week ending Jan 28

Federal Reserve and the markets in standoff on rate hikes (AP) — Sooner or later, either Wall Street or the Federal Reserve has to blink. Nearly a year into the Fed’s drive to quash inflation by hiking interest rates at a blistering pace, investors still don’t seem to fully believe what the Fed warns is coming next: Higher rates through the end of the year, which could sharply raise unemployment and slow growth. Wall Street has a more sanguine view: With inflation cooling from painful highs, investors are betting that the Fed will stop hiking rates soon, pause for a bit and then start cutting rates toward the end of the year to combat what many on Wall Street expect will be a mild recession. That relatively optimistic view has helped propel the broad S&P 500 stock index up 4.4% so far this year. Yet a host of Fed speakers last week underscored a contrasting message: They expect to raise their benchmark rate above 5%, modestly above Wall Street’s forecast. Doing so would likely lead to even higher borrowing rates for consumers and businesses, from mortgages to auto loans to corporate credit. What’s more, some Fed officials reiterated they plan to peg rates at a higher level through the end of this year. The gap between the Fed’s projections and Wall Street’s expectations could have far-reaching consequences for Americans’ finances as well as for the economy. For investors, rate cuts serve almost like hits of steroids. They make borrowing less expensive, and they typically juice prices for everything from stocks to bonds to cryptocurrencies. That’s why investors are so hungry to sniff out when the next rate cut could occur, hoping to get in ahead of it and derive the most benefit from the resulting rise in the prices of stocks and other assets. If, on the other hand, the Fed follows through on its warnings of still-higher rates, the economy might not only tip into recession but could endure a deeper and longer one than would have occurred if it had followed the market’s path instead. Wall Street investors have taken encouragement from the widespread assumption among economists that when it meets next week, the Fed will raise its key rate by a smaller increment, just a quarter-point. That would mark a downshift from the half-point rate increase the Fed imposed in December and four consecutive three-quarter-point hikes before that.

The Fed should raise rates by more than markets anticipate in February as inflation will likely be sticky through mid-year, Mohamed El-Erian says -- The Federal Reserve should opt for delivering a larger rate hike than markets are expecting at the start of 2023 because inflation may halt its downward trend in the coming months, said economist Mohamed El-Erian. "I would go personally for 50 [basis points], and that's because I think inflation is going to get sticky in mid-year at around 4%," said El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, to Bloomberg in an interview broadcast on Friday. "I'd rather get the tightening out of the way now than when the economy weakens, but it's tough. It's a personal judgment. I'd go for 50." Investors are largely looking for the Federal Open Market Committee to raise the Fed funds rate by 25 basis points on February 1. The CME FedWatch tool on Monday showed a 99.8% probability of a rate increase of a quarter-percentage point at the first meeting of 2023. The Fed in December downshifted its pace of rate hikes to 50 basis points from 75 basis points after economic data showed inflation easing from multiyear highs. The Fed funds rate currently stands at 4.25%-4.5%. El-Erian said there are arguments both for and against the Fed moving to 25 basis points, making the February meeting a "tricky one" for policymakers led by Chairman Jerome Powell. "If you want to go to the 25 camp, you look at the retail sales numbers, you look at the [yield] curve inversion. The 50, you look at the labor market, and there are downside risks to both." El-Erian said the Federal Reserve is still facing a credibility issue as the market's pricing is at odds with the Fed's larger message that it still has plenty of work to do to get inflation to its 2% target. The Consumer Price Index was up 6.5% year over year in December, down from November's 7.1% rate. But core prices rose by more than expected as shelter costs for homeowners and renters increased. "The ultimate destination itself is a variable," in terms of how high the Fed will raise its benchmark borrowing rates, the economist said. He also said he doesn't think it's a good idea for the Fed to take a higher-for-longer approach in fighting inflation. "If you look at the two-sided widths of that approach, I think it tails too much on the downside," said El-Erian, who also serves as president of Queens' College at the University of Cambridge.

U.S. inflation roller coaster prompts fresh look at long-ignored money supply (Reuters) - The amount of money sloshing around the U.S. economy shrank last year for the first time on record, a development that some economists believe bolsters the case for U.S. inflation pressures continuing to abate.The Federal Reserve's main measure of the nation’s money stock - known as M2 money supply - slid for a fifth straight month in December, dropping by a record $147.4 billion to a seasonally adjusted $21.2 trillion from the month before, data from the U.S. central bank released this week showed.From a year earlier, the volume of cash, coins, checking and savings deposits, other small time deposits and cash parked in money market funds fell by nearly $300 billion and has fallen by more than $530 billion since last March when the Fed kicked off its aggressive - and ongoing - process to drain liquidity from the economy to combat high inflation.M2 took off in March 2020 as the Fed slashed rates and started buying trillions of dollars in bonds to help support the economy as the coronavirus pandemic started, ultimately mushrooming by $6.3 trillion - a 40% increase - from its level right before the start of the crisis.The recent decline in the money supply comes as the Fed has been aggressively raising rates to push inflation back to its 2% target. Since last June, it has also cut its holdings of Treasury and mortgage bonds by $400 billion to roughly $8.5 trillion to augment that process, further stripping the economy of financial liquidity.Money-supply purists have long argued that the country's ever-growing stock of money was an inflation powder keg. It's an argument that lost credibility with policymakers in the record-long economic expansion before the pandemic when M2 rose by more than 80% but inflation never rose sustainably above the Fed's 2% target and spent much of that decade notably below it.That dynamic changed in the last two years, though, with money supply trends moving in roughly the same direction as inflation pressures: As money supply rose rapidly into early 2022, so did inflation; since M2 started a persistent decline last summer, inflation pressures have also receded.M2 “exploded during the pandemic, and correctly predicted that we would get inflation,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard, an early proponent of policy tightening, said earlier this month. “Inflation is certainly a monetary phenomenon” and “when you get a huge movement in money, then you do get the movement in inflation,” as was seen in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.To be sure, measuring money supply is complicated, with no one way to do it. The Fed itself has altered its approach, scrapping the publication of an even broader measure, called M3, in 2006.Bullard, acknowledging the cooling off of money supply, said this downshift in money "bodes well for disinflation," which means the Fed is likely to face an enduring trend of lower price pressures.A paper published this month by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University said that economists and policymakers would do well to keep an eye on money supply measures in the future."Money has all but disappeared from monetary policy analysis" given the economics profession's emphasis on the view monetary policy works by managing expectations about the future path of interest rates, wrote Joshua Hendrickson of the University of Mississippi. Given money supply's better-than-expected track record on recent inflation issues, ignoring these numbers has been "misguided," he said.Economists, meanwhile, are still taking on board whether money supply is something they need to pay greater mind to as they contemplate monetary policy and inflation.

Debt-limit fight risks early end to Fed quantitative tightening --The Federal Reserve's quantitative-tightening program risks being propelled toward an early end as U.S. politicians bicker in Washington over raising the national debt limit, according to some economists and bond market participants. By shrinking its bond portfolio by up to $95 billion a month, the central bank is draining liquidity from the US financial system — complementing its interest rate hikes in the battle to control inflation. An early end to QT could therefore provide the U.S. economy with some relief. Through a complex series of reactions, constraints imposed on the Treasury Department by the debt limit could end up amplifying some of the impact of QT later this year. Commercial bank reserves parked at the Fed form a part of the U.S. financial bedrock, and when the Fed's first foray with QT caused them to shrink in 2018 and 2019, stocks saw declines and money markets seized up. Dynamics caused by the debt limit could have the effect of a more rapid shrinking of reserves later this year — potentially bringing forward the end of QT, even if the U.S. avoids a default. "It's a complicating factor — because we just don't know how all these things are going to net out against each other," said Blake Gwinn, head of U.S. rates strategy at RBC Capital Markets. "There's really two major sources of uncertainty around this process. We don't know what the right level of reserves is," nor how long it will take to get there, he said. And the debt limit "adds uncertainty around the pace at which we're getting to that end level." It all makes for a big change from just weeks ago, when the Fed concluded that its bond-portfolio runoff was "proceeding smoothly," according to minutes of the December policy meeting. That runoff process can shrink liquidity via two major channels: bank reserves and the so-called reverse repurchase facility, or RRP, which serves as a parking place for money market funds. It can make a difference which one shrinks, because reserves are viewed by economists as having a more powerful role in supporting credit in the economy. When the Treasury draws down its cash pile and has to start restraining its sales of government securities later this year, there will be less Treasury-bill supply for money market funds. That means they'll likely need to park more in the reverse-repo facility. What could then happen is that the other channel affected by Fed QT — bank reserves — end up shrinking faster.

Blowout Demand In Record-Breaking 5Y Auction As Bond Market Laughs At Higher For Longer -- After yesterday's blowout 2Y auction which printed barely above 4%, and showed just how little faith the bond market has in Powell's "higher for longer", moments ago we got an even more impressive 5Y auction which not only showed relentless buyside demand but blew away several records.Printing at a high yield of 3.530%, this was not only the 5th consecutively lower 5Y yield, and some 70bps below the September high of 4.228%, but it was a whopping 44bps below December's high yield of 3.973% and also stopped through the When Issued 3.554% by a whopping 2.4bps, which was the second highest stop through on record going back to Jan 2016 (only Oct 21's 2.5bps was bigger).The bid to cover was likewise stellar, surging to 2.64 from 2.46 last month, which was not only far above the recent average of 2.39 but was the highest since Aug 2020.Finally, it was the internals that were truly outstanding with both Indirects and Dealers setting new records: specifically, the Indirect award was a blowout 75.74%, up from 64.51% last month and the highest, well, on record, while Dealers tumbled by 50% from 16.9% to just 8.8%, which was also the lowest on record.

Index of leading indicators says recession almost certain; so what of the coincident indicators? - This week is one of those where almost all of the important data is crammed into one day - in this case, Thursday, when Q4 GDP, initial claims, real manufacturng and trade sales, durable goods orders, and new home sales will be reported all at once. In the meantime, you may have heard that yesterday the Index of Leading Indicators declined again, by -1.0%. This marks the 9th straight decline in the index, which is now 5% below its recent peak (via Advisor Perspectives):The index has *never* declined this much without a recession having occurred. In fact, its current decline is almost as much as, or even more than, 3 recessions in the past 60+ years (1960, 1970, 1982) and nearly 50% as deep as the maximum declines in 3 others (1980, 1990, 2001). So, if the leading indicators are down sharply, what is the current status of the “big 4” monthly coincident indicators that the NBER has indicated it pays the most attention to? Here they are, each normed to 100 as of their respective most recent peaks: Three of the four - industrial production, real sales, and real personal income - made troughs in June. Industrial production has since rolled over, but the other two have continued to rise since that time. This tells us that the price of gas has played an important role in their levels, and especially in real sales and real income. Since gas prices continued to decline in November and December, that will give them another boost: Even so, that is probably not going to be enough to save real sales for November, which will be updated on Thursday. We already know that real retail sales declined that month, and nominally, so did both manufacturing and wholesale sales as well, as shown in total (nominal) business sales: Nominally total sales declined -0.8% in November. It is unlikely that the inflation adjustment will be enough to reverse that sign. If so, that will be the 2nd of the 4 metrics to have rolled over.

BEA: Real GDP increased at 2.9% Annualized Rate in Q4 - From the BEA: Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate) Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 3.2 percent. ... The increase in real GDP reflected increases in private inventory investment, consumer spending, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by decreases in residential fixed investment and exports. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased. The increase in private inventory investment was led by manufacturing (mainly petroleum and coal products as well as chemicals) as well as mining, utilities, and construction industries (led by utilities). The increase in consumer spending reflected increases in both services and goods. Within services, the increase was led by health care, housing and utilities, and "other" services (notably, personal care services). Within goods, the leading contributor was motor vehicles and parts. Within federal government spending, the increase was led by nondefense spending. The increase in state and local government spending primarily reflected an increase in compensation of state and local government employees. Within nonresidential fixed investment, an increase in intellectual property products was partly offset by a decrease in equipment. Within residential fixed investment, the leading contributors to the decrease were new single-family construction as well as brokers' commissions. Within exports, a decrease in goods (led by nondurable goods excluding petroleum) was partly offset by an increase in services (led by travel as well as transport). Within imports, the decrease primarily reflected a decrease in goods (led by durable consumer goods). Compared to the third quarter, the deceleration in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected a downturn in exports and decelerations in nonresidential fixed investment, state and local government spending, and consumer spending. These movements were partly offset by an upturn in private inventory investment, an acceleration in federal government spending, and a smaller decrease in residential fixed investment. Imports decreased less in the fourth quarter than in the third quarter. PCE increased at a 2.1% rate, and residential investment decreased at a 26.7% rate. The advance Q4 GDP report, with 2.9% annualized increase, was above expectations.

Fed hasn’t stopped GDP from growing by James_Hamilton – see graphs - The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP grew at a 2.9% annual rate in the third quarter. That makes two quarters in a row with values close to the historical average, a welcome relief from the modestly negative growth rates with which we started last year.Real GDP growth at an annual rate, 1947:Q2-2022:Q4, with the historical average (3.1%) in blue. Calculated as 400 times the difference in the natural log of GDP from the previous quarter. The new data caused the Econbrowser recession indicator index to ease down to 8.3%, undoing the caution signal from the two previous quarters. This is an assessment of the situation of the economy in the previous quarter (namely 2022:Q3). Although some observers thought the U.S. might have entered a recession last year, the facts didn’t end up supporting their pessimism. GDP-based recession indicator index. The plotted value for each date is based solely on the GDP numbers that were publicly available as of one quarter after the indicated date, with 2022:Q3 the last date shown on the graph. Shaded regions represent the NBER’s dates for recessions, which dates were not used in any way in constructing the index.Notwithstanding, all is not well with the housing sector, which is ground zero for the Fed’s war on inflation. Drops in construction of new homes subtracted an average of 1.2% from the annual GDP growth rate over each of the last three quarters. The Fed’s hikes in interest rates are defintely holding back growth. The yield curve says the market is betting on one or two additional modest hikes from the Fed, but by the end of the year it will have reversed course and be bringing rates down.

Economy grows, even as U.S. braces for recession - The U.S. economy expanded at a 2.9 percent annualized rate in the fourth quarter of last year, once again defying predictions of a dramatic slowdown as consumers kept spending and companies continued hiring. For the year, the GDP grew at a 2.1 percent pace, shaking off negative growth in the first half of the year even in the face of rapid interest rate hikes by a Federal reserve bent on stomping out 40-year-high inflation, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. But the coming year is peppered with potential landmines that could reshape the 2024 election, with most CEOs and Wall Street economists expecting a recession to hit later this year, triggered by the highest borrowing costs in decades. The Fed raised interest rates seven times last year to above 4 percent from near-zero levels during the pandemic. Inflation cooled but remains elevated. And the economy still managed to stay afloat. But while the numbers look stronger than expected from many forecasts of a year ago, the year ahead is still going to be rocky as the full impact of the Fed’s rate hikes are felt and with Fed Chair Jerome Powell vowing to do whatever it takes to curb inflation. White House officials said the report was evidence that Biden’s economic plan is working. “President Biden’s first two years of economic growth were the strongest first two years of any President since President Clinton,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Emilie Simons tweeted. Republicans took a different view. Republican National Committee rapid response director Tommy Pigott said in a statement that it was “absurd” to brag about an economy that still features elevated inflation. A single, preliminary GDP estimate is not going to significantly change the central bank’s approach as it attempts a rarely executed “soft landing” for the economy in which a volley of rate hikes — in this case historically large and fast ones — snuff out inflation without tripping the economy into a painful recession. While strong on the headline figure, the details of the report confirm much of what other numbers are telling the Fed: Residential fixed investment dropped as the rate hikes hammer the mortgage market and exports took a hit from the rising dollar. Consumer spending, which accounts for nearly 70 percent of GDP, rose 2.1 percent in the fourth quarter, decelerating from the 2.3 percent rise in the third. But while inflation remains high, improved supply chains, lower oil prices and the Fed’s hikes have the consumer price trend clearly moving downward as new data to be released tomorrow is likely to show. The GDP report also showed a downturn in inflation with the price index for gross domestic purchases declining to a 3.2 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter from 4.8 percent in the third quarter.

GDP Q4 2022: U.S. GDP rose 2.9% in the fourth quarter, more than expected even as recession fears loom -The U.S. economy finished 2022 in solid shape even as questions persist over whether growth will turn negative in the year ahead. Fourth-quarter gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services produced for the October-to-December period, rose at a 2.9% annualized pace, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected a reading of 2.8%. The growth rate was slightly slower than the 3.2% pace in the third quarter. Consumer spending, which accounts for about 68% of GDP, increased 2.1% for the period, down slightly from 2.3% in the previous period but still positive. Inflation readings moved considerably lower to end the year after hitting 41-year highs in the summer. The personal consumption expenditures price index increased 3.2%, in line with expectations but down sharply from 4.8% in the third quarter. Excluding food and energy, the chain-weighted index rose 3.9%, down from 4.7%. While the inflation numbers indicated price increases are receding, they remain well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. Along with the boost from consumers, increases in private inventory investment, government spending and nonresidential fixed investment helped lift the GDP number. A 26.7% plunge in residential fixed investment, reflecting a sharp slide in housing, served as a drag on the growth number, as did a 1.3% decline in exports. The housing drop subtracted about 1.3 percentage points from the headline GDP number. Federal government spending rose 6.2%, due largely to an 11.2% surge on nondefense outlays, while state and local expenditures were up 2.3%. Government spending in total added 0.64 percentage points to GDP. Inventory increases also played a significant role, adding nearly 1.5 percentage points. "The mix of growth was discouraging, and the monthly data suggest the economy lost momentum as the fourth quarter went on," wrote Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics. "We still expect the lagged impact of the surge in interest rates to push the economy into a mild recession in the first half of this year." Following a 2021 that saw GDP rise at its strongest pace since 1984, the first two quarters of 2022 started off with negative growth, matching a commonly held definition of a recession. However, a resilient consumer and strong labor market helped growth turn positive in the final two quarters and gave hope for 2023. "Just as the economy wasn't as weak in the first half of 2022 as GDP reports suggested, it's also not as strong as the Q4 GDP release would indicate," said Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors. "Held aloft by resilient consumer spending, the economy expanded at a solid pace late last year, but remains vulnerable to a more pronounced slowdown in the coming quarters."

No Landing Yet: Consumers Refuse to Give Up, Government Spending Jumps, Inventories Rise toward Trend, Trade Deficit Less Horrible by Wolf Richter - GDP, not adjusted for inflation and expressed in today’s dollars (“nominal” GDP), jumped by a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.5% in Q4, from Q3, to $26.1 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today.GDP, adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2012 dollars, rose by a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.9% in Q4 from Q3, after the 3.2% gain in the third quarter, and after two quarters of declines in the first half. The drop in Q1 had largely been caused by the “freak event,” as I called it, of the exploding trade deficit that has now been more than unwound (the chart is cropped at +9% and at -9% to cut off the 30% swings in 2020):The increase in Q4 inflation-adjusted GDP was driven by:

• Consumer spending. Americans just refuse to give up. They got big wage increases and many were still flush with money, and they managed to outspend inflation, no problem.
• Improvement of the trade deficit to less horrible levels.
• Government investment and consumption.
• Investment in private inventories, which are reverting to trend, after the shortages.

A big negative was residential fixed investment, which continued to plunge. Investment in fixed equipment also fell.“Real” GDP, adjusted for inflation by expressing it in 2012 dollars, rose to a record seasonally adjusted annual rate of $20.02 trillion: Annual “real” GDP growth in 2022, at 2.1%, was right in line with the average before the pandemic: Consumer spending on goods and services, adjusted for inflation, grew by an annual rate of 2.1% in Q4, roughly the same pace of growth as in the prior two quarters. Spending on goods and services, both, increased. The share of consumer spending as a percent of GDP, at 70.6%, was still above the pre-pandemic range of 68% to 69%, as other parts of the economy, particularly the trade deficit – in part caused by consumer spending on goods – haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Government consumption and investment rose by 3.7% (adjusted for inflation and annualized), the second quarter in a row of increases, after five quarters in a row of declines. Federal government: +6.2%, second quarter in a row of increases, after five quarters in a row of declines:

A Few Comments on Q4 GDP and Investment -- Note: The first two graphs - Investment Contributions and Residential Investment as a percent of GDP - are useful in predicting Fed induced recessions. RI as a percent of GDP usually turns down well in advance of a recession. This is something I'm watching. Earlier from the BEA: Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate):Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 3.2 percent. ... The increase in real GDP reflected increases in private inventory investment, consumer spending, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by decreases in residential fixed investment and exports. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased. The advance Q4 GDP report, at 2.9% annualized, was above expectations, partly due to a positive impact from an increase in inventories. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased at a 2.1% annualized rate in Q4. The graph below shows the contribution to GDP from residential investment, equipment and software, and nonresidential structures (3 quarter trailing average). This is important to follow because residential investment tends to lead the economy, equipment and software is generally coincident, and nonresidential structure investment trails the economy. In the graph, red is residential, green is equipment and software, and blue is investment in non-residential structures. So, the usual pattern - both into and out of recessions is - red, green, blue. Of course - with the sudden economic stop due to COVID-19 - the usual pattern didn't apply. The dashed gray line is the contribution from the change in private inventories. . Residential investment (RI) decreased at a 26.7% annual rate in Q4. Equipment investment decreased at a 3.7% annual rate, and investment in non-residential structures increased at a 0.4% annual rate. The contribution to Q4 GDP from investment in private inventories was 1.46 percentage points. On a 3-quarter trailing average basis, RI (red) is down, equipment (green) is up, and nonresidential structures (blue) is still down. I'll post more on the components of non-residential investment once the supplemental data is released. The second graph shows residential investment as a percent of GDP. Residential Investment as a percent of GDP decreased in Q4. I'll break down Residential Investment into components after the GDP details are released. Note: Residential investment (RI) includes new single-family structures, multifamily structures, home improvement, broker's commissions, and a few minor categories. The third graph shows non-residential investment in structures, equipment and "intellectual property products". Investment in non-residential structures increased slightly in Q4 as a percent GDP.

GDP report reveals ominous Great Depression warning sign not seen since 1932 --The latest numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that the U.S. economy grew by 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, and 2.1 percent for 2022. While the White House was quick to take credit for the state of the nation’s economy, they might want to think twice. This latest report should have alarm bells ringing, not trumpets sounding. That’s because economic growth is slowing down. Even the areas which contributed positively to gross domestic product (GDP) are not necessarily signs of prosperity. For example, business investment grew at only 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter, but that was almost entirely inventory growth. Nonresidential investment, a key driver of future economic growth, was up just 0.7 percent. Meanwhile, residential investment fell off a cliff, dropping 26.7 percent as consumers were unable to afford the combination of high home prices, high interest rates and falling real incomes. No wonder homeownership affordability has fallen to the lowest level in that metric’s history. But the growth in inventories, which accounted for half the GDP growth in the fourth quarter, is not a good sign, either. It is the result of businesses being unable to sell off existing inventories at current prices. Liquidating that inventory at discounts will mean lower profits, a further drag on future growth.Another positive contributor to the GDP number was net exports, which is simply exports minus imports. But the gain here resulted from a slowdown in international trade — hardly a sign of wealth for Americans. Instead, imports are simply falling faster than exports, which shows up as an increase in GDP. The most troubling information in the GDP report is the precipitous drop in real disposable income, which fell over $1 trillion in 2022. For context, this is the second-largest percentage drop in real disposable income ever, behind only 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression.

U.S. lawmakers preparing plan to avert debt-ceiling crisis | (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is preparing a plan to defuse a looming crisis over the nation's debt ceiling by changing it from a fixed dollar amount a percentage of national economic output, the group's top Republican said on Sunday. The proposal would replace Washington's current federal debt ceiling - currently set at $31.4 trillion - with a rule that would instead limit debt to a share of national economic output, said U.S. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, the Republican co-chair of the moderate Problem Solvers Caucus. Fitzpatrick - appearing on Fox News Sunday with Democratic Problem Solvers co-chair Josh Gottheimer - said Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy will be taking the lead in negotiations with the White House over the debt ceiling. But he and Gottheimer were "putting meat" on the bones of their proposal to help avoid a crisis. "We're just going to offer up ... a possible bridge building solution," Fitzpatrick said. The U.S. government on Thursday came close to its statutory borrowing limit. The Treasury Department warned that its extraordinary cash management measures could only allow the government to pay all its bills through early June, at which point the nation could be at risk of failing to meet its obligations, including on its debt securities. House Republicans want to use that critical deadline to force spending cuts, while the White House has said there should be no negotiations over lifting the debt limit. Republicans' narrow House majority has given outsized influence to the party's most hardline voices.

Senate GOP to McCarthy: Debt fight is all yours - Senate Republicans are happy to leave the hard work on averting a cataclysmic debt default this year to the House’s new speaker. After Kevin McCarthy blasted last month’s Senate GOP leadership-backed $1.7 trillion spending plan, upper-chamber Republicans are sitting out the early days of what’s shaping up as a standoff between their House counterparts and President Joe Biden. A handful of Senate Republicans helped twice raise the debt ceiling in 2021, and four of those members said on Monday they have no intention of stepping into the breach this time. In other words, the Senate’s bipartisan gangs aren’t riding to the rescue on the debt ceiling — yet. “What matters is really what the House can create,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a frequent cross-aisle negotiator. “They’re in a position, they have the gavels. We have to see what sort of strategy they think works to a successful outcome.” After two years of bipartisan progress on issues Washington once only dreamed of tackling, from gun safety to infrastructure, the current dynamic means the Senate Republican minority is effectively handing the keys to McCarthy to cut a deal with Biden. Senate Democrats had hoped to clear a clean debt ceiling bill early this year to demonstrate to the House they could get a filibuster-proof majority well ahead of the impending spring deadline, but their Republican colleagues say that’s not happening right now. That’s in part because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants spent much of their political capital in December, aggressively moving to pass a government funding bill that had McCarthy complaining loudly and often. Many GOP senators feared that kicking the spending measure to this year could risk a shutdown. And now some Republicans doubt McConnell could muster the nine votes needed to break a filibuster on a debt limit increase, even if he wanted to. On Monday, all McConnell would say was: “We won’t default.” “I don’t think he could get it, personally, right now. I think he squeezed all that he could to get the omnibus done, as well as it went,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), referring to the spending bills passed late last year. Cramer added: “I don’t want to say hard feelings, but people feel the cost of that. And I don’t think they’re going to be ready to take another bullet, if you will.”

Manchin: White House not negotiating on debt ceiling is a mistake - Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) blasted the White House’s position to not negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling, saying on Sunday it is “a mistake” to not have talks over the borrowing limit. “I think it is a mistake,” Manchin said to CNN’s “State of the Union” host Dana Bash when asked if the White House’s decision to not negotiate with the GOP was correct. “We have to negotiate. This is a democracy. We have a two-party system.” Manchin has been one of the few Democratic voices calling for his party to negotiate with Republicans, as lawmakers face a looming deadline to find a solution for the debt ceiling. The U.S. reached its technical borrowing limit of around $31.4 trillion last week, but the Treasury Department said it will take measures to ensure the government can pay its bills until around June. Republicans have said they want guarantees of spending cuts from the White House and Democrats if they are to agree to any extension of the debt ceiling. White House officials have said they will not negotiate on that point and Democrats have urged for a swift raising of the debt limit. But Manchin has consistently called for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats on this issue, arguing against what he calls wasteful government spending. “We should be able to talk and find out where our differences are,” Manchin said on Sunday. He also said that cuts to Social Security and Medicare should be taken off the table, but said the government should look at other options to slash spending. “Look at ways that we have wasteful spending (and) that we can be held accountable and responsible,” Manchin said. “Every American has to live within a budget… shouldn’t the federal government have some guardrails?”

Yellen: GOP demand to link spending cuts to debt limit increase ‘very irresponsible’--Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an interview published Sunday that Republican calls for spending cuts in exchange for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling were “very irresponsible.” In an interview with the Associated Press published Sunday, Yellen called the GOP’s stance on the debt ceiling could have far-reaching consequences for the economy. “It is possible for markets to become quite concerned about whether or not the U.S. will pay its bills,” Yellen told the newswire. The Biden administration has warned that an extended standoff over the debt ceiling could destroy faith in the credit of the U.S. government and spur a deep economic recession. Republicans are using the debt ceiling as a point of leverage in an effort to freeze spending at 2022 levels, in a move that has raised particular concerns over potential cuts in defense spending. The White House has so far refused to negotiate, pointing to clean votes to raise the debt ceiling under the Trump administration. Yellen, who spoke to the AP while on a trip in Africa, said she has not yet spoken with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on the issue. “Congress needs to understand that this is about paying bills that have already been incurred by decisions with this and past Congresses and it’s not about new spending,” Yellen said. “But it can’t be negotiated over whether or not we’re going to pay our bills,” she added. The U.S. reached its technical borrowing limit of around $31.4 trillion last week, with the Treasury Department saying it will take measures to make sure that the government’s bills are fully paid until around June. The White House said on Friday that President Biden plans to meet with McCarthy in discussions on various topics. “Congress has to do it,” Yellen said of raising the debt ceiling. “It has to be done. It can’t be something that’s contingent on cuts.”

Debt default would make Lehman bankruptcy 'look like a walk in the park' — If Congress can't agree to a debt ceiling fix, Wall Street could face apocalyptic consequences. Banks and other financial firms benefit from the longstanding assumption that the United States will always pay its debts. Treasuries underpin the entire world's financial system because of that stability, and changing that assumption could create a far-reaching domino effect that touches everything from overnight repo transactions to home mortgage prices. The United States stared down the barrel of debt default during the Obama administration in 2011, but averted complete disaster with just days to spare. Still, the standoff hit markets, and led to a downgrade of U.S. debt by S&P Global, giving the financial world a taste of what could happen with this go-around. And the risk of brinkmanship leading to an actual default is substantially higher this time, experts agree. The conservative Republican holdouts who fought Rep. Ken McCarthy's bid to be House speaker have little consensus on what they want out of debt ceiling negotiations with President Biden and Democratic lawmakers, and it's unlikely that McCarthy has the political sway to keep them in line for a vote. Even Wall Street — which has become increasingly tolerant of Washington's antics since the near-crisis in 2011 — is beginning to take notice. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said last week that the creditworthiness of the United States should be "sacrosanct," and that questioning it "should never happen," while Goldman Sachs economists in a recent note said that the debt ceiling is "going to be a problem." "Most large financial institutions feel like they need to engage in contingency planning on the assumption that you can't really know if brinkmanship will be resolved this time around,"

Debt Ceiling Arm Wrestling Targets Ukraine Spending by Yves Smith -- The US again is going through its debt ceiling ritual, although there are a few variants on established themes. Rest assured, there will be no voluntary default. As a currency issuer, the US can only choose to default, and the debt ceiling device would be for Congress to be the part that chose to force a default. But Congresscritters personally and via their constituent have far too much at stake to send the the financial markets into a tailspin.However, a debt ceiling can and often has resulted in spending freezes called shutdowns, the longest of which occurred during the Trump Administration, in a staredown over his southern border wall. Trump eventually blinked and decided to declare a national emergency to bypass the need for Congressional approval.The important lesson from the Trump and past shutdowns is that voters don’t like them and the party perceived to be responsible usually takes an approval hit. So the real threat is triggering a shutdown, and that is enough to force horsetrading and some spending concessions.Recall that the Democrats have had opportunities to abolish the debt ceiling and haven’t. It would have gone almost unnoticed had it been included in the early Obama crisis response. Its opponents are correct when they say that the debt ceiling serves to prevent the Administration from spending money already authorized by Congress. And Twitter demonstrates how the two parties are in blame game mode. For instance:Sadly, the Democrat message seems to be “Republicans need to own up to Donald Trump profligacy” which still has the effect of perpetuating the Big Lie that government spending is bad. Government spending buys critically important things like bridges and in the old days paid for important social goods like substantial support to public schools. And before neoliberalism sold the myth that corporate spending is good and collective spending is bad, many countries practiced industrial policy. As yours truly has said, we now have industrial policy by default, with pet interest groups getting regulatory and tax breaks that enable them to extract rents. Favored sectors include the military-intelligence complex, real estate, higher education, and health care.For those who would like to circulate a short-form debunking of debt ceiling misconceptions, Jamie Galbraith has a fine new piece in The Nation that serves nicely. A representative section: The United States does not borrow in order to have funds to pay its obligations. It pays its obligations by check (or electronic transfer) as specified by law. It then issues bonds so that “investors across the globe” can save a safe US dollar-denominated asset, the Treasury bond, that pays interest, as cash and bank deposits do not. So the debt ceiling theatrics might not be a bad thing if they fostered more discussion of what national priorities should be. Instead they serve as a device for fiscal conservatives to have a second go at creating conditions to foster more overt or stealthy tax cuts. And Democrats go along because this charade gives them cover to cut politically extremely popular programs like Social Security and Medicare…so privatizers can profit.We have Janet Yellen in an unseemly manner acting as if the measures she has implemented to handle the US hitting its debt limit are “extraordinary” when in fact they are familiar and have been deployed by numerous times by her predecessors. Disappointingly, the business media, which ought to know better, has has taken up Yellen’s framing.

The Debt Ceiling Explained. Once More, With Feeling… Jamie Galbraith - It is in the nature of articles about the debt ceiling that no matter how often one tries to set the record straight, nothing ever gets through. Noting this after reading my most recent effort, a physicist friend chided me for using “facts and logic” against “what everyone knows.” This states the problem precisely. So here I go again, once more, with feeling. In The New York Times of January 17, 2023, Alan Rappeport offers an excellent account of what everyone knows. It is suitable for a technique I learned in high school in France, explication de texte. The method involves line-by-line quotation and analysis. Herewith:

The United States borrows huge sums of money by selling Treasury bonds to investors across the globe and uses those funds to pay existing financial obligations, including military salaries, safety net benefits and interest on the national debt.

No. The United States does not borrow in order to have funds to pay its obligations. It pays its obligations by check (or electronic transfer) as specified by law. It then issues bonds so that “investors across the globe” can save a safe US dollar-denominated asset, the Treasury bond, that pays interest, as cash and bank deposits do not. Cash and bank deposits are not “debt subject to limit” under the law. You can review a full list of what is subject to limit here. Cash and bank deposits are not on that list. It is possible to look these things up.

Because the United States runs budget deficits—meaning it spends more than it takes in through taxes and other revenue—it must borrow huge sums of money to pay its bills.

No, on several counts. First, a detail: Borrowing is revenue. It brings back money previously spent, which is the original (French) meaning of the word “revenu.” Since the United States government normally matches debt issue to deficits, revenue and spending normally match closely. But second, and more important, the United States government has no mechanical (or legal) need to “borrow…to pay its bills.” It may issue bonds, but it doesn’t have to. To repeat, the United States pays its bills by issuing checks as specified by law. What happens or doesn’t happen after that is a separate issue.

Yellen reports new debt-limit accounting maneuver to Congress --Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen advised Congress that her department is deploying an additional accounting maneuver to avert breaching the federal debt limit. Yellen said in a letter to bipartisan congressional leaders that the Treasury will be altering the investments in a third government-run fund for retirees, afterfter last week advising them of similar action for two others. The move was anticipated, as the Treasury chief had initially told Congress that all three funds would be involved in a Jan. 13 letter. Yellen didn't offer any update on how long the extraordinary measures can be used to avoid the Treasury running out of cash. Earlier this month, she said "it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June." Tuesday's notice involved the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan, which is a defined-contribution retirement fund. As with the other two funds, Yellen said that it would be "made whole" once the debt limit is increased or suspended. There are other measures still open to the Treasury. Ones used in the past to conserve headroom under the debt limit include suspending the daily reinvestment of securities held by the Exchange Stabilization Fund. That's a special vehicle that dates back to the 1930s, over which the Treasury secretary has wide discretion. The Treasury previously has also suspended issuance of state and local government series Treasuries. Those securities are a place where state and local governments can park cash, and they count toward the federal debt limit. Those governments need to invest in other assets when SLGS issuance is suspended.

House Republicans eye Social Security, Medicare in debt limit fight - House Republicans have started to weigh a series of legislative proposals targeting Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, part of a broader campaign to slash federal spending that could force the new majority to grapple with some of the most difficult and delicate issues in American politics.Only weeks after taking control of the chamber, GOP lawmakers under new Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have rallied around firm pledges for austerity, insisting their efforts can improve the nation’s fiscal health. They have signaled they are willing to leverage the fight over the debt ceiling — and the threat of a fiscal doomsday — to seek major policy concessions from the Biden administration.So far, the party has focused its attention on slimming down federal health care, education, science and labor programs, perhaps by billions of dollars. But some Republicans also have pitched a deeper examination of entitlements, which account for much of the government’s annual spending — and reflect some of the greatest looming fiscal challenges facing the United States.In recent days, a group of GOP lawmakers has called for the creation of special panels that might recommend changes to Social Security and Medicare, which face genuine solvency issues that could result in benefit cuts within the next decade. Others in the party have resurfaced more detailed plans to cut costs, including by raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, targeting younger Americans who have yet to obtain federal benefits.“We have no choice but to make hard decisions,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the leader of the Republican Study Committee, a bloc of more than 160 conservative lawmakers that endorsed raising the retirement age and other changes last year. “Everybody has to look at everything.”Any plan to rethink entitlements is likely to face steep opposition in the Democratic-led Senate and may never gain meaningful traction even among other Republicans in the House. Adding to the political challenge, former president Donald Trump waded into the debateFriday, warning his party publicly against cutting “a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.”

Senators eye Social Security reforms as some in House GOP consider cuts Some senators are eyeing a divided Congress as an opportunity to tackle reforms to Social Security, as the program faces significant solvency issues in little more than a decade. Changes to Social Security are a perpetually heavy lift for Congress, but they’ve gained traction as some House Republicans float cuts to it as part of debt ceiling negotiations. “A wise senator said that whenever you see reforms shore up those kinds of programs, it usually takes a divided Congress,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told The Hill this week. “So, maybe that historically bodes well for something that would make sure that Americans have a secure retirement system,” he added. Senate Republicans are generally leaving debt ceiling negotiations to the GOP-controlled House. But separately, there has been growing chatter from both parties in the upper chamber about potential ways to help protect Social Security, which some estimates say is on track to becoming insolvent in about 12 years. Reports surfaced last week that Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Angus King (I-Maine) are working toward a bipartisan compromise to help protect the program, unrelated to debt ceiling negotiations. Semafor, which broke the news, reported the effort could lead to an investment fund specifically to help shore up Social Security. The senators’ offices confirmed to The Hill last week that both Cassidy and King “have been working on a legislative solution,” but said the “plan is not finalized.”

Splits emerge as U.S. House Republicans demand Biden negotiate on debt limit - (Reuters) - Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives are divided over how hard a line to take on the debt ceiling, but were united on Wednesday in demanding that Democratic President Joe Biden agree to negotiate on spending as part of any deal. Hard-line Republican conservatives, who have the power to block any deal in the narrowly divided House, want to force deep spending cuts on Biden and the Democratic-led Senate in exchange for an agreement to avoid default on the $31.4 trillion debt. Some moderates want to tread more carefully and avoid any potential damage to the U.S. economy, but even they contend their party will not support a debt agreement without negotiations on spending. "I know we can't ask for the moon," said Representative Don Bacon, a moderate Republican whose Nebraska district Biden won by 6 percentage points in 2020. "But the president also can't refuse to negotiate. I mean, if he refuses to negotiate, you're not going to get any Republican support for anything," Bacon told Reuters. The federal government on Jan. 19 came close to its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit set by Congress, and the Treasury Department has warned that it may only be able to pay all the government's bills through early June, at which point the world's biggest economy could be at risk of failing to meet its obligations, including on its debt securities. Brinkmanship could panic investors, potentially sending markets slumping and shaking the global economy. A downgrade of the United States' debt could result -- as occurred in protracted 2011 debt-ceiling battle that also led to years of forced domestic and military spending cuts.Congress raised the debt limit three times during Republican Donald Trump's presidency. But Republicans are now seizing the issue as leverage in their first major act since winning a narrow 222-212 House majority. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Biden are expected to meet and discuss the debt ceiling among other issues. But no meeting has yet been scheduled. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated on Wednesday that Biden is open to hearing ideas on how to cut the debt, despite his opposition to debt ceiling negotiations.

Manchin meets with McCarthy on debt limit Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D) met with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) Wednesday to urge the House Republican leader to negotiate with President Biden on legislation to raise the debt limit, a sign the senior West Virginia senator could play a pivotal role in bipartisan talks. Manchin’s meeting with McCarthy comes at a time when other Democrats, including Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pa.), the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, say that Democrats should not negotiate over the debt limit. A source familiar with the meeting said Manchin encouraged McCarthy to negotiate with Biden to find a path forward that would avoid harming the American people. The source described the interaction as “a good meeting” and said “no commitments” were made. Manchin on Sunday called on the White House to negotiate with House Republicans over raising the debt limit, arguing it would be a “mistake” to expect Congress to authorize new federal borrowing authority without bipartisan talks. “We have to negotiate. This is the democracy that we have. We have a two-party system, if you will, and we should be able to talk and find out what our differences are,” Manchin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Manchin said he “respectfully” disagreed with Durbin and other Democrats who are urging their party leaders not to negotiate with Republicans on raising the debt limit, arguing that Congress has already approved the spending that would be covered by new borrowing authority. On The Money — Senators look toward Social Security reform Defense & National Security — Inside the decision to send Ukraine tanks “If you’ve been here more than 15 minutes, you know what’s going to happen. We’ll be lurching from one deadline to the next,” Durbin told reporters Monday, predicting a prolonged standoff over the debt limit will roil financial markets. “It will devastate the credibility of our economy, something that’s unacceptable.”

McCarthy: ‘We won’t touch Medicare or Social Security’ - Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Thursday that House Republicans will not target Medicare or Social Security in their negotiations over the debt ceiling. “We won’t touch Medicare or Social Security,” he told Donald Trump Jr. in an interview in the Speaker’s office for Trump’s “Triggered” podcast. The remark comes as some House Republicans have been eyeing entitlement programs as a potential target for trimming down federal spending, after vowing to tie an increase in the debt limit to spending cuts. Since the U.S. hit its debt ceiling last Thursday, Congress now faces a looming deadline to raise the debt limit and prevent the government from defaulting on its debt. The Treasury Department began employing “extraordinary measures” to prevent such a default, which is expected to give Congress until early June to address the issue. However, President Biden and congressional Democrats have so far refused to negotiate on the debt ceiling, instead calling for a clean increase and teeing up a potential showdown with Republicans. As divisions have emerged within the GOP over whether to target entitlement programs, former President Trump warned Republicans last week to look elsewhere for their spending cuts. “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree,” Trump said in a video statement posted to Truth Social.

McCarthy's moderate Republican allies have their own debt-ceiling ideas - Ultraconservatives in the House have dominated the public discussion on the U.S. debt ceiling, but Speaker Kevin McCarthy can't afford to ignore GOP centrists if the country is to avoid a catastrophic payments default later this year. Republican moderates are looking for bipartisan solutions to the debt-ceiling dilemma that would avoid the massive cuts to federal spending — including popular Social Security and Medicare programs — that some GOP members have demanded. Their ideas, which are more likely to gain traction with Senate Democrats and the White House than with conservatives, include indexing discretionary spending to inflation; tying the debt ceiling to the country's GDP; and small, across-the-board cuts to outlays. Discretionary spending excludes entitlement programs. Both parties are also working on long-term fixes to Social Security that could have significant implications in the debt-limit fight — if they can come to a resolution that can pass both chambers. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has said it's up to President Biden and McCarthy to avert a debt default. Any Senate bill addressing the debt ceiling that could get the requisite 60 votes in that Democratic-led chamber would almost certainly not win passage in the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. That leaves the House speaker, who made concessions to conservatives to be elected to the post, facing the challenge of corralling his factious party. "It's been made clear over the past week that House Republicans are going to have to be proactive and take the lead on debt-ceiling negotiations," Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota said at a press conference Wednesday. Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate Republican from Nebraska, wants to tie increases in discretionary spending to inflation. Defense spending, in particular, typically climbs much faster than consumer prices — to the consternation of liberal Democrats and fiscal conservatives.

Scott pushes plan to prioritize certain payments if debt limit bill stalls - Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) circulated a letter to Senate colleagues Thursday urging them to back his plan to ensure the federal government does not default on interest payments or payments to Social Security beneficiaries if Congress fails to raise the debt limit before the Treasury Department runs out of borrowing authority. Scott’s bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), is called the Full Faith and Credit Act and would require the Treasury Department to continue to pay the principal and interest on debt held by the public and ensure Social Security payments continue to old-age and disability beneficiaries. It would also prioritize payments to active members of the armed services and U.S. Coast Guard and compensation and pensions provided by the Veterans Affairs Department. Finally, it would also instruct the Treasury Department to prioritize Medicare payments. Their bill ensures that the Treasury Department will not run out of money to cover debt payments, Social Security payments and other stipulated obligations because it requires the Treasury secretary to notify Congress of any expected revenue shortfall and raise the debt limit by the amount necessary to cover those priorities on a two-week basis. Scott called the bill a “commonsense solution” that “protects entitlement programs, ensures our military members are taken care of and takes a default threat off the table by mandating interest payments on our debt.” The Florida senator said President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen “possess the full authority to prioritize debt payments and ensure that the full faith and credit of the United States is never in question.”

Yellen says raising debt limit is only solution to avoid fiscal crisis --Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the only solution to avoid a U.S. default crisis is for Congress to increase the federal debt limit, avoiding engaging with other proposed stopgap measures including short-term extensions or spending cuts."It's overly necessary for Congress to raise the debt limit, and I hope they do so in a timely way before we come to a crisis," she said in an interview Thursday. "I'm not going to comment on rumors about what they are or are not considering," she said, referring to a proposal mulled by House Republican leaders to push the federal debt ceiling until Sept. 30.Democrats and Republicans remain locked in a confrontation over the government's legal debt limit, with the stability of global financial markets and the U.S. economy hanging in the balance.Yellen has consistently rejected the idea that Democrats should compromise by allowing spending cuts that Republicans are demanding in return for lifting the ceiling. She's also dismissed arguments that the Treasury should prepare for technical steps that would minimize the impact of a default, or resort to gimmicks, like minting a $1 trillion coin.However, President Biden's administration may not have public opinion on its side. A recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll found 66% of respondents believed Republicans should only increase the ceiling after extracting constraints on future spending from Democrats.Yellen on Thursday — speaking with Bloomberg News while in Johannesburg, South Africa — said that the administration has held regular meetings on how to communicate its stance on the issue, but no coordinated public opinion push has yet been formulated.During the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis, the Obama administration considered prioritizing interest payments on debt over other obligations, which became public when transcripts of discussions at the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee on the plan were released five years later.The Treasury secretary, who was then Fed vice chair, said that plan was never agreed to. "We do talk about what kinds of things are feasible, but even there, if you look at the FOMC discussion of that, you have no guarantees that would work," she said.

Biden to blast House GOP over economic agenda amid debt ceiling feud - President Biden sharply rebuked House Republicans on Thursday for trying to slash seniors’ retirement benefits and hold hostage the nation’s finances, stressing that the new majority’s agenda — and its staunch demands for spending cuts — threatened to plunge the United States into an economic crisis. On a day when the administration received a burst of positive news, with the nation’s economic growth exceeding expectations last quarter, Biden took to a union facility in Springfield, Va., to highlight the political stakes: Pointing to the country’s recent turnaround, the president stressed a need to battle back GOP lawmakers “who are trying to destroy this progress.” “This nation has gone through too much. We’ve come too far to let that happen,” Biden said, promising to “veto everything” Republicans try to send to his desk. The president’s speech marked the latest in a series of escalating attacks on House Republicans, who assumed control of the chamber in January on a promise to serve as a bulwark against the administration. GOP lawmakers in turn blamed the president for what they see as reckless spending, arguing it has contributed to the country’s elevated prices for homes, groceries and other consumer goods. “Unless Congress can get a handle on its spending problem, the American people worry the economy will not deliver for them,” Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.), chairman of the tax-focused House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement Thursday. Citing rising interest rates and their financial consequences for Americans’ jobs and expenses, he added, “Americans have made clear that the status quo in Washington is unacceptable.” But the two parties’ ongoing war of words took on greater significance Thursday against the backdrop of an emerging political crisis: Congress must act as soon as this summer to raise the debt ceiling, which allows the government to borrow to pay its bills. Absent a resolution, the United States could experience a historic fiscal calamity, plunged potentially into another economic downturn not even three years after it recovered from the last one. In response, Biden on Thursday again called on Republicans to raise or suspend the borrowing cap, stressing he is unwilling to negotiate over one of the country’s most important fiscal obligations. But GOP lawmakers — seizing on the deadline as leverage in their search for billions of dollars in spending cuts — maintained instead that the president should come to the table and strike a deal. “I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip,” Biden said. “In the United States of America, we pay our debts.”

Biden: I won’t let GOP use debt ceiling as ‘bargaining chip’ - President Biden on Thursday called the prospect of the federal government defaulting on its debt “mind-boggling” but pushed back against Republican lawmakers seeking to leverage negotiations over raising the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts. “If Republicans want to work together on real solutions and continue to grow manufacturing jobs, build the strongest economy in the world and make sure Americans are paid a fair wage, I’m ready,” Biden said in remarks on the economy in Springfield, Va. “But I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip.” Biden’s comments come as the White House has staked out the position that it will not negotiate with Republicans over the debt limit. Administration officials believe the debt ceiling should be raised as part of a clean vote, without other conditions attached. Some Republicans have argued the government should agree to cuts or reforms to major programs in order to limit future spending as part of any agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Even some moderate Republicans have suggested Biden will have to come to the negotiating table to hammer out an agreement. “The very notion that we would default on the safest, most respected debt in the world is mind-boggling,” Biden said. “I’m not going to get into the reckless threats that take the economy hostage in order to force an agenda that’s going to only limit American workers and weaken us internationally. I won’t let that happen.” Biden placed much of the blame for the state of the debt on his predecessor, noting that roughly 25 percent of the current national debt total was accumulated during the Trump administration. The Biden administration has argued its spending bills are paid for and will ultimately cut the debt by nearly $2 trillion. But that amount is a drop in the bucket compared to the total debt, which is nearly $31 trillion. Congress must act to raise the debt limit in the coming months, or the U.S. will default. The debt limit allows the government to pay money it has already approved, not cover new spending. White House officials and economists have warned that failing to raise the debt limit could result in economic catastrophe, including job losses, a stock market decline and the loss of government services for veterans, seniors and other Americans.

US pledges to “go on the offensive” against Russia - On Friday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley gave a briefing at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they pledged the United States to the military defeat of Russia. Milley announced the commitment of the United States and NATO to “go on the offensive to liberate Russian-occupied Ukraine.” He repeated that Ukraine would use NATO armored vehicles and tanks to go on the “tactical and operational offensive to liberate the occupied areas.” With this declaration, the entire prestige of the NATO alliance has been staked on the reconquest of all Ukrainian territory, which, according to the United States, includes both the entire Donbas and the Crimean Peninsula. As the immense challenges posed by the new American strategy emerge in the coming months, and as the death toll among Ukrainian troops rises, the demand will inevitably be made for the direct deployment of NATO troops in the war. This would mean that American and Russian soldiers would be shooting at each other in the first general engagement between nuclear-armed states in history. Milley is an active-duty military officer, and Austin is a retired four-star general who was granted a special dispensation from Congress to serve in the civilian office of defense secretary. These two four-star generals were effectively setting the foreign policy of the United States in a sweeping display of the power of the military in American society. The explicit assertion by Milley and Austin that the weapons being provided by the US and NATO are of an offensive, not defensive, character is a 180-degree reversal of public statements by the Biden administration, which justified the escalation of US involvement in the war with the declaration that it would not provide “offensive” equipment. “The equipment that we’ve provided is defensive, as you know, not offensive. And we see that as being a difference,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said at a briefing in May. “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment,” Biden said that same month, “and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews, just understand—and don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say—that’s called ‘World War III.’”

