, “New data, obtained from the Environment Agency (EA) using Freedom of Information rules, shows that 3,460 ‘high consequence’ flood defence assets were rated as being in poor or very poor condition in 2019/20. That’s 6 percent of all such assets in England, an increase on the previous year after many defences were damaged in last winter’s flooding.” Out of the 3,460, 791 of the assets were classed as very poor, having severe defects which could lead them to fail completely. The EA defines high consequence assets as “flood defence assets that contribute to managing flood risk in a location where the consequence on people and property of an asset failing is high”. Large parts of the UK have just suffered flooding from Storm Christoph. The Environment Agency issued 130 flood warnings across England, with 225 less severe flood alerts. Residents were forced to leave their homes in parts of Ruthin, North Wales, and Maghull in Merseyside due to rising floodwaters. In the Didsbury district of south Manchester, the River Mersey came very close to bursting its banks as it reached the highest water levels it had ever recorded. Around 2,000 homes and businesses were told to evacuate the area. This part of Manchester had not faced the danger of flooding for 60 years. In areas that had suffered or were under threat from January’s Storm Christoph, such as Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Shropshire, South Yorkshire, the West Midlands, and Worcestershire, 831 crucial flood defences were classed as in poor or very poor condition when inspected last year. This represents nine percent of all the assets in those areas. Warrington, which was flooded in Storm Christoph, had the second highest figure of over 25 percent of its flood defences classed as in poor condition last year. Unearthed’s research showed flood defence assets maintained by third parties were even more likely to be in a poor state. It noted, “Across England, third party-managed flood defences were twice as likely to be in a poor condition last year as those managed by the EA —eight percent compared to four percent.”
Tropical Cyclone "Ana" hits Fiji, leaving at least 1 person dead and 5 missing - (videos) Category 2 Tropical Cyclone "Ana" made landfall near Rakiraki, Fiji at 06:00 LT on January 31, 2021, and continued tracking SSE over the Central Division towards the Suva area. By 12:00 LT (00:00 UTC), Ana's center was located over the coast of Viti Levu, between Suva and Navua, heading towards Kadavu. The storm caused extensive damage and flooding, leaving at least 1 person dead and 5 others missing. Destructive storm force winds with average speeds of 100 km/h (62 mph) and momentary gusts up to 140 km/h (87 mph) were battering Viti Levu, Yasawa and Mamanuca Group, the western half of Vanua Levu, Lomaiviti Group, Vatulele, Beqa, Kadavu, and nearby smaller islands and the Moala Group as the storm moved over. Ana peaked as Category 3 tropical cyclone and weakened back to Category 2 at 12:00 LT on February 1 (00:00 UTC) while located about 240 km (150 miles) WSW of Onoi-Lau. It was moving SSE at about 13 km/h (8 mph).On Monday, February 1, authorities said more than 10 000 people were sheltering at 300 evacuation centers after Ana's passage over the main island of Viti Levu brought winds of 140 km/h (87 mph). Extensive damage and flooding were reported across parts of the island, including the capital Suva. The main rivers have surged, flooding low-lying areas, closing highways, and causing power outages and landslides. According to the National Disaster Management Office, a 49-year-old man had drowned, while 4 fishermen and 1 child are still missing. Flooding of roads, villages, towns, and communities near streams, rivers, and low lying areas remains a threat to the Fiji Group as the system moves away. Moderate to heavy swells and breaking waves reaching the coastal areas that can cause coastal inundation and sea flooding especially during high tide. Poor visibility in areas of heavy rain and thunderstorms. At 06:00 UTC on February 1, the center of Category 2 Tropical Cyclone "Ana" was located about 500 km (311 miles) S of Suva, Fiji. The cyclone is moving SSE at 28 km/h (17 mph) while weakening.
Tropical Cyclone "Eloise" death toll rises to 21 after striking Mozambique - At least 21 people have been killed by Tropical Storm "Eloise" since it formed on January 15, 2021 -- 1 in Madagascar, 11 in Mozambique, 4 in Eswatini, 3 in Zimbabwe, and 2 in South Africa. Eloise made landfall just south of the port city of Beira, Mozambique early Saturday morning (LT) on January 23. The storm peaked shortly before landfall with 1-minute sustained winds of 165 km/h (105 mph), making it a Category 2 equivalent hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale.It left a trail of destruction in Beira, Manica, and Quelimane. The same area that was hit by the highly destructive Tropical Cyclone "Idai" in 2019, which left more than 1 300 people dead, many more missing, and over 100 000 displaced.Eloise moved inland after making landfall, bringing heavy rains to southern Zimbabwe, northern South Africa, and far eastern Botswana.More than 270 000 people have been affected by the storm, most of them in Mozambique, according to UN OCHA.More than 20 000 people have been displaced and 20 500 houses were damaged or destroyed in Mozambique, mainly in Sofala Province. At least 424 classrooms and 82 health centers were damaged.With floodwaters present in multiple locations, the risk of water-borne diseases, including cholera, is high, OCHA warned.More than 177 000 hectares (437 700 acres) of crops were flooded in Mozambique alone, which could affect upcoming harvests and undermine regional food security.Eloise is the 5th named storm of the 2020/21 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season.
Category 2 Tropical Cyclone "Lucas" affecting Vanuatu and New Caledonia --Tropical Cyclone "Lucas" formed over the Coral Sea on February 1, 2021, as the 5th named storm of the 2020/21 South Pacific Ocean cyclone season. The storm moved into the basin from the Australian region as a Category 2 tropical cyclone, to the northwest of Port Vila in Vanuatu.The storm is forecast to continue moving southeast over the Coral Sea, passing approximately 300 km (185 miles) west of Vanuatu Islands on February 2 and 3 and possibly make landfall over New Caledonia on February 3. Heavy rains are already falling over most parts of Vanuatu and New Caledonia and are forecast to continue over the next 48 hours, accompanied by strong winds and storm surge. On February 1, the Vanuatu Meteorological Services have issued a tropical cyclone advisory and a severe weather warning for heavy rainfall for the central and southern islands of Vanuatu.Weather warnings could remain active even after the system's immediate threat has diminished, as some areas may still be highly susceptible to rain-induced hazards. Localized evacuations are possible if weather conditions prove particularly hazardous.
BOM: La Niña likely past peak, but influence continues - The 2020–21 La Niña is likely to have peaked with respect to atmospheric and oceanic patterns in the tropical Pacific, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said on February 2, 2021. All of the international climate models surveyed by the Bureau are anticipating NINO3.4 will return to borderline or neutral values by mid-autumn. It is typical for La Niña to continue to influence the Australian climate, even as the La Niña weakens. Impacts associated with La Niña, such as above-average rainfall in eastern and northern Australia, are expected to persist into early autumn, with climate outlooks indicating above-average rainfall is likely for parts of these regions, particularly over northern Queensland. Over the past fortnight, the sea surface temperatures across the Pacific Ocean basin have warmed by around 0.2 °C. The 90-day Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) has decreased slightly but continues to remain well above the La Niña threshold of +7, and trade winds have returned to near-average strength in the central tropical Pacific. Model outlooks indicate a return to neutral conditions (neither El Niño nor La Niña) during the late southern summer or early autumn. The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is positive, but is expected to tend towards neutral values over the next fortnight. The Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) is currently located over the western Pacific Ocean. Its influence on Australia is expected to weaken during the next fortnight as it moves east into the central Pacific....... Read more »
Wooroloo Fire Destroys Homes in Australia, Forces Locked-Down Residents to Evacuate - The Wooroloo fire, raging out of control outside Perth, Western Australia, has destroyed at least 71 homes and was expected to continue to grow.Authorities warn the fire, already fueled by hot and unusually dry conditions, is being made dangerously erratic by winds gusting at over 45 mph and blowing embers as much as three miles ahead of the firefront.Smoke from the blaze turned skies over the city on Australia's western coast a hazy orange, raining ash on suburban homes, and dangerously degraded air quality. Climate change makes wildfires more extreme as increased temperatures dry out brush and soil, exacerbating fire conditions. Officials emphasized that evacuation orders caused by the fire overrode the snap lockdown triggered by a COVID-19 infection earlier in the week.As reported by The New York Times: The fire, reminiscent of the infernos that devoured Australia's southeast coast more than a year ago, is another reminder that as climate change spurs more frequent and intense natural disasters, Australia and other countries are likely to find themselves dealing with intersecting catastrophes. For a deeper dive: BBC, Sydney Morning Herald, 9News, CNN, The New York Times, AP, The Independent. Photos: Al Jazeera; Climate Signals background: Wildfires
Judge: PG&E may have been 'criminally reckless' before Zogg Fire -A federal judge said Wednesday that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. may have been “criminally reckless” in failing to cut down a pine tree near where a deadly wildfire started last year west of Redding.U.S. District Judge William Alsup made the comment at a virtual hearing about whether he should require PG&E to more carefully account for the state of tree trimming work when deciding whether to turn off power lines to prevent wildfires.The judge is trying to prevent a repeat of the circumstances that led the Zogg Fire to start in September and kill four people, destroy more than 200 buildings and burn more than 56,000 acres in Shasta and Tehama counties. PG&E has not officially been blamed for the fire, but authorities are investigating whether one of the company’s power lines was the cause.Alsup oversees PG&E’s probation arising from the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. He has proposed expanding the company’s probation conditions to require explicit consideration of vegetation conditions along power lines when deciding whether to cut electricity because of fire risk. He has indicated that such a requirement might have forced PG&E to turn off electricity near the Zogg Fire’s origin and therefore avoid the blaze. Of particular concern to Alsup has been a single gray pine that he said was leaning over the power line suspected of starting the fire. State officials seized part of the tree in their investigation. Alsup said “it was reckless, maybe criminally reckless,” for PG&E to have left the tree in place. He said it was particularly alarming because gray pines “have a shallow root system.”
Saharan dust plume with high values moving over Europe - A large Saharan dust plume is moving NE over parts of Europe -- from Spain and France today, February 6, 2021, into Italy, Germany, and the rest of northern and eastern Europe and the Balkans in the coming days. Sand-laden rains, a fairly rare phenomenon in winter, are expected over much of the region. (animation, numerous pictures)
Thawing Permafrost Is Full of Ice-Forming Particles That Could Get Into Atmosphere - Permafrost – frozen soil in the far north – is thawing, releasing greenhouse gases and long-lost microbes. But one thing that scientists have not studied extensively is whether permafrost contains certain kinds of particles that could affect clouds and weather. As atmospheric scientists, we found in a recent study that thawing permafrost contains lots of microscopic ice-nucleating particles. These particles make it easier for water droplets to freeze; and if the ones in permafrost get airborne, they could affect Arctic clouds. In the summer of 2018, one of us, Jessie Creamean, went to Fairbanks, Alaska, and collected samples of permafrost from a research tunnel deep underground. These samples ranged from 18,000 to 30,000 years old, and our team tested them to see how many ice-nucleating particles are hiding in permafrost. It turns out permafrost contains a ton of them – up to 100 million highly active individual particles per gram of mostly dead microbes and pieces of plants. This density is on par with what is found in fertile soils, which are some of the most concentrated sources of ice-nucleating particles on Earth. Everywhere in the world, ice-nucleating particles typically play a major role in cloud behavior, and the strength of that effect is still being studied. No one yet knows whether ice-nucleating particles from permafrost are getting into the atmosphere and affecting clouds. But the theory of how ice-nucleating particles change clouds is understood. Ice-nucleating particles are extremely good at forming small ice crystals – a rare skill found in less than 1 in a million of all the particles floating around in the air. Ice-nucleating particles can be mineral dust from deserts, specks of soil from farm fields or – like what we found in the permafrost – bacteria and bits of biological material from oceans or plants. The ability to easily form ice has big consequences for clouds and weather. Ice-nucleating particles allow cloud ice to form at warmer air temperatures than normal, up to around 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Without these particles, a water droplet can supercool to about negative 36 F before freezing. When ice-nucleating particles are in a cloud, water droplets freeze more easily. This can cause the cloud to rain or snow and disappear earlier, and reflect less sunlight.
Sulfur dioxide emissions detected at Soufriere volcano, St. Vincent and the Grenadines --Multi-Gas measurements conducted at La Soufriere volcano on February 1, 2021, confirmed the presence of sulfur dioxide (SO2) for the first time. Filter packs used to measure hydrogen chloride (HCl), Hydrogen fluoride (HF), Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) will need to be sent abroad for analyses. The fact that SO2 is now coming out of the volcano suggests that the ground water is drying up, National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) reports. The absence of Sulfur dioxide in the early stages of the eruption was due to the interaction of sulfur dioxide with the ground water (Sulfur dioxide was dissolving in the ground water). The lava dome survey on February 1 produced the following reasults: estimated length 511 m (1 676 feet), width 231 m (757 feet), height 93 m (305 feet), total volume 5.93 million m3 (209.4 million ft3).
Study: Earth Warmer Than Any Time in Last 12,000 Years - Climate campaigners on Thursday pointed to a study showing that Earth is hotter than it’s ever been during the entire epoch of human civilization as the latest proof of the need to treat human-caused global heating like the dire emergency that it is. On Wednesday, the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature published a report revealing that an analysis of ocean surface temperatures found that the planet is hotter now than at any other time in the past 12,000 years, and that it may actually be warmer than at any point during the last 125,000 years. Researchers determined this by solving what scientists call the “Holocene temperature conundrum.” This was the mystery of why the global heating that began at the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago peaked around 6,000 years later — before giving way to the onset of a cooling period that lasted until the Industrial Revolution, when the current anthropogenic warming period began. It turns out that the collected data, obtained from fossilized seashells, was inaccurate, showing only hot summers while missing the colder winters. “We demonstrate that global average annual temperature has been rising over the last 12,000 years, contrary to previous results,” research leader Bova, from Rutgers University in New Jersey, told The Guardian. “This means that the modern, human-caused global warming period is accelerating a long-term increase in global temperatures, making today completely uncharted territory. It changes the baseline and emphasizes just how critical it is to take our situation seriously.”
After 2020 decline, EIA expects energy-related CO2 emissions to increase in 2021 and 2022 - In its January 2021 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects that energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States will increase in 2021. Economic growth and the lessening of pandemic-related restrictions result in more energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions. EIA expects total energy-related CO2 emissions to increase to 4.8 billion metric tons in 2021 and 4.9 billion metric tons in 2022. U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fell by an estimated 11% in 2020, largely because of reduced travel and other factors that have led to less energy consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the short term, EIA forecasts rising CO2 emissions as a result of economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, changes in fuel mix, and greater demand for residential electricity as colder winter weather leads to more heating demand in 2021. EIA expects petroleum to account for about 46% of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in 2021 and 47% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2022. Most of these emissions come from the transportation sector as a result of increased travel as the economy recovers from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. EIA expects natural gas, which accounted for about 36% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020, to decline to about 34% of total emissions in 2021. Emissions from natural gas are declining mainly because natural gas consumption is declining as natural gas prices increase relative to coal prices. EIA expects natural gas prices to increase by 98 cents per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2021 while prices for coal increase by 12 cents/MMBtu. As a result, EIA forecasts that natural gas’s share of total energy-related CO2 emissions will decline to 32% in 2022 as natural gas prices rise. Coal accounted for 19% of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020. EIA expects this share of total emissions to rise to 21% in 2021 and 2022 as coal becomes more economical for use in electricity generation amid higher natural gas prices.
U.S. Cities Are Under-Counting Their CO₂ Pollution By Almost 20% - A new national estimate suggests that urban emissions are significantly higher than previously thought, complicating efforts to reduce greenhouse pollution. At least 48 U.S. cities are under-counting their carbon dioxide pollution by nearly 20%, according to a new study that compares local disclosures against a national database that can now estimate the same information. The new analysis could create confusion about how much cities emit—and therefore how much pollution they must cut—at a time of increased attention to climate change from the White House, state capitals, and city officials. About three-quarters of fossil-fuel CO₂ pollution comes from cities. As populations swell, reducing those emissions becomes even more critical, said Northern Arizona University professor Kevin Gurney and his co-authors in the journal Nature Communications.The difference between the cities’ and the study authors’ estimates is consequential at a national scale—amounting to 70 million tons of CO₂, or about the output of the entire state of Massachusetts. If the difference between the 48 cities included in the study and the research estimates were extrapolated across the country, the under-counted emissions would amount to 474 million tons, or 24% more than California emitted in 2015. “We hope that this will stimulate a significant reevaluation of how to go about the entire endeavor,” Gurney said. “We are recommending that a science-driven estimate be generated for all cities and provided to them.” Standards by which cities estimate their own emissions vary widely, which has long been an obstacle to building a consistent picture of urban emissions in the U.S. Measuring emissions can be expensive and time-consuming, which is a problem in places where resources are already stretched. Cities commonly miss industrial or commercial uses of gasoline, or emissions from individual facilities. They may also calculate emissions related to shipping and driving in different ways.
US has multiple, affordable paths to net zero emissions by 2050, California study concludes - Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 could be "surprisingly feasible," with costs running $1 per day per person or just 0.4% of the U.S GDP, according to a new report from the University of San Francisco, the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and consulting firm Evolved Energy Research. . No matter which decarbonization strategy the U.S. ultimately adopts, technical limitations in other fields mean the electricity sector must be among the first to pursue aggressive decarbonization, eliminating 65-70% of its emissions by 2035, according to Jim Williams, the paper's lead author and an associate professor at the University of San Francisco. Despite the need for carbon-free electricity, excessively ambitious decarbonization targets could actually undermine the nation's success. "If you look at the reality of what that would entail on the ground, the impact would be such that I would anticipate any policy that pushes that change along would swiftly face blowback and ultimately be abandoned," said Ryan Jones, co-founder of Evolved Energy Research. "That is the worst outcome in terms of this transition." Within about a decade, the U.S. will have its choice of a variety of economical strategies for combating climate change, according to the new paper by Jones, Williams and their colleagues, published in AGU Advances. But for the next ten years, technical limitations mean the course is relatively set. After the mid-2030s, the paper anticipates that at least eight viable pathways to a carbon neutral economy will emerge. But before 2030, the success of those eventual strategies rest on the same set of critical actions. First and foremost, according to Williams, the electric sector must cut its own carbon emissions by at least two-thirds. This is a necessary first step, Williams said, because carbon-free electricity enables multiple downstream strategies such as electrification or the development of alternative fuels. But it's also a matter of simple pragmatism: it is possible to make dramatic strides toward decarbonized electric generation with existing technology. The same cannot be said of, for example, airliners. "There are no-brainers up front that derive from the science of the situation," Williams said. "At some point you get to more difficult applications like air travel. ... There are going to be applications where you need other decarbonized energy sources, specifically liquid fuels, and for those things we're not as clear what the ultimate best strategy is going to be.".
Burned by carbon pricing, Dems chart new course on climate -- Tuesday, February 2, 2021 - It was more than a decade ago when Democrats tried and failed to pass a federal cap-and-trade program. Now they are taking a different approach. President Biden and congressional Democrats seem increasingly likely to pursue a plan that eliminates greenhouse gas emissions from power plants while pouring money into green infrastructure to cut carbon dioxide from cars, buildings and factories. The approach marks a sharp departure from the last time Democrats controlled Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, climate policy largely centered around the creation of a carbon cap-and-trade program. But a decade of bruising political losses, coupled with the success of tax incentives and state mandates designed to boost wind and solar production, has convinced many Democrats to travel a new path. Focusing on infrastructure investments has the benefit of creating jobs, as well as cutting emissions, they say. Targeted investments can also address long-standing concerns over racial and economic equity. And many in the party believe they have found a politically popular policy — a clean energy standard — that can create a foundation for electrifying other segments of the economy. "The shift is real," said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), chair of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and a former member of the task force that helped write Biden's climate plan. "What we determined, after months and months of hearing from folks across the spectrum, is they just didn't think that a price on carbon was a silver bullet," she added. "Climate policy's got to be broader."
Exxon’s New Carbon Capture Plan Looks a Lot Like Its Old One - Exxon Mobil Corp. pledged to spend $3 billion on low-emission technologies through 2025 to address investor concerns over its environmental record, unveiling a plan that comprises several projects that have already been announced. Exxon said Monday in a statement it will “commercialize” its low-carbon technology initiatives through a new venture called ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions.The announcement, made on the eve of Exxon’s fourth-quarter earnings report, comes as the Irving, Texas-based company faces intense pressure from environmentalists and investors for not moving fast enough on climate change and also for delivering weak financial performance compared with peers. Shareholder D.E. Shaw & Co. is in talks about adding new directors to Exxon’s board, according to people familiar with the matter, and activist investor Engine No. 1 last week revealed its own slate of nomination.Exxon has sought to fend off some of the criticism with targets to reduce methane leaks and emissions intensity. Its latest response is an increased focus on carbon capture, a technology favored by many other large oil and gas producers.But investors looking for a meaningful strategic shift may be disappointed. The planned investments announced Tuesday represent less than 5% of the oil giant’s capital budget over the period.Furthermore, several of the projects touted by Exxon aren’t new. The carbon capture efforts in the Netherlands, Belgium and Qatar are already being developed with partners. Exxon said it has moved ahead with permitting for the expansion of its LaBarge facility in Wyoming, which would be the company’s biggest carbon capture project, but that project is still in doubt after being put on hold. Government support is needed to make carbon capture more commercially viable, Exxon also said in the statement. The “opportunities can become more commercially attractive through government policy, including the United States tax credit 45Q, which ExxonMobil supports, and other supportive policies in the European Union, Canada and Singapore,” it said.
Power plant linked to idled U.S. carbon capture project will shut indefinitely –NRG (Reuters) - NRG Energy Inc will shut down indefinitely the power source for what had been the only U.S. project capturing carbon from a coal-fired generator until it was idled last year, a spokesman said on Friday. The company notified the Texas grid operator, ERCOT, on Wednesday that the Petra Nova gas plant would be mothballed indefinitely effective June 26, according to a market notice. "This was a decision we have been evaluating for some time," NRG spokesman Chris Rimel said in an email. He added that the unit would be preserved in the event that the carbon capture system is some day restarted. Petra Nova's carbon capture project was seen as a major test of efforts to sequester planet-warming gases and store them below ground, a technology considered crucial to companies and governments hoping to fight climate change. The plant was designed to capture a portion of the carbon emissions from the W.A. Parish coal plant, and pipe it 81 miles to the West Ranch oil field, where it would push more oil to the surface. NRG idled the carbon capture facility in May of last year, however, saying a collapse in the price of oil prompted by the coronavirus pandemic had made it uneconomical. The joint venture between NRG and Japan's JX Nippon received a $190 grant from the U.S. government but suffered chronic mechanical problems.
Carbon capture technology has been around for decades — here's why it hasn't taken off - Elon Musk is going to pay $100 million towards a prize to come up with the best carbon capture technology. (Or so he tweets. Details are scarce so far.) The maverick tech CEO's promise is not particularly notable for its generosity. With a net worth over $200 billion, $100 million is 0.05% of Musk's wealth. But still, the richest person in the world's tweet brings attention to an often overlooked technology which has been around since the 1970s, but has mostly been relegated to niche corners of the energy community. In response to one tweet recommending tree-planting, Musk said trees "are part of the solution, but require lots of fresh water & land. We may need something that's ultra-large-scale industrial in 10 to 20 years." The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is tracked as in parts per million, or PPM. As of December, atmospheric carbon dioxide stands at 414.02 ppm, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We started the industrial revolution with 280 parts per million in the atmosphere," Lackner tells CNBC. "By now we have 415 [ppm], and we are going up 2.5 ppm a year at this moment." The consequences of that rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are already dire and will get worse. "The oceans have started to rise, hurricanes have gotten way worse, climate has become more extreme, and this will only get worse over the next decade," Lackner says. The only choice, Lackner says, is to "draw down" the atmospheric carbon dioxide — or to suffer unknown, devastating consequences. Capturing carbon from the air, not from a factory smokestack, is called "direct air capture," and there are currently 15 direct air capture plants in Europe, the United States and Canada, according to the IEA. "Carbon removal is expected to play a key role in the transition to a net-zero energy system," the IEA says, but currently it is a very expensive technology. Direct air capture is "very expensive because the CO2 in the atmosphere is only .04%," Herzog tells CNBC, and the technical process of removing carbon dioxide from a gas gets more expensive the lower the concentration of the carbon dioxide gets. "But it is very seductive. A lot of people jumped on this," he says. Lackner sees it as a necessity. "In the end I see CO2 as a waste management problem. We have for two centuries simply dumped the waste from energy production — which is carbon dioxide — in the atmosphere and not thought about it any further, and we are gradually waking up to the fact that that's not acceptable," Lackner says.
SENATE: Power-sharing deal in hand, Schumer turns to climate change -- Wednesday, February 3, 2021 -- Senate leaders have finally struck a power-sharing agreement that will allow Democrats to officially take the reins of committees, with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calling on incoming chairs to put climate change at the top of the agenda. After weeks of negotiations, the New York Democrat announced this morning that the Senate will vote today on the organizing resolution, which sets the chamber's rules and committee rosters for both parties for the 117th Congress. "I'm confident our members are ready to hit the ground running on the most important issues that face our country," Schumer said. "Senate Democrats are not going to waste any time taking on the biggest challenges facing our country and our planet," he added. The organizing resolution allows Democrats to formally take over Senate committees, which technically have remained in the hands of Republicans even though Democrats control the 50-50 chamber because of Vice President Kamala Harris' tiebreaking vote. GOP chairs have yielded the gavels to their counterparts as a courtesy, including for confirmation hearings on President Biden's Cabinet nominees. Schumer made clear today that the incoming Democratic panel leaders will get to work immediately on climate change. "I've already instructed the incoming Democratic chairs of all relevant committees to begin holding hearings on the climate crisis in preparation for enacting President Biden's 'Build Back Better' agenda, which includes major climate legislation," Schumer said on the floor. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee began that process this morning with a hearing examining energy-sector trends and past progress in addressing climate change. "As we all know, climate change touches virtually every aspect of our economy and involves virtually every aspect of public policy," Schumer said. "So as the Biden administration prepares a whole-of-government approach to combating climate change, the Democratic majority will pursue a whole-of-Senate approach, as well."
Biden's climate change agenda will face big obstacles with evenly divided Senate - President Joe Biden has passed an early flurry of executive action on climate change during his first weeks in office, reversing environmental rollbacks from the Trump administration and quickly acting on campaign promises to address global warming.. The president's orders, though significant, don't substitute for the administration's plans to implement more permanent climate legislation, including parts of the $2 trillion proposal to cut planet-warming carbon emissions to zero by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Without new climate legislation from Congress, Biden's orders to reverse Trump's rollbacks on emissions from vehicles, power plants and oil and gas drilling could be easily undone by a future administration. Many of Biden's legal reversals could take years to impose too. What could stand in Biden's way in passing major climate reform on issues — such as phasing out coal and oil with clean energy technology — is moderate Senate Democrats and Republicans from fossil-fuel states who oppose policies they view as harmful to the industry in their home state. The Biden administration has a slim Democratic Senate majority that's 10 votes short of the 60 needed to break the Senate's filibuster and pass climate bills. The Senate is divided 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris as a tie-breaking vote for Democrats. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who opposes ending the filibuster and has broken with his party to defend coal production in West Virginia, is the incoming chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and will yield tremendous power in deciding what passes. Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School, said that while many of Biden's climate proposals wouldn't require Congressional action, Congress is essential to appropriate infrastructure spending and help strengthen the Clean Air Act and other regulatory controls to mitigate fossil fuel production. "Without Congressional action you don't have the certainty of continuity. You have a loss of momentum, which is a big problem," Gerrard said. "At the same time, we see the plummeting costs of wind and solar. The market is going to be driving a lot of this without government action." Democrats tried but failed to pass climate change legislation when they controlled Congress under former President Barack Obama and will likely face similar difficulty under Biden. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the majority leader, has addressed how difficult major bipartisan reform on climate will be and recently recently called on the president to declare climate chang a national emergency. Invoking a climate emergency is a controversial move that would give the Biden administration larger authority to circumvent Congress, like redirecting funding for clean energy sources and canceling offshore drilling projects. And the move would certainty face legal challenges.
Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez seek 'climate emergency' declaration (AP) — With Democrats in charge of Congress and the White House, progressive lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are pushing the Biden administration to act ever more aggressively on climate change. A week after President Joe Biden signed executive orders intended to combat the worst effects of global warming, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers urged him to go even further and declare a national emergency on climate change. Along with other liberal lawmakers, the independent Vermont senator and the New York Democratic congresswoman introduced legislation in the House and Senate that would direct Biden to declare a national climate emergency. Such a declaration, similar to one issued by former President Donald Trump on construction of a southern border wall, would give Biden more power to combat global warming, including reinstating a ban on crude-oil exports and forcing companies to manufacture solar panels, electric-car charging stations and other elements of the so-called green economy. The lawmakers introduced a similar resolution in 2019, but this time they have high-level support, including a recent statement by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that Biden should consider declaring an emergency to take additional actions on climate. “If there ever was an emergency, climate is one,″ the New York Democrat told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow last week, adding that an emergency declaration would give Biden “more flexibility.″ Unlike Trump’s “stupid wall,″ climate change is a real crisis, Schumer said. “We have to do something about climate. We don’t have any more time.″ The bill requiring an emergency declaration faces an uphill road in the Senate, where a 60-vote threshold is needed. So far, just four senators have signed onto the bill, which faces stiff opposition from Republicans and likely resistance from moderate Democrats.
Waiting to Address Climate Change Will Cost Trillions - There’s really no good reason to wait to tackle the climate crisis, but especially when it comes to money. A new report offers yet more proof that the longer we wait, the higher that cost will be. The analysis by policy research firm Energy Innovation, published on Wednesday morning, examines two scenarios for reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. That’s a target set by the Biden administration and several other countries, and based on advice from United Nations climate scientists on how to avert dangerous levels of warming. In one modeled scenario, the U.S. begins aggressive efforts to decarbonize now. In the other, officials wait until 2030 to start. The financial difference could prove to be massive. The analysis shows that starting to decarbonize now would cost $320 billion per year, or a total of $4.5 trillion. Waiting until 2030, though, and the costs of reaching net-zero by 2050 would be $750 billion each year, or about $8 trillion by 2050 when all is said and done. That means the cumulative cost associated with putting off decarbonizing until 2030 are 72% higher than the cost of getting the ball rolling now. “To meet climate goals, it is imperative to start climate action today,” Megan Mahajan, one of the co-authors and a senior policy analyst on the Energy Policy Solution team, said in an email. “In particular, it is urgent to quickly transition to electric vehicles and building components, because polluting equipment sold today will last for decades. And transitioning to clean sources of electricity as rapidly as possible becomes even more important as vehicles and buildings increasingly rely on electricity rather than fossil fuels.” The authors used Energy Innovation’s open-source Energy Policy Simulator, a peer-reviewed model that estimates the impacts of climate and energy policies. In the 2021 scenario, the policies the authors plugged in include a clean energy standard that reaches 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2050, 100% electric vehicle standards for light-duty vehicles by 2035 and heavy-duty vehicles by 2045, and building efficiency improvements ranging from 11%-40% by 2050. The 2030 scenario, the study says, “necessarily requires steeper emissions reductions to achieve the same cumulative abatement.” That’s because if the U.S. keeps emitting greenhouse gases, more urgent action will be needed to stave off extreme heating. Waiting a decade, for instance, would mean having to transition to 100% clean energy by 2040 instead of 2050 due to the pollution that piled up in the atmosphere over the course of the 2020s. It would also require constructing nine times more clean energy capacity per year by the mid-2030s.
Manchin: We should be building the green economy in West Virginia — West Virginia’s senior U.S. Senator has drafted a bill that would create jobs in states that have a history of relying on fossil fuels, such as coal. Now that he has taken the seat as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin has a bill called 48C Tax Credits, which would reinstate and expand tax credits for manufacturers. He is working with Michigan Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow to get traction for the bill. If approved, the bill could have a $4 billion impact on the U.S. economy. “A 48C tax credit simply does this; $4 billion will be directed to the coal fields of America —most of them in West Virginia where the coal mines have been closed down — where coal fire planting has been shut down, where the economy has been destroyed, and you can trace those tax credits if you bring us manufacturing jobs, you bring us technology jobs, you bring us something.” Manchin said if the Biden administration is going to be pulled into the direction of a ‘green energy’ policy, he wants to ensure those workers from the coal fields will have a seat at the table. “You can’t unlock that door unless you have something to show in return and then that’s how we have to do it,” he said Thursday in a video call with editors and reporters from CNHI newspapers in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. “I’m going to say if you’re still going to get tax credits and if it’s for any type of energy, then those tax credits have to be used and spent in the states that lost the traditional jobs they replaced. You do that and, by God, we’ll have all kind of opportunity.” Manchin said the first hearing he will hold in the energy committee will focus on a discussion he refers to as “Climate Baseline.” He said he hopes there no one in West Virginia who still denies that changes in climate are real and that humans “had a tremendous impact” so it should be up to humans to right the wrongs that led us here. At the same time, Manchin said demand for fossil fuels in developing nations continues to be a large driver in the reality that fossil fuel dependence is not going to end anytime soon.
Biden team in talks with utilities, car companies about emissions: climate adviser --(Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has started discussions with the utility and automobile sectors about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, White House domestic climate change adviser Gina McCarthy told Reuters. The talks are part of a broad effort by the Biden administration that McCarthy will spearhead to engage every federal agency to decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035 and the whole economy by 2050. The United States is the world’s second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter behind China, with the power and transport sectors making up more than half of the emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. McCarthy’s first major task will be to come up with a 2030 emission reduction target under the Paris climate agreement before Biden convenes world leaders for a climate summit on April 22. “We’re already having conversations with the utility world and we’re having conversations with the car companies,” McCarthy said in an interview. “The car companies understand now that the future for them is electric vehicles ... so we’re going to be sort of working to make sure that we move forward with some kind of an agreement on that and a strategy to get us out of the gate fast.” The White House has met some major automakers - including General Motors Co - as it prepares to begin talks with the industry about revising vehicle emission standards through 2026 or beyond. GM said last week it aimed to sell only electric cars by 2035. She met virtually with the board of the Edison Electric Institute, the main utility lobby, which discussed its “support for recent energy-related executive orders,” a spokesman for the group told Reuters. McCarthy will chair a task force composed of the heads of all Cabinet agencies to see what measures can be taken through regulation, budget appropriation and legislation to combat climate change, she said.
GOP Senator John Kennedy Wants Us to Know His Car Doesn’t Run on ‘Unicorn Urine’ -- Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who is known for firing off attention-seeking colloquialisms in cable news interviews, did so once again on Tuesday night, peppering a Fox News appearance with the colorful phrase “unicorn urine.” The ultra-conservative lawmaker, speaking to Benghazi chairman turned Fox News host Trey Gowdy, railed against President Joe Biden’s climate change and energy policies while standing up for the oil and gas industry.“Most Americans support an all-of-the-above energy policy: Oil, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, hydrogen,” the Louisiana lawmaker remarked. “But they also understand that we can’t run the greatest economy in all of human history without oil and gas.”Turning to Gowdy, he was adamant that his car “does not run off fairy dust” and it “doesn’t run off unicorn urine,” adding that Biden has caved to the “left-wing crazies” who blame climate change “when they break a shoelace.”
Renewable fuels accounted for almost $4 billion in Iowa's GDP in 2020, report shows Iowa’s renewable fuels industry accounted for almost $4 billion or about 2 percent of Iowa’s gross domestic product in 2020, according to a report commissioned by the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. The report, written by Agriculture and BioFuels Consulting’s John Urbanchuk, shows the industry also provided $1.8 million in household income and 37,000 jobs. Biodiesel production increased in 2020, but ethanol production — which accounts for about 88 percent of the 37,000 jobs — faced myriad obstacles. Decreased fuel consumption during coronavirus, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s use of small-refinery waivers and a drop in exports to Canada and Brazil all hampered the industry. “Biofuels still provide a major boost to Iowa’s economy, but quite frankly, the report is a wake-up call to redouble our efforts at the state level,” said Monte Shaw, IRFA’s executive director, in a news release. “Midwestern states like Iowa must be aggressive to drive local demand for biofuels in a meaningful way, thereby providing a sturdy market foundation, even as we supply the rest of the United States and markets around the world.”
Making fuel from pig poop sounds exciting — unless you live nearby -- The land that Elsie Herring lives on, about 60 acres of farmland in southeastern North Carolina, has been in her family since her grandfather purchased the property in 1891 from his former enslaver. Herring and her older siblings were born and raised on the land, and they continue to live in simple houses and trailers sprinkled throughout the fields. But there is also an unwelcome guest on the Herrings’ property. In the late 1980s, a hog farm was constructed next door to the siblings’ homes, on a contested portion of land that Herring believes rightfully belongs to her family. The farm, now owned by Smithfield Foods, the nation’s top producer of pork, is relatively small. There are two hog houses where pigs are lined up side to side, butt to head, with little space to move. These houses have slats in the floor that allow swine excrement to fall into troughs below, from which it is pumped into malodorous lagoons just outside the structures. And not 8 feet from the home of Herring’s late mother, separated by a thin strip of trees, are the so-called spray fields — corn fields on which hog manure is sprayed as a fertilizer. Mists of water and swine feces from the operation make their way to Herring’s property, bringing with them a constant, unbearable odor. All she, her family, and neighbors can do is keep the windows and doors shut, and place air fresheners and scented aerosol sprays around the house to mask the smell. “It’s nice to smell something that smells sweet instead of something that’s just so foul,” Herring told Grist. “You just have to do what you have to do to make life as pleasant as you can and try to stay safe at the same time,” she added, noting that even though masking the odor presents a short-term solution, it doesn’t protect them from inhaling the airborne fertilizer. Herring says she has developed bronchitis due to the inescapable pollution. “Living near these animals, knowing that they are on my family’s land without our permission and having their waste blown on us, having our air and our water polluted,” Herring said, “is like so many injustices are compounded in one.”Herring and her family are not alone. There are approximately 2,400 similar hog farms in North Carolina, most of them in Duplin County, where she lives, as well as Sampson, Bladen, and Robeson counties, and lagoons and spray fields are the primary ways these pork farms handle their hog waste. If the lagoons are left unchecked, the waste that builds up in the pink-tinted waters releases not only extreme odors but methane, ammonia, and other pollutants that can spread into nearby communities. Methane is a greenhouse gas about 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, and the other pollutants, like hydrogen sulfide, which is responsible for the odor, can inflame the eyes, skin, and lungs. The smell leaves people reluctant to exit their houses for fear of difficulty breathing — even just to hang their laundry outdoors. The predominantly Black and low-income communities surrounding these farms have experienced increased rates of respiratory and heart disease for decades.
Goodbye, gas? The era of electric cars is coming faster than anyone thought. - One of the questions that has long plagued automobile executives was whether motorists — after a century of pulling into gasoline stations for a near instant fill up — would be willing to switch to electric vehicles typically requiring hours-long charges.With electric vehicles constituting less than 3 percent of the global auto sales, that question remains unresolved. Governments and automakers, however, are not waiting for the answer. Confident technological advances will ease consumer concerns, they are forging ahead with plans to convert the majority of new car and light truck sales to electric by the 2030s in an effort to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.Within the next two decades, new cars buyers may not have any choice but electric vehicles, much as Americans in the 1970s had no choice but to buy cars with smaller, less powerful engines after the federal government imposed fuel efficiency standards following the Arab oil embargo, said Devin Lindsey, an automobile analyst with the research firm IHS Markit.“Everyone wanted a large engine,” he said. “But they had to buy the cars. That’s all there was.”With China, Europe, and states such as California and Massachusetts imposing electric vehicle mandates, the transition from petroleum vehicles has gained increasing momentum in recent years. That has only accelerated with the election of President Joe Biden, who, since taking office, has ordered the EPA to work on tougher car emissions standards and federal agencies to start buying electric vehicles en masse. Auto manufacturers are rushing new electric pickup trucks and sports cars to show rooms, eager to establish footholds in what is expected to be the market of the future — whether they like it or not. The transition gained more speed recently when General Motors announced it would produce only electric vehicles by 2035.“Manufacturers want to be on the forefront,” he said. “The batteries are so much more efficient and there’s so many less moving parts, which means less maintenance and repairs. The only thing that holds it back is people afraid they can’t take long road trips. But once they shorten the charge to minutes and not hours, that’s game changing.” Such a shift to electric vehicles would have long-term consequences for an oil industry that currently provides more than 90 percent of the U.S. transportation sector’s energy needs, raising questions about the future of oil drillers and refineries across Texas.
Opinion | G.M. and the Electric-Car Comeback - The New York Times -- General Motors’ announcement last week that it will stop making gas-powered cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles by 2035 and become carbon neutral by 2040 is even bolder than it sounds: The repercussions will ripple broadly across the economy, accelerating the transition to a broader electric future powered by renewable energy. The pledge by the nation’s largest automaker to phase out internal combustion engines puts pressure on other auto companies, like Ford and Toyota, to make equally ambitious public commitments. It follows an earlier announcement by G.M. that it would invest $27 billion in electric vehicles over the next five years While every major auto company is investing in zero- and low-emission vehicles, amounting to $257 billion worldwide through 2030, until now none had been willing to say when they would end production of gas-powered cars. Wall Street rewarded G.M.’s clarity by bumping its stock. Now investors will expect the rest of the industry to explain how their electric vehicle strategies measure up.G.M.’s decision is a sea change. For decades, the company and other automakers resisted pollution rules. As recently as last year, G.M. supported the Trump administration’s relaxation of fuel efficiency standards, only to make an about-face after the November election. When one of the most recalcitrant and iconic American companies so markedly changes its tune and embraces the clean-energy transition, something big is happening. Pressure will undoubtedly mount on oil and gas companies, among others, to produce credible energy transition plans of their own.The plan by G.M.’s. chairman and chief executive, Mary Barra, will also mean big changes for auto design and manufacturing, and for the auto supply chain. Suppliers must now pivot away even more intently from making traditional transmissions and engines to producing the advanced batteries, motors and power systems electric vehicles need. And car dealers, after years of pushing gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, must now aggressively market electric cars to consumers. Phasing out the gas-powered cars and trucks that many people drive will cause demand for gasoline to drop steadily over the next few decades, cutting into oil and gas industry profits. Gasoline is the most consumed petroleum product in the United States, with light-duty vehicles accounting for more than 65 percent of total on-road fuel consumption. If medium- and heavy-duty trucks that burn diesel also transition to lower-polluting fuels, demand for oil will drop further. In the short term, the oil and gas industry can absorb lower demand for certain petroleum products, but in the long term, it will need to rethink its business model.Politically, G.M.’s pledge also further isolates the U.S. oil and gas industry, which has, on the whole, been too slow and reactive on climate change. Corporate leaders across the economy increasingly recognize that climate change requires a societal response and are positioning their companies to be part of the solution. Investors, employees and others seeking to slow global warming will demand as much.
DOE, House Energy committee question proposed building energy code changes - Increased involvement by local and state officials led to efficiency gains, prompting pushback from the building industry. The organization responsible for developing model building energy codes is facing growing pressure to reconsider proposed changes that would limit the role of state and local governments in approving future updates. More than 200 stakeholders submitted comments ahead of the International Code Council’s Jan. 21 board meeting, with about three-quarters of them opposing a plan to overhaul the process for approving its triennial updates. Meanwhile, the organization received a letter from the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee requesting answers to several questions related to the proposed changes and the influence of industry groups like the National Association of Home Builders on the process. A U.S. Department of Energy official raised similar questions at the recent meeting. “We at DOE don’t currently have a comprehensive justification for why it’s needed,” said Jeremy Williams, a program specialist with DOE’s Building Technologies Office. “We’d ask ICC to further demonstrate where exactly the current process fails and how the proposed process would proceed.” The changes would strip voting rights from thousands of public sector members and leave final say over future energy codes up to a committee made up of building code officials, industry groups and other stakeholders, with some spots for clean energy advocates. Any one stakeholder interest group could not account for more than a third of the committee’s members. The proposed overhaul was set in motion last fall after industry groups representing homebuilders and developers raised concerns over the recently completed code development cycle, which saw record online voting turnout by state and local government officials, resulting in the code’s biggest efficiency gains in at least a decade.
Biden's EPA pick assures lawmakers he will listen to states in climate fight (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency told lawmakers on Wednesday he will consult with states and other stakeholders as the agency determines how to deliver on the administration’s plans to tackle climate change and clean up pollution hotspots. The comments came during an unusually cordial Senate confirmation hearing for the nation’s top environmental regulator, a nomination that has historically triggered fierce debate between Republicans and Democrats over how to balance U.S. green regulation with economic development. “We all understand the anxiety and the fear as we make this transition that folks in your states have,” said Michael Regan, 44, referring to Biden’s plan to shift the country toward cleaner energy sources to combat global warming. Regan is the former head of North Carolina’s environmental regulator, where he earned a reputation as a consensus builder, and would be the first Black man to lead the EPA if confirmed by the Senate. Republicans have said they are worried a rapid shift away from fossil fuels would kill jobs and stunt economic growth in the world’s top producer of oil and gas and have already criticized some of Biden’s early moves like canceling the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, and pausing new leases for oil drilling on federal land.
Michael Regan's coal ash cleanups set template for EPA regs -- Wednesday, February 3, 2021 --In February 2014, a lagoon holding a slurry of heavy metal-laden coal ash at Duke Energy Corp.'s shuttered Dan River power plant in North Carolina was breached. A drainage pipe burst, leading to the release of 20 million gallons of polluted water into the river on the border with Virginia, enough to fill 30 Olympic-size swimming pools. "That catastrophe exploded a political scandal on the front page of every North Carolina newspaper and the top story on every TV station," said Frank Holleman, an attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) who worked to reach a settlement after the spill. Charlotte-based Duke, the largest U.S. utility, pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act the following year. It agreed to pay $102 million in fines and funding for conservation projects. The spill would eventually lead to the nation's largest coal ash cleanup settlement.Utilities are often the most powerful private entities in Southern states, Holleman said. In North Carolina's case, he said, Duke used its influence to resist expensive measures like moving coal ash from leaky pits near groundwater to drier locations at higher elevations. Environmentalists had spent years warning that disasters like the Dan River spill were inevitable. Power plants often store coal ash, also known as coal combustion residuals, in low-lying earthen pits. They tend to be near rivers because coal power requires a water supply to generate steam. Michael Regan, who became secretary of North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality in 2017 and today sits before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for his confirmation hearing as President Biden's choice to lead EPA, played a key role in negotiating cleanup requirements. Regan could use the Tar Heel State coal ash standards as a template for federal regulations, activists say.
RENEWABLE ENERGY: Biden wants solar jobs. People may not want them -- Monday, February 1, 2021 -- As President Biden pushes to build out clean energy, he'll have to contend with a problem: Solar jobs are hard to fill.It's a curious puzzle. The solar industry's job rolls have expanded to hundreds of thousands of workers in recent years, as demand for rooftop solar and solar farms has spiked. The jobs offer decent wages, a sense of social mission and sometimes a path to quick promotion.But solar firms face an array of difficulties keeping themselves staffed, even in a COVID-19 economy when so many are out of work. "It's heavy lifting: You have to get up on ladders; you have to drive long distances. It can be exhausting work," said Andrea Luecke, who recently stepped down as executive director of the Solar Foundation, where for a decade she compiled reports on employment in the industry. "Why would anyone want to work in the solar industry, slamming panels or digging trenches, if people can work at Starbucks?"Such scarcity has dogged the solar field for years, but Biden's priorities are going to put hiring managers under new pressure.The president has embraced creating "millions and millions" of clean energy jobs as a panacea. It is a multipurpose life raft meant to stem the climate crisis, solve the jobs crisis and create paths to careers for disadvantaged communities across the country. Last week, he signed an executive order that called for federal agencies to enact various policies to boost clean energy employment (Energywire, Jan. 28). His call to action comes as solar, one of clean energy's biggest job creators, is already in all-out growth mode.
Bill aims to strengthen COVID-19 protection for mine workers in lieu of MSHA action — A bill introduced by West Virginia’s two U.S. senators and six congressional colleagues would add long-sought COVID-19 protections for miners.Throughout the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Labor and its mine safety agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MHSA), have declined to issue an emergency temporary standard related to the novel coronavirus.
Bitcoin's wild ride renews worries about its massive carbon footprint — Bitcoin's price isn't the only thing surging lately — the amount of electricity it consumes is also on the rise. The cryptocurrency has for years alarmed experts due to the sheer level of energy required by so-called miners, which release new coins into circulation. Bitcoin has a carbon footprint comparable to that of New Zealand, producing 36.95 megatons of CO2 annually, according to Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, an online tool created by data scientist Alex de Vries. It consumes as much power as Chile — around 77.78 TWh — according to Digonomist's estimates. The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a separate tool from researchers at Cambridge University, shows a much larger figure of 110.53 TWh — more than the entire annual energy consumption of the Netherlands. "That's an unfathomable amount of electricity," said Charles Hoskinson, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur who co-founded Ethereum, the blockchain network underpinning ether, the world's second-most valuable digital coin. Bitcoin's energy needs are "enormously large," Michel Rauchs, research affiliate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, told CNBC. It accounts for around 0.5% of total global electricity consumption, according to the Cambridge researchers' estimates. "Although we agree the amounts are ludicrous right now, that is still half as much as inactive home appliances in the U.S. consumed," Rauchs said. The amount of energy wasted on idle home devices like phone chargers and microwaves in the U.S. could power the bitcoin network for two years. Why does bitcoin consume so much energy? Bitcoin isn't controlled by any single authority — like a central bank — but a disparate network of computers. So-called "miners" run purpose-built computers which compete to solve complex math puzzles in order to make a transaction go through. The blockchain — a digital ledger of all bitcoin transactions — is designed this way to ensure that users aren't able to "double spend" funds, a flaw in which the same digital token could be spent more than once. Each block that is added onto the chain carries a hard, cryptographic reference to the previous block. Proponents of bitcoin say this makes it extremely secure. But bitcoin miners do not run this operation for free. A key incentive of bitcoin's model, known as "proof of work," is the promise of being rewarded in some bitcoin if you manage to solve the complex hashing algorithm. "The issue is, it can never get better by design," says Hoskinson, who now runs IOHK, a blockchain firm that developed another digital token called cardano. "The more successful bitcoin gets, the higher the price goes; the higher the price goes, the more competition for bitcoin; and thus the more energy is expended to mine." A key measure of bitcoin's mining difficulty hit an all-time high last month. With bitcoin rising in price, revenue to miners is also increasing, incentivizing more participants to mine the cryptocurrency.
Why using rare metals to clean up the planet is no cheap fix -- He is neither a climate sceptic nor a fan of inaction. But as the world moves to adopt a target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Guillaume Pitron, a French journalist and documentary maker, worries about the costs. The figures in his book The Rare Metals War are stark. Changing the energy model means doubling the production of rare metals about every 15 years, mostly to satisfy demand for non-ferrous magnets and lithium-ion batteries. “At this rate,” writes Pitron, “over the next 30 years we… will need to mine more mineral ores than humans have extracted over the last 70,000 years.”Before the Renaissance, humans had found uses for seven metals. During the industrial revolution, this increased to a mere dozen. Today, we have found uses for all 90-odd of them, and some are very rare. Neodymium and gallium, for instance, are found in iron ore, but there is 1200 times less neodymium and up to 2650 times less gallium than there is iron.Zipping from an abandoned mine in the Mojave desert to the toxic lakes and cancer-afflicted areas of Baotou in China, Pitron weighs the awful price of refining the materials, ably blending investigative journalism with insights from science, politics and business.There are two sides to Pitron’s story, woven seamlessly together. First, there is the economic story of how China worked to dominate the energy and digital transition. It now controls 95 per cent of the rare earth metals market, making between 80 and 90 per cent of the batteries for electric vehicles, says Pitron, and more than half the magnets in wind turbines and electric motors.Then there is the ecological story of the lengths China took to succeed. Today, 10 per cent of its arable land is contaminated by heavy metals, 80 per cent of its groundwater isn’t fit for consumption and air pollution contributes to around 1.6 million deaths a year there, according to Pitron (a recent paper in The Lancet says 1.24 million deaths in China a year are attributable to air pollution – but let’s not quibble).
Long Ridge power plant in Ohio to use hydrogen and natural gas -- The owner of a power plant being built along the Ohio River in eastern Ohio is taking steps toward fueling it with hydrogen and not just natural gas, as originally planned. When the 485-megawatt power plant at Long Ridge Energy Terminal in Monroe County opens later this year, the natural gas-fired plant will be blended with hydrogen, a carbon dioxide-free energy source being pitched as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to transition the plant to 100% hydrogen over the next decade — potentially green hydrogen — a renewable energy source that uses electrolysis to split water to harvest hydrogen molecules. "What we hear loud and clear is that we want carbon-free power," said Bo Wholey, Long Ridge's president. Hydrogen power plants could help the transition away from greenhouse gases, he said. But before it's considered a victory for zero or low emissions, experts say everything weighs on the source of the hydrogen. There's so-called gray hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuels and is the main type of hydrogen used throughout the world. As a new technology, green hydrogen is less readily available, but it holds promise as a renewable source. Using green hydrogen is about twice as expensive as gray hydrogen, experts told The Dispatch. Those costs could go down if prices of electrolyzers continue to drop, there's a cheap source of renewable electricity and the use increases. "Hydrogen is a versatile, zero-carbon molecule that can be used in different applications. The key question is: How can you make sure its costs can be competitive?" said Amgad Elgowainy, a senior scientist specializing in hydrogen economies at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois. "This is a difficult question because making a green option is usually more costly compared to the business-as-usual conventional energy sources and technologies. So, in that sense, support is needed to enable a green option by bridging the cost gap with the conventional option."
Bill would give voters say on siting wind and solar projects - Toledo Blade — A bill will soon be introduced to try again to give township residents the ability to challenge via voter referendum the siting of wind farms in their communities.A key difference this time around is the inclusion of proposed solar projects.“The main objective is to let our citizens know what's happening,” new state Sen. Bill Reineke (R., Tiffin) said. “So many of these projects have been a secret.”He plans to introduce the bill along with fellow Sen. Rob McColley (R., Napoleon) later this week.It would require a developer of a proposed wind or solar project to share its application with affected local townships at least 30 days prior to filing it with the Ohio Power Siting Board. That information would include the location of the projects and the names of property owners with whom lease agreements have been negotiated. In the case of wind farms, turbine heights would be required. The bill would also apply to smaller solar projects that are not subject to OPSB review. The board considers siting of energy-producing projects, pipelines, and transmission lines.Each township's trustees would have the option of passing a resolution to allow local voters to petition for a referendum or a resolution that would directly put siting board approval on the ballot. The trustees could also opt to do nothing, indicating tacit support for the project.Any township trustee who personally has a lease agreement, or has an immediate family member who has, could not vote. If there aren't two trustees left to constitute a majority, the public is automatically given the option to seek a referendum.The siting board's final approval of a project would become effective within 90 days unless township residents file within that window petitions containing valid signatures of registered voters equaling at least 8 percent of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election.
A wind turbine production plant in Britain will now get most of its power from renewable gas -- A turbine production plant owned by energy giant Vestas will now be powered using an environmentally-friendly source of gas, according to a new deal announced on Monday. A biogas facility off the south coast of England will soon provide electricity to a factory operated by the Danish company, in what will be the latest example of how the idea of a "circular economy" is being embraced by big business.In a statement Monday, Earth Capital said its portfolio company, Black Dog Biogas, would send power to the Vestas factory, which manufactures blades for offshore wind turbines. Both sites are located on the Isle of Wight.The Black Dog plant is able to provide enough power to meet roughly 80% of the Vestas factory's requirements, in addition to approximately 1,200 homes on the Isle of Wight, Earth Capital said.The biogas facility generates energy using materials like grass and maize, which are grown on the island. The process has several steps, according to Earth Capital. Enzymes break the feedstocks down, producing biofertilizer and biogas.The latter is used to fuel two combined-heat-and-power units, which produce heat and electricity, while the biofertilizer is scattered on farmland to help produce the crops used by the power plant. This, Earth Capital said, helped to "support a circular economy" whilst at the same time negating the need to use what it described as "carbon intensive fertilisers."
Wind developers are retrofitting newer projects with bigger, better blades - Utilities and developers are repowering wind turbines with bigger, better blades years ahead of the end of their original life expectancies as they look to take advantage of technology improvements and expiring federal tax credits. Xcel Energy recently won approval for a $750 million plan to retrofit four wind farms in Minnesota and North Dakota, two of which were built in 2015. The oldest of the batch originally started generating power in 2008. Wind farm contracts and decommissioning plans generally set life expectancies around 25 to 35 years. By repowering the projects long before that, utilities are able to boost output around 10% or more, adding power to the grid without facing fresh permitting or interconnection hurdles. “It’s a smart thing to do,” said Beth Soholt, director of the Clean Grid Alliance, a renewable energy advocacy nonprofit. Soholt noted that the added generation means additional federal tax credits, which helps lower the cost of power. “It’s also a good benefit for ratepayers.” A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study on the wind industry reported a mean age of 11 years for turbines reengineered in 2019. Wind farm owners repowered 1,828 turbines producing 2,864 megawatts, with the most common change being an increase in the size of the rotor diameter. Tower height rarely changed, the report said. The data covered “partially repowered” projects that replaced equipment rather than the entire turbine, an approach Xcel will use.
Empire State Building powers up with 100% wind after deal with US developer -New York’s Empire State Building is now 100% powered by wind energy, following the signing of a contract between the iconic property’s manager, Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT), and US developer Green Mountain Energy. The three-year deal will see the edifice, which underwent a ten-year, $550m retrofit that has resulted in a 40% reduction in energy use and emissions, powered as part of an overall supply of 300 million kWh of renewable energy to ESRT’s portfolio, which will save emissions equivalent to taking “all New York City taxis [off the street] for one year”. “ESRT is viable example of how to scale carbon neutral technologies, strategies and policies to balance with an effective economic business case,” said Dana Robbins Schneider, director of energy at ESRT. “We have purchased renewable power from Green Mountain Energy for the Empire State Building, for a decade,” she said. “We now expand that to all properties in New York State with an additional direct energy contract for our Connecticut properties. Our tenants now work in carbon neutral offices.” ESRT’s portfolio totals more than 10 million square foot (1 million m2) of property. Green Mountain first began supply clean-energy to the Empire State building in 2011. “At Green Mountain, we’re encouraged by the vocal advocacy from ESRT that continues to lead New York’s transition to renewable energy,” said Mark Parsons, Green Mountain Energy’s vice president. “As the longest-serving competitive green energy provider, our mission is to use the power of consumer choice to change the way power is made, and we are committed to helping New Yorkers reduce their carbon footprint.”(Copyright)
Biden administration puts Vineyard Wind energy project back on track - Boston Globe -- The long-delayed Vineyard Wind offshore project has been put back on track by the Biden administration. In one of her first actions as the new director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Amanda Lefton pledged on Wednesday to conduct a “robust and timely” review of Vineyard Wind and essentially resume the permitting process where it left off in December. That’s when the developers of Vineyard Wind withdrew their proposal for a wind farm that could generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough power for more than 400,000 homes, to be built about 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Soon after Joe Biden became president last month, the developers rescinded their withdrawal and requested that BOEM resume its review. Vineyard Wind, a joint venture of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, was to be the first major offshore wind farm in the United States. It would be financed through contracts with three major Massachusetts electric utilities. But the project ran into delays under the Trump administration, after commercial fishermen raised concerns that the giant turbines would be hazardous to their work.
Group Sues to Block Wind Farm Cable in Wainscott - Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the East Hampton Town Board, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, and South Fork Wind in an effort to block the town board’s Jan. 21 approval of an easement that would permit the developers of the proposed South Fork Wind farm to land an export cable at the Beach Lane beach and to bury it under town-owned roads on its way to a Long Island Power Authority substation in East Hampton. Tuesday’s move by the group, a well-funded effort to thwart the cable’s landing in Wainscott, follows its Dec. 30 delivery of a petition seeking formation of an incorporated village. The supervisor has scheduled a public hearing on Friday, as required under state law, to determine the legal sufficiency of the petition. The suit charges that the town “improperly rushed the grant of easement prior to the completion of the environmental and regulatory process,” according to a statement from the group. The statement further charges that the town board’s approval of an easement and host-community agreement, which would see the town and the town trustees sharing around $29 million over the project’s 25-year lifespan, was “a grab for money” intended “to end-run the Wainscott community’s effort to incorporate as a village.” The town board voted 4 to 1 in favor of granting the easement, and 4 to 0 in favor of the host-community agreement. Councilman Jeff Bragman voted against the easement agreement and abstained from voting on the host community agreement, arguing that the town would maintain leverage and therefore its ability to influence the project by waiting until state and federal reviews are completed. The proposed wind farm is under review by the New York State Public Service Commission and the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Proposal would give money to North Dakota coal plants by taxing wind power -North Dakota lawmaker wants to impose a new tax on wind farms and give the money to coal-fired power plants in the form of grants. Rep. Dave Nehring, R-Bismarck, presented the proposal Tuesday to the House Finance and Taxation Committee, saying it’s meant to bring part of a federal tax credit “back to North Dakota to support the generation built here that is the backbone of our electric grid.” Critics argue the measure would not address supporters’ concerns about the reliability of the power grid and would drive future wind development to other states. “A tax levied is not a tax collected,” said Jeff Danielson, who works as central states director for American Clean Power and spoke on behalf of the Wind Industry of North Dakota coalition. “The tax proposed in this bill would be so high that that business would not likely locate in North Dakota.” House Bill 1458 takes aim at the federal Production Tax Credit, which offers a tax credit for electricity generated from wind farms. The subsidy has helped propel a boom of tall, spinning turbines across the landscape of windy states such as North Dakota, and it’s often criticized by the coal industry and coal supporters, who view it as unfair. Congress enacted the tax credit in 1992 and has extended it numerous times. Watch Now: Keeper takes tumble into icy penguin pool at UK zooBrady Bunch: QB has taken over 200 teammates to Super BowlShe was stunned by Biden's inauguration. How this South Carolina mom escaped QAnon. Golden Globe nominations 2021: TV, film snubs and surprises The bill before North Dakota lawmakers would levy a tax on wind farms that’s equal to half the Production Tax Credit. The tax would apply only to wind farms that begin operating in 2021 or future years. State tax officials estimate the measure would generate $5 million per year in tax revenue from a new wind farm. The money would go into a “grid reliability and resiliency fund,” and the three-member Public Service Commission would be tasked with using the money to provide grants to qualifying power plants. Power plants in North Dakota run on coal, natural gas or water. Plants would be eligible only if they meet a number of criteria, including having a 30-day supply of fuel onsite, as is the case at coal-fired facilities. The bill comes as coal plants nationwide struggle to compete amid a boom in renewable and natural gas-fired power.
Norfolk Southern faces environmental violations in train derailment, coal spill in Roanoke County - Environmental regulators have issued a notice of violation to Norfolk Southern for a train derailment last fall that spilled tons of coal into the Roanoke River. After investigating the incident in western Roanoke County, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality said it had “reason to believe” the railway might have violated water protection regulations. The notice of violation, which was dated Jan. 25, is the first official step in a process that could lead to fines against Norfolk Southern. Meanwhile, an investigation continues into what caused an eastbound train of 26 coal hopper cars to jump the tracks near a trestle that crosses the river late on the night of Oct. 30. Twelve of the cars, loaded with about 2,600 tons of coal, plunged into the river as the trestle collapsed. No one was injured. Norfolk Southern has reported its findings to the Federal Railroad Administration. “We expect the FRA to make the report available to the public within the next month or so,” railroad spokeswoman Rachel McDonnell Bradshaw wrote in an email Tuesday. An investigation by the railroad administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, is still underway and no other information was available, a spokesperson said. Norfolk Southern has rebuilt the crossing and restored rail service on Nov. 19, Bradshaw said. The rail cars that capsized into the river near Barley Drive were carrying lumps of coal that were quickly swept away, according to the DEQ notice of violation, which was provided this week in response to an open-records request from The Roanoke Times. Although it has not been determined how much of the 2,600 tons of coal ended up in the water, the notice said there was a “significant” amount observed at the Salem Water Treatment Plant, about 3.4 miles downstream from the crash. “Visually notable deposits” were seen for another 3 miles, reaching the Salem Rotary Park near LewisGale Medical Center, the document stated. As a precautionary measure, the city of Salem stopped drawing its drinking water from the river until Nov. 30. City wells and the Western Virginia Water Authority were used as a replacement, at a cost of about $49,000, according to spokesman Mike Stevens. Labor and chemical costs added another $7,000. The city is seeking reimbursement from Norfolk Southern, Stevens said.
COVID Amplifies Environmental Injustice in Chicago - Southwest Chicago's Little Village neighborhood is one of the city's most polluted neighborhoods and has also been ravaged by the novel coronavirus, Grist reports, yet another stark instance in which the pandemic has illuminated and exacerbated existing environmental injustices.The immigrant-rich neighborhood has been pummeled by COVID-19. At one point last November, one in nine. Little Village residents had a confirmed case of COVID-19 and residents in two of its ZIP codes were 15 times more likely to die from it than those living in the overwhelmingly white Near Northside neighborhood just over half-a-dozen miles away.Due to the legacy of a coal plant (the demolition of which caused an air pollution crisis itself) and other polluting industries, Little Village also suffers from among the highest levels of cumulative pollution burden in the city, far higher than the overwhelmingly white downtown neighborhoods just a handful of miles away. COVID-19 has pummeled the community, in mid-November, one in nine Little Village residents had a confirmed case of COVID-19."The question is always: why aren't resources going towards the communities that need it?" said José Acosta-Córdova, an environmental planning and research organizer at the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. "And in Chicago, environmental justice is where all of the struggles — economic justice, racial justice, immigration, labor issues — meet."As reported by Grist:The coronavirus pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the toll decades of environmental injustices have taken on poorer communities of color. That's something the Biden administration has signaled it wants to work on: On Wednesday, the president signed an executive order creating a new White House council on environmental justice, and pledged that 40 percent of the benefits from federal investments in clean energy and clean water would go to communities that bear disproportionate pollution.
'It's a slam upon our state': Sen. Bill Cassidy rebukes Joe Biden over 'Cancer Alley' remarks - President Joe Biden’s recent utterance of “Cancer Alley” has raised the hackles of Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy. The Baton Rouge Republican said the president’s use of the term, rooted in longstanding concerns about toxic air pollution in the industrial corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was an insult against Louisiana. “I'm not going to accept that sort of slam upon our state,” Cassidy said in a call with reporters Tuesday. “It sounds like great rhetoric. But again, I don't accept that slam." Biden mentioned Cancer Alley in a speech about several executive orders he signed late last month to combat climate change and pollution. He said “environmental justice” will take center stage as his administration works to improve the health and well-being of communities of color, especially “the hard-hit areas like Cancer Alley in Louisiana or the Route 9 corridor in the state of Delaware,” Biden said. While the executive orders didn’t specify how the Biden administration plans to address Louisiana's petrochemical belt, local environmental activists said the president is clearly concerned about the disproportionate impact of pollution on the state’s mostly Black and low-income communities — a matter they say is rarely discussed by Louisiana politicians. Cassidy, a physician specializing in digestive ailments, acknowledged Louisiana does have higher rates of cancer than other states, but rejected industrial pollution as a major cause. Instead, Cassidy put the blame on lifestyle choices, like smoking and overeating, and other factors. “We have a higher incidence of cigarette smoking, of obesity, of certain viral infections, and other things which increase the incidence of cancer in our state,” Cassidy said. “So whenever you speak of Cancer Alley ... you have to do what is called a regression analysis to separate out those factors … and several others that could be an alternative, and a more typical explanation for why some folks may have cancer. When you do that, the amount of cancer which is left unexplained is pretty marginal.” Gail LeBoeuf, an environmental and civil rights activist in St. James Parish, said Cassidy is “blaming the victims.”
Denmark wants to build a renewable energy island in the sea, its largest construction project ever - Denmark is to push forward with plans to build a huge artificial island in the North Sea that will act as a major renewable energy hub and cost billions of dollars to develop. The Danish Energy Agency, part of the government's Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, said Thursday the project would be owned by a public-private partnership, with the Danish state holding a majority stake. The scale of the project, which will be located in waters 80 kilometers off the coast of Jutland, the large peninsula which contains the Danish mainland, is considerable. The first phase — set to have a capacity of 3 gigawatts (GW) — will involve approximately 200 offshore wind turbines sending electricity to the hub, which will distribute it to nearby countries via the grid. In future, the capacity of the hub could be expanded to 10 GW. This, Danish authorities say, would be enough to power 10 million homes in Europe. Depending on its final capacity, the island will cover an area between 120,000 and 460,000 square meters. The estimated cost of building the artificial island, 10 GW of capacity and required transmission grid will amount to 210 billion Danish krone ($33.97 billion). "The energy hub in the North Sea will be the largest construction project in Danish history," Dan Jørgensen, the Danish minister for climate, said in a statement. "It will make a big contribution to the realization of the enormous potential for European offshore wind, and I am excited for our future collaboration with other European countries," he added. The project will now move forward, with Denmark's climate department entering into discussions with potential investors from the private sector. On the political front, conditions of the tender will be negotiated, new legislation passed and environmental impact assessments carried out. In addition to the artificial island, a second energy hub of 2 GW is also being planned for the island of Bornholm, in the Baltic Sea. Denmark is something of a pioneer when it comes to offshore wind projects. The world's first offshore wind farm, in waters near the Danish island of Lolland, was commissioned by Orsted — the company formerly known as DONG Energy — in 1991. Other Danish firms, such as turbine maker Vestas, are major players in wind power. Looking further ahead, the European Union — of which Denmark is a member — wants its offshore wind capacity to hit 60 GW by 2030,
Place, prices, alternatives playing roles in coal-fired generation retirements — Despite retirement of 131.8 GW of coal-fired generation capacity since 2010, about 225.3 GW of such capacity remains operating today, led by Texas, Indiana and West Virginia, and replacing that capacity with low- or no-carbon alternatives by 2050 would likely coincide with declining wholesale power prices, industry observers say. Since 2010, almost 8.5 GW of coal-fired generation has retired in Texas, but it still has more than 18 GW of coal-fired capacity operating, the largest amount among the 50 states, according to the S&P Global Market Intelligence power plant database. "The Texas coal fleet is younger than the US average and a growing demand has likely kept some coal [capacity operating] in Texas, although the amount of coal is dropping quickly," said Joshua Rhodes, a University of Texas Webber Energy Group research associate. "Other states that either produce coal or have monopoly utilities are often slower to move away from the rock." Of the 10 states that have had the most coal capacity retired since 2010, five lie all or partly in the PJM Interconnection, accounting for more than 45 GW of retired capacity. These states have also been affected by the boom in natural gas production from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations via hydraulic fracturing, which has resulted plunging gas prices. Spot gas at the Texas Eastern M-3 pipeline fell from $5.101/MMBtu in 2010 to $1.593/MMBtu in 2020, according to the S&P Global Platts price database. Power prices have fallen, also, in the PJM area. PJM West Hub day-ahead on-peak prices have fallen from an estimated average of $53.68/MWh in 2010 to an average locational marginal price of $23.31/MWh in 2020. "The future will depend on where you are, but near-term it is likely to be won by solar, wind, storage, and gas," Rhodes said in a Feb. 1 email. The other five states among the top 10, in terms of coal capacity retirements since 2010, are Arizona, Texas, Alabama, Florida and Georgia, which lie in what many call America's "Sun Belt."Solar power has been growing in several of these states, as the unsubsidized levelized cost of energy for solar power has fallen from about $248/MWh in 2010 to about $37/MWh in 2020, according to the Lazard investment firm. Texas leads the 50 states in terms of wind generation capacity, and the LCOE for wind has fallen from $124/MWh in 2010 to about $40/MWh in 2020, according to Lazard.Wholesale power prices have also fallen, from about $41.15/MWh for average day-ahead on-peak indexes at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas North Hub in 2010 to about $26.15/MWh for ERCOT North Hub day-ahead on-peak LMPs in 2020.
Coal to Exit From U.S. Power System by 2033, Morgan Stanley Says – Bloomberg - Coal is on track to disappear from the U.S. power grid by 2033 as the push for a carbon-free electricity system gains strength, according to Morgan Stanley. The fossil fuel will be supplanted largely by renewables, which will supply 39% of U.S. electricity in 2030 and 55% in 2035, according to a report Monday from Morgan Stanley. The shift comes as a growing number of states implement laws mandating utilities eliminate carbon emissions from their fleets. Coal supplied about 20% of U.S. electricity last year and may rebound to as much as 22% in 2021 as higher natural gas prices prompt utilities to shift their fuel mix, according to Energy Department forecasts. But that short-term rebound won’t overcome the global shift toward cleaner sources of electricity, a trend that’s getting a big push from President Joe Biden’s pledge to put the U.S. on a path to an all-green power system. Gas prices may climb 48% this year, which “drives coal generation and the sector’s carbon footprint to increase in 2021 but we continue to project a constant decline thereafter,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in the report. Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, has committed $500 million to launch Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at closing the remaining coal-powered plants in the U.S. by 2030.
TVA proposes to build new gas plants at shuttered coal sites - Despite opposition from some environmental groups against continuing to burn fossil fuels, the Tennessee Valley Authority is proposing to replace aging gas plants in Memphis and New Johnsonville, Tennessee, with new gas-fired combustion turbines in Kentucky and Alabama. In a draft environmental assessment of its energy options released this week, TVA is proposing to build six new natural gas combustion turbines with a combined generating capacity of 1,500 megawatts at its former Paradise coal plant in Kentucky and its shuttered Colbert coal plant in Alabama within the next three years. Both of those plants already have natural gas-fired generators and the gas-fired peaking plants, which are designed to be used to help meet power demand peaks, will replace aging combustion turbines TVA is shutting down at its Allen plant in Memphis and its New Johnsonville plant west of Nashville. The old plants have a combined capacity of 1,400 megawatts, but TVA's studies indicate they are less efficient and emit more carbon dioxide than the new units would. TVA said closing the gas combustion turbines at Allen would cost eight jobs in Memphis and shutting down Johnsonville would cost 28 jobs. "TVA would help offset this employment loss by placing some interested employees in available positions across the TVA service area," TVA said in a 301-page report on its proposed changes. "In addition to employment impacts, during the decade following the CT retirements, annual average system-wide emissions of CO2 would decrease by 0.6 percent."
Oil spill from wreckage at Lata wharf - An old tuna boat that sank off the Lata wharf, Temotu Province, a decade ago has begun leaking oil, prompting a resident to call on authorities to clean up the wreck before the oil spillage turns into an environmental disaster. In an email sent to this paper yesterday, Mr. Cedric T Williams, a resident of Lata, said the wreckage has started releasing oil into the sea. Mr. Williams said one other issue being brought up by ship owners and operators over the past 10 years is the space of sunken ship occupies. “Complaints have been raised on the public forums over and over again but it has fallen on deaf ears. Further complaints have since emerged when the sunken ship starts spilling oil in nearby sea areas.” He said the ongoing debate on social media blamed the Temotu Provincial Government led by Premier Clay Forau, a former foreign minister. Mr. Forau has since said that successive provincial governments have notified the relevant authorities including the Solomon Islands Maritime Safety Administration (SIMSA), but said all the communication had fallen on deaf ears. “With the seriousness of the oil spillage, the Temotu public is now calling on the government to act swiftly to rectify the issue before it causes further damage to the environment. More so, we are calling on our Members of Parliament to approach the appropriate authorities particularly the Minister of Infrastructure Development and SIMSA to act on the issue immediately,” he said.
Are NJ nuclear subsidies optional or essential? - In a reprise of a debate from three years ago over lucrative subsidies to keep New Jersey’s three nuclear power plants from closing, backers and critics squared off over whether to keep charging ratepayers for the $300 million annual payments. In two virtual public hearings Monday, the two sides once again portrayed the financial viability of the PSEG Nuclear units in starkly contrasting terms. PSEG executives argued the plants are in worse fiscal shape than they were in 2018 when a divided Board of Public Utilities voted to award the initial subsidies to avert their closing. Unlike the last go-around, however, the board-hired consultant, Levitan Associates, determined the three units are no longer profitable, a reversal of its position in 2018. But prominent opponents of the subsidies, including New Jersey’s Division of Rate Counsel and the independent market monitor for PJM, the regional power grid, say the company failed to demonstrate it needs the financial incentives. Nuclear power plants across the country are finding it difficult to compete with cheaper natural gas, forcing the closing of seven nuclear units in the past few years with as many as a dozen at risk of doing so, according to William Healey, of the New Jersey Alliance For Action. Joseph Accardo, vice president and deputy general counsel of PSEG, noted New Jersey already has determined it needs the nuclear units if it is going to meet the state’s aggressive clean-energy goals. The units provide roughly 40% of the state’s electricity and 90% of its carbon-free power. If the plants are retired, New Jersey residents would pay billions of dollars more for their electricity, most of which would come from dirtier gas plants, he said. The existing $300 million subsidies need to be retained in full, Accardo said.
TVA seeks input on conducting environmental study for proposed Clinch River Nuclear site (WATE) – The Tennessee Valley Authority is asking for public comment on a proposal to conduct an environmental study for an advanced nuclear reactor technology park at the Clinch River Nuclear Site in Roane County.Its the next step in a proposal winding its way slowly through regulatory processes.The park would contain one or more advanced nuclear reactors with a cumulative electrical output not to exceed 800 megawatts. TVA plans to evaluate a variety of alternatives, including a no-action alternative. TVA is asking for public comments to identify potential alternatives, information, and analysis relevant to the construction, operation, and decommissioning of such a park. Comments must be received or postmarked by March 19.Comments may be submitted in writing to J. Taylor Cates, NEPA Specialist, 1101 Market Street, BR 2C-C, Chattanooga, TN 37402; online at https://www.tva.com/nepa; or by email to nepa@tva.gov. Please note that due to COVID-19 teleworking restrictions, electronic submission of comments is encouraged to ensure timely review and consideration. All comments received, including names and addresses, will become part of the administrative record and available for public inspection.
Villages in Japan Are Competing to Become a Nuclear Waste Site - Two fishing villages in Hokkaido are vying to host the final storage facility for half a century of Japanese nuclear waste, splitting communities between those seeking investment to stop the towns from dying, and those haunted by the 2011 Fukushima disaster, who are determined to stop the project. In the middle is a government that bet heavily on nuclear energy to power its industrial ascent and now faces a massive and growing pile of radioactive waste with nowhere to dispose of it. Since it first began generating atomic energy in 1966, Japan has produced more than 19,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste that is sitting in temporary storage around the country. After searching fruitlessly for two decades for a permanent site, the approaches from Suttsu, population 2,885, and Kamoenai, population 810, may be signs of progress. The towns have focused a debate that has bedeviled an industry some regard as a vital emissions-free energy source and others revile as a dangerous liability. The accidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 reinforced public skepticism about both the safety of reactors and our ability to safely store their residue for centuries. While new generations of fail-safe reactor designs may eventually help assuage the first concern, the problem of the waste remains. That’s where the two fishing villages come in. Japan’s nuclear energy strategy is to reprocess spent fuel to reuse extracted uranium and plutonium, and to seal the remainder in glass, enclose it in steel containers and bury it in bedrock in a “deep geological repository” least 300 meters underground. There the radioactivity would slowly decay, losing 99.9% of its potency in 1,000 years. “It’s safer to keep high-level waste underground than storing it above ground, considering the risks of earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, fires or terrorism,” according to a public release from Japan’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NUMO). Then came Fukushima and public sentiment turned inexorably against atomic power. The day before the 2011 tsunami and earthquake caused the nation’s worst nuclear accident, Japan had 54 reactors operating, generating almost a third of the country’s electricity. Only nine have restarted, and the government has scrapped the target date to complete the waste repository after a wholesale review of the industry.So the radioactive waste continues to pile up, stored temporarily above ground at the giant Rokkasho nuclear power complex in the far north of Japan’s main island of Honshu and other plants and research stations around the country. The Rokkasho and Tokaimura nuclear facilities already have about 2,500 blocks of vitrified waste, while another 19,000 tons of spent fuel is scattered around other sites, waiting to be processed. To find a site that would permanently hold at least 40,000 vitrified blocks, the government in 2017 produced a color-coded map showing suitable locations in green in terms of geology, seismic activity and ease of transportation from power plants.
Corruption in utility bailouts hurts ratepayers and the planet - Brookings Institution --The U.S. energy mix is changing. Renewables are ascendant in growth and continue to plummet in cost. Meanwhile, the struggles of fossil fuels were apparent even before the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a dramatic drop in oil prices and hastened the collapse of coal. The result is a cleaner and cheaper U.S. power sector that is more responsive to market forces and technological advancement. Electric utilities, with their integral role in power generation, are among the vanguard of stakeholders effecting this transition. By building out renewables portfolios, investing in emerging technologies, and retiring old and inefficient infrastructure, many utilities are helping to shift the United States to a more efficient and responsible energy grid while stimulating job growth and reducing electricity costs for consumers.Some utilities, however, have resisted the prevailing technological and societal trends powering the modernization and decarbonization of the U.S. electrical grid. This resistance often comes in the form of keeping old and inefficient power plants online, despite financial incentives to embrace cleaner, more modern generation sources.Because many of those older power plants operate at a loss, utilities taking this position often turn to local and state governments for subsidies or bailouts. While bailouts are not necessarily problematic in and of themselves, in some cases a shadowy constellation of individuals, organizations, and companies are the driving forces behind them. Such networks of actors often offer tendentious justifications for the bailouts they seek that downplay the negative financial and environmental consequences. They then take advantage of lax disclosure laws to conceal their involvement or their connections to the policymakers pushing to grant the bailout with public funds.The recent corruption scandal surrounding the FirstEnergy electric utility and House Bill 6 (H.B. 6) in Ohio provides an example of the harm done to ratepayers and the energy transition when bad actors and dark money work together to conceal the true motivations behind utility bailouts.H.B. 6, taken up in the Ohio House of Representatives in April 2019 and then signed into law by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine three months later, is a sweeping, energy-focused bill opposed by an unlikely bipartisan mix of lawmakers, environmentalists, and free-market conservatives. Itsprovisions granted bailouts to two floundering nuclear power plants owned by FirstEnergy and two unprofitable coal-fired power plants owned by the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation. Those bailouts were to be paid for by surcharges on residential, commercial, and industrial electric bills totaling $170 million per year until 2027. Furthermore, H.B. 6 stipulated the reduction—after 2026—of the state’s decade-old clean-energy mandate and the weakening of energy efficiency standards for utilities.
Residents Raise Firestorm About Akron's Fracking Plans for LaDue - Geauga Maple Leaf - A local energy company’s proposal to lease the mineral rights under 475 acres of LaDue Reservoir from the City of Akron has met with an avalanche of outrage from local residents and environmental groups. DP Energy Auburn LLC, organized Jan. 1, according to Ohio Secretary of State’s office records, wants to drill under LaDue and surrounding properties for oil or natural gas in what many called “fracking,” or drilling deep in a vertical direction, then horizontally into shale layers far below the surface.An Akron Beacon Journal article said DP Energy plans to drill under 475 acres of watershed land at LaDue, which straddles southern Geauga and northern Portage counties.The energy company told Akron Public Service Director Chris Ludle that DP was organized Jan. 1 by Akron attorney and former City Councilman Patrick D’ Andrea, who served as councilman from 1979-1989 and as Summit County director of development, according to his law firm’s website.Efforts to reach D’Andrea at his law office were unsuccessful and a recording stated his voice mailbox was full and could not receive messages.D’Andrea told Ludle because the LaDue land will be adjacent to parcels that DP already owns, there will be no need for equipment, tanks or access roads on the LaDue portion. If no oil or gas is found within three years, the well must be capped and the mineral rights forfeited back to the City of Akron.DP would pay Akron $500 per acre, or $237,500 plus 15 percent of any royalties, for the mineral rights. If Akron did not agree to the deal, the company would drill on adjacent property anyway.According to a Jan. 21 Cleveland.com article, the city has been in negotiations to sell the mineral rights for about a year. LaDue Reservoir, in Auburn and Troy townships, was completed in 1962 to provide a water source for the City of Akron. The lake was formed by damming two tributaries of the Cuyahoga River — Black Brook and Bridge Creek. The proposed contract agreement with DP was scheduled to come before Akron City Council on Jan. 25, but one council member referred it back to committee, halting the process temporarily. According to another council member, the issue could be voted upon as early as Feb. 1. As the proposal sat in committee, council has been bombarded with voice messages and emails, mostly opposed to the fracking. Many have made their opinions known on social media outlets such as Facebook, Next Door and Twitter. “I learned about it through an article I saw in the Akron Beacon Journal and one on Cleveland.com,” Russell Township resident Shelly Chernin told the Geauga County Maple Leaf last week. Chernin serves as a trustee for Protect Geauga Parks and said she is opposed to fracking at LaDue. “I’m frustrated because Geauga is impacted by what is decided by the City of Akron,” Chernin said via phone interview. “I wrote to our county commissioners and heard back from County Administrator Gerry Morgan that there isn’t much they can do.”