U.S. closer to approving ‘significant number’ of Abrams tanks to Ukraine - The Biden administration is leaning toward sending “a significant number” of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, two U.S. officials said, and an announcement could come as early as this week.The development comes amid a public standoff with German officials, who are under pressure to send their own Leopard tanks and allow other European countries that operate the German-made vehicles to do so as well.On Tuesday, shortly after news broke of the possible U.S. move, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that German Leopards were heading to Ukraine. Last week, Scholz told U.S. lawmakers that Berlin would approve the transfer only if the U.S. donated its own tanks first.The transfer of U.S. and German tanks would mark a major development in the West’s effort to arm Ukraine. Top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have spent weeks pleading for tanks as Kyiv prepares for fresh Russian offensives in the country’s east.The vehicles would likely come through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, according to a third person familiar with the issue. The program allows Washington to finance the purchase of weapons and equipment for Ukraine, as opposed to pulling them from existing U.S. stockpiles.

U.S. poised to give Ukraine advanced M1 tanks - The Biden administration has decided to provide M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, overriding previous concerns that the heavy battle tanks, the world’s most powerful, are too logistically burdensome for Kyiv’s forces, according to U.S. officials.The decision, due to be announced Wednesday, comes after a rare dispute last week among Western allies over the provision of tanks made in Germany, which has been reluctant to allow its Leopard 2 main battle tanks to be transferred to Ukraine unless the United States first provides Abrams.The U.S. vehicles, probably numbering at least 30, are unlikely to arrive by spring, when Russian forces are expected to begin a new offensive and Ukraine plans to launch its own counteroffensive to take back Russian-occupied territory. Instead, the Abramses are “probably not for the near fight,” one U.S. official said, and are not likely to arrive for many months, if not years.Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, declined at a news briefing Tuesday to respond to queries about the tanks, saying “I have no announcements at this time.”“We want to make sure [the Ukrainians] have the ability to maintain it, sustain it, train on it,” Ryder said of the Abrams. He emphasized that the administration — while “focused on what is it that Ukraine needs right now, to have an immediate effect on the battlefield” — is “continuing to have discussions about what are the medium- and long-term defense requirements.” In the last few weeks, the administration has announced it will quickly ship hundreds of armored combat vehicles to Ukraine.Pentagon officials have emphasized in recent weeks that they are planning how to build Kyiv’s security forces for the future. The Abramses are expected to be ordered from manufacturers, rather than transferred from existing U.S. stocks, and the main usefulness in announcing them now appeared designed to break a logjam with the Germans.

After US offer, Germany unleashes Leopard tanks for Ukraine (AP) — After weeks of hesitation that saw growing impatience among Germany’s allies, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Wednesday that his government would provide Ukraine with Leopard 2 battle tanks and approve requests by other countries to do the same. In a statement, the German government said it would initially provide Ukraine with one company of Leopard 2 A6 tanks, which comprises 14 vehicles, from its own stocks. The goal is for Germany and its allies to provide Ukraine with a total of two battalions, or 88 tanks.Germany was “acting in close coordination” with its international allies, he added. The long-awaited decision came after U.S. officials said Tuesday that a preliminary agreement had been struck for the United States to send M1 Abrams tanks to help Ukraine’s troops push back Russian forces that remain entrenched in the country’s east almost a year after Moscow’s invasion and war. Scholz had insisted that any decision to provide Ukraine with powerful Leopard 2 tanks would need to be taken in conjunction with Germany’s allies, chiefly the United States. By getting Washington to commit some of its own tanks, Berlin hopes to share the risk of any backlash from Russia.

The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back – Caitlin Johnstone -- Well the omnicidal war sluts won the debate over sending tanks to Ukraine, so now it’s time to start arguing for sending F-16s. In an article titled “Ukraine sets sights on fighter jets after securing tank supplies,” Reuters reports the following:“Ukraine will now push for Western fourth generation fighter jets such as the U.S. F-16 after securing supplies of main battle tanks, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister said on Wednesday.Ukraine won a huge boost for its troops as Germany announced plans to provide heavy tanks for Kyiv on Wednesday, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue. The United States is poised to make a similar announcement.Just in time for the good news, Lockheed Martin has announced that the arms manufacturing giant happens to be all set to ramp up production of F-16s should they be needed for shipment to Ukraine. “Lockheed Martin has said that it’s ready to meet demands for F-16 fighter jets if the US and its allies choose to ship them to Ukraine,” Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports. “So far, the US and its allies have been hesitant to send fighter jets to Ukraine due to concerns that they could be used to target Russian territory. But the Western powers seem less and less concerned about escalation as the US and Germany have now pledged to send their main battle tanks.” The New York Times has a new article out titled “How Biden Reluctantly Agreed to Send Tanks to Ukraine,” subtitled “The decision unlocked a flow of heavy arms from Europe and inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.”Ukraine,” subtitled “The decision unlocked a flow of heavy arms from Europe and inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia.” It’s authors write: President Biden’s announcement Wednesday that he would send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine came after weeks of tense back-channel negotiations with the chancellor of Germany and other European leaders, who insisted that the only way to unlock a flow of heavy European arms was for the United States to send tanks of its own. His decision, however reluctant, now paves the way for German-made Leopard 2 tanks to be delivered to Ukraine in two or three months, provided by several European nations. While it is unclear whether it will make a decisive difference in the spring offensive that President Volodymyr Zelensky is now planning to take back territory seized by Russia, it is the latest in a series of gradual escalations that has inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia. When even the myopic empire simps at The New York Times are acknowledging that western powers are escalating aggressions in a very dangerous direction, you should probably sit up and pay attention.

World On Brink Of WW3 Due To West Escalating, Medvedev Warns - Days after he warned NATO of the likelihood of nuclear war if Russia is defeated in Ukraine, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the security council Dmitry Medvedev on Monday said the world stands on the brink of World War III due to US and Western aggression against Russia. "The world has come close to the threat of World War III due to impending US aggression against the Russian Federation," Medvedev said in comments first reported by Sky News Arabia. He also emphasized he sees the conflict at a point of no return. "There are no conditions for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine now, either de facto or de jure," Medvedev said. On the same day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov voiced something similar, saying the confrontation with NATO can no longer be seen as merely a "hybrid war" or proxy war, but is instead fast approaching a real one. He said this in a joint press conference with his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor Lavrov explained that this "almost real" - as he put it according to state media, was something the West "has been preparing for a long time against Russia." He further charged that Ukraine's leadership has created "presidents of war" and "Russophobic leaders" - particularly in reference to Present Zelensky and before him Petro Poroshenko. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov additionally sounded the alarm in separate Monday remarks, saying that the current rush to supply Western-made tanks to the battlefield will severely escalate the conflict. "The Ukrainian people will pay the burden of this so-called support," he said.Peskov also highlighted that it's clearly creating tensions and division among allies, noting that if the tank plan proceeds, "All countries that directly or indirectly ship weapons to Ukraine are responsible for this."

Trump suggests providing tanks to Ukraine will lead to 'nukes' and says ending the war with Russia would be 'easy' - Former President Donald Trump, whose first impeachment was linked to his dealings with Ukraine, on Thursday appeared to criticize the US and Germany over their recent decisions to provide battle tanks to Kyiv at a time when Russia is expected to launch another major offensive. Trump suggested offering tanks to Ukraine would lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Trump said it would be "easy" to end the war, without providing any suggestions on how this would be accomplished."FIRST COME THE TANKS, THEN COME THE NUKES. Get this crazy war ended, NOW. So easy to do," Trump, who is running for president again in 2024, said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump referred to as a "genius" the week Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has repeatedly made nuclear threats throughout the war. Western countries have accused Putin of reckless nuclear saber-rattling. Nuclear experts have expressed grave concerns about Putin's threats, as leading historians warning that the Russian leader's rhetoric and actions have presented nuclear dangers even greater than during the Cuban missile crisisat the height of the Cold War.But many top military analysts and Russia experts also say that Putin's nuclear threats are largely designed to deter the West from continuing to provide Ukraine with crucial security assistance. The US and other NATO countries have sent billions of dollars worth of aid to Ukraine, includingvital weapons that have played a key role on the battlefield and wreaked havoc on Russia's forces. Ukraine recently pushed hard for the West to provide tanks as it looks to defend against the ongoing Russian invasion but also makes preparations to regain control of occupied territory.

"Not An Offensive Threat": Biden Downplays US Tanks In Ukraine As Russia Warns Decision Is "Extremely Dangerous" - Biden in the remarks while flanked by his top defense officials unveiled an international tank coalition of nations in support of Ukraine, including that the US will send 31 Abrams tanks."Today, I'm announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion," Biden said from the White House."Today's announcement builds on the hard work and commitment from countries around the world, led by the United States of America, to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity," Bided continued. "That's what this is about, helping Ukraine protect and defend Ukrainian land. It is not an offensive threat to Russia. There is no offensive threat to Russia. If Russian troops return to Russia … where they belong, this war would be over today." He emphasized Germany's central role in its own decision to send and authorize Leopard 2 battle tanks, and thanked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The name Germany was invoked consistently throughout the brief speech, leading to a reporter asking whether Germany "forced" the US take action on the Abrams. Biden responded "no" - Germany did not force him to change his mind. "We wanted to make sure we're all together," he said.So the tank coalition is formed. Everyone who doubted this could ever happen sees now: for Ukraine and partners impossible is nothing. I call on all new partners that have Leopard 2 tanks in service to join the coalition and provide as many of them as possible. They are free now.— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) January 25, 2023Biden sought to emphasize that the new Ukraine aid is not an offensive threat to Russia. However, we doubt that Moscow is going to see it that way. Per AFP:President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the delivery of 31 US tanks and other large-scale military aid is to help Ukraine defend itself, but poses no "offensive" threat to Russia. "That's what this is about: helping Ukraine defend and protect Ukrainian land. It is not an offensive threat to Russia," he said in televised remarks.As expected, Russia is furious over the decision of the United States and Germany to authorize Western-manufactured advanced tanks for Ukrainian forces, calling it "extremely dangerous" and pointing out the unprecedented decision blows past Kremlin "red lines".The Russian Embassy in Berlin communicated to the German government that the dangerous move "takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation." The statement asserted that it "contradicts the statements of German politicians about the unwillingness of the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany] to be drawn into it [the war]. Unfortunately, this happens over and over again."

Johnstone: Let's Nuke The World Over Who Governs Crimea - Critics of the US empire have spent months compiling mountains of evidence showing that the empire knowingly provoked the war in Ukraine. Supporters of the US empire have spent months posting dog memes and accusing strangers of being paid by Putin. It’s clear who’s in the right. So does everyone else in the world get a vote on whether their lives should be risked in an offensive to control who governs Crimea? Or will the Biden administration just be making that call on behalf of all living creatures? It’s so crazy how the fate of everyone alive and everyone who could potentially be born in the future is riding on the way two governments choose to navigate a conflict in Ukraine, just because those two governments have most of the world’s nuclear weapons. It’s like two people in a bar getting into a brawl that kills everyone in their city. Nobody else in the world gets a vote on the decisions being made that could kill everyone alive and end humanity forever; just a few people within those two governments and their militaries. ❖ The US empire is telling Moscow “I’m the craziest motherfucker around, I’ll keep ramping up the brinkmanship looking you right in the eye and daring you to use nukes,” while telling the rest of the world “I am the voice of sanity that you should all look to for leadership.” One of the empire’s faces is the virtuous upholder of freedom and democracy, while the other face puts on an intimidating show of viciousness like a prisoner biting off someone’s cheek in the prison yard. At least one of those faces is necessarily lying. ❖ Literally the only reason mainstream westerners are fine with the US empire’s nuclear brinkmanship with Russia is because most don’t understand it, and those who do understand it don’t think very hard about it. They avoid contemplating what nuclear war is and what it would mean. Whenever I touch on this subject I get a bunch of replies like “Yeehaw! That’s right bitch, we’re standing up to Putin!” They’re not approaching the subject with anything like the gravity they would if they understood what’s happening and had seriously thought about what could be. They don’t understand how horrifyingly dangerous it is that the empire is considering backing a Crimea offensive, and they haven’t sincerely contemplated what it would be like for every living creature to die horribly and for no one else to ever be born again for all of time. Whatever position you have on this whole conflict, you should be approaching the possibility of nuclear annihilation with the most profound solemnity imaginable, because it is without exaggeration the single worst thing that could possibly happen. Take it seriously, or be silent. ❖ If a nuclear war between Russia and NATO erupts, the answer to the question “Was it worth it?” will be a decisive “No.” Not just for people like me, but for everyone, no matter how sympathetic they are to the western power structure and no matter how much they hate Russia. If their answer isn’t “no” immediately, it will be their answer in a matter of hours. If people don’t immediately understand the horror that’s been unleashed upon our world and how nothing could possibly have been worth it, they will understand it in short order.

U.S. arms exports up 49% in fiscal 2022 (Reuters) - Sales of U.S. military equipment to foreign governments rose 49% to $205.6 billion in the latest fiscal year, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday. Sales approved in the year included $13.9 billion worth of F-15ID fighter jets to Indonesia, $6.9 billion worth of Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ships to Greece, and $6 billion worth of M1A2 Abrams tanks to Poland. General Dynamics Corp makes the Abrams tank, Boeing makes the F-15 jet and Lockheed Martin Corp makes the ships. There are two major ways foreign governments purchase arms from U.S. companies: direct commercial sales negotiated between a government and a company, and foreign military sales in which a foreign government typically contacts a Defense Department official at the U.S. embassy in its capital. Both require U.S. government approval. The direct military sales by U.S. companies rose 48.6% to $153.7 billion in fiscal 2022 from $103 billion in fiscal 2021, while sales arranged through the U.S. government rose 49.1% to $51.9 billion in 2022 from $34.8 billion the prior year, the State Department said. Sales of U.S. military equipment in the prior fiscal year totaled $138 billion.

Ukraine will now push for F-16 fighter jets, government adviser says - With main battle tanks from the U.S. and Germany now headed to Ukraine, Kyiv is now focusing on securing modern fighter jets from Western allies. Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Defense secretary, told The Hill that he was optimistic about receiving Western fighter jets such as the American F-16s, which Ukrainians have sought since early last year when Russia first invaded. “Every type of weapon we request, we needed yesterday,” Sak said. “We will do everything possible to ensure Ukraine gets fourth-generation fighter jets as soon as possible.” Reuters first reported the news that Ukraine was setting its sights on fighter jets. Ukraine scored a major win on Wednesday with the announcement from President Biden that the U.S. will donate 31 American-made M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Kyiv. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday also said he would supply Ukraine with the country’s Leopard 2 tanks and approve the transfer of other Leopards from European allies. The tanks were the latest hurdle for Western allies, who have cautiously approved more and more advanced weaponry for Kyiv, from HIMARS launchers to the Western battle tanks. Western fighter jets and longer-range artillery units, which would allow Ukraine to strike Russian forces deeper in occupied territory, will likely be the next debate for NATO. Ukraine currently uses Soviet-era fighter jets, including MiG-29s, which became a point of controversy last March when the U.S. declined to facilitate the transfer of MiGs from Poland to Kyiv. DOJ says Louisiana prisons hold inmates beyond their release dates House lawmakers hold moment of silence honoring victims of Monterey Park shooting So far, the U.S. has resisted sending the F-16 fighter jets and does not appear ready to announce their transfer anytime soon. But national security adviser John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday the U.S. was “in constant discussions” with Ukraine and “we evolve those as the conditions change.”

Lockheed Says It's Ready With F-16s If US and Allies Choose to Send Them to Ukraine Lockheed Martin has said that it’s ready to meet demands for F-16 fighter jets if the US and its allies choose to ship them to Ukraine.So far, the US and its allies have been hesitant to send fighter jets to Ukraine due to concerns that they could be used to target Russian territory. But the Western powers seem less and less concerned about escalation as the US and Germany have now pledged to send their main battle tanks.Frank St. John, chief operating officer of Lockheed, told Financial Times that there has been a “lot of conversation about third-party transfer of F-16s,” which would involve European nations armed with the F-16 shipping them to Ukraine.St. John said Lockheed wasn’t involved in the conversations but was preparing for the eventuality. He said the arms maker was “going to be ramping production on F-16s in Greenville [South Carolina] to get to the place where we will be able to backfill pretty capably any countries that choose to do third-party transfers to help with the current conflict.”The Netherlands expressed openness to sending its F-16s to Ukraine last week, with the Dutch foreign minister saying it would look at any requests for the aircraft with an “open mind.” Another option could be for former Warsaw pact countries that are now NATO members to send their older Soviet-made MiG fighter jets to Ukraine and replace them with F-16s or other modern Western-made aircraft.A Ukrainian Air Force spokesman claimed on Tuesday that the US and Ukraine have already determined an aircraft that Washington will provide for Kyiv. The spokesman didn’t specify which one, and there’s been no sign from the American side has agreed to send planes.Throughout the war, Ukraine has been lobbying for the US to provide F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, which would involve months of training for Ukrainian forces. The US has already pledged weapons systems that require extensive training, including the Patriot missile defense systems and M1 Abrams tanks.Lockheed Martin has benefited greatly from the war in Ukraine as many of its weapons systems are now in high demand, including the HIMARS rocket systems and Javelin anti-tank missiles. President Biden showed his appreciation for the arms maker last May when he visited a Lockheed Martin plant producing Javelins and said, “thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Hardly Anyone Is Thinking Logically About The Risk Of Nuclear War – Caitlin Johnstone - The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its symbolic Doomsday Clock to ninety seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been set since its founding after the second world war. Chief among their reasons for doing so is the increasingly dangerous war in Ukraine.A statement authored by the Bulletin’s editor John Mecklin is as biased against Russia as any mainstream western punditry today and makes no mention of the US empire’s role in provoking,prolonging and benefiting from this conflict, yet it still provides a fairly reasonable appraisal of the magnitude of the threat we’re staring down the barrel of at this point in history:This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.The war in Ukraine may enter a second horrifying year, with both sides convinced they can win. Ukraine’s sovereignty and broader European security arrangements that have largely held since the end of World War II are at stake. Also, Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful responses to a variety of global risks.And worst of all, Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict—by accident, intention, or miscalculation—is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high.Mecklin encourages dialogue between Russia, Ukraine and NATO powers in order to de-escalate tensions in “this time of unprecedented global danger.” He quotes UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who warned last August that the world has entered “a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.”We came a hair’s breadth from nuclear annihilation during the chaotic and unpredictable brinkmanship at the height of the last cold war, and in fact had numerous close calls that could have easily wound up going another way. As former Secretary of State Dean Acheson put it, humanity survived the Cuban Missile Crisis by “plain dumb luck”.There’s no logical basis for the belief that we’ll get lucky again. Believing nuclear war won’t happen because it didn’t happen last time is a type of fallacious reasoning known as normalcy bias; it’s as rational as believing Russian roulette is safe because the man handing you the pistol didn’t blow his head off when he pulled the trigger. But that’s the kind of sloppy thinking you’ll run into when you try to discuss this subject in public; I’m always encountering arguments that there’s no risk of nuclear war because we’ve gone all this time without disaster. The most common response I get is something along the lines of “Well if there is a nuclear war it will be Putin’s fault,” as though whose “fault” it is will matter to us while we’re watching the world end, along with the related “Well Russia shouldn’t have invaded then” and “Well Russia should stop threatening to use nukes then.” People genuinely don’t seem to understand that in the event of a full-scale nuclear war, it will really be the end of everyone. They don’t understand that there will be no pundits discussing the nuclear armageddon on Fox and MSNBC, arguing about whose fault it was and which political party is to blame. They don’t get that there won’t be any war crimes tribunals in the radioactive ashes as the biosphere starves to death in nuclear winter.

Biden's promise to send tanks delayed by lack of inventory: reports | Fox News --Despite President Biden’s promise to send 31 Abrams M1 tanks to Ukraine on Wednesday, it could take months for the artillery to arrive, according to reports. The New York Post reported that Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh confirmed that the U.S. does not have enough of M1 Abrams tanks in its stockpile to send over to Ukraine at this time."We just don’t have these tanks available in excess in our US stocks, which is why it is going to take months to transfer these M1A2 Abrams to Ukraine," Singh told the Post. If the tanks were in the Pentagon’s possession, it would take less than a week to get the tanks boxed and shipped. But when using the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI, program, it could take months or years because the government goes through procurement to identify and hire contractors to build the weapons. Biden announced the weapons approval on Wednesday, just hours after German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz said Ukraine would also get Leopard 2 tanks from Berlin as Russia plans for a major offensive. The decision to send tanks came after weeks of stalled and frustrated negotiations with Germany, which senior defense officials described as the "product of good diplomatic conversations." Earlier this month, Germany suggested it would not agree to send its tanks to Ukraine unless the U.S. did as well, citing concerns over escalating the war.

US military kills senior Islamic State official in Somalia (AP) — U.S. special operations forces have killed a senior Islamic State group official and 10 other terrorist operatives in remote northern Somalia, the Biden administration announced Thursday. The operation carried out on Wednesday targeted Bilal al-Sudani, a key financial facilitator for the global terrorist organization, in a mountainous cave complex. “This action leaves the United States and its partners safer and more secure, and it reflects our steadfast commitment to protecting Americans from the threat of terrorism at home and abroad,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. President Joe Biden was briefed last week about the proposed mission, which came together after months of planning. He gave final approval to carry out the operation this week following the recommendation of Austin and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, according to two senior Biden administration officials who briefed reporters on the operation on the condition of anonymity. Al-Sudani, who has been on the radar for U.S. intelligence officials for years, played a key role in helping to fund IS operations in Africa as well as the ISIS-K terrorist branch operating in Afghanistan, Austin said.

Blinken headed to Mideast as US alarm over violence grows (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Egypt, Israel and the West Bank this weekend, the State Department announced Thursday, as the U.S. expressed alarm about escalating violence after Israel’s single deadliest operation in the West Bank in two decades. Blinken’s visit to Israel has been planned for weeks, but the Israeli raid on a West Bank refugee camp earlier Thursday — which the Palestinians say killed nine people, including a 61-year-old woman — will likely dominate his talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah. The Israeli military also fatally shot a 22-year-old Palestinian later in the day. The trip, the second by a senior U.S. national security official this month, had already been expected to be fraught with tension over disagreements between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly on the Palestinian conflict. Thursday’s raid and the subsequent outcry are expected to make the visit even more difficult. The top U.S. diplomat for the Mideast said the administration was urging both sides to de-escalate tensions in the wake of the raid and decried a Palestinian announcement that they would cut off all security cooperation with Israel as a result. Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said U.S. officials had been in touch with top Israeli and Palestinian officials since the incident happened to stress the importance of calming the situation. She said the civilian casualties reported in Jenin were “quite regrettable.” But, she also said the Palestinian announcement that it would suspend all security cooperation with Israel in the aftermath was a mistake, as was a Palestinian vow to bring the matter to the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. “Obviously, we don’t think this is the right step to take at this moment,” Leaf told reporters on a conference call. “We want to see them move back in the other direction. We don’t think it makes sense” to go to an international forum now, she said. “They need to engage with each other.” Blinken will hold talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo on Sunday before going to Jerusalem and Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday to see Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the State Department said.

Yellen reasserts US commitment to Africa in Senegal visit | Politics News | Al Jazeera -United States Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen has reaffirmed her country’s commitment to deepening relations and trade with Africa during a visit to Senegal, amid competition across the continent from China and Russia.“The United States is all in on Africa, and all in with Africa,” Yellen said on Friday morning at a business incubator in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, where she touted the fruits of a new “mutually beneficial” US economic strategy towards Africa.“Our engagement is not transactional, it’s not for show, and it’s not for the short-term,” she said.Yellen’s three-country tour of the region comes just weeks after US President Joe Biden hosted the leaders of dozens of African nations, as well as the African Union, for the second US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, DC.The talks were a follow-up to the first such gathering hosted by former US President Barack Obama in 2014. They highlightedBiden’s efforts to strengthen ties with like-minded countries across the region. The Biden administration unveiled a string of new economic investments and trade deals in Africa during the summit, and Biden personally expressed support for the African Union’s push for a permanent place at the Group of 20 (G20) forum of global economies.China, which Washington has viewed as its main global competitor, has consistently outpaced the US in its investments in Africa in recent years. Russia has also been trying to rally support on the continent in response to pressure from the US and its allies over the war in Ukraine.Last weekend, Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang ended a week-long tour of African nations, including Ethiopia, where he emphasised Beijing’s partnerships on security and economic development in the region.Qin, whose trip included stops in Gabon, Angola, Benin and Egypt, also rejected the idea that China is competing in Africa with the US. “What Africa needs is solidarity and cooperation, not bloc competition. No one has the right to force African countries to take sides,” the Chinese foreign minister said from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Beijing tells US to fix own debt problems after Yellen calls China a barrier to solving Zambia crisis | South China Morning Post -- After US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called China a "barrier" to debt reform in Africa this week, Chinese officials in Zambia had a pointed response - get your own house in order.The Chinese Embassy in Zambia said on its website Tuesday "the biggest contribution that the US can make to the debt issues outside the country is to act on responsible monetary policies, cope with its own debt problem, and stop sabotaging other sovereign countries' active efforts to solve their debt issues."Republicans in the House of Representatives are using a risky, unusual threat to refuse to vote in a new debt ceiling, a figure that reflects money already spent and now owed by the government, to pressure the Biden administration and Democrats to cut spending programs. So far, the Biden White House is refusing to negotiate, counting on hardline Republicans to step back under pressure from businesses, investors and moderates.US national debt is about $31 trillion, a figure that has skyrocketed since 2000's $5.6 trillion thanks in part to increased spending for an aging population, outlays for Iraq and Afghanistan wars, COVID-19 programs and tax cuts that trimmed revenues.Yellen and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva arrived separately in Zambia Sunday to highlight the need for debt reform in Africa.Zambia defaulted on its debt in 2020 and has made little progress to restructure it with Chinese and private creditors to date, a situation that has helped pushed citizens into poverty.The world's poorest countries faced $35 billion in debt-service payments to official and private-sector creditors in 2022, more than 40% of which was due to China, the World Bank said. The US Federal Reserve's rate increases, designed to tame inflation at home, and the appreciating US dollar have added to African countries' debt service burden, the African Development Bank said last week.

Yellen’s South Africa visit: ‘Not especially warm welcome’ – Africa has become the superpowers’ flavor of the month, as senior politicians from the U.S., China and Russia have been leaving crisscrossing jet vapor trails across the continent, with Washington, Moscow and Beijing trying to curry favor, and conjure up business deals, with African leaders.Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang has just finished a week-long tour of African nations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov landed in South Africa on Monday, and diplomatic airport officials have to do a quick turnaround, as on Jan 24 U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen comes to town.The welcome mat for Yellen is of a complex construction. South Africa’s foreign minister recently described both Russia and China as "very good friends." South Africa is proud of its political and trade links with Russia and China as a member of the BRICS group of nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Secretary Yellen will see South African smiles at the airport, but they are not going to be as wide as for the men from Moscow."Secretary Yellen’s trip will be professionally welcomed, if not especially warmly," Bhaso Ndzendze, head of department and associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, told FOX Business. He cautioned that the ties between South Africa and the three superpowers are complicated: ‘Pretoria’s relationship with Russia is political and quite ambivalent, whereas with China it is close but mainly economic.’Ndzendze continued: "South Africa’s commercial ties are still strong with the U.S., as evidenced by the fact that the U.S. is currently the second-largest buyer of South African goods. (China is the first.) Unlike with China also, South Africa has a substantial surplus in its trade with the U.S.." Over 600 US companies are currently operating in South Africa, J. Brooks Spector, former U.S. diplomat and academic and now associate editor of South Africa’s Daily Maverick, told FOX Business in Johannesburg. "Secretary Yellen will get a polite hearing," he said.

Yellen Welcomes South Africa's Energy Transition, Steers Clear of Russia Mention (Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday lauded South Africa's "bold" participation in an energy transition partnership backed by the United States and other Western nations but steered clear of mentioning U.S. concerns about Pretoria's planned military drills with China and Russia. Yellen spoke to reporters alongside South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in Pretoria on the third leg of her nearly two-week tour of Africa, and just days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited South Africa. She welcomed Godongwana's "cooperation and insightful views" in their previous discussions, and said she would raise several issues, including Zambia's stalled sovereign debt restructuring effort, given South Africa's key role on the country's creditor committee. "The United States strongly values our relationship with South Africa," Yellen said in remarks that included no mention of Russia or China, or White House concerns about Pretoria's plans to hold joint military drills with both countries. Washington was not asking countries to choose sides, focusing instead on America's plans in South Africa and beyond, a senior Treasury official said. U.S. officials did brief the South Africans on U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over its war in Ukraine to avoid possible misunderstandings, the official told reporters. Godongwana said the two would discuss countering the financing of terrorism, climate financing, resolving sovereign debt crises in Africa and global topics that will form part of a meeting of the G20 group of major economies next month. He said Yellen's visit was a "momentous" occasion, noting that the previous visit by a U.S. Treasury secretary was in 2014, and praised Yellen's announcement on Wednesday that the United States and South Africa were setting up a joint task force on combating the financing of wildlife trafficking. South Africa has remained one of Moscow's most important allies on a continent divided over Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

“Chinese Aggression” Sure Looks An Awful Lot Like US Aggression – Caitlin Johnstone --Punchbowl News reports that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is planning a trip to Taiwan, which will be yet another incendiary provocation against Beijing if it occurs. The previous House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, sparked a significant escalation in hostilities with her visit last year, the consequences of which are still reverberating today.Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp explains:Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was viewed in Beijing as a major provocation, and it sparked the largest-ever Chinese military drills around the island. The exercises included China firing missiles over Taiwan and simulating a blockade of the island, both unprecedented actions.China has kept up the military pressure on Taiwan since Pelosi’s visit, and its warplanes regularly now cross the median line, an informal barrier that divides the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Before Pelosi’s trip, China barely crossed the line. Now, it’s an almost-daily occurrence.Beijing views the US House speaker visiting Taiwan as an affront to the one-China policy and the understanding the US and China reached in 1979, when Washington severed formal relations with Taipei. US-led provocations and escalations against China are becoming a regular occurrence, both from the US itself and from its imperial assets like Australia and Taiwan. Yet according to the western political/media class, the urgent threat of our day is “Chinese aggression”.After the House of Representatives voted to approve the new Select Committee on China — a Republican initiative designed to increase internal pressure in the US government to ramp up the new cold war — the committee’s chairman Mike Gallagher put out a statement saying that it is “time to push back against the Chinese Communist Party’s aggression in bipartisan fashion.”Gallagher is a particularly noxious warmonger who says urgent efforts must be made to stop China from “destroying the capitalist system led by the United States in order to make way for the triumph of world socialism with Chinese characteristics.” He advocates the “selective decoupling” from specific sectors of the Chinese economy and says the US is in “the early stages of a new cold war” against China. He advocates pouring weapons into Taiwan in much the same way the US did in the lead-up to its proxy war in Ukraine, and asserts that the US needs to be preparing for a direct hot war with China in the near future.Gallagher’s hawkishness on China is quickly becoming the mainstream consensus position in the western political/media class as the US-centralized empire ramps up aggressions while continually complaining about Chinese aggression.

Monroe Doctrine Redux: US Military Trying to “Box Out” China and Russia from Strategic Resources in Latin America - As regular readers are by now probably aware, the Commander of US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), General Laura Richardson, has a rare talent for saying the quiet parts out loud. That talent was on full display in a recent interview with Washington-based think tank, the Atlantic Council last Thursday (Jan 19). In one 90-second clip (featured below) Richardson laid out in disarmingly frank terms why the US is showing a renewed interest in Latin America: the region’s abundant natural resources. Those resources include rare earth elements, lithium, gold, oil, natural gas, light sweet crude (huge deposits of which have been found off the coast of Guyana), copper, abundant food crops, and fresh water. And the US government and military, and the corporations whose interests they serve, have their eyes on all of them. As the Argentinean journalist and news presenter Carlos Montero lamented in a tweet, it would be nice to live in a would where the US wasn’t interested in Latin America for the riches it could plunder but to help it break free from being the world’s most unequal region. Of even greater concern to the US is that many of Latin America’s resources are now being sold to its number-one adversary, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Its number-two adversary is, of course, Russia, with whom a number of LatAm countries have close military ties. As Richardson told the Atlantic Council’s virtual audience (emphasis my own), “in a lot of our countries in this region, [the PRC] is the number one trade partner, with the United States number two in most cases.” She then clumsily corrected herself: “Not in most cases, I would say in some cases.” Tellingly, she did not correct the Freudian slip, “our”. As I said, she has a gift of saying the quiet parts out loud. The reality is that China is already South America’s biggest trading partner. The US still holds sway over Central America and is still the region’s largest trading partner as a whole. But that is primarily due to its gigantic trade flows with Mexico, which account for 71% of all US-LatAm trade. As Reuters reported in June, if you take Mexico out of the equation, China has already overtaken the US as Latin America’s largest trading partner. Excluding Mexico, total trade flows — i.e., imports and exports — between China and Latin America reached $247 billion last year, far in excess of the US’ $173 billion. The US is now in a desperate race to turn back the clock. To do so, it is rejigging the Monroe Doctrine, a 200-year old US foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism on the American continent. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the United States. Now, it is applying that doctrine to China and Russia. Gen Richardson detailed how Washington, together with US Southern Command, is actively negotiating the sale of lithium in the lithium triangle to US companies through its web of embassies, with the goal of “box[ing] out” our adversaries:

US seeks accelerated return of SPR crude loans --President Joe Biden's administration said it plans to start refilling the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) by accelerating the return of some of the 24.4mn bl of crude it loaned out last year.ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and Phillips 66 were among the companies that took long-term loans of crude from the SPR as part of an "exchange" program meant to lower fuel prices. Nearly all of that crude had been scheduled to return to the SPR over a four-month period beginning on 1 June 2024, according to contracts obtained by Argus Media.US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said the administration had a strategy to begin refilling the SPR that would "accelerate" the return of some of the loaned out crude. The SPR is currently at its lowest levels in nearly 40 years, but still has 371.6mn of crude in inventory."I have no concerns that we will be able to refill and replenish the SPR, and do it at a savings to taxpayers," Granholm said today.The US Energy Department did not respond to requests for details on when crude would return to the SPR, or the volume of borrowed crude set to be returned on an accelerated timetable.Biden announced the exchange program in November 2021, marking an effort to combat rising fuel prices by offering loans of crude from the SPR. At one point when the program was open to bidding, prompt-month Nymex WTI crude futures were $19/bl more than futures prices at the end of the program in September 2024.Under the terms of the SPR exchange contracts, companies were able to select a "return period" that required them to return crude loans over a period ranging from 3-33 months. As payment for the loan, companies had agreed to return 2.3-9.1pc more crude than they borrowed from the SPR.Of an initial 21.7mn bl of crude loaned from the SPR, 20.4mn bl was contracted to be returned between 1 June 2024 and 30 September, according to contracts obtained through a public records record. If the existing contracts remain intact, companies will also have to add a total of nearly 1.8mn bl of additional crude to the SPR as payment for the loans.Beyond accelerating the return of crude loans, the administration is also working on a plan to buy 60mn bl of crude for the SPR at a targeted price of $67-72/bl, using revenue from last year's emergency sale of 180mn bl at an average price of $96/bl. The Energy Department earlier this month called offa "pilot" purchase of up to 3mn bl of crude because it said the offers were too high. Granholm said the administration planned to announce soon a plan for the crude purchases.

Senate Republican leaders introduce bills restricting Biden's SPR authority as WH threatens veto - Republican leaders on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led by Ranking Member John Barrasso, R-Wyo., introduced companion bills of House legislation targeting President Biden's use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The first bill, the Secure Auction for Energy Reserves Act which Barrasso introduced with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, would prohibit the federal government from selling SPR stocks to China and other countries of particular concern. Earlier this month, the House passed similar legislation, the Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, by a margin of 331-97."China is profiting from President Biden’s political abuse of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," Barrasso said in a statement. "Meanwhile, America has become more vulnerable to true energy and national security emergencies." "Our legislation will ban SPR sales to China and other hostile nations," he continued. "It will also ban SPR sales to state-owned companies which purchase oil from Russia, Iran, and other nations the U.S. has sanctioned. Adversaries cannot be allowed to benefit from America’s security reserve."Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced two bills to restrict President Biden's authority on Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases. (Associated Press)Collins added that it is "inexcusable that our emergency stockpile of crude oil is being sold to dictators overseas." She said legislation was necessary to ensure Americans primarily benefit from future SPR releases.Over the summer, the Biden administration was heavily criticized after reports that it had sold SPR oil to China which reportedly used the stocks to bolster its own reserves. The White House then fired back, saying it was legally required to sell the oil to the highest bidder. The second legislation Senate Republicans introduced Tuesday, the Strategic Production Response Act, would require the Department of Energy to only tap the SPR when there is a severe energy supply interruption and not until the Interior Department issues a plan to increase oil and gas production on federal lands and waters.

Republicans launch newest fight against Biden's oil drawdowns - Republicans are aiming to neutralize one of the main tools that President Joe Biden used to lower gasoline prices before last year’s elections — his prolific releases of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The House GOP is calling a vote this week on legislation, H.R. 21 (118), that would prohibit releases from the underground petroleum stockpile unless the government approves a corresponding increase in domestic gas and oil production on federal lands. Two weeks ago, the House passed legislation that would ban sales from the reserve to China. Both measures are typical examples of the not-gonna-pass messaging bills that a party offers when it takes over a chamber of Congress, although the China bill picked up significant Democratic support. Senate Republicans led by Energy Committee ranking member John Barrasso of Wyoming have released similar legislation on the oil reserve this week, as the GOP uses the issue to express frustration with Biden’s broader efforts to wean the economy off fossil fuels to combat climate change. But Republicans are casting their latest proposal in national security terms — accusing Biden of recklessly making politically timed sales from an emergency reserve created in response to the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s. “The SPR was created during a time of energy scarcity,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said in an interview, adding that Biden should instead unleash production from the nation’s fracking hot spots. “You don’t need an emergency reserve to bail you out of high energy prices. You just need to use the Bakken or Permian Basin.” Congress has also turned to the petroleum reserve for non-emergency reasons over the years, with lawmakers of both parties pushing oil sales to raise money for needs such as highway construction and drug approvals,, and former President Donald Trump once proposed selling off half the SPR’s supplies to shrink the federal deficit. Now, though, Republicans argue that Biden has left the U.S. vulnerable to a severe supply disruption by ordering emergency drawdowns after gasoline prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The GOP voiced similar complaints when then-President Barack Obama sold oil from the reserve in response to supply disruptions amid the Arab Spring. Biden’s releases last year — including a massive release just before the election — totaled more than 200 million barrels of oil from the reserve, a network of underground salt caverns that now holds 372 million barrels. That’s down from 638 million barrels when Biden took office and the reserve’s lowest level since 1983.The Treasury Department has estimated that the Biden administration’s releases reduced gasoline prices by up to 40 cents per gallon. The national average price was $3.446 a gallon Tuesday, down from an all-time high of $5.016 in June.The Biden administration has initiated a plan to begin refilling the reserve, but Republicans accuse the president of failing to explain why Russia’s invasion and the subsequent spike in fuel prices qualified as an emergency. They also complain that he hasn’t tended to preserving the physical condition of the reserve’s infrastructure, saying its pipelines, pumps and caverns have been degraded from frequent drawdowns.

U.S. House passes bill limiting drawdowns from strategic oil reserve (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday limiting the ability of the energy secretary to tap the strategic oil reserve without developing plans to increase the amount of public lands available for oil and gas drilling. Representatives backed the bill 221 to 205, with support from only one Democrat. President Joe Biden would veto the legislation should it pass Congress, the White House said this week. The bill is expected to face an uphill battle in the Senate, which unlike the House, is controlled by Biden's fellow Democrats. The Strategic Production Response Act, or H.R.21, requires the U.S. energy secretary to develop a plan to increase oil and gas leasing on federal lands, including submerged ones on the Outer Continental Shelf, before tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It would not stop the president from tapping the SPR in case of an emergency, such as a hurricane that halts production of crude. Republicans, who took control of the House this month, have pushed a series of political messaging bills that appeal to conservative voters. Republican backers of the bill said the Biden administration acted recklessly in selling 180 million barrels from the reserve last year, or 1 million barrels a day for six months, in the biggest release ever. That drawdown and others Biden approved have pushed the level of the SPR to its lowest level since 1983. The SPR should be used only to address true emergencies, said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican and chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "President Biden has turned a longtime bipartisan strategic asset, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, into a political tool to cover up the consequences of his expensive rush-to-green agenda," said Rodgers. The Biden administration, which is pursuing an aggressive policy to curb climate change by supporting the energy transition off fossil fuels, has said it sold the oil to counter gasoline prices that had risen to $5.00 a gallon and helped fuel the highest inflation levels in decades. Oil prices spiked last year on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and as the world began to emerge from the pandemic. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters at the White House this week that Biden "will not allow the American people to suffer because of the backwards agenda that House Republicans are advancing."

Meet the top House recipients of oil and gas money - The oil and gas industry donated millions of dollars to members of the House in the last election cycle. Now, many of the top recipients are well-positioned to advance its interests.Two of them — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) — serve in leadership positions. Several more have been assigned to House committees where they will wield outsize influence over energy and climate policy.Of the top 10 recipients of oil and gas money in the 2022 election cycle, eight are Republican, according to data from OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending. The contributions include donations of more than $200 from individuals, as well as money from political action committees that represent energy companies and organizations, including the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Koch Industries Inc.McCarthy was the top recipient with $616,563 in oil and gas donations. Scalise received $368,291 from the industry, enough to land him fourth on the list. Six of the top 10 lawmakers hail from Texas, including Rep. Wesley Hunt, a rising star in the Republican party.That an industry would give money to politicians to gain influence is neither new nor unique to the fossil fuel sector. But it highlights the problem with American campaign financing, said Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush. The contributions buy real influence, he said. And oftentimes, it has nothing to do with the interests of the constituents in a congressional district, he said. “These industries pick their favorites and back their favorites and expect their legislation or a lack of regulation in return,” he said, adding, “This is a pattern that you see a lot, and fossil fuels is definitely a GOP industry.”

Manchin pushes to delay tax credits for electric vehicles (AP) — Ratcheting up his criticism, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Wednesday moved to delay new tax credits for electric vehicles, a key feature of President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law. Manchin said guidelines issued by the Treasury Department allow manufacturers in Europe and other countries to bypass requirements that significant portions of EV batteries be produced in North America.The climate law, officially known as the Inflation Reduction Act, “is first and foremost an energy security bill,” Manchin said, adding that the EV tax credits were supposed “to grow domestic manufacturing and reduce our reliance on foreign supply chains for the critical minerals needed to produce EV batteries.″ Manchin’s bid to delay the tax credits surfaced as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi visited the Washington, D.C., Auto Show on Wednesday to highlight the administration’s efforts to boost electric vehicles and related infrastructure. EV sales have tripled since Biden, a Democrat, took office two years ago, Granholm said. There are now more than 2 million EVs and 100,000 chargers on U.S. roadways, with more than $100 billion invested or pledged for EVs and their supply chains, including batteries, she said.

Manchin bill slaps back at Biden in EV tax credit fight - Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin took another swipe at the Biden administration Wednesday, releasing legislation that would stop the Treasury Department from issuing subsidies for consumer electric vehicles that don’t comply with strict sourcing requirements for batteries and battery minerals. The West Virginia Democrat brought out the “American Vehicle Security Act of 2023,” a bill that would bar automakers from making an end run around sourcing requirements under the newly minted Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA.Moreover, Manchin’s office suggested Tuesday that the bill would force some EV buyers who got a tax credit to return the money. In a statement, Manchin cast the bill as a means of reducing the United States’ reliance on countries like China for EV batteries and criticized Treasury for failing to issue guidance linking the incentives to sourcing provisions meant to grow domestic manufacturing. “The IRA and the EV tax credits must be implemented according to the congressional intent to ensure the United States, as the superpower of the world, is not beholden to countries that don’t share our values,” Manchin said.Sourcing requirements have emerged as a point of tension on Capitol Hill, the White House and beyond, with Manchin accusing Treasury of watering down the Inflation Reduction Act’s requirements. The senator, whose office wrote the relevant provisions, designed the nation’s EV strategy around that credit. But the IRS changed that calculation by focusing instead on the commercial vehicle credit.Manchin has argued that pushing drivers toward the commercial tax credit will hinder the federal government’s effort to move EV supply chains out of China and into the sphere of the United States and its allies (E&E Daily, Jan. 3).At issue are the Inflation Reduction Act’s commercial-vehicle tax credits, known in the tax code as 30D, which includes leased vehicles. Tax officials suggested last month that automakers could rely on that credit, which has no sourcing rules (Climatewire, Jan. 3).That would avoid complications around the consumer-vehicle tax credit. The tax credit places stringent but as yet unclear rules requiring half the minerals used in batteries be mined, processed or recycled domestically — before a $7,500-per-vehicle federal tax credit is issued. The new law’s EV incentives have become a political hot potato between the Biden administration and international allies, such as France, Germany and South Korea. Many foreign automakers are planning to build EV factories in the United States that would comply with the new rules, but until those factories open years from now, the companies’ customers will miss out on the tax credits.

 Big winners from Biden's climate law: Republicans who voted against it - They didn’t vote for it, they don’t like it and they’re working to undermine it — but Republicans are reaping the benefits of Democrats’ climate law. In the five months since the Inflation Reduction Act became law, companies have announced tens of billions of dollars in renewable energy, battery and electric vehicle projects that will benefit from incentives in President Joe Biden’s signature law, aimed at expanding domestic manufacturing in clean energy and reducing dependence on Chinese imports. In fact, roughly two-thirds of the major projects are in districts whose Republican lawmakers opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, according to a POLITICO analysis of major green energy manufacturing announcements made since the bill’s enactment. The dynamic has prompted a tricky balancing act for the GOP: Tout the jobs and economic benefits coming to their states and districts, but not the bill that helped create them. The results are also potentially awkward for Democrats who expended political capital and more than a year of wrangling to enact the bill, only to see Republican lawmakers and governors sharing in the jobs and positive headlines it’s creating — although Democrats say they also see longer-term benefits for the nation in building GOP support for alternatives to fossil fuels. Republicans insist their positions on the bill and the jobs are not in conflict. “Just because you vote against a bill doesn’t mean the entire bill is a bad bill,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who was the top GOP member of Democrats’ Select Climate Crisis Committee in the last Congress. “I go out there and advocate for our district to try and get transportation funds, to try and get energy funds. That’s my job. I am not embarrassed about it. I don’t think it’s inconsistent with my vote.” To Democrats, the slate of new investments stand as proof that they were correct that the Inflation Reduction Act, H.R. 5376 (117), would expand the reach of clean power to rural and conservative areas — a promise that failed to sway a single Republican vote to support the bill.

U.S. wants to see quicker progress on World Bank reforms- Yellen (Reuters) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday said the United States wanted to see quicker progress on the World Bank's plans for expanding its lending capacity to address climate change and other global crises. The World Bank's "evolution roadmap", reported by Reuters earlier this month, calls for the bank to negotiate with shareholders ahead of April meetings on proposals that include a capital increase and new lending tools.It calls for World Bank management to develop specific proposals to change its mission, operating model and financial capacity that could be approved by the joint World Bank and International Monetary Fund Development Committee in October. The plan marks the start of a negotiation process to alter the bank's mission and financial resources and shift it away from a country- and project-specific lending model used since its creation at the end of World War Two. Yellen said the bank's roadmap was a "constructive document" and formed a good basis for discussion, but more work was needed. "We do have some concerns," she told Reuters as she traveled to Zambia from Senegal. "We would like to see some progress on a quicker timeline. And think there are some things that could be done to expand lending given the current capital release." Yellen said working on the reforms - first of the World Bank and then other multilateral development banks - was one of her biggest priorities this year.

U.S. Treasury's Yellen says IRS needs to be 'completely redone' (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Sunday said rebuilding the Internal Revenue Service would be one of her top priorities in coming years, putting her squarely at odds with Republicans who have taken control of the House of Representatives. Yellen told Reuters in an interview on her way to Zambia that she was thrilled that Congress had approved $80 billion in new funding to help the agency reduce a huge backlog of tax returns and better hunt down $600 billion in unpaid tax bills. She said she decided to stay on as Treasury secretary in large part to oversee implementation of legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, which included the IRS funding and passed on party lines last year. Yellen lobbied hard for the extra funding to help the IRS deal with what she called massive problems, including a "huge backlog" in working through tax returns, and lack of personnel to carry out complicated audits of higher-earning taxpayers. "I’m excited about legislation that’s passed and I want to make sure that it makes the difference it should make, and that includes the IRS," she said. "That agency needs to be completely redone, and it’s a big task." Republicans sought unsuccessfully to slash tens of billions in IRS funding from the law. The law also includes about $270 billion in tax credits for electric vehicles, home solar panels and other climate purchases that will be overseen by Treasury, which has made Yellen a pivotal climate figure in President Joe Biden's administration.

Key Republicans oppose House GOP bill to abolish tax code - Republican supporters of a bill aimed at abolishing the tax code as we know it are running into an early barrier in the House: their own leadership. The Fair Tax Act was thrust into the spotlight earlier this month as reports emerged that it was part of a deal made by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) with his GOP detractors during the days-long process to elect him Speaker. But as the bill becomes fodder for growing Democratic attacks from the White House down, some Republicans are distancing themselves from the legislation. McCarthy made clear his opposition to the bill when pressed by reporters earlier this week. He said the bill “would have to go through committee” when asked on Wednesday if he planned to bring it up for a floor vote. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R) said Thursday that he didn’t support the bill, instead telling The Hill that he backs making permanent the tax cuts in former President Trump’s signature 2017 tax bill. “We made the code more simplified and got rid of a lot of loopholes, and so I want to see us continue focusing on the fairness and simplicity of a tax code,” Scalise argued. The Fair Tax Act, introduced by Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), would constitute the largest change to the U.S. system in decades — maybe ever — and would all but abolish the tax code. It would eliminate all income taxes, payroll taxes, estate taxes and gift taxes in favor of an outsized 30-percent sales tax that would be collected by states and then remitted to the federal Treasury. The new method of taxation would render the IRS, as it currently exists, all but obsolete. Some Republicans have expressed interest in the idea of a national sales tax but have yet to sign onto the legislative effort. “It’s an interesting idea … if everybody pays in a portion, everybody has his skin in the game,” Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) said of the idea, adding that “it can be doable, but I have to see those parameters.” However, the push has not gone without criticism from others in the conference. “I don’t think it’s a wise thing,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told The Hill on Wednesday, saying he doesn’t think “it’s smart politics or policy.” Bacon claimed the plan for the bill was initially understood to be that leaders would bring it “to the floor for a vote.” But said he called on GOP leadership to allow the measure to “go through regular order” instead. “I asked that it be [brought] to committee and studied and marked up, not just brought on the floor,” he said, adding that “if you do it the normal way, bad bolts get rooted out or they get amended.”