Letters to the Editor - Geauga Maple Leaf --SAFEGUARD OUR DRINKING WATER - The League of Women Voters of Geauga stands with the League of Women Voters of the United States in calling for stringent controls to protect the quality of current and potential drinking-water supplies, including protection of watersheds for surface supplies and of recharge areas for groundwater. For more than 100 years, the City of Akron has endeavored to secure a reliable source of drinking water by channeling upstream rainfall and snowmelt into a series of carefully constructed reservoirs. Rockwell Reservoir in Portage County, along with Geauga’s East Branch and LaDue reservoirs, together supply clean drinking water to nearly 300,000 Akron customers. Developed by William LaDue, the ambitious public water system called for protection of the upstream waterways that feed into each reservoir. Accordingly, Akron purchased watershed property along the Upper Cuyahoga River and today is the largest land owner in Geauga County.On its website, Akron boasts of protecting more than 18,000 acres of watershed property. Such mindful stewardship of ecologically critical resources protects both Akron’s drinking water as well as the groundwater that so many people in Geauga rely upon to supply their private wells.It is against this backdrop that Akron officials propose allowing gas and oil extraction from watershed property buffering the southeast corner of LaDue Reservoir. DP Energy Auburn, LLC seeks to use a horizontal drilling process known as fracking to drill under the city-owned lands. All of the proposed drilling sites are in watersheds. One stretches under LaDue Reservoir. The risk to the Akron water supply is readily apparent. Of equal concern is the risk to Geauga’s groundwater, which supplies drinking water to the vast majority of our households and businesses. Any threat to our shared water supply is an urgent matter of public health to both communities.We urge residents of Geauga and Akron to voice their concerns to their elected leaders. We ask the City of Akron to reject this short-sighted proposal and to fulfill their duty to safeguard our drinking water.Shelly Lewis, President League of Women Voters of Geauga
Critics of proposed fracking under Akron-owned watershed flood City Council with complaints - - Akron Deputy Clerk of Council Sara Biviano read in the first public comment sent via email Monday night. It began like most of the 130 minutes worth of complaints council would hear during the public meeting, which up until that point took little more than a half hour to get through all the regular business.“No oil or fracking in any backyard. Stop the madness,” the email began.After 10 minutes of emails, Biviano told council: “I do have voicemails to play. There are over 100 of them.”As she queued up the voice messages, Councilman Donnie Kammer’s eyes bulged. Councilwoman Tara Samples dropped her face into her hands to conceal a smile. Colleagues settled in for an earful. The flood of public comments included about 10 emails and 115 voicemails. By the Akron Beacon Journal’s tally, 88% of the complaints related to a proposal by Public Service Director Chris Ludle to sell the mineral rights under 475 acres of watershed land around the La Due Reservoir in Geauga County for gas and oil extraction. The deal would not allow construction or drilling activity on the surface of the city-owned property.The company trying to buy the rights, DP Energy Auburn LLC, used the name of the township in the limited liability company created for the transaction. And Auburn Township residents of that township, along with even more from Akron, made their voices heard. The calls came from neighboring Chesterland and Bainbridge Township and as far south as Wadsworth and Norton.In all, 110 people called or wrote to council to express opposition to the plan, which Ludle said last week would involve horizontal drilling to get under the city-owned watershed property and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to unlock oil and gas trapped in a shale formation thousands of feet below the city’s primary drinking supply.
Akron pulls fracking proposal following public outcry over drilling at LaDue Reservoir in Geauga County - – Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan announced during a virtual town hall Thursday that the city has pulled legislation before city council to lease mineral rights for a private company to drill and frack under city-owned land near the LaDue Reservoir in Geauga County.“I’ve listened to a lot of the concerns from both people inside of Akron and outside, and a significant amount of concern on Akron City Council, and I have decided to withdraw the LaDue oil and gas proposal from the Akron City Council agenda at this time,” Horrigan said. “There won’t be a vote on it. We’re not moving forward, definitively, with the project.”The proposal had garnered widespread criticism from Akron residents concerned about water quality and environmental issues, as well as from Geauga County residents who rely on groundwater, which can be impacted by fracking. During Monday’s City Council meeting, more than 100 voicemails were played during the public comment period, the vast majority of which criticized the fracking proposal. The deal would have allowed the company – DP Energy Auburn, LLC – to frack under 475 acres of city-owned land at LaDue, which is upstream from Akron’s drinking water supply on the Cuyahoga River. The city was considering leasing the mineral rights for $237,500, or $500 per acre, along with 15% of potential royalties for any oil or gas produced by the wells.DP Energy Auburn was seeking to drill horizontally under the city-owned land through wells on adjacent properties.Public Service Director Chris Ludle previously told City Council’s Planning and Economic Development Committee that the city had been negotiating with DP Energy Auburn for “about a year,” despite the company only becoming incorporated on Jan. 1, according to Ohio Secretary of State records.DP Energy Auburn is registered to Akron attorney Patrick D’Andrea, who was an Akron City Councilman from 1979 to 1989 and a former Summit County director of development. He currently represents landowners and businesses regarding oil, gas and mineral rights, according to his law firm’s website. D’Andrea did not immediately respond to an inquiry from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer
Akron mayor pulls plan to drill for oil and gas at LaDue Reservoir - Akron Beacon Journal - Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan is withdrawing a proposal to allow fracking for gas and oil beneath city-owned watershed land at the LaDue Reservoir in Geauga County.While defending the environmental safeguards and economic necessity of the proposed deal, Horrigan told the public during a Facebook Live town hall Thursday that the city is abandoning a tentative deal with DP Auburn Energy LLC to lease mineral rights for 475 acres of watershed land.The deal would have required approval from council, which passed the plan out of committee before Councilwoman Tara Samples pulled the issue back into committee for reconsideration. On Monday, council took no action on the proposal but heard hundreds of complaints from neighbors of the reservoir in Auburn Township, Akron residents who rely on the drinking water supply and environmentally concerned citizens across the region, including members of the Democratic Socialists of America and Our Revolution Akron, an offshoot of the national progressive movement championed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders."Drilling under Lake Le Due Reservoir was a bad idea from the onset," said Samples, an Our Revolution supporter who called the mayor's decision to abandon the deal a "win" for the people whose voices were heard "loud and clear.""Whether you call it mineral drilling or something (else), it's still fracking," she said. "And the bottom line is you can't take back poisoning people's water. That lasts a lifetime."Horrigan said good points were made on either side of the issue, and he's willing to have a fact-based debate about whether fracking is the right way to generate revenue for Akron. "I completely understand the public’s concern about irresponsible fracking practices that have occurred in this country, but I’m also troubled about the misinformation used to stir up community concern, when our primary objective is to safeguard the health, economic mobility, and safety of our residents," Horrigan said in a statement following his town hall. “I understand you’re concerned about the irresponsible fracking practices that have happened around the country. But it’s also kind of troubling sometimes to look at some of the misinformation that is out there — really, sometimes, just to stir up community concern — when our primary concern is always to keep our drinking water and our citizens safe … This isn’t Flint. It’s not even a comparison. … We’re not selling the water rights … And, quite frankly, I haven’t been bought by campaign donors. I want to make that clear.”
Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan withdraws proposal to allow fracking at LaDue Reservoir - — Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan announced Thursday that he has withdrawn his proposal to lease underground oil and gas rights for well sites just outside the city's property lines. Horrigan originally introduced the proposal as a solution to generate funds for upcoming water and sewer needs, but was met with pushback from residents over the potential risks and the negative reputation of fracking. "I completely understand the public’s concern about irresponsible fracking practices that have occurred in this country, but I’m also troubled about the misinformation used to stir up community concern, when our primary objective is to safeguard the health, economic mobility, and safety of our residents," Mayor Horrigan explained in a press release.Horrigan says that with the proposal, tight control over the project and the ability to put the highest of restrictions and protections in place, would have been allowed.Without the additional revenue, Mayor Horrigan says the city is in a "precarious spot" when it comes to funding. The city of Akron is being crippled by its current consent decree and ratepayers are already facing sizable sewer fees due to the federally mandated $1.2 billon sewer project. Additionally, the pandemic has resulted in a "significant reduction" in revenue from municipal sewer and water revenue due to lack of business activity. According to the Mayor, the project was expected to immediately generate a quarter of a million dollars in revenue and maintain a "significant royalty revenue over the life of the project.""The City of Akron needs revenue to maintain our vast water infrastructure and to continue to eliminate lead services in this city to get us closer to our goal of zero lead service lines in Akron," said Horrigan. Mayor Horrigan maintains that he and his staff will continue to evaluate creative ways to safely and responsibly leverage the city's assets to raise the necessary funding.
Thousands of gallons of fracking waste spilled from Noble County well for four days - -Thousands of gallons of fracking waste spilled from an oil and gas well in Noble County for four days before it was stopped, Ohio Department of Natural Resources confirmed Thursday."Containment measures have been put in place to prevent the flow of fluid into a nearby tributary," said Sarah Wickham, an ODNR spokeswoman. "The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and local officials were notified and have assisted the Division in the response."The spill was first reported by an adjacent landowner on Alfred Brown Road in Dexter City on Jan. 24 to the state’s incident notification line, Wickham said. The cause of the spill was not immediately known and is under investigation. ODNR said preliminary tests show the fluid appears to be fracking waste. "There have been no injuries or evacuations and the extent of impact to the environment has not yet been determined," Wickham said in a statement.A nearby tributary, Taylor Fork, was initially affected by the spill, with an unknown amount of fish getting killed off.Containment measures included ODNR overseeing contractors to build emergency containments to collect fluid flowing from the well. On Tuesday, a system of containment structures including pipes and storage tanks were installed to stop the fluid from entering the environment, Wickham said. By Thursday the flow of fluid was stopped. About 39,000 barrels of fluid were collected and disposed of, she said. (42 gallons per barrel)The well, which is named Gant Florence/Ohio Power Co., had its first year of production in 1986, according to ODNR records. However, the last time the well produced a sizeable amount of gas was in 2012. The well has a depth of more than 6,000 feet.Records show the well is still labeled as a producing well even though it hasn't been in use for some time. "Moreover, this well should have been plugged once it was determined to be non producing, according to ODNR’s own regulations," said Teresa Mills, executive director of Buckeye Environmental Network.
In Ohio, regulators respond to suspected frack waste spewing from unused gas well, causing fish kill - Ohio regulators are working at a gas well that started spewing what’s believed to be brine water from fracking into the environment more than a week ago. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which regulates the oil and gas industry, said in an email that it was notified on Sunday, January 24 that fluid, what the agency called “produced brine,” was spraying out of an oil and gas well in the Crooked Tree area near Dexter City in Noble County. Brine is a salty byproduct of gas and oil production and can contain toxic metals and radioactive substances, according to US EPA. This video posted to Facebook by Amber Deem shows liquid spraying out of the well and pooling on the ground. Deem told The Allegheny Front in a phone call that the Parkersburg, West Virginia company where she works owns this well, and that it hadn’t produced gas in years. Deem has now said she is awaiting advice from her attorney before commenting further. Chasity Schmelzenbach, director of Noble County Emergency Management, was informed by Ohio DNR about the incident at the well, which is owned by Genesis Resources LLC of Parkersburg. On Wednesday, January 27, the state was able to contain the spray in a collection system on-site, Schmelzenbach said, but not before the suspected brine killed fish in Taylor Fork, a small tributary. She said state regulators had wildlife experts at the scene. “The chloride counts are really high, that’s why the fish kill happened, they believe,” Schmelzenbach said. “Typically brine doesn’t kill fish, so the concentrations had to be pretty high in that small area.” By the next day, Schmelzenbach said the state reported that the pressure of the emerging liquid had dropped. Ohio DNR said brine continues to flow at the wellhead. So far it has collected, and disposed of more than 30,000 barrels of fluid from the site. The agency has not determined where the liquid originated, or why it suddenly started spewing from the old gas well. There have been no injuries or evacuations and the extent of impact to the environment is not yet known. Noble County is home to around ten frack wastewater injection wells, according to Schmelzenbach and state mapping, some a few miles from the incident. In late 2019, brine from an injection well in Washington County, Ohio migrated to several producing gas wells, some more than five miles away. Since 2017, there have been seven spills of frack waste in Noble County, including this one, according to Ohio EPA records.
Reps disagree on Biden drilling order - Warren Tribune Chronicle --U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan said President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, did the right thing by suspending new oil and gas drilling on federally owned lands and waters, while U.S. Reps. Bill Johnson and Dave Joyce, both Republicans, said the decision damages the nation’s energy supply. Biden recently issued executive orders including a halt to new drilling on federal property as part of his plan to address climate change. It came a week after Biden ordered a 60-day suspension of new drilling and follows through on a campaign pledge to halt new drilling on federal property.Federal leases make up about 22 percent of the nation’s oil production and 12 percent of gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Ryan, D-Howland, stressed this doesn’t stop fracking or drilling and only restricts new drilling on federally owned property.“You don’t want to necessarily be drilling in Yosemite or some of these other national parks. But we still need to pursue a cracker plant in Belmont County that the same people criticizing Biden about this haven’t lifted a finger to get that thing done,” Ryan said. “That’s about jobs and putting us at the center of the natural gas industry. Biden is supportive of that.” Ryan called the moratorium “the bridge to the renewable energy sector.” Biden’s executive orders double energy production from wind turbines, call for a move to an all-electric federal vehicle fleet, conserve 30 percent of the country’s lands and waters in the next decade, seek to reduce carbon emissions and make climate change a national security priority.Johnson, R-Marietta, said: “I’m disappointed but not surprised that Joe Biden is coming after our domestic energy supply and the jobs that come with it.” Johnson described it as “the start of a war against domestic energy that will target not only jobs, but also the cost of living for those who use electricity and drive a car. These policies are bad for America and will impact everyone. They will especially hurt the Mahoning Valley and rural Appalachia.”
Monroe County, OH Developing Ohio River Site to Help Utica Shale...The Monroe County, OH Port Authority has scored close to $3 million in grants and loans to fund a development project located at a former CONSOL Energy coal mining site south of Clarington, OH. The money will be used to build an access road and repair eight of 12 existing barge cells on the Ohio River. The end game is to “lease the property to companies that provide support services to the shale gas industry.” Please Login to view this content.
Speak out for our rights to a safe region and planet - Athens NEWS --To the editor, We are reaching out to Athens Countians to join in the protest and fight against another oil and gas industry assault on our region. A Class III injection well project is being reviewed by ODNR Division of Oil and Gas. The Powhatan Salt Company LLC has applied to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for three Class III solution-mining well permits to create storage caverns in the Salina salt formation, 2.5 miles north of Clarington, Ohio, along the Ohio River in Monroe County. The caverns will be immediately adjacent to the river. With the number of abandoned mines and fracking operations in the immediate area, there is significant risk of subsidence, explosions, and fissures created by the increasingly frequent earthquakes in the region. The storage caverns will initially be used to produce brine from the Salina formation 6,000 feet below the surface. The brine will be piped under the Ohio River to Natrium, West Virginia, and a chemical plant that produces chlorine from brine. To create these storage caverns, Powhatan Salt Company would inject millions of gallons of freshwater underground at high pressures to carve out cavities in the salt. Powhatan would withdraw approximately 1,928,000 gallons of freshwater/day from the Ohio River to carve out the first cavern. More caverns could be constructed to increase storage capacity, which could require withdrawal of as much as 380,200,000 gallons of freshwater. The application does not disclose that, as Powhatan Salt Co. LLC and its sister company Mountaineer NGL Storage LLC have stated in numerous news stories, they have been intending to use the caverns for the storage of natural gas liquids like ethane, propane, butanes, and possibly hydrogen extracted from fracking. This use not only creates additional explosive and contamination hazards but also supports proliferation of fracking and its climate impacts and increases the massive amount of toxic, radioactive waste generated by this industrial process. Ohio Underground Injection Control Program (UIC) Class III well permitting does not require modification of an application or permit even if this drastic change of use occurs.
Will The Fracking Boom Ever Translate Into Jobs And Income For Appalachia’s Residents? - The U.S. fracking boom has delivered record amounts of shale gas — fuel used not just for electric generation but also as a feedstock for the manufacturing sector. But despite that explosive growth, the Appalachian region has failed to realize corresponding economic benefits. What gives? On Wednesday, the Ohio River Valley Institute readily acknowledged that the oil and gas industry has produced an abundance of oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids that are comprised of ethane, methane and propane — the elements that go into finished products. The region, in fact, now accounts for 30% of the nation’s natural gas production. But the growth in both jobs and incomes never followed.That is because much of the wealth creation has gone to those who often live outside those local areas and who then reinvest their profits elsewhere. And the conference also disputed the notion that the creation of one energy job leads to several others, noting that the “multiplier effect” in Appalachia’s shale gas area and is virtually one-for-one. The Ohio River Valley represents Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Bureau of Economic Analysis says that while the gross domestic product in the fracking counties of the three Ohio Valley states grew by 96%, jobs in those fracking counties only expanded by 1.7%, all between 2008 and 2019. The Ohio River Valley Institute says that 90% of the wealth created from fracking comes from the sale of shale gas and only about 10% of that money stays local.
Opponents of Plum injection well appeal to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf - Pittsburgh Business Times - Environmental activists and residents against a Plum Borough wastewater well have stepped up their campaign against the well, appealing to Gov. Tom Wolf to cancel the permit to operate. Protect PT, Breathe Project and Citizens for Plum expressed in the letter to Wolf what they called serious concerns regarding the Penneco Sedat #3A waste disposal well about the risks to drinking and surface water supplies, radioactivity of the wastewater and the potential for small earthquakes. The disposal well was approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in 2018. Ben Wallace, COO of Penneco Environmental Solutions LLC in Delmont, told the Business Times on Thursday that the wastewater injection well should be operational in the late spring. The waste, also known as brine, is used heavily in natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The industry reuses the liquid for the most part in an extensive recycling effort but, eventually, the water — which includes radioactive materials and heavy metals from underground — has to be disposed of. There aren’t that many wastewater injection wells in Pennsylvania; most of the wastewater is disposed of in Ohio, where it is trucked. In the letter to Wolf, the groups say the well, which has been producing natural gas since 1989, wasn’t designed to take waste injected into it instead. Anthony Ingraffea, an emeritus engineering professor at Cornell University, said the circa 1985 well design for Sedat #3A for a natural gas well doesn’t fit its new purpose. He said the well’s casing and cement weren’t tested in 1989 when the well was drilled and a non-state-of-the-art inspection and test was conducted in 2015. “It’s a 32-year-old well designed for one purpose that is now being called upon for an entirely different purpose,” Ingraffea and Melissa Troutman, a research and policy analyst at Earthworks, said that there’s a chance of contamination of local water wells. The well is within about 1,000 feet of privates and some in the area have water wells that could be impacted. Troutman raised the issue of radioactivity from radium 226, a carcinogen, if there was to be a leak.
Supreme Court will hear case on PennEast pipeline | TheHill - The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to take up a challenge from a pipeline project seeking to use eminent domain to build a natural gas pipeline between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.The PennEast Pipeline Co. LLC is seeking to overturn a decision from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals that blocks it from seizing New Jersey state land to build its 116-mile project.The state of New Jersey has opposed the project, as have environmental groups, but under the Trump administration, the White House sided with the pipeline.It is the federal government who has the “primary authority to determine whether additional pipelines and related facilities are needed and, if so, where they should be located and whom they should serve,” the solicitor general’s office wrote in a December brief.But those opposed to the pipeline argue states should have a say.“The law is clear, and the Eleventh Amendment protects New Jersey from seizures by private companies using eminent domain. The Supreme Court should uphold the Third Circuit ruling and protect states from federal overreach,” Maya van Rossum, leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, which opposes the project, said in a statement. Last summer, 20 states sued the Trump administration in a separate suit, challenging an Environmental Protection Agency rule that weakens states’ ability to block pipelines and other controversial projects that cross their waterways.
OIL AND GAS: Biden expected to back pipeline in Supreme Court battle -- Thursday, February 4, 2021 -- The Biden administration's Justice Department may keep supporting a pipeline company's eminent domain power in the latest energy fight to land before the Supreme Court, legal experts say.
After an order raises issues with Vermont Gas pipeline, activists push for penalties - After a state order last week detailed issues with a Vermont Gas pipeline, the company filed with state regulators Wednesday requesting more time to respond. “Today we’ll be filing for a little more time so we can review the ruling,” Vermont Gas spokesperson Beth Parent told VTDigger. The Public Utility Commission order found that Vermont Gas had failed to bury the 41-mile natural gas pipeline through Addison County at the 4-foot depth required by a construction permit. The ruling also pointed to the failure of the company to ensure a licensed professional engineer signed off on the construction plan. “Vermont Gas did not build the project as approved,” the commission wrote, listing five failures that were considered “substantial changes” from the 2013 Final Order. “It’s just astounding that you could have a major project like this that was constructed without the oversight of an engineer,” said Jim Dumont, an attorney for five area residents who oppose the $165 million pipeline completed in 2017. Dumont said neighbors have serious safety concerns, especially after the 2018 explosion of a pipeline in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, utilities projects aren’t required to have an engineer sign off on construction plans, while in Vermont they are. The order finds that Vermont Gas didn’t comply with the requirement. Hinesburg resident Rachel Smolker, who Dumont represents in the case, said she sees a disturbing pattern in the recent construction of pipelines. She described a “slam it in the ground” approach, which she connects to a recent uptick in incidents. “A lot of corners were cut,” she said. “I really do fear for the people who live close to the pipeline, and I have friends who live within a few hundred feet.”
Living With Natural Gas Pipelines: Appalachian Landowners Describe Fear, Anxiety and Loss - More than 2 million miles of natural gas pipelines run throughout the United States. In Appalachia, they spread like spaghetti across the region. Many of these lines were built in just the past five years to carry natural gas from the Marcellus Shale region of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where hydraulic fracturing has boomed. West Virginia alone has seen a fourfold increase in natural gas production in the past decade.Such fast growth has also brought hundreds of safety and environmental violations, particularly under the Trump administration's reduced oversight and streamlined approvals for pipeline projects. While energy companies promise economic benefits for depressed regions, pipeline projects are upending the lives of people in their paths.As a technical and professional communication scholar focused on how rural communities deal with complex problems and a geography scholar specializing in human-environment interactions, we teamed up to study the effects of pipeline development in rural Appalachia. In 2020, we surveyed and talked with dozens of people living close to pipelines in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.What we found illuminates the stress and uncertainty that communities experience when natural gas pipelines change their landscape. Residents live with the fear of disasters, the noise of construction and the anxiety of having no control over their own land.Appalachians are no strangers to environmental risk. The region has a long and complicated history with extractive industries, including coal and hydraulic fracturing. However, it's rare to hear firsthand accounts of the long-term effects of industrial infrastructure development in rural communities, especially when it comes to pipelines, since they are the result of more recent energy-sector growth.For all of the people we talked to, the process of pipeline development was drawn out and often confusing. Some reported never hearing about a planned pipeline until a "land man" – a gas company representative – knocked on their door offering to buy a slice of their property; others said that they found out through newspaper articles or posts on social media. Every person we spoke with agreed that the burden ultimately fell on them to find out what was happening in their communities.
Natural gas production far exceeded consumption in West Virginia in 2019 - In West Virginia in 2019, 5.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of marketed natural gas was produced and 0.6 Bcf/dwas consumed. No other state had a higher ratio of natural gas production to consumption in 2019. West Virginia’s natural gas production ranked 6th out of the 50 states in 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Natural Gas Annual. West Virginia ranked third for proved natural gas reserves in 2019, behind only Texas and Pennsylvania.In 2019, only 10% of the natural gas produced in West Virginia was consumed in the state. The industrial sector accounted for 37% of the natural gas that was delivered to consumers in West Virginia, followed by the residential and commercial sectors, which each accounted for 24%.The electric power sector, the largest natural gas-consuming sector nationwide, accounted for 15% of the natural gas deliveries in West Virginia in 2019. The natural gas that is not consumed in state moves through an extensive pipeline network to other states, often those in the Northeast, or is stored underground. About 240 Bcf of natural gas working storage capacity is located in West Virginia, which is 5% of the Lower 48 states’ total natural gas working storage capacity.Electricity generation from natural gas has displaced coal-fired generation in many parts of the nation, but the shift has been less noticeable in West Virginia. Coal-fired power plants accounted for 91% of the electricity generated in West Virginia during 2019, a larger share than in any in other state, although it was coal-fired generation's lowest share in more than 20 years. Natural gas and wind each accounted for about 4% of West Virginia’s power sector electricity generation in 2019. Additional state-level analysis for all types of energy is available in EIA’s State Energy Portal.
WV Office of Oil and Gas Short on Inspectors - West Virginia has a lot of gas wells—giant horizontal fracking wells, smaller conventional wells and old gas and oil wells that have been abandoned.The state Office of Oil and Gas (OOG), within the state Department of Environmental Protection, reports West Virginia has approximately 60,000 active wells and about 15,000 abandoned wells under its jurisdiction.According to its website, OOG “is responsible for monitoring and regulating all actions related to the exploration, drilling, storage and production of oil and natural gas.” The staff at OOG includes an inspection staff, which responds to complaints and gathers information at well sites.You would think, given the size of the state’s gas and oil industry, that the inspection unit would be large and well-funded, but it is not. In fact, just the opposite.The OOG is funded primarily through permitting ees, but as the industry has slowed down and fewer wells are needed to produce more gas, the funding has been “significantly reduced,” according to OOG.As a result, the size of the inspection staff has steadily declined from 40 to just 11. That is 11 field inspectors for 75,000 active and abandoned wells.The West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization and several state lawmakers are alarmed by that ratio. Delegate Evan Hansen (D-Monongalia) and Senator Bill Ihlenfeld (D-Ohio), along with the Surface Owners are proposing a $100 per year fee on every well that has not yet been plugged to fully fund OOG. “There is a range of public health and environmental concerns if oil and gas wells and the tanks that store the fluids from those wells are not properly regulated,” Hansen said.
WV should beef up staff of gas, oil inspectors (Opinion) - West Virginia has a lot of gas wells — giant horizontal fracking wells, smaller conventional wells and old gas and oil wells that have been abandoned. The Office of Oil and Gas, within the state Department of Environmental Protection, reports that West Virginia has approximately 60,000 active wells and about 15,000 abandoned wells under its jurisdiction. According to its website, Oil and Gas “is responsible for monitoring and regulating all actions related to the exploration, drilling, storage and production of oil and natural gas.” The staff at Oil and Gas includes an inspection staff, which responds to complaints and gathers information at well sites. You would think, given the size of the state’s gas and oil industry, that the inspection unit would be large and well-funded, but it is not. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Oil and Gas is funded primarily through permitting fees but, as the industry has slowed down and fewer wells are needed to produce more gas, the funding has been “significantly reduced,” according to Oil and Gas. As a result, the size of the inspection staff has steadily declined from 20 to just 14. And, with anticipated staff movement, that number will be reduced to 11. That will be 11 field inspectors for 75,000 active and abandoned wells. The West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization and several lawmakers are alarmed by that ratio. Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, and Sen. Bill Ihlenfeld, D-Ohio, along with the surface owners, are proposing a $100-per-year fee on every well that has not yet been plugged, to fully fund Oil and Gas. “There is a range of public health and environmental concerns, if oil and gas wells and the tanks that store the fluids from those wells are not properly regulated,” Hansen said Thursday on Talkline. The gas industry opposes the annual fee. One industry official told me the majority of the existing gas wells are “marginal wells” that might net only a few dollars a day in profit. One possible solution would be to use a portion of the severance tax to hire more inspectors. Given the size and importance of West Virginia’s gas industry, having only a handful of field inspectors is woefully short of what is necessary for Oil and Gas to do its job properly. How and where to find the funding is a public policy matter, and it is one the Legislature should seriously consider in the session that starts next week.