 Fed's Brainard is a front-runner to head Biden's economic council -Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard is a top contender to become the head of the White House's National Economic Council, according to people familiar with the deliberations. President Biden has not made a final decision on who will fill the role being vacated by Brian Deese, the people said, noting that interviews were still ongoing. Other candidates include Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, Biden advisor Gene Sperling, former Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, former Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh and Bharat Ramamurti, the council's current deputy. The president's decision isn't expected imminently, one of the people said. Deese, who has been in the role for two years, hasn't given a firm date for his departure. If Brainard is appointed, it would open a slot on the Fed's seven-member board at a time when policymakers are debating how much more to raise interest rates. Biden would need to find a successor who could win the backing of the Senate. That Brainard was a front-runner was first reported by The Washington Post. The move comes as Biden prepares for a turnover of top aides. Chief of Staff Ron Klain is due to leave in the coming weeks and is set to be replaced by Jeff Zients, a former NEC director who also served as Biden's COVID czar. Cecilia Rouse, who leads the Council of Economic Advisers, is also planning on leaving shortly, which will mean Biden has to replace another top economic aide. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen — whose job Brainard was once a serious candidate for — also committed in a private December meeting with Biden to staying in her role, at least for now. Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Brainard have led the Fed as it raised interest rates over the past year at the steepest pace in four decades to curb inflation that officials mistakenly thought would prove transitory.

Democrats reach agreement with GOP on House committee ratios House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) announced Sunday that Democrats have reached an agreement with House Republicans on the remaining standing committee ratios for the upcoming term. “These ratios are consistent with an inversion of those from the prior Congress where Democrats held a similarly sized majority, notwithstanding a few changes in overall committee size,” Jeffries said in a letter to colleagues that was obtained by The Hill. Republicans currently hold a 222-212 advantage over Democrats in the House, after Democrats held an identical edge in the last Congress. House Republican leadership announced committee appointments last week, including reassigning Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to committees after they were both stripped of their assignments in 2021. “It is my expectation that no returning member of the House Democratic Caucus will involuntarily lose a seat related to an existing committee assignment, except for the House Committee on Ways and Means, as previously anticipated,” Jeffries said. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) previously vowed to keep prominent Democrats off certain committees, including keeping Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) off the House Foreign Affairs Committee and keeping Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) off the House Intelligence Committee. Jeffries said Democratic membership on the House Armed Services, Budget, Foreign Affairs, Judiciary and Small Business committees is a “direct inversion” from when the Democrats had the majority in the last Congress.

McCarthy hands detractors critical posts to influence legislation - Speaker Kevin McCarthy awarded his group of detractors another powerful perch: The ability to influence nearly everything that will come to the House floor. The California Republican announced his picks for the Rules Committee on Monday evening, and the nine GOP members on the panel will include Reps.Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), two Republicans who initially voted against McCarthy during his 15-ballot speaker fight before ultimately supporting him. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), known for being a libertarian-leaning gadfly and thorn in leadership’s side, is also getting a seat.It’s a significant shift for the committee, with possibly far-reaching implications that go beyond simple procedure fights. The panel is typically packed with leadership allies and yes-men who follow party leaders’ directives on how and when to bring priorities to the floor. Members can shut down or allow amendment votes on legislation, a tactic to head off potential poison pills both from across the aisle and within their own ranks. However, McCarthy’s decision will give the House GOP’s right flank the ability to put their stamp on everything — from what bills advance to the full chamber to the structure of floor debates and amendments — and they’re much less likely to go along with leadership.Both Roy and Massie have a track record of holding up major spending legislation, emergency disaster aid and forcing votes on divisive amendments against the wishes of GOP leadership. Importantly, if Roy, Norman or Massie hang together they can effectively block legislation, including bills that McCarthy supports, from getting to the floor, as minority party members usually vote no on the 9-4 split panel.That is likely to shift much of the GOP’s floor drama to the Rules Committee, which could now serve as a microcosm of the broader policy fights within the conference by requiring conservative buy-in before legislation can advance.“Didn’t ask for it. But you can’t push for change [and] not saddle up if asked,” Roy, who helped negotiate a deal that helped flip several McCarthy “no” votes, said about his elevation to the committee.McCarthy had pledged as part of negotiations over his speaker bid to elevate different factions within his conference, including the House Freedom Caucus, to plumb positions. Under the deal, members of the group were expected to get two seats while a third seat was expected to go to a conservative. Those same conservatives had also pushed for more amendment votes on bills that come to the floor. It could portend difficulty ahead for the Rules Committee, which will now need their backing to get legislation up for a vote.

McCarthy blocks Democrats Schiff, Swalwell from intelligence committee - House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday he will block Reps. Adam B. Schiff and Eric Swalwell from serving on the House Intelligence Committee, days after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) formally recommended the California Democrats be reappointed to the panel.McCarthy has argued that both Schiff and Swalwell are unfit to serve on the committee, using Schiff’s work conducting the first impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump and Swalwell’s alleged ties to a Chinese intelligence operative. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing in relation to the allegation against Swalwell.“This is not anything political. This is not similar to what the Democrats did,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday evening. “Those members will have other committees, but the Intel committee, the Intel committee’s responsibility is a national security. … I respect Hakeem Jeffries’s support of his conference and his people. But integrity matters.”Unlike most committees, where party leaders control their appointees, the speaker has final say over who sits on the Intelligence panel.McCarthy declined to answer multiple questions on whether he will try to keep Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from serving on the Foreign Affairs committee — a move that would require a majority vote in the full House.Schiff told reporters that McCarthy was “carrying the dirty water” for Trump by leaving him out of the committee as retribution for his work during Trump’s first impeachment trial.Republicans have been keen to deny Democrats positions on key panels after the Democratic-led House in the last Congress voted to remove Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) from their committee assignments. Greene had previously voiced approval of violence against prominent Democrats, and Gosar had posted an animated video on social media that depicted the killing of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). In the votes to remove them from their committee slots, some Republicans joined Democrats in voting yes.

Divided U.S. House members spar over national security committee seats | (Reuters) - Members of the U.S. House of Representatives traded jabs on Wednesday over Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy's decision to remove three Democrats from the intelligence and foreign affairs committees, two years after Democrats ousted two Republicans from committee assignments. Reflecting the bitter divide in the newly seated House, where Republicans hold a slim majority, McCarthy on Tuesday formally rejected Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell as members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Schiff is the panel's former chair and Swalwell has been a long-standing member. Schiff and Swalwell, who both played leading roles in the two impeachments of Republican former President Donald Trump, at a news conference on Wednesday accused McCarthy of playing politics with the committee that oversees intelligence agencies. "The cardinal sin appears to be that I led the impeachment of his master in Mar-a-Lago," Schiff said. Mar-a-Lago is Trump's Florida home. McCarthy, who as speaker can act unilaterally appoint the members of a select committee like the intelligence panel, insists he is acting in the best security interests of the country. Select committees are established to consider a particular matter or subject. McCarthy and other Republican leaders also said they do not want Representative Ilhan Omar to serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But under House rules on standing committees, the full chamber must vote on that decision, and it was not immediately clear whether enough Republicans would side with McCarthy to keep Omar off. At least two have said they opposed her removal; Republicans have only a five-seat majority in the House.

Ilhan Omar says McCarthy leaving her off Africa subcommittee is 'racist, xenophobic' - In a new statement, Rep. Ilhan Omar is now accusing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of being "racist" and "xenophobic" for removing her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.Omar, a member of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights, defended her position in a tweet saying she is "the only African-born" member."As the only African born, not being on the Africa subcommittee is not just an elimination of a unique voice but an elimination of all the voices that have never been heard on a committee on the continent," Omar wrote.She added: "It’s racist, xenophobic and discriminatory."Omar echoed these remarks during an appearance Sunday on MSNBC's "Yasmin Vossoughian Reports.""I think it would be hypocritic [sic] for him to remove, you know, the first African born on subcommittee on Africa on the Foreign Affairs Committee, where I’ve had the opportunity to not only represent my constituents but the voice of so many people who have never had a voice on the Foreign Affairs Committee," Omar said.Omar has previously described McCarthy's decision as a political stunt, a blow to the integrity of the democratic institution and a threat to national security.McCarthy has said he is removing Omar from the position as she has upset many of her colleagues in the past with controversial anti-Israel statements that highlighted antisemitic tropes.

White House defends Schiff, Swalwell and Omar amid battle over committees - The White House on Wednesday pushed back on Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) opposition to having three House Democrats serve on certain committees. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre took issue with McCarthy blocking Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from serving on the House Intelligence Committee, and with McCarthy’s pledge to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Jean-Pierre said all three members “bring a lot to the table when it comes to foreign policy and national security.” “We’ll say that when it comes to that committee, it should not be politicized,” Jean-Pierre added, speaking specifically about the Intelligence Committee. “It should be independent. And again, those congressional members bring a lot of expertise to that committee, and I’ll leave it there.” McCarthy on Tuesday formally rejected Schiff and Swalwell from serving on the House Intelligence Committee, saying the two were not qualified for a panel that has access to sensitive and classified materials. McCarthy has accused Schiff of lying to the public about former President Trump’s ties to Russia — a charge that Schiff has dismissed as political retribution. In Swalwell’s case, he was associated with a suspected Chinese spy who had fundraised for his 2014 campaign, a revelation that was made public in 2020. McCarthy has said that a confidential FBI briefing on the episode has left him convinced that Swalwell is a national security risk. Omar has drawn backlash from Republicans for her critical remarks about Israel in recent years. McCarthy has said she should be removed from the House Foreign Affairs panel, but blocking her from that committee requires a majority of the chamber to vote in favor.

Pompeo accuses Schiff of leaking classified information Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of State and CIA director, on Wednesday accused Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) of leaking classified information from his former seat on the House Intelligence Committee, from which Schiff has been blocked by new Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “Adam Schiff lied to the American people, and during my time as CIA director and secretary of State, I know that he leaked classified information that had been provided to him,” Pompeo said in a Fox News interview, adding that Schiff’s tenure as Intel chairman “almost ruined that committee.” Pressed during the interview on why Pompeo didn’t come forward to take action against Schiff if he believed classified documents had been leaked, Pompeo said “it’s a complicated process” and “it’s difficult to pin down precisely what happened.” Pompeo said he “held back” information from the Intelligence Committee because he “didn’t feel comfortable” working with the Schiff-led panel. Schiff’s office blasted Pompeo for the “false and defamatory” remarks. “This is another patently false and defamatory statement from Mike Pompeo. While we understand that Adam Schiff is a favorite target for the failed lackeys of the Trump administration running for president, reputable news outlets shouldn’t repeat these falsehoods,” Schiff spokesperson Lauren French said of the former CIA director’s remarks to Fox News. McCarthy had long vowed to remove Schiff and fellow Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif.) from their Intel committee slots. He followed through on his pledge when he took the gavel and formally blocked the pair of Democrats after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) submitted them to the panel.

McCarthy gets heated with reporter: 'You don't get to determine whether I answer a question' | Fox News - House Speaker Kevin McCarthy got heated with a reporter Tuesday evening as he faced questions over his decision to kick two Democrats off the House Intelligence committee while allowing embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., to take committee assignments.During a press gaggle, McCarthy defended his decision to remove Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., from the intelligence panel, telling reporters that Swalwell had been compromised by a Chinese spy and should not receive intelligence briefings, while Schiff, according to McCarthy, had abused his authority by repeatedly lying to the American people. However, a reporter pressed McCarthy on his decision to let Santos have committee assignments after the New York Republican was caught in several lies about his background, including fabricating his work and education. The reporter asked why Santos' many lies were "not a factor." "He got elected by his district," McCarthy began, but he was cut off. "That's not an answer to my question," the reporter complained, which provoked a scolding from McCarthy. "Let me be very clear and respectful to you. You asked me a question. When I answer it, it's the answer to your question. You don't get to determine whether I answer your question or not, okay? In all respect," McCarthy chided.

GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz blasts McCarthy for kicking Democrats off committees: 'Bread and circuses' -Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana came out strongly against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's plan to kick some Democrats off their committees. Before winning the House majority, McCarthy, R-Calif., had pledged to kick Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., off the House Intelligence committee, as well as Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Spartz strongly condemned any such effort Tuesday, saying, "two wrongs do not make a right." "Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented actions last Congress to remove Reps. Greene and Gosar from their committees without proper due process. Speaker McCarthy is taking unprecedented actions this Congress to deny some committee assignments to the minority without proper due process again," Spartz said in a statement. "As I spoke against it on the House floor two years ago, I will not support this charade again. Speaker McCarthy needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress and start governing for a change," she added. With only a narrow GOP majority, Spartz's opposition could make it harder for McCarthy to keep his campaign promise. The speaker of the House determines which members comprise the Intelligence panel, which is organized as a permanent select committee, granting McCarthy unilateral authority over it. But removing Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee would require a majority vote in the House. Spartz and Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina have said they won't support a GOP-led effort to kick the Democratic lawmakers to the curb. Schiff, Swalwell and Omar made formal requests to the Steering Committee to be reinstated on their committees this month, supported by Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. "It is my understanding that you intend to break with the long-standing House tradition of deference to the minority party Intelligence Committee recommendations and deny seats to ranking member Schiff and Rep. Swalwell," Jeffries wrote to McCarthy on Saturday. "The denial of seats to duly elected members of the House Democratic Caucus runs counter to the serious and sober mission of the Intelligence Committee."

McCarthy might have a math problem in blocking Omar from panel | The Hill - Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) vow to block Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee has hit an early snag: He may not have the votes to do it. Omar, one of three Muslims in Congress, has been a controversial figure on Capitol Hill for her sharp criticisms of the Israeli government and its human rights record. Republicans have said she’s crossed a line into antisemitism, and McCarthy’s case for booting her from Foreign Affairs rests on that accusation. But McCarthy has a math problem to solve, one that could prove an early test of his ability to keep his narrow majority united and fulfill a long-running vow. Democrats are rallying behind Omar, which could force GOP leaders to rely entirely on their own members if they’re to succeed. The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the 12:30 Report newsletter Enter Your Email Subscribe “There’s already two Republicans that have indicated that they won’t vote to put her off, and I think others will come aboard also,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), the senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, who is lobbying Republicans on Omar’s behalf. “So I don’t think it’s going to be a simple vote. I think that she has a good chance of staying.” Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) said this week she’ll oppose the measure, calling McCarthy’s move “unprecedented” while citing her opposition to Democrats’ successful removal of GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) from committees in 2021. “Two wrongs do not make a right,” she said in a statement. “As I spoke against it on the House floor two years ago, I will not support this charade again.” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has been similarly cool to the concept, also pointing to her criticism of the Greene and Gosar evictions under Democratic rule. “I’m not going to be a hypocrite just because Republicans are in the majority now,” she told reporters Wednesday morning. “It’s not been a precedent in Congress to kick people off of their committees because of things that they say, even if you vehemently disagree with those things.” Still, Mace said she’s withholding final judgment until the final resolution is released.

Rep. Matt Gaetz introduces 'PENCIL' resolution barring Adam Schiff from accessing classified information - Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced the "Preventing Extreme Negligence with Classified Information Licenses," or PENCIL Resolution, on Thursday that would bar Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., from accessing any classified information. "The resolution expresses the sense of the U.S. House of Representatives thatCongressman Adam Schiff should not have access to classified information, should be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, and should have his comments made during any proceeding of Congress regarding Russian Collusion and the Trump campaign be officially struck from the record," Gaetz's office said in a statement. Schiff's position on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence allowed him access to classified materials including those relating to former President Donald Trump's first impeachment and the Select Committee on the January 6 Attack."Every member of Congress can access classified information by virtue of their election. Only the most egregious actions would warrant removal, and Adam Schiff has undoubtedly crossed the Rubicon," Gaetz told Fox News Digital. "Democrats have willfully ignored the national security consequences of members like Schiff misrepresenting and leaking classified information to the press."

Santos loans deepen questions around campaign finances- A set of updated campaign finance reports are deepening the mystery surrounding the source of high-dollar loans that Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) made to his campaign last year. Santos’s campaign previously reported that a pair of six-figure loans from the candidate — one for $500,000 that was made last March and another for $125,000 in October — came from his personal funds. But in an amended filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday, Santos’s campaign unchecked a box indicating that the $500,000 loan came from personal funds. Similarly, a separate updated report left the same box unchecked for the $125,000 loan. The changes were first reported by The Daily Beast. Further complicating the matter is the fact that filings from later in 2022 still mark the $500,000 loan as coming from personal funds, leaving the source of the money unclear. Campaign finance experts are struggling to unpack the latest disclosures from Santos’s campaign, which they say are riddled with potential errors and discrepancies. “Nobody can make sense of them,” said Robert Maguire, the research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit watchdog group. “It seems impossible at this point that there is some sort of oversight.” “It’s just an astounding number of financial questions,” he added. “I’ve been doing that for more than a decade and I’ve never seen anything like this.” Brett Kappel, an elections lawyer specializing in campaign finance, said that it’s unclear whether the apparent discrepancies on Santos’s updated filings were the result of a simple clerical error or an intentional change. Regardless, Kappel said, “the amendments make no sense and are inconsistent,” adding the changes would almost certainly attract scrutiny from the FEC.

RNC Chair McDaniel fights for reelection in leadership feud (AP) — Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel is fighting for reelection in a bitter leadership feud that’s testing former President Donald Trump’s grip on his own “Make America Great Again” movement.The high-profile contest to lead the GOP through the 2024 presidential election will be decided Friday afternoon in a secret vote at the committee’s winter meeting in Southern California.The former president is privately backing McDaniel, whom he picked for the job after his victory in 2016. But rebel factions inside his own MAGA movement have lined up behind her challenger, Trump attorney Harmeet Dhillon. Dhillon has waged an aggressive challenge against McDaniel that featured allegations of chronic misspending, mismanagement and even religious bigotry against Dhillon’s Sikh faith — all claims that McDaniel has denied. Above all, the case against McDaniel, a niece of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, has been focused on conservative frustration with repeated election losses on her watch.

Rough road for farm bill as divided Congress takes hold - A chaotic start to the new Republican-led House may spell trouble for the 2023 farm bill. As Rep. Glenn Thompson begins his new job as Agriculture Committee chair, he faces significant challenges to make the five-year legislation bipartisan while managing pressure from his own party’s right flank. Issues such as climate change and low-income nutrition programs are likely targets for the party’s most conservative members, and the Pennsylvania Republican has little room to maneuver with a thin majority, say lobbyists and policy groups. The GOP’s right wing showed its muscle during the election for Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to lead the House. Rebels won seats on the House Rules Committee, easier procedures to oust the speaker and more flexibility to cut government spending. Those trade-offs will have an impact on agriculture legislation. If Thompson can’t broker compromises, the bill is likely to falter, said policy advocates who’ve worked on multiple farm bills. The most conservative lawmakers could demand nutrition programs be stripped from the measure, and Democrats could withhold support if the legislation goes too far to appease the right. Thompson has a lot more responsibility than he faced in a two-year stint as ranking Republican, when the farm bill seemed far off. “It’s a big difference when you’re the chairman,” said former Rep. Mike Conaway, a Texas Republican who chaired the Agriculture Committee for the 2018 farm bill and didn’t run for reelection in 2020. Conaway told E&E News he expects Thompson will make the process bipartisan, citing the razor-thin majority Republicans have. But lawmakers don’t have much time to conduct hearings and write a bill, he said, if they expect to enact a new authorization before the current one expires at the end of September.

Lawmakers submit more than 140 amendments as House opens process for first time in seven years - The House opened up its amendment process for the first time in seven years on Thursday, and began debating on the floor more than 140 proposed changes to an oil-related bill. House Republicans brought the Strategic Production Response Act to the floor on Thursday under what’s known as a modified-open rule. The bill in seeks to limit the president’s ability to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), and would mandate the federal government to draw up a plan that would boost the percentage of federal lands leased for oil and gas production, should it continue withdrawing resources from the SPR. Unlike structured or closed rules, which limit the number of amendments considered — as determined by the House Rules Committee for each bill — a modified-open rule allows anyone to submit an amendment as long as they do so the day before a bill is debated. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said it was the first time in seven years the House had used such a process, and more than 140 amendments were submitted for the bill. The amendments varied in topic, with some proposing restrictions on where oil from the SPR is sent and others seeking to place constraints on where oil and gas leases are. A number of the amendments were passed or rejected by voice vote on Thursday. On some amendments, however, members requested a roll call vote. The House is expected to continue debating amendments Thursday night, then vote on the entire bill Friday, a longer process than a structured or closed rule. Conservative lawmakers had pushed for a more open legislative process in the lead up to — and during — this month’s protracted Speaker’s race in an effort to empower rank-and-file members. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) touted the process during his press conference on Tuesday. “This week, you’re going to see something that hasn’t happened in Congress in more than seven years: a bill is going to come to the floor under an open rule,” McCarthy told reporters outside his office in the Capitol. “Think about that. The entire time the Democrats were in the majority, those four years and three years in the past, you have not had a bill come to this floor under an open rule.” “This is what we promised the American public. This is what we promised the members on both sides. There will be more openness, more opportunity for ideas to win at the end of the day, and as we move forward,” he added.

House passes bill to improve FAA system that grounded flights  - The House on Wednesday passed a bipartisan bill aimed at reviewing and recommending improvements to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) NOTAM pilot alert system that went haywire earlier this month. The NOTAM Improvement Act would create a task force under the FAA to offer solutions aimed at boosting the system’s stability and keeping it safe from cyber attacks. The FAA was forced to ground all U.S. flights on Jan. 11 for several hours due to a NOTAM system outage, the first nationwide shutdown in more than two decades. “Following the FAA meltdown earlier this month, it is clearer than ever that improvements must be made to our aviation safety systems,” Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), who co-led the bill with Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), said in a statement. The bill passed 424-4, marking the third time it has passed the House. The Senate didn’t take the bill up in either of the last two Congresses. “I encourage my colleagues in both the House and the Senate to pass my legislation before another failure of the NOTAM system occurs. Our pilots, crew members and passengers are counting on us,” Stauber said on the House floor. The task force would consist of pilots, airline and airport industry executives, union officials, air traffic controllers and other aviation and computer system experts. The bill’s passage comes as Congress gears up to reauthorize the FAA’s funding for five years. Aviation experts hope that lawmakers will provide the agency with more money to upgrade its archaic systems. The FAA said last week that the NOTAM outage was caused when government contractors unintentionally deleted files while working to improve the system’s databases. The FAA said it didn’t find any evidence of a cyber attack or nefarious actors but would continue to investigate. “The FAA made the necessary repairs to the system and has taken steps to make the NOTAM system more resilient. The agency is acting quickly to adopt any other lessons learned in our efforts to ensure the continuing robustness of the nation’s air traffic control system,” the agency said in a statement.

Biden’s human rights pick withdraws - President Joe Biden’s nominee for a top human rights position is withdrawing from contention in the face of unrelenting opposition from a Senate Republican who questions her support for Israel.The loss of Sarah Margon, whose nomination to serve as assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor was announced in April 2021, could damage an administration push to prioritize human rights in its foreign policy. It also highlights the partisan logjams in the Senate confirmation process, where actions by a single senator have left some foreign policy and national security positions empty for years.Margon is a former Capitol Hill staffer and Washington director for Human Rights Watch who now works in a senior role at the Open Society Foundations, the organization founded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros.In a conversation and statement shared first with POLITICO, she described her decision not to be renominated as the new Congress has taken over as hers alone and praised the Biden team’s support.“At present, I don’t see a path forward for confirmation, and after 1 ½ years, it’s time to move on,” Margon said in the statement. “I will continue to work on democracy and human rights, and am grateful to President Biden and Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken for their confidence in me and the honor of a nomination.”Margon faced opposition from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, Jim Risch of Idaho. Risch, citing past tweets of hers, accused Margon of supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which targets Israel due to its policies toward the Palestinians.Margon denied supporting the BDS movement, but her attempts to clarify the tweets didn’t sway Risch. Neither did a letter of support from a bipartisan group of foreign policy professionals, some of them prominent in the Jewish community, who dismissed the anti-Israel allegations against Margon.

Texas leads 20 Republican states in suing Biden admin over migrant parole program | Fox News - A coalition of 20 states and a top conservative legal group are suing the Biden administration over its recently expanded humanitarian parole program that allows tens of thousands of migrants from designated countries a month into the U.S., arguing that the program is unlawful.The lawsuit, filed by Texas and America First Legal in the Southern District of Texas, is joined by 19 additional states who are seeking to block the Biden administration’s parole program, which allow up to 30,000 migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela into the U.S. each month.The Biden administration announced the program for Venezuelans in October, which allowed a limited number to fly directly into the U.S. as long as they had not entered illegally, had a sponsor in the U.S. already and passed certain checks. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced that the program would be expanding to include Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans and that the program would allow up to 30,000 a month into the U.S. It allows for migrants to receive work permits and a two-year authorization to live in the U.S. and was announced alongside an expansion of Title 42 expulsions to include those nationalities. "We anticipate this action is going to substantially reduce the number of people attempting to cross our southwest border without going through a legal process," he said."We can provide humanitarian relief consistent with our values, cut out vicious smuggling organizations, and enforce our laws," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. "Individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States will be subject to prompt expulsion or removal. Individuals who are provided a safe, orderly, and lawful path to the United States are less likely to risk their lives traversing thousands of miles in the hands of ruthless smugglers, only to arrive at our southern border and face the legal consequences of unlawful entry."In the lawsuit led by Texas and America First Legal, the plaintiffs argue that the program is illegal given the "exceptionally limited" parole power available to the federal government. They note that up to 360,000 migrants could be allowed into the U.S. a year.

GOP states sue Biden administration over new border policy - The Washington Post — Twenty states with GOP attorneys general on Tuesday sued the Biden administration over a major change in immigration policy that would turn away more migrants but still allow 360,000 people to legally enter each year from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.The lawsuit, which was filed in a federal court in Texas, accuses the Biden administration of “arbitrarily” creating recent changes and overstepping its authority. Among those leading the challenge is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has succeeded before in temporarily stopping new immigration rules under President Joe Biden.The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment on the lawsuit late Tuesday.The changes that Biden announced this month amounted to his boldest move yet to confront the arrival of migrants that have spiraled since he took office two years ago. The four nationalities that Biden addressed now make up the majority of those crossing the border illegally. There were more than 2.38 million stops during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, which is the first time the count topped 2 million. The administration has struggled to clamp down on crossings, reluctant to take hardline measures that would resemble those of the Trump administration.

U.S. arrests of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan migrants plummet (Reuters) - The number of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border dropped off dramatically from December to January following new rules that expel them back to Mexico, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said. U.S. authorities encountered a daily average of just 115 migrants from those countries over a week-long period ending on Jan. 24, down from an average 3,367 in the week to Dec. 11, a 97% drop, DHS said on Wednesday. The department attributed the decrease to the expansion of a public health order known as Title 42, which was first implemented by Republican former President Donald Trump to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as expanded legal pathways to enter the United States. On Jan. 5, the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden announced that migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua would be expelled to Mexico without the chance to seek U.S. asylum under Title 42. Mexico had previously accepted mostly Mexicans, some Central Americans and, more recently, Venezuelans. Reuters reported last week that overall border arrests dropped in January following the new policies. Biden, who intends to seek reelection in 2024, has struggled both operationally and politically with record numbers of migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. His move to expand the Trump-era program has angered some immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers who point to his pledge to reverse the Republican's hardline border policies.

Mexico finds 57 adolescent migrants crammed into truck | (AP) — Mexican immigration authorities said they found 57 Guatemalan adolescents packed into a trailer on a highway near the U.S. border Thursday. The National Immigration Institute said the 43 boys and 14 girls were crammed into the truck’s trailer, along with eight men and a woman and her daughter. All of the adolescents were considered unaccompanied minors, meaning they had no relatives or parents with them. The vehicle was stopped for inspection on a highway leading to the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas. The driver of the vehicle was detained. The minors were taken to a child welfare facility. Children are frequently smuggled through Mexico to rejoin parents or relatives who have already emigrated to the the United States.

WSJ Shreds Vaccine Makers, Biden Admin Over Deceptive Booster Campaign - Wall Street Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley has taken a flamethrower to vaccine makers over their "deceptive" campaign for bivalent Covid boosters, and slams several federal agencies for taking "the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy." You might have heard a radio advertisement warning that if you’ve had Covid, you could get it again and experience even worse symptoms. The message, sponsored by the Health and Human Services Department, claims that updated bivalent vaccines will improve your protection. This is deceptive advertising. But the public-health establishment’s praise for the bivalent shots shouldn’t come as a surprise. –WSJ The narrative behind the campaign was simple; mRNA Covid shots could simply be 'tweaked' to to target new variants - in this case, the jabs were claimed to confer protection against BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants, along with the original Wuhan strain. To call this wishful thinking would be extremely generous. As Finley writes, three scientific problems have arisen.

1. The virus is mutating much faster than vaccines can be updated.
2. Vaccines have 'hard wired' our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, "so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines."
3. Antibody protection wanes after just a few months.

Finley has brought receipts too... Two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine this month showed that bivalent boosters increase neutralizing antibodies against the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but not significantly more than the original boosters. In one study, antibody levels after the bivalent boosters were 11 times as high against the Wuhan variant as BA.5. The authors posit that immune imprinting “may pose a greater challenge than is currently appreciated for inducing robust immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants.” This isn’t unique to Covid or mRNA vaccines, though boosters may amplify the effect. Our first exposure as children to the flu—whether by infection or vaccination—affects our future response to different strains. -WSJFor those who took (or were forced to take) the original vaccine, our memory B-cells were trained to produce antibodies against the original Wuhan strain. And as a New England Journal of Medicine article notes, people who have taken said original vaccine were "primed" to respond to the Wuhan strain, and 'mounted an inferior antibody response to other variants.'The studies directly contradict marketing information from Pfizer and Moderna, which asserted that the bivalent boosters produced a response to the new strains (BA.4 and BA.5) that's 4-6x that of the original boosters - which the WSJ says is "misleading."For starters, neither Pfizer or Moderna conducted a randomized trial.They tested the original boosters last winter, long before the BA.5 surge and 4½ to months after trial participants had received their third shots. The bivalents, by contrast, were tested after BA.5 began to surge, 9½ to 11 months after recipients had received their third shots. –WSJ Here's the moneyshot: "The vaccine makers designed their studies to get the results they wanted. Public-health authorities didn’t raise an eyebrow, but why would they? They have a vested interest in promoting the bivalents."

FDA panel eyes shift to annual COVID shots --In a document posted ahead of an advisory group meeting on Jan 26, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today spelled out a proposal for annual COVID-19 vaccine shots for the majority of people and a system for updating the vaccines that mirrors that for flu shots.With no end in sight for a SARS-CoV-2 virus that rapidly evolves and evades protection, federal officials are trying to shore up waning protection, broaden coverage against the changing virus, and greatly simplify the process not only for health providers, but also for the public, now weary of frequent booster shots.The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) will vote on one question, whether to simplify current vaccine use by shifting to just one vaccine composition for both primary series and booster doses, which would be a bivalent shot that contains the original virus and the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants."This simplification of vaccine composition should reduce complexity, decrease vaccine administration errors due to the complexity of the number of different vial presentations, and potentially increase vaccine compliance by allowing clearer communication," the FDA said in its briefing document.Also, the group will discuss two other issues. One is whether to streamline the immunization schedule to include two yearly COVID-19 vaccine doses for very young children who have not been exposed to the virus before and people with weakened immune systems, including adults older than age 50. The one-dose group, as proposed, would include young kids who have had 2 or more doses, older children, and all but older adults.The FDA said the immunization schedule proposal is influenced by emerging evidence that hybrid immunity provides significant protection against COVID-19, acknowledging that there are some inconsistencies and data gaps.The other discussion point is a system to periodically update the composition of the COVID vaccines, including those for use in fall 2023. The FDA proposed that the annual discussion would occur in early June each year to allow vaccines to be produced in time for September deployment. However, it said emergence of a more pathogenic vaccine-escape variant would prompt emergency assessment.

Opinion | Fix the CDC to confront the next pandemic - Washington Post editorial - The covid-19 pandemic has been a strenuous trial for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s premier public health agency. Its demoralized workforce is exhausted, its authoritative voice diminished, its data-gathering processes cumbersome. The agency’s funding is too inflexible to deal with challenges that demand rapid mobilization. The time has come for a major reset, which ought to be a high priority for the new Congress. Director Rochelle Walensky announced a reform effort last year, acknowledging the mistakes of the past and pledging to make the agency more action-oriented. A reorganization toward this end was announced on Tuesday. This is a good start. As a new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies declares, in today’s globalized world, a strong, reliable and effective CDC is indispensable to U.S. prosperity and security. To reach that goal, Congress and the administration will have to take the next steps. The CSIS study, “Building the CDC the Country Needs,” was prepared by a task force led by Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president at CSIS and director of its Global Health Policy Center. Their report offers a serious and doable agenda for reform.They point to “fundamental and vexing gaps” in the CDC’s authority to acquire data, such as information on the spread of disease. Although the agency is “expected to move decisively at the earliest possible moment when signs of a dangerous outbreak emerge,” and cope with a fast-moving crisis either at home or abroad, it comes up against “five choke points.” One is that for every new disease, it must engage in time-consuming, politically sensitive negotiations to establish individual data-use agreements with each state and private entity, which can hamper its response. During the pandemic, the CDC found that critical data for tracking the virus was often scattered among different, incompatible databases, and it had difficulty persuading states to provide detailedpersonal information about vaccine recipients because of privacy concerns.Another choke point: The CDC lacks the contracting flexibility given to other federal agencies, and its funding is fixed in more than 160 individual budget lines, which inhibits its ability to move staff in an emergency. The CDC also lacks authorizing legislation, essential to clarify in law the agency’s mission, structure and funding. That can be rectified this year when Congress reauthorizes the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which could easily include a new section on the CDC. If the CDC is expected to mount rapid responses like the Federal Emergency Management Agency does — and we think it should — it needs statutory authority.Other priorities include preserving the CDC’s science staff. According to the new study, senior career ranks are aging, retirement is accelerating, and next-generation recruitment lags.The CDC also has its work cut out to reestablish public confidence. President Donald Trump’s White House wrongly muzzled the CDC at the start of the pandemic. But the study found that the agency’s communications capabilities are “woefully underpowered” for today’s intense media environment. The CDC needs to be able to respond in real time and widely, including on social media, to uncertainty about outbreaks and disinformation about disease and vaccines.The loss of public trust can also be remedied if Dr. Walensky and future agency chiefs demonstrate forceful leadership in a public health crisis. To that end, the Atlanta-based CDC needs a stronger presence in Washington, where policy is forged. The CSIS study also underscores the need to bolster the CDC’s large overseas operations, which are undervalued and underfunded, but remain vital in helping other countries and standing sentinel for the United States when a disease breaks out. The CSIS report warns that the CDC has entered a “moment of peril.” If repaired and bolstered promptly, the CDC will be better able to tackle the real peril: disease and illness.

SNAP payments to shrink in 32 states as emergency benefits end next month — Emergency benefits that have helped boost payments to SNAP recipients during the COVID-19 pandemic are set to end soon, leaving families with less money and high grocery prices. SNAP, which stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, used to be called the Food Stamp Program. For nearly three years, households have been receiving an additional $95 or more on top of their normal allotment. In 17 states, those added emergency benefits have already expired as of January 2023. Those states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. In one state, South Carolina, the emergency allotment will expire after the January 2023 payments are issued. In the remaining 32 states, plus Washington, D.C., Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the extra money will dry up starting with the March 2023 benefit month, according to the FNS. Oklahoma is one of the states where the added benefits are set to expire. “The agency knows these additional benefits have been critical to meeting the needs of Oklahomans during such difficult times,” acknowledged Deb Smith, Director of Adult and Family Services. Oklahoma state officials said people should plan for a return to their pre-pandemic SNAP benefits beginning March 1.

Scammers draining SNAP accounts of all benefits, officials warn – Officials across several U.S. states are warning against a rise in scams that leave SNAP beneficiaries without any money in their account and no other way to buy groceries.One mom in Oklahoma didn’t realize she had been victimized until she tried to buy a $1 drink. Her EBT card was rejected for “insufficient funds,” Nexstar’s KFOR reported. She later found out someone had spent all $462 at a market in Brooklyn, New York.A single father of eight kids, also in Oklahoma, recently had $800 stolen from his account. “I don’t have that extra support. I can’t call my mom. I can’t call my sister. We don’t come from money; [they] took from a hard working blue collar worker,” William Hassell told KFOR.State officials “more than 100 Oklahoma SNAP users” have been affected by card skimming attacks. Dozens of families in New York have also been victimized, according to WPIX. Pennsylvania also warned residents of scam activity last month.SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and used to be called the Food Stamp Program. Scammers appear to be targeting the funds two ways: skimming and texts. Skimming basically steals a person’s payment information from a card reader that’s been tampered with. Another strategy, officials say, is targeting people with fake texts saying there are issues with a recipient’s SNAP account, convincing them to hand over their pin. The USDA Food and Nutrition Service issued a scam alert in October, saying thieves were increasingly using the skimming technique to target SNAP funds.The agency advises SNAP users to never share their PIN with anybody, check their accounts regularly for unauthorized charges, and inspect card readers for anything that looks suspicious attached before inserting or swiping. Anyone who believes they’ve been victimized by a scammer should contact their local SNAP office. Oklahoma told KFOR the USDA doesn’t allow for stolen SNAP benefits to be reimbursed with federal funds.Without the money restored to their accounts, low-income or no-income families may be left with few options to buy food before the next month’s benefits come in. Meanwhile, food costs continued to rise at the end of 2022. Compared to the same time last year, bread was 16% more expensive, frozen vegetables 18%, and eggs a whopping 49%.

Biden's new student loan plan would be a big new college subsidy -  Washington Post editorial - You might not have noticed, but President Biden is trying to overhaul the student loan system. Even as his controversial student debt forgiveness scheme heads to the Supreme Court, the Education Department is advancing another audacious plan to reshape how higher-education loans work — and not just for existing borrowers, but future ones, too. This means it could soon redefine the nation’s higher-education loan system, which some 70 percent of college students use to finance their degrees. The new plan is better than many of the ideas Democrats have proposed to help students finance higher education because it is tailored to help low-income graduates, particularly those who attended community college. But it still poses some big risks for taxpayers and even the borrowers themselves. It would be expensive. And it would amount to a huge new subsidy for higher education that Congress never specifically approved. The Biden team is committing itself and future administrations to the plan without the blessing of federal lawmakers. To impose this big new policy without going through Congress, the administration proposed taking an existing student loan program and making its terms so generous that it would essentially become a grant program. The new repayment scheme would require individual borrowers to pay only 5 percent of their yearly income above roughly $31,000 to service their undergraduate debt. So a nursing assistant earning $30,000 annually would pay nothing. For those with less than $12,000 in debt, the government would forgive whatever is left after 10 years. For every additional $1,000 borrowed, the forgiveness timeline would increase by a year to a maximum of 20 years for undergraduate loans.In a new analysis, the Urban Institute estimates that a typical community college student who takes out $12,000 in debt could expect to repay only $1,000. Many would pay nothing. Some 49 percent of borrowers in bachelor’s degree programs would pay back less than half of what they owe, and 78 percent would get some degree of forgiveness.This would represent a shift in philosophy on debt forgiveness, from viewing it as a safety net for those who fall into financial distress to an entitlement for most undergraduate borrowers. Because the new program would be so generous, it would create a strong incentive to borrow, which could encourage more students to take on debt rather than pay for their education out-of-pocket.In theory, more education debt would not be a problem for students if they took advantage of generous new loan terms and made all their payments. Yet the Education Department acknowledges that many borrowers fail to enroll in existing loan repayment programs that would save them money and, if they do, to complete necessary paperwork such as recertifying their incomes. “Far too often borrowers end up in default on a student loan when they would have had a low or even a $0 payment on an [income-driven repayment] plan,” according to a department analysis. Administration officials say they are taking steps to ensure student borrowers do not fall through the cracks, but they have far to go in improving borrower services.

How economic headwinds are posing a challenge to Biden - Economic headwinds are posing a challenge to President Biden as he readies a possible reelection bid during which jobs and the economy are likely to take center stage. The White House has sought to highlight the resilience of the U.S. economy in the face of high inflation, rising interest rates and mounting layoffs across the technology, real estate and media sectors in making arguments for Biden’s economic stewardship. Inflation had been expected to be a serious headwind for Democrats in last November’s midterms, but instead the party exceeded expectations by gaining a Senate seat while keeping its House losses to a minimum. New threats are now on the horizon even as the White House hopes for a soft economic landing from Federal Reserve efforts to lower inflation and prevent a recession. Here are some of the economic challenges confronting Biden. Mounting layoffs at big technology companies — many of which drastically expanded operations throughout the pandemic — have prompted a parade of worrying headlines and concerns among some investors. Major tech companies have laid off more than 200,000 workers over the past four months, the majority of which are for high-paying, white-collar jobs. Amazon, Microsoft and Google in particular announced tens of thousands of layoffs this week. The White House said this week that Biden is monitoring the layoffs and is aware of the impact it has on workers and their families. They also argued that the layoffs overall are at a low level, pushing back on the idea that the decisions by Microsoft and Google represent a major concern for the economy or workers in other industries. “The U.S. economy continues to grow … and the unemployment is a 50-year low. So leading analysts have publicly stated that they do not believe the recent layoffs in the tech industry are indicative of trends in the broader economy,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Friday. Only about 190,000 Americans filed new first-time claims for unemployment insurance in the week ending Jan. 14, according to Labor Department data. Layoffs on the whole remain well below average levels from 2019, when new weekly jobless claims regularly topped 200,000 or more.

Justice Department found more classified items in Biden home search (Reuters) - A new search of President Joe Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday by the U.S. Justice Department found six more items, including documents with classification markings, a lawyer for the president said in a statement Saturday night. Some of the classified documents and "surrounding materials" dated from Biden's tenure in the U.S. Senate, where he represented Delaware from 1973 to 2009, according to his lawyer, Bob Bauer. Other documents were from his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, from 2009 through 2017, Bauer said. The Department of Justice, which conducted a search that lasted over 12 hours, also took some notes that Biden had personally handwritten as vice president, according to the lawyer. The president offered access "to his home to allow DOJ to conduct a search of the entire premises for potential vice-presidential records and potential classified material," Bauer said. Neither Biden nor his wife were present during the search, the attorney said. Biden is in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the weekend. Justice Department investigators coordinated the search with Biden's lawyers ahead of time, Bauer said, and the president's personal and White House lawyers were present at the time. Other classified government records were discovered this month at Biden's Wilmington residence, and in November at a private office he maintained at a Washington, D.C., think tank after ending his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration in 2017.

Two Democrats Call For Investigation Into Biden Classified Documents Case -At least two Democratic senators have called for a full investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials after several batches of documents were found at an office and his home in Delaware. “The reports about President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents are extremely irresponsible and disturbing,” Manchin (D-W. Va.) told Fox News on Jan. 20.“These allegations should be investigated fully.” The development “raises serious questions, and the appointment of an unbiased special prosecutor to investigate the matter is the right step,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Fox. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who recently confirmed she wouldn’t be running for re-election in 2024, told NBC News last week that the reports of handling classified documents is a bad look for the White House.“Well, it’s certainly embarrassing. Right?” Stabenow stated. “I mean, it’s embarrassing that you would find a small number of documents, certainly not on purpose. They don’t think it’s the right thing and they’ve been moving to correct it, working with the Department of Justice, working with everyone involved, with the [National] Archives, and so from my perspective, you know, it’s one of those moments that obviously they wish hadn’t happened.” Their comments came just hours before Biden’s lawyer confirmed the Department of Justice (DOJ) searched his home, while an FBI spokesperson confirmed the search to Fox News on Saturday. The search of his Delaware residence reportedly lasted hours, the FBI said.

64 percent in new poll say Biden acted inappropriately handling classified documents --Almost two-thirds of respondents in a new survey said that they believe President Biden acted inappropriately in handling classified documents when he left office as vice president. The ABC News-Ipsos poll, published on Sunday, found that 64 percent of those surveyed said Biden’s handling of classified documents after his vice presidency was inappropriate, while 34 percent said that Biden handled his classified documents appropriately. In comparison, 77 percent of respondents said they believe that former President Trump acted inappropriately with his handling of classified documents after his term in the White House, and 22 percent said that Trump handled classified documents appropriately. Forty-three percent of respondents said they believe that Trump’s handling of classified documents was a more serious concern than Biden’s. By comparison, 20 percent said Biden’s handling of classified documents was a more serious concern than Trump’s.

Mike Pence had classified documents at home, turned them over - The Justice Department has taken possession of a “small number” of documents with classified markings that former Vice President Mike Pence found in his Indiana residence earlier this month, according to Greg Jacob, the custodian of Pence’s White House records. In a Jan. 22 letter to the National Archives, Jacob indicated that FBI agents came to Pence’s Indiana home on the night of Jan. 19 to retrieve documents that the former vice president had located a few days earlier. “The transfer was facilitated by the Vice President’s personal attorney, who has experience in handling classified documents,” wrote Jacob. DOJ’s effort to obtain the documents came days after Pence notified the National Archives that he had discovered them at his residence on Jan. 16. Jacob indicated Pence was unaware of the existence of the documents and had enlisted an outside counsel after press reports of the discovery of documents at President Joe Biden’s own personal residence. The sensitivity of the newly discovered documents is unclear. In his first letter to the Archives, Jacob indicated that Pence’s counsel did not review them “once an indicator of potential classification was identified.” Pence’s revelation threatens to upend the political landscape on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. The Biden White House has similarly turned over classified documents to the National Archives that were found in the president’s personal home and an office he used following his stint as vice president. But it has endured withering criticism, including from fellow Democrats, over the existence of those items. And House Republicans have already begun the process of investigating why classified items were discovered in both Wilmington, Del., and the Penn-Biden Center in Washington, D.C.

Graham on Pence classified docs: 'We've got a problem here' – POLITICO video

Garland defends handling of Biden, Trump classified document probes - Attorney General Merrick Garland is defending the Justice Department’s investigations into how classified materials wound up in several locations at President Joe Biden’s home as well as at a think-tank office he used in Washington between his stints at the White House. In his first public comments since the FBI conducted a daylong consensual search of Biden’s home on Friday, Garland sought to rebut Republican complaints that investigators have been less confrontational in their handling of the Biden documents than they were in pursuing a larger set of documents with classification markings that were seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last August. “We do not have different rules for Democrats or Republicans, different rules for the powerful or the powerless, different rules for the rich and for the poor, we apply the facts, and the law in each case in a neutral, non-partisan manner,” Garland told reporters during a press availability at Justice Department headquarters. “That is what we always do.” Earlier this month, Garland appointed a special counsel to determine whether laws were broken in connection with the presence of the apparently-classified records at the Penn Biden Center in Washington and later at Biden’s Delaware home. Asked if he had any regrets about the way the matters had been handled thus far, Garland called the law enforcement decisions “appropriate” and unaffected by politics. “That is what we’ve done and that is what we will continue to do,” Garland said, flanked by a Justice Department task force handling fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn the federal constitutional right to abortion. While Garland said Monday that the Justice Department has pursued the Trump- and Biden-related cases “without regard to who the subjects are,” there remain special protections for a sitting president under longstanding Justice Department legal opinions. Those opinions preclude criminal charges against a president while he remains in office, but they do not rule out the possibility of such charges once a president leaves office.

National Archives blows off Republican oversight request for info on Biden classified documents -The National Archives has ignored a House Oversight Committee's request for communications relating to the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center think tank, blowing past the deadline for providing the information.House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., on Jan. 10 requested records detailing the National Archives' interactions with President Biden's lawyers and the Justice Department, setting a deadline for Jan. 24. Nevertheless, the deadline came and went Tuesday with no response from the archives, Comer says."The National Archives has not produced the requested documents to the Committee at this time," a committee spokesperson told Axios late Tuesday. "Chairman Comer’s request still stands and anticipates moving forward with a transcribed interview with NARA’s general counsel soon." Comer's Oversight Committee is the tip of the spear for Republicans seeking more information about Biden's alleged mishandling of classified documents. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has stonewalled questions about the documents in recent days.

Senate GOP pours cold water on idea of impeaching Biden - Senate Republicans are pouring cold water on the idea that President Biden’s classified documents controversy rises to the level of an impeachable offense, heading off House conservatives looking for revenge after former President Trump’s two trials. Even before Tuesday’s revelation that about a dozen classified documents had been found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home, GOP senators were cool to the idea of impeachment. “I don’t think you want to get into where it’s a tit for tat, every two years or four years you’re dealing with impeachment proceedings in the House and Senate,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) told The Hill. “There has to be a really good reason, obviously, the constitutional reasons and grounds for that. So we’ll see where it goes.” Asked whether Biden’s possession of classified documents has the potential to rise to the level of an impeachable offense, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to the Senate GOP leadership team, gave a simple answer: “No.” Many Republicans thought the Democrats’ first impeachment of Trump over delaying military aide to Ukraine was a partisan overreach. But that means they are also wary of doing the same thing now that their party has the House majority. It’s just one of several tension points emerging between Republicans in the two chambers. Senate Republicans have mostly ignored chatter in the House about impeaching Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, or wiping out the tax code and replacing it with a 23 percent to 30 percent national sales tax. Some Republicans think talk of impeaching Biden will grow in the House, even though GOP senators warn that it’s a bad idea. House Republicans introduced more than a dozen impeachment resolutions against Biden in the last Congress, and the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee has already initiated an investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents, which could lay the ground for future impeachment proceedings. Trump has also come under criticism for a separate classified documents controversy, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in an interview with Fox Business argued that Biden’s handling of classified documents was more egregious because the former Republican president at least secured the classified information he held with padlocks. “That’s much different than what we’re finding now with President Biden, and I think it is severely going to cause him a great deal of trouble in the future as we get more of the truth,” McCarthy told Fox host Larry Kudlow.