Diversified Gas & Oil announces opening of gas control center in Charleston — Diversified Gas & Oil Corporation announced the opening of its state-of-the-art natural gas control center in its Charleston regional office. The new facility will initially support the monitoring of the Cranberry Pipeline network, which transports 70 million mcf (thousand cubic feet) of natural gas per day across approximately 3,000 miles of gathering, midstream and transmission pipeline in West Virginia, the company said in a news release Tuesday.
U.S. natgas jumps 11% on colder weather outlook, rising demand (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures soared over 11% on Monday to a two-month high as a major winter snowstorm battered the Northeast and with forecasts suggesting much colder weather and higher heating demand over the next two weeks than previously expected. Commodity traders are watching closely for extraordinary price moves after a series of volatile moves in numerous markets attributed to retail traders using social network Reddit. Those traders were responsible for big moves in smaller stocks in the last several days, while a big swing in silver prices had investors concerned that those traders were starting to migrate to commodities markets. Silver prices were up more than 11% earlier on Monday. Front-month gas futures rose 28.6 cents, 11.2%, to settle at $2.850 per million British thermal units, their highest settle since Dec. 1 and their biggest daily percentage gain since September. "The shift in the forecasts during the past couple of days has been dramatic with consensus of views now favoring some extreme cold due to move across the country later this week and continuing through next week and likely beyond," Gas stockpiles last week were 9.3% above the five-year average. Energy traders said they have not heard that Reddit users were having much of an impact on the gas market, a much bigger asset than individual equities. However, the U.S. Natural Gas Fund (UNG) was also having a big day with daily volume near 9.1 million lots traded versus a daily average of around 5.1 million lots over the past year. Exchange-traded funds are viewed as more vulnerable to herd-like activity than underlying futures contracts. "I would not rule out that the Reddit crowd is having some impact - possibly in pushing up volumes in UNG - but we're used to seeing lots of volatility in the gas market." In 2020, gas futures rose or fell over 10% in intraday trade a little more than once a month on average. Data provider Refinitiv projected average gas demand, including exports, would rise from 128.4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) this week to 138.1 bcfd next week as the weather turns colder and heating use increases. That was much higher than Refinitiv's outlook on Friday.
Wild Intraday Pricing Behavior Ends with Natural Gas Futures Nearly Flat; Cash Still Strong Natural gas futures settled nearly flat on Tuesday, but not before the March Nymex contract surged over the $3.00/MMBtu threshold. The prompt month reached an intraday high of $3.005 as the frigid air blanketing much of the eastern United States this week was seen continuing through at least the first half of the month. However, with the latest run of the European weather model erasing a decent chunk of projected demand, the March contract retreated back to a $2.845 settlement. April closed the day at $2.818. Spot gas continued to strengthen, with prices nearing $15.000 in New England. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. climbed 44.5 cents to $3.750. [Plan for natural gas pricing 10 years out with NGI’s Forward Look – forward curve data.] Weather models made huge changes to the colder side over the weekend and on Tuesday, continued updates added demand to the 15-day outlook. The European model gained 23 heating degree days (HDD) for Saturday (Feb. 6) through Feb. 16. The midday American Global Forecast System, meanwhile, added another 5 HDDs, with the model showing a frigid pattern across much of the northern half of the country during that time period, including bouts of subfreezing air into Texas and the South, according to NatGasWeather. “With the supply/demand balance already tight, the natural gas markets have been impatiently waiting for sustained winter cold to arrive, and this is the first time the past two winters it’s likely to finally come through,” NatGasWeather said.
U.S. natgas futures fell 2% on forecasts for less heating demand next week (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures fell 2% on Wednesday on forecasts for less heating demand next week than previously expected. That small decline comes despite forecasts for a little more heating demand this week and an outlook that continues to call for temperatures to remain well below normal across much of North America through late February. Front-month gas futures fell 5.6 cents, or 2.0%, to settle at $2.789 per million British thermal units. In the spot market meanwhile, cold weather boosted next-day gas NG-CG-BS-SNL and power EL-PK-NPMS-SNL in New England to its highest since December 2019. It also took gas at the Henry Hub benchmark NG-W-HH-SNL in Louisiana, the Dominion South hub NG-PCN-APP-SNL in southwest Pennsylvania and the AECO hub NG-ASH-ALB-SNL in Alberta, Canada, to the highest since March 2019. Data provider Refinitiv said output in the Lower 48 U.S. states has averaged 89.8 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in February. Traders said that was down from 91.0 bcfd in January, due in part to the freezing of some wells. Output hit an all-time monthly high of 95.4 bcfd in November 2019. With colder weather coming, Refinitiv projected average gas demand, including exports, would rise to 139.8 bcfd next week from 127.4 bcfd this week. That forecast for next week was lower than Refinitiv's outlook on Tuesday. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants averaged 10.7 bcfd so far in February, up from January's 10.4 bcfd average and on track to tie December's 10.7 bcfd record high. That LNG record came as buyers around the world purchased near record amounts of U.S. gas because prices in Europe and Asia remain much higher than in the United States.
US working natural gas volumes in underground storage decline 192 Bcf: EIA | S&P Global Platts -- A string of massive weekly US natural gas storage withdrawals, starting with the 192 Bcf pull reported Feb. 4, have the potential to unravel recent forecasts, and prompt stocks to enter next year's heating season more than 600 Bcf below the five-year average, marking a dramatic year over year reversal. Natural gas storage inventories fell 192 Bcf to 2.689 Tcf for the week ended Jan. 29, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The withdrawal was below the 195 Bcf pull an S&P Global Platts' survey of analysts expected, but it proved to be the largest weekly draw of the heating season. Storage volumes now stand 41 Bcf, or 1.5%, more than the year-ago level of 2.648 Tcf and 198 Bcf, or 7.9%, more than the five-year average of 2.491 Tcf. The NYMEX Henry Hub March contract added 11 cents to $2.90/MMBtu in afternoon trading on Feb. 4. The upcoming summer strip, April through October, added 7 cents to average $2.93/MMBtu. S&P Global Platts Analytics' supply and demand model currently forecasts a 181 Bcf withdrawal for the week ending Feb. 5, which would shrink the storage surplus to the five-year average by 56 Bcf. Milder temperatures reduced demand by nearly 2.5 Bcf/d. Unsurprisingly, residential and commercial demand paced the losses, averaging about 2.2 Bcf/d below the prior week. Moreover, gas-fired power generation fell about 600 MMcf/d as wind generation ramped up. A draw of at least 230 Bcf looks probable for the week ending Feb. 12 as artic temperatures are forecast to blanket much of the country. It would measure nearly 100 Bcf stronger than the five-year average. A recent cold snap in both the Midwest and Northeast regions has pulled hard on storage inventories. Heavy withdrawals are expected to continue with the 14-day weather forecast calling for US temperatures to average 2 degrees below normal. While the main impact of the colder temperatures is being felt in the Northeast, prices across the Southeast and Texas have also strengthened considerably this week due to stronger Henry Hub prices, which rallied 19 cents on Feb. 1. The trickle-down impacts of the prolonged heavy withdrawals pushed the March Henry Hub contract higher as well, gaining 25 cents on Feb. 1. Prior to the cold snap, Platts Analytics was forecasting total inventories to end the winter at 1.79 Tcf. However, with the recent pull, inventories could trend closer to 1.5 Tcf. This poses issues for the Summer 2021 build, which Platts Analytics is forecasting to total 1.6 Tcf over the season.#160;
Natural Gas Futures Whipsaw After EIA Storage Figure Points to Shrinking Surplus - Natural gas traders appeared to have a bit of sellers’ remorse on Thursday, quickly sending futures prices higher after an initial dip ahead of the latest government storage report. After slipping to a $2.734/MMBtu intraday low, the March Nymex futures contract settled Thursday at $2.935, up 14.6 cents on the day. April jumped 11.7 cents to $2.889. Spot gas prices also moved higher across much of the United States, but the Northeast cratered from recent highs. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. plunged 29.5 cents to $3.250. After Wednesday’s move into the red, market observers were quick to criticize the decline along the Nymex futures curve. Although weather models had pulled back some of the projected demand seen for the 15-day period, the pattern overall remained far colder than normal. Structural demand, mainly in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, also continued to be strong. Early Thursday, the March Nymex contract treaded water ahead of the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) weekly storage inventory report. Ahead of the report, analysts had pegged the withdrawal coming in the lower 190 Bcf range. NGI had called for a steeper pull of 197 Bcf. A minute before the EIA print crossed trading desks, the prompt month dipped into negative territory, trading at $2.788, off one-tenth of a cent. However, once the EIA’s 192 Bcf draw hit the screen, March futures recovered to $2.806.
Polar Vortex Drives Massive Gains for Natural Gas Forwards, but Rally Loses Momentum - Massive snowstorms and intensifying frigid air in the coming weeks amped up the gains for natural gas forwards in the final days of January into early February. March prices averaged 19.0 cents higher for the period, while solid export demand seen this summer (April-October) lifted the strip an average 8.0 cents, according to NGI’s Forward Look. Smaller increases were seen for next winter (November 2021-March 2022), but prices were barely changed for the summer 2022 months. Although this winter was heading toward one of the warmest on record, a string of bitter storms that started circulating through the Lower 48 in late January have revived demand and fueled prices. The latest weather system was forecast to push into the Rockies and Plains into Friday, then spread across the northern and eastern United States, according to NatGasWeather. The forecaster said daytime temperatures this weekend may fall close to zero in some areas, while overnight lows in North Texas and the South could fall into the 20s. What’s even more impressive, though, is the Arctic blast that’s forecast to follow. Bespoke Weather Services said even after trending colder on Thursday, weather models intensified the biting weather on tap beginning over the weekend. The forecaster added a decent chunk of demand to its outlook, but it said the weather model consensus suggests that may not be cold enough. The issue is the development of a “very cold” Arctic air mass in Canada, which is forced fully into the United States underneath the strong North Atlantic Oscillation block on the Atlantic side, according to Bespoke. This block had been forecast to wane after mid-month, but the timing has slowed, keeping colder momentum going for longer. However, potential sentiment wary of $3.00 prices may limit upside price realization over the next seven to 10 days. Indeed, after an early run past $3.050, the March Nymex contract settled Friday at $2.863, off 7.2 cents from Thursday’s close. April fell 4.8 cents to $2.841. NatGasWeather said the sell-off aligned with the European weather model’s afternoon run, which not only trended a bit milder for the upcoming week by stalling the frigid cold’s arrival into the South and East by a few days, but also by not being quite as cold. Regardless, the outlook is still a “massive” 110 heating degree days colder than normal, according to the forecaster.
Marathon to fund projects in southwest Detroit to settle refinery emissions violations — Marathon Petroleum Co. will invest more than $500,000 into community projects and pay the state nearly $82,000 in fines as part of a consent order finalized this week to settle emissions violations. The state Department of Environment, Great Lakes,and Energy on Wednesday released the final terms of its agreement with the southwest Detroit refinery that includes an anticipated investment of $539,000 into environmental safeguards for the neighborhood in the 48217 ZIP code. The agreement, signed Jan. 22, lays out costs that exceed what was an anticipated $360,000 investment in a tentative deal from August. The order was effective on Monday. The majority of the supplemental funding — or about $500,000 — will go toward installing an air filtration system at Mark Twain School for Scholars in southwest Detroit. The school is located about two miles from the refinery in the community that ranks among the state's most polluted.
In pushing for Line 5 shutdown, Bad River Band points to alternative route - The Chippewa tribe in northern Wisconsin says Enbridge could reduce the risk to the Great Lakes by diverting Line 5 oil to another line that runs south to Illinois. As legal battles continue over Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, tribal leaders in Wisconsin say the company is ignoring a safer alternative that’s already in the ground — though the company disagrees. “The notion that Enbridge is somehow going to be stranded without Line 5 is ludicrous,” said Mike Wiggins, tribal chair for the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, whose reservation on the south shore of Lake Superior is crossed by Line 5. The 30-inch pipeline originates in Superior, Wisconsin, and carries crude oil 645 miles across Wisconsin and Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently ordered Enbridge to shut down the pipeline where it crosses the Straits of Mackinac, citing risk to the Great Lakes. As the company seeks permits for its proposed reroute south of the reservation, Bad River Band leaders say the company is failing to acknowledge the potential to decommission the 67-year-old pipeline altogether and divert its contents through other routes. Line 5 is part of a network of Enbridge pipelines called the Lakehead System. As Line 5 cuts east and then south around Lake Michigan, Line 61 runs south from Superior into Illinois before connecting with smaller lines that cross Indiana and Michigan and ultimately reach the same destination: Sarnia, Ontario. Line 61 is newer and larger — the 42-inch pipeline was completed in 2009 and has already undergone multiple upgrades and expansions. The line carries about 996,000 barrels per day to Pontiac, Illinois — about 75% of its capacity. “The elephant in the room is that Enbridge has invested heavily in their route from Superior down through Chicago,” Wiggins said, in contrast with Line 5, which he calls “the forgotten pipe.” The environmental risk posed by the pipeline was highlighted in August 2019 when tribal officials discovered 49 feet of Line 5 unearthed less than 5 miles from Lake Superior. The pipeline itself has contributed to the erosion of a steep bank as an oxbow is forming, according to a February 2020 report from the Bad River Natural Resources Department.
Michigan grants Enbridge key permits to build Line 5 tunnel under Straits --Enbridge Energy is one step closer to building a tunnel to transport petroleum beneath the Straits of Mackinac, after Michigan environmental regulators approved key permits for the Line 5 project. The decision by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy comes months after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered the pipeline to shut down this May, underscoring the complicated road ahead for both Enbridge and its detractors in Michigan. In an announcement Friday, state officials acknowledged wide-ranging public concerns about the tunnel, but said state law limited their nine-month review to a narrow question: Will the tunnel project comply with Michigan’s environmental laws ? They concluded the answer is yes, and granted Enbridge permits to discharge wastewater into the Great Lakes and conduct its tunnel-building work in protected wetlands. “Although this proposed tunnel project has illuminated numerous related policy issues, the basis for our decision is required to be limited to compliance with the relevant environmental statutes created by our legislature,” said Liesl Clark, director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, in a statement. Environmentalists, tribal leaders and others who oppose the tunnel plan had urged the agency to go beyond a simple review of construction and operation impacts and consider broader questions impacts on Michigan’s environment, such as the climate implications of approving new fossil fuel infrastructure.
Burnett Oil Seeks Permit to Drill in Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve -Conservation groups sent a letter to state and federal agencies today opposing Burnett Oil Company’s request to the state of Florida for permits to develop oil infrastructure to facilitate new oil drilling in the Everglades, inside Big Cypress National Preserve.The permits would allow the company to construct oil wells and access roads in wetlands and Florida panther habitat.In its final days, the Trump administration approved the state of Florida’s request to assume the federal government’s Section 404 permitting authority under the Clean Water Act.While Big Cypress National Preserve is a unit of the national park system, some of the oil and gas beneath the preserve is privately owned. Burnett Oil Company — which according to the application package, leases from Collier Resources Company the right to explore for and extract oil — is planning further harmful oil and gas activities inside Big Cypress.The company’s seismic testing operations in 2017 and 2018 severely damaged wetlands and cypress trees in the delicate ecosystem, a crucial habitat for the endangered Florida panther, Florida bonneted bat and other imperiled species.Burnett Oil’s hunt for oil created massive soil ruts — some as deep as two feet — altering natural vegetation, wetland soils and hydrology in this incredibly important part of the River of Grass. This damage can still be seen in the preserve today. Expanding oil infrastructure inside the country’s treasured public lands would be inconsistent with the climate initiatives being championed by the Biden-Harris administration.
Burnett Oil Inching Towards Drilling At Big Cypress National Preserve -- An oil company that in 2017 and 2018 did seismic testing in a search for oil at Big Cypress National Preserve has applied for Florida permits to construct well pads and access roads in the preserve, a precursor to additional permitting that could allow the company to drill there. Burnett Oil Co. filed the initial permitting applications on January 22. However, even if the state approved those requests the company would still need an environmental resource permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and an access permit from the National Park Service before it could commence drilling.Pedro Ramos, superintendent of Everglades National Park to whom Big Cypress Superintendent Tom Forsyth reports to, declined to discuss the matter, and Forsyth did not immediately respond to questions pertaining to the project, which reportedly calls for two pads and access roads up to 33 feet wide and approximately 1.5 miles long.Officials from the National Parks Conservation Association and Natural Resources Defense Council were drafting a press release Tuesday evening and had no immediate comment.Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida Wildlands Association, was greatly concerned by the company's move. He said Forsyth told him earlier Tuesday that there were two pads involved, and each would have several wells. "This is coming as no surprise that Burnett is doing this," Schwartz said during a phone call Tuesday evening. "I'm extremely disappointed that they're moving forward on this. I'm very curious to see how the Biden administration responds, since they just recently put out a statement regarding a moratorium on oil and gas projects on federal lands. The problem here is that although the land is federally owned, these are not federal oil rights. They're privately owned by the Collier family. A split estate."
US crude exports hit record high in 2020 - US crude exports reached a record high in 2020, showing resilience in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Total domestic crude exports averaged about 3.2mn b/d in 2020, up from 2.98mn b/d in 2019, the previous record high, according to trade data released today by the US Census Bureau and monthly figures from the Energy Information Administration. In December, US crude exports averaged 3.35mn b/d, up by about 23pc from 2.73mn b/d in November with China regaining its position as the top destination. US crude exports destined for China averaged about 719,000 b/d in December. China had been the top destination for US crude loaded in May-October, but its intake fell sharply in November when India took the top spot. India in December was the second top destination for US crude, with about 560,000 b/d, a record high for US exports headed to that country. State-controlled Indian refiners in December expanded their import portfolios to include more US grades, with IOC now including West Texas Light (WTL) as an eligible grade in their weekly import tenders and Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL) issuing a unique tender that sought Mars for its Vizag refinery in January and February. Meanwhile, US ultra-low sulphur diesel (ULSD) exports to Mexico surpassed year-earlier levels in December as overall shipments edged higher. Total US gasoline and diesel exports climbed in December from the previous month while trailing volumes shipped in December 2019. But diesel shipments to Mexico, the largest foreign customer of US fuels, reported the largest year-to-year increase of any major fuel. Shipments increased by 20pc from November and by 16pc from December 2019 to about 295,000 b/d. Total US ULSD exports averaged 920,000 b/d, higher by 20pc from the previous month and lower by 7.1pc compared to December 2019. Exports to Mexico, Chile and France all increased compared to the previous year, while Brazilian, Colombian and Peruvian shipments fell. Total conventional gasoline exports averaged about 930,000 b/d in December, higher by 9.7pc from November but 2.8pc lower than December 2019.
U.S. drillers add oil and gas rigs for 11th week in a row -Baker Hughes (Reuters) - U.S. drillers this week added oil and natural gas rigs for an 11th week in a row for the first time since June 2017 as crude prices hit pre-pandemic highs. The U.S. oil and gas rig count, an early indicator of future output, rose by eight to 392 in the week to Feb. 5, the highest since May, according to data on Friday from energy services firm Baker Hughes Co. Despite rising for six months in a row, that count is still 398 rigs, or 50%, below this time last year. The total count, however, has soared since hitting a record low of 244 in August, according to Baker Hughes data going back to 1940. U.S. oil rigs rose four to 299 this week, also their highest since May, while gas rigs rose four to 92, their highest since April, according to Baker Hughes data. Coronavirus travel restrictions last year crushed oil demand and prices, but U.S. crude futures climbed over $57 a barrel this week, their highest since January 2020. [O/R] The pace of recovery in output in the world’s top producer, however, is slow. The government this week projected U.S. crude output will not to top its 2019 record of 12.25 million barrels per day until 2023. Production in 2020 tumbled 6.4% to 11.47 million bpd. Looking forward, U.S. crude futures were only trading around $55 a barrel for the balance of 2021 and $51 for calendar 2022, which could prompt some producers to reduce activity in the future. Most energy firms plan to continue cutting spending for a third year in a row in 2021 as they keep focusing on improving earnings rather than increasing output. U.S. financial services firm Cowen & Co said the 45 independent exploration and production (E&P) companies it tracks plan to cut spending by about 6% in 2021 versus 2020. That follows capex reductions of roughly 48% in 2020 and 12% in 2019.
Rep. Jay Dean files bill to protect access to natural gas from local bans - State Rep. Jay Dean has filed a bill to protect consumers access to natural gas and prevent local governments from prohibiting or restricting the use of natural gas or propane in residential or commercial buildings. According to a press release, House Bill 1501, dubbed “the Natural Gas Protection Act,” is meant to ensure local bans on natural gas and propane usage do not happen in Texas. “These local bans on natural gas are misguided and have no place in Texas,” said Rep. Dean. Citing cities such as Berkeley, CA, the press release said as many as 50 cities across the country have studied or passed local natural gas or propane bans. “Government should not remove consumers’ access to the affordable, reliable energy of natural gas. Especially now, we should be expanding consumers’ options and supporting all aspects of our state’s economy. A ban on natural gas would do the opposite.” Rep. Dean added, “The energy industry in Texas has already been hit hard this past year. We need to support this industry that powers our daily lives, not kick them while they’re down. Plus, consumers want more, not fewer, affordable and energy-efficient fuel options, like natural gas. I am proud that HB 1501 protects both consumer choice and the natural gas industry here in Texas.”
Will Texas go along with Joe Biden's oil and gas cleanup plans? - In East Austin, one plot of land near a decommissioned natural gas and oil-fired power plant now produces fruits and vegetables in a community garden. In South Houston, land that was contaminated by an old landfill will soon be occupied by a commercial solar farm.Based on his recent executive order on climate, President Joe Biden wants to see more projects like these that combine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with jobs cleaning up contaminated sites that are disproportionately located in communities of color. In Texas, the president’s directive to prioritize such projects could present opportunities for neighborhoods that have been left with the toxic legacies of the early days of the oil, gas and chemical industries. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Texas has 69 Superfund sites, which are extremely toxic sites the federal government has prioritized for cleanup. The state also has several recently mothballed natural gas plants and thousands of old and abandoned oil and gas wells.“Such work should include efforts to turn properties idled in these communities into new hubs for the growth of our economy,” Biden’s order said. It directs a slew of federal agencies to identify and coordinate federal resources to revitalize the economies of communities where coal, oil and gas and power plants provided jobs for decades, but now have either shuttered or could soon be jeopardized by a transition to low-carbon energy sources.But Biden’s vision is at odds with Republican leadership in Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott and the state’s GOP members of Congress have mostly criticized it for prioritizing renewable energy sources over the oil industry, which remains a pillar of the state’s economy.“Texas is not going to stand idly by and watch the Biden administration kill jobs in Midland, in Odessa or any other place across the entire region,” Abbott said last week during a visit to the Permian Basin, one of the most productive oil fields in the world. He signed his own executive order that directs state agencies to “use all lawful powers and tools to challenge any federal action” that threatens the energy sector in Texas.
Disturbing the Peace - Fort Worth Weekly - In early January, the rumblings of 18-wheelers brought back memories that Bobby Pickard would prefer to forget. A decade ago, the multinational gas company EnCana agreed to a truce of sorts. Instead of sending semitrucks within feet of Pickard’s property — the vehicles kicking up fine dust, dirtying the air, and damaging nearby roads — EnCana leaders diverted their water-laden trucks down nearby 4500 White Settlement Rd., which is devoid of residences. At the time, it was an all-too-rare victory against Big Oil (“ Trail Dust,” Nov. 2008). That informal deal appears to be off.On a recent frigid morning, Pickard pointed east and down his fence line toward a long stretch of dirt road.“They usually send the first round of trucks around 9:30 a.m.,” he said. “To access this road, they have to drive past school buses and children. It looks so outrageous.” The roads that lead to the dirt road, as he showed me later that morning, are also used by the residents of Chisholm Heights. Pickard said the massive trucks, which can weigh 80,000 pounds when laden with water, are slowly destroying the residential streets. Pickard said he enjoys the relative peace and quiet of living on the unincorporated land just northeast of Weatherford, but those freedoms also mean that road repairs would come from the pockets of nearby residents, not the oil company. “They do whatever they want to because they can.” A sign near the entrance of the dirt road that leads behind Pickard’s home and several other houses reads, “Bedrock Production, LLC, Beggs Lease.” Pickard believes that the Houston-based oil company recently took over ownership of the wells from EnCana. The fact that the trucks changed delivery routes 10 years to the day suggests that Bedrock Production did not want to renew the contract that allowed the trucks to access the well sites via 4500 White Settlement Rd.
Oil, gas and earthquakes: The role of wastewater disposal wells and fracking - (Yahoo News video) - Oil, gas and earthquakes: The role of wastewater disposal wells and frackingChesapeake Energy cuts 15% of workers as it emerges from bankruptcy (Reuters) - U.S. shale oil and gas producer Chesapeake Energy Corp plans to cut 15% of its workforce, an email sent to employees revealed, as it closes on new financing that will allow it to emerge from bankruptcy court protection next week. Once the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer, Chesapeake was felled by a long slide in gas prices. The company is “resetting our business to emerge a stronger and more competitive enterprise,” according to the email to employees by Chief Executive Doug Lawler dated Tuesday, and reviewed by Reuters. Most of the 220 layoffs will happen at the Oklahoma City headquarters, the email said. Chesapeake on Tuesday said it planned to raise $1 billion in notes to complete its bankruptcy exit. The company’s bankruptcy plan was approved by a U.S. judge last month, giving lenders control of the firm and ending a contentious trial. Chesapeake filed for court protection in June, reeling from overspending on assets and from a sudden decline in demand and prices spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.
Appeals court refuses to stop construction of oil pipeline (AP) — The Minnesota Court of Appeals on Tuesday denied a request by two American Indian tribes to shut down construction of a contentious crude oil pipeline project in northern Minnesota. Opponents of the Enbridge Line 3 replacement project, led by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and White Earth Band of Ojibwe, said in their petition that construction would destroy land that is protected by treaty agreements and would violate cultural and religious rights. Enbridge said the petition had no merit and did not “recognize the exhaustive and meticulous review” of the project. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Dec. 9 denied the tribes’ motion to halt construction and on Dec. 23 denied a petition for reconsideration of that decision. Other cases seeking to halt the project remain in the appeals court and the tribes had asked the court to intervene in the meantime. Line 3 starts in Alberta, Canada, and clips a corner of North Dakota before crossing northern Minnesota en route to Enbridge’s terminal in Superior, Wisconsin. The 337-mile (542-kilometer) line in Minnesota is the last step in replacing the deteriorating pipeline that was built in the 1960s.
Line 3 will improve safety and provide a huge economic benefit to Minnesota - We write in response to a recent Community Voices commentary by Caroline Frischmon against the Enbridge Line 3 Pipeline. It is important that readers look at the full picture. On Dec. 1, after six years of permitting, reviews and studies, construction began to replace Line 3 and to date, nearly 20 percent of the project is complete. The author compared the aging pipeline that was built in the 1960s to a friend’s old car and stated that fixing something past its prime is worthless. But just look around you anytime you drive across Minnesota and you will see that we are constantly repairing and addressing aging infrastructure. We fix roads, replace pipes and upgrade power utilities to make sure they are working at full capacity and are as safe as they can be. Line 3 is no different. This pipeline was built in the 1960s and under the Obama/Biden administration it was agreed that Line 3 needed to be replaced in order to improve safety. In this piece, the author mentions that the pipeline is in disrepair and that leaks could be catastrophic – two of the primary reasons why this project is so crucial. Left untouched, the risks are great. While we always need to learn more about alternative and clean energy, for the time being, oil is here to stay and we need to do what we can to ensure that it’s transported safely. Many Line 3 opponents have turned their vitriol on Gov. Tim Walz. Thankfully, Walz has shown that he understands the need to both plan for the future and make sure we have a safe and efficient way to get from today to what is next. There will be a time when we use less oil, but we also need to make sure we have the right path to get there.