Cotton vows to block nominees until Congress sees documents seized at Biden, Trump residences Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he and other Republicans will hold up President Biden’s nominees until the administration shares with Congress the classified documents seized at Biden’s Delaware home and Washington office and former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Cotton vowed “there will be pain” until the Biden administration shows lawmakers what classified documents the president and former president held outside the proper security protocols and warned that Republicans could also hold up federal funding as leverage. “The administration is stonewalling Congress on the classified documents present at President Trump’s residence and President Biden’s residence and office, which is totally unacceptable,” Cotton told reporters Wednesday. “The members of the Intelligence Committee — for that matter, the members of Congress have an absolute right to this information so we can make an informed judgment about the risk, if any, these documents have posed to our national security by being improperly handled,” he said. Cotton rejected the administration’s claims that the sensitive information can’t be shared with Congress while special counsels Jack Smith and Richard Hur are investigating Trump’s and Biden’s handling of the documents, calling it “a farce.” “Until the administration stops stonewalling Congress, there will be pain as a consequence for them,” he declared. “Whether it’s blocking nominees or withholding budgetary funds, Congress will impose pain on the administration until they provide these documents,” he said. Cotton argued that Congress had access “to many sensitive documents” during former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations that Russia colluded with Trump campaign advisers during the 2016 election. “There’s no reason that standard shouldn’t apply now to the documents present at President Trump’s residence and President Biden’s residence and office,” he said. “I’m prepared to refuse consent to fast-track any nominee from any department or agency and to take every step that I can on every committee on which I serve to impose consequences on the administration until they provide these documents,” he added. Cotton said he also wanted to review the classified documents found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home. The Arkansas senator held up a group of U.S. attorney and U.S. marshal nominations last year to demand information from the Justice Department about why it didn’t do more to defend U.S. marshals who were being sued for their role in defending a federal courthouse in Portland, Ore. during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

Opinion | The culture of government secrecy is out of control - The Washington Post - What should we think of the fact that Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and now Mike Pence have all turned out to have classified material sitting in their houses? Before I answer that question, let me tell you a few facts.One 2004 essay put the number of classified pages in existence at about 7.5 billion. In 2012, records were classified at a rate of 3 per second, making for an estimated 95 million classifications that year alone. Today, no one knows how frequently information is classified. And as of 2019, more than 4 million people were eligible to access classified information, about one-third for top secret records, the highest general designation. The real scandal is that the U.S. government has a totally out-of-control system of secrets that represents a real danger to the quality of democratic government. Let me acknowledge a political point. It is true that people glossed over these issues when Trump was found to be holding onto classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, but have begun to discuss them now that President Biden also appears to be guilty of the same offense. Some of this double standard is political bias. But Trump’s behavior was also a major issue, particularly his refusal to turn over the documents and defiance of direct requests from the Justice Department. That is an important difference, though it doesn’t change the larger point. Given how crazy the classification system is, the wonder is that we don’t find more top secret documents littered throughout the houses of government officials. Democratic governments demand transparency. Accountability and control are impossible when citizens know so little about what the government is doing — and when it has the power to block access to any of that information. This problem has become much, much worse in the digital era. Timothy Naftali, a New York University scholar and former director of the Nixon Library, told me, “We now have a tsunami of classified documents — tens of thousands of emails, PowerPoints, all kinds of stuff — all stored somewhere in the cloud, but we still have a tiny staff of people at the National Archives for the declassification process.” He estimated that it could take five years for a request to declassify a single document to even make it to the agency that has to decide whether to do so. Another scholar, Matthew Connelly of Columbia University, points out that the U.S. government spends about $18 billion a year on classifying and protecting information and just $100 million on declassification.

Trump And Lawyers Hit With $938,000 Penalty For "Frivolous" Suit Against Clinton - A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump and his lawyers to pay $938,000 in sanctions for having filed a "completely frivolous" lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and others, claiming they attempted to rig the 2016 election by smearing Trump with allegations that he was colluding with Russia. “We are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” wrote Judge Donald Middlebrooks in a 46-page order issued in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.. Middlebrooks was nominated by Bill Clinton in 1997. In April, Trump's lawyers filed a motion asking the judge to recuse himself from the case, arguing that "because her husband nominated Judge Middlebrooks to the Federal Bench, there exists a reasonable basis that Judge Middlebrooks’ impartiality will be questioned.” He denied the motion, citing precedents. Trump's lawsuit asked for $30 million in damages from Clinton and 30 other defendants, alleging racketeering, "a conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood" and other wrongdoing. When Middlebrooks threw the suit out in September, he said Trump "is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him." Now Middleton has followed up by holding Trump, his lead attorney Alina Habba and Havva Madaio & Associates jointly and severally liable for $937,989.39. That means the penalty, which covers the defendants' legal expenses, can be collected from any one or combination of the sanctioned trio. Other defendants include the Democratic National Committee, its 2016 chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Christopher Steele, and the FBI's James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Middleton had previously ordered $50,000 in other sanctions in the case. "This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim," wrote Middlebrooks in his sanction order.

Bannon: Marjorie Taylor Greene ‘sees herself on the short list for Trump’s VP’ Former Trump White House strategist Stephen Bannon has said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) “sees herself on the short list” to be named former President Trump’s running mate in his 2024 bid to retake the Oval Office. “This is no shrinking violet, she’s ambitious — she’s not shy about that, nor should she be. … She sees herself on the short list for Trump’s VP,” Bannon told NBC News. When Greene “looks in the mirror, she sees a potential president smiling back,” Bannon added. An unnamed source in the NBC News piece concurred that Greene’s “whole vision” is to snag the second-in-command slot on Trump’s ticket. The former president announced his 2024 bid just after the midterm elections in November, but has had a relatively quiet campaign in the weeks since. An ardent Trump ally, Greene endorsed Trump even before his official launch. She said last summer that she would be “honored” to run alongside Trump in 2024, according to an Insider article. The firebrand Georgia lawmaker boasted of having Trump on the line as she lobbied to get Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) elected Speaker of the new House, calling him “my favorite president.” “She’s both strategic and disciplined — she made a power move, knowing it would run up hard against her most ardent crew. … She was prepared to take the intense heat/hatred short-term for the long-term goal of being a player,” Bannon said of Greene’s support for McCarthy. Greene’s name is among a number of people rumored to be under consideration, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R). Trump hasn’t indicated that a vice presidential announcement is imminent.

Trump tries to intervene as Navarro faces trial for defying Jan. 6 committee - Donald Trump is once again making a last-ditch bid to help a former aide avoid prosecution for defying the Jan. 6 select committee.A lawyer for Trump issued a letter this week endorsing the decision by former White House adviser Peter Navarro to blow off a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee by making blanket claims of executive privilege.The Jan. 23 letter, filed in federal court, comes less than a week before Navarro is slated to go to trial for contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before the select committee last year. “This confirms President Trump’s position that, as one of his senior advisors, you had an obligation to assert executive privilege on his behalf and fully comply with the principles of confidentiality stated above when you responded to the Committee’s subpoena,” the attorney, Evan Corcoran, wrote on Trump’s behalf.The letter appears calculated to undercut the ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta rejecting Navarro’s effort to dismiss the cases against him. Mehta noted in a 39-page opinion last week that Navarro had presented no evidence that Trump actually asserted executive privilege on his behalf — even though he made explicit assertions to block the testimony of other former aides.“Defendant has failed to come forward with any evidence to support the claimed assertion of privilege,” Mehta wrote. “And, because the claimed assertion of executive privilege is unproven, Defendant cannot avoid prosecution for contempt.”Mehta is unlikely to consider Corcoran’s letter sufficient to derail Navarro’s trial. Navarro had initially claimed in court arguments that Trump told him, during a private conversation, to assert executive privilege before the Jan. 6 committee. But Corcoran’s letter makes no reference to such an assertion.It’s the second time Trump has made a last-second bid to disrupt the pending contempt trials for aides who defied the select committee. Days before longtime ally Steve Bannon faced a criminal trial for contempt, Trump took the opposite tack — writing a letter to Bannon waiving any potential executive privilege and clearing the way for Bannon to testify to the committee. Prosecutors dismissed the gambit as a stunt to disrupt the trial, and Bannon ultimately took no steps to actually comply with the select committee’s subpoena, even after Trump’s explicit permission.

Four More Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 riot - Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group were convicted of seditious conspiracy Monday, joining founder Stewart Rhodes in being found guilty by a jury of plotting to keep President Donald Trump in power by force. Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used and even more rarely successful, making the verdict a significant victory for the Justice Department. Of the nearly 1,000 people charged with committing crimes at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, fewer than 20 were charged with seditious conspiracy, identified by the Justice Department as not just participants in a violent mob but leaders using brutality to further a political plot. At Rhodes’s trial, only he and Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggswere found guilty of conspiring to commit sedition, while three associates were convicted of less politically loaded felonies that did not require plans to use force. Monday’s verdict — which came after the jury deliberated for about 13 hours — comes as five members of the Proud Boys face trial down the hall on seditious conspiracy charges. The convictions underscore the government’s contention that the Jan. 6 attack was not a peaceful protest gone awry but a planned assault on democracy.Joseph Hackett, 52; Roberto Minuta, 38; David Moerschel, 45, and Edward Vallejo, 64, were all also convicted Monday of obstructing lawmakers and Congress generally and conspiring to do the same. Hackett was convicted of destroying evidence by deleting it from his devices, while Minuta and Moerschel were acquitted on that charge. Hackett and Moerschel were acquitted of responsibility for damaging the Capitol’s historic Columbus doors. Both the obstruction and sedition convictions carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison, but sentencing guidelines are likely to be in the range of 5 to 7 years.The Oath Keepers were described by federal prosecutors as armed and dangerous traitors, and by their attorneys as hapless has-beens who stumbled into chaos.

Jan. 6 intruder who sat at Pelosi office desk convicted on all charges - Richard Barnett, who famously put his feet up on a desk in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office as rioters swarmed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was convicted by a Washington jury Monday of all eight charges he faced, including four felonies. Barnett, 62, was convicted of obstructing Congress’ Jan. 6 proceedings, a charge that carries a 20-year maximum sentence, as well as disorderly conduct in the Capitol while carrying a dangerous weapon: a “Hike ‘N Strike” walking stick that doubles as a stun weapon. He was also convicted of stealing an envelope from the desk in Pelosi’s suite. The Arkansan, who also goes by “Bigo,” became a symbol of the brazenness of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and his smiling image while seated in a desk chair in Pelosi’s suite quickly went viral. He left her a note that read, “Nancy, Bigo was here bi-otch,” and, after his arrest, tried to copyright the phrase. Video showed him waving the purloined envelope — addressed to then-Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) — outside the Capitol. Emily Berret, who was an aide to Pelosi on Jan. 6, testified that the desk in the famous picture was hers, and she described the horror she experienced when she saw the image on the news while on lockdown with the speaker. Barnett remained stoic as the verdict was read shortly before noon Monday. His partner, Tammy Newburn, was flanked in the public gallery by the mother of Ashli Babbitt — who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she sought to breach the House chamber on Jan. 6 — and the mother of Enrique Tarrio, who was at the same moment in a courtroom two floors below facing charges of seditious conspiracy. Also seated alongside Newburn was Nicole Reffitt, the wife of Jan. 6 defendant Guy Reffitt, who is serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. Barnett took the stand in his own defense, contending that he was “pushed” into the Capitol by the Jan. 6 mob and then roamed around looking for a bathroom until he stumbled into Pelosi’s suite. He said he took the envelope because he had bled on it and viewed it as a “biohazard.” He left an American flag on a side table inside the office as well. He said that he was angered by police actions outside the Capitol, disoriented after being maced in the rotunda and made overheated statements in the moment.

Judge orders video of attack on Paul Pelosi to be released -- A judge has ruled that video of the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), should be released following a motion from several news organizations, according to multiple reports. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Stephen Murphy ruled on Wednesday that the evidence against the alleged attacker, David DePape, should be publicly released, siding with the outlets in ruling that it should be available to the public. NBC News reported that the evidence set to be released includes body camera footage that was captured by the officer who responded to the attack at the Pelosis’ address, the 911 call that Paul Pelosi made, parts of an interview that the police had with DePape and security video of the break-in that Capitol Police recorded. The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, however, had argued in court that publishing the video would distort the facts of the case, and the office and DePape’s defense team both argued it could “irreparably harm” his right to a fair trial, the outlets reported. But Murphy noted in his ruling that the footage was already played at a preliminary hearing last month, attorney Thomas Burke, who represented the organizations suing for disclosure, told The New York Times.

Nancy Pelosi Had Literal Exorcism Performed On House After Husband's Attack --Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called in a priest to perform an exorcism at the San Francisco home where her husband, Paul Pelosi, was attacked by 42-year-old David DePape on November 4th, according to Pelosi's daughter, Alexandra."I think that weighed really heavy on her soul. I think she felt really guilty. I think that really broke her. Over Thanksgiving, she had priests coming, trying to have an exorcism of the house and having prayer services," she told the NY Times. While the official details surrounding the incident have changed several times, the last update came in a now-retracted November report by veteran NBC News correspondent Miguel Almaguer (who's been benched since said report). According to Almaguer, Paul Pelosi opened the door to their San Francisco home last month when police arrived. However, he did not try to escape or alert police to an emergency, and he instead walked to the police and back toward the alleged attacker, David DePape.“After a ‘knock and announce,’ the front door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or tried to leave his home but instead began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police,” Almaguer said in the now-deleted Nov. 4 video report. Almaguer cited unnamed sources for the claims.

White House engaged in 'vast censorship enterprise' against conservatives, COVID critics: Missouri AG -- One of two state attorneys general filing a civil suit against the Biden administration claimed in a Fox Business exclusive he uncovered a "vast censorship enterprise" and produced purported evidence the White House's social media team leadership tried to censor or suppress conservative voices and critics of its COVID policy – including a member of a prominent Democratic family.Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who along with Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey Landry, first filed suit last May. However, Bailey told "The Bottom Line" Tuesday the web of purported censorship continues to grow."This is about protecting the Constitution, and I couldn't agree with those sentiments more," he said, after host Dagen McDowell read from part of the lawsuit."I'm proud to have partnered with the Louisiana attorney general on this case because it's the most important First Amendment case in a generation. We've uncovered a vast censorship enterprise, coercion and collusion between officials at the White House and across federal bureaucratic agencies and their cronies in Big Tech/social media to target and censor free speech in America."He underlined that the case is preeminently a First Amendment defense rather than any type of political attack.Earlier this month, Bailey also released a statement chronicling several legal "exhibits" germane to the case, which include a purported attempt by the White House to get Twitter to censor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – the son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.Bailey characterized Kennedy, who has questioned aspects of the coronavirus vaccines, as "a known critic of the White House's COVID-19 narrative."Another exhibit alleges White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty "demand[ed] Facebook step up its operations of ‘removing bad information’ on vaccines" – while others scolded Facebook for not taking substantive action against posts by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Elon Musk meets with Kevin McCarthy, Hakeem Jeffries to ensure Twitter is 'fair' -- Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that he met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in an effort to ensure that the social media platform is "fair" to both sides."Just met with @SpeakerMcCarthy & @RepJeffries to discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both parties," Musk tweeted on Thursday.Musk's call for fairness on the platform between political parties comes after the Twitter Files showed that the FBI routinely contacted the social media platform to notify them of accounts that "may" constitute violations of the company's terms of service."Hello Twitter contacts, FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter's Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy," an FBI employee wrote in an email on Nov. 10, 2022.Many Republicans point to Twitter's decision to censor the New York Post's Hunter Biden story prior to the 2020 election as a prime example of the social media platform's censorship against conservatives.Musk said in May 2022 that he could no longer support the Democratic Party. "In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican," Musk said.

Trump’s Facebook, Instagram accounts to be reinstated - Former President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be reinstated in the coming weeks, according to the platforms’ parent company, Meta. Meta handed down a two-year ban on Trump’s accounts in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, a suspension that the company called “unprecedented.” Now it will unlock the accounts in the coming weeks, but will apply heightened penalties for future offenses of its user guidelines, according to a release from the company on Wednesday. Meta’s President for Global Affairs Nick Clegg said on Twitter after the announcement that the company had needed to determine whether the public risk that had surfaced on Jan. 6, 2021, had receded enough to allow Trump back onto the platform. “Our determination is that the risk has sufficiently receded, and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out,” the company said. The looming reinstatement from Facebook and Instagram comes after his Twitter account was reinstated in November after Elon Musk took over the platform. Trump has sent mixed messages about whether he will return to the platforms after communicating mainly through his own social media site, Truth Social. He responded to Meta’s announcement Wednesday by criticizing the initial decision to suspend him. “FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite President, me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account. Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” he wrote. Meta said that the lifting of Trump’s ban is also coming with new guardrails to deter repeat offenders, including heightened penalties for public figures who are returning from suspension related to civil unrest.

Google accused of monopolizing $250B U.S. digital ad market - The Justice Department and states including California, New York, Colorado and Virginia filed a lawsuit against Google alleging the search and advertising behemoth illegally monopolized the online ad market through a yearslong practice of self-dealing, anticompetitive acquisitions, and forcing businesses to use multiple products and services that it offers.The Justice Department and states are accusing Google of illegally monopolizing the roughly $250 billion U.S. market for digital ads. The complaint is seeking to break up the company’s advertising business, along with unspecified damages for harm directly impacting the federal government. Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Tennessee also joined the lawsuit.“Google abuses its monopoly power to disadvantage website publishers and advertisers who dare to use competing ad tech products in a search for higher quality, or lower cost, matches,” the DOJ and states said in the complaint. “Google uses its dominion over digital advertising technology to funnel more transactions to its own ad tech products where it extracts inflated fees to line its own pockets at the expense of the advertisers and publishers it purportedly serves.”It is the first major antitrust lawsuit against a tech company in the Biden administration, continuing efforts started under former President Donald Trump.It’s also the latest in a barrage of antitrust lawsuits against Google. It’s both the DOJ’s second case, and the second case targeting its ad business. The DOJ and a group of state attorneys general sued in October 2020 over Google’s dominance in web searches, and a Texas-led group of state attorneys general challenged its advertising business later that year. Yet another case was filed by a Utah-led group of states in 2021 over Google Play, its mobile app store.“Today’s lawsuit from the DOJ attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector,” said Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels. “It largely duplicates an unfounded lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General, much of which was recently dismissed by a federal court. DOJ is doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow.”

DOJ files second antitrust suit against Google, seeks to break up its ad business - The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday filed its second antitrust lawsuit against Google in just over two years. It's the latest sign the U.S. government is not backing down from cases against tech companies even in light of a mixed record in court on antitrust suits. This lawsuit, which is focused on Google's online advertising business and seeks to make Google divest parts of the business, is the first against the company filed under the Biden administration. The department's earlier lawsuit, filed in October 2020 under the Trump administration, accused Google of using its alleged monopoly power to cut off competition for internet search through exclusionary agreements. That case is expected to go to trial in September. Google's advertising business generated $54.5 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30 from Search, YouTube, Google Network ads and other advertising. Google also faces three other antitrust lawsuits from large groups of state attorneys general, including one focused on its advertising business led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia joined the DOJ in the latest lawsuit. Google's advertising business has drawn critics because the platform operates on multiple sides of the market — buying, selling and an ad exchange — giving it unique insight into the process and potential leverage. The company has long denied it dominates the online advertising market, pointing to the market share of competitors including Meta's Facebook. In their lawsuit, the Justice Department and the states argue that Google sought to control all sides of the market, realizing "it could become 'the be-all, and end-all location for all ad serving.'" "Google would no longer have to compete on the merits; it could simply set the rules of the game to exclude rivals," they allege. According to the complaint, even one of Google's own advertising executives questioned the wisdom of the company's broad ownership in the space. "[I]s there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network?" the executive allegedly asked. "The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE." The harm of Google's practices, they allege, is that "website creators earn less, and advertisers pay more, than they would in a market where unfettered competitive pressure could discipline prices and lead to more innovative ad tech tools that would ultimately result in higher quality and lower cost transactions for market participants." As a result, they added, more publishers are forced to turn to alternative models like subscriptions to fund their operations.

Epic and Match antitrust case against Google goes to trial November 6th -- Epic Games and Match Group now have a court date for their antitrust case against Google. A Northern District of California judge has set the start of a jury trial for November 6th. Both Epic and Match accuse Google of abusing its control of Android app distribution through the Play Store by establishing unfair fees and requirements for in-app purchases. This comes alongside a lawsuit from39 attorneys general as well as a customer class action suit demanding $4.7 billion in damages.Epic sued Google in 2020 after the Android creator kicked Fortnite out of the Play Store for letting customers use an alternative in-app payment system. Match sued Google last year over the "exorbitant" store fee. Epic and Match consolidated their case and a filed motion last fall to expand their allegations, accusing Google of further antitrust violations by paying major developers hundreds of millions of dollars to keep their apps in the Play Store. Unlike Epic's partially successful lawsuit against Apple, this case has to acknowledge that customers do have a choice. Where Apple requires that all regular app downloads go through the App Store, Android's sideloading option lets customers install software without downloading it from Google. The issue, as you might imagine, is that those apps are both harder to install and less likely to be noticed when the Play Store is included by default on many Android phones. Google denies misusing its power, and argues that the fees are necessary to maintain and invest in the Play Store. It maintains that the incentive program doesn't forbid developers from launching third-party stores, and that its portal competes fairly. In December, Google called on the court to deny the expanded requests over timing and other issues.

The U.S. Congress Twiddled Its Thumbs on Crypto while 10 Countries Banned It and 42 Others Placed Heavy Restrictions - By Pam and Russ Martens: On January 31 of last year, Oliver Sullivan reported at Lawyer Monthly that the growing list of countries “that wholly banned cryptocurrencies includes China, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Oman, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Bangladesh and (as of this month) Kosovo. Forty-two others have passed restrictions to this effect, prohibiting crypto exchanges or limiting the ability of banks to engage with crypto.”Compare that to the United States, which increasingly looks like a financial backwater, with questionable crypto deposits blowing up federally-insured banks; collapsing publicly-listed crypto mining stocks whose business model is to pump more fossil fuels into the atmosphere in order to solve complex mathematical problems that have no productive purpose; $8 billion in customer funds going missing at the FTX crypto exchange which was promoted by media darlings on television; and, of course, Big Law firms getting fat at the crypto bankruptcy trough after shilling for these same crypto firms for years before federal regulators. On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, December 18, Senator Sherrod Brown, the Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, was asked by host Chuck Todd if crypto and the massive fraud at FTX didn’t demonstrate that there is “a huge vulnerability in our system?” Senator Brown responded as follows:“We had our sixth hearing on crypto to educate the public about its dangers. Not just the Ponzi scheme you talk about and not just the lack of consumer protection or regulation, but also the threat to national security from Korean cyber criminals to drug trafficking and human trafficking and financing of terrorism and all the things that come out of crypto.”Let that sink in for a moment. Ten other countries also determined that crypto was a national security threat and outlawed it. The U.S. knows it’s a national security threat but allowed it to be promoted to its citizens on television in Super Bowl commercials. Todd then asked Brown if crypto should even be legal in the United States. Brown responded that banning it is very difficult because it would go offshore “and who knows how that will work.” (You can watch the full exchange between Todd and Brown beginning at 7:43 minutes at this Meet the Press link.) Actually, we do already know how crypto going offshore will work. The key business units of FTX were registered in Antigua and Barbuda with its physical headquarters in the Bahamas. But if selling crypto or trading crypto in the United States had been illegal, we wouldn’t currently be looking at 2.7 million user accounts at FTX.US bilked out of their life savings. We also wouldn’t currently be looking at another international financial scandal perpetuated by a U.S. citizen who is being compared around the world to another U.S. Ponzi artist, Bernie Madoff. How many times can the U.S. be at the center of global financial frauds before there is capital flight out of the U.S. because our financial safeguards are no longer trusted? In fact, the issue of capital flight was raised last Wednesday in a speech given by Christy Goldsmith Romero, a Commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal regulator. Romero spoke before an audience at the Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School on “Crypto’s Crisis of Trust: Lessons Learned from FTX’s Collapse.” On the topic of capital flight, Romero had this to say: “Financial markets are heavily dependent on public trust. Without that trust, financial markets would not be able to help entrepreneurs and companies raise capital and manage risk. When financial markets and key institutions lose the public’s trust, capital flight follows and economic activity slows.”

Bankruptcy Judge in Manhattan Rules that Crypto Exchange Customers Lost Ownership of $4.2 Billion When They Deposited It into “Earn” Accounts - Pam and Russ Martens: --Customers of bankrupt crypto platforms who have been locked out of withdrawing from their accounts for months, are learning the hard way that U.S. bankruptcy court judges in New York and Delaware have little sympathy for their plight. Instead, there has been an uncanny propensity to side with big corporate law firms like Kirkland & Ellis and Sullivan & Cromwell.A December 11, 2019 report from the Congressional Research Service cited a study that found that “60% of large business debtors filed for bankruptcy” in just two venues – the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and the Southern District of New York – despite the fact that the businesses did not maintain their principal place of business there. The report further notes that “when debtors have substantial flexibility to choose the jurisdiction in which they file for bankruptcy, self-interest encourages those debtors to file in courts that favor debtors and their attorneys to the detriment of creditors and other stakeholders.”This month we’ve witnessed two shocking examples of what appears to be judge bias favoring the debtors and their Big Law attorneys. Last Friday, despite a mountain of conflicts of interest involving pre-bankruptcy-petition work performed by law firm Sullivan & Cromwell for collapsed crypto firm, FTX, the Delaware Bankruptcy Court Judge, John Dorsey, signed a ruling granting Sullivan & Cromwell’s aggressive desire to be named lead counsel in the matter. The more than two dozen conflicts belatedly admitted to by the law firm – only after prodding by the U.S. Trustee — included having previously provided personal legal representation to the company’s now indicted CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. The personal legal representation involved Bankman-Fried’s purchase of half a billion dollars in stock in the discount brokerage firm, Robinhood. The Department of Justice seized those shares this month. According to Congressional testimony by the newly appointed CEO of FTX, more than $8 billionof customer funds are missing.Equally stunning, Chief Judge of the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Martin Glenn, issued an opinion on January 4 in the bankruptcy proceedings of another crypto company, Celsius, that found that customers did not own their own deposits that had been made into an interest-earning program called “Earn.” The Judge wrote:“…the Court concludes, based on Celsius’s unambiguous Terms of Use, and subject to any reserved defenses, that when the cryptocurrency assets (including stablecoins, discussed in detail below) were deposited in Earn Accounts, the cryptocurrency assets became Celsius’s property; and the cryptocurrency assets remaining in the Earn Accounts on the Petition Date became property of the Debtors’ bankruptcy estates (the ‘Estates’).”Glenn’s opinion sided with Big Law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, which is representing the debtors estate, and is a devastating development to the approximate 600,000 account holders in the Earn program. The combined value of those accounts was roughly $4.2 billion shortly before the Celsius bankruptcy filing in July. Instead of getting the contents of their accounts returned, the opinion means that these customers become unsecured creditors along with a multitude of others.

We finally know whom FTX owes money to: Wall Street elite, Big Tech, airlines, and many more — Newly unsealed bankruptcy documents revealed thousands of creditors to whom FTX owes money after the once-mighty crypto exchange collapsed in November.Wall Street heavyweights including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan were named in the creditor list, which includes businesses, charities, individuals and other entities in a 116-page document filed late Wednesday. FTX is now at the center of a massive fraud investigation.Also included in the creditors list are media companies, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, commercial airliners, including American, United, Southwest and Spirit, as well as several Big Tech players, including Netflix, Apple and Meta.On Thursday, lawyers for FTX filed an additional document advising the court that the list — known as a creditor matrix — is “intended to be very broad” and “includes parties who may appear in the Debtors books and records for any number of reasons.” Being on the list does not “necessarily indicate that the party is a creditor” of FTX or its affiliates, they wrote.Goldman Sachs, for one, is named in the creditor matrix but doesn’t appear to be a creditor. In a statement to CNN on Wednesday, the bank said it had not filed a claim against FTX.“This type of creditor matrix is prepared by the debtors for the purpose of providing notice to interested parties in a bankruptcy proceeding and is not necessarily evidence of a creditor relationship,” a spokesperson said.The document doesn’t disclose the amount or nature of the debt, and names of individual creditors — mostly customers who deposited funds on FTX — remain redacted at FTX’s request. Inclusion on the creditor list doesn’t necessarily mean the parties had an FTX account.FTX is believed to have more than a million creditors, the top 50 of whom are collectively owed more than $3 billion.The crypto platform was once of the most popular crypto exchanges on the planet, fueled by celebrity endorsements and high-profile partnerships with sports teams. It marketed itself as a beginner-friendly crypto platform, allowing customers to deposit fiat currency and trade it for digital assets. But FTX came unraveled in November as speculation about its balance sheet sparked investor panic. In the midst of a liquidity crisis, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving customers in limbo.Federal prosecutors investigating FTX say that its founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, orchestrated a massive fraud by stealing customer funds to cover losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research. They also accuse him of using stolen money to buy luxury real estate and contribute to US poltical campaigns.

Sam Bankman-Fried tried to influence witness through Signal: DOJ --Federal prosecutors are attempting to bar indicted FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried from using encrypted messaging software, citing efforts that may "constitute witness tampering," according to a letter filed in Manhattan federal court Friday. Bankman-Fried reached out to the "current General Counsel of FTX US who may be a witness at trial," prosecutors said. Ryne Miller, who was not identified by name in the government filing, is the current counsel for FTX US, and a former partner at Kirkland & Ellis. The government claims that Bankman-Fried wrote to Miller via Signal, an encrypted messaging app, on Jan. 15, days after bankruptcy officials at crypto exchange disclosed the recovery of more than $5 billion in FTX assets. "I would really love to reconnect and see if there's a way for us to have a constructive relationship, use each other as resources when possible, or at least vet things with each other," Bankman-Fried allegedly told Miller. Bankman-Fried has also been in contact with "other current and former FTX employees," the filing said. Federal prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried's request suggests an effort to influence the witness's testimony, and that Bankman-Fried's effort to improve his relationship with Miller "may itself constitute witness tampering." Both Miller and a representative for Bankman-Fried declined to comment. In restricting Bankman-Fried's access to Signal and other encrypted messaging platforms, the government cites a need to "prevent obstruction of justice." Federal prosecutors claim that Bankman-Fried directed Alameda and FTX through Slack and Signal, and ordered his employees set communications to "autodelete after 30 days or less." Citing previously undisclosed testimony from ex-Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, the government claimed that Bankman-Fried indicated "many legal cases turn on documentation and it is more difficult to build a legal case if information is not written down or preserved." Ellison pled guilty to multiple charges of fraud and has been cooperating with the U.S. Attorney's efforts to build a case against Bankman-Fried.

DOJ Seeks to Ban Sam Bankman-Fried From Contacting FTX Employees – WSJ - The Justice Department on Friday asked a federal judge to bar FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried from communicating with current and former employees of the collapsed crypto exchangewithout a lawyer present after prosecutors alleged he recently contacted a potential witness in his criminal case.Mr. Bankman-Fried, who faces federal charges related to the implosion of FTX, reached out to the general counsel of the company’s U.S. operation through an encrypted messaging application earlier this month, federal prosecutors said in a filing. Prosecutors said Mr. Bankman-Fried has also contacted other current and former FTX employees and are concerned that the communications could lead to witness tampering.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Prosecutors Ask Judge to Tighten Bail Conditions - Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday that the disgraced cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried had tried to contact a potential witness in his criminal case, and they asked a judge to impose new bail conditions limiting his ability to communicate with former colleagues. In a court filing, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said Mr. Bankman-Fried sent messages over email and the encrypted messaging app Signal this month to the general counsel of the U.S. arm of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded. Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, has been charged with fraud, money laundering and campaign finance violations linked to the implosion of FTX last year. The communication was “suggestive of an effort to influence Witness-1’s potential testimony,” the filing said. “This is particularly concerning given that the defendant is aware that Witness-1 has information that would tend to inculpate the defendant.” Prosecutors asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is overseeing Mr. Bankman-Fried’s case, to prohibit the entrepreneur from contacting current and former FTX employees or using Signal or other encrypted apps to communicate. A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Bankman-Fried built FTX into one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world before the company filed for bankruptcy in November. He was arrested in December at his home in the Bahamas, where FTX was based, and then extradited to the United States to face the criminal charges. Judge Kaplan granted him bail under highly restrictive conditions, confining him to his parents’ home near the campus of Stanford University in Northern California.

Serious New Issues Emerge in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Deeply Conflicted Role in the FTX Bankruptcy Case By Pam and Russ Martens -- What makes this bankruptcy case so bizarre is that the presiding Judge, John Dorsey, has had Sullivan & Cromwell’s mountain of conflicts placed directly under his nose by the gutsy Marshal Hoda and his co-counsel; four sitting U.S. Senators; a former FTX in-house attorney, Daniel Friedberg, in a bombshell sworn declaration; and by the U.S. Trustee in the case (who represents the U.S. Department of Justice in bankruptcy cases). The U.S. Trustee warned Dorsey as follows in an objection filed on January 13:“The U.S. Trustee objects to the S&C Application for two overarching reasons. First, S&C’s disclosures as filed are wholly insufficient to evaluate whether S&C satisfies the Bankruptcy Code’s conflict-free and disinterestedness standards. The incomplete disclosures are a sufficient and independent reason to deny the application. Nevertheless, publicly available information thus far raises the specter that S&C may have a conflict or not be disinterested given that an S&C partner of eight years became general counsel for certain of the Debtors approximately 14 months before the petition date. Second, the scope of S&C’s retention cannot be allowed as proposed. Bankruptcy Code sections 1106(a)(3) and 1107(a) specifically preclude debtors in possession from investigating themselves, which is exactly what the Debtors propose in the S&C Application. But as if this Judge is living in some alternative universe with different bankruptcy laws, Judge Dorsey approved Sullivan & Cromwell as lead counsel at the January 20 hearing.The ink on the Judge’s order was barely dry before more conflicts involving Sullivan & Cromwell raised their ugly head, as we knew they would.According to one of the delayed disclosures submitted by Sullivan & Cromwell, it provided personal legal advice to Sam Bankman-Fried less than four months before FTX filed bankruptcy. To put that another way, the man federal prosecutors have accused of masterminding “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history” was the recent personal client of the law firm that will now oversee recouping monies from his thefts. (Bankman-Fried has also written that he worked out of Sullivan & Cromwell’s offices when he visited New York City. We asked, via email, three Sullivan & Cromwell partners involved in the bankruptcy case, as well as the two co-chairs of the firm, to confirm or deny that. We received no response.)According to the long overdue filing of its conflicts, with specificity, by Sullivan & Cromwell law partner Andrew Dietderich, filed with the court on January 17 – just three days before the January 20 hearing – Sullivan & Cromwell’s representation of Bankman-Fried “commenced on April 14, 2022 and ceased on August 5, 2022.” Sullivan & Cromwell’s disclosure also offers this: “This matter was arranged, and paid for, by Alameda.” As we explained earlier, Alameda is Sam Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund that federal prosecutors say was looting customer funds from FTX during that timeframe. The nature of the work that Sullivan & Cromwell performed personally for Bankman-Fried, according to the Dietderich declaration, involved “a position that had been established in the stock of Robinhood Markets, Inc.” – a stock trading app that has had plenty of its own scandals.“Had been established” in the above paragraph is not accurate. According to SEC records, Bankman-Fried was purchasing Robinhood stock through the month of April and May 2022, during which period he was represented by Sullivan & Cromwell according to their own bankruptcy court filing. Now this is where you have to pay close attention. Sam Bankman-Fried’s stock purchase in Robinhood was not a flimsy 1,000-share position. It was not even a 10,000-share position. It was an enormous 56,273,469 shares with a current market value (at yesterday’s closing price) of $545,289,914 – more than half a billion dollars. And it was purchased with loans taken from Alameda Research, which prosecutors allege was using stolen FTX customer funds. Now, as Sullivan & Cromwell has put pen to paper to confirm, it advised Bankman-Fried on this stock transaction. And, as everyone on Wall Street knows, Sullivan & Cromwell is highly sophisticated in such matters. So wouldn’t one think that large block trades would have been arranged with sophisticated financial institutions to acquire a position of 56 million shares?Instead, something unusual happened, according to this filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission by former Sullivan & Cromwell partner, Ryne Miller, who had become General Counsel of FTX.US in August of 2021 according to his LinkedIn profile page.The Robinhood stock was purchased and then held through a company set up in Antigua and Barbuda (Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd.) in which Sam Bankman-Fried was the majority owner. Bankman-Fried didn’t acquire the stock position in a few large block trades but instead made purchases on 29 separate trading days from March 14, 2022 through May 11, 2022. The number of shares purchased on any one day ranged from a low of 400,000 shares to a high of 2.8 million shares on May 3 and May 10. Equally concerning, the SEC filing made by Ryne Miller does not show the trading dates and amounts for all 56 million shares but just the details for 29,888,469 shares. (You can tally the “Quantity” column at this link to see what we mean.) Did Bankman-Fried escalate his daily purchases in Robinhood stock after this date? The public is left in the dark in terms of seeing the full picture of what went on here.

Numerous Big Law Firms Had Zero Ties to Sam Bankman-Fried; So Why Did John Ray Hire Two Deeply Conflicted Law Firms? By Pam and Russ Martens:A battle between Big Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and the U.S. Trustee (who represents the U.S. Department of Justice in the bankruptcy proceedings) is heating up for a hearing scheduled for February 6. The hearing will take arguments for and against why Sullivan & Cromwell should not be allowed to investigate its own past conduct in the serial frauds that prosecutors have alleged occurred at Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto companies.Since the FTX bankruptcy filing on November 11, Sullivan & Cromwell has been functioning as lead counsel for the bankruptcy estate and was officially appointed to that position by the court on January 20, despite what looks like fatal conflicts to a growing number of observers.Both Sullivan & Cromwell and the U.S. Trustee have filed interrogatories to take discovery from each other prior to the hearing, according to court documents. (It strikes us as bizarre that Sullivan & Cromwell wants to depose what is effectively the U.S. Department of Justice when the DOJ’s criminal investigation into the FTX matter is ongoing.)Additionally, Sullivan & Cromwell has filed a notice that it plans to call as its witness for the hearing, John J. Ray III, the man it recommended to become the new CEO of the FTX group of companies and who has been functioning in that role for more than two months – hiring new Directors, law firms and advisers.The position of the U.S. Trustee is that it wants to appoint an independent examiner to conduct the investigation into FTX. According to a court filing, its rationale is as follows: “An examiner could—and should—investigate the substantial and serious allegations of fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, and mismanagement by the Debtors, the circumstances surrounding the Debtors’ collapse, the apparent conversion of exchange customers’ property, and whether colorable claims and causes of action exist to remedy losses. The appointment of an examiner is mandatory under 11 U.S.C. § 1104(c)(2) because the Debtors’ fixed, liquidated, unsecured debts to its customers alone far exceed section 1104(c)(2)’s $5 million threshold.By calling John Ray to the witness stand, Sullivan & Cromwell may be opening up a hornet’s nest for itself because the U.S. Trustee then has the right to cross examine. The attorney for the U.S. Trustee, Juliet Sarkessian, has demonstrated at a previous hearing that she is quite adept at cross examination.A big problem for Ray is that a former inhouse attorney for FTX, Daniel Friedberg, has filed a declaration with the court suggesting that Ray is a pawn being used by Sullivan & Cromwell to rubber stamp whatever the law firm wants. Friedberg contradicts the law firm’s prior statement to the court that it was Ray who decided to put the FTX group into bankruptcy, writing that “S&C and Ryne Miller [the General Counsel of FTX.US who was previously a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell] selected this route and chose ‘their guy’ to run it.” The court filing showing that Sullivan & Cromwell got a $12 million retainer for FTX bankruptcy work while Ray got a $200,000 retainer furthers that perception.The narrative that Ray may simply be rubberstamping the wishes of Sullivan & Cromwell gets further support from the fact that there are plenty of Big Law firms that did no legal work (or no significant legal work) for Sam Bankman-Fried or his companies prior to the bankruptcy filing, and which have big bankruptcy practices. And yet, Ray selected Sullivan & Cromwell as lead counsel and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan as Special Counsel (to conduct investigations and round up assets) despite the fact that both law firms had been previously retained by Sam Bankman-Fried and did significant legal work for his crypto companies.

Genesis Wants $20.9 Million From 'Bitcoin Jesus' for Expired Options - GGC International, a branch of Genesis Global, alleged that veteran trader Roger Ver, also know as "Bitcoin Jesus," has yet to settle some of his cryptocurrency options trades, according to January 23 court filings first cited by CoinDesk. The claims were noted in documents with the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan shortly after Genesis' chapter 11 bankruptcy filing earlier this month. The Genesis subsidiary is a British Virgin Islands company that offers spot trading and derivatives for digital assets, and is owned by Genesis Bermuda Holdco Limited, the report noted. That's one of the names included in Genesis' bankruptcy filing. Court documents show GCG International seeks "money damages for defendant's failure to settle cryptocurrency options transactions that expired on Dec. 30, 2022, in an amount to be determined at trial but no less than $20.9 million." So-called Bitcoin Jesus was an early advocate for the world's most popular token, but has also been a polarizing figure within the crypto and blockchain communities. Meanwhile, crypto lender Genesis had been facing issues long before the recent collapse of FTX, as Insider previously reported. Months before Sam Bankman-Fried's exchange imploded, Genesis was impacted by the fall of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. A wave of executive departures ensued later in the year, and insiders say they felt like they were in the dark regarding the stability of the firm. Here's what Derar Islim, interim CEO of Genesis, said in a January 19 statement: "While we have made significant progress refining our business plans to remedy liquidity issues caused by the recent extraordinary challenges in our industry, including the default of Three Arrows Capital and the bankruptcy of FTX, an in-court restructuring presents the most effective avenue through which to preserve assets and create the best possible outcome for all Genesis stakeholders."

Is Grayscale in Trouble with Genesis Filing for Bankruptcy? - Grayscale is one of the most important companies on the cryptocurrency market, holding the distinction of being the world's largest digital asset manager. Prior to recent events surrounding crypto exchange FTX, it may not have been widely known that Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group (DCG), a company that also oversees the operations of crypto lender Genesis. Following the demise of the crypto platform led by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Genesis encountered liquidity challenges stemming from an ongoing crisis that traces back to the collapse of Terra (LUNA) and Three Arrows Capital (3AC). As a result, the institution-focused crypto brokerage was unable to fulfill withdrawal requests from customers who were concerned about contagion from the FTX crash. As a result of the exposure of $175 million in assets at the failed cryptocurrency exchange, Genesis was compelled to file for bankruptcy on Jan. 19, 2023. At present, the company holds approximately $150 million in cash, and it is of the belief that this liquidity will enable it to sustain its business operations and facilitate the restructuring process. This situation has generated significant concern regarding the potential negative impact on Grayscale, given that it belongs to the same group. However, the asset manager has stated that the regulatory framework in place for it and its entities reduces the likelihood of a scenario similar to that of FTX. Ads Could Grayscale go bankrupt? It is essential to acknowledge that the purpose of this content is not to spread FUD on the cryptocurrency market, as it is already abundant. The intention is to provide a factual analysis of recent events, to serve as a source of information and to aid in informed decision making. Grayscale owns one of the world's leading Bitcoin (BTC) funds, GBTC. This fund offers traditional investors the opportunity to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency market without the need to purchase BTC directly. GBTC operates similarly to a traditional Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), in which individuals can purchase shares of the fund, which are based on the value of Bitcoin. However, amid the events that transpired toward the end of 2022, there was speculation that Grayscale may be facing liquidity issues due to the potential selling of GBTC shares by investors in response to the decline in the value of Bitcoin. These rumors have raised concerns about the company's capability to meet its financial obligations and the overall well-being of the fund. A warning signal was triggered when Grayscale announced in November that, for security reasons, it would not be conducting a much-anticipated proof of reserves on the crypto market, unlike other major players in the industry. It is noteworthy that while Coinbase, as the custodian of Grayscale's Bitcoins, conducts regular validations, it does not reveal addresses or any other confidential information, in order to safeguard the security of its products. Another area of concern is the reality that Digital Currency Group (DCG), the parent company of Grayscale, holds a substantial stake in GBTC. This can potentially lead to conflicts of interest within the company and implies that DCG has a significant level of exposure to the risks associated with this investment, which may not be in the best interest of the overall health of the group. Read more on U.Today https://u.today/is-grayscale-in-trouble-with-genesis-filing-for-bankruptcy

Warren praises SEC for making it harder for banks to custody crypto - — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the Securities and Exchange Commission should double down on its scrutiny on digital assets, while applauding the agency's existing effort to insulate the banking system from the crypto industry. Warren alluded to an accounting bulletin issued by the agency that requires most SEC registrants that hold crypto assets for their clients record that risk on their balance sheets as a liability. For many banks, especially large ones, this effectively blocks their ability to custody crypto assets, because they would need to hold considerable capital to offset that liability. "The SEC has helped to keep crypto volatility out of the banking system by holding banks and other public companies responsible for the risks of custodying crypto assets," she said. In her remarks, given at an event hosted by the American Economic Liberties Project and Americans for Financial Reform, Warren praised SEC Chairman Gary Gensler's attention on crypto, but called on Congress to allow the agency more resources to enforce existing securities laws, and to grant it more authority to better police the more opaque corners of the crypto market. "In the pockets of this market where regulators may not have the authority they need, Congress should give the tools to get the job done," she said. "We can see the risks to financial stability, but in the dark recesses of the crypto world, the threat to our national security is growing." Warren's support of the SEC is notable given a push by some firms, including FTX, to support legislation that would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission more control over crypto markets. That's a move that some crypto skeptics — including Warren — believe would result in more lenient rules and enforcement. Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chair the Senate Agriculture Committee, and John Boozman of Arkansas, the panel's ranking Republican, sponsored a bill to that end, with input from FTX's disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Elizabeth Warren: Crypto giants are 'collapsing under the weight of their own fraud' — Senator Elizabeth Warren, a longtime crypto critic, warned recent turbulence in the digital asset space will only continue unless a host of regulators strengthen protections for investors.“For all their talk of innovation and financial inclusion, crypto industry giants — from FTX to Celsius to Voyager — are collapsing under the weight of their own fraud, deceit and gross mismanagement,” she said.“And when they sink, they take a lot of honest investors down with them,” Warren (D-Mass.) added during her comments Wednesday at an event hosted by the American Economic Liberties Project and Americans for Financial Reform.FTX, Celsius and Voyager all filed for bankruptcy last year as asset prices tanked and the global market capitalization of crypto collapsed by roughly $2 trillion. Federal prosecutors have charged several former FTX executives, including founder Sam Bankman-Fried, with orchestrating one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.The collapse of FTX in November sparked a contagion that is still rippling through crypto markets, which remain largely unregulated and opaque.Warren on Wednesday called on regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and banking authorities, to double down on the tools they already have. They need to protect consumers, educate investors and pursue “meaningful consequences” for bad actors, she said.“Crypto fraud is a big problem, but it’s one we can fix,” Warren said.The SEC in the past two years has made “a good start” by keeping crypto volatility out of the traditional banking system and preventing Bitcoin exchange-traded funds from hitting the market, she said. And without naming Bankman-Fried directly, Warren praised the SEC for charging “crypto crooks” with defrauding ordinary investors.But the SEC can’t fix it all.“All our regulators need to get in the game,” Warren said, calling on environmental and banking officials to step up.“Crypto mining firms are polluting communities, they’re straining power grids, and they’re driving up utility costs in communities from Texas to New York,” she said. “Both the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency have the authority to require crypto miners to disclose their energy use and their environmental impact. “Warren said the rise of crypto-friendly banks has already opened the traditional banking system to greater risk, “raising the specter of a crypto collapse in which American taxpayers are left holding the bag.”“It’s the bank regulators’ job to insulate the banking system — and taxpayers — from the risk of a crypto fraud. They have the tools, and they need to use them.

Sen. Ted Cruz Wants Capitol Hill Vending Machines to Accept Crypto -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has proposed requiring vendors on Capitol Hill to accept cryptocurrency as payment.On Wednesday, Cruz introduced a concurrent resolution that, if adopted, would require the Architect of the Capitol, the Secretary of the Senate and the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives to only contract with food service contractors and vending machine operators that accept cryptocurrency for the Capitol complex in Washington, D.C.The text of the resolution was not available on Congress’ website at press time, and representatives for the one-time presidential candidate did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment. Cruz has been a vocal supporter of the growing crypto mining industry in his home state of Texas, saying last year he wanted the Lone Star State to be an “oasis on planet Earth for bitcoin and crypto.” He has also been outspoken about the need for members of Congress to be more educated when it comes to crypto, and has publicly disclosed his own cryptocurrency holdings.

White House Calls on Congress to ‘Step Up Its Efforts’ on Crypto Regulation - Four senior U.S. officials in the Biden administration published a statement on Friday urging Congress to “step up its efforts” with respect to regulating the cryptocurrency market.The officials – Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council; Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Cecilia Rouse, chair of the Council of Economic Advisors; and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan – wrote that Congress “should expand regulators’ powers to prevent misuses of customers’ assets … and to mitigate conflicts of interest.”Other suggestions for Congress in the statement included strengthening transparency and disclosure requirements for crypto companies, strengthening penalties for violations of illicit-finance rules, and working more closely with international law enforcement partners.The officials also made suggestions about what Congress should not do in terms of crafting new crypto regulation, including “greenlight[ing] mainstream institutions, like pension funds, to dive headlong into cryptocurrency markets.”To do so, the officials warned, “would be a grave mistake” that “deepens ties between cryptocurrencies and the broader financial system.”Though the spectacular collapses of neither the ill-fated LUNA stablecoin nor the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX were directly named in the statement, the effects of both loomed large over the officials’ guidance, which called 2022 “a tough year for cryptocurrencies” plagued by the implosion of “a so-called ‘stablecoin’ prompting a wave of insolvencies” and the subsequent downfall of “a major cryptocurrency exchange.”“Some cryptocurrency entities ignore applicable financial regulations and basic risk controls … In addition, cryptocurrency platforms often mislead consumers, have conflicts of interest, fail to make adequate disclosures, or commit outright fraud," they wrote.The White House’s concerns – as well as its recommendations – echo similar remarks made by U.S. regulators, including Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Commissioner Kristin Johnson, who called on Congress earlier this week to expand the CFTC’s authority to conduct due diligence on crypto acquisitions.However, the responsibility to regulate crypto does not fall only on congressional shoulders.In their statement, the four officials said the Biden administration itself would be unveiling “priorities for digital assets research development, which will help the technologies powering cryptocurrencies protect consumers by default” in “the coming months.”“Safeguards will ensure that new technologies are secure and beneficial to all – and that the new digital economy works for the many, not just the few,” they wrote.

Moody's is working on scoring system for crypto stablecoins - Moody's is working on a scoring system for stablecoins, the crypto sector's most traded tokens, as the asset class grows and faces increased scrutiny from regulators and investors. The system will include an analysis of up to 20 stablecoins based on the quality of attestations on the reserves backing them, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named discussing private information. Stablecoins are digital tokens designed to maintain a one-to-one value with a less volatile asset, typically the U.S. dollar. To achieve that, their issuers generally hold at least an equivalent amount of that asset in reserve. The project is still in early stages and won't represent an official credit rating, another person with knowledge of the plan said. A spokesperson for Moody's declined to comment. The company provides credit ratings for publicly traded crypto companies such as Coinbase Global, while its research arm issues broader analysis reports on the sector. Stablecoin reserve attestations have come under more scrutiny in recent years as usage of the tokens increased, and as questions arose about the assets backing the largest one, Tether's USDT. Tether, which has $67 billion of dollar-pegged stablecoins in circulation, was fined by US authorities in 2021 for lying about its reserves.

New York’s financial regulator takes aim at firms co-mingling crypto funds -New York’s chief financial regulator is set to release new guidance on Monday dictating that companies separate customers' crypto assets from their own, after alleged co-mingling of funds at collapsed crypto exchange FTX and its affiliated trading firm Alameda Research led to billions of dollars in losses for customers. The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), which leads one of the few state agencies with a regulatory system in place for cryptocurrency companies, will also stipulate that state-regulated companies disclose to customers how they account for clients' digital currency. The guidance is the latest in a series of crypto-related directives NYDFS has issued in the past year, which saw a market collapse that wiped about $1.3 trillion off the value of crypto tokens in 2022 and triggered the bankruptcies of crypto firms such as FTX, Celsius Network and most recently, Genesis Global Capital, whose lending unit filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection on Thursday. It comes as federal regulators such as the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are warning about the lack of consumer protections in the crypto sector. Federal agencies like the CFTC say much of what they can do is limited without congressional legislation that would give them additional authority. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of stealing billions of dollars in customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research. Concerns about the crossover between the two firms helped fuel a flurry of customer withdrawals in November, forcing the exchange to file for bankruptcy. Bankman-Fried has denied any criminal wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty.

 Hive ransomware gang shut down by FBI, AG Merrick Garland says - The FBI and law enforcement in Europe have shut down a major ransomware operation accused of extorting more than $100 million from organizations across the world by encrypting victims’ computer systems and demanding payments to provide a key to unlock them, U.S. officials said Thursday. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the ransomware group called Hive attacked hospitals, school districts, financial firms and others, stealing and sometimes publishing their data. Like some other prolific groups, Hive partnered with independent hackers who broke in through phishing or other means: The gang provided the encryption program and ransomware negotiations, and split the profits with the hackers. In one August 2021 case, a nonprofit Ohio network of hospitals had to cancel urgent surgeries as its staff moved to paper charts. Other victims included a Florida heavy machinery company that had to shut down temporarily, multiple law firms, and a New Jersey tech company whose customers had their data stolen, according to an FBI affidavit. Garland, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and their top deputies described the dismantling of Hive as a major victory in the government’s efforts to fight ransomware with novel methods. Law enforcement was able to hack Hive and infiltrate its networks for seven months, officials said, stealing the decryption keys and quietly giving them to 336 victims before taking full control of Hive servers in the United States and Europe, knocking them offline and preventing new infections. U.S. officials credited German and Dutch authorities and Europol for helping in the case. German police and prosecutors said in a statement that they were able to penetrate the hackers’ technology infrastructure as they investigated an attack on a company in southern Germany. They said they succeeded because victims didn’t pay the ransom and instead filed charges with the police.

Bitcoin world's most hated cryptocurrency - Bitcoin’s precipitous plunge in price helped it become the world’s the most hated virtual currency in 2022, according to a survey by crypto education website Coin Kickoff. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market value was the most disliked coin in 16 countries, led by Canada, Qatar and Finland. Ethereum and solana were the world’s most loved, led by Indonesia, Russia and Uzbekistan. Coin Kickoff came up with its love/hate ranking by analyzing more than 835,000 Twitter posts with the artificial intelligence algorithm HuggingFace. Bitcoin lost 70% of its value in 2022, causing investors to vent their frustration on social media. Ethereum, crypto’s second-largest currency, fell almost as much, dropping by 67.5%, but was spared the backlash. Coin Kickoff noted, in contrast to bitcoin, many of ethereum’s projects are based around decentralized finance (DeFi) — which aims to broaden the usage of cryptocurrencies for more complex transactions such as loans. Solana was also loved, despite losing 94% of its value. Its network suffered over five outages, numerous hacks and fallout from FTX’s bankruptcy with FTX and sister company Alameda Trading holding 10.7% of its tokens, according to Coin Telegraph. Sentiment for bitcoin may improve with its recent price recovery. Ian Wright, the crypto expert behind Coin Kickoff, told FOX Business: "While it is still 67% down on its all-time high, investors are confident that the current economic climate in the U.S. and bitcoin’s standing as the pre-eminent crypto coin will yield further gains as the year progresses." FxPro senior market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich was more cautious. "Despite the positive performance of the U.S. stock indices, bitcoin continued its unsuccessful attempts to consolidate above $23,000 on Wednesday. The crypto market has, at least, paused after rallying since the beginning of the year," he said. Wright added that investors will look to see whether etherum can hit $5,000 in 2023. "Like bitcoin, its value is rallying as a result of economic conditions. It is still highly regarded within the U.S. crypto community because of its long-term potential and the blockchain base for many of the industry’s most exciting prospects," he told FOX Business.

Experts expect 'stalemate' on ILC applications — After a year when crypto tanked and regulators have become increasingly skeptical of bank-fintech partnerships, observers say the prospect of new industrial loan company applications being approved is increasingly remote.The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., helmed by newly confirmed chairman Martin Gruenberg, has had an inconsistent track record in recent years on granting new ILC applications, and that inconsistency is attributable largely to the different attitudes of the agency's leadership over that time.ILCs are state-chartered and FDIC-insured depositories owned by nonfinancial companies. Fourteen companies have applied for ILC charters since 2017, but approvals of those applications were few and far between until 2020. In the first year of the pandemic, after 14 years without approvals, Block — formerly Square Financial Services — and the education financing company Nelnet Bank were granted charters by the FDIC under the leadership of former Chair Jelena McWilliams. McWilliams also pushed through a set of revised guidelines for ILC parent companies in late 2020, establishing capital and liquidity requirements, representation from the parent company on the ILC board, and supervisory expectations for ILCs. Gruenberg, then a minority party board member, voted against the changes at the time.Expectations for new ILC charters have been muted since President Biden assumed office in 2021, but attention around nonbank charters refocused when Elon Musk applied for a money transmitter license for Twitter with the Treasury Department late last year. Musk also said in an online event last year that he was thinking of taking Twitter even further intooffering banklike services, leading to speculation that he might seek an ILC charter in the future.

Fed denies Custodia's member bid, dealing blow to master account hopes - Custodia Bank's bid to get access to the Federal Reserve's payment system was dealt a blow Friday morning. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors denied the Cheyenne, Wyoming-based digital-asset bank's application to be a state member bank on the grounds that its "untested" business model is too risky. Custodia had sought membership in the Fed — a status that would have made the Board its primary supervisor — alongside its two-year-old effort to obtain a so-called master account with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Custodia's account application is the subject of a heated lawsuit between the bank, the Board of Governors and the Kansas City Fed. In its decision Friday, the board cited concerns about Custodia's business model, which centers on providing custody services for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, and aspires to include issuing its own stablecoin. The board questioned the firm's ability to manage risks related to money laundering and illicit finance. "The firm's novel business model and proposed focus on crypto-assets presented significant safety and soundness risks," the Fed's statement reads. "The Board has previously made clear that such crypto activities are highly likely to be inconsistent with safe and sound banking practices. The Board also found that Custodia's risk management framework was insufficient to address concerns regarding the heightened risks associated with its proposed crypto activities, including its ability to mitigate money laundering and terrorism financing risks." Custodia CEO Caitlin Long said in a written statement that she was "surprised and disappointed" by the decision, adding that her company was given a 72-hour notice that it could "either withdraw its membership application or see it denied." By blocking Custodia from being federally regulated, Long said, the Fed was passing up an opportunity to bring digital asset servicing into the regulatory perimeter and, in doing so, resolving to keep much of the sector's activities in the shadows.

Kansas City Fed rejects Custodia's master account application - The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has denied Custodia Bank's application for a master account, according to a U.S. district court filing. The reserve bank disclosed the rejection in a motion to dismiss filed with the U.S. District Court of Wyoming on Friday afternoon. Custodia is suing both the Kansas City Fed and the Fed Board of Governors over its long-delayed application for a master account, which grants access to the Fed's various financial services, including its payment system. In its filing, the Kansas City Fed and the Board of Governors argue that the ruling should render Custodia's lawsuit moot. The bank had sought to pressure the Fed to make a decision about its two-year-old application, arguing that it had been subject to an unreasonable delay. The Kansas City Fed's denial of Custodia's master account application came just hours afterthe Board of Governors rejected the Wyoming-based digital asset bank's bid to become a state member bank. The designation would have made the Fed Custodia's primary supervisor and — according to the central bank's recently enacted application review framework — made it easier for the bank to receive a master account. Nathan Miller, a spokesman for Custodia, said the bank plans to continue its litigation against the Fed, noting that the bank intends to challenge whether the bank has congressional authority to pick and choose which institutions can have master accounts. Custodia and others argue that any state chartered depository is entitled to master account access. In a written statement, Miller accused the Board and the Kansas City Fed of taking "coordinate action against" the bank and said the rationale for the rejections was "misguided and wrong." "It will not protect American consumers, will discourage responsible innovation, and will provide even greater advantages to incumbent banks," Miller said in a written statement. "Custodia Bank offered a safe, federally regulated, solvent alternative to the reckless speculators and grifters that the Fed has allowed to penetrate the U.S. banking system, with disastrous results for some banks. Custodia actively sought federal regulation, going above and beyond all requirements that apply to traditional banks." The Kansas City Fed's court filing did not disclose a reason for the denial. The reserve bank declined to comment on the decision Friday afternoon.

'A huge mistake': Lessons from the JPMorgan-Frank fintech deal --Millions of fake students. An $18,000 payout for concocting synthetic identities. Emails that brushed off the possibility of "orange jumpsuits" and revealed frantic cover-ups. Bank-fintech acquisitions that fizzle rarely have details as salacious as the saga of JPMorgan Chase and Frank. Earlier in January, news broke about a lawsuit that JPMorgan Chase filed on Dec. 22 alleging that it was defrauded by the founder of Frank, a college financial-planning website that it acquired in September 2021. The bank paid $175 million to acquire Frank on the premise that it had 4.25 million customers with accounts. In reality, the vast majority were fabricated, according to the complaint, and there were fewer than 300,000 true users. Charlie Javice, the founder of Frank, filed her own lawsuit against Chase the next day, countering that Chase launched "groundless investigations" into her conduct to deny the compensation it owed her, including a $20 million retention award.Other bank-fintech deals have collapsed over the past year, such as UBS's bid to merge with the automated wealth management firm Wealthfront and Patriot National Bancorp's dealfor the neobank American Challenger Development Corp. But none have made the headlines or incited as much curiosity as the Chase-Frank story.It sparks questions about what the bank could have done differently during due diligence and why troubling aspects of Frank's past did not give pause sooner. Observers point out there were warning signs dating back years, including investigations by the Department of Education and Federal Trade Commission.There are also broader lessons for banks targeting fintechs for acquisitions, from the importance of balancing speed with due diligence and the need to weigh carefully what a startup's future will look like within a legacy institution."Entrepreneurs turn into these media stars," said Mathieu Shapiro, managing partner at law firm Obermayer, who likened the rise and fall of Frank to the scandals revolving around the health technology company Theranos and cryptocurrency exchange FTX. "Once you have the whole world talking about how great they are, it becomes harder to stand up and say, this doesn't compute, what are they actually doing to make the loan process easier?"In JPMorgan's fourth-quarter conference call, CEO Jamie Dimon described the acquisition as "a huge mistake."In an emailed statement, JPMorgan Chase spokesperson Pablo Rodriguez said, "Our legal claims against Ms. Javice and [Frank's chief growth officer] Mr. [Olivier] Amar are set out in our complaint, along with the key facts. Any dispute will be resolved through the legal process." Attorneys for Charlie Javice did not respond to a request for comment.

Deutsche Bank To Cut Investment Banking Bonuses By 40% - Deutsche Bank is the latest Wall Street firm making cuts to its bonus pool, according to a new report from FT. Cuts of 40% are expected to be made for investment bankers, marking some of the largest cuts we've seen on the street since firms started announcing them prior to the holidays. While investment bankers will see bonus cuts, traders will see increased payouts, the report says. Meanwhile the "overall bonus pool for Deutsche’s investment banking division would fall by less than 10 per cent", people familiar with the matter said. Fixed income will also see an increase in their pay after the unit posted 25% revenue growth in the 9 months leading up to September 30 last year. That trend continued into the fourth quarter, according to the report. But revenue from investment banking, which makes its money off of dealmaking, was down 58% for the first 9 months of the year last year. A decline in leveraged loans for private equity deals and valuation losses also crippled the segment of Deutsche's business. Investment banking and dealmaking was crippled across Wall Street in 2022, with numerous major banks citing it as the key reason they have also cut bonuses heading into 2023. For example, days ago we wrote that Vis Raghavan of J.P. Morgan confirmed his firm wasn't immune to the "anemic" year that investment banking had in 2022 and as a result, he told Bloomberg from Davos that bonuses would "absolutely" fall. “All banks pay for performance, so if the performance isn’t there, the compensation isn’t going to be there,” he said. Raghavan said the company's markets desks had a "mixed year" and, despite anemic dealmaking and lower demand for equities, posted strong performances in "commodities, rates and macro, as well as volatility-based equity trades". Credit Suisse Group AG Chairman Axel Lehmann also made a statement last week warning about lower bonuses after what he called a "horrifying year". Recall we wrote days ago that the bank had come out and was considering a large cut to its bonus pool. It was considering a 50% cut to its bonus pool, Bloomberg reported last week. Credit Suisse and J.P. Morgan join a number of Wall Street banks who laid off employees, cut bonuses or both after a torrid 2022. Goldman Sachs, for example, is set to lay off up to 4,000 employees, we noted last month. The bank was also "considering shrinking the bonus pool for its more than 3,000 investment bankers by at least 40 per cent this year".

Morgan Stanley fines its bankers over messaging breaches - Morgan Stanley fined some of its own bankers more than $1 million each for conducting business on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms, the latest fallout from an industrywide probe that saw U.S. regulators impose the record penalties for monitoring lapses. The funds have either been clawed back from previous bonuses or will be docked from future pay, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named as the information has not been made public. Morgan Stanley is the latest bank to require individual staff to bear some of the burden of an unprecedented regulatory investigation, after it emerged that unapproved messaging platforms were being widely used to conduct business. Finance firms are required to scrupulously monitor communications involving their business to head off improper conduct. Individual penalties at Morgan Stanley range from a few thousand dollars to more than $1 million, based on a points system that considers factors including seniority, number of messages sent and whether they were issued prior warnings, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the news. The bank now gives employees training on scenarios when they should shift conversations from personal devices to official platforms such as their work email, the FT reported. Last year, Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $200 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. A dozen banks, including Barclays, Goldman Sachs Group and UBS Group have paid similar levies with total penalties in the matter cresting $2 billion.

 Popular Bank agrees to $2.3 million PPP loan fraud penalty -Popular Bank has agreed to pay a $2.3 million fine to the Federal Reserve in connection with six fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loans that the bank originated. The New York division of Popular, a Puerto Rican bank, agreed to the penalty after self-reporting that it had funded the $1.1 million in falsely obtained loans in August 2020, according to an order from the Fed. The $71 billion-asset bank cooperated with the Fed's investigation, agreed to the fine without admitting or denying the Fed's allegations and has undertaken "substantial remediation related to its ineffective controls and procedures," the order states."We have consented to the imposition of the order and the civil money penalty. The order does not impose any other obligations on the bank," a Popular spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.The Fed's investigation found that Popular did not follow required anti-money-laundering policies and failed to "timely" report having detected "significant indications of potential fraud," according to a press statement from the Fed. The order did not provide further details. The fine is one of the first penalties assessed against a PPP lender. The $800 billion program was created in March 2020 to support small businesses forced to shut down during COVID-19. Since last year, banks and fintech companies have come under increasing scrutiny for allowing rampant PPP fraud to take place by lowering due diligence standards to quickly disburse funds at the onset of the pandemic. The Department of Justice has estimated that at least 10% of PPP loans, as well as similar Emergency Injury and Disaster Loans, were fraudulently obtained.

 California AG defends disclosure law opposed by merchant lenders California's Attorney General Rob Bonta is defending the state's newly enacted small-business disclosure law that requires merchant cash advance lenders, factoring firms and some fintechs to divulge annual percentage rates to borrowers. Bonta sent a letter last week to Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, supporting the agency's view that California's law — which went into effect on Dec. 9 — is not preempted by the federal Truth in Lending Act. The California law mandates that nonbanks disclose the APR, total interest and fees on financings of $500,000 or less. Bonta submitted the letter in response to a preliminary determination by the CFPB last month that small- business disclosure laws in four states — California, New York, Utah and Virginia — do not run afoul of TILA, the seminal consumer protection law that created the current consumer disclosure regime. But TILA only governs consumer disclosures; there currently are no federal disclosure requirements for commercial loans. State disclosure laws that protect small businesses are a relatively new concept and only California and New York require that lenders calculate and disclose key terms. The issue is further complicated by the proliferation of short-term, high-cost financing options online, made primarily by nonbanks to small-business borrowers with bad credit. As states have become more proactive in seeking to regulate small-business lending, the lenders have filed lawsuits and floated novel legal theories to gut the state laws.

CFPB launches staff survey on sexual orientation and gender identity --The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Office of Civil Rights has launched a pilot staff survey on sexual orientation and gender identity. In a memo sent to CFPB employees on Monday, Melissa Brand, who heads the bureau's civil rights office, wrote that the survey's results will help the federal Office of Personnel Management formulate a coordinated government wide policy on the issue of sexual orientation and gender identity. The memo was sent to all CFPB employees under the subject line: "Making Sure Every Person Counts: Take the SOGI Pilot Survey to Promote Inclusion for All." The memo, which was obtained by American Banker, stated that the survey would be "anonymous and voluntary." "Your participation will literally help ensure that every person at CFPB (and ultimately across the federal sector) counts and has a chance to express their identity in a more inclusive, authentic, accurate way," Brand wrote. "The survey results will also help the CFPB's Office of Civil Rights (OCR), Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI), Office of Human Capital (OHC), and CFPB senior leaders better assess the equal employment opportunity and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility related needs and challenges of our employees, including for LGBTQIA+ employees." CFPB employees were provided a link to a list of frequently asked questions about the survey. Brand cautioned that the survey had a question at the end that asked for the division where the employee worked. "This is only for purposes of measuring overall survey participation," she wrote.

Auto lending practices draw regulatory scrutiny for USAA -USAA Federal Savings Bank is once again in hot water with regulators over discriminatory practices in its auto lending unit. The San Antonio-based bank is now the first with more than $100 billion of assets to receive low marks on consecutive Community Reinvestment Act performance exams. And, according to the report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — USAA's primary regulator — things appear to be heading in the wrong direction. In 2019, the OCC downgraded USAA's CRA rating from "satisfactory" to "needs to improve, " the second-lowest grade in the system, after identifying 600 violations of laws aimed at protecting military members. In the 2022 report, the OCC noted 6,477 violations of a different statute and again issued a "needs to improve" rating. "There are only 34 banks with over $100 billion [of assets], we expect all of them to be outstanding," said Kenneth H. Thomas, president of Community Development Fund Advisors. Outstanding is the highest grade achievable on the exam. "Satisfactory we'll accept … but they almost never go below that. Only four banks have done that and each of those times, they've upgraded themselves in the next round." The other four large banks that have been given "needs to improve" ratings are Centennial, Colorado.-based Countrywide Bank in 2008, Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Wells Fargo National Bank Association in 2012, Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank and Birmingham, Alabama-based Regions Bank, both in 2014, according to a digital database maintained by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. No bank that size has ever received the CRA exam's lowest rating, substantially noncompliant, but Thomas said that might have been warranted for USAA.

Subprime Auto-Loan Delinquencies Rise to 2019 Levels: a Dive into Subprime Lending and Securitizations by Wolf Richter -Delinquencies of subprime auto loans have bounced off the stimulus-fueled low levels during the pandemic, when borrowers got caught up on their auto loans with the money they got from stimulus checks and extra unemployment benefits, and from not having to make mortgage payments because they’d entered their mortgages into a forbearance program, and from not having to make rent payments because of the eviction bans. Most of this has now ended, and the money is gone, and subprime delinquency rates are surging. In December, the subprime auto-loan 60-days-and-over delinquency rate rose to 5.7% of total auto loan balances in the Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) rated by Fitch Ratings. The record in the 21st century was set in August 2019, the Good Times, of 5.9%. Prime-rated auto loans are in pristine conditions. Delinquency rates of “prime” rated auto loans are near record lows of a minuscule 0.2%, according to Fitch Ratings. During the worst moment of the Great Recession in January 2009, the prime delinquency rate rose to 0.9%, still minuscule. Prime auto loans are a low risk, low yield business. Auto loans are rated subprime for the same reason a lot of bonds are rated “junk” (BB+ and below): the borrower has a much higher risk of defaulting on the debt. Investors buy them because they get paid higher yields to compensate them for taking those higher risks. Subprime auto loans, just like junk bonds, are a high-risk business with potentially high profits and high losses. Subprime loans on used vehicles come with interest rates on average of 15% to 20%, depending on how deep they’re into subprime, according to Experian. Investors are willing to take high risks to get these kinds of juicy yields. Much of the subprime lending is done by a coterie of specialized lenders. Most of the subprime auto loans are packaged into Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) that investors such as bond funds and pension funds purchase for their higher yields.ABS are structured with the equity tranche and the lowest-rated tranches taking the first losses. As losses increase, higher-rated tranches are starting to take losses. The top-rated tranche of a subprime-auto-loan ABS, perhaps rated “AA” (my cheat sheet for credit ratings of corporate bonds), will only take losses if there is severe damage to the ABS from defaults.Tranches with high credit ratings carry the lowest yields, and investors that are more risk-averse buy them. Low rated tranches are bought by risk cowboys. And the lowest tranche is usually retained by the subprime lender that originated the loan – the required skin in the game, which is one of the reasons why small specialized lenders can go belly-up.Subprime lending has been around for decades and is rife with abuses and scandals. Some subprime loans come with such huge interest rates that practically guarantee that the loans will default. Some subprime lenders take huge risks in their underwriting practices.

Chopra: It's time to revisit 'byzantine' regulatory regime for home appraisals - Regulators are gearing up to take a closer look at the "byzantine" regulatory structure overseeing the real estate appraisal profession. During a hearing on appraisal bias on Tuesday morning, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra turned the spotlight on the profession's rulemaking entity: the Appraisal Foundation Chopra noted that the small nonprofit writes the standards for home valuation throughout the country and is funded by individual appraisers who must pay for access to the rules as well as by member organizations that pay fees. Because of its status as a private organization, he said, the foundation is not accountable to its stakeholders or any higher governmental agency. "I guess I just want to ask others on the panel," Chopra said. "Does this arrangement seem weird?" Junia Howell, a sociologist who researches racial bias in home appraisal and a witness for the hearing, agreed that the regulatory regime is unique. She added that changes to it could help address discriminatory practices by appraisers. "There is not really a single other regulatory structure like this in the country and maybe even in the world, so by the pure definition of the word 'weird,' yes," Howell said. "If you're also insinuating, is there a moral problem to it, I would suggest that yes, there needs to be a different structure that possibly increases some of the accountability" for the profession.

 With regulatory spotlight on bias, appraisers worry about losing their independence -- As the Biden administration's effort to root out bias among home appraisers marches on, those in the field worry the push could undermine their independence.Since the White House launched the Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity, or PAVE, Task Force in June 2021, there have been two congressional hearings on the matter and draft legislation from Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, that would impose federal oversight over the appraisal profession. Democrats no longer control the House, so the odds of legislative changes to appraisal regulation are slim, but regulators remain fixated on the issue. On Tuesday morning, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Sandra Thompson are set to participate in a hearing on the topic of racial bias in home valuation. The hearing will be hosted by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's Appraisal Subcommittee, the agency tasked with overseeing state regulation of appraisers and appraisal management companies. Already some of the most significant changes on the matter have come from those agencies. Last October, the FHFA launched a public database of aggregated and anonymized appraisal data that shows, among other things, trends in "undervaluation" — when homes are appraised below their contractual price. Earlier this month, HUD proposed a policy changethat would make it easier for homeowners to challenge appraisals they believe were skewed by racial bias.More reforms are expected as various agencies work through findings from the PAVE Task Force and other efforts, such as Tuesday's hearing. But, as Washington once again shines a spotlight on appraisal bias, working appraisers are concerned the government's efforts will erode some of the safeguards implemented by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 and, ultimately, end up pressuring appraisers to err on the side of higher valuations. Such a trend could put both banks and other lenders as well as borrowers in harm's way. Mary Cummins, a Los Angeles-based real estate appraiser, said the FHFA's focus on undervaluation is creating pressure for appraisers to sync their findings with contract pricing. However, she said, this type of outside influence is illegal and something Congress sought to eliminate with Dodd-Frank, which bars lenders from discussing valuations with appraisers. "It shocks the conscience that the government is now the one pressuring, influencing the appraiser to come in at or above contract value with some borrowers," Cummins said, adding that the focus on getting higher valuations in lower-income areas could lead to poorer borrowers being saddled with underwater mortgages in down markets."You would be doing a cruel disservice to these people to come in high. They would end up upside down with a huge mortgage payment they may not be able to afford," she said. "Did the government learn nothing from the Great Recession?"

"This Is The First Domino": Amazon Letting An Office Lease In Seattle Expire For Only The Second Time Ever - The major exodus by U.S. corporations out of U.S. cities continues. The latest example is now Amazon, who is - for only the second time in Seattle - allowing one of its major office leases to expire, according to the Seattle Times. The e-commerce giant is set to move workers out of its offices in Port 99 on Eight Avenue, the report says. The lease expires in April, according to a company spokesperson. Amazon will move "about 2,000" of its employees to office space across from its Puget Sound headquarters, the report noted. Amazon had just announced layoffs that would affect 18,000 employees companywide and, specifically, 2,300 employees near Puget Sound. But the company says that the lease expiration decision had little to do with the layoffs and more to do with "the ongoing shift to remote and hybrid work after the COVID-19 pandemic". As the Seattle Times notes, the number of office workers in downtown Seattle is down 42% from prior to the pandemic. This marks only the second time Amazon has taken such action. Back in 2020, the company dropped its lease at 2201 Westlake, where it made up about half of the building's 318,000 square feet of office space, the report said. They had to relocate 1,000 employees as a result. And it isn't just Amazon that is rethinking its use of office space in Seattle. Facebook is also planning on subleasing two locations and Microsoft reportedly will not renew its lease at the 26-story City Center Plaza in Bellevue when it expires in Summer of 2024.

Freddie Mac: Mortgage Serious Delinquency Rate unchanged in December - Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in December was 0.66%, unchanged from 0.66% November. Freddie's rate is down year-over-year from 1.12% in December 2021. Freddie's serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20% following the housing bubble and peaked at 3.17% in August 2020 during the pandemic. These are mortgage loans that are "three monthly payments or more past due or in foreclosure". Mortgages in forbearance are being counted as delinquent in this monthly report but are not reported to the credit bureaus.The serious delinquency rate was at 0.60% just prior to the pandemic; this is almost back to that level.Note that multi-family delinquencies have been increasing and were at 0.12% in December, up from 0.08% in December 2021.

Black Knight: Mortgage Delinquency Rate Increased in December; Prepayments at Record Low - From Black Knight: Black Knight’s First Look: Mortgage Delinquencies Closed 2022 Down 9% for the Year, While Prepayments Hit Third Consecutive Record Low

• The national delinquency rate inched up 7 basis points in the month to 3.08%, but finished the year 30 basis points (-9%) below its December 2021 level
• Prepayment activity fell to 0.39% – with single month mortality (SMM) hitting its third consecutive record low dating back to 2000 when Black Knight began reporting the metric
• Serious delinquencies (90+ days past due) continued to improve nationally despite an 8.7K rise in Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ian, with 44 other states seeing seriously past-due volumes decline in the month
• Borrowers 30 days late increased by 40K, up 4.8%, while 60-day delinquencies stayed flat
• Foreclosure starts increased by 15% in the month to 26,900 – the third consecutive increase, but still 30% below pre-pandemic levels
• Foreclosure was started on 4.9% of serious delinquencies in December, up from November, but still 46% below the start rate seen in December 2019 prior to the pandemic
• Active foreclosure inventory rose by 2.3% in the month, though volumes remained subdued throughout 2022 after the record lows of 2021 due to widespread moratoriums and forbearance protections

According to Black Knight's First Look report, the percent of loans delinquent increased 2.3% in December compared to November and decreased 9% year-over-year. Black Knight reported the U.S. mortgage delinquency rate (loans 30 or more days past due, but not in foreclosure) was 3.08% in December, up from 3.01% in November. The percent of loans in the foreclosure process increased slightly in December to 0.37%, from 0.37% in November. The number of delinquent properties, but not in foreclosure, is down 146,000 properties year-over-year, and the number of properties in the foreclosure process is up 70,000 properties year-over-year.

 Los Angeles Extends Rent Protections After COVID-Era Moratoriums Set To Expire - The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Jan. 20 to make some COVID-era protections for renters permanent, less than two weeks before they were set to expire.“Today was a huge victory,” recently-elected Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky posted to Twitter after the vote.“The Los Angeles City Council just unanimously adopted several common sense tenant protections that will protect thousands of Angelenos facing eviction, and help make our work around homelessness and reducing poverty that much easier.” The council approved moratoriums for renters - including no-fault evictions and nonpayments - beginning at the height of the pandemic and were to expire Feb. 1.

Mortgage Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey - Mortgage applications increased 7.0 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending January 20, 2023. This week’s results include an adjustment for the observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. ... The Refinance Index increased 15 percent from the previous week and was 77 percent lower than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 3 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent compared with the previous week and was 39 percent lower than the same week one year ago. “Mortgage rates declined for the third straight week, which is good news for potential homebuyers looking ahead to the spring homebuying season. Mortgage rates on most loan types decreased last week and the 30-year fixed rate reached its lowest level since September 2022 at 6.2 percent,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Overall applications increased with both gains in purchase and refinance activity, but purchase applications remained almost 39 percent lower than a year ago. Homebuying activity remains tepid, but if rates continue to fall and home prices cool further, we expect to see potential buyers come back into the market. Many have been waiting for affordability challenges to subside.” Added Kan, “Despite a 15 percent increase in refinances, they were still 77 percent behind last year’s pace, as rates remained more than two percentage points higher, thus providing very little refinance incentive for most borrowers who are locked into lower rates.” ... The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) decreased to 6.20 percent from 6.23 percent, with points increasing to 0.69 from 0.67 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.

Mortgage rates tick down ahead of Fed meeting next week - Mortgage rates fell slightly this week, staying almost flat ahead of the Federal Reserve’s closely watched interest rate-setting meeting next week. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.13% in the week ending January 26, down from 6.15% the week before, according to data from Freddie Mac released Thursday. A year ago, the 30-year fixed rate was 3.55%. “Mortgage rates continue to tick down and, as a result, home purchase demand is thawing from the monthslong freeze that gripped the housing market,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Potential homebuyers remain sensitive to changes in mortgage rates, but ample demand remains, fueled by first-time homebuyers.” After climbing for most of 2022, spurred by the Fed’s harsh interest rate hikes to tame soaring inflation, mortgage rates have been trending downward since November, alongside data that continues to show inflation may have reached its peak. Last week’s mortgage rates hit the lowest level since September. The average mortgage rate is based on mortgage applications that Freddie Mac receives from thousands of lenders across the country. The survey includes only borrowers who put 20% down and have excellent credit. Many buyers who put down less money upfront or have less than ideal credit will pay more than the average rate. The Fed is expected to continue its rate-hiking campaign at its two-day meeting on January 31 to February 1. The central bank is likely to announce a smaller increase in the fed funds rate, with a quarter-point hike, compared with the half-point and three-quarter-point increases in the meetings last year. The Fed does not set the interest rates borrowers pay on mortgages directly. But its actions influence them. Mortgage rates tend to track the yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds, which move based on a combination of anticipation about the Fed’s actions, what the Fed actually does and investors’ reactions. When Treasury yields go up, so do mortgage rates; when they go down, mortgage rates tend to follow.

Survey finds Americans wildly misinformed on housing market - A new survey finds Americans are woefully misinformed about the nation’s mercurial housing market, even as millions of them prepare to buy homes. Twenty-eight million Americans plan to purchase a home in 2023, according to a survey released Tuesday by NerdWallet, the personal finance company. On average, they hope to spend $269,200. But that figure falls more than $100,000 short of the median home price, which was $388,100 in December, according to the real estate brokerage Redfin. Home prices crossed the $269,000 threshold sometime in 2013, Federal Reserve statistics show. If prospective homebuyers sound oddly optimistic about prices, that may be because they are pessimistic about the state of the housing market. Two-thirds of Americans surveyed said they expect an imminent crash. Real estate economists do not. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, forecast an average sale price of $385,800 this year, about the same as last year. Redfin predicts a 4 percent drop: bad news for sellers, but hardly a crash. “Home prices already have been falling, especially on the West Coast, and prices will fall in some cities in 2023,” said Holden Lewis, a home and mortgages expert for NerdWallet. “But a drop in home prices isn’t necessarily a crash.” Another head-scratcher: 61 percent of Americans told pollsters current mortgage rates are unprecedented, meaning that they have never been seen before. “We actually defined it,” said Elizabeth Renter, data analyst for NerdWallet. The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage hit 6.15 percent last week, according to the Fed. That’s higher than most mortgage rates of the past few years, which have ranged below 3 percent at times. But it is not unprecedented. Over the last 50 years, NerdWallet reports, 30-year mortgage rates have averaged 7.75 percent. Mortgage rates in the 6 to 7 percent range were common as recently as 2008. Homebuyers have basked in a climate of historically low rates for more than a decade. The Fed cut rates dramatically in the Great Recession of 2008 to stimulate the economy, a campaign that continued, on and off, through the COVID-19 pandemic. Runaway inflation prompted a dramatic series of hikes in 2022, which pushed mortgage rates back to “normal” levels, at least in a historical sense. The new survey of 2,051 American adults, conducted by the Harris Poll for NerdWallet, is the latest iteration of an annual poll. Pollsters have found overconfident home shoppers for several consecutive years. “We know from the past five years, roughly 10 percent of Americans say they’re going to purchase a home in the next 12 months, which is wildly optimistic,” Renter said. “Part of it could be that they’re unaware of what’s going on in the housing market.” Nearly 30 million Americans plan to buy a home in 2023. In all likelihood, just a small percentage of them will succeed: Only 6 million existing homes sold in 2021. The survey found more realism when asking respondents how their homebuying plans had panned out in 2022. Seventy percent of Americans who had planned to buy a home in 2022 did not succeed. Some of them made offers that were not accepted. Others shelved their plans because they couldn’t find affordable homes. TAGS HOUSIN

Realtor.com Reports Weekly Active Inventory Up 69% YoY; New Listings Down 5% YoY -Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report released today from Chief Economist Danielle Hale: Weekly Housing Trends View — Data Week Ending Jan 21, 2023. Note: They have data on list prices, new listings and more, but this focus is on inventory.

• Active inventory growth continued to climb with for-sale homes up 69% above one year ago. In January, the housing market built further on the impressive growth seen in late 2022. But there is still room for more. Even after surging more than 50% in December 2022, the number of homes on the market trailed pre-pandemic counts by nearly 40%.
• New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were again down, this week by 5% from one year ago. This marks the twenty-ninth consecutive week of year-over-year declines in homeowners listing their homes for sale, but this week’s decline was not only smaller than dip, the average decline in new listings so far this year is about half what we saw in the fourth quarter of 2022. As mortgage rates rose and the market shifted from a distinct seller’s market to one that might better be described as a nobody’s market, we saw homeowners retrench, and the number of new listings fell. Although the number of new listings is still declining, at the current pace we could see a reversal of that trend or more new listings than one year ago as soon as February.

Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in inventory according to realtor.com. In early 2022, inventory was declining rapidly, so the year-over-year change is up sharply. An interesting note this week is that new listings were only down 5% from a year ago. This is a significant change from December when new listings were down 21% year-over-year according to Realtor.com, anddown 21.5% in the local markets I track. Something to watch!

Goldman Sachs says 4 cities likely to see a 2008-style housing crash: report | The Hill Goldman Sachs is predicting dark days in 2023 for some of the pandemic’s red-hot U.S. housing markets. The investment bank shied away from predicting a nationwide crash, but warned that residents in four cities in particular could see plummeting values that echo the 2008 housing collapse, according to a note to clients obtained by the New York Post. The “overheated” markets mentioned in the note were: San Jose, California; Austin, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; and San Diego, California. Goldman now believes that interest rates will remain high longer than expected, and notified clients that the bank is raising its forecast for the 30-year fixed mortgage rate to 6.5% for year-end 2023. These housing markets could be a first-time buyer’s best bet in 2023 September 2022 marked the first time since the 2008 housing crisis that the average long-term mortgage rate surpassed 6%. High mortgage rates, combined with soaring home prices, are currently driving some buyers away and contributing to a cooling housing market. Austin, ranked the hottest real estate market in the U.S. in 2021 by Zillow, has fallen to 30th for 2023. The company’s report called the market “ice cold” and stated that homes are now spending an average of 68 days on the market, more than any other major U.S. metro. The Austin Board of Realtors has pushed back against the report, saying that there is still “incredibly high demand.” Prices are expected to fall less than 2% in cities like New York and Chicago, according to Goldman, and even grow in others, like Baltimore and Miami. In cities where valuations have drifted far from fundamentals, the decline is expected to be far more devastating, according to the note. “This [national] decline should be small enough as to avoid broad mortgage credit stress, with a sharp increase in foreclosures nationwide seeming unlikely,” Goldman Sachs wrote. “That said, overheated housing markets in the Southwest and Pacific coast, such as San Jose MSA, Austin MSA, Phoenix MSA, and San Diego MSA will likely grapple with peak-to-trough declines of over 25%, presenting localized risk of higher delinquencies for mortgages originated in 2022 or late 2021.” National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in his 2023 forecast that he sees “hopeful signs” for the country as a whole and expects housing prices to be flat on average. “Half of the country may experience small price gains, while the other half may see slight price declines,” Yun said. The exceptions, however are markets like the San Francisco Bay Area, where San Jose is located, which he predicts will see potential 10-15% drops in 2023. “Mortgage rates are the lifeblood that drive home sales,” Yun said. The average rate on a 30-year loan was 6.15% this week, nearly a full point below the 7.08% high of September 2022. The same rate was 3.56% at this time last year, according to Freddie Mac.

New Home Sales at 616,000 Annual Rate in December; Annual Sales down 16.4% in 2022 -- The Census Bureau reports New Home Sales in December were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 616 thousand. The previous three months were revised down sharply. Sales of new single‐family houses in December 2022 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 616,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 2.3 percent above the revised November rate of 602,000, but is 26.6 percent below the December 2021 estimate of 839,000. An estimated 644,000 new homes were sold in 2022. This is 16.4 percent below the 2021 figure of 771,000. The first graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions since 1963. The dashed line is the current sales rate. New home sales are below pre-pandemic levels. The second graph shows New Home Months of Supply. The months of supply decreased in December to 9.0 months from 9.2 months in November. The all-time record high was 12.1 months of supply in January 2009. The all-time record low was 3.5 months, most recently in October 2020. This is well above the top of the normal range (about 4 to 6 months of supply is normal)."The seasonally‐adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of December was 461,000. This represents a supply of 9.0 months at the current sales rate."The last graph shows sales NSA (monthly sales, not seasonally adjusted annual rate). In December 2022 (red column), 47 thousand new homes were sold (NSA). Last year, 61 thousand homes were sold in November. The all-time high for December was 87 thousand in 2005, and the all-time low for December was 23 thousand in 2010. This was at expectations of 614 thousand SAAR, however sales in the three previous months were revised down sharply.

1.51 million Total Housing Completions in 2022 including Manufactured Homes; Most Since 2007 --Today, in the CalculatedRisk Real Estate Newsletter: 1.51 million Total Housing Completions in 2022 including Manufactured Homes; Most Since 2007 Excerpt: Although total housing starts decreased 3.0% in 2022 compared to 2021, completions increased year-over-year. Construction delays impacted completions in 2022, and that left a record number of housing units under construction. However, there still were 1.507 million total completions and placements in 2021, the most since 2007. Not counting Manufactured homes, there are 1.392 million completions in 2022, up from 1.341 million in 2021, and also the most since 2007. This graph shows total housing completions and placements since 1968 through 2022. Note that the net addition to the housing stock is less because of demolitions and destruction of older housing units. The housing start report last week indicated 1,021.9 thousand single family completions in 2022, 10.0 thousand in 2-to-4 units, and 360.4 thousand in 5+ units.

AIA: Architecture Billings "Continue to Decline" in December -- Note: This index is a leading indicator primarily for new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) investment. From the AIA: Architecture billings continue to decline: Demand for design services from U.S. architecture firms continued to contract in December, according to a new report from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The pace of decline during December slowed from November, posting an Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score of 47.5 from 46.6 (any score below 50 indicates a decline in firm billings). Inquiries into new projects posted a positive score of 52.3, however new design contracts remained in negative territory with a score of 49.4. “Despite strong revenue growth last year, architecture firms have modest expectations regarding business conditions this coming year,” said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “With ABI scores for the entire fourth quarter of 2022 in negative territory, a slowdown in construction activity is expected later this year, though the depth of the downturn remains unclear.”
• Regional averages: Midwest (49.4); South (48.6); Northeast (46.5); West (45.5)
• Sector index breakdown: mixed practice (54.8); institutional (47.3); commercial/industrial (45.2); multi-family residential (44.3)
This graph shows the Architecture Billings Index since 1996. The index was at 47.5 in December, up from 46.6 in November. Anything below 50 indicates contraction in demand for architects' services. This includes commercial and industrial facilities like hotels and office buildings, multi-family residential, as well as schools, hospitals and other institutions. This index had been positive for 20 consecutive months but indicated a decline the last three months. This index usually leads CRE investment by 9 to 12 months, so this index suggests a pickup in CRE investment in early 2023, but a slowdown in CRE investment later in 2023. Note that multi-family billing turned down in September and has been negative for four consecutive months and is at the lowest level since May 2020. This suggests we will see a downturn in multi-family starts sometime in 2023 (multi-family starts probably have already peaked).

Hotels: Occupancy Rate Down 6.2% Compared to Same Week in 2019 --From CoStar: STR: MLK Day Leads to Slightly Lower US Weekly Hotel Performance - With the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, U.S. hotel performance came in slightly lower than the previous week, according to STR‘s latest data through Jan. 21.
Jan. 15-21, 2023 (percentage change from comparable week in 2019*):
• Occupancy: 54.2% (-6.2%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): $140.16 (+11.3%)
• evenue per available room (RevPAR): $75.97 (+4.4%)
*Due to the pandemic impact, STR is measuring recovery against comparable time periods from 2019. Year-over-year comparisons will once again become standard after Q1.
The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average.The red line is for 2023, black is 2020, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2022. Dashed purple is 2019 (STR is comparing to a strong year for hotels). The 4-week average of the occupancy rate is below the median rate for the previous 20 years (Blue), but this is the slow season - and some of the early year weakness might be related to the timing of the report.The 4-week average of the occupancy rate will increase seasonally over the next few months.

How “FHFA-CPI” using house prices rather than OER shows a sharp deceleration in inflation -- Paul Krugman made another foray into the “inflation is mostly gone” genre over the weekend with a thread on Mastodon that largely relied on the following graph: concluding that “[A]t this point the burden of proof lies on anyone claiming that we had more than a, well, transitory inflation spike that’s mostly behind us.”I’m very disappointed with Krugman’s argument, mainly because his “supercore” measure of inflation boils down to “if we exclude all the items that CPI says are really going up in price, plus gas, then things aren’t really going up in price.”Well, duh. Since the inflection point of all this argumentation is June, I thought I’d try a fairer representation of the main sectors involved. So, below is a bar graph that breaks all of the measures down to the First and Second Halves of 2022, starting with overall inflation (blue), then subtracts food and energy (red), energy (gas) (gold), and shelter (purple). The final three bars focus on shelter (brown), house prices via the FHFA purchase only index (lavender), and finally energy (teal):This makes it clear that both total and core inflation aren’t very different in H2 than in H1. In fact as officially measured shelter prices accelerated from +2.7% in H1 to +3.8% in H2. The big declines are in house prices, which aren’t in the official CPI and which declined from +8.6% in H1 to -0.4% (-0.27% through October, the last month reported, extrapolated to 6 months) in H2; and energy, which decelerated from +18.2% in H1 to +0.3% in H2 (this despite the huge drop in gas prices from $5 to $3 between June and December).So I disagree with Prof. Krugman’s analysis using his cherry-picked “supercore.” Inflation, as officially measured, isn’t “mostly behind us.” Nevertheless, if the question is, “Should the Fed continue to raise rates?” then I arrive at the same conclusion, but for a different reason; namely, that officially measured CPI for shelter lags what is actually happening in the housing market (as represented by prices) by 12 or more months. I show that below via “FHFA-adjusted” total and core CPI, which substitutes the FHFA purchase only index for CPI shelter. The only difference is, since the FHFA has only been reported through October, the below graph is quarterly rather than semi-annual:Now it is clear just how much inflation, as it more properly ought to be considered by the Fed, has sharply decelerated since June.

Your Living Standards Have Declined Dramatically - In the old days, shopping for groceries used to be a joy. By old days, I mean two years ago. Now, it is shocking and miserable. You look at these prices and wonder if you can even afford normal foods we took for granted. Everyone knows about the egg problem, which is being chalked up to a bird flu, just as Putin was responsible for the gas price and greedy meat processors caused beef prices to soar. Sorry but this is ridiculous. The price of eggs is up dramatically because all the costs associated with making them available to consumers are up. At first, there was just a shortage because grocery chains resisted price increases. Once they came back to the shelves, the cost dramatically rose. You are going to pay more for the worst eggs than the best egg cost only one year ago. Unless you know someone with chickens or have them yourself, you are stuck with thin shells and light-yellow yokes forever, while paying through the nose for them. The bottom line is undeniable: in a mere two years, many of the things you loved, healthy food for your families—I’m not talking about the all-carb diet they want us to adopt—has now doubled in price. Some is up 50 percent and some is up 150 percent. This damage is absolutely not captured in the CPI, which has huge drawbacks by being calculated on an annual basis and for being a weighted index number that fails to capture the reality on the ground. The reality you see on the shelves of your local store. The grocery prices tell the truth that you are being pillaged.The pillaging is not limited to this problem however. And by the way, this is NOT going to improve. It would take a dramatic deflation to restore our living standards. The Fed will never permit that. At best, their intention is to take down the inflation rate to 2 percent per annum. It now stands at about 6 percent, maybe. So even if it happens to fall to zero, all prevailing prices will stick. That means that you have been robbed. The fundamentals of household finance are even worse. Credit card balances are way up. Savings is way down. And real income (which is adjusted for inflation) has been falling now for 21 months straight. Truly, it’s panic time but people are so beaten down and exhausted that they are not panicking. Most people have acquiesced in exhaustion of the shock and awe to which they have been subjected.

Personal Income increased 0.2% in December; Spending decreased 0.2% -- The BEA released the Personal Income and Outlays report for December: Personal income increased $49.5 billion (0.2 percent) in December, according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $49.2 billion (0.3 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) decreased $41.6 billion (0.2 percent). The PCE price index increased 0.1 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.3 percent. Real DPI increased 0.2 percent in December and Real PCE decreased 0.3 percent; goods decreased 0.9 percent and services were unchanged.The December PCE price index increased 5.0 percent year-over-year (YoY), down from 5.5 percent YoY in November, and down from the recent peak of 7.0 percent in June 2022. The PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 4.4 percent YoY, down from 4.7 percent in November, and down from the recent peak of 5.4 percent in February 2022. The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) through December 2022 (2012 dollars). The dashed red lines are the quarterly levels for real PCE.Personal income was at expectations, and the decrease in PCE was slightly below expectations.Inflation was close to expectations.

Services PCE Price Index Spikes, But Goods PCE Price Index Falls as Energy Prices Plunge: Core PCE Re-accelerates by Wolf Richter - The different components of the PCE price index is what the Fed holds up when it details its reasoning behind its crackdown on inflation. They include overall PCE but particularly core PCE (which excludes the volatile food and energy components) and more recently, services PCE, which is where inflation has now solidly moved to, and from where it is very difficult to dislodge. On a monthly basis, driven by price increases in services, both the core PCE and the services PCE re-accelerated in December. On a year-over-year basis, the services PCE remains near its multi-decade high. The PCE price index for services jumped 0.5% in December from November, the biggest jump since September, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today. There is no indication here that services PCE is backing off or has reached a turning point in the uptrend, or whatever. Services inflation has become a horror show. On a year-over-year basis, the PCE Price Index for services rose 5.1%, same as in November. It has now been above 5% for the fifth month in a row, and is not showing any signs of a decline. This confirms the CPI for services, released on January 12, which spiked to a new four-decade high. This recalcitrant inflation in services is a source of frustration for the Fed’s crackdown on inflation – and it keeps featuring in Powell’s comments. But goods prices are falling. The PCE price index for durable goods – new and used vehicles, appliances, furniture, etc. – declined by 0.3% for the month, the third month in a row of month-to-month declines, but the decline decelerated from the prior month (-0.8%). The PCE price index for energy plunged by 5.1% for the month, having now plunged five of the past six months. Year-over-year, the Energy index is down 8.3%. The PCE price for food prices slowed to an increase of 0.2% for the month, but it still up 10.6% year-over-year. The PCE price index for goods overall plunged by 0.7% for the month:

Consumer Spending on Services Keeps up with Raging Inflation in Services. Spending on Goods Falls as Prices Drop, Demand Fizzles after Pandemic Binge --Wolf Richter -Consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, is now impacted by sharp price drops for fuel and durable goods, and sharp price increases for services. Inflation continues to rage in services, even as goods prices have dropped. I discussed these PCE price indices here a minute ago. So consumers are paying less for many goods than they had to pay a few months ago, but they’re paying a lot more for services. About 62% of what consumers spend goes to services.Spending on services, not adjusted for inflation, jumped 0.5% in December from November, and by 8.7% year-over-year, according to the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) data released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. But adjusted for inflation by the PCE price index for services, “real” spending on services remained flat for the month and was up 3.3% from a year ago – 3.3% is decent growth in real spending. Services include housing, utilities, insurance, healthcare, travel bookings, streaming, subscriptions of all kinds, entertainment, repairs, cleaning services, haircuts, etc. On this inflation-adjusted basis, spending on services is still well below pre-pandemic trend:Spending on durable goods, not adjusted for inflation, fell 1.9% in December from November, and was up only 3.2% year-over-year. Durable goods include new and used vehicles of all kinds, appliances, electronics, furniture, etc.Adjusted for inflation with the PCE price index for durable goods, “real” spending on durable goods fell 1.6% in December from November. Spending fell less than when not-adjusted for inflation because prices have dropped, including prices for used vehicles.Year-over-year, adjusted for inflation, spending was up only 1.8%, coming off the pandemic binge and is reverting to trend. This was truly a massively overstimulated boom in buying stuff:

Anti-Asian discrimination cost Chinese restaurants $7.4 billion during the pandemic's first year, new study finds -At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-China fervor stoked consumer discrimination that cost Chinese restaurants $7.4 billion in lost revenue in 2020—losses 18.4 percent greater than at other types of restaurants—according to a new study by researchers from Boston College, the University of Michigan, and Microsoft Research, published today in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. The findings begin to put a finer point on the broad economic costs of anti-Asian discrimination during the pandemic and the role of politicians who focused blame on China, where the coronavirus emerged in late 2019, said study co-author and Boston College Assistant Professor of Political Science Masha Krupenkin. Attitudes towards Chinese and non-Chinese Asian food declined precipitously during the pandemic and this change in attitudes was driven by a mix of assigning blame for COVID-19 spread to Asians and experiencing fear of Chinese food, Krupenkin and colleagues from the University of Michigan and Microsoft Research found. "The COVID-19 pandemic originated in China," said Krupenkin. "Many actors in US politics and media, especially those that were ideologically conservative, emphasized the connection between COVID and China as a way of placing blame for the pandemic. At the same time, there was a sharp increase in incidents of discrimination and violence against Asian-Americans." The pandemic effectively delivered a "shock" to consumer discrimination against Chinese and other Asian restaurants, survey data, online search trends, and consumer cellular device mobility data studied by the team revealed. "Our analysis estimates that COVID-related stigma and anti-Asian hate cost Asian American businesses $7.42 billion in lost revenue in 2020, highlighting how negative sentiment towards foreign entities can spillover into consumer discrimination targeting domestic minority groups," said co-author Justin T. Huang, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan. "These patterns echo how Muslim Americans faced widespread discrimination, hate, and stigma post-9/11 and exemplify how some American minority groups are perceived through the lens of the perpetual foreigner stereotype."