Biden Revokes Oil Drilling Permits for Additional Review -The Biden administration is revoking dozens of invalid drilling permits issued by agency workers without the approval of political appointees, despite a temporary order for such reviews.The Interior Department on Friday notified affected oil and gas producers that roughly 70 permits governing onshore wellswere improperly issued and that the companies need to seek new approvals.Although the companies may swiftly obtain the new authorizations, the move is likely to further sour relations between the Biden administration and the oil industry, which is bearing the brunt of the president’s early efforts to fight climate change. President Joe Biden canceled a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline his first day in office, and on Wednesday he ordered a pause in the sale of new oil and gas leases on federal land.The drilling permits fell afoul of a temporary Interior Department order that for two months puts those decisions in the hands of top agency officials, rather than delegating them to workers in Bureau of Land Management offices around the country. “Approximately 70 permits were approved without proper review following the issuance of a department directive that temporarily elevates review of permitting activities,” said Interior spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz. “Operators have been notified that those applications for permits to drill must be resubmitted for appropriate and timely review. Interior continues to approve permits and will transmit final decisions as soon as possible.” The approvals were invalid under the Interior Department’s Jan. 20 secretarial order requiring agency brass to authorize drilling permits, easements, hiring and other decisions, according to a notification letter seen by Bloomberg News.Companies also are being assured they do not face penalties for any drilling or other activities they started under the invalidated permits, though they are being ordered to cease those operations while seeking new approvals.Top Interior Department officials have used the temporary new process to approve dozens of drilling permits since Jan. 20, when Biden was inaugurated. At least 33 have been authorized for offshore oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a Bloomberg News review of government data. The permit changes are separate from agovernment pause on new oil and gas leasing that was ordered by Biden on Wednesday. That leasing moratorium doesn’t affect permitting and other activity on existing oil and gas leases.
U.S. Oil Executives Pushing ‘Clean Shale’ as Joe Biden Mounts Climate Attack – American oil executives began a pushback against some of President Joe Biden’s climate policies by making the case that fossil fuels from U.S. shale have a lower carbon footprint than imports. Since taking office this month, the Biden administration has made swift moves to pause sales of oil and gas leases on federal land, cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and expand the government’s fleet of clean-energy vehicles. The U.S. oil industry, already under pressure from low prices and investor pessimism, is particularly concerned about limiting access to resources on federal acreage in New Mexico, Wyoming, Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. “We don’t think it’s good policy to be overly restrictive on federal land,” Chevron’s Chief Financial Officer Pierre Breber said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday. “That will just move energy production to other countries. We know that we can develop energy in this country responsibly.” America is the world’s biggest consumer of crude and any restrictions of domestic production will mean more will have to be shipped in from other countries, which may produce higher-carbon oil and have less stringent environmental laws, the argument runs. U.S.-produced shale emits less carbon per barrel than the global average for both onshore and offshore, according to Rystad Energy. “Reducing domestic production will not only raise costs at the pump, but will also ensure international producers, operating with fewer environmental regulations, will meet the global demand for petroleum products,” Pioneer Natural Resources Co.’s Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield said by email. “That scenario is inconsistent with the administration’s choice to rejoin the Paris Accord.” The Oil-Climate Index, a 2016 model funded by the Carnegie Endowment, shows that shale plays including the Eagle Ford in South Texas and the Bakken in North Dakota have some of the lowest emissions per barrel globally. But key to shale’s climate impact is how operators manage natural gas that is produced alongside the crude and the industry has come under intense criticism for excessive flaring and venting of methane, an extremely harmful practice.
Steil says he has introduced a bill to overturn Biden's halting of construction on Keystone Pipeline expansion – As he indicated he would, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., on Tuesday announced that he had introduced a bill in Congress that, if passed, would overrule President Joe Biden’s executive order and allow construction on the Keystone XL Pipeline expansion to continue.However, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, in control of what comes up for a vote, it is unlikely the bill will see a vote any time in the near future. According to the company that owns the pipeline, TC Energy, as many as 13,200 jobs (more than 10,000 of which were American) equaling more than $2 billion in total payroll were immediately lost and/or will never be created because of the order.“I’ve spoken to Wisconsin workers who were laid off by Joe Biden on Jan. 20. These men and women just want to do their jobs, and President Biden’s order has put them out of work. If the President will not reverse course and allow the Keystone XL Pipeline’s construction to continue, Congress must act. Today, I am taking action,” Steil said in a statement Tuesday. “The Keystone XL Pipeline provides good-paying jobs for Wisconsin workers, employs thousands across the country and shores up American energy production. I am working to ensure these men and women receive a paycheck and get back to work. At a time when unemployment is far too high, we need to put in place policies that create jobs. I urge Speaker Pelosi to bring this bill to a vote immediately.”
GOP moves to save Keystone XL, sink Democrats on energy -- Wednesday, February 3, 2021 --House and Senate Republicans readied legislation yesterday to resurrect the controversial Keystone XL pipeline from Canada into the United States by granting the needed approvals, which President Biden moved to scrap last month.
Oil, Gas Experts Differ on Effects of Closed Pipeline - Spectrum News 1 — As the pandemic keeps oil supply high and demand low, the U.S. continues its reign of energy independence for the first time since the 1950s. However, new actions by President Joe Biden have some in the industry concerned. “We are facing some really strong headwinds from the new administration out of Washington. We fear that there's going to be additional things that are going to come down the pike that are not going to be pro-industry. And as much as we advocate and make the case that natural gas is clean, and abundant and reliable, that message may not resonate in Washington,” said Mike Chadsey of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order that included revoking a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline delivers as much as 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta, Canada to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. Even without the Keystone pipeline, the U.S. relies on Canada for more than half of its imported oil.Here in Ohio, Chadsey said 200,000 people work in the state's oil and gas industry and in the last 10 years, $86 billion in private funds has been invested in our state to help in drilling, leasing, pipeline and fracking. The Buckeye State currently ranks 5th in the nation in oil production with 60,000 active oil and gas wells according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.Dr. Brent Sohngen is a Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at Ohio State University. He said stopping the Keystone pipeline is not expected to reduce current oil output below what we need, and that the U.S. will maintain its independence. “They XL Keystone pipeline is really a long time proposition aimed at a world there's really high oil prices. It seems like there's a lot of oil that's a lot lower cost in other parts of the world. Off the coast of Guyana, in the Gulf of Mexico, which is a lot lower cost than that, and a lot closer to those same refineries in Houston,” said Sohngen. The oil and gas industry is also concerned about another of Biden's executive orders, one that sets a moratorium on leasing federal land. Chadsey said that will restrict energy development, increase prices, impact low income families and may lead to layoffs.“And there's certainty talk about, oh well folks can just go and find another job. That sounds good but that may not be a reality. Particularly when you have generational folks who are in t his business for years and years and this is really what their passion is. This is what these communities rely on,” said Chadsey.
Colorado farmers' land polluted by pipeline leak, bemoan "toxic spaghetti" of underground network - For years, Julie and Mark Nygren have hosted school children on field trips to their farm near Johnstown. But recent visitors to their property saw what looked more like a strip mine than a farm. On a recent day, bulldozers, backhoes and large trucks drove around big piles of dirt, down and out of a pit and through the spot where the Nygrens’ house once stood. Speaking over the roar of the engines, the couple talked about the upending of their lives, starting in 2016 with the dying off of trees in front of their home, worsening health problems and the discovery in April 2019 of green liquid in a ditch 130 feet from their house. The liquid was connected to a widespread underground leak from a natural gas pipeline running below the western Weld County farm. The Nygrens are suing the pipeline’s owner and a construction company that dug in the area to put in a culvert. And the Nygrens, their lawyers and others are calling for more oversight of the thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines under Colorado homes, schools, roads and farm land. “I call it the subterranean toxic spaghetti,” said Lance Astrella, one of the lawyers representing the Nygrens in their lawsuit against DCP Midstream Operating Co. and Mountain Constructors Inc. The “spaghetti,” or network of oil and gas pipelines, includes flowlines, gathering lines, longer transmission lines that run within the state and transmission lines that cross state lines. Flowlines, typically shorter and smaller in diameter, connect a well to surrounding equipment and are regulated by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Gathering lines, the kind that spilled on the Nygrens’ farm, generally carry oil or natural gas to a collection point. Along with the larger transmission lines, they are regulated by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission and the federal government in a manner that sometimes seems as much of a labyrinth as the physical structures. A deadly house explosion in Firestone in 2017 led to tougher rules for flowlines. It was an impetus for Senate Bill 181, passed in 2019 to overhaul how oil and gas is regulated in Colorado.
Small oil spill reported near Parshall Sunday; all product recovered - The North Dakota Oil and Gas Division was notified of a spill which occurred Sunday, January 31 at the Parshall 52-1114H well, about 3 miles northwest of Parshall, North Dakota. EOG Resources, Inc reported Sunday that 300 barrels of produced water and 50 barrels of crude oil were released due to an equipment failure within containment on location. At the time of reporting all product had been recovered. A North Dakota Oil and Gas inspector has been to location and will monitor the investigation and any continued remediation.
North Dakota oil spill near Parshall under investigation– North Dakota energy officials are reporting that 2,100 gallons of oil and 12,600 gallons of produced water spilled at a well near Parshall has been recovered. State Oil and Gas Division officials say EOG Resources, Inc. reported the spill on Sunday. It was released due to an equipment failure within the containment system. Produced water is a byproduct of oil extraction and is typically taken from the well to a disposal site. A state inspector has been sent to the site to investigate and monitor the well.
Fracked With 34 Million Gallons Of Water -- February 2, 2021 - This was an extended long lateral, three sections long; one section longer than a typical two-section well in the Bakken. The Maddy Federal wells are tracked here. 32070, A/F, XTO, Maddy Federal 24X-34D, North Fork, first production, 7/20; t--; cum 253K 12/20; re-entered on December 4, 2018; TD reached on December 21, 2018; fracked 3/30/20 - 4/20/20; 33.660 million gallons of water; 93.3% water by mass;
After Court Rules Dakota Access Pipeline Operating Illegally, Dems Demand Biden It Shut Down - Five Democratic lawmakers on Friday encouraged President Joe Biden to order an immediate shutdown of the Dakota Access pipeline after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last week delivered a victory to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe by ruling that DAPL is operating illegally.The three-judge panel upheld a lower court's ruling that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it granted an easement for DAPL to cross a federal reservoir along the Missouri River, less than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.The court ordered a full environmental impact statement examining the threats posed by the oil pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, as the Democrats' letter to Biden notes, "rightfully fears an oil spill could disproportionately affect their drinking water, as well as hunting and fishing rights."Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Mike Faith said in a statement that "we are pleased that the D.C. Circuit affirmed the necessity of a full environmental review, and we look forward to showing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers why this pipeline is too dangerous to operate."Despite mandating the review, the panel did not order DAPL to stop operating. Jan Hasselman, the EarthJustice attorney representing Standing Rock, said after the ruling that "this pipeline is now operating illegally.""The appeals court put the ball squarely in the court of the Biden administration to take action," Hasselman said. "And I mean shutting the pipeline down until this environmental review is completed." Five lawmakers are now backing that call: Reps. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-Calif.), Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), and Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) as well as Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The Democrats note that Biden has taken "bold early actions ... to prioritize climate action and environmental justice," including withdrawing permits for the Keystone XL pipeline.In addition to urging him to "build on this promising start" by shutting down DAPL during the review, they detail some of the pipeline's history, including the "egregious environmental racism" in 2016, when "North Dakota law enforcement officials violently removed protestors from the path of DAPL, many of them from the nearby Standing Rock Sioux Tribe." While former President Barack Obama—under whom Biden was vice president — denied DAPL permission to cross beneath Lake Oahe on unceded ancestral tribal lands, former President Donald Trump, the letter notes, "reversed course and granted the easement while ignoring the concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe."
Buoyed by Keystone XL, pipeline opponents want Biden to act (AP) — After President Joe Biden revoked Keystone XL’s presidential permit and shut down construction of the long-disputed pipeline that was to carry oil from Canada to Texas, opponents of other pipelines hoped the projects they’ve been fighting would be next. The Biden administration hasn’t specified what action it might take on other pipelines, but industry experts doubt there will be swift changes like the one that stopped Keystone. They say the Keystone XL move on Biden’s first day fulfilled a campaign promise and was symbolic for a president who has made climate change a national security priority and has called for a dramatic increase in cost-competitive renewable and clean-burning energy. “I think generally we can expect more rigorous environmental reviews, more scrutiny and so forth. But I would be very surprised if Biden were to take any action of the executive order type,” said Ben Cowan, an environmental law attorney who advises clients on permitting for pipelines and other energy projects. A look at some other high-profile pipeline projects and what actions Biden might take: Opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline, which carries oil from North Dakota to a shipping point in Illinois, want Biden’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to shut it down. A federal appeals court ruled last week that the project must undergo a more thorough environmental review, known as an environmental impact statement, but it declined to shut the line down while the review is completed. Texas-based pipeline owner Energy Transfer maintains the line is safe. But pipeline opponents say the ruling means it is operating with an invalid permit. The Army Corps faces a Feb. 10 hearing where it must tell a federal judge how it expects to proceed without a permit granting easement for the 1,172-mile (1,886 kilometer) pipeline to cross beneath Lake Oahe, along the Missouri River. The Standing Rock Sioux, who draw water from the river, have said they fear the line will someday fail and pollute the water and land.
Alberta to pursue compensation through NAFTA for U.S. decision on Keystone XL, Kenney says - Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says the province intends to seek compensation for U.S. President Joe Biden’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline through remaining provisions of the North American free-trade agreement. Mr. Kenney has railed against Mr. Biden’s decision, which he warned sets a dangerous precedent that could imperil other cross-border pipelines. He vowed a continued fight to either convince Mr. Biden to reverse his decision or attempt to recover some of the more than $1-billion the province has committed to the project. The Alberta government would likely need the support of the pipeline owner, Calgary-based TC Energy Corp., to mount such a legal case. The company has yet to say what it plans to do, and the federal government has appeared reluctant to spend any more energy on the Keystone XL file. Mr. Kenney was asked during a Facebook Live question-and-answer session on Tuesday evening whether his government planned to sue under NAFTA. “Yes,” Mr. Kenney said. “We are absolutely going to use every legal tool at our disposal to protect our interests. This was, in my view, a clear violation of the investor protection provisions in the North American free-trade agreement.” While NAFTA has been replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the previous trade agreement’s Chapter 11 provisions allowing investors to sue the U.S., Canadian or Mexican governments for compensation remain in force for three years, or until July, 2023.
As Democrats take charge in Washington, lawmakers introduce bills to stop oil drilling in ANWR - As Democrats take control of the U.S. Senate and House, lawmakers introduced legislation on Thursday to permanently protect the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling by declaring it a wilderness area.Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania, introduced the legislation weeks after the former Trump administration held the government’s first-ever oil lease sale in the refuge’s 1.6-million-acre coastal plain.The administration issued leases to three small entities, primarily the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state agency. AIDEA said it planned to hold the leases for possible future development if private partners express interest.Democratic President Joe Biden, on his first day in office, issued an order temporarily halting oil and gas activity in the 19-million-acre refuge in northeast Alaska. He has said he hopes to permanently protect the refuge. Major banks also have vowed not to finance oil and gas projects there.Republicans held sway in 2017 when Congress approved drilling in the refuge after decades of attempts by Alaska’s congressional delegation, and Republican President Donald Trump signed the provision into law. Huffman has said Alaska Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan need to meet with Democrats to discuss how Alaska can receive value from the federal government for the potential state revenue that will be lost if oil development in the refuge is banned.Murkowski, Sullivan and Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young have said they will fight to maintain the oil leasing program in the refuge.
Exxon Mobil reports a $20 billion loss, fourth straight quarter in the red - Exxon Mobil said Tuesday it lost $20.1 billion during the most recent quarter, its fourth-straight quarter of losses as the energy giant grapples with the pandemic's impact on the industry. Exxon said it earned 3 cents per share excluding items during the fourth quarter, which was ahead of the 1 cent profit analysts surveyed by Refinitiv expected. Revenue, however, came up short of expectations at $46.54 billion. The Street consensus was for $48.76 billion. In the same period a year earlier, the company earned 41 cents per share on an adjusted basis, on $67.17 billion in revenue. During the third quarter of 2020, Exxon lost 18 cents per share on an adjusted basis, while generating $46.2 billion in revenue. Shares of Exxon advanced 1.6% on Tuesday. "The past year presented the most challenging market conditions ExxonMobil has ever experienced," Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said in a statement. He said the company's aggressive cost-cutting measures are expected to deliver structural expense savings of $6 billion per year by 2023. "We've built a flexible capital program that is robust to a range of market scenarios and focused on our highest-return opportunities to drive greater cash flow, cover the dividend, and increase the earnings potential of our business in the near and longer term," Woods added. On Monday, Exxon announced plans to invest $3 billion in carbon capture and other emissions-cutting technology. The move is too little too late for fighting climate change, according to some, who say Exxon should have prioritized investing for the future. Peers including BP have also set net-zero targets. Oil has steadily climbed during the last year following the unprecedented demand loss from the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures advanced more than 2% on Tuesday to trade at high as $54.96 per barrel, the contract's highest level since January 2020. Still, the energy industry continues to feel the impacts of depressed demand. Shares of Exxon are up 9% this year, but down 27% over the last 12 months through Monday's close. Rival Chevron on Friday said it lost 1 cent during the fourth quarter on an adjusted basis, compared with the consensus estimate for a 7 cent profit. Revenue also came up short of analysts' expectations.
BP reports its first full-year loss in a decade after 'brutal' year — Energy giant BP on Tuesday reported a weaker-than-expected full-year net loss, following a tumultuous 12-months in which the global oil and gas industry faced a torrent of bad news. The U.K.-based oil and gas company posted a full-year underlying replacement cost loss, used as a proxy for net profit/loss, of $5.7 billion. That compared with a net profit of $10 billion for the 2019 fiscal year. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected a full-year net loss of $4.8 billion. BP also posted fourth-quarter net profit of $115 million, missing analyst expectations of $285.5 million. The company said its full-year results were driven by lower oil and gas prices, significant exploration write-offs, pressure on refining margins and depressed demand. It warned the ongoing coronavirus pandemic would continue to impact its performance. "It is definitely a tough quarter at the end, I guess, of a really tough year for everyone. And our full-year results were hit hard by Covid," Bernard Looney, CEO of BP, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" shortly after the results were published. "We have had the worst recession, I guess, in the world since the '40s. It was a brutal year, I think, for the oil business — negative prices, fuel demand down 14%, aviation down 50%, and of course we had adjustments to our planning prices which resulted in impairments and write-offs." BP's latest figures come as energy companies attempt to prove to investors that they have gained a more stable footing on stronger commodity prices. The oil and gas industry was sent into a tailspin last year, as the coronavirus pandemic coincided with a historic demand shock, falling commodity prices, evaporating profits, unprecedented write-downs and tens of thousands of job cuts. It will likely become known as the worst year in the history of oil markets, the head of the International Energy Agency has previously said. The world's largest oil and gas companies are now seeking to put it behind them, pointing instead to the prospect of an economic rebound in 2021 and hopes for a fuel demand recovery in the coming months.
Exxon, BP announce billions in losses for 2020 --Both ExxonMobil and BP announced Tuesday that they had sustained major losses in 2020 amid low demand for oil due to the coronavirus pandemic. Exxon posted $22.4 billion in losses for 2020, posting a loss of $20.1 billion for the fourth quarter. According to Reuters, this was Exxon’s first annual loss. BP reported $20 billion in losses for 2020, including nearly $1.4 billion in the fourth quarter. Chevron, meanwhile, announced last month that it had lost $5.5 billion in 2020, including $665 million in the fourth quarter. During the pandemic, oil prices plummeted, particularly early in the year as demand slowed for oil amid a significant decrease in travel and foreign disputes. However, in recent months, oil prices have been recovering, and U.S. crude was selling at about $55 per share on Tuesday afternoon. Demand is expected to recover somewhat if the pandemic is brought under control. “The past year presented the most challenging market conditions ExxonMobil has ever experienced,” ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said in a statement. Woods added that “reorganizations” and initiatives “enabled us to respond decisively to permanently improve our cost structure, drive greater efficiencies across our businesses, and emerge a stronger company.” In October, the company announced plans to lay off about 1,900 U.S. employees. Around the same time, it was reported that BP would cut 7,500 jobs after an additional 2,500 took voluntary severance. In a statement, BP CEO Bernard Looney characterized the changes including job losses as “reinventing” the company. “The underlying operations of the company remained safe – one of our safest years – and reliable, and major new projects were brought on line,” Looney added.
Chevron and Exxon discussed merger last year after Covid pandemic devastated oil prices, reports say - The CEOs of Chevron and ExxonMobil last year discussed the possibility of merging the two companies, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing unnamed people familiar with the talks. The newspaper reported that Chevron CEO Michael Wirth and Exxon CEO Darren Woods spoke about the prospect after the Covid-19 pandemic began to negatively impact oil prices. The talks are not ongoing and were described as preliminary, according to the Journal. Representatives from the two companies declined to comment. The talks were later reported by Reuters. A merger between Chevron and Exxon would be among the largest in history, and would likely face antitrust scrutiny from President Joe Biden's Department of Justice. Both companies descend from John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, which was broken up by the Supreme Court in 1911. Chevron's market cap is $164 billion, and Exxon's is $189 billion, meaning that the combined company would be worth north of $350 billion. The combined firm would be the second largest oil and gas company in the world, after Saudi Aramco. Oil prices have recovered much of their losses since cratering in March, though they have remained somewhat depressed amid a slower-than-expected vaccine roll out and worries of new coronavirus variants.
Oil major Shell reports sharp drop in full-year profit, raises dividend— Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday reported a sharp drop in full-year profit as the coronavirus pandemic took a heavy toll on the global oil and gas industry. Shell reported adjusted earnings of $4.85 billion for the full-year 2020. That compared with a profit of $16.5 billion for the full-year 2019, reflecting a drop of 71%. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected full-year 2020 net profit to come in $5.15 billion. For the final quarter of 2020, Shell reported adjusted earnings of $393 million, missing analyst expectations of $470.5 million. The company said it would raise its first-quarter dividend to $0.1735 per share, an increase of 4% from the previous quarter. Shell CEO Ben van Beurden described 2020 as an "extraordinary" year. "We have taken tough but decisive actions and demonstrated highly resilient operational delivery while caring for our people, customers and communities. We are coming out of 2020 with a stronger balance sheet, ready to accelerate our strategy and make the future of energy," van Beurden said in a statement. Income attributable to Shell shareholders collapsed by 237% to a loss of $21.7 billion in full-year 2020, down from a profit of $15.8 billion in full-year 2019. Shell said this was the first full-year headline loss since the unification of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and Shell Transport & Trading Company to one parent company in 2005. Energy supermajors endured a dreadful 12 months by virtually every measure in 2020 and the industry faces significant challenges and uncertainties as it seeks to recover. Last year, the Covid pandemic coincided with a historic demand shock, falling commodity prices, evaporating profits, unprecedented write-downs and tens of thousands of job cuts. Shell said it had reduced its net debt by $4 billion to $75 billion over the course of 2020. Shares of the company are up more than 3% year-to-date, having plummeted over 44% last year.
ANALYSIS: Higher prices lead to better returns, but producers still cautious: Platts Analytics | S&P Global Platts — Stronger natural gas and crude prices have boosted internal rates of return across most US shale plays, but major operators have signified their intent to maintain level production moving forward despite the spike. The average 12-month forward curve for the US domestic crude price benchmark, WTI, sharply increased to $52/b in January as OPEC agreed to reduce production by 1 million b/d through March. With WTI back above the $50/b mark, crude-focused plays saw another strong month of improvement in wellhead internal rate of return. The Permian Delaware, Midland, Bakken, Denver-Julesburg, Eagle Ford, SCOOP/STACK and Powder River all shifted above the 10% cost of capital mark, suggesting new wells coming online should be able to realize cash flow neutrality at a minimum, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics. Platts Analytics IRRs are based on a half-cycle, after-federal corporate tax analysis, which excludes sunk costs such as acreage acquisition, seismic and appraisal drilling. For gas-directed plays, the Henry Hub average 12-month forward curve settled at $2.68/MMBtu for January. At this price point, only the Utica-Dry and Haynesville plays are bringing wells online with an IRR of over 10%, as regional gas differentials continue to hurt the Northeast's ability to price gas at all close to Henry Hub. Dominion-South and Columbia Gas-App. Hubs, which are associated with the Marcellus and Utica, were discounted on average by 67 cents/MMBtu and 49 cents/MMBtu to the Haynesville's Henry Hub price point for the month of January, hurting operator's ability to produce strong revenue results on their new horizontal wells. The jump in crude prices has also closed the profitability gap between the wet and dry pockets of West Virginia and Pennsylvania as IRRs for the Marcellus-Wet and Marcellus-Dry both hovered around 7.5% for January. This suggests more rigs may be reallocated to West Virginia-Wet and Pennsylvania-Southwest Wet plays for 2021, assuming crude prices remain strong, according to Platts Analytics. The Delaware continues to lead all US shale plays as a stronger Waha price has boosted most of the region's robust wellhead gas revenue, pushing this region's IRRs into the 25% area. With IRRs of 20% to 30%, operators will likely start to increase their completion activity quickly in the near term, according to Platts Analytics. Hydraulic fracturing of the approximately 200 drilled-but-uncompleted wells will help Texas and New Mexico operators stabilize the region's production after the reduction in activity experienced in 2020. Other crude plays such as the Midland, Bakken and Eagle Ford are each obtaining 20% IRRs as a solid gas environment with over $50/b oil will drive operators to bring on frack crews in the short term with these favorable economic conditions. While a $50/b WTI environment provides respectable returns for most of the crude shale plays at a theoretical asset level, it would likely take $60/b WTI to change the recovery trajectory of drilling and completion activity in US shale.
EIA estimates that global petroleum liquids consumption dropped 9% in 2020 - Responses to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused global demand for petroleum products to fall significantly in 2020. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that the world consumed 92.2 million barrels per day (b/d) of petroleum and other liquid fuels in 2020, a 9% decline from the previous year and the largest decline in EIA’s series that dates back to 1980. A supplement to EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) describes developments in global oil consumption during 2020, methods for estimating and forecasting global oil consumption, and expectations for oil consumption in 2021 and 2022.In its short-term outlook, EIA forecasts changes in U.S. petroleum consumption in response to variables including economic growth, employment growth, vehicle fleet fuel efficiency, and oil prices. For the rest of the world, EIA uses a combination of available real-time data and models based on the relationship between gross domestic product (GDP) and oil consumption. Because of the unique effects of the pandemic in 2020, EIA relied on a wider set of other indicators to assess non-U.S. energy demand, including third-party indexes that tracked mobility, flights, and government stay-at-home orders and their stringency across countries.A previous Today in Energy article described how EIA uses data series from our Weekly Petroleum Status Reportand our Petroleum Supply Monthly (with a two-month lag in the data) to inform short-term forecasts of U.S. petroleum markets. The United States is the world’s largest consumer of petroleum liquids, accounting for 20% of the global total in 2019.Other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) provide monthly consumption data after a two- to three-month lag. Collectively, the 37 OECD member countries consumed 47% of global petroleum liquids in 2019.Data from non-OECD countries can vary from a two- to three-month lag (in the case of Brazil and India, for example) to a year or more. For this reason, EIA will have near-final data on about half of world oil consumption for 2020 by the first quarter of 2021, with values from the United States, OECD countries, and some non-OECD countries. EIA will add finalized data to its published estimates as information becomes available throughout 2021 and 2022. The effects of the pandemic continue to present challenges in forecasting global petroleum liquids consumption. More context on these uncertainties is available in the STEO supplement Developments in Global Oil Consumption.