Gas Prices Set To Soar As Crack Spread Jumps On Tightening Fuel Supplies - U.S. oil refining margins, also known as the 3-2-1 crack spread, jumped to a three-month high on Tuesday -- and that's an indication the country faces an ongoing product shortage that might lead to higher gasoline and diesel prices at the pump. The 3-2-1 crack spread is a great indicator to gauge fuel product tightness. High spreads indicate gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other petroleum products are in short supply, while low spreads mean an abundance of supply. Spread direction is also important -- if rising, it would mean fuel inventories are declining. The simple calculation of refining margins is for every three barrels of crude oil the refinery processes -- it makes two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of distillates like diesel and jet fuel. On Tuesday, the crack spread hit a three-month high of $42 a barrel. For some context, the five-year January average is $15.56. Reuters pointed out that refinery outages exacerbate fuel supply tightness. A diesel producing unit at PBF Energy's (PBF.N) Chalmette, Louisiana, refinery was shut following a fire on Saturday. It could be out for at least a month. Exxon Mobil said Monday it will perform planned maintenance on several units at its Baytown, Texas, petrochemical complex.The ongoing refinery maintenance season could be much lengthier than usual, with many U.S. Gulf Coast refineries still running below capacity after Winter Storm Elliott knocked out some 1.5 million barrels per day of refining capacity in December. A Suncor refinery in Commerce City, Colorado, has remained offline since the storm.

US water heater, furnace shipments fell in Nov -US shipments of residential gas and electric storage water heaters and furnaces fell in November by double digits, while air conditioner and heat pump shipments rose. Residential gas storage water heater shipments were 327,900 units in November, down by 15pc compared with the prior year, while electric storage shipments fell by 9pc to 347,800 units, according to data by the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute. Year-to-date shipments of gas water heaters are down by 17pc to 3.76mn units while electric water heaters are down by 7pc to 4.16mn units. Commercial gas storage water heater shipments fell by 19pc to 5,600 units, while electric water heater shipments fell by 18pc to 9,700 units. Year-to-date shipments are down by 8pc for gas heaters to 76,500 units and down by 22pc for electric heaters to 109,000 units. Gas warm air furnace shipments fell in November by 12pc compared to the prior year to 286,000 units, while year-to-date shipments were down by 2pc to 3.62mn units. Central air conditioners and air-source heat pump shipments were at 697,000 units, up by 5pc compared to a year ago, while air conditioner-only shipments rose by 4pc to 398,500 units and heat pump shipments rose by 6pc to 298,600 units.

Where do your online shopping returns end up? In the trash, new research finds - For e-commerce companies, it is cheaper to throw away returned items rather than selling them again. In a new study, researchers at Lund University in Sweden interviewed members of the textile and electronics industries, hoping to better understand a problem that is snowballing, yet has been the subject of little research. Internet shopping is increasingly commonplace, and with it comes more returns: previous studies have shown that digital commerce generates significantly more returned products than shopping in shops. According to industry data, the trend of returning items looks to be on the increase, something that might be explained by the fact that shipping returns back is usually free. High volumes of returns increase fossil-fuel emissions, thanks to more freight journeys. But it gets worse: what is not widely known is that companies—often ones who nurture a sustainable, carbon neutral profile—usually throw away the products that are sent back. The total value of returned textile and electronic products destroyed in the EU could be as much as EUR 21.74 billion in 2022, according to some calculations. Some believe the true cost to be higher still. "The blunt reality is that throwing things away is the lesser of two evils for the company, from a financial perspective. That applies particularly to goods that are cheap compared to the cost of examining, repacking and putting them back on sale again," says Carl Dalhammar, senior lecturer at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University who, alongside colleagues Hedda Roberts, Leonidas Milios and Oksana Mont, recently wrote an article featuring interviews with eleven representatives of the clothing and electronics industries. The phenomenon is widespread throughout the electronics and clothing industries. Both are sectors with a large and varied range, and cheap products. The more expensive the products, the more likely they are to be repackaged and sold again.

LA Port Inbound Traffic Down 20% YoY in December --Container traffic gives us an idea about the volume of goods being exported and imported - and usually some hints about the trade report since LA area ports handle about 40% of the nation's container port traffic. The following graphs are for inbound and outbound traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in TEUs (TEUs: 20-foot equivalent units or 20-foot-long cargo container). To remove the strong seasonal component for inbound traffic, the first graph shows the rolling 12-month average. On a rolling 12-month basis, inbound traffic decreased 1.6% in December compared to the rolling 12 months ending in November. Outbound traffic increased 1.1% compared to the rolling 12 months ending the previous month. The 2nd graph is the monthly data (with a strong seasonal pattern for imports). Usually imports peak in the July to October period as retailers import goods for the Christmas holiday, and then decline sharply and bottom in February or March depending on the timing of the Chinese New Year. Imports were down 20% YoY in December, and exports were up 15% YoY. It is possible that exports have bottomed after declining for several years (even prior to the pandemic).

Google lays off in-house massage therapists in latest round of job cuts: report -More than two dozen in-house massage therapists were part of the latest round of layoffs that happened at Google last week. According to filings reported by CNBC on Tuesday, 27 in-house massage therapists were among the 1,845 employees to lose their jobs with the company in the state of California. Twenty-four of the massage therapists who lost their jobs had been based at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., while three more massage therapists employed by the company and based at the Los Angeles and Irvine, Calif. campuses were also let go.Google is one of several tech companies that have laid off thousands of employees in recent weeks.Some of the staff reductions have been blamed on the companies overhiring during the pandemicGoogle’s parent company Alphabet has cut 12,000 jobs, the company’s biggest round of layoffs to date. The round of layoffs affected 6 percent of its workforce.

Some Google workers who've been laid off earned as much as $1 million a year, report says - Some of the 12,000 staff whose roles were cut by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on Friday included both high performers and workers making seven figures, The Information reported. Google managers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the outlet that some who lost their jobs included those with high scores on performance reviews or in managerial positions earning between $500,000 and $1 million a year. The average salary for a manager at the tech giant in the US was about $165,000, according to employment website Indeed. In January 2022, Insider reported that four executives got a pay rise to $1 million as well as more share options after they complained about pay and inflation. Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider. "We hired for a different economic reality than we face today," Pichai said in an email to all employees on Friday, and took "full responsibility for the decisions that led us here." An Insider source, whose employment at Google has been verified, said the company had last month brought in a new "support check-in" policy that they described as a "compassionate-sounding euphemism for a performance warning mark on your personal record." The source told Insider the new rating system amounted to a "talking-to" from managers to employees: "It's a sign that you need to shape up, or start looking for another job soon." They added that someone from human resources had described it as "tough love," prompting the employee to comment: "It implied that the company is like family to us, and they get to discipline us as a parent." According to The Information, Google told managers to put more employees into low-performing categories during performance reviews. The system was particularly punitive to new recruits, said the employee who spoke to Insider. Some who had only worked at the company for three months had already had a "support check-in" catch-up about not meeting all their expectations, the employee added.

IBM planning to cut almost 4,000 jobs from spin-off of company, divestment from analytics business | The - IBM is planning to cut nearly 4,000 jobs as a result of one of its branches spinning off to become its own company and divesting a health care data analytics business. Tim Davidson, a spokesperson for IBM, said the company is laying off roughly 3,900 employees. The company is also taking on a $300 million charge through the first quarter of 2023 from its 2021 spin-off of Kyndryl, an information technology infrastructure company, and the divestment of its health care data analytics business, he said. Davidson said the layoffs are entirely related to these actions and not the company’s financial outlook. He noted that IBM still has a “robust” analytics business. He said the business formerly known as Watson Health, which is now called Merative, was the business that was divested. The Wall Street Journal reported that the layoffs will account for 1.4 percent of the company’s total headcount of 280,000.

BLS: Alaska and Pennsylvania Set New Record Series Low Unemployment rates in December --From the BLS: Regional and State Employment and Unemployment Summary Unemployment rates were higher in December in 7 states, lower in 5 states, and stable in 38 states and the District of Columbia, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Thirty-five states and the District had jobless rate decreases from a year earlier, 4 states had increases, and 11 states had little change....Utah had the lowest jobless rate in December, 2.2 percent. The next lowest rates were in North Dakota and South Dakota, 2.3 percent each. The rates in Alaska (4.3 percent) and Pennsylvania (3.9 percent) set new series lows. (All state series begin in 1976.) Nevada had the highest unemployment rate, 5.2 percent.Two states set new series record low unemployment rates in December.

Job Market’s 2.6 Million Missing People - “Job Market’s 2.6 Million Missing People Unnerves Star Harvard Economist,” (msn.com), Ben Steverman Originally in a comment in this post Discussion on Solutions to Social Security, Angry Bear. The number I had originally calculated was ~2.6 million people joining the Civilian Labor Force. Bloomberg has the original article out as of the last day; “US Labor Shortage Rattles Harvard Economist as 2.6 Million Workers Sit Out,” Bloomberg. Behind the five-decade low US unemployment rate of 3.5% lies a 2.6-million-person mystery.That’s roughly how many more Americans should be working or looking for jobs if the economy’s labor force participation rate was the same as before the Covid-19 pandemic. But something’s still off, leaving everyone from mom-and-pop businesses to Federal Reserve economists scrambling to answer a crucial question: Where are these workers?So who is missing out of the Civilian Labor Force? According to Economist Raj Chetty at Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights lab: The US is missing about a fifth of its pre-pandemic low-income workforce. At least some of those workers moved to higher-paying jobs, but, after adjusting for wage growth, researchers found employment for the poorest quarter of the workforce was still 13.5% below pre-pandemic levels at the end of 2021.Plotting low-wage employment on a graph by county, the highest-rent areas are missing the most workers — the places where bars, restaurants and health clubs were most empty in 2020. BLS Household Numbers;As it turns out (and reported), the hardest-hit businesses are found in the richest neighborhoods. In areas like Boston’s Back Bay, New York’s Upper West Side and Brentwood in Los Angeles. The pandemic and its aftermath have thrown the lives of millions of lower income employees into chaos. These employees are the ones who once waited on the wealthy in restaurants, bars, gyms and hair salons.The pandemic created a divide between the professional class where many of their occupations could be done remotely as opposed to those in lower-income jobs (retail and hospitality) requiring in-person interaction. The highest-rent areas are missing the most workers who were manning the bars, restaurants and health clubs most empty in 202o. Many of those workers moved to places they didn’t have to commute one hour each way to get to work.The US once led the world in the proportion of women who worked. But today, many developed nations surpass the US in their labor force Participation Rate for women. The share of both men and women in the American workforce has been dropping since the turn of the century. Much of what is missing in support of them (important for lower income families) is Childcare subsidies, paid sick and family leave, and access to part-time work. All of which would lower the job barriers for parents and other caregivers, older workers and people with disabilities. A lot going on here and playing out as people adjust to an era of continuing pandemics of varying strengths and sizes. “Job Market’s 2.6 Million Missing People Unnerves Star Harvard Economist,” (msn.com). Not sure why this unnerves this economist, we have seen this phenomenon several times now. Those sitting it out may yet come back if the US can get greater control over the pandemic and the need for vaccinations.

Where Did All The Workers Go? -In a November 30, 2022, speech on “Inflation and the Labor Market,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell blamed most of the 3.5 million estimated shortfall in the US labor force on premature retirements. He also blamed a large portion – between 280,000 and 680,000 – on “long Covid.” In a footnote, however, Powell acknowledged a far more somber factor: an estimated 400,000 unexpected deaths among working age people. It’s easy to blame these deaths on Covid-19. The virus is of course one significant cause. But it’s not nearly the only cause, especially among young and middle-age workers. We need better government data transparency to make a full assessment. Until then, we can proceed with others who track mortality for a living – life insurance companies. In 2020, Covid-19 took many lives, even among select groups of middle-age people, specifically those with comorbidities such as diabetes. In 2020, Covid did not take very many lives of healthy young and middle-age people – for example, the types of people who are employed at large and mid-size companies and who have group life insurance. As you can see in the chart below, group life insurance benefit payments in 2020 were barely higher than in 2018. In 2021, however, group life payments exploded by 20.7 percent over the five year average and by 15 percent over the acute pandemic year of 2020. Why would healthy young and middle-age people suddenly begin dying in large numbers in 2021 when they’d navigated 2020 with relative success? Especially when we consider that in 2021, the US administered 520 million Covid-19 vaccine doses. Shouldn’t healthy people employed in good jobs with good benefits, now protected with vaccines, have fared better in 2021 than in 2020? Surely, overdoses and suicides have risen in recent years. But those causes of death are less prominent among the group life cohorts in general, and the latest data confirm these were not drivers of the group life surge. Curiously, two of the largest spikes in 2021 came from deadly automobile accidents and non-automobile accidents. Let’s look at a few of these young adult age groups in more detail. In the charts below, we’ve broken out total all-cause deaths into three groups – 30-34, 35-39, and 40-44. Eyeballing the age group charts alone shows that factors other than Covid-19 itself must have driven large portions of the mortality spike in young and middle-age workers. .

• The most important overall point is that 2021 was far worse for young and middle-age people than 2020.
• Another key point is that 2022 was also worse than 2020, though not as bad as 2021.
• Mortality rates in 2022 were still dramatically higher than the pre-pandemic baseline.

In the three charts above, we estimate 2022* total deaths because November and December are still provisional and subject to upward revisions. We’ve made what we believe are reasonable projections. The % change figures are relative to the 2018-19 average. These are absolute numbers not adjusted for population growth or cohort size.Covid-19 hit hard in 2020, especially for the old, vulnerable, and comorbid. In other words, Covid-19 took many of the most unhealthy from us in 2020. In principle, therefore, a smaller number unhealthy people might have been susceptible to Covid-19 in 2021 and 2022. High mortality years are often followed by low mortality years. After two successive high mortality years, the third year is even more likely to be low-mortality. For 2022 to be as bad, or somewhat worse, than 2020, is thus a big surprise. Last year’s milder Omicron variants make 2022’s stubbornly high mortality rate even more baffling.

Report: Half Moon Bay shooting suspect angered by bill from on-site accident – The San Mateo County District Attorney on Friday confirmed a report that the Half Moon Bay mass shooting suspect claimed the incident stemmed from his anger over a $100 equipment bill. The suspect, 66-year-old Half Moon Bay resident Chunli Zhao, was arrested and charged with fatally shooting seven people at two Half Moon Bay area farms Monday afternoon. The victims who died have been identified as Zhishen Liu, 73, Aixiang Zhang, 74, Qizhong Cheng, 66, Jingzhi Lu, 64, Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50, Yetao Bing, 43, and Jose Romero Perez, 38. An eighth victim, Pedro Romero Perez, was critically injured but survived the shooting. In a jail inteview with NBC News Thursday, Zhao claimed a forklift he was operating was hit by a coworker on a bulldozer and that he was asked to pay $100 to cover the cost of the damage. Zhao went on to say he vented his frustration over the bill 30 minutes before the shooting. He then went back to confront his boss again, shooting both his supervisor and the coworker he blamed for the accident. On Friday afternoon, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe confirmed those details were consistent with what Shao told investigators during interviews.

 These are the cities with the most unhoused young adults – - San Jose, Calif., has the highest ratio of unhoused young adults in the nation, according to a new study. The nonprofit United Way of the National Capital Area analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development on the number of people experiencing homeless and vacant housing units in 100 major cities. The results of the analysis were broken down in a recently released report. There were 582,462 people experiencing homelessness in January of last year marking a 0.3 percent increase since 2020, according to HUD data. But while anyone can experience homelessness, there are certain populations that are more at risk — such as Black and Latino youth. About 3.5 million young adults experience homelessness a year, according to the National Network for Youth, a D.C.-based nonprofit aimed at helping runaways and young people experiencing homelessness.There are about 85 unhoused young adults, between the ages of 18 and 24, per 100,000 residents San Jose, Calif. The Northern California city has almost 50 more young adults experiencing homelessness per 100,000 residents than New York City, which has the second-largest ratio of homeless young adults in the nation. The Big Apple is home to 36.23 young adults experiencing homelessness per every 100,000 residents, according to the study. Los Angeles came in third place with 32.17 homeless young adults per 100,000 residents followed by Honolulu with 27.8. Seattle came in fifth place with 26.95 young adults experiencing homelessness per 100,000 residents.

California’s Plan to Disappear the Homeless - Elected officials continue to turn to draconian measures to disappear homeless people. In addition to passing a wave of laws across the country criminalizing homelessness, California is moving ahead with a plan that will allow the state to force the unhoused into court-ordered treatment programs for a period of up to two years – and potentially much longer. (New York is considering a similar law.)The California law is not designed to actually help the homeless or stop more people from becoming homeless, which would actually require resources and/or taking on powerful interests like the private equity-dominated real estate rental market, the healthcare industry that bankrupts people, major corporations that pay poverty wages, etc. Let’s remember that 40-50 percent of people experiencing homelessness are employed. Instead these laws are simply designed to remove from view the people our society has chewed up.The criminalization route allows politicians to look tough and say they’re doing something (and maybe eventually it means the homeless can help make money for the private prison industry and/or become slave laborers to help line the pockets of some of the largest and most profitable companies in the US). The court-ordered treatment policies allow politicians like California Governor Gavin Newsom to preen himself for being compassionate. So naturally the California law is called the CARE (Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment) Act.CARE is slated to start rolling out later this year, but the plan is still facing opposition in the courts. Just this week Disability Rights California and other civil rights and disability advocates filed a lawsuit against Newsom in an attempt to overturn the law. They say it violates constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection as well as the fundamental rights to privacy, autonomy and liberty. Anyone from family members to first responders could petition a civil court to create a court-ordered care plan for people who meet specific criteria. These include a diagnosis of schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, along with being at risk of harming themselves or others or being unlikely to survive on their own. Here is relevant section from state bill 1338:

Police have killed over a thousand people using Tasers. A use-of-force expert says the weapon should be banned. -- A panicked Keenan Anderson flagged down police on January 3 following a traffic incident in Venice, California and ended up restrained on the ground while a Los Angeles Police Department officer deployed a Taser at least 6 times. In between the shocks — applied to the upper left side of his back — Anderson yelled in pain and pleaded for help, as seen in body camera footage released by the LAPD on January 12. Hours after being tased, the 31-year-old English teacher and cousin of Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors went into cardiac arrest and died at the hospital. Although no official cause has been announced by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, Anderson's death has sparked new conversations about the deadly use of stun guns by police, which have resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people between 2000 and 2018, according to a Reuters report. The deaths disproportionately affect Black people, Reuters found. Black people accounted for 32% of deaths, despite only making 14% of the US population, while white people made up 29% of deaths, despite making up 60% of the population. "The Taser directly caused the death of Mr. Anderson, I believe," Kalfani Turè, an assistant professor at Mount Saint Mary's University, told Insider. Turè, a former police officer who now researches use-of-force incidents, explained that many police departments have no rules limiting how stun guns are used because of the false notion that Tasers are non-lethal — despite overwhelming evidence that they can kill people. Turè — who is against the current use of Tasers — also pointed out that their use could potentially set people on fire. In addition to the repeated use of the Taser, Turè pointed out that the officer's use of the Taser near Anderson's chest — especially considering the fact that he appeared to be in a nervous state — is not advised for officers, as stun guns can cause the heart to stop. "Just as the Taser operates at a low amplitude, meaning that it's quiet, so does the heart," Turè said. "No one sees the heart. No one hears the heart. But when you disrupt the heart the results are profound."

Report: Half Moon Bay shooting suspect angered by bill from on-site accident – The San Mateo County District Attorney on Friday confirmed a report that the Half Moon Bay mass shooting suspect claimed the incident stemmed from his anger over a $100 equipment bill. The suspect, 66-year-old Half Moon Bay resident Chunli Zhao, was arrested and charged with fatally shooting seven people at two Half Moon Bay area farms Monday afternoon. The victims who died have been identified as Zhishen Liu, 73, Aixiang Zhang, 74, Qizhong Cheng, 66, Jingzhi Lu, 64, Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50, Yetao Bing, 43, and Jose Romero Perez, 38. An eighth victim, Pedro Romero Perez, was critically injured but survived the shooting. In a jail inteview with NBC News Thursday, Zhao claimed a forklift he was operating was hit by a coworker on a bulldozer and that he was asked to pay $100 to cover the cost of the damage. Zhao went on to say he vented his frustration over the bill 30 minutes before the shooting. He then went back to confront his boss again, shooting both his supervisor and the coworker he blamed for the accident. On Friday afternoon, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe confirmed those details were consistent with what Shao told investigators during interviews.

U.S. finds Louisiana deliberately kept inmates past release date (Reuters) - The Justice Department found Louisiana violated the U.S. Constitution by confining people in its custody past the dates when they were legally entitled to be released, adding state authorities were "deliberately indifferent to the systemic overdetention." "There is reasonable cause to believe that the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LDOC) routinely confines people in its custody past the dates when they are legally entitled to be released from custody, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment," the Justice Department said in a statement on Wednesday. The Justice Department said it concluded that the LDOC denies individuals' due process rights to timely release from incarceration. "LDOC is deliberately indifferent to the systemic overdetention of people in its custody," the Justice Department concluded. LDOC said it was reviewing the Justice Department report that was released Wednesday, adding it had cooperated with federal officials during their probe. Between January 2022 and April 2022, 26.8% of the people released from LDOC’s custody were held past their release dates, the Justice Department said. Of those overdetained people, 24% were held over for at least 90 days, it added. The Justice Department initiated its investigation in December 2020. It said on Wednesday that it provided the Louisiana authorities and LDOC with written notice of the findings and the minimum remedial measures necessary to address them. The notice said a lawsuit could be initiated by the Justice Department if the issues are not addressed.

Virginia school downplayed warnings about 6-year-old before teacher’s shooting, staffers say -The Virginia teacher who was shot by a 6-year-old student repeatedly asked administrators for help with the boy but officials downplayed educators’ warnings about his behavior, including dismissing his threat to light a teacher on fire and watch her die, according to messages from teachers obtained by The Washington Post. The previously unreported incidents raise fresh questions about how Richneck Elementary School in Newport News handled the troubled student before police say he shot Abigail Zwerner as she taught her first-grade class earlier this month. Authorities have called the shooting “intentional” but are still investigating the motive. Many parents are already outraged over Richneck officials’ managementof events before the shooting. Newport News Superintendent George Parker III has said school officials got a tip the boy had a gun that dayand searched his backpack, but that staffers never found the weapon before authorities say the 6-year-old shot Zwerner. Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said his department was not contacted about the report that the boy had a weapon before the shooting. Police and school officials have repeatedly declined to answer questions about the boy’s disciplinary issues or worrisome behaviors the 6-year-old may have exhibited and how school officials responded, citing the child’s age and the ongoing law enforcement investigation. The boy’s family said in a statement he has an “acute disability,” but James Ellenson, an attorney for the family, declined to comment on accounts of the boy’s behavior or how it was handled by the school.School district spokeswoman Michelle Price said in a phone interview late Friday that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law protecting students’ privacy, prohibits her from releasing information related to the 6-year-old. “I cannot share any information in a child’s educational record,” she said. “A lot of what you’re asking is part of the child’s educational record, and it’s also a matter of an ongoing police investigation and an internal school investigation. Unfortunately, some of these details I’m not even privy to.” Screenshots of a conversation held online between school employees and Parker shortly after the shooting show educators claiming that Zwerner raised alarms about the 6-year-old and sought assistance during the school year. “she had asked for help,” one staffer wrote in that chat, referring to Zwerner. “several times,” came another message. “Yes she did.” “two hours prior” “all year.” The messages, which were provided to The Post by the spouse of a Richneck Elementary schoolteacher, do not detail what specific assistance Zwerner sought, or to whom she directed her requests. Zwerner and her family have not returned repeated messages from The Washington Post.

Two Students Dead, Adult Hurt in Iowa School Program Shooting – - Two students were killed Monday and an adult employee was injured in what police said was a targeted shooting at a Des Moines school that is dedicated to helping at-risk youth, and three people were arrested afterward.The shooting was at an educational program called Starts Right Here that is affiliated with the Des Moines school district. Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie said at Monday night's City Council meeting that the injured adult is the program's founder, William Holmes, a rapper who goes by the stage name Will Keeps.“Two teenagers tonight are dead because of this violence. Just a short time ago, I spoke to their family members and offered our community’s support and thoughts and prayers. But there is little one can say that will lessen their pain,” he said. “Nothing that can be said to bring them back, those who were killed so senselessly.”Police said emergency crews were called to the school, which is in a business park, just before 1 p.m. Officers arrived to find two students critically injured, and they started CPR immediately. The two students died at a hospital. The adult employee, later identified by the mayor as Keeps, was in serious condition and was headed into surgery Monday afternoon.About 20 minutes after the shooting, police said officers stopped a car that matched witnesses' descriptions about 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) away and took three people into custody. Police said one person ran from the car, but officers tracked that person down with a K-9. “The incident was definitely targeted. It was not random. There was nothing random about this,”

Are Video Games GOOD for Kids? - The Incidental Economist (video with Dr Aaron Carroll) - Many people like to argue about whether video games cause violence, but what about evidence for the positive effects games might have? The research is out there, so what do we think about it? Are Video Games GOOD for Kids? - YouTube

In suburban Philadelphia, a school district is accused of stigmatizing LGBTQ students  - The U.S. Department of Education is investigating whether a suburban Philadelphia school district is creating a hostile environment for LGBTQ students. The district in Bucks County adopted policies earlier this year that restrict library books and what teachers can display in their classrooms. From member station WHYY, Emily Rizzo reports. Over the last six months, the Central Bucks School District has passed two controversial policies - one that prohibits books with sexualized content and one that censors classroom decorations and discussions that have to do with advocacy. Board member Deb Cannon said at the most recent board meeting that the advocacy policy ensures materials are appropriate for the district's 17,000 students: Education should model an important element, neutrality as an academic virtue. The policies are about protecting children from indoctrination, says parent Vonna DeArmond, who spoke at another board meeting. Can you be certain and can you guarantee that these books and those passages and those pictures, those graphic pictures, are not being used to groom... To create these policies, the school board, which declined interview requests, worked with the conservative, evangelical Independence Law Center, associated with the Family Research Council. That organization is an extremist hate group, according to Andrew Seidel of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He says it targets LGBTQ people and wrongly characterizes them as pedophiles.

A Philadelphia high school librarian was ordered to remove a poster with an Elie Wiesel quote   — A quote by the Nobel Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was briefly removed from the walls of a Philadelphia-area high school, reportedly because it violated the school’s policy on “neutrality.”On Wednesday a principal of a high school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, ordered the school librarian to take down four posters with the Wiesel quote. The quote came from Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel acceptance speech and reads: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”That ran afoul of a controversial new district policy banning teachers from engaging in “advocacy activities” or displaying any signs or symbols of “any partisan, political, or social policy issue.” “If I didn’t take it down, I knew there would be consequences that could impact me,” the librarian, Matt Pecic, told local outlets. His daughter was the one who had originally emailed him the quote, saying it reminded her of him.

Iowa school board member gets ripped for saying public education is 'not to teach kids what parents want’ - An Iowa school board member posted on Facebook on Tuesday that public education is not to teach kids what parents want, but rather what the community needs."The purpose of a public ed is to not teach kids what the parents want. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client is not the parent, but the community," Linn-Mar school board member Rachel Wall posted.The Facebook post garnered much pushback in the comment section. The post received over 100 comments."Resign now humbly you absolutely know your breaking Iowa code," one user responded. ."Thank GOD Kim Reynolds now signed the law where parents now have the freedom to use their $ to send their kids to the school THEY CHOOSE! Hopefully schools like Linn Mar will LOSE kids in droves!" another said. "The question I have is "why do you think society needs our kids to know the liberal woke agenda?" Linn-Mar spends way to much time and resources on the LGBTQ agenda while ignoring more pertinent issues. Shame on you for asserting that parents don’t know what their kids need!" one person posted."You are nothing more than an activist pushing your ideology on children. You took this right off your buddy Molly Donahue’s page. Resign," another commenter replied.

Decline in teen pregnancies is good but not enough - In these times of war, special counsels and political lies, we search for really good news where ever. Here’s one with a caveat or two: the dramatic decline in teenage pregnancy and births over the last 30 years.Both government surveys and the Guttmacher Institute report a sharp drop in teen pregnancy. This reflects, experts say, a huge increase in sex education and in the use of effective contraceptives.“We have seen tremendous progress as young people get better information,” says Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, CEO of “Power to Decide,” a non-partisan non-profit that for a quarter century has been in the forefront of this educational effort. (It was known as the “Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy,” until the name was changed a few years ago to reflect expanding its charge to protection of abortion rights.)We still have a way to go; we need national standards for sex education — why should a 15-year-old in Mississippi have less information than a teen in California? — and there still are too many inequities for teens of color and/or poor. “But we know how do it,” notes Dr. McDonald-Mosley, who is an obstetrician.America has come a long way since President Clinton, in his 1995 State of the Union address, declared teen pregnancy a moral problem: one of the seven great challenges facing the country.Today there is overwhelming support both for teaching sex education to teenagers in public schools and for easy access to the best birth control.Groups like Power to Decide and state, local and federal governments have effectively disseminated information. Slightly fewer teenage girls are engaged in sex, and those that do are using more effective protections like intrauterine devices and contraceptive implants.

Florida teacher resigns after sheriff reveals her explicit video chats with inmate boyfriend during school day | Fox News --A Florida teacher resigned after the local sheriff's office discovered she had been engaging in explicit video chats with her prison inmate boyfriend during school hours.Donna Barber, 52, was informed she would likely be terminated from her job in the Franklin County School District, but instead elected to step down this week. She was close to retirement after working as a teacher for nearly 30 years.Earlier this month, Franklin County Sheriff A.J. Smith assigned a staffer to monitor the video chats of inmates at the local prison. The staffer found that Barber was disrobing during some of her calls with inmate Lawrence Ray and had engaged in sexual conversation.A review of the couple's previous video calls showed Barber was having similar explicit video conversations with Ray and that some were done from her school office during the workday.

Ontario teacher unions seek to soften up members for major concessions as opposition grows among rank and file - Ontario’s 200,000 teachers are in the midst of a contract battle with Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s hard-right Progressive Conservative government. Contracts for public and separate (Roman Catholic) school teachers— represented by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF), the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), the Association des enseignantes et des enseignants franco-ontariens (AEFO), and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA)—expired on September 1 of last year. All of the unions have been tight-lipped about their “demands” and the content of their negotiations with Ford and his hatchetman, Education Minister Stephen Lecce. The latter are pledged to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from the education budget in the years to come. The last major public statement from any of the teacher unions was on the ruling that the Ontario Superior Court made last November striking down Bill 124 as unconstitutional. This deeply unpopular legislation capped wage increases for 1 million Ontario public sector workers at 1 percent per annum for three years starting in 2019. Working to cover up their own role in enforcing Bill 124 by agreeing to concessions-filled contracts covering all their members, the teacher unions hailed the judicial ruling as a great “victory” for workers, even though it did nothing to reverse the massive real-terms pay cuts they suffered as a result of the illegal bill. The Ford government is currently in the process of appealing the court ruling. The AEFO, which represents 12,000 French-language teachers in Ontario, has made a call for more prep time. The ETFO, which represents 83,000 elementary school teachers, has made a vague demand for stronger class-size caps. However, the ETFO acceded to an increase in class sizes in the last contract, which was imposed by the Ford government in partnership with the unions at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The OECTA, which represents 45,000 separate school teachers, has not made public any information concerning its negotiations. The OSSTF, which represents nearly 60,000 secondary school teachers, has similarly not made any details public, although it has presented an opening offer to the government, according to a report in the Globe and Mail.

Florida students threaten lawsuit against DeSantis over African American studies rejection -- Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said Wednesday that three Florida high school students are ready to file a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over his rejection of an Advanced Placement (AP) African American studies pilot program in the state. “Will we let Governor DeSantis or anybody exterminate Black history in the classrooms across America?” Crump asked at a press conference in the Florida Senate. “What this really is about is saying you cannot exterminate us. You cannot exterminate our culture and you can never exterminate the value of our children to this world.” Wednesday’s announcement was to “give DeSantis notice” that should he not allow the course to be run in classrooms, three students — Elijah Edwards, Victoria McQueen and Juliette Heckman — will be the lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit against him. “Stealing the right for students to gather knowledge on a history that many want to know about because it’s a political agenda goes to show that some don’t want this — the horrors this country has done to African Americans — to finally come to light,” McQueen said. “Also, when students learn ‘all the basics,’ students learn just enough to get by, but don’t have to consider the trauma that will forever be engraved in this country’s history,” she added. “My Floridian classmates and I are being deprived by not getting this course, and we feel that we should be able to make the decision of whether or not to take a[n] Advanced Placement African American history.” In addition to the three students, Crump was joined by Florida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell (D); Fedrick Ingram, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers; Florida Legislative Black Caucus Chairwoman Dianne Hart, state Sen. Shevrin Jones (D); and David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. “By rejecting the African American history pilot program, Ron DeSantis clearly demonstrated he wants to dictate whose story does and doesn’t belong,” said Driskell. “He is undermining the rights of parents and students to make the best decisions for themselves. He wants to say that I don’t belong. He wants to say you don’t belong.” The Florida Department of Education sent a letter to the College Board, which administers the AP exams, earlier this month saying that “the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” The department’s key concerns with the course included the topics of intersectionality, Black Queer Studies, the Black Lives Matter movement, Black Feminist Literary Thought, the reparations movement and the Black Study and Black Struggle in the 21st Century. Key readings by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the “founder” of intersectionality, Angela Davis, a “self-avowed Communist and Marxist,” Roderick Ferguson, Leslie Kay Jones, bell hooks and Robin D.G. Kelley also were reportedly cause for concern.

College Board to revise AP African American studies class rejected by HDeSantis College Board will release an updated version of its Advanced Placement course in African American studies next week after Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-Fla.) administration rejected initial plans for a pilot program in Florida high schools. Florida’s Department of Education blocked the course last week, arguing in a letter that the curriculum “is inexplicably contrary to Florida law” and “significantly lacks educational value.” Now, College Board is set to update its official framework for the AP African American studies course and release revisions on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month. In a statement shared with The Hill Wednesday, College Board didn’t say that the updated framework it plans to release next month was spurred by Florida’s opposition, but rather that it was a part of a longer process of revising the course with feedback from a 60-city pilot program. “This framework, under development since March 2022, replaces the preliminary pilot course framework under discussion to date,” College Board said. “Before a new AP course is made broadly available, it is piloted in a small number of high schools to gather feedback from high schools and colleges. The official course framework incorporates this feedback and defines what students will encounter on the AP Exam for college credit and placement,” the statement continued. The course itself has been in development for more than a decade. Florida officials, however, are saying the changes are a response to DeSantis’s criticisms. In recent remarks on education, DeSantis argued that the course was “indoctrination” and a way to “shoehorn in queer theory” through Black history “for political purposes.” “Thanks to @GovRonDeSantis’ principled stand for education over identity politics, the College Board will be revising the course for the entire nation,” said DeSantis’s press secretary Bryan Griffin on Twitter Tuesday.

Florida eyes banning TikTok at state universities - — University officials in Florida are considering a possible ban on TikTok that could block students from using the popular application on 12 campuses across the state. Members on the Board of Governors over state universities, meeting Tuesday in Miami, expressed support for creating a system-wide policy outlawing the app. The change could be introduced in the next two months with scrutiny mounting towards the Beijing-based company. Several schools across the country have already blocked TikTok from their networks, including the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Oklahoma. “As a state university system, we have an obligation to protect our research,” said Alan Levine, president and CEO of Ballad Health who chairs the BOG’s strategic planning committee. A growing number of states and colleges have taken actions against TikTok, owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance, amid security concerns and government directives calling to restrict access to the app. It’s banned on government devices in dozens of states while colleges are seeking to block access to TikTok on Wi-Fi and school-issued devices. Florida’s flagship school, the University of Florida, is among the first institutions in the state to make a move against TikTok by suggesting that students delete the app and discontinue its use. Some Florida officials, namely state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, are pushing for schools to make stricter efforts against the app. “It’s very concerning having TikTok on our university campuses,” Patronis wrote in a tweet Monday. “We are the most innovative country on the planet and we are allowing this app to go unchecked. All of the Chancellors need to make this a priority, and if they don’t, Trustees should get involved.” That message appears to be resonating with Board of Governors members who agreed Tuesday that the panel should pursue new regulations surrounding TikTok at Florida universities.

More than 100 Harvard students walk out of class of professor accused of sexual abuse - More than 100 Harvard students walked out of professor John L. Comaroff’s class Tuesday afternoon to protest his teaching again after he was placed on leave last year for violating the school’s sexual harassment and professional conduct policies. The Harvard Crimson, the school’s student newspaper, reportedthat the students protested Comaroff’s first lecture of the year by plastering the walls of the building where he teaches with signs reading “Abusers have no place on campus” and “Stop protecting sexual predators.” After Comaroff started his lecture, students stood up from their seats and walked out, chanting “Justice for survivors” and “No more Comaroff, no more complicity,” the student newspaper reported. Harvard student Rosie Couture tweeted a video of students walking out of the classroom that showed students protesting seconds after Comaroff started his lecture. A similar walkout occurred in Comaroff’s first lecture of the fall 2022 semester, when he returned to teaching after being placed on unpaid administrative leave, the Harvard Crimson reported. Comaroff, who teaches African and African American studies and anthropology, was placed on unpaid administrative leave for the spring 2022 semester for violating the school’s sexual harassment and professional conduct studies. This suspension came after three anthropology students filed a lawsuit against Harvard last spring accusing the university of ignoring serious allegations against Comaroff for years. In the complaint, the students allege that Comaroff threatened their academic careers if they chose to report him.“When students reported him to Harvard and sought to warn their peers about him, Harvard watched as he retaliated by foreclosing career paths and ensuring that those students would have ’trouble getting jobs,’ ” the complaint filed in February of 2022 stated. “Harvard even allowed its investigatory process to be used in service of Professor Comaroff’s campaign of professional blacklisting,” the complaint continues. “The results have been devastating: Professor Comaroff and his enablers have destroyed the educational opportunities and careers of countless students.”

College student evaluations of teachers found to have another kind of gender bias -- A trio of researchers from the University of Cincinnati, the University of Colorado Boulder and Clemson University has found that college students giving evaluations of their professors in upper-level courses exhibited a gender bias based on the predominance of gender ratios of professors in a given department. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Oriana Aragón, Evava Pietri and Brian Powell describe analyzing more than 100,000 student evaluations at Clemson University.Prior research has shown that students may allow biasessuch as gender, attractiveness or race to impact evaluations of their professors, which can, of course, skew results. In this new effort, the researchers found another factor that can skew results: gender bias based on the predominance of a given gender of professors in a given department.For example, they found that students tend to give lower marks to male professors in a given department if most of the other professors in that department are female. They also found that this effect applied regardless of the gender predominance: If the department is predominantly male, then students tend to give lower marks to female professors. To reach these conclusions, the researchers obtained and analyzed more than 100,000 student evaluations for professors teaching4,700 courses at Clemson University.The researchers also conducted an experiment to learn more about such biases. Their experiment consisted of a website for a non-existent department at the university that displayed ratios of male to female professors teaching courses, which were rated by volunteer students. The fake website also allowed the volunteers to look at and rate professors who were described as teaching various courses. Pictures of the professors were also included to ensure the volunteers could identify their gender. In looking at the data, the researchers found the same results—the students rated those professors lower who were in the gender minority in their department. They also found that when they moved the ratios toward parity, the students ceased rating one gender or the other higher or lower. The researchers did not attempt to find out why such biases exist, but suggest learning institutions could reduce such biases by moving towardgender parity regardless of the department in which professors are teaching.

Federal authorities take down fraudulent nursing diploma operation -Federal authorities charged 25 people across five states for participating in a fraudulent scheme to sell fabricated nursing school diplomas and transcripts, the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Inspector General announced Wednesday.Law enforcement agencies across Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Texas and Florida executed search warrants and charged 25 individuals for their alleged involvement in the scheme. It reportedly included the selling of fraudulent nursing degree diplomas and transcripts from Florida-based nursing schools to registered nurse, licensed nurse practitioner and vocational nurse candidates, according to the announcement.Once the candidates received the “bogus” credentials, they were able to sit for the national board exam after skipping crucial requirements to become a registered nurse. If they successfully completed the exam, they were eligible to become licensed in their respective state and become employed in the nursing field, according to the announcement. Overall, more than 7,600 fake diplomas and transcripts were distributed as a result of the fraudulent operation, according to officials.The Miami Herald reported that the coalition of nursing school operators involved in the scheme charged between $10,000 and $17,000 for fraudulent degrees. In 2021, a grand jury indicted two individuals involved in the scheme for assisting multiple candidates in “procuring fraudulent nursing diplomas and transcripts from two nursing schools in Florida,” according to the Southern District of Florida Attorney General’s office.

Whatever happened to MOOCs? --10-15 years ago, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) were a higher education fad. Universities could dispense with physical (lecture halls, heating, cooling, cleaning, security) and administrative (room scheduling) costs and just teach students online. During this period, I was associate dean for research and the Dean of our medical school brought up the suggestion that we could replace our first year medical school curriculum with MOOCs. Never mind that one of those Os in MOOC stands for “open,” meaning tuition-free, open to everyone, which would do violence to our tuition-based business model. We were going to just give this away–seriously?I read everything I could at the time–it was hot, so there were plenty of articles and studies–to prepare for a Dean’s staff discussion that never came. I don’t know if he figured out on his own or was overtaken by more pressing concerns, but MOOCs fell off the agenda.The COVID pandemic was an ideal test bed for MOOCs, since Zoom classrooms became pervasive across academis in the first couple of years. What everyone figured out pretty quickly is that teaching well online is hard, faculty and technology-intensive and makes students and professors unhappy. This was pretty predictable from the experience with MOOCs prior to the pandemic–only a small fraction of students who enrolled actually completed MOOCs. Most dropped out. Not a lot of learning there. If MOOCs didn’t get a shot in the arm from the COVID Zoom years, I don’t know what it would take.Some subjects (STEM topics in particular) lend themselves to online instruction, since mastery of some formulaic content is required. Interactive sessions could be reserved for problem-solving using the toolkit presented online, the so-called “flipped classroom” model. Of course, that was already possible with textbooks.In the end, most learners lack the self-discipline and motivation to learn on their own. They need an instructor to provide a vector for their efforts. MOOCs, like flying cars and fusion energy, will remain mostly a futuristic vision.

University of Washington librarians and publishing workers set to strike - Around 130 librarians and publishing workers at the University of Washington (UW) in the Seattle metro area are ready to launch a second strike on Wednesday, January 25 if an agreement is not reached. The workers, who are members of the UW Libraries Union, voted to authorize a strike by 94 percent in November. The workers are fighting for higher wages to meet the rising cost of living in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. The workers voted to establish the UW Libraries Union, which is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union Local 925, in June 2021. University administrators have refused to agree to terms on its first contract with the union, although negotiations have been going on since October 2021. In October 2022, a year after negotiations started, the union authorized a one-day strike with pickets across all three campuses. Over 50 workers participated that day, according to the Seattle Times. The dragging out of contract negotiations has further eroded the living standards of the UW librarians and workers at UW Press, the university’s academic publishing unit. Many employees have not seen any raises since prior to the pandemic. Since then, the cost of living has increased at least 11 percent. The average rent for an apartment in the Seattle area is $2,324 and like the rest of the country, gas and groceries have become more expensive because of inflation. Prior to negotiations, staff typically got a 2 percent increase each year, which effectively meant a deep cut in real wages. University administration has used the establishment of the union to justify the wage freeze. “The employer is required by law to maintain the status quo for wages and working conditions until there is an agreement with the union,” wrote UW spokesperson Michelle Ma. In reality, the administration has a financial incentive to drag negotiations out for as long as possible.

UAW bureaucrats collaborate with UC to retroactively dock strikers’ pay - Less than one month after the historic strike of 48,000 academic workers at the University of California (UC), their employers, the UC Regents, are attempting to retroactively dock the wages of those who struck. Unable to distinguish between those who struck and workers who did not, wages were paid out to all members, who on average make $2,200 a month. The vindictive maneuver, if carried out, will claw back about $900 from the majority of workers who already live below the poverty line and are reliant on aid and food pantries. The powerful six-week strike ended due to the betrayal of rank-and-file workers by the United Auto Workers (UAW) bureaucracy, which sabotagedthe strike and accepted and pushed a contract that was favorable only to the UC. Now the UAW apparatus is helping the UC collect attestation forms that will be used to dock pay. The UAW wrote to the membership falsely claiming that “the University is entitled to such information, so you should answer truthfully and accurately.” The UAW’s notice merely said that members should include or change language in the form that would supposedly create an administrative hurdle for UC. The academic workers and faculty received an email from the UC on January 13 requesting that strikers sign attestation forms indicating whether they had withheld labor during the strike and to indicate the time frame they struck. In McCarthyite fashion, faculty members are also being asked to attest to if they engaged in sympathy strike actions and withheld labor. One worker expressed fear that if attestation forms are not returned, the UC may ask faculty to name who was on strike. The form includes the following language, “You are a member of a bargaining unit that has engaged in a strike at the University. Therefore, it is necessary that you confirm which days or hours, if any, that you withheld your labor during the work stoppage.” The stated deadline to submit these forms is January 23. There are growing questions about the role played by UAW bureaucrats in helping the university dock strikers’ pay. One UC academic workeridentified the author of the attestation form as UAW official Kavitha Iyengar, who is apparently a legal adviser to the UAW. As recently as 2020, Iyengar served as president of the UC-wide UAW Local 2865 while pursuing her Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley. She is currently on the Executive Board of Local 2865 as the Northern Vice President. This document authorship listing indicates at the very least that the UAW assisted UC in drafting this attestation form.

Biden's new student loan plan would be a big new college subsidy - Washington Post editorial - You might not have noticed, but President Biden is trying to overhaul the student loan system. Even as his controversial student debt forgiveness scheme heads to the Supreme Court, the Education Department is advancing another audacious plan to reshape how higher-education loans work — and not just for existing borrowers, but future ones, too. This means it could soon redefine the nation’s higher-education loan system, which some 70 percent of college students use to finance their degrees. The new plan is better than many of the ideas Democrats have proposed to help students finance higher education because it is tailored to help low-income graduates, particularly those who attended community college. But it still poses some big risks for taxpayers and even the borrowers themselves. It would be expensive. And it would amount to a huge new subsidy for higher education that Congress never specifically approved. The Biden team is committing itself and future administrations to the plan without the blessing of federal lawmakers. To impose this big new policy without going through Congress, the administration proposed taking an existing student loan program and making its terms so generous that it would essentially become a grant program. The new repayment scheme would require individual borrowers to pay only 5 percent of their yearly income above roughly $31,000 to service their undergraduate debt. So a nursing assistant earning $30,000 annually would pay nothing. For those with less than $12,000 in debt, the government would forgive whatever is left after 10 years. For every additional $1,000 borrowed, the forgiveness timeline would increase by a year to a maximum of 20 years for undergraduate loans.In a new analysis, the Urban Institute estimates that a typical community college student who takes out $12,000 in debt could expect to repay only $1,000. Many would pay nothing. Some 49 percent of borrowers in bachelor’s degree programs would pay back less than half of what they owe, and 78 percent would get some degree of forgiveness.This would represent a shift in philosophy on debt forgiveness, from viewing it as a safety net for those who fall into financial distress to an entitlement for most undergraduate borrowers. Because the new program would be so generous, it would create a strong incentive to borrow, which could encourage more students to take on debt rather than pay for their education out-of-pocket.In theory, more education debt would not be a problem for students if they took advantage of generous new loan terms and made all their payments. Yet the Education Department acknowledges that many borrowers fail to enroll in existing loan repayment programs that would save them money and, if they do, to complete necessary paperwork such as recertifying their incomes. “Far too often borrowers end up in default on a student loan when they would have had a low or even a $0 payment on an [income-driven repayment] plan,” according to a department analysis. Administration officials say they are taking steps to ensure student borrowers do not fall through the cracks, but they have far to go in improving borrower services.

Massachusetts Democrats press J&J for more info on children’s medicine shortage: ‘Key questions remain unanswered’ - Massachusetts Democrats sent a second letter to Johnson & Johnson’s CEO on Thursday to once again demand more information on the shortages of children’s Tylenol and Motrin. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Democrat Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Katherine Clark and Lori Trahan sent the second letter to Johnson & Johnson CEO and Chairman of the Board Joaquin Duato, claiming that the company’s initial response left key questions unanswered. The group of lawmakers sent their first letter on Jan. 12, and the company responded on Jan. 18. “While your January 18th reply underscored your public statements about increased production, provided insight into the scale up of production based on forecasting models as early as April 2022, and clarified the timeline of communication with the FDA, key questions remain unanswered,” they wrote. Tylenol and Motrin are both over-the-counter medicines that are commonly used to relieve pain and reduce fevers. CVS and Walgreens confirmed last month that their pharmacies were limiting the purchases of Tylenol and Motrin due to increased demand and product shortages. This shortage came in the peak of the winter’s “tripledemic” storm of COVID-19, influenza and RSV infections, when demand for these products was high. In the initial letter, the lawmakers asked Johnson & Johnson when the company learned of the medicine shortages, how much it increased production and when availability of the children’s medicine would return to normal. The group also asked for available “regional and city-by-city” data on the shortage. In their second letter, the group said the company did not provide them any data or answer when the medicine availability would return to normal. They urged Johnson & Johnson to provide answers by Feb. 3.

Far-right Texas attorney general attempts to compile list of transgender residents- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has requested that the state Department of Public Safety provide a list of people who have changed their gender on Texas driver’s licenses. No plausibly legitimate reason for this ominous and menacing request has been given. Considering the record of Paxton, Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Republican Party, it is clear that there is every reason to suspect the worst. Paxton’s request comes to light as the Texas political establishment, which has aligned itself with the January 6 coup attempt and with the most violently reactionary sections of the American political establishment, lurches further and further to the right. The attacks on transgender people—who are vilified as child abusers and “groomers”—are part of the campaign with which the far-right is attempting to mobilize backward social prejudices and undermine democratic consciousness. Last February, Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate gender-transitioning health care as child abuse. The targets included the parents of such children, as well as any medical professionals involved. While Abbott’s directive was initially blocked by a judge, the Texas Supreme Court overturned that injunction. These threats to criminally prosecute are not toothless: medical licenses can be revoked, children can be separated from their parents and, if convicted, people can be sent to prison. The prospect of criminal prosecution will be sufficient in itself to discourage many families from seeking evaluation and treatment. That, of course, is its purpose.