Pipe laying for Nord Stream 2 restarts in Danish waters (Reuters) - The consortium behind the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline has resumed laying pipes in the waters of Denmark, it said on Saturday, despite mounting pressure on the project from Washington. Construction of the link, which would double the capacity of the existing Nord Stream pipeline to 110 billion cubic metres of gas per year, was suspended in December 2019 due to the threat of sanctions from Washington.However the German government has stood by the project and late in December a vessel called the Fortuna, which was subsequently put under sanctions by Washington, laid a 2.6 km (1.6 mile) portion of the pipeline in German waters. Construction of the pipeline is mostly complete but around 120 km is left to be laid in Danish waters as well as 30 km in German waters, before it makes landfall at the northern German coastal town of Lubmin, near Greifswald.
Venezuela’s PDVSA seeks to export oil offloaded from floating facility - Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA has begun marketing about 570,000 barrels of Corocoro medium crude recently offloaded from a floating facility that was listing last year, two sources with knowledge of the offer said. Crude onboard the Floating Storage and Offloading facility (FSO) Nabarima, operated by a joint venture between PDVSA PDVSA.UL and Italy’s Eni ENI.MI, started to be transferred to a tanker late last year amid environmental concerns from neighboring countries over a potential spill. About 1.3 million barrels of oil had remained stored at the FSO since early 2019, when sanctions imposed by the United States on PDVSA deprived the joint venture of its main customer for that crude grade, Houston-based refiner Citgo Petroleum. PDVSA-owned tanker Icaro, which received the first parcel of the offloaded crude, earlier this week set sail almost fully loaded to the Amuay ship-to-ship hub off Venezuela’s western coast, according to Refinitiv Eikon vessel tracking data. The sources said PDVSA plans to sell the first parcel of 570,000 barrels to a customer that has not yet been determined. If it cannot allocate the oil for exports in the coming days, it would transfer it to a larger vessel, the Suezmax Rio Caroni, where it would remain until sold or transferred to one of PDVSA’s refineries, the sources said. PDVSA did not respond to requests for comment. Eni said that Nabarima’s crude is owned by PDVSA. “Eni is not involved in decisions pertaining to its commercialization,” the company said in a statement. PDVSA has previously dismissed concerns by environmental groups and the governments of Trinidad and Tobago and Brazil that the facility could be prone to a spill. PDVSA’s oil exports have soared again this month as a growing group of customers with no experience in oil trade have been able to find vessels to carry exports, mainly to Asia. The shipments are poised to increase if the U.S. government authorizes a handful of PDVSA’s established customers to resume trading with PDVSA, after ordering a halt to oil swaps in the last quarter of 2020.
Shell ordered to compensate Nigerian farmers affected by oil spills - A Dutch court has delivered a major victory to a group of Nigerian farmers in their 13-year-long effort to hold Shell's Nigerian subsidiary accountable for oil spills on their lands. The Court of Appeal in The Hague sided with farmers and environmentalists on most of their legal claims, ruling that the Nigerian subsidiary owes the farmers financial compensation for the oil spill pollution in two villages. "The court ruled that Shell Nigeria is liable for the damage caused by the spills. Shell Nigeria is sentenced to compensate farmers for damages," Senior Justice Sierd Schaafsma said, as reported by Agence France-Presse. The parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, and its subsidiary must also install a leak detection system to one pipeline to prevent further spills. The court is still considering whether to hold Shell responsible for spillage in a third village, which was caused by sabotage. The spills happened between 2004 and 2007. "Three of the four Nigerian plaintiffs and their fellow villagers must now be compensated for the damage caused and Shell must ensure that there is a leakage detection system in the pipelines in Nigeria," Friends of the Earth, the environmental organization that sued Shell, said in a statement. "It is the first time that a court has held Dutch transnational corporation accountable for its duty of care abroad." The court has not yet set the amount of compensation the farmers will receive, and the verdict can be appealed to a higher court.
Dutch Court Orders Shell Oil to Pay for Harm Done to Nigerian Farmers -- Global environmental justice campaigners heralded a Dutch court's ruling Friday that Royal Dutch Shell's Nigerian subsidiary must pay punitive restitution to Nigerian villages for oil spill contamination that brought death, illness, and destruction to Nigerian farmers and communities."After 13 years, justice!" tweeted Friends of the Earth Europe.The legal effort seeking accountability for the oil pollution in the Niger Delta, as Agence France-Presse noted, was brought forth by the Netherlands branch of Friends of the Earth, and "has dragged on so long that two of the Nigerian farmers have died since it was first filed in 2008." One of those farmers was the father of Eric Dooh. "Finally, there is some justice for the Nigerian people suffering the consequences of Shell's oil," Dooh, who became a plaintiff in the case, said in a statement. "It is a bittersweet victory," he continued, "since two of the plaintiffs, including my father, did not live to see the end of this trial. But this verdict brings hope for the future of the people in the Niger Delta." As Reuters reported, Friday's decision went a step further than a 2013 ruling by a lower court, saying that Shell's Nigerian subsidiary was responsible for multiple cases of oil pollution. The appeals judge sided with the farmers in four of six spills covered by the lawsuit and postponed a verdict in the remaining cases, where the lower court had previously found SPDC responsible. The appeals court "also held the Anglo-Dutch parent company Royal Dutch Shell liable for installing new pipeline equipment to prevent further devastating spills in the Niger Delta region," AFP added. The devastation, as Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) has previously described, has been vast: Between 1976 and 1991, over two million barrels of oil polluted Ogoniland in 2,976 separate oil spills. While oil production has ceased, pipelines operated by Shell still traverse the land, creeks and waterways. Leakages—caused by corroded pipelines as well as bandits—mean that the area is still plagued by oil spills. Describing the scene in 2019 at a few of the sites affected by oil spills in the Niger Delta, FOEI added that the "horror of the vast stretch of black, lifeless landscape stretching out in front of us is something that has to be seen in order to be believed." Nigerian environmental justice advocate Nnimmo Bassey, in a tweet welcoming the new ruling, drew attention to the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, who, along with other Ogoni rights activists, was executed by the country's military in 1995 after leading an uprising against Shell's ecological damage in the region.
Oil jumps more than 2% as supply cuts take effect - Oil prices rose more than 2% on Monday, buoyed by falling U.S. crude inventories and rising winter fuel demand as a one of the worst snowstorms in years hits the U.S. Northeast. Brent crude was up $1.22 cents, or 2.2%, at $56.26 a barrel. U.S. crude settled 2.59% higher at $53.55 per barrel. Both benchmarks gained nearly 8% in January. U.S. government data last week showed a 2.3 million-barrel drawdown in stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub for crude futures. Another 2.3 million-barrel weekly decline is expected since then, analysts and traders said citing a Wood Mackenzie report. "Crude is being supported by many small factors this week - expected drawdowns in Cushing, a sudden rise in winter fuel demand amid colder weather, and further talks on Capitol Hill about stimulus checks," The U.S. Northeast has been hit by a powerful winter snow storm, pummeling a vast swath stretching from Pennsylvania through New England, causing widespread disruption in New York City and other major urban centers in the region. Goldman Sachs said prices could rise to $65 by July, forecasting an oil market deficit of 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first half of 2021, a higher level than its previous prediction of 500,000 bpd. OPEC oil output rose for a seventh month in January, a Reuters survey found, after the group and its allies agreed to ease supply curbs further, although the production growth was smaller than expected. Russian oil and gas condensate production also increased in January, two sources told Reuters on Monday, but the increase was in line with expectations, following Moscow's deal with OPEC on output cuts. U.S. oil and gas drillers are gearing up for a pick-up in demand. As higher prices make new wells profitable again, they added rigs for a sixth month in a row in January. U.S. production data from the Energy Information Administration showed output rose above 11 million bpd in November, the first time it has exceeded that figure since April.
Oil settles up more than 2% as U.S. inventories fall, demand picks up -Oil prices settled more than 2% higher on Monday, buoyed by falling U.S. crude inventories and rising winter fuel demand due to one of the worst snowstorms to hit the U.S. Northeast in years. Brent crude settled up $1.31 cents, or 2.4%, at $56.35 a barrel. U.S. crude gained $1.35 cents, or 2.6%, to settle at $53.55. Both benchmarks gained nearly 8% in January. U.S. government data last week showed a drawdown of 2.3 million barrels in stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub for crude futures. Another 2.3 million-barrel weekly decline is expected, analysts and traders said citing a Wood Mackenzie report. “Crude is being supported by many small factors this week - expected drawdowns in Cushing, a sudden rise in winter fuel demand amid colder weather, and further talks on Capitol Hill about stimulus checks,” said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York. The U.S. Northeast has been hit by a powerful winter snow storm, pummeling a vast swath stretching from Pennsylvania through New England and causing widespread disruption in New York City and other major urban centers in the region. Goldman Sachs said oil prices could rise to $65 by July, forecasting an oil market deficit of 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first half of 2021, a higher level than its previous prediction of 500,000 bpd. OPEC oil output rose for a seventh month in January, a Reuters survey found, after the group and its allies agreed to ease supply curbs further, although the production growth was smaller than expected. “It looks like OPEC compliance is really pushing the complex higher, as well as the expectation that we will see U.S. inventories tighten over the next few weeks,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. Russian oil and gas condensate production also increased in January, two sources told Reuters on Monday, but the increase was in line with expectations, following Moscow’s deal with OPEC on output cuts. U.S. oil and gas drillers are gearing up for a pick-up in demand. As higher prices make new wells profitable again, they added rigs for a sixth month in a row in January. U.S. production data from the Energy Information Administration showed output rose above 11 million bpd in November, the first time it has exceeded that figure since April.
Oil jumps 2% to highest level in a year amid output cuts -Oil prices rose more than 2% on Tuesday, reaching their highest in 12 months after major producers showed they were reining in output roughly in line with their commitments. The U.S. and global benchmarks rallied as optimism about more U.S. economic stimulus added to market bullishness from supply cuts. Brent crude was up $1.22, or 2.2%, at $57.57 a barrel for its third straight day of gains, touching $58.05, the highest levels since January last year. U.S. oil gained 2.26%, or $1.21, to settle at $54.76 per barrel, after touching a session high of $55.26, the highest in a year. The rally began as OPEC production increases were less than expected. OPEC crude production rose for a seventh month in January but the increase was smaller than expected, a Reuters survey found. Voluntary cuts of 1 million bpd by OPEC's de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, are set to be implemented from the beginning of February through March. Russian output increased in January but is in line with the supply pact, while in Kazakhstan oil volumes fell for the month. The rally picked up steam as the U.S. Congress looked ready to adopt an economic stimulus package, and as cold U.S. weather boosted heating oil demand. "You got the U.S. economic stimulus package that no one thought we would get," said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York. A cold snap and heavy snow in the U.S. northeast drove the margin for heating oil to an 8-month high of $15.88, lending further support to crude. However, energy giant BP flagged a difficult start to 2021 amid declining product demand, noting that January retail volumes were down about 20% year on year, compared with a decline of 11% in the fourth quarter. Oil demand is nevertheless expected to recover in 2021, BP said, with global inventories seen returning to their five-year average by the middle of the year.
WTI Slips Back Below $56 After Smaller Than Expected Crude Draw -- Oil prices extended their gains overnight, with WTI topping $56 for the first time in a year, as declines in U.S. (API last night)and Chinese crude stockpiles added impetus to a rally driven by tightening global supplies.“The crude oil market is getting close to a frenzy,” said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB AB.“A reflection of the tightening global crude oil market is the continued strengthening of the Brent crude oil curve.”A big draw confirming API's report could be enough to extend these gains even further. API
- Crude -4.261mm (-2.4mm exp)
- Cushing -1.885mm
- Gasoline -240k (+1.5mm exp)
- Distillates -1.622mm (-1.3mm exp)
DOE
- Crude -994k (-2.4mm exp, -4.84mm Whisper)
- Cushing -1.517mm
- Gasoline +4.467mm (+1.5mm exp)
- Distillates -9k (-1.3mm exp)
Analysts expected yet another crude draw in the last week, following the prior week's big drop (and API's bigger than expected draw)., but were disappointed as crude stocks only fell 994k barrels (vs a whisper number of a huge 4.84mm drop)...
Oil rises to highest level in more than a year after U.S. stock drawdown - Oil prices rose almost 2% on Wednesday and hovered near their highest levels in about a year, after government data showed U.S. crude stockpiles fell to their lowest since March, while OPEC+ maintained its supply cut agreement. Brent crude futures rose 1.74% to $58.46 a barrel. The benchmark earlier hit $58.94 a barrel, its highest since last February. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude settled 1.7% higher at $55.69 per barrel, after hitting a high of $56.33 earlier in the session, the highest level since Jan. 2020. Both benchmarks' backwardation, where contracts for near-term delivery are more expensive than later supplies, hit their highest in just over a year at around $2.30, indicating expectations of tighter supply. U.S. crude oil stockpiles fell last week to 475.7 million barrels, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday, their lowest since March. Refiner utilization rates, meanwhile, rose by 0.6 percentage points. "Refineries are back in business, which is supportive for crude," said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. "On net, this is a supportive report." The market has been bolstered by deep supply cuts from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, which on Wednesday, maintained their oil output policy. The day before, a document seen by Reuters showed that OPEC+ expects the oil market to be in deficit throughout 2021, peaking at 2 million barrels per day in May. "Underpinning the bullish sentiment are tightening fundamentals. Ahead of today's ministerial meeting, OPEC+ hinted that global oil stockpiles will decline below the five-year average by June," PVM analysts said. The market was also bolstered by news that Democrats in the U.S. Congress took the first steps toward advancing President Joe Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid plan without Republican support.
Oil Futures Surge on Assurance from OPEC+ --- Oil climbed to the highest in more than a year in New York as OPEC and its allies pledged to continue whittling down global inventories. Futures in New York surged 1.7% to near $56 a barrel on Wednesday. A committee of OPEC+ ministers said the group will keep pushing to quickly clear the oil surplus left by the pandemic-induced demand slump. The alliance’s effort appears to be working despite a still tenuous recovery in demand: Chinese stockpiles are at the lowest in almost a year and a U.S. government report on Wednesday showed crude stockpiles fell nearly 1 million barrels. There’s a sense that “the risk is much more on the upside than the downside at this point,” “We certainly still have a lot of inventories sloshing around the system, but people feel like that’s going to decline from here on out until we get back to a balanced market.” Alongside OPEC+’s efforts to limit crude supply, driven by Saudi Arabia’s commitment to extra cutbacks, the oil market’s structure has firmed significantly. The premium of West Texas Intermediate’s nearest December contract to December 2022 has widened to more than $3 a barrel. “OPEC is holding the line on production, the vaccine rollout is progressing, Covid cases are rolling over and the stimulus package is making some progress.” West Texas Intermediate for March delivery rose 93 cents to settle at $55.69 a barrel, at the highest since late January 2020. Brent for April settlement advanced $1 to $58.46 a barrel. The contract is at the highest since last February. Despite the downtrend in crude inventories, a recovery in fuel demand remains shaky as lockdown measures limit mobility. The combined refining margin for gasoline and diesel, which provides a rough profit gauge for processing a barrel of crude, fell back toward $14 a barrel on Wednesday. The Energy Information Administration report showed gasoline stockpiles at the highest since June. A rolling average of gasoline demand ticked up slightly last week, but still remains at its weakest seasonally in more than two decades.
Crude Oil Extends Rally -- Oil jumped to the highest in more than a year, extending this week’s rally to above $56 a barrel, with investors confident that OPEC+ producers are committed to restraining global supplies. Futures in New York climbed nearly 1% on Thursday, also buoyed by stronger U.S. equities. OPEC+ producers have pledged to keep draining a pandemic-driven oil surplus, while global inventories from China to the U.S. continue to decline. Saudi Arabia is keeping oil pricing unchanged for Asia, while raising prices for all grades for buyers in the U.S. and Europe. “It looks like, at every turn, Saudi seems to want to support the market,” said Michael Hiley, head of over-the-counter energy trading at New York-based LPS Futures. “If demand really picks up, we could be short oil pretty quickly, because U.S. production isn’t going to come back fast.” Key technical indicators suggest crude is due for a pullback, though. The 14-day Relative Strength Indexes for both Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures are showing the commodity in overbought territory. Meanwhile, a buying binge in the North Sea market seems to have subsided, with no bids or offers Thursday on an S&P Global Platts pricing window for the first time since late November. The expectation for stronger oil demand is also supporting prices, with governments worldwide distributing Covid-19 vaccines. While a full-fledged recovery still has yet to take shape, oil consumption is poised to return to 2019 levels by the end of the year, according to Citigroup Inc. “At the moment we are seeing pretty good oil prices,” Shell Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Demand is not back where it was a year ago, but then again we see a lot of discipline also from OPEC+ and therefore the market is being held in balance quite well.” West Texas Intermediate for March delivery rose 54 cents to settle at $56.23 a barrel. Brent for April settlement gained 38 cents to settle at $58.84 a barrel, the highest since February 2020. Meanwhile, money is flooding back into the market. Total holdings of WTI crude futures are now at their highest level since July 2018, surpassing levels seen during the frenzied trading of April last year. That influx of funds comes as the crude futures curve continues to indicate strength. The so-called Dec.-Red-Dec. spread, a favored trade of the world’s hedge funds, has topped $3 a barrel this week to reach its strongest level in a year.
Oil climbs after OPEC+ maintains oil output cuts, U.S. stock draw -- Oil prices extended gains on Thursday after the OPEC+ alliance of major producers stuck to a reduced output policy, and as crude stockpiles in the United States fell to their lowest levels since March last year. Brent crude futures gained 47 cents, or 0.8%, to $58.93 a barrel, by 0317 GMT, having earlier hit their highest since Feb. 21, 2020 in the wake of the OPEC+ decision. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures climbed 49 cents, or 0.9%, to $56.18 a barrel after reaching its highest settlement level in a year on Wednesday. "Crude prices have been rising higher now that OPEC+ has convinced the energy market that they are determined in accelerating market re-balancing without delay," said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, known as OPEC+, extended its current oil output policy at a meeting on Wednesday, a sign that producers are happy that their deep supply cuts are draining inventories despite an uncertain outlook for a recovery in demand as the coronavirus pandemic lingers. A document seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed OPEC expects the output cuts will keep the market in deficit throughout 2021, even though the group cut its demand forecast. Also supporting prices, U.S. crude oil stockpiles fell by 994,000 barrels last week to 475.7 million barrels, their lowest since March, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday. Analysts in a Reuters poll had forecast a 446,000-barrel rise. Continued progress in rolling out COVID-19 vaccines is also an important driver of oil prices, OANDA's Moya said. "The world now has several effective COVID vaccines that should really force energy traders to upgrade their return to pre-pandemic behaviour forecasts," he said. The market was also bolstered by news that Democrats in the U.S. Congress took the first steps toward advancing President Joe Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus aid plan. In a separate development, the United States has filed a lawsuit to seize a cargo of oil it says came from Iran rather than Iraq, as stated on the bill of lading, and contravenes U.S. terrorism regulations.
Oil prices rise to highest in a year on U.S. growth optimism, crude supply restraint - Oil hit its highest level in a year on Friday, closing in on $60 a barrel on economic revival hopes and supply curbs by producer group OPEC and its allies. New orders for U.S.-made goods rose more than expected in December, pointing to continued strength in manufacturing. The U.S. Congress is also moving ahead on President Joe Biden's COVID-19 relief plan. Brent crude was up 64 cents, or 1.1%, at $59.48 after hitting its highest since Feb. 20 last year at $59.75. U.S. crude was up 48 cents, or 0.9%, at $56.72, after reaching $57.09, its highest since Jan. 22 last year. "The conditions still remain supportive for oil markets," said Jeffrey Halley, analyst at brokerage OANDA. "Oil should find plenty of willing buyers on any material dip." Brent is on track to rise more than 6% this week. The last time it traded at $60, the pandemic had yet to take hold, economies were open and people were free to travel, meaning demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel was much higher. The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, however, is fuelling hopes of lockdowns being eased, boosting fuel demand. But even demand optimists such as OPEC do not expect oil consumption to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2021. Oil also gained support from supply curbs by major producers. OPEC and its allies, collectively known as OPEC+, stuck to their supply tightening policy at a meeting on Wednesday. Record OPEC+ cuts have helped to lift prices from historic lows last year. "OPEC+ discipline has been a real positive," said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets. Further boosting the market, a weekly supply report showed a drop in U.S. crude inventories to their lowest since March, suggesting that output cuts by OPEC+ producers are having the desired effect.
Oil rises 1%, hits highest in a year on growth hopes, OPEC+ output cuts (Reuters) - Oil prices rose about 1% on Friday, after hitting their highest in a year and closing in on $60 a barrel, supported by economic revival hopes and supply curbs by producer group OPEC and its allies. people want to get something done, Oil was also supported as U.S. stock markets hit record highs on signs of progress toward more economic stimulus, while a U.S. jobs report confirmed the labor market was stabilizing. Brent crude ended the session up 50 cents, or 0.9%, at $59.34 after hitting its highest since Feb. 20 at $59.79. U.S. crude settled up 62 cents, or 1.1%, at $56.85, after reaching $57.29, its highest since Jan. 22 last year. U.S. crude futures gained about 9% this week, the biggest percentage gain since October, in part due to U.S. inventories last week dropping to levels last seen in March. [EIA/S] Brent rose about 6% for the week. The last time Brent traded at $60 a barrel, the pandemic had yet to take hold, economies were open and demand for fuel was much higher. The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has fed hopes of demand growth, but even optimists, such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries which expects a market deficit throughout 2021, do not expect oil consumption to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2022. “What is really helping the market today, and is a more valid reason for the price rise we see, once again comes from Saudi Arabia and its top firm, Aramco,” Aramco raised its Arab Light official selling price (OSP) to Northwest Europe for March by $1.40 a barrel from the previous month. This could signal Saudi Arabia is more confident in the demand outlook, feeding bullish sentiment, Tonhaugen said. OPEC and allies, collectively known as OPEC+, stuck to their supply tightening policy at a meeting on Wednesday. Record OPEC+ cuts have helped lift prices from historic lows last year. “OPEC+ discipline has been a real positive,” said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets. The U.S. oil rig count, an early indicator of future output, has risen for five straight months. This week, the number of rigs rose by four to 299, the highest since May, according to energy services firm Baker Hughes Co. The pace of recovery in the world’s top producer, however, is slow. The government this week projected U.S. crude output will not to top its 2019 record of 12.25 million barrels per day until 2023. Production in 2020 tumbled 6.4% to 11.47 million bpd.
Crude Oil Prices up 9%. But Struggle With $60 Resistance -- Crude prices rose some 9% on the week but fell short of the $60 per barrel mark targeted by oil bulls, suggesting the market may be overbought in the short-term and could consolidate even if it hits that high point. New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, the key indicator for U.S. crude, settled up 62 cents, or 2.2%, at $56.85 per barrel. For the week, WTI gained some 9%. London-traded Brent, the global benchmark for crude, settled up 50 cents, or 0.8%, at $59.34. For the week, Brent gained about 6%. U.S. gasoline RBOB futures meanwhile traded as high as $1.6729 a gallon, their highest since mid-February last year, when world oil demand began to collapse under the weight of the Covid-19 pandemic. The market has been cheered this week by the way OPEC’s monthly meeting on output policy played out, with no extra output agreed and plenty of evidence of output quotas being observed. Nigerian output in particular has now fallen to a level that almost compensates entirely for its overproduction last summer, partly due to disruptions at some of its export facilities. In addition, another week of clear drawdowns in U.S. and international inventories has convinced many that the market is set to tighten meaningfully as demand picks up in the course of the year, pushing back-month futures contracts sharply higher. “The market is increasingly pricing in a belief that last year’s price crash together with an increased investor focus on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) could led to a future shortfall due to lack of investments towards exploration,” Saxo Bank head of commodity strategy Ole Hansen said in a morning note. “However, before we reach that stage, global demand needs to recover from the current 94 million barrels/day and back towards 100 million seen a year ago, while OPEC+ slowly returns 7 million barrels/day of still capped production.”
The end of the Qatar blockade will boost the Middle East economy, IMF says— The International Monetary Fund has raised its economic outlook for the Middle East and North Africa region's growth in 2020 by 1.2 percentage points to an overall contraction of 3.8%, showing that despite some progress since the coronavirus pandemic began, it's still been a brutal year by any account. Recovery will be varied and based largely on countries' investments and strategies for vaccine distribution. But there has been one bright spot for the Gulf states in particular — the lifting of the political and economic blockade of Qatar by other GCC countries, the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia Director Jihad Azour told CNBC on Wednesday. While the full details of the reconciliation accord between blockading states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt — and Qatar are not publicly known, Azour told CNBC's Hadley Gamble that "any improvement in terms of opening up borders, improving economic relationship will provide an additional potential for growth." "Of course, this will improve trade, especially at rates in goods and services," he added. "It will reduce the cost of procuring for example, for Qatar, it will also help the airlines by reducing the cost. Therefore, there is always benefit from improving economic relationships, especially that we are now entering into a new phase in terms of globalization." The news, which saw a dramatic 3 ½-year dispute come to an end, is a likely boon for investment as well, Azour said. "I think this is good for business in the short term, but also in the long term, in terms of providing a bigger space for investors. And this is something that will be valued." Qatar's Financial Centre alone aims to attract $25 billion of foreign direct investment inflows by 2022 as a result of the rapprochement, CNBC reported in January. Airlines, manufacturing and food production are among the other areas that are likely to see major boosts.
Triple shock of US sanctions, oil price collapse and the pandemic decimates Iranian living standards -- Iranian workers and their families are reeling under the combined impact of US sanctions, the oil market collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic. Iran’s GDP had already fallen by 6.8 percent in the financial year before the pandemic-induced recession took its toll, as oil revenues halved following the expiry of the Trump administration’s short-term waivers of sanctions on those countries importing Iranian oil. The Trump administration’s punitive sanctions were imposed in 2018, after the US scuttled the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, with the aim of crashing its economy and provoking “regime change.” The sanctions effectively bar Iran from selling its oil—the lifeblood of the Iranian economy—causing crude oil production to fall to its lowest level in 40 years and oil storage facilities to be filled to capacity and depriving the government of a major source of its revenues. Just five days before leaving the White House, President Donald Trump expanded Washington’s punitive sanctions to other key industries, including Iran’s marine, aerospace, aviation and steel sectors. Revenues fell even further in 2020 following the global oil market collapse, with oil production now less than 2 million barrels per day, about half that in 2018. This contraction, expected to lead to a further 3.7 percent decline in GDP for 2020-21, comes in the wake of a decade-long decline in per capita GDP income. Iran’s currency, the rial, has lost 43 percent of its value against the dollar. This, together with years of austerity imposed by successive governments with the support of all factions of Iran’s political establishment, has led to inflation rising to 46 percent, mass unemployment, with a devastating impact on household budgets as the cost of food and housing soared, and ever-deepening social inequality, with the Gini coefficient of inequality reaching 35.6, according to the Iran Economic Monitor. These rising living costs have eroded wages, driving many young people out of the city centres where rents are high into the outer suburbs, satellite towns or back to their families in the impoverished rural areas. They have decimated the value of the government’s cash transfers to those with little or no income, despite an increase announced last autumn. At least 55 percent of Iranians are poor, with half of these living in extreme poverty, a five-fold increase since the reimposition of US sanctions in 2018, because wages are totally inadequate to meet their basic needs. Last November, a video went viral on Iranian social media showing Bandar Abbas municipal officials demolishing a single mother's rickety shed, erected without a permit. The destruction of the shack that was home to herself and three children, one of whom is disabled, drove 35 year old Tayyebeh to attempt suicide by setting fire to herself, by no means an isolated phenomenon. The furore that followed forced the municipality to pay for her hospitalisation and local commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to offer to build her a home if the city provided the land, although such promises are rarely fulfilled.