Lawmakers codify abortion rights in state constitution, sending it to voters - — The next decision will be with voters on whether New York will enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.The state Assembly and state Senate voted Tuesday afternoon on the second passage of a resolution first passed last July that would protect abortion rights in the state constitution, giving it additional strength in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade last June by the U.S. Supreme Court. It passed both chambers by an overwhelming majority.After the two separately elected legislatures vote on the measure, it can go before voters as early as this November. But lawmakers will direct it to be put on the ballot in November 2024 — a presidential year in a heavily blue state that would improve its chances of passage.“Here in New York we will never let the extremist, anti-choice agenda to prevent anyone from accessing reproductive health care,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Tuesday at a rally near the state Capitol with abortion-rights activists.New York added stronger abortion rights into state law in 2019 and approved new laws last year to shield providers and patients from out-of-state litigation.But in the wake of the Roe vs. Wade decision, abortion rights advocates and some lawmakers pushed to enshrine the protections in the constitution as a way to make it harder to overturn by any future legislature.

Heavy smoking can have a serious impact on the treatment of periodontitis --Smoking can have a serious impact on the effect of the treatment of periodontitis – a widespread condition that leads to degradation of the teeth's supportive tissue and, in serious cases, to loss of the teeth.This is shown by a new study from Aarhus University which has just been published in theJournal of Dental Research.The researchers studied the effect of different levels of smoking on the clinical results of the treatment of more or less advanced cases of periodontitis.The study shows that heavy smokers with the most severe forms of inflammation obtained no benefit from the treatment, while heavy smokers with moderate periodontitis only had a 50 percent effect from the treatment, compared to smokers with less tobacco consumption. To our surprise, we could see that the disease had actually grown worse in some parameters in the hardest-hit group, despite the fact that this particular group had received the most extensive, individually-designed treatment."

In Seattle, the ‘shadow epidemic’ has passed COVID - COVID-19 isn’t done with Seattle and King County. But after a three-year run, it’s not the top emerging health scourge anymore. The coronavirus has been officially displaced.Drug overdoses are now killing more people than COVID.It started to happen last summer, in August, when more than 25 people died from drugs in a week, mostly from ingesting fentanyl, county records show. In the fall, drugs firmly dethroned COVID, when 339 people died during the quarter — nearly four per day, 70% more than were dying from COVID.As of Friday, 100 people have already died in 2023 from drug overdoses countywide. Forty-three have died of COVID.Drugs now are overwhelming the system, in some of the same ways that we all worked to prevent by wearing masks and socially distancing during coronavirus waves.“A key indication of just how bad things are at the end of 2022 and likely to get worse [in] 2023, the medical examiner’s office is now struggling with the issue of storing bodies because the fentanyl-related death toll continues to climb,” Public Health Director Dr. Faisal Khan, a medical epidemiologist, said at a health board meeting this month.Paramedics also are straining to keep up. There now are 20 drug overdose calls every day, roughly double from a year ago. (These are predominantly non-fatal overdoses.) Just in the month of December, “King County emergency medical services responded to 156 opioid overdoses in downtown Seattle,” an all-time record, the health department reported.Inside city limits, Seattle saw twice as many drug overdose deaths last year (541) as COVID deaths (273), health department records show.It isn’t solely a downtown phenomenon. Kent, Renton and North Seattle near Shoreline also are marked dark red on the county’s overdose map. A week ago there were 11 overdose calls out in West Seattle. Big cities to the north and south of us, Vancouver and San Francisco, also have seen drug deaths surpass COVID. “The number of overdose deaths has grown on an exponential scale,” the health department’s review of 2022 says. “Exponential” was the word they once used about the coronavirus — the fear that it might spread out of hand to the point it starts crippling the ability to respond to it.

Seattle Medical Examiner Running Out Of Space To Store Bodies Due To Fentanyl Overdoses: Official - The health director of the Washington county that encompasses Seattle confirmed the medical examiner’s office is struggling to store bodies due to rampant fentanyl overdoses across the city.“A key indication of just how bad things are at the end of 2022, and likely to get worse and 2023, the medical examiner’s office is now struggling with the issue of storing bodies because the fentanyl-related death toll continues to climb,” Seattle-King County Public Health Director Dr. Faisal Khan said during a board meeting last week, captured on video by conservative local radio host Jason Rantz.Khan noted that the King County Medical Examiner’s Office is “now struggling with the issue of storing bodies because the fentanyl-related death toll continues to climb” due to the “finite space in the coolers they use and that space is now being exceeded on a regular basis.”His remarks came during a King County Board of Health meeting on Jan. 19. A dashboard provided by King County shows that 2022 saw the highest number of fentanyl poisonings—686—as compared with 2021, where only 385 fentanyl overdoses were confirmed.“When the final review of fatal overdoses is completed in the upcoming weeks, I fear that 2022 will set another heartbreaking record for fatal overdoses in King County. It will more than double the number of lives lost compared to just three years ago, in 2019,” Khan said during last week’s meeting.A spokesperson for Public Health—Seattle & King County told Rantz’s show on KTTH that officials “have options for temporary morgue surge capacity when our census count gets high, including storing decedents on autopsy gurneys and partnerships with funeral homes.”

When young children test positive for Covid-19 and another respiratory virus, their illness is much more severe, a new study suggests — When Covid-19 patients younger than 5 also test positive for another respiratory virus, they tend to become sicker and develop more severe disease, a new study suggests. Among hospitalized children younger than 5, testing positive for both Covid-19 and another respiratory virus at the same time is associated with about twice the odds of severe respiratory illness than those who tested negative for other viruses, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics. The study comes amid a harsh season of respiratory viruses, including RSV, flu, Covid-19 and other viruses that overwhelmed children’s hospitals. The findings demonstrate the impact respiratory viruses have on pediatric hospitals and how “continued surveillance” of circulating Covid-19 and other illnesses can help predict future surges in hospitalizations, wrote the researchers, from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and various universities and health departments across the United States. The new study included data on 4,372 children who were hospitalized with Covid-19. Among those who were tested for other respiratory viruses, 21% had a codetection, meaning another respiratory virus was also detected in their test results. The data came from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 hospitalization surveillance network called COVID-NET, with data from across 14 states. The researchers noted that they focused on codetection, not coinfection, since testing wouldn’t necessarily show that a child was actively infected with both viruses just because they test positive. Overall, “this study found that respiratory virus codetections were rare in the first year of the pandemic, RSV and rhinovirus or enterovirus codetections increased during the Delta-predominant period and influenza codetections were infrequent throughout the first 2 years of the pandemic,” the researchers wrote in their study. The data also showed that children with codetections were more likely to be younger than 5, receive increased oxygen support, and be admitted to the intensive care unit. No significant associations were seen among children 5 and older. Specifically for children younger than 2, testing positive for respiratory syncytial virus or RSV while having Covid-19 was significantly associated with severe illness.

Children’s immune systems do not develop ‘adaptive’ memory to protect against second time SARS-CoV-2 infection -Children have largely avoided severe COVID-19 symptoms because they have a strong initial 'innate' immune reaction that quickly defeats the virus. And now, researchers led by scientists at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research have uncovered what this might mean for the immune system. Unlike those of adults, children's immune systems don't remember the virus and don't adapt, so when they're next exposed to SARS-CoV-2, their body still treats it as a new threat, the scientists found.The price that children pay for being so good at getting rid of the virus in the first place is that they don't have the opportunity to develop 'adaptive' memory to protect them the second time they are exposed to the virus.""Because children haven't been exposed to many viruses, their immune system is still 'naive'. And because they don't develop memory T cells, they are at risk of getting sick when they become reinfected. With each new infectious episode as they get older, there is a risk of their T cells becoming 'exhausted' and ineffective, like the T cells in older people. This is why we think it's important to vaccinate children," he says.The immune system has two modes. The innate immune system is the first line of defense, comprising physical barriers such as skin and mucosal surfaces that block viruses from entering. It is also composed of cells that make chemicals to signal to other cells and ward off the viruses. The innate immune system does not distinguish between one type of virus or another.The second line of defense comprises B and T cells of the adaptive immune system. These cells have specific receptors that can recognize and distinguish different parts of a virus and generate a rapid response to neutralize or limit it.Infants start with an immune system blank slate, which has a much higher proportion of naïve T cells, the researchers found. As they move through childhood into adulthood and become exposed to more viruses, the naïve T cells are replaced by memory T cells that are locked in to making responses to viruses they have seen before. "Over time, as you get infections, your immune system becomes more 'educated', allowing you to make a faster immune response that's tightly matched to the viruses that have infected you before," says Associate Professor Philip Britton, pediatric infectious diseases physician at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, and clinical lead in the study. "Children's immune systems move from relying mostly on the innate system, to needing the adaptive system as a backup as they grow older and are unable to clear viruses as rapidly."

Early data suggests COVID-19 was still one of the leading causes of death in 2022 - COVID-19 has killed more than 1 million people in the United States since the start of the pandemic, and life expectancy has been cut by nearly 2.5 years since 2020. A very early look at data from 2022 suggests that there were significantly fewer COVID-19 deaths in the third year of the pandemic than there were in the first two. More than 267,000 people died of COVID-19 in 2022, according to preliminary data from Johns Hopkins University, compared with more than 350,000 COVID-19 deaths in 2020 and more than 475,000 COVID-19 deaths in 2021. This first look at the data is based on deaths reported by states through Jan. 9. The final count will differ from this early data as states continue to review death certificates and refine their reporting, and it will be months before the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases preliminary mortality data to compare to other causes of death. Despite the lower death toll, however, COVID-19 will likely remain the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2022 for the third year in a row. In 2021, as in many years before, the top causes of death in the U.S. were heart disease and cancer, each killing more than 600,000 people. The fourth leading cause of death was drug overdoses and other unintentional injuries, which killed about 225,000 people. If overall mortality trends hold steady into 2022, as they typically do, that would again leave COVID-19 squarely as the third most common cause of death.

Where is the XBB.1.5 COVID variant most common? CDC data explains – For nearly a month, the U.S. has been dealing with a new, now-dominant COVID variant, XBB.1.5. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, while it had previously been prevalent in one region of the U.S., it’s beginning to spread in others.XBB.1.5 is a spinoff of XBB, a subvariant of omicron that health officials worldwide have been warning about since the fall. XBB.1.5 is considered a recombinant virus because it carries genetic data from two previous mutations, Nexstar’s The Hill reports.XBB was first detected in India in August and spread quickly through Southeast Asia, according to the World Health Organization. At the time, the WHO described XBB as “the most antibody-evasive SARS-CoV-2 variant identified to date.”Since first being discovered, XBB has evolved and now has two subvariants, XBB.1 and XBB.1.5. XBB.1.5 differs from its family members because it has a mutation that allows it to better bind to cells, Andrew Pekosz, a virologist for Johns Hopkins University, told CNBC. That ability to bind gives it a better chance of infecting people.Earlier this month, XBB.1.5 began sweeping through the Northeast. As of Thursday, the CDC reports the variant makes up roughly 82% of cases in New England, New York, and New Jersey. It’s now becoming more prevalent across states along the East Coast.According to the CDC, XBB.1.5 makes up roughly half of the cases being reported through Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Further south – across the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi – XBB.1.5 comprises roughly one-third of cases. It isn’t dominant in this region – BQ.1.1 is at roughly 38% of cases, but CDC data shows its prevalence is declining.BQ.1.1, a substrain of omicron as well, is the most common variant across the rest of the country so far. As it is in the south, the variant has been declining in prevalence nationally as XBB.1.5 has spread. As more data is collected from states, this data could change, the CDC notes.So far, XBB.1.5 hasn’t proven to be more severe than others, Dr. Barbara Mahon, director of the CDC’s proposed Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division said during an interview with CBS News. The World Health Organization echoed those sentiments last week.Studies have suggested, though, that it may not respond as well to antibody treatment as other variants and subvariants have. According to Dr. Jay Varma of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response, the monoclonal antibodies treatment “is no longer effective,” leaving healthcare providers with Paxlovid, “the one drug that’s widely available, as our effective treatment option.” Late last month, the FDA warned an at-home saliva testing kit, DxTerity, has been found to “have significantly reduced sensitivity” to some omicron mutations, including the XBB, BA.2.75, and BN.1. Medical professionals and the CDC continue to recommend wearing a mask, getting vaccinated, and staying home if you aren’t feeling well — even if you’re testing negative for COVID.

What’s CH.1.1? Meet ‘Orthrus,’ a new wildcard Omicron strain with a concerning Delta mutation - Omicron spawn XBB.1.5, also known as “Kraken,” now dominates the U.S. COVID variant scene, comprising an estimated 61% of cases, according to federal health data released Friday.But there's now a new player being tracked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that could give Kraken a run for its money. CH.1.1, or “Orthrus,” was estimated to comprise 1.5% of U.S. cases as of Friday. Another Omicron spawn, it was named after a mythical two-headed cattle dog killed by Hercules, by Australian variant tracker Mike Honey.Not much is known about the relatively new strain, levels of which have been rising globally since November. Like other “high flying” COVID variants, it has the potential to be more transmissible, evade immunity from vaccine and infection, and cause more severe disease.What’s more, it features a concerning mutation seen in the deadly Delta variant that generally isn’t seen in Omicrons—one that could make it even more daunting of a foe. While CH.1.1 isn’t a “Deltacron”—a recombinant, or combination, of Delta and Omicron—it’s a prime example of convergent evolution, a process through which COVID variants evolve independently but pick up the same mutations.It’s anyone’s best guess as to how CH.1.1 will play out in various countries throughout the world, including the U.S., Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), tells Fortune.“I don’t think we have a real sense of what variants to be concerned about and which not to be,” he says.Case in point: XBB.1.5, which “started out looking like it was going to be a very serious challenge, in terms of COVID” in the U.S. But after attaining dominance in the Northeast, “it just began to peter out throughout the rest of the country,” where it hasn’t risen as swiftly, he says.“We’ve seen this before: What might appear to be a challenging variant turns out not to be a real challenge.”The bottom line, according to Osterholm: Anyone who thinks they can tell you what the future of the pandemic looks like—and make no mistake, we’re still in a pandemic, he says—“probably has a bridge to sell you.” Lack of crystal ball aside, here’s what we know about the variant under monitoring by the World Health Organization.

Covid linked with higher risks of cardiovascular disease, death: Study - Covid-19 is associated with higher risks of cardiovascular disease and death in the short- and long-term, according to a study of nearly 160,000 participants published in Cardiovascular Research, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Compared to uninfected individuals, the likelihood of Covid-19 patients dying was up to 81 times higher in the first three weeks of infection and remained five times higher up to 18 months later, it said. “Covid-19 patients were more likely to develop numerous cardiovascular conditions compared to uninfected participants, which may have contributed to their higher risks of death,” said study author Professor Ian C.K. Wong of the University of Hong Kong, China. “The findings indicate that patients with Covid-19 should be monitored for at least a year after recovering from the acute illness to diagnose cardiovascular complications of the infection, which form part of long Covid.” This study compared the occurrence of cardiovascular conditions and death in infected versus uninfected individuals recruited before December 2020, when no vaccines were available in the UK. More than 7,500 patients with Covid-19 infection diagnosed from 16 March 2020 to 30 November 2020 were identified from UK Biobank. Each patient was matched with up to 10 individuals without Covid-19 during the study period (16 March 2020 to the end of follow-up on 31 August 2021) and a historical cohort before the pandemic (16 March 2018 to 30 November 2018). Each uninfected group had more than 70,000 participants who were similar to the Covid-19 group for age, sex, smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular and other health conditions, body mass index, ethnicity, and deprivation. In all three groups, the average age was 66 years and there were nearly equal numbers of women and men. Professor Wong explained: “The historical control cohort was included to rule out the effect of routine healthcare services being reduced or cancelled during the pandemic, which led to worsening health and increased mortality even in uninfected people.”

Risk of death elevated for 18 months after COVID-19: study - In the first three weeks after infection with COVID-19, patients are 81 times more likely to die than uninfected individuals, and the risk remains five times higher up to 18 months later, according to a new study published in Cardiovascular Research.The study included almost 160,000 participants and found that COVID-19 is associated with higher risks of cardiovascular disease and death in the short and long term.“COVID-19 patients were more likely to develop numerous cardiovascular conditions compared to uninfected participants, which may have contributed to their higher risks of death,” “The findings indicate that patients with COVID-19 should be monitored for at least a year after recovering from the acute illness to diagnose cardiovascular complications of the infection, which form part of long COVID.”The occurrence of cardiovascular disease and death in infected versus uninfected individuals was analysed to ascertain the link. The data was obtained from individuals recruited before December 2020 when there were no vaccines available in the UK. The UK Biobankwas used to gather information about more than 7500 COVID-19 patients diagnosed between 16 March 2020 and 30 November 2020.Each of the COVID-19 cases was matched with up to 10 individuals without COVID-19 and a historical cohort from before the pandemic (16 March 2018 to 30 November 2018). The cohorts were matched for age, sex, smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular and other health conditions, body mass index, ethnicity and deprivation. The average age across all three groups was 66 years, with an almost even mix of males and females. “The historical control cohort was included to rule out the effect of routine healthcare services being reduced or cancelled during the pandemic, which led to worsening health and increased mortality even in uninfected people.”Medical and death records were examined for instances of cardiovascular disease and conditions such as stroke, atrial fibrillation and myocardial infarction, and were evaluated for the acute phase (within 21 days of COVID-19 diagnosis) and the post-acute phase (starting at 22 days after diagnosis and continuing up to 18 months). The data revealed that patients with COVID-19 were approximately four times more likely to develop major cardiovascular disease in the acute phase and 40% more likely in the post-acute phase when compared with uninfected individuals. Compared to uninfected individuals, the risk of death in COVID-19 patients was up to 81-fold higher in the acute phase and five-fold higher in the post-acute phase. Patients with severe COVID-19 were more likely to develop major cardiovascular disease or die than non-severe cases. COVID-19 patients had a greater likelihood of several cardiovascular conditions compared with uninfected participants in both the short and long term including myocardial infarction, coronary heart disease, heart failure and deep vein thrombosis. Risks of some cardiovascular conditions — for example, stroke and atrial fibrillation — were elevated in COVID-19 patients in the short term but then returned to normal levels.

Analysis of seemingly recovered COVID-19 patients indicates that SARS-CoV-2 infection can persist significantly longer than suggested by PCR-negative tests - Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can persistently progress into a deadly condition even after clinical resolution of the acute infection suggested by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) negative test results.In a study published in The Journal of Pathology, scientists have described the infection dynamics and clinical features of PCR-negative patients who eventually died due to the worsening of COVID-19. Fatal SARS-CoV-2 infections are characterized by severe lung damage, micro- and macrovascular thrombosis, and persistent infection of pneumocytes and endothelial cells.A considerable proportion of COVID-19 patients remain symptomatic for several months, even after the clinical resolution of acute infection. This condition is medically termed as long COVID. Some patients with persistent PCR-negative test results exhibit signs of disease progression and eventually die.In the current study, scientists have conducted post-mortem analyses of a group of COVID-19 patients who eventually died due to progressive worsening of clinical conditions, despite having SARS-CoV-2-negative tests for up to 300 days post-acute infection.The post-mortem analyses were conducted on a total of 27 COVID-19 patients. Three remained PCR-negative for more than nine months, and the rest were PCR-negative for 11-300 consecutive days. In most of the patients, death occurred due to pneumonia.The lung tissue samples collected from these patients were subjected to histopathological and immunohistochemistry analyses. The RNA samples extracted from the tissues were analyzed by PCR to detect viral RNA.The post-mortem analysis of lung tissue samples revealed that about 81% of patients had interstitial pneumonia. In 48% of patients, pneumonia was severe and caused death. The most prominent characteristics of pneumonia in these patients were severe alveolar damage, immune cell infiltration, and extensive fibrotic substitution.Micro- and macrovasculature thrombosis was noted in 67% of patients. This is the most common feature in acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Other clinical features observed in tested samples included vasculitis, squamous metaplasia of the respiratory epithelium, cytological abnormalities and syncytia, and bronchial cartilage dystrophy. Overall, these observations indicate that pathological changes noted in these patients are not significantly different from that observed in patients with acute infection. In other words, despite persistently not having detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA in respiratory samples for a long period, these patients represent clinical features similar to acute infection with detectable viral RNA. The immunohistochemistry findings revealed a complete absence of virus-infected cells in the respiratory epithelium. This justifies the PCR findings of the persistent absence of detectable viral RNA in nasopharyngeal samples. Interestingly, about 70% of the patients exhibited detectable virus-infected cells in specific lung regions. Specifically, the presence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was detected in chondrocytes, para-bronchial cells, syncytial cells, and to some extent, in pericyte endothelial cells. The study describes pathological lung features of COVID-19 patients who died due to progressively worsening disease, despite having persistent virus-negative PCR results for a long period. The pathological lung features of these deceased patients are similar to that observed in a patient with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Bivalent BA.4-5 or BA.1 mRNA-booster given as a fourth dose associated with increased protection against COVID-19 hospitalization and death --In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers compared the efficiency of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron BA.4-5 and BA.1 bivalent messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-booster vaccines.A few clinical investigations have demonstrated that the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.4-5 and BA.1 bivalent mRNA-booster vaccinations improve neutralizing antibody activity against Omicron compared to the monovalent mRNA coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines. Considerable data exist related to the comparative efficacy of bivalent mRNA-booster vaccinations as a fourth vaccine dose against severe SARS-CoV-2 infections.Prior observational studies related to fourth doses were generally confined to monovalent mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations and were conducted predominantly before the establishment of the predominant Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. As a result, information on the efficacy of bivalent mRNA vaccines is necessary for guiding the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination strategy and determining the value of producing variant-adapted vaccines.In the present study, researchers compared the efficacy of the bivalent BA.1 or BA.4-5 mRNA-booster vaccines administered as the fourth vaccine dose against SARS-CoV-2-related hospitalization and mortality during the prevalence of the Omicron BA.4-5 subvariant.The four Nordic nations of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have national demographic and healthcare registers, including individual-level information that facilitated correlation using unique and country-specific variables for all citizens.The research cohorts included 3,368,697 adults vaccinated with the fourth dose, of which 1,290,999 were bivalent BA.4-5-vaccinated, 992,282 were bivalent BA.1-vaccinated, and 1,085,416 were monovalent mRNA-booster-vaccinated. Denmark was found to have a larger proportion of bivalent mRNA-booster vaccine recipients than Norway, Finland, and Sweden. Within each nation, the manifestation of comorbidities and prior COVID-19 infection was comparable among bivalent BA.1 booster- and BA.4-5 booster-vaccinated individuals.When the team compared four-dose with three-dose vaccinated persons during 60 days of follow-up, the cumulative rates of SARS-CoV-2-related hospitalization and mortality were low. For instance, the cumulative occurrences of hospitalization due to COVID-19 did not surpass 0.16% among those who received three or four vaccine doses, in any of the comparisons performed in the study. Furthermore, receiving a bivalent BA.4-5 booster as the fourth dose was related with a decreased risk of SARS-CoV-2-related hospitalization in all four Nordic countries.The study findings showed that bivalent BA.1 or BA.4-5 mRNA booster vaccination as a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose boosted protection against SARS-CoV-2-related hospitalization and mortality compared to triple-vaccinated individuals. Fourth dose immunization with bivalent BA.4-5 boosters provided marginally higher protection against hospitalization due to COVID-19 than bivalent BA.1 booster vaccines. The researchers believe that the present study provided much-needed information about the efficacy of bivalent booster vaccines in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Analysis of adverse events in older US adults after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination - In a recent study posted to medRxiv*, researchers evaluated adverse events (AEs) in older adults after messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccination for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).The United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved COVID-19 vaccines under emergency use authorization for primary and booster vaccination. These included Pfizer’s BNT162b2 and Moderna’s mRNA-1273 for individuals aged six months or older and Novavax for those aged 12 or above. Rapid cycle analysis (RCA) is a near real-time surveillance method to screen for elevated risks of AEs post-vaccination.This method revealed a significant association between primary vaccination with BNT162b2 and pulmonary embolism (PE), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), and disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). Another study reported associations of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 booster vaccination with Bell’s Palsy and myocarditis/pericarditis (Myo/Peri), respectively. These AEs may not represent true safety concerns as RCA fails to establish vaccines as causality.The primary series study analyzed the post-vaccination risk of DIC, AMI, and PE within a risk window of 28 days and ITP in a 42-day risk window. The booster study evaluated the risk of PE and AMI using a 28-day risk window, Myo/Peri using a 21-day risk window, and ITP and BP within a risk window of 42 days.Subjects were followed up until the end of the observation/study, fourth vaccination, or death. Medical records were reviewed for cases from the two studies classified as true, indeterminate, or non-cases. Case counts for AMI were 3,653 (primary series) and 16,042 (booster), in-patient PE were 2,470 (primary) and 5,085 (booster), DIC were 254 (primary only), BP were 3,268 (booster-only), ITP were 1,085 (primary) and 88 (booster), and Myo/Peri were 1,295 (booster-only).BNT162b2 recipients were younger, more likely to live in a nursing home, and less likely to live in a rural area than mRNA-1273 recipients in both studies. In the primary series study, DIC and AMI exhibited a high case fatality rate of 67% and 34%. The risk of AMI was significantly increased following primary vaccination with BNT162b2.Nonetheless, this effect was insignificant after adjusting for seasonality or outcome misclassification and excluding individuals with prior COVID-19. The risk of AMI post-BNT162b2 booster was not elevated. The risk of AMI was not significantly elevated after primary or booster mRNA-1273 vaccination.The risk of inpatient PE increased significantly after primary BNT162b2 vaccination, which remained significant in the adjusted analysis. By contrast, it was significantly reduced following the BNT162b2 booster vaccination. The primary series study revealed no significant increase in the risk of inpatient PE post-vaccination with mRNA-1273, while the risk was significantly reduced after mRNA-1273 booster vaccination.BP risk increased significantly after booster vaccination with the BNT162b2 vaccine but not with mRNA-1273 and was consistent in adjusted analyses. ITP risk did not increase after primary/booster vaccination with either mRNA vaccine. Similarly, the risk of DIC was not elevated following vaccination. Myo/Peri risk was not significantly increased for either vaccine.In summary, the researchers found no significant increases in the risks of DIC, Myo/Peri, AMI, and ITP following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in the elderly US population. The results were inconsistent for PE. The risk of BP was slightly increased after mRNA vaccination. Overall, these findings corroborate the safety of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 and are in line with the conclusion that vaccination benefits outweigh the risks.

Only 1% of immune-impaired US adults have gotten the recommended 5 COVID vaccine doses -- Only 41% of US adults with impaired immune systems, who are at high risk for poor COVID-19 outcomes, have received four doses of mRNA vaccine, and less than 1% had received the recommended five doses as of August, according to a study published late last week in JAMA Network Open.The study, led by researchers from Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC), examined uptake of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in 42,697 patients with impaired immune systems from Dec 14, 2020, to Aug 6, 2022. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently recommends that these patients receive five doses.Among the 42,697 patients, 44.0% were aged 65 years or older, 47.0% were women, 41.9% were White, 33.5% were Hispanic, 12.1% were Black, and 10.1% were Asian or Pacific Islander. At study enrollment, 4,503 patients (10.6%) were unvaccinated, 36,606 (85.7%) had received a single dose, and 1,588 (3.7%) had received a combination of the two vaccines.By the end of the study period, after accounting for death or disenrollment from the KPSC health plan, 78.0% of immunocompromised patients had received a third dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, 41.0% had gotten a fourth dose (primary series plus monovalent [single-strain] booster dose), and only 0.9% had received a fifth dose (second monovalent booster).Of the 31,122 participants who received a third dose at least 3 months before study end, 47.3% obtained a fourth dose. Similarly, among 13,054 recipients of a fourth dose at least 4 months before study end, 3.0% received a fifth dose.Participants 65 years and older were more likely to receive at least four vaccine doses than younger patients (hazard ratio [HR], 3.95 vs 2.52, respectively). Those least likely to receive at least four doses were Black versus White adults (HR, 0.77), patients who previously had COVID-19 vs never-infected participants (HR, 0.71), and those receiving high-dose corticosteroids versus patients not taking these medications (HR, 0.88).

Survey of previously vaccinated US residents finds the most common reasons for not getting an updated COVID-19 vaccine - In a recent study published in the Morbidity Mortal Weekly Report, researchers described reasons cited by adults for receiving or not receiving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) booster vaccines. It is recommended that bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccinations, designed to protect against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ancestral strain as well as Omicron BA.4/BA.5 sublineages, be employed to strengthen protection against COVID-19 infection and severe illness. However, comparatively few US adults eligible for booster vaccines reported being vaccinated with a bivalent booster dose. The reasons for this low vaccine coverage are yet unknown. In the present study, researchers explored why adults reportedly did and did not receive the bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine.Participants reported the dates of all prior SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 vaccination doses. The individuals vaccinated with the bivalent booster dose were given a randomly arranged list of 10 proposed reasons for receiving the booster dose. They were asked to select multiple reasons that influenced their decision. They were also asked to enter additional reasons if any.Participants who were not vaccinated with a bivalent booster vaccine could choose from a different set of randomly ordered ten reasons for not receiving the booster dose and optionally provide additional reasons. The non-vaccinated participant then viewed information regarding the eligibility and availability of the bivalent booster vaccine. Subsequently, non-booster vaccinated participants indicated whether they intended to receive the booster vaccine after receiving this information and were contacted through Prolific one month later to answer a follow-up survey. Most patients (95.8%) were vaccinated with two SARS-CoV-2 vaccine doses, including 396 (34.4%) vaccinated with the bivalent booster vaccine. Approximately 714 (62.1%) reported not receiving the bivalent booster vaccine. Almost 396 individuals vaccinated with the bivalent booster vaccine cited an average number of five reasons. The most prevalent reasons included protecting oneself (90.7%), preventing serious disease (80.6%), and protecting others (75.0%). The team noted that these motives were constant across age groups. Furthermore, the 714 individuals who were not vaccinated with the bivalent booster vaccine cited an average of one reason for not being vaccinated.Age-specific reasons for not obtaining the bivalent booster dosage varied across the cohorts. The most common reasons cited by adults aged between 18 and 39 years for not obtaining the bivalent booster dosage were ignorance of eligibility (29.8%), ignorance of the availability of updated booster doses (23.5%), and the belief that they were still adequately protected against SARS-CoV-2 infection (18.5%).The most prevalent reasons cited by persons aged between 40 and 59 years were ignorance of eligibility (22.1%) or the belief that they were still adequately protected against severe COVID-19 disease (21.3%) or SARS-CoV-2 infection (18%). The most prevalent reasons cited by people aged 60 years or older for not receiving a bivalent booster dose were the belief that they were still adequately protected against infection (20.2%), anxiety about adverse effects (17.5%), and uncertainty regarding the booster's efficacy (16.2%).Commonly, adults aged between 40 and 59 years and 60 years and older did not receive a booster dosage because they believed they were sufficiently protected from infection or serious disease. Yet, among the 223 people who chose either or both of these explanations, 160 (71.7%) had neither tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection nor received a COVID-19 vaccination dose within the previous six months, while 114 (51%) had never been SARS-CoV-2 infected. After one month, the team recontacted the 714 individuals who were not vaccinated with the booster dose at the time of the initial evaluation. Among 714, almost 624 responded to the follow-up questionnaire. Among the 427 participants who intended to receive the bivalent booster vaccine, 122 had already received it. Among the 197 individuals who did not intend to receive the booster vaccine, nine had already received it.

FDA withdraws emergency use authorization of COVID drug because it is unlikely to be effective against new variants - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it is withdrawing its emergency use authorization of a COVID-19 antibody therapy as a prevention tool because it is unlikely to be effective against variants that are currently circulating.Evusheld, which is made by British-Swedish pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, AstraZeneca, was first authorized in December 2021 as pre-exposure prophylaxis against the virus for those who are immunocompromised and less likely to generate antibodies from vaccination.However, the FDA said the medication does not neutralize several omicron subvariants including BQ.1, BQ.1.1, BF.7, BF.11, BA.5.2.6, BA.4.6, BA.2.75.2, XBB and XBB.1.5.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these subvariants make up at least an estimated 90% of cases in the U.S. "This means that Evusheld is not expected to provide protection against developing COVID-19 if exposed to those variants," the FDA said in a press release."Today's action to limit the use of Evusheld prevents exposing patients to possible side effects of Evusheld such as allergic reactions, which can be potentially serious, at a time when fewer than 10% of circulating variants in the U.S. causing infection are susceptible to the product," the press release continued.The FDA has been warning for months that Evusheld might not be very effective, starting in February 2022 when data showed a higher dose may be able to prevent against infection from omicron subvariants BA.1 and BA.1.1 than the originally approved dose.

Covid: CDC urges immunocompromised to take precautions after Evusheld pulled - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday urged people with weak immune systems to take extra precautions to avoid Covid after the dominant omicron subvariants knocked out a key antibody treatment.These precautions include wearing a high quality mask and social distancing when it's not possible to avoid crowded indoor spaces, according to the CDC.The guidance comes after the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday pulled its authorization of Evusheld, a combination antibody injection that people with weak immune systems took as an additional layer of protection to prevent Covid infection.The FDA pulled Evusheld because it is not effective against 95% of the omicron subvariants circulating in the U.S. This includes the XBB subvariants which are now causing 64% of new cases, as well as the BQ family that is responsible for 31% of reported infections.Although most Americans have largely returned to normal life as the Covid pandemic has ebbed, people with weak immune systems remain at higher risk of severe disease because they do not mount as strong of an immune response to the vaccines.Still, it is important for people with weak immune systems to stay up to date on their Covid vaccines by receiving the omicron booster because the shots can slash the risk of severe disease, according to the CDC. If you have a weak immune system and develop Covid symptoms, you should get tested as soon as possible and receive treatment with an antiviral within five to seven days, according to CDC.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeals emergency COVID-19 measures - Former Trump White House Press Secretary and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order to repeal COVID-19 executive orders issued at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 on January 13, cementing the re-opening campaign accelerated under the Democratic administration of Joe Biden. The action repealed an executive order to establish a steering committee to implement the Arkansas Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which went into effect March 30, 2020; the Governor’s Medical Advisory Committee for Post-Peak COVID-19 Response (April 13, 2020), Governor’s COVID-19 Testing Advisory Group (April 21, 2020), the Governor’s Technical Advisory Board (May 26, 2020), and the Governor’s COVID-19 Winter Task Force (November 13, 2020). Sanders called the executive orders “obsolete,” saying the state government has “prioritized COVID-19 disproportionately,” claiming the orders “allowed other health concerns like addiction, cancer screenings, diabetes, and mental health to worsen.” Parroting the position of the Democratic Party administration in Washington, she said, “As Governor, I will always put the health, safety, and well-being of Arkansans first. President Biden declared the ‘pandemic is over’ during an appearance on ‘60 minutes’ last year,” Sanders said. Sanders went on to say that it is time for Arkansas and the United States “to get back to normal” all the while millions continue to get infected and tens of thousands are dying every week around the globe. Nearly 12,800 people have died due to COVID-19 in Arkansas since the beginning of the pandemic.

 Delaware Gov. John Carney tests positive for COVID-19 - (CBS) – Delaware Governor John Carney says he has tested positive for COVID-19. The governor says he had mild symptoms and tested positive using an at-home test Friday night. "I'm feeling fine and will work from home," the governor said in a brief statement. According to Delaware's COVID-19 Response website, the 7-day average of new COVID-19 cases is currently at 135. They also say there are currently 158 hospitalizations due to COVID-19.

Heart symptoms persist in 10% of patients with long-COVID - In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, researchers described the long-term cardiac symptoms associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Recent studies have shown that long-term cardiac symptoms associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection can persist for months or even years. Chest discomfort, inflammatory heart disease, and arrhythmia, among other symptoms, are frequently observed. Heart muscle inflammation, or myocarditis, which can be directly caused by a viral infection, can progress to manifest into subclinical or overt myocardial dysfunction with or without electrophysiological abnormalities having long-term consequences. The intensity and timespan of such cardiac symptoms differ from patient to patient. Detecting its risk factors is an important and active area of research that can inform the monitoring and treatment of such symptoms and reduce the burden of eventual illness and mortality among COVID-19 survivors. The present systematic review examined 101 studies related to long-term cardiac symptoms after COVID-19, of which 92 provided sufficient data for meta-analysis. These studies assessed 49 distinct long-term cardiac symptoms observed post-COVID-19, with chest discomfort and arrhythmia being the most often studied symptoms. More than two-thirds of all the studies involved prospective cohorts, while 14 included retrospective and 15 performed cross-sectional research. Most of the research involved online surveys, regional studies, and multiple- or single-hospital studies. Approximately 60% of studies had a sample size between 100 and 999 participants, while 28% involved a minimum of 1,000 participants. The majority of studies clinically confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections. Long-term cardiac symptoms were examined clinically or reported by the patient. The index dates of the follow-up periods differed between studies. Additionally, inpatients were recruited by 45 studies, outpatients by 15 studies, and inpatients as well as outpatients by 35 studies. The majority of studies involved COVID-19 patients irrespective of severity, while the tools employed to measure severity differed considerably. Five or more studies documented ten cardiac symptoms, including chest discomfort, arrhythmia, cardiac abnormalities, hypertension, myocardial damage, stroke, thromboembolism, heart failure, myocarditis, and coronary disease. For these symptoms, both random-effects, as well as fixed-effects meta-analyses were also performed. All symptoms showed significant variation between the studies. A random-effects model described the pooled proportion of cardiac symptoms, including chest pain, hypertension, arrhythmia, cardiac abnormalities, thromboembolism, myocardial damage, stroke, coronary disease, myocarditis, and heart failure. The study findings highlighted a variety of heart symptom presentations observed after COVID-19, many of which might endure for months or even a year. There is considerable variety in research design and significant variation in the proportion of symptoms reported by study features. The researchers believe that the limits of the existing research hinder a greater knowledge of long COVID-19 at this time. The present research demonstrated the necessity for high-quality studies on long COVID-19 and the need for long-term cardiac monitoring for COVID-19 survivors.

 Long wait times in emergency rooms lead to deaths and poor health outcomes across North America -Hospitals throughout Canada and the United States have experienced an alarming surge of respiratory viruses in infants, children and adults, predominantly respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and COVID-19. Hospitals in both countries have been operating at or above capacity for several months with no end in sight due to the homicidal “forever COVID” policy which has been overseen by the Trudeau Liberal government in Canada and the Biden administration in the United States. The rapid spread of the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant across Canada and the United States is overwhelming an already stretched health care system. The risk of death and other serious health care outcomes from long wait times in emergency rooms (ERs) will increase due to lack of beds and staff and increased boarding time (the total time required to treat patients in the ER). Hospital staff are exhausted and suffering from moral injury and are leaving in droves, which will only exacerbate the shortage of health care workers. According to a report by the Canadian CBC News, ER deaths are at a six-year high in the province of Nova Scotia; 558 people died in ERs in 2022, up from 505 in 2021 and 393 in 2020. The most recent death was that of a 37-year-old woman who had sought medical treatment for excruciating abdominal pain at Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre in Amherst, Nova Scotia. The patient, Allison Holthoff, waited six hours in a wheelchair or lying on the floor in the waiting room before being brought into an exam room. Her husband, Gunter Holthoff, told CBC News that at one point he told medical staff that his spouse was not doing well, and she felt like she was dying, but there was no response or action. After more time passed the nurses prepared Allison for an X-ray, but she subsequently went into cardiac arrest before the test could be performed. She was resuscitated three times but later died in the intensive care unit. The day before Allison Holthoff’s death, 67-year-old Charlene Snow died after returning home following a seven-hour wait in the ER at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital. Snow suffered a cardiac arrest and died an hour after leaving the hospital, according to Global News.

The next worrisome coronavirus variant could come from China — will it get detected? - Fears that the massive surge of coronavirus infections in China could immediately spark the emergence of a troubling new variant are unfounded, say researchers. But that could change in the coming months as more people in the country acquire some natural immunity from infection. More widespread immunity could drive the virus SARS-CoV-2 to evolve ways to evade this immune protection. It remains crucial that variants be tracked, yet scientists question how quickly the next variant of concern will be detected as many countries wind down surveillance efforts.When China abruptly dropped its zero-COVID policy in December, most of its population had little immunity against the dominant Omicron variant in circulation worldwide. Under such circumstances, the emergence of a dangerous new variant is unlikely, says epidemiologist Jodie McVernon at the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia. There should be less selection pressure for immune-evading variants to emerge in a such a population, she says.Still, China is ramping up efforts to monitor variants circulating in its population, and has announced plans to get 3 hospitals in each of its 31 provinces to genetically sequence virus samples collected from 15 outpatients, 10 people with severe COVID-19, and all people who have died from COVID-19 each week. But experts are divided on whether these plans will be enough to rapidly detect a concerning variant that could cause new waves of infection and death, in part because many other nations have reduced their genomic monitoring.However, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has called on European countries to set up random testing of travellers from China, and sequence the virus from all positive samples, so that emerging variants can be detected. Other nations, including the United States, Japan and Australia, have also put surveillance measures in place for travellers from China.Countries track variants by constantly sequencing a proportion of known infections and sharing those sequences in public repositories such as GISAID. During the first two years of the pandemic, most public-health agencies carried out targeted sequencing, monitoring people who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 with the aim of detecting new variants that might cause more-severe illness. Viruses collected from immunocompromised people, who can harbour infections for weeks or months, were also sequenced, because prolonged infections can give rise to heavily mutated viruses^1,2.Most nations also sequenced a representative sample of viruses from across the community, says Vitali Sintchenko, a microbiologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. In a study he co-authored, the researchers concluded that countries should aim to sequence 0.5% of COVID-19 cases and share those data within 21 days of collecting the samples. That would give them a 34% probability of detecting a new lineage before it infects 100 people³.The study, which also looked at sequencing efforts in 189 countries up to the end of February 2022, found that during the first two years of the pandemic, 78% of high-income countries sequenced more than 0.5% of their COVID-19 cases, with some, including Denmark, Japan and the United Kingdom, consistently sequencing more than 5% of cases each week. The earlier such data are gathered and shared, the faster scientists can run laboratory tests to look at the new variant’s immune evasion, resistance to antiviral drugs and ability to infect cells, says Sintchenko.But the testing landscape has changed drastically over the past year, says evolutionary virologist Verity Hill at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut. Broad-scale population-based screening was feasible in countries such as the United Kingdom because researchers could tap into samples collected at community-based PCR testing facilities. But in many countries authorities are no longer offering such services because of the expense and the decrease in demand, says Hill. And people are increasingly opting to self-test, using rapid antigen tests, or not test at all.That means that detection of new variants is getting harder everywhere, says Sintchenko.

Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 – WHO - 25 January 2023 -Globally, nearly 1.9 million new cases and over 12 000 deaths were reported in the week of 16 to 22 January 2023. In the last 28 days (26 December 2022 to 22 January 2023), over 11 million cases and over 55 000 new deaths were reported globally – a decrease of 25% and an increase of 13%, respectively, compared to the previous 28 days. As of 22 January 2023, over 664 million confirmed cases and over 6.7 million deaths have been reported globally. In this edition, we include:

• The COVID-19 epidemiological update at the global and regional levels
• An update on the circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) and Omicron subvariants under monitoring
• An update on hospitalizations and ICU admissions related to COVID-19

What is Orthrus? The new Covid Omicron variant behind a quarter of UK cases -Covid variant Orthrus now accounts for one-fifth of Covid cases in England, figures show. Surveillance data shows how the strain, scientifically called CH.1.1, has snowballed since it was first detected in November 2022. Health chiefs have warned that it — or another Omicron sub-lineage nicknamed the 'Kraken' — could soon become dominant. Since the first cases of the new variant emerged in November it spread to account for 23.1 per cent of all cases in England by 1 January, the latest UKHSA figures show – though sequencing suggests it could make up as much as 100 per cent in some areas. The figures for that week suggest Orthrus accounted for around 8,700 cases, though officials warn variant estimates are uncertain. Orthrus, along with the Kraken, or XBB.1.5, variant are thought to be moving towards dominance in Britain – though neither have been classed as being “of concern”. Data from the Sanger Institute, one of the UK's largest surveillance sites tasked with analysing strains circulating in the UK, shows Orthrus, nicknamed after a mythical two-headed dog, accounted for 23.3 per cent of all Covid tests analysed in England on January 7, the latest data available.Kraken, nicknamed after a mythical sea monster, currently accounts for 3.6 per cent of cases in England, according to the same data. However, it was only spotted in mid-December. While Orthrus is behind more infections, experts have said Kraken appears to be growing faster and is thought to be more transmissible and immune evasive than other strains in circulation. UK Health Security Agency data suggested that Kraken has a 39 per cent growth rate advantage over BQ.1, the current dominant variant. Meanwhile, the advantage rate for Orthrus was 22 per cent. Orthrus has a mutation called P681R — which was also on the Delta variant — and is thought to make it better attack cells and cause more severe illness. Scientists have also spotted it has R346T, which is thought to help the strain fight-off antibodies that were generated in response to vaccination or previous infection. And Kraken has one called F486P, which helps it to bypass Covid-fighting antibodies. Another mutation — S486P — is thought to improve its ability to bind to human cells. Concerns over the two new strains, combined with the unfolding NHS crisis and a 'flu-nami', has triggered calls for the return of pandemic-era restrictions like masks and working-from-home in a bid to ease pressure on the ailing health service.

The billionaires at Davos protect themselves from COVID-19, while declaring the pandemic “over” for working people - World leaders met this week (January 16 to 20) at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, an exclusive and remote mountain ski resort in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland, to discuss the bleak state of world affairs. It was the first in-person meeting of the WEF at Davos since the outbreak of COVID-19, but the assembled heads of state, billionaires and their minions did not treat the pandemic as a thing of the past. On the contrary, they were exceedingly vigilant, and participants had to be tested for coronavirus as a condition of attendance. There was the usual massive entourage of security personnel, with more than 5,000 armed guards, including snipers, at a cost exceeding 30 million Swiss francs, provided by the Swiss army to ensure the heads of state and global business leaders were kept safe from protests. More importantly, every conceivable means to protect them against COVID-19 infection has also been employed. The measures to protect these billionaires, world leaders and their staff from COVID-19 were kept under wraps until leaked to the press towards the end of the assembly, raising a storm of online controversy. Statements like “Do as I say, not as I do,” “let them eat cake,” and “although we are in the same storm—the same pandemic—we are not in the same boat” are just some of the comments that have exploded on social media. This outpouring underscores the deep divide that separates the thin layer of fabulously wealthy parasites from the billions among the working class whose labor is exploited 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to ensure the capitalists’ coffers are overflowing with riches. The revolutionary sentiment and comparisons between the global capitalist elite and the doomed French monarchy and aristocracy cannot be missed. The hypocrisy couldn’t be more vivid as many of those in attendance have been openly declaring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic and calling for the elimination of any public health measures in support of protecting the population from the continuous assault of a deadly virus that is constantly mutating. Their slogan appears to be: “A pandemic for thee but not for me.”

WHO calls on China to release more information on its COVID case surge to learn more about which variants are circulating – MarketWatch - The World Health Organization has called on China to release more information about its current wave of COVID infections after China said nearly 60,000 people have succumbed to the virus since early December, the Associated Press reported.n The announcement of fatality numbers on Saturday came after weeks of complaints that China was not keeping experts abreast of what was happening.The announcement “allows for a better understanding of the epidemiological situation,” said a WHO statement. Director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus talked by phone with Health Minister Ma Xiaowei, it said.“WHO requested that this type of detailed information continued to be shared with us and the public,” the agency said.The National Health Commission said only deaths in hospitals were counted, which means anyone who died at home is not part of the tally. It gave no indication of when or whether it might release updated numbers. China has seen a wave of cases ever since the government ended stringent restrictions on movement in December.The WHO is now analyzing the data, which covers early December to Jan. 12. So far, the epidemiology is similar to what has been seen in other countries, “a rapid and intense wave of disease caused by known sub-variants of omicron with higher clinical impact on older people and those with underlying conditions,” said the statement.

China says Covid outbreak has infected 80% of population - The possibility of a big Covid-19 rebound in China over the next two or three months is remote as 80% of people have been infected, a prominent government scientist said on Saturday. The mass movement of people during the ongoing Lunar New Year holiday period may spread the pandemic, boosting infections in some areas, but a second Covid wave is unlikely in the near term, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on the Weibo social media platform. Hundreds of millions of Chinese are traveling across the country for holiday reunions that had been suspended under recently eased Covid curbs, raising fears of fresh outbreaks in rural areas less equipped to manage large outbreaks. China has passed the peak of Covid patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions, a National Health Commission official said on Thursday. Nearly 60,000 people with Covid had died in hospital as of Jan. 12, roughly a month after China abruptly dismantled its zero-Covid policy, according to government data. But some experts said that figure probably vastly undercounts the full impact, as it excludes those who die at home, and because many doctors have said they are discouraged from citing Covid as a cause of death.

Eight in 10 people in China caught Covid since early December, say officials - About 80% of China’s population has been infected with Covid-19 since restrictions were lifted in early December, Chinese health authorities have said. The figure, which would equate to about 1.2 billion people but cannot be confirmed by outside bodies, prompted some pandemic experts to estimate that more than 1 million may have died – far more than the government’s official tally of about 72,000. A wave of Omicron cases engulfed China after the government abruptly ended its zero-Covid policy last December, lifting restrictions shortly before the start of the lunar new year and Spring festival. On Saturday, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said about 80% of the country’s 1.41 billion people had been infected in this wave. In the week leading up to the lunar new year, the CDC reported 12,658 deaths, adding to the official pandemic toll of almost 60,000, which most observers believe is far below the real figure. Until a dramatically increased update earlier this month, the official toll from this wave was reported as being below 60 deaths. Rising case numbers in December quickly overwhelmed data collection processes. Coupled with a narrow definition of a Covid-attributed death, official tallies soon appeared far below the reality on the ground, and the government was accused of lacking data transparency by the WHO. Beijing rejected the accusation and defended the zero-Covid policy and its sudden dismantling. Some health officials have acknowledged the data discrepancies but said now is the time to focus on the health response. “China might have dropped its zero-Covid policy in the first week of December, but they were probably already flailing and failing,” Prof Robert Booy, an infectious diseases paediatrician, said. “In 2022, China lost population for the first time since the Great Leap Forward – a drop of 850,000 people. They’re going to lose at least that number in the coming weeks of Covid, mostly of very old people who haven’t been fully vaccinated.” Dr Xi Chen, an associate professor of health policy and economics at Yale, said no one had good enough data to accurately gauge China’s death toll, but making conservative assumptions that it had the lowest case fatality rate of 0.11% would suggest that about 1.23 million people had died. “Of course, this assumes China has healthcare resources like South Korea and New Zealand do,” he added. “If you take Hong Kong, you have nowadays an excess mortality … which is roughly 2,000 deaths per million. If you convert that rate to China, you get to a bit below 3 million deaths,” he said, adding the caveat that China’s health system was not as consistently developed as systems in other places, including Hong Kong. “If you take Brazil, the figure is close to 4,000 per million, so it’s double,” Flahault said. James Trauer, the head of the epidemiological modelling unit at Monash University, cautioned against making estimates so early in the wave, noting that it was not clear how China’s CDC was able to produce the 80% figure, given the issues with data collection. The CDC notice had said holiday travel may further spread the virus in the short term, but that because so many were already infected, “the possibility of a large-scale epidemic rebound or a second wave of epidemics across the country is very small”. “Probably the most important thing from the Chinese perspective at the moment is to manage the epidemic better and increase the resources to treat the people getting sick.”