Iranian-Backed Forces Receive New Missiles As Tensions Grow In Iraq - The second month of 2021 began with preparations by Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) for new round of hostilities. Kata’ib Hezbollah received short and medium range rockets through Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Kata’ib Hezbollah is a key member of the PMU, actively participates in the fight against ISIS since the emergence of the group in Iraq, and is a vocal supporter of the current attempts to oust the US presence from Iraq. At the same time, the PMU are subject to more and more frequent ISIS attacks in recent days. As the terrorists appear to be popping up all around. On January 31st, the PMU said they repelled an ISIS attack in the region of Jurf al-Sakhar in the province of Babil. These apparent appearances by ISIS members coincide with reports by pro-Iranian sources blaming the US for airlifting them. On January 31st, in an interview with the al-Maloumeh news website, Sabah al-Akili claimed that the US military airlifts ISIS units into areas behind PMU positions in the Jurf al-Sakhar region. So far, US President Joe Biden’s policy for the Middle East is incredibly unsurprising. Any potential withdrawals appear to be nothing more than a pipe dream. The first-ever African American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw was being reconsidered. Not only that, but it is likely that the deployments need to be increased. Attacks on US supply convoys have become commonplace, all of them being blamed on the PMU. However, responsibility for the most recent attack was assumed by the Qasim Al-Jabbarin group, which does not declare its affiliation with the PMU. With the US still leading the way for NATO in the entire region, any exit also from Afghanistan becomes more fiction than reality. This will, in turn, lead to increased Taliban activity, since the peace deal is not being honored.
Biden Orders USS Nimitz Aircraft Carrier Home in Possible Signal to Iran - Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin instructed the carrier and and the 5,000 sailors and Marines of its strike group to return home after being deployed for over 240 days. Over the course of its deployment, the USS Nimitz was responsible for providing air cover during the troop drawbacks in Afghanistan, running operations and exercises to strengthen US Central Command and US Indo-Pacific Command areas of responsibility, according to the Pentagon. It has also conducted brief missions in Somalia carrying out air raids on extremists in the country and it was involved in training the Indian Navy's 7th Fleet. The Nimitz is 100,000 tons of power. Laid down in 1968, it is one of the largest American warships. It is one of 10 similar ships in its class: the Eisenhower, Vinson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Washington, Stennis, Truman, Reagan and Bush. US Naval Institute News says that the Nimitz was operating within the US 7th Fleet off the coast of west India when it got the order to go home after nearly eight months on the water. Just prior to the beginning of the year, the Nimitz was ordered to come "directly" home by the acting US Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller. Ninety-six hours later, the carrier got another order to “halt its routine redeployment” and remain in the area of US Central Command following threats from Tehran on the anniversary of the killing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commander Qasem Soleimani.
New U.S. stand on Yemen war can be 'step towards correcting past mistakes' - Iran (Reuters) - Iran’s foreign ministry said on Saturday a new U.S. stand on the Yemen war can be a “step towards correcting past mistakes”, after President Joe Biden said this week Washington was ending its support for a Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen. “Stopping support ... for the Saudi coalition, if not a political maneuvre, could be a step towards correcting past mistakes,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh was quoted as saying by state media. Biden said on Thursday that the more than six-year war, widely seen as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, “has to end.” He also named veteran U.S. diplomat Timothy Lenderking as the U.S. special envoy for Yemen in a bid to step up American diplomacy to try to end the war.
U.N. bid to avert oil spill off Yemen uncertain as Houthis mull review (Reuters) - Yemen’s Houthi group has advised the United Nations to pause preparations to deploy a team to assess a decaying oil tanker threatening to spill 1.1 million barrels of crude oil off the war-torn country’s coast, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday. The tanker Safer has been stranded off Yemen’s Red Sea oil terminal of Ras Issa for more than five years, and U.N. officials have warned it could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska. Houthi authorities gave long-awaited approval in November for a visit to assess the tanker. A U.N. team, which includes a private company contracted by the world body to do the work, was aiming to travel to the tanker early next month. But U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that time line was now uncertain amid U.N. concerns about signals from the Houthis that they are considering a “review” of their formal approval of the tanker mission. “Houthi officials have advised the U.N. to pause certain preparations pending the outcome of such process, which would create further delays to the mission,” he said in a statement. He said the United Nations had so far spent $3.35 million on preparing for the mission. The world body also has to lease a technically equipped vessel, but needs a letter from the Houthis with security assurances. “We regret that, to date, we have not received a response to our multiple requests for this letter, the lack of which would increase the cost of the mission by hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Dujarric said. Houthi-run Al Masirah TV last week quoted a senior Houthi official as saying the United Nations had made additional requests that had not been part of an agreed framework. “Their new requests are related to their financial relationship with insurance firms and we will not get involved in matters that do not concern us,” the Houthi official said. Last month, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. The United Nations is also reviewing whether that could affect the tanker mission. A Saudi Arabia-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015, backing government forces fighting the Houthis. U.N. officials are trying to revive peace talks to end the war as the country’s suffering is also worsened by an economic crisis, currency collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden Ends “Offensive Support” for Saudi War in Yemen — President Biden delivered a foreign policy speech on Thursday and vowed to end US support for Saudi Arabia’s “offensive” operations in Yemen. “We are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” Biden said. Last week, the administration halted planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. While Biden vowed to end “offensive” support, he promised to keep supporting the Saudis militarily in other ways. “At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, UAV strikes, and other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries. We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty.” Framing the move as an end to support for “offensive” operations could give the US some wiggle room to continue some support for the Saudi-led coalition. And since the coalition is more capable now than it was in 2015, when the Obama administration first backed the Saudis in Yemen, operations could still continue.The US often blames Iran for Houthi attacks in Saudi territory. But the reality is, these attacks wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for the over five-year US-backed Saudi siege on Yemen, where the coalition’s targeting of civilian infrastructure and the blockade on the country has caused widespread disease, and mass starvation.Biden did mention the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and said USAID will work to ensure that aid is being delivered. He announced the appointment of Timothy Lenderking as the US special envoy to Yemen, a veteran diplomat who will work to end the fighting between the Saudis and the Houthis. Biden said Lenderking will “work with the UN envoy and all parties of the conflict to push for a diplomatic resolution.”One thing Biden did not bring up is the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, one of the last moves from the Trump administration. The UN and international charities have warned that the designation will cause mass famine since it criminalizes doing business with the Houthis, who control territory where about 70 percent of Yemen’s population lives.
Student protests grow as Turkey's young people turn against Erdoğan - Escalating protests over the appointment of a state-approved rector at a prestigious Istanbul university have become an unexpected catalyst for Turkey’s disillusioned and underemployed youth to vent their frustrations at President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. Demonstrations by both staff and students erupted last month over the installation of Melih Bulu, a business figure who stood as a ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) parliamentary candidate in 2015, as rector of Boğaziçi University, arguably the most acclaimed higher education institution in the country. The decision to appoint Bulu was denounced as undemocratic by university members, and widely interpreted as a government attempt to infiltrate one of the country’s last left-leaning institutions: Bulu is the first rector chosen from outside the university community since Turkey’s 1980 military coup. At least 250 people in Istanbul and another 69 in Ankara have been arrested this week, the vast majority of them students, in clashes between protesters and police marking one of the biggest displays of civil unrest in Turkey since the 2013 Gezi Park movement. Erdoğan said on Wednesday that his government would not allow the Boğaziçi protests to spiral out of control, accusing the protesters of being “terrorists” and “LGBT youth” working against Turkey’s “national and spiritual values”. Behrem Evlice, a fourth-year political science student, said: “We are so angry right now, and it’s not just Boğaziçi students, it’s students and young people all over Turkey. [The state] has attacked us with the police and violence. They are smearing us with these labels when all we want is a say in how our university is run. Ultimately though there is an economic crisis in Turkey and they know they are going to lose votes … they are just trying to divide people.” Critics say Erdoğan’s monopoly on power and the undermining of democratic norms have intensified since a failed 2016 coup, after which the presidency reserved the right to directly handpick university rectors. Over the last five years, more than a dozen universities across the country have been shut down. Almost two decades of AKP rule have placed Turkish institutions and society on a firmly religious and socially conservative path; the new wave of protests is unlikely to move the political needle in a deeply polarised country in which state repression of peaceful protest has become the norm. But while many people from older generations are grateful to Erdoğan for building roads and hospitals and raising living standards for the working classes, Turkey’s Generation Z has never known anything other than AKP rule, in recent years defined by political instability and economic turmoil. As such, they represent a new test for the party’s grip on power.
Chinese fishing vessels seized amid escalating tensions in the Pacific - Two Chinese fishing vessels were seized by authorities in Vanuatu in late January for allegedly fishing illegally in the south west Pacific island nation’s territorial waters. Authorities claimed the Dong Gang Xing 13 and Dong Gang Xing 16 were fishing in Vanuatu’s northern waters near the remote Torres islands. Vanuatu’s department of fisheries, the police maritime wing, and a French naval reconnaissance plane from New Caledonia had monitored the ships before they were detained by a Vanuatu patrol boat. The crew is facing investigation after undergoing quarantine in Port Vila. New Zealand journalist Michael Field described the incident as “murky,” chiefly because of the nature and origin of the vessels. There are currently 200-300 Chinese longliners and purse seine tuna fishers legitimately operating in Vanuatu’s 663,251 square kilometre exclusive economic zone, from their base in Fiji. The arrested boats, owned by Zhuhai Dong Gang Xing Long Distance Fishing, were operating closer in-shore for grouper and sea cucumber. Beijing had given the company permission to fish in Mauritania, Africa, and Vanuatu under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Vanuatu currently maintains diplomatic relations with China and, along with Tonga, signed up to the BRI in 2018. According to Field, the company says it has permission under the BRI to build a base in Vanuatu, a claim that has not been acknowledged by Vanuatu. Field speculated the boats may have believed they were operating under a deal between Port Vila and Beijing and asked: “Is Vanuatu heading for a diplomatic row with China?” Pacific island nations have in recent years sought to clamp down on illegal and unregulated fishing. In 2015 Palau burned four Vietnamese fishing boats caught off its coast and arrested the captains. During coordinated maritime sweeps in 2017, several Vietnamese boats were detained in the territorial waters of the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. However, driven by the US diplomatic, economic and strategic offensive against Beijing, Pacific states are now being drawn into fierce geo-strategic rivalries. Washington has seized on claims of illegal fishing to boost its military presence across the region. Armed US Coast Guard cutters are currently being deployed to American Samoa and Guam to counter “Chinese activity.”
Indian government presents budget amid economic crisis, swelling social opposition - India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government yesterday tabled its budget for the 2021-2022 fiscal year, which begins April 1. India’s economy is beset by multiple crises—all of which have been greatly exacerbated by the government’s calamitous mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. These include: a banking system that is mired in bad loans; a massive unemployment and underemployment crisis; falling consumer demand and shrinking capital investment. No less troubling for India’s far-right BJP government and ruling class is a groundswell of popular opposition to the raft of pro-big business measures Modi has implemented since August 2019 in a desperate bid to revive investment and capitalist growth. Tens of millions of workers across India joined a one-day general strike on Nov. 26 to protest the government’s class war policies, including a labour law “reform” that would illegalize most strikes and further casualize the labor force. A more than two-month long mass agitation by farmers has disrupted implementation of the three pro-agribusiness laws the government rushed through parliament last September at the same time as it amended the labor code. In presenting her budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman nevertheless blithely claimed, “India is well well-poised to be the land of promise and hope.” Having promised a budget like “no other,” Sitharaman attempted a fiscal and political high-wire act. In an attempt to kick-start the economy, she raised government outlays, particularly infrastructure spending, and injected additional funds into the troubled banking sector. At the same time, she tried to appease the international credit-rating agencies, which have threatened to reduce India’s rating to junk bond status, by slashing subsidies and pressing forward with other pro-investor policies, long demanded by international and domestic capital. To the delight of big business, despite the government’s rapidly deteriorating fiscal position it announced no tax increases for business or the rich. This included dropping plans to introduce a “pandemic cess”—what would have been a temporary charge to fund measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected more than 10 million Indians and killed over 150,000. Underscoring the budget’s sharp right-wing thrust, the government also did not (as had been suggested in many press previews of the budget) introduce any measures to mollify farmers’ anger, and it ignored the unemployment crisis altogether. In fact, it is slashing spending on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee in the coming budget, which is supposed to provide 100 days of menial, minimum wage work per year to one member of any rural household that needs it. For years, the program has been massively over-subscribed, meaning millions go hungry because they cannot access the “guarantee.”
Nearly 40,000 Australians still stranded overseas because of government indifference - A year after the COVID-19 crisis commenced, almost 40,000 Australian citizens are still registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) seeking assistance to return home from overseas. They have experienced extortionate airline ticket prices, endless delays and cancellations. Many face personal destitution and impoverishment, with the heightened risk of infection in countries severely affected by the pandemic. Among them, 4,800 have been classified as vulnerable. For purely financial reasons—the refusal of Australian federal, state and territory governments to provide adequate quarantine facilities—these citizens are being denied their basic legal, constitutional and democratic right to enter and live in the country. They are also being offered little financial assistance. Perth Airport in Western Australia [Wikimedia Commons] Government caps limiting the number of returning passengers have resulted in airlines routinely favouring first class and business class tickets over economy passengers. A first-class air ticket from London to Sydney can be priced as high as $36,895 and a business-class flight from Paris to Melbourne $25,352. However, even these enormous prices do not guarantee a seat on a flight. Many people whose flights are cancelled have to wait 30 days for a refund so they can book a new ticket. This situation has been exacerbated by the announcement on January 8, that the governments leaders, meeting as the bipartisan “national cabinet,” had further reduced the number of international arrivals. New South Wales (NSW), Queensland and Western Australia halved their numbers of arrivals until at least February 15. The number of people allowed to enter the country dropped from 6,700 a week to just 4,200. There is no lack of air transport capacity. According to a Senate COVID-19 inquiry, the number of empty airline seats coming into the country stood at 30,000 per week last November. Kym Bramley, who has been stranded in Mexico since March, told the New Daily: “They say ‘we don’t have enough spots’ but they seem to be able to create them for celebrities, cricket teams [and] tennis players… They are allowing tennis players from the same countries we can’t get home from.” She added, “for us,” it costs “$10,000 for a flight home—if you’re lucky.”
Ugandan Rebel Commander Found Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity - (Reuters) - A former Ugandan child soldier who became a commander of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army was convicted on Thursday of dozens of crimes, including widespread rape, sexual enslavement, child abductions, torture and murder, including killings of babies. The International Criminal Court found Dominic Ongwen guilty of 61 out of 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. A hearing in mid-April will consider a possible sentence, which could be up to life imprisonment, with a decision expected later this year. Judges at the court said Ongwen, who himself was taken by the LRA as a young boy, had acted out of free will in committing “innumerable” crimes between 2002 and 2005, commanding several hundred soldiers. “Mothers were forced to abandon their children in the bush. LRA fighters threw children, including babies, into the bush because the children were crying and making it difficult for their mothers to carry looted goods,” Presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt said, naming the victims and describing the crimes. “His guilt has been established beyond any reasonable doubt,” he said, issuing the verdict after a 3-1/2-year trial that ended in March last year. Ongwen, wearing a tie and face mask, sat impassively in court, sometimes with his eyes closed, listening as the judgment was read out. His lawyer has argued that Ongwen’s brutal life in the LRA affected his mental health and his capacity to make independent decisions. Led by fugitive warlord Joseph Kony, the LRA terrorized Ugandans for nearly two decades as it battled the government of President Yoweri Museveni from bases in the north of the country and neighbouring countries. In recent years it has been largely wiped out. In a legal first, Ongwen was also convicted for the crime of forced pregnancy for atrocities committed against seven women. “As a result of the sexual and physical violence and the living conditions to which they were submitted, the abducted women and girls suffered severe, barely imaginable physical and mental pain,” Schmitt said. Ongwen ordered the killing and abduction of many civilians during attacks on camps protected by Ugandan government forces and personally took sex slaves, raped women and forced children to fight in hostilities, the court found. Ongwen, who was detained in 2015, remains in the court’s custody.
Major hospital in Chile goes up in flames amid near collapse of public health system -The fire that engulfed San Borja Hospital, one of the major hospitals in Santiago this past Saturday, bears the hallmarks of decades of underfunding and under-resourcing of the public health system by right-wing and “left” governments alike. Amid an alarming escalation of COVID-19 cases that has national intensive care units at 92 percent occupancy, such avoidable catastrophes can only speed up the collapse of an already debilitated health system. It is due both to good fortune as well as the decisive action and dedication of health professionals and emergency services that no one was injured. Around 300 firefighters, 40 fire engines and emergency vehicles battled the blaze after the alert was raised at around 7 a.m. In less than two hours, health staff evacuated the majority of patients, some 300 in total, to safe areas of the hospital to determine who could be discharged and to transfer others, including ICU patients, to already stretched health facilities across Santiago. It remains unclear the exact trigger for the fire that started in the boiler room; an investigation is ongoing. The initial report indicated an electrical fault. What is certain is that with years of financial neglect, insufficient maintenance and obsolete equipment, such incidents are bound to happen. This is the conclusion that millions in the country have drawn. A video has gone viral of an angry San Borja worker confronting the Health Minister Enrique Paris while he was giving a press conference in the vicinity. “You have done nothing! You come for the TV and for the photo op, nothing else,” he said as he was moved along. Film of four hospitals being inundated with rainwater only 24 hours later also went viral. The worst hit was the El Pino Hospital, located in the San Bernardo district. A hospital communiqué stated that the “facility suffered several incidents in its installations. For the most part, these are minor leaks and filtrations. But around 4:00 p.m. there was a major incident in the Maternal Emergency Service (where) the false ceiling broke due to the accumulated water that exceeded the capacity of the rainwater filtration systems.”
Europe’s Economy Falls Further Behind U.S. and China. ‘It’s Getting Desperate.’ – WSJ -- The eurozone’s economy is diverging sharply from the U.S. and China, as stubbornly high coronavirus infections, extensive Covid-19 restrictions and a painfully slow vaccine rollout delay Europe’s recovery from last year’s historic economic downturn. Fresh data Tuesday highlighted an economic gap between the eurozone and the U.S. and China that is likely to widen this year, given that the U.S. is proceeding more quickly than the European Union in rolling out vaccines and China remains largely free of the virus. The eurozone’s gross domestic product contracted by 0.7% in the three months through December from the previous quarter, resulting in an annual decline of 6.8% for the bloc in 2020, the EU’s statistics agency said on Tuesday. That compares with a 3.5% decline for the U.S. economy last year, supported by a strong rebound in the fourth quarter. China’s economy grew by around 2.3% last year. Since the start of the pandemic, European policy makers have sought to balance saving lives and supporting businesses, but have generally pursued more draconian restrictions to stop the virus’s spread than has the U.S. Nonetheless, the death toll in Europe is approaching that of U.S., while its economic performance—already lagging behind the U.S. before the pandemic—has been much worse than other advanced economies. Now, a sluggish rollout of vaccines, the threat of highly contagious new variants of the virus and the possibility of weeks or months of continued restrictions bode ill for the near term and could delay a recovery. EU countries have administered vaccines to less than 3% of their populations compared with 9% in the U.S. and 14% in the U.K., according to OurWorldInData. Many economists expect the eurozone to re-enter recession in the coming months. “The eurozone will be the last major economy to return to pre-pandemic levels and will suffer continued substantial output gaps for at least the next two years,” said Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit. The International Monetary Fund expects the eurozone economy to end this year 3.3 percentage points smaller than it was at the start of 2020, while the U.S. economy will be 1.5% larger. At the current pace, the U.K. should have administered at least one dose of vaccine to 60% of its population by June, and the U.S. could follow by October, according to Berenberg Bank. France and Spain won’t reach that threshold until summer 2022, and Germany and Italy will take until 2023, the bank said. At Lindner Hotels AG, a German family-owned company, up to 90% of staff have been on furlough since November, with some furloughed for the past 10 months, said Chief Executive Otto Lindner. The company’s revenue declined by roughly two-thirds last year. “The second lockdown is much more brutal than the first. It’s getting desperate,” Mr. Lindner said.
As COVID Rages, Bankruptcy Cases Fall…..For Now - Bankruptcies have fallen sharply in OECD economies because of the array of COVID-related support available to businesses, as well as imposed moratoria on bankruptcy filings. This column argue that this situation won’t last, and that governments should start planning for a surge by the end of 2021 – ideally by reforming their bankruptcy laws, as the UK has done, and lessening the burden on courts.
Commerzbank cuts 10,000 jobs in Germany, with union support - Commerzbank’s share price jumped 6 percent when CEO Manfred Knof announced last week that 10,000 full-time jobs would be cut and 340 of the bank’s 790 branches would be closed. The jobs massacre is the price Commerzbank staff are expected to pay for the bank to achieve a return on equity of about 7 percent by the end of 2023 through cost savings of €1.4 billion. Anyone who thought this would provoke an outcry from the trade union Verdi has been taught better. “We can largely support this strategy because it is correct in terms of the target picture,” Verdi representative Stefan Wittmann told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. His only objection was that “the timeline for staff reductions until the end of 2023 provided for in the new strategy is far too short.” The supervisory board is to vote on the new plans this week. It is already becoming apparent that the job cuts will be approved there—perhaps in a somewhat longer time frame. The trade union and its representatives on the supervisory board have already proven to be reliable co-managers of the financial institution in the past, to the delight of the shareholders. The chairman of the General and Group Works Council, Uwe Tschäge, who is also deputy chairman of the Supervisory Board, told finance daily Handelsblatt at the time that he was not opposed to the job cuts if they were “socially accommodated.” “There must be no compulsory redundancies, we will fight for that,” Tschäge said. He added that Commerzbank must choose a “reasonable period of time” and provide enough money for partial retirement models and similar devices. He wanted to be able to understand why and where management was cutting jobs. He expected support from the federal government as a major shareholder to ensure that employees were “dealt with decently.” What was important to him, Tschäge said, was “that the bank is in a stable position even after restructuring and that it can continue to develop.” In other words, that it makes more profit again! No wonder business magazine Capital then proposed Tschäge as interim head of the supervisory board. It reassured shareholders, “That a works council representative—in this case, by the way, a trained banker—heads the supervisory board may frighten arch-capitalists, but there are examples of this working smoothly.”
Swiss march in lakeside tax haven to protest COVID-19 lockdown (Reuters) - Some 500 protesters marched through the Swiss tax haven of Zug on Saturday, wearing white protective suits and chanting dystopian slogans to voice displeasure with rules aimed at limiting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The demonstration was reminiscent of a rally a week ago in Vienna, where thousands opposed to that country’s even-stricter lockdown faced off against police. Though Switzerland’s restrictions have been less severe than those in Germany, Austria or Italy -- restaurants and non-essential shops are closed but ski areas are open -- there is still a steady buzz of opposition. In Zug, police watched but did not intervene as a group of protesters filed from the train station to the centre of the lakeside city known for shell companies with letter-box addresses and attractive tax rates. Marchers wore placards that read “Wearing a mask is modern slavery”. A loudspeaker droned, “Closeness is dangerous” and “Denounce those you love”. “I want to make a statement, that the citizens are the ones who are in control, and the state should be there to serve its citizens,” one man said, without giving his name. A woman said she was there for the next generation.
Alcohol deaths hit record high during Covid pandemic – BBC - Deaths caused by alcohol hit a new high during the first nine months of 2020, provisional figures for England and Wales show. Between January and September, 5,460 deaths were registered with this cause - up 16% on the same months in 2019. It is the biggest toll recorded since records began in 2001. The high rates spanned the period during and after the first Covid lockdown, the Office for National Statistics figures show. It reached a peak of 12.8 deaths per 100,000 people in the first three months of 2020 and remained at this level through to September - higher than in any other time on record. As in past years, rates of male alcohol-specific deaths were twice those seen for women. Experts say the coronavirus pandemic will have had little effect on how the data was gathered and recorded. But it is not clear how much it may have contributed to the deaths. ONS spokesman Ben Humberstone said: "Today's data shows that in the first three quarters of 2020, alcohol-specific deaths in England and Wales reached the highest level since the beginning of our data series, with April to September, during and after the first lockdown, seeing higher rates compared to the same period in previous years." "The reasons for this are complex and it will take time before the impact the pandemic has had on alcohol-specific deaths is fully understood."
15,000 students involved in rent strikes in 55 UK universities - UK students are engaged in the largest rent strike in decades, in protest against their mistreatment and exploitation throughout the pandemic. There are currently strikes ongoing in at least 55 universities, with over 15,000 students nationwide now signed up to withhold their next rent payment and new rent strikes starting almost daily. The strike wave began last term, after the Conservative government encouraged students to travel from all over the country, and the world, to gather in universities, as part of its criminal programme of reopening all education settings and the economy. Inevitably, huge outbreaks of COVID-19 ripped through campuses, forcing thousands of students to self-isolate.More and more universities had to switch to fully online learning. However, this was done on an ad-hoc basis, resulting in a significant deterioration in the quality of education, which was plagued by issues such as Wi-Fi problems, lack of equipment to attend online classes and lack of contact with lecturers. Students organise rent strike at University of Manchester. The banner on the Owens Park Tower reads "Put Students and Staff before Profit" (Credit: Twitter/@rentstrikeUofM and tke.media)University administrations also failed to provide adequate mental health or quarantine support, with reports of some students going hungry as they were not allowed to leave their accommodation and were only provided one meagre meal a day. Several universities took the confinement of their students as an opportunity for profiteering, charging those self-isolating extortionate amounts for low-quality food packages.The contempt with which students were treated was summed up at the University of Manchester, where metal fencing was erected around student residences in the middle of the night and a student occupation was met with a mob-handed police response.Rent strikes at dozens of universities began to swell, as students refused to pay full accommodation fees for such reduced services and abusive treatment. Actions at Bristol University and the University of Manchester won rent rebates of 30 percent, in Manchester’s case for the whole first term, inspiring strike plans at dozens of other universities.Most groups have a similar set of demands, including a reduction in rent of between 30 and 50 percent, no repercussions for rent strikers, and better wellbeing and mental health support plans for students. Many rent strike movements have established links of solidarity between staff and students, demanding a no-redundancies policy for all staff and PhD students.
UK universities step up jobs cull in collaboration with the trade unions -- As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened last March, the University and College Union (UCU) fell in line behind the government and employers’ insistence that “we are all in it together”. Its negotiators in the pensions and pay dispute, the largest UK university strike in history, put an offer on the table which they admitted “fall[s] short of our original demands” and pledged, “[w]e won’t escalate our disputes during the pandemic—but we won’t abandon them either”. This spirit of generosity was not shared by the universities, who announced plans to make compulsory redundancies, or opened “voluntary” redundancy schemes with the blessing of the UCU, citing projections that income from the inflated fees paid by international students would fall due to deferred or declined offers. This expected fall failed to materialise, with UCAS figures released in September revealing that the number of students from outside the UK and EU starting a course in 2020 increased 9 percent on the previous year. However, between March and September, over 3,000 university staff were made redundant, according to information obtained by Edvoy. Even without the excuse of a fall in student numbers, university management continue to use the room to manoeuvre provided by the UCU to force through job losses and restructuring plans, in some cases after previous attempts had failed due to staff and student opposition. These major attacks mirror the mass job losses in the higher education sector which followed the 2008 financial crash, and the response of the UCU has been identical. It is happy for jobs to be lost, as long as it can contain the anger of workers by “negotiating” slightly improved terms and maintaining its position at management’s side. Last November, the WSWS reported on the hundreds of redundancies being planned at the universities across the UK. The response of the UCU to the attack on jobs, and the continued reopening of campuses during the pandemic, with many university staff classified as “critical workers”, has been to isolate each dispute and oppose calls for unified national action. The pattern for the UCU’s betrayals was the dispute at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, which was called off on the basis of a management commitment to make no compulsory redundancies. This was hailed by UCU Scotland President and Socialist Workers Party member Carlo Morelli as a “magnificent victory”—even as the Socialist Worker admitted “many workers at the university have come forward to take voluntary redundancy”. At the University of East London (UEL), where 441 staff have been notified they may be made redundant, 92 staff have already been affected by the restructuring, according to the Guardian. The majority of these are “voluntary”.
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