Pandemic deaths in China hit 700,000 since end of Zero-COVID policy, according to modeling estimates - The figures on infections, deaths and the course of the outbreak by the British-based analytics firm Airfinity were recently revised and updated to take account of epidemiologic data from the more remote inland provinces. Airfinity is now forecasting one longer, more severe COVID wave as Chinese New Year travel will continue to fuel the outbreak that has spread across the country at unimaginable rates. The group wrote on January 16, “Today’s new forecast considers reports that some provinces including Henan, Gansu, Qinghai, and Yunnan have already seen infections peak. Our analytics indicators suggest that the virus has spread more quickly to rural areas, partly driven by people traveling for the Chinese New Year celebrations. This increased growth rate has changed our forecast from predicting two successive waves to one larger and more severe wave.” As China’s ministry of transport has noted, more than two billion passenger trips are likely to take place during the 40-day holiday season. Already on Saturday, the eve of the Chinese New Year, the Chinese media reported that more than 26 million passenger trips took place. A majority of the travelers are thought to be migrant workers on their way home to visit families, many for the first time in the three years since the Wuhan lockdowns took effect and Zero COVID was implemented as the country’s official response to the coronavirus. There are real and justified fears that such travel will only entrench the virus deeper into Chinese society. According to Airfinity’s calculations, COVID-19 infections could peak at 4.8 million per day, with more than 62 million infections estimated to occur in the latter half of January. Assuming a fatality rate similar to other countries, deaths would peak at 36,000 per day on January 26, with the New Year festivities well underway. The firm estimates that cumulative COVID-19 deaths as of January 20 stand at 708,000. These figures imply that the health systems across China over the next several weeks can expect to face a more protracted and horrific wave. Dr. Matt Linley, Airfinity’s Analytics Director, said, “Our forecast estimates a significant burden on China’s healthcare system for the next fortnight and it is likely that many treatable patients could die due to overcrowded hospitals and lack of care.”These estimates were corroborated by China’s chief epidemiologist at their Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Wu Zunyou, who said over the weekend that the current wave of infections “has already infected about 80 percent of the people,” or around 1.1 billion people.

China Covid: Coffins sell out as rural losses mount - BBC News - The BBC has found evidence of a considerable number of Covid-related deaths in China's rural regions, as the virus spread from big cities to more remote areas with older populations. In Xinzhou region of northern Shanxi province the coffin makers have been busy. We watched the skilled craftsmen as they carved elaborate decorations into the freshly-cut wood. Over recent months, they say, they haven't had time to stop. One villager, a customer, told us that at times the coffins have sold out. Laughing with a dose of the black humour you find in the area, he added that those in the funeral industry had been "earning a small fortune". There has been much debate about the real number of Covid deaths in China, after the virus ripped through its megacities. Some 80% of the population - more than a billion people - have been infected since China scrapped restrictions in December, according to leading epidemiologist Wu Zunyou. Last weekend China reported 13,000 Covid-related deaths in less than a week, adding to the 60,000 deaths it has counted since December. But these deaths have been in hospitals. In rural areas there are only sparse medical facilities and those who die at home are mostly not being counted. There is not even an official estimate for the number of village deaths. But the BBC found evidence the death toll is mounting. We visited a crematorium and they too have been busy, mourners dressed in white walking forward carrying the ceremonial box which would eventually contain the remains of a loved one. In another village, we saw one man and woman loading huge tissue paper birds onto the back of a flatbed truck. "They're cranes. You ride the crane into the afterlife," the woman said. As they packed up other elaborate, Buddhist images newly made from tissue paper they said they'd had an explosion in demand for their funeral decorations, two or three times what's normal. Everyone we met in this part of Shanxi who is connected to the funeral industry told us a similar story about an increase in deaths and they all attributed it to the coronavirus.m

Thailand: Bid for Chinese New Year tourists threatens new COVID surge - Embracing the lie that COVID-19 is “mild” and “endemic,” the Thai regime is setting the stage for a new surge of the pandemic by attempting to kickstart its tourism sector by opening up to Chinese New Year tourists. With the ending of zero-COVID in China and the opening up of its borders, some 300,000 Chinese are expected to travel to Thailand in the next three months. Several provincial areas and cities in Thailand are resuming Chinese New Year celebrations for the first time since 2020. “It has been three years since we launched such large-scale Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Thailand due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Chinese embassy charge d’affaires Yang Xin told the China Daily. “This year’s celebration back to normal is really encouraging.” These comments reflect the abrupt about-face of the Chinese government, under huge international pressure, in ending its effective zero-COVID policy and embracing the murderous “let it rip” approach taken in countries around the world. In Thailand, the true picture of daily COVID cases is masked behind a complete dismantling of testing and tracing. Official daily cases, now updated on a weekly basis, are indicating the beginnings of a case spike with the latest seven-day average of 4,166 daily cases. Thailand’s Department of Disease Control (DDC) has declared that the arrival of Chinese tourists is “unlikely” to trigger a spike in the number of new COVID-19 infections. Large crowds, however, attend the Chinese New Year’s celebrations, likely turning them into mass spreader events. The country’s health system, which is already under immense pressure, is assuming the worst. Deputy clerk Suksan Kittisupakorn told the Bangkok Post that the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) and the Ministry of Public Health have prepared more than 10,000 hospital beds for new COVID-19 patients. The tourist promotion is being driven by a flagging economy and big business demands for profit. The Thai economy has been hit hard by the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the US economic war against China. The IMF is forecasting a deceleration in growth and potentially a recession in Thailand’s major markets, the US and the European Union. Thailand’s economy is heavily dependent on expor,t which constitute 55 percent of GDP.

China claims Covid wave has peaked with severe cases, deaths falling fast - China’s health authorities have said the Covid wave is past its peak, with rapid decline in both severe cases and deaths in hospitals, but experts remain wary of the government’s official data. According to China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), the number of critically ill patients in hospital peaked in the first week of January, then rapidly declined by more than 70%. The number of deaths also reached its highest level that week, the data said. Prof Chi Chun-huei, director of the centre for global health at Oregon University, said local officials were incentivised – via punishments and rewards – to under-report infection figures during the zero-Covid policy. Now that policy was gone, they were incentivised to exaggerate infection rates and under-report deaths. “Most international experts know this very well – China’s statistics are very unreliable,” he said. Covid cases have swept across China in recent months, escalating rapidly after the government suddenly ended its zero-Covid policy in early December 2022. Last week a senior health official said 80% of people had been infected in this wave, although it was not clear where the figures came from. According to the data, there were 128,000 critically ill Covid patients in Chinese hospitals on 5 January, the highest number reached during this wave. It described a peak inside hospitals over the western new year, with almost 10,000 new critically ill cases a day from 27 December to 3 January. By 23 January the total number of critically ill cases had dropped by 72% to about 36,000, it said. The number of deaths in hospitals reached their highest point on 4 January, with 4,273 recorded, before falling 79% by 23 January to 896. The CDC said the number of visits to fever clinics peaked at 2.867m on 23 December, before falling 96.2% to 110,000 on 23 January. A similar decline was observed in visits to rural clinics, with peaks around the same date, it said. The data, published on Wednesday, was based primarily on hospital in-patients, giving some insight into the severity of the outbreak, but external health experts and observers have cautioned that it only shows one part of the true toll. China’s wave of infections hit major cities first, and there has been concern that travel for lunar new year could spread infections into regional areas. Reporting from inside China has already found apparent high rates of infection and fatalities that appear to exceed official reports.

South Korean government lifts indoor mask mandate while COVID-19 continues to run rampant - The South Korean government of President Yoon Suk-yeol has announced that it will lift the indoor mask mandate to limit the spread of COVID-19 on Monday, January 30. This is despite the fact that the virus continues to run rampant throughout the country, with the official number of cases in the tens of thousands daily. Prime Minister Han Deok-su made the announcement on January 20, a day before the beginning of the Lunar New Year holiday. The announcement was calculated to encourage people to travel, eat out, and otherwise drop precautions while visiting family, and to promote the lie that the pandemic is all but over. People will only be required to wear masks on public transportation and in hospitals and pharmacies. The government claims without a shred of scientific evidence that it is safe to end mask-wearing if two of four criteria are met. Those four criteria are a downward trend in new cases, a decline in critically ill patients and deaths, the supposed existence of strong medical response capabilities, and high vaccination rates among high-risk groups. The government claims that all but the fourth criterion have been met. At the same time, over the past week, the average number of official new cases each day has been approximately 27,000, with a recent slight fall in identified cases due to the holiday and less testing. On average, 35 people have died each day over the same period. Yet, as experience has shown, a relative fall in cases does not mean that a wave is over or that another wave, with a potentially even more contagious and deadly variant, will not occur. The new, highly infectious and immune evading XBB.1.5 variant is already spreading in South Korea after it was detected in December. Prime Minister Han’s own words contradicted the claim that it is now safe to remove masks. He said: “The importance of vaccination has grown with the easing of the mask mandate. I strongly advise high-risk people aged 60 or older and the elderly residing in high-risk facilities to get vaccinated as soon as possible.” The question must be asked that if high-risk groups—to say nothing of the very real health threat to other segments of the population—are still at risk, why is the mask mandate being lifted? The answer lies in the fact that mask-wearing is widely supported in South Korea with the vast majority continuing to wear masks both indoors and outdoors, even with little or no enforcement measures in place. The lifting of the indoor mask mandate, which has been in place for almost the entire pandemic, is meant to sow confusion about the dangers of COVID-19 and encourage the complete resumption of economic activities for the benefit of big business.

North Korea locks down Pyongyang due to ‘respiratory illness’ - North Korean authorities have ordered a lockdown in the nation’s capital city Pyongyang because of the spread of an unspecified respiratory illness, according to a statement released by the Russian embassy in North Korea on Facebook. The lockdown will last for five days, and could be extended another three days, according to the post, which called for a “special anti-epidemic period” and urged foreign diplomats to remain inside. The notice also stated that individuals should take their temperature four times a day and report the results daily to a hospital in Pyongyang. If an individual has a high temperature, they should immediately report to the hospital.While the notice does not mention any particular illness, such as COVID-19, it does say the city has seen a rise in patients with “recurrent influenza in winter and other respiratory diseases.South Korean news outlet NK News first reported the lockdown. The secretive dictatorship has been guarded about the toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on the country. In August, North Korean leader Kim Jung Un said in a speech that the country had “eradicated” the virus, according to state media reports.

Australia Sees Heart Attacks Increase By 17% In 2022 - "Experts" Blame Pandemic - The public has been bombarded with a stream of news stories in recent months seeking to explain the steady rise of heart attacks in western countries in the past two years. The epidemic is most concerning due to the large number of young and otherwise healthy people that are being stricken with heart problems otherwise reserved for older or clinically obese patients. Explanations for the trend blame everything from video games to climate change. Of course, these scapegoats do not explain the statistical leap in heart failure in the past two years. The most common narrative is that the covid virus is the cause - The problem with this theory is that there is zero evidence to support the claim that covid causes potential heart ailments. Are the "experts" baffled? Or, are they trying to avoid the obvious culprit. Australia is reporting a 17% increase in heart attacks in the first eight months of 2022 alone, and establishment paid researchers seem to be deliberately avoiding any mention of the covid mRNA vaccines. Instead, they are continuing to blame covid infection along with numerous peripheral and indirect triggers associated with the lockdowns. Multiple studies now show a direct relationship between vaccine status and Myocarditis, specifically in young people, and the attempts to suppress such information by Big Pharma and governments are failing. If side effects are related to developing auto-immune disorders triggered by mRNA as some researchers suspect, then symptoms in many vaccinated people may not become visible for months or years.

Africa Is Starkly Unvaccinated, And Starkly Unvanquished By COVID -Africa as a Whole Is Very Strikingly Unvaccinated, According to Johns Hopkins University, Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations Let’s keep in mind that most striking continent on an otherwise bleak world map, as we examine the following map, which shows Africa’s burden of COVID cases since the beginning of COVID. Here is Africa’s relative share of COVID cases since the beginning of COVID: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html One would reasonably expect a worldwide pandemic that began three years ago to have been recorded with some ballpark accuracy in case counts, and morbidity and mortality data throughout the world by now, as each hemisphere has been through three winters. One would also expect that a worldwide vaccine campaign that peaked over a year ago to have resulted in reliable vaccine uptake maps. One would expect a general consensus regarding such data. So let’s accept the above maps as not (or not yet) disputed, and as reliable documentation of historical events of pinnacle importance, events that behoove humanity to understand well, and to understand as thoroughly as if our future well-being depends on it. One who has faith in the practice of vaccination would have also expected that vaccines carrying the name of the pandemic to have mitigated case counts of the same disease. How then is the overall experience of the African continent to be understood? Africa was not the only part of the world where reported COVID cases have been low. Prior to vaccination, numerous countries were barely impacted at all by COVID. Let’s zoom out from Africa now to examine events in other countries. Former US Dept of Justice adviser Gavin de Becker wrote an article on Children’s Health Defense [3] that also appears in a book by Edward Dowd, Cause Unknown; in it he looks at COVID mortality in various nations, primarily in Asia, but also in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, after COVID began, as well as before and after the launch of their vaccination campaigns. Three of de Becker’s timelines are as follows. De Becker indicates with a syringe pointer the date at which each of the following countries began their COVID vaccine campaigns. De Becker notes that “the reality displayed on the graphs you’ve seen is undeniable, cannot be unseen, and is available to anyone more interested and more industrious than media and governments have been.” De Becker’s article, as the Johns Hopkins data, necessarily relies on reports that are fraught with much difficulty, for the reasons I review below, primarily the wildly misapplied PCR “test” to COVID diagnosis. However, because that alleged test is primarily how the world has evaluated and tallied COVID cases and deaths for three years, we are necessarily dependent on and limited to the derived data from this alleged test for any meaningful assessment of COVID epidemiology.

Resistant H pylori infections linked to use of antibiotics for COVID-19 -Antibiotic treatments for Heliobacter pylori infections showed lower-than-accepted eradication rates in patients previously treated for COVID-19, according to the results of a randomized trial published last week in BMC Infectious Diseases.In the trial, conducted in Egypt from Mar 21, 2021, to Sep 30, 2021, investigators enrolled 270 patients with newly diagnosed H pylori infections who had been treated for COVID-19 more than 3 months before enrollment. The patients were randomized to receive the first-line treatment of clarithromycin, esomeprazole, and amoxicillin or the alternative regimen of levofloxacin, esomeprazole, and amoxicillin. H pylori is the main causative organism of chronic gastritis, peptic ulcer disease, and gastric carcinoma.A total of 116 patients in the clarithromycin group and 117 patients in the levofloxacin group were assessed. The eradication rates in the intention-to-treat and per-protocol analyses were 55.56% and 64.66%, respectively, in the clarithromycin arm and 64.44% and 74.36%, respectively, in the levofloxacin arm. While the eradication rate using levofloxacin was higher than that of the clarithromycin-based regimen, the difference did not reach statistical significance, and both regimens had an unacceptable rate of eradication.Although they did not document which type of antibiotics the patients had been treated with for COVID-19, the investigators suggest the extensive use of azithromycin (which has cross-resistance with clarithromycin) and levofloxacin to treat COVID-19 patients may have resulted in the accumulation of mutations in H pylori—a bacterium present in 50% to 75% of the world's population—that confer resistance.They say the findings should "raise the alarm" about the impact that widespread antibiotic use for COVID-19, particularly during the first year of the pandemic, has had on antibiotic resistance. "This rising resistance can adversely impact the costs of H. pylori treatment and increase the risk of H. pylori related diseases," they wrote. "Further studies enrolling a larger number of patients with molecular and genetic testing are needed to elucidate the exact mechanism of antibiotic resistance of H. pylori in such patients."

More Salmonella cases reported in outbreak tied to pet bearded dragons -A pair of Salmonella outbreaks linked to pet bearded dragons, first announced in October, has sickened at least nine more people in five more states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a Jan 20 update.The added cases bring the total to 32 infections from 20 states. Ten people have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported. The outbreaks involve two Salmonella serotypes: Vitkin (12 cases) and IIIb 61:z52:z53 (20 cases).Of the sick people, 47% were children. Of the 25 people interviewed, 16 had contact with a pet bearded dragon before they got sick. The latest illness onset was Nov 20.Among the Salmonella Vitkin infections, investigators are still working to determine if there is a common supplier. Four patients bought their pets from different stores. In the Salmonella IIIb 61:z52:z53 outbreak, public health officials from Utah and Colorado have identified the outbreak strain from a sick person's bearded dragon and its habitat. Patients bought their pets from different stores, and efforts are still under way to identify a common supplier. Sequencing from 30 patient samples predicted resistance to ciprofloxacin, though most people recover without antibiotic treatment.

Racist beauty standards leave communities of color more exposed to harmful chemicals: NYC study - Racist beauty standards are driving the use of beauty products that are often contaminated with chemicals that alter the human endocrine system, cause organ damage, and spur cancer in communities of color, according to new research. Chemical straighteners and skin lighteners — beauty products frequently used among Black and Asian Americans —sometimes contain harmful ingredients such as formaldehyde, mercury and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and have been linked to health problems such as uterine and breast cancer, kidney and nervous system damage and more. New research published today in Environmental Justice shows the use of these potentially toxic products is spurred by racialized beauty standards. “Beauty norms that glorify European features do impact product use,” Lariah Edwards, an environmental health researcher at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and a lead author on the study, told EHN. Examples of these European features include straight hair and light or white skin. As part of a collaboration between the New-York-City-based environmental justice advocacy group WE ACT and various universities, researchers surveyed 297 women and femme-identifying individuals in Northern Manhattan and the South Bronx about their past and current use of chemical straighteners and skin lighteners. Researchers asked participants whether family members and peers commented on hairstyles or skin tone. The study found that perceptions of others’ beliefs about beauty was an important driver of product use — respondents who perceived that others around them thought light skin makes women look more beautiful were more likely to use skin lighteners than women who didn’t perceive such beliefs from their communities. People of color have used chemical straighteners and skin lighteners for decades as a way to more easily assimilate, or to widen their social or career opportunities, the authors wrote. For example, they noted, a 2021 Pew Research survey found that 59% of Hispanic adults believed having lighter skin would “help them get ahead” in the U.S.

Billions still exposed to toxic trans fat: WHO -Efforts to eliminate industrially-produced fat have a long way to go with five billion people exposed to toxic fat added to many food products, the UN health agency said Monday. The World Health Organization called in 2018 for harmful trans fatty acids to be wiped out by 2023. They are thought to be responsible for around 500,000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year. Although 43 countries with combined populations of 2.8 billion people have now implemented best-practice policies, most of the world remains unprotected, it said. WHO acknowledged in an annual progress report that the goal was still out of sight. Industrially-produced trans fat is often used in packaged foods, baked goods, cooking oils and spreads. "Trans fat has no known benefit, and huge health risks that incur huge costs for health systems," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "By contrast, eliminating trans fat is cost effective and has enormous benefits for health," he said. "Put simply, trans fat is a toxic chemical that kills, and should have no place in food. It's time to get rid of it once and for all."The WHO said that nine of the 16 countries with the highest estimated proportion of coronary heart disease deaths caused by trans fat intake were not implementing best-practice policies.

Traffic pollution can impair brain function: study - Typical levels of traffic pollution can impair human brain function in a matter of hours, a new study has found. Just two hours of exposure to diesel exhaust causes a plunge in the brain’s functional connectivity — a measure of how different areas of the brain communicate with each other, according to the study published in Environmental Health on Tuesday. “For many decades, scientists thought the brain may be protected from the harmful effects of air pollution,” senior author Chris Carlsten, head of respiratory medicine at the University of British Columbia, said in a statement. “This study, which is the first of its kind in the world, provides fresh evidence supporting a connection between air pollution and cognition,” Carlsten added. To draw these conclusions, the Canadian research team briefly exposed 25 healthy adults to diesel exhaust and filtered air at different times in a laboratory setting. The scientists said they measured brain activity before and after each exposure using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They then analyzed changes in the brain’s “default mode network” — a set of interconnected brain regions that contribute to memory and internal thought. The fMRI results demonstrated that participants experienced decreased functional connectivity in the default mode network after exposure to diesel exhaust, in comparison to filtered air, according to the study. “People may want to think twice the next time they’re stuck in traffic with the windows rolled down,” Carlsten said. “It’s important to ensure that your car’s air filter is in good working order, and if you’re walking or biking down a busy street, consider diverting to a less busy route,” he added.

What to Know About the Risks of Gas Stoves and Appliances — ProPublica - As a climate reporter, I was well aware of the growing concern about the gas stoves in people’s homes leaking dangerous pollutants, like methane, a potent greenhouse gas and explosive hazard; nitrogen dioxide, which worsens asthma; and benzene, which causes cancer. But I was a renter who had no control over my appliances. So I mostly ignored it — until one day last fall when I smelled the rotten-egg odor of leaking natural gas while baking focaccia. I borrowed a $30 gas leak detector from a friend (a fellow climate reporter, of course). When I turned on the oven in my New York City apartment, the lights for a “significant” leak lit up. People still don’t recognize that there are health downsides to cooking with gas in your home,” said Regina LaRocque, a Harvard Medical School professor who does research on medicine and public health. “This is the 21st century, and we have better ways of cooking than over a fire.”The issue has caught national attention in recent weeks, as the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission considers regulating gas stoves. Public health experts and environmentalists have long warned of the risks of gas ranges. One study found that indoor gas stoves were responsible for roughly 13% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. The American Public Health Association and American Medical Association have urged consumers to transition away from gas. LaRocque uses a traditional electric coil stove at home. But she and other experts advocated for induction stoves, which use electromagnets to heat up food. These stoves are growing in popularity as consumers choose them for climate, health and safety reasons, though they can cost more than twice as much as a gas range. Gas stoves leak benzene, a carcinogen that can cause leukemia. In a separate study published last fall, Lebel and his colleagues analyzed gas samples from residential kitchens. Out of 160 samples, all but one contained benzene.“If there’s a leak from that appliance, it likely contains benzene,” Lebel said. “It’s a rather unavoidable cost of owning a gas appliance.”Raw natural gas contains a mix of methane and toxic chemicals like benzene, toluene or formaldehyde. Gas companies strip out the impurities before piping the processed gas to homes, but they don’t eliminate all the toxins. Lebel’s team modeled the benzene concentrations from the leaking stoves and found a handful that failed to meet California’s benzene safety guidelines. They also found traces of other harmful compounds, including toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene, which can cause dizziness, nausea and liver damage. A separate study of gas appliances in the Greater Boston area found benzene in 95% of samples, though at lower levels than Lebel’s study.

US renters have growing worries over gas stoves – and few options - New research has revealed the extent of indoor air pollution caused by gas stoves. Switching to alternatives like electric or induction stoves is the best way to reduce the health risk of burning fossil fuels in the kitchen – but that is rarely an option for renters, who typically can’t choose the type of appliances installed in their apartment.People stuck with gas stoves in rentals are grappling with the reality of living with an appliance that may be leaking dangerous pollutants like methane and benzene even when it’s turned off. The lack of choice over appliances is acutely felt in low-income housing. “I remember my elementary school was heated throughout the winter by burning coal or heating oil,” said Russell Taylor, who has lived in New York City public housing since 1972. After school, Taylor said, “I went home and was exposed to gas burning from my stove.”Taylor says that growing up, his family used the stove for more than cooking. “Because of inadequate heating and freezing temperatures during the winter, we used the stove to stay warm in our apartment,” Taylor said, adding that they would turn the stove up on high, open the oven door, and lay socks and T-shirts on the stove racks, unaware of the nitrogen oxides – a pollutant linked with asthma and respiratory issues – they were exposed to daily.Taylor is a member of We Act for Environmental Justice, which advocates for people of color and low-income communities nationwide. Last October, the organization sent a petition to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development along with other advocacy groups, calling on the agency to tackle indoor air pollution through electrification. The petition also calls to address cumulative indoor air pollutants like mold and mildew, pests, lead paint and other hazards found in public housing. “This is a long-overdue conversation,” said Annie Carforo, a climate justice campaigns coordinator at We Act, regarding the latest nationwide debate on gas stoves. “Because New York City’s housing stock is so old and dense, there is very little option, and folks take the housing that they can get.”

Firefighters exposed to toxins at Grenfell Tower fire diagnosed with incurable cancers - Twelve firefighters among the 1,300 who attended the June 2017 Grenfell Tower inferno in London have developed incurable cancers—possibly the result of exposure to deadly contaminants released by the blaze. Some are relatively young men in their forties. A Mirror investigation reported that the majority are suffering from digestive cancers and leukaemia, and that their number could rise to 20 as a list of firefighters at the scene who now have cancer is being compiled. It is feared this is “only this tip of the iceberg” as cancer can take up to 25 years to develop. Grenfell underwent “refurbishment” on the cheap in 2014, during which the exterior was covered with highly combustible cladding, permitting a small kitchen fire to spread with exceptional ferocity—72 people died. The blaze burned for 60 hours, releasing a thick black smoke so dense it was impossible for those trying to escape to see even their hands in front of their faces. It contained carcinogens released from the burning cladding. Firefighters continued the rescue even as they ran out of oxygen, forced to breathe in the fumes. Pictures taken at the time show them exhausted, clothed “in soot-covered personal protective equipment on the grass, drinking and eating,” which can lead to cancer of the digestive system. The Mirror noted, “A 2019 study by the University of Central Lancashire (UClan) found soil contamination from the disaster caused by the fire could lead to an increased risk of cancer and respiratory problems of those living in the area. “Analysis of soil, debris and char samples of insulation boards used on the tower revealed heightened concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals and proven carcinogens, including benzene, within 200m of the tower.” Brian Flanagan, 47, a firefighter who attended the emergency, said, “What is out of the ordinary was the length of time we were there, and this is the problem. In a standard fire you would be there not more than four hours. When you get to that mark you get a relief crew. But I was at Grenfell for eight hours, twice as long as I should have been.” Many firefighters were on duty for 12 hours. Research commissioned by the Fire Brigades’ Union from the UClan found firefighters are twice as likely to develop cancer if they remain in their personal protective equipment longer than four hours. They face a similar risk if they notice soot in their nose or throat. Another firefighter, a father in his 50s, who, “risked his life as he and his colleagues led a trapped family to safety” spoke anonymously. Grenfell “left him suicidal and suffering from scarred lungs,” reported the Mirror. “We were quite early on the scene and got held in this underground car park and we were breathing all the toxins for ages,” he said. The newspaper reported that the firefighter has “failed several medicals since the blaze because of his lung function and now needs inhalers.” He told the Mirror, “Before Grenfell my health was great. I passed all the medicals and had no problems at all… It literally was within a month or so I started to get this cough and for me that’s when it started to go downhill.”

Depleted under Trump, a ‘traumatized’ EPA struggles with its mission — The nation’s top environmental agency is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration. The chemicals chief said her staff can’t keep up with a mounting workload. The enforcement unit is prosecuting fewer polluters than at any time in the past two decades. And now this: the stressed-out, stretched-thin Environmental Protection Agency is scrambling to write about a half dozen highly complex rules and regulations that are central to President Biden’s climate goals.The new rules have to be enacted within the next 18 months — lightning speed in the regulatory world — or they could be overturned by a new Congress or administration.The regulations are already delayed months past E.P.A.’s own self-imposed deadlines, raising concerns from supporters in Congress and environmental groups. “It’s very fair to say we are not where we hoped we’d be,” said Miles Keogh, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents most state and local air regulators. As staffing at the E.P.A. thinned out, the workload only increased, both the agency and its critics say. Career employees are being “worked to death,” said Betsy Southerland, a former top E.P.A. scientist. “They’re under the greatest pressure they’ve ever been.” Biden administration officials insist the agency has delivered more environmental protections than any previous presidency and listed dozens of new policies, including the creation of a high-level office focused for the first time on addressing racial disparities when it comes to environmental hazards.The agency’s administrator, Michael S. Regan, has promised that new regulations being written by his staff now will be made public by spring. Agency officials said that the E.P.A. has stepped up its recruitment efforts and has purchased software that has helped it identify more potential job candidates, particularly from universities.

EU Court puts end to emergency use of bee-toxic pesticides – The EU’s highest court ruled on Thursday (19 January) that EU countries should no longer be allowed temporary exemptions for banned, bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides, putting half of all such derogations to an end. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) confirmed that member states will no longer be allowed to grant derogations temporarily permitting the use of seeds treated with ‘expressly banned’ plant protection products by EU law. The ruling came in the wake of a request for annulment before the Belgian Administrative Court on the derogation given by Belgium for the use of these bee-toxic insecticides on sugar beets. The request was brought by the campaigner groups Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe and Nature & Progrès Belgium together with a Belgian beekeeper. The plant protection products in question – imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam – belong to a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, which are chemically similar to nicotine and target insects. Neonicotinoids have come under fire in recent years for contributing to the decline of bees by disrupting their sense of orientation, memory and mode of reproduction. Partial restrictions on the use of these products on bee-attractive crops were imposed by the European Commission in 2013, followed by a ban on all outdoor uses in 2018. In 2021, the ECJ confirmed that the Commission was right to ban the use of neonicotinoids on bee-attractive crops after Bayer, the producer of the pesticides, filed an appeal.

France to take the legal road after plastic pellet spill - France will take legal action over an “environmental nightmare” caused by waves of tiny plastic beads washing up on its Atlantic coastline.As the Guardian reports, the white pellets the size of grains of rice, nicknamed “mermaids’ tears”, appeared on beaches ranging from Brittany to locations in Spain for the last year. They are believed to have come from shipping containers lost in the Atlantic Ocean.To alleviate the situation, dozens of volunteers turned up on France’s north-west coast to sift through the sand at Pornic in the department of Loire-Atlantique to collect some of the beads, formally called industrial plastic granules (IPG), measuring less than 1.5mm.However, environmental activists admit it is a hopeless task, with Annick, a retiree who had filled the bottom of a yogurt pot with a few dozen pellets, saying that:It’s more symbolic than anything else: I don’t think we’re going to pick up the whole containerFurthermore, Lionel Cheylus, a spokesperson for the Surfrider Foundation Europe, the campaign group that organized the clean-up operation, added that “these pellets are often lost but I’ve never known it this bad.”Estimations suggest that every year about 160,000 tonnes of the beads are lost in the EU and 230,000 tonnes are lost worldwide. What is more, Jean-Michel Brard, the mayor of Pornic, has filed a legal complaint along with two other politicians in the area – Yannick Moreau, mayor of another beachside town, Les Sables-d’Olonne, and the president of the Pays de la Loire region, Christelle Morançais. Nevertheless, officials believe it is impossible to identify the origin of the beads.

Avian flu confirmed in three grizzly bears euthanized in Montana Three juvenile grizzly bears found disoriented and suffering from neurological issues such as partial blindness tested positive for avian flu, Montana wildlife officials confirmed Tuesday. The bears were found in poor condition last fall and were euthanized, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Man whose foot was found in Yellowstone pool left poems, $447 in cash in car: investigators “We suspect these mammals probably get the virus from consuming infected birds,” said FWP Wildlife Veterinarian Jennifer Ramsey in a news release. One was found in Augusta, another in Dupuyer and the third in Kalispell, all located in northern Montana. They were the first documented cases of the virus in grizzly bears, according to Montana officials. U.S. Department of Agriculture records on bird flu in mammals show that another grizzly bear, living in a zoo, died around the same time as the Montana cases. Montana wildlife officials didn’t immediately respond to Nexstar’s request for additional information. Tests last year also confirmed HPAI in a fox and a skunk in Montana, officials said. In other countries, the disease has been documented in animals including pigs, cats, dogs, tigers, and leopards, among others. The bird flu hit U.S. egg farmers especially hard last year, prompting the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and driving up the price of eggs in the process. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI or H5N1), can be fatal to poultry and has ripped through bird populations in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa since December 2003, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The virus could potentially spread to people and cause serious disease, according to the CDC, although the risk is considered to be very low. Wildlife officials urge people to take precautions when handling game birds; sick or dead birds; or other mammals.“Even if an animal is not suspected to have died from a contagious disease, gloves should always be worn if a dead animal must be handled for disposal,” Montana FWP said.

Fear the deer: Crash data illuminates America’s deadliest animal - The Washington Post - Behold the deer, the deadliest beast in North America.Deer are responsible for the deaths of about 440 of the estimated 458 Americans killed in physical confrontations with wildlife in an average year, according to Utah State University biologist Mike Conover, employing some educated guesswork in the latest edition of “Human-Wildlife Interactions.”Those deer-inflicted fatalities are not, so far as we know, caused by deer-on-human predation. They’re the unfortunate result of more than 2 million people a year plowing into deer with their sedans and SUVs, usually on a two-lane road, often at high speed. To shed light on this herbivorous hazard, we turned, of course, to data. Specifically, we analyzed more than 1 million animal-vehicle collisions compiled by Calumn Cunningham, Laura Prugh and their colleagues at the University of Washington for a recent paper published in Current Biology. They estimate deer were involved in more than 90 percent of the collisions, which occurred in 23 states between 1994 and 2021.With a few exceptions, the data show deer are at their most dangerous in November. Indeed, the deer threat peaks just before Thanksgiving — typically Nov. 7 through 14 — when you’re about three times more likely to hit a deer than at any other time of year.Experienced deer hunters can probably guess why driving in November can turn into Russian roulette on certain highways and byways: In much of the country, that’s rutting season. And during the rut, deer focus on procreation, not self-preservation. Marianne Gauldin of the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division compares rutting bucks to teenage boys. “They are hyper-focused on the opportunity to breed, and they therefore lose some of their wits,” Gauldin said. “They are full-tilt looking for does, chasing does and running after does for the opportunity to breed. And they are doing this with tunnel vision … literally running across the road.” Does share similar distractions. They’re either in estrus — hormonally receptive to sex and looking to breed — or fleeing hot-and-bothered bucks until their cycles catch up. Collisions occur more often in states with the most white-tailed deer — which experts say tend to have a shorter, sharper rut than the western mule deer — and in states with long stretches of busy rural roads. Separate insurance claim data from State Farm, which is widely cited in academic research, shows a driver out minding her own business on the winding, bending roads of West Virginia had a 1 in 35 chance of hitting an animal between June 2021 and June 2022, making the Mountain State easily the most dangerous in terms of deer-car collisions. Montana and Michigan were next. D.C. drivers, by contrast, had only a 1 in 907 chance of stopping a buck while driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, or anywhere else.

People are building artificial beaver dams in drought-stricken Montana - In southwest Montana, landowners, volunteers, and others are wading into streams and piling up sticks, branches, and sod to create artificial beaver dams. “And it’s immensely satisfying because if you’re working in the spring, you build these structures and you just see the water back up right away,” says Pedro Marques of the Big Hole Watershed Committee. He says beavers were once common in the region, and the dams they built slowed water and allowed it to soak into the soil, so the area was marshier. But fur trappers decimated the beaver population. And with fewer beaver dams, snow melt that trickled slowly into rivers and streams started flowing more quickly downstream. And climate change is making the problem worse. As temperatures rise, more precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow. So instead of melting slowly throughout the spring and summer, the water now rushes into streams, draining out of the area quickly. The structures Marques’s team is building mimic beaver dams. They slow the water down, so it seeps into the soil and helps provide moisture over time. Marques hopes the new dams will attract real beavers. “Eventually the beaver will find that place and take over what we’ve started,” he says. “That’s really the end goal.”

Why the snowfall in Colorado Rockies isn’t likely to alleviate the drought – l A string of winter storms that brought heavier than average snow and rain across the west increased snowpack in the Western Rockies to 146 percent of average, a gain that holds the potential to boost reservoir levels in the coming months. Despite the extra snowpack, experts say it’s too early to tell what things will look like in the spring, and that much more steady precipitation is needed to make any significant dents in the dwindling water supply of the Colorado River. Over the past couple decades, a mega-drought in the Western United States has slowly dried up the region and significantly reduced the river’s levels, threatening the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. These reservoirs are fed by the Colorado River, which relies in large part on melting snowpack from the Colorado Rockies. Lake Powell captures water that falls in the Upper Colorado River Basin, while Lake Mead is fed by releases of Powell. Current snowpack in the Upper region is at 153 percent of average, while across Colorado, snowpack sits at 130 percent of its usual amount. So, when it comes to winter storms “the more the merrier,” said Adrian Harpold, an associate professor of mountain ecohydrology at the University of Nevada, Reno. “We need all the snowpack we can get,” Harpold said. “Snow is what, really, our whole water infrastructure in the Rocky Mountains is based on.” Essentially, the snowpacks serve as water banks for drier seasons. However, climate change brings the threat of warmer weather and earlier springs, which could derail the benefits of more snowpack. Warmer weather earlier means less snow could fall in the winter months, and snowpack could melt and evaporate faster. Snowpack in the region typically doesn’t reach its peak until April, leaving much unknown about what the pack will look like this spring.

California Drought Eases As Reservoir Levels Rise And Snowpack Booms - California has experienced water shortages in recent years due to a combination of factors, including drought and increased demand. A parade of storms has eased a historic water crisis, replenishing reservoirs and increasing snowpack. The latest data from the official website of the State of California shows 97% of major reservoir levels are at normal levels for this time of year. This is great news following last summer when reservoir levels were dangerously low. Here's a map of the major reservoirs. Most are at average levels, except for a few. Nearly a month of storms has also boosted the state's vital snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. State data shows statewide snowpack levels are 126% above average levels for this time of year. We recently pointed out snowpack levels were at their highest in four decades. Only a small portion of California remained in extreme drought. The heavy rains and snow have eased drought conditions. The storms were part of a moisture conveyor belt over the Pacific Ocean called atmospheric rivers. This resulted in one of the wettest California winters on record. Much of California's water comes from reservoirs and snowpacks. The deluge of storms has prevented the price of water trading on the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index from topping new highs. The contract currently trades at $1,020 an acre-foot, about 20% lower from the top of $1,282 recorded in September of last year.

Florida orange growers struggle to keep juice on tables after 'unprecedented setbacks' squeeze industry - Florida orange farmers are suffering devastating supply and labor issues as the juicy fruit’s retail price is expected to squeeze consumers throughout this year. "Break-even would be the optimum at this point. The whole industry, it's experienced unprecedented setbacks," Beck Brothers Citrus President Glenn Beck told FOX Business’ Ashley Webster on Thursday. "So we're just trying to survive now just for the hope of a better day." Florida’s orange production is projected to hit historic lows in 2023, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicting 18 million boxes to enter the retail market, the lowest orange supply to come out of the Sunshine State since 1937. That’s an estimated 56% drop in Florida’s orange exports year-over-year, while peak orange production sits at 244 million boxes. Due to a combined impact from a crop freeze, Hurricane Ian damage and a citrus "greening disease" that can sap the life out of trees in droves, Beck said many Florida growers were forced to downsize operations or close their doors altogether. "Many don't get past it," Beck noted. "Those without the resources to combat all of these problems, unfortunately, they go out of business." With less labor and producers creating a lower supply of oranges, the fruit’s retail price has surged. A spokesperson for the USDA told FOX Business last week that the crop in Florida this year is smaller than California for the first time in decades due to the weather conditions and hurricanes. "The industry is really, really struggling hard to keep orange juice on the table," commodities analyst Judy Ganes said. The Wall Street Journal reported that prices for a gallon of orange juice in some areas is already above $6. At one point, Florida produced 90% of all domestic orange juice, but that number now floats closer to 50% as farms from Mexico and Brazil step in to help.

Biden restores protections for Tongass forest after Trump-era rollback -The U.S. Forest Service has finalized a rule restoring protections rolled back under the Trump administration for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the largest such forest in the U.S. “As our nation’s largest national forest and the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, the Tongass National Forest is key to conserving biodiversity and addressing the climate crisis,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “Restoring roadless protections listens to the voices of Tribal Nations and the people of Southeast Alaska while recognizing the importance of fishing and tourism to the region’s economy,” he added. In early 2001 the outgoing Clinton administration added most of the forest to its Roadless Initiative, barring road development or timber harvesting in the protected areas. The forest has been of particular concern to environmentalists due to its status as the country’s biggest carbon sink, or absorber of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. “The Tongass stores about 20 percent of the total amount of carbon that’s stored in the National Forest System,” Kate Glover, an attorney for the organization Earthjustice, told The Hill. “So that’s a large amount of carbon. It’s equal to about one and a half times U.S. total greenhouse gas emissions for the year 2018.” Since the implementation of the initial Clinton rule, it has repeatedly been rolled back and restored, usually on a partisan basis, in addition to ongoing litigation. Despite the Trump-era rollback, much of the forest loss began earlier, with about 88,000 acres transferred out of the forest to the Sealaska Corporation and the Alaska Mental Health Trust beginning in 2015. Since then, lands subject to ownership transfers have accounted for about 43 percent of forest loss between 2015 and 2020. In July 2021, the Biden administration announced it would restore and expand protections wound back by the Trump administration, including an end to large-scale sales of timber from old-growth trees in the forest. Ultimately, however, Glover said it’s difficult to avoid a scenario where the protections continue to seesaw based on the party in power without passing legislation through Congress. She specifically pointed to the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which passed the House last August but never received a Senate vote. “It’s been something that’s been considered in Congress for a while and if they were to pass that bill, it would include the Tongass and make the roadless rule protections law. So they would be harder to change,” she said.

Forest-saving plan takes a violent turn in Georgia - A long-brewing plan to save 3,500 acres of forest outside Atlanta has suddenly become entangled in the national debate over police conduct after an environmental activist was killed on part of the property that’s been selected for a police training center. The activist who was part of a group that’s been occupying the site was fatally shot by police. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the protester fired first, injuring a Georgia state trooper who required hospitalization. There’s no body camera footage of the incident, according to the bureau, which is looking into what happened. The 85 acres that Atlanta wants to use for its training site is part of 3,500 acres of woodland that several groups say will preserve forests in a metropolitan area known for its greenery but has in fact been losing it. A spokesman for the Nature Conservancy’s Atlanta office, which has been spearheading the broader forest preservation effort, said the group “unequivocally condemns the violence” at the site, a parcel that used to house a prison farm. The Nature Conservancy added in a statement: “The footprint of the proposed training facility counts for a little over two percent of the South River Forest. We have a vision for the entire 3,500 acres which will serve a long underserved community not just with new, maintained greenspaces, but with increased environmental resilience.” The situation escalated dramatically last week, when police arrived to clear out activists who’ve been occupying the forest for months. On Wednesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said a 26-year-old activist didn’t comply with a request to come out of a tent and shot at police, who shot back, killing the protester. Activists have said the protester was nonbinary and went by the name Tortuguita.

Texas, industry groups challenge WOTUS changes - The state of Texas and industry groups are challenging the legality of recent changes the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers made in the definition of Waters of the US (WOTUS). Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and a coalition of 17 industry groups led by the American Farm Bureau Federation filed separate lawsuits against EPA and the corps on 18 January in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas asking the court to vacate the recently finalized WOTUS changes. Both lawsuits claim the changes expand the agencies' authority beyond what Congress intended. The lawsuits are the latest action in prolonged deliberations over what bodies of water are subject to federal oversight. Attempts by the administrations of former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump ended up being challenged and blocked by the courts. On 30 December 2022, EPA and the corps announced they had finalized a rule that establishes a "durable" definition of WOTUS, restoring water protections that were in place under the Clean Water Act prior to 2015. The rule was published in the Federal Register on 18 January, opening a 60-day period for opponents to file lawsuits, and is scheduled to be effective as of 20 March. Among the points of contention for opponents to the rule changes is the new definition of interstate waters, which EPA and the corps have defined as "all rivers, lakes, and other waters that flow across, or form a part of, state boundaries," including wetlands. The rule "allows for cascading expansion of federal authority from these non-navigable 'interstate waters' by lumping even a minor water feature (like a ditch, ephemeral stream, pond, or isolated wetland) that crosses state lines in with traditional waters," Texas said. That is a violation of the authority Congress gave the agencies in the Clean Water Act, which gives the federal government jurisdiction over "navigable waters," the lawsuit claims. Texas also said the recent changes to WOTUS do not consider whether interstate water supports commerce and intrude on individual states' sovereignty. The industry groups made similar claims in their lawsuit. And both Texas and the industry groups said EPA and the corps acted in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner that violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

Large tornado rips through the southeastern Houston area, leaving significant damage, Texas - -Severe storms hit Texas, U.S. on Tuesday afternoon LT, January 24, 2023, causing widespread damage and leaving more than 100 000 homes without power. The NWS Storm Prediction Center received reports of 10 tornadoes by midnight UTC on January 25, with 7 of them happening in Texas and 3 in Louisiana. Damaging winds and a few tornadoes remain possible across the upper Texas Coast, and extending eastward tonight across coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the western Florida Panhandle. A developing storm across the western Gulf coast on Tuesday afternoon will be pushing northeastward tonight into the Lower Mississippi Valley, through the Ohio Valley and Lower Lakes on Wednesday, January 25, and into the Northeast by early Thursday. This storm is set to have significant impacts across a large portion of the nation from the Gulf coast into the Northeast. The damage caused by the tornadoes in Texas was widespread, with reports of downed power lines, visible roof damage to commercial and residential buildings, overturned 18-wheelers and crashed vehicles, partially collapsed buildings, and “catastrophic” damage to homes. Several areas in Houston were particularly hard-hit, including Katy, Jersey Village, Pasadena, Pearland, north central Chambers County, and southeastern Liberty County. One of the most devastating tornadoes touched down in Pasadena, Deer Park, and Baytown, causing extensive damage to power lines and property. The twister formed near the major southern Houston traffic artery, proceeding to blast eastward, throwing cars around and damaging street posts.1 63 residents were rescued from the San Jacinto Manor nursing home in Deer Park, which was destroyed by the tornado. The chief executive officer of the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council reported that only one patient suffered injuries, and needed to be taken to a local hospital. In some neighborhoods, homes were completely taken off the slab. Pasadena officials reported being “inundated” with 9-1-1 calls and asked people to be judicious when calling emergency responders. Fire Chief Lanny Armstrong said his department responded to 60 calls since 14:00 CST (20:00 UTC). Officials said they were responding to gas leaks, building collapses, and downed power lines. One official described the damage as “just catastrophic.”

Snow and ice storm hits Northeast U.S., leaving more than 90 000 homes without power - Tens of thousands of customers across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Main were left without power on Monday morning, January 23, 2023, as a major winter storm brought strong winds, heavy snow and ice to parts of New England. As of 17:40 UTC on January 23, Massachusetts had more than 10 300 customers without power, down from more than 45 000 earlier in the day. Most of the outages were centered in Franklin, Worcester, and Middlesex counties. New Hampshire had 36 000 customers without power and Maine 24 500. Traffic is difficult across the region and many schools and offices have announced closures until conditions improve. The weather pattern across the central and eastern United States will be active over the next few days, with two well-organized low-pressure systems making headlines, NWS forecaster Snell noted.1 The first is the ongoing coastal low-pressure that will continue to bring widespread rain from the Mid-Atlantic Coast to southern New England on Monday. It will also bring moderate to heavy snow from Upstate New York to central Maine, where 15 – 30 cm (6-12 inches) of snow could accumulate by Monday night. Winter storm warnings are in effect for these areas. It will also be windy, particularly near the coastal areas, due to the strong pressure gradient that will be in place.

Tropical Cyclone “Cheneso” rapidly intensifies after leaving a trail of death and destruction in Madagascar - Tropical Cyclone “Cheneso” rapidly intensified after spending 5 days over Madagascar, bringing death and destruction. The system is expected to further intensify as it moves near the SW coast of the country over the next few days, bringing more heavy rainfall. Parts of northern Madagascar have already received more than 1 000 mm (40 inches) of rain. Cheneso formed around 12:00 UTC on January 18, 2023, as the fourth named storm of the 2022/23 Southwest Indian Ocean cyclone season and made landfall around 07:45 UTC (10:45 LT) on January 19, north of the city of Antalaha in northern Madagascar with maximum sustained winds of 90 km/h (55 mph) and gusts up to 120 km/h (75 mph). This is the first tropical cyclone of the season to make landfall in Madagascar. The cyclone dropped heavy rains as it slowly moved over the country and exited into the Mozambique Channel, off the southwest coast of Madagascar on January 24. It then rapidly intensified, quickly surpassing its landfall intensity. According to the National Bureau of Risk and Disaster Management (BNGRC), 7 people have died and 13 others are missing, as of January 25. Approximately 14 400 individuals have been temporarily displaced to 55 accommodation sites, while up to 35 000 people have been affected. Widespread damage has been reported to nearly 10 570 houses, and about 100 classrooms, disrupting access to education for a number of students. Several northern and central Madagascar communities have been isolated, as roads have been damaged by floods or landslides. tropical cyclone cheneso jtwc fcst 15z january 25 2023 At 01:00 UTC on January 25, the center of Tropical Cyclone “Cheneso” was located on the Mozambique Channel, about 135 km (84 miles) west of coastal Morondava City in Menabe Region, central-western Madagascar. At 15:00 UTC, its maximum sustained winds were 130 km/h (80 mph), with gusts to 160 km/h (100 mph). Over the next three days, Cheneso is expected to continue intensifying, while moving south over the Mozambique Channel, not far from the Malagasy coast. The storm is expected to peak as a major cyclone with maximum sustained winds of over 185 km/h (115 mph) on January 27 as it gradually curves southeastwards. Rainfall still remains an enormous threat with this storm, with another 500 mm (20 inches) possible in some areas, and 250 mm (10 inches) further north, where it’s believed that over 1 000 mm (40 inches) have already fallen.

Africa’s food crisis is the biggest yet – five reasons why - In October, Nadifa Abdi Isak brought her malnourished daughters to hospital in Mogadishu. That day, a nurse said, 42 other children had already been checked into the emergency unit, ravaged by hunger. There were 57 the day before that.Staff at the Benadir maternity and paediatric hospital said admissions of malnourished children have more than doubled their patient numbers over the past year. They are now treating over 1,000 emergency cases each month.Half a million children’s lives are at risk from a looming famine in Somalia, according to the United Nations – that’s more than in any country worldwide this century.Across Africa, from east to west, people are experiencing a food crisis that is bigger and more complex than the continent has ever seen, say diplomats and humanitarian workers.One in five Africans – a record 278 million people – were already facing hunger in 2021, according to data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It says the situation has worsened. The number of East Africans experiencing acute food insecurity – when a lack of food puts lives or livelihoods in immediate danger – has spiked by 60% in just the last year, and by nearly 40% in West Africa, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).Conflict and climate change are the long-term causes. Heavy debt burdens following the COVID-19 pandemic, rising prices and war in Ukraine have made things much worse as European aid has been sucked away, data and testimony from more than a dozen experts, donors, diplomats, medical staff and men and women in farms and marketplaces across nearly a dozen countries in Africa and beyond shows.East Africa has missed four consecutive rainy seasons, the worst drought in 40 years, Michael Dunford, the WFP’s East Africa director said. “The situation has never been as bad from a regional perspective as it is today,” he told Reuters.African countries account for only around 3% of the global emissions responsible for climate change, but suffer more than any other region from its impact. On the other side of the continent, parts of West Africa have been hit by flooding after the most intense rainfall in 30 years. By mid-October, 5 million people and 1 million hectares of farmland were affected, according to the WFP.In Chad, over 19,000 head of livestock were swept away after rivers broke their banks, and in neighbouring Nigeria, flooding has hit 29 of the 36 states. “You have drought in some places, then you have floods in some places,” he said. “That is a real shift.” War forces civilians from their homes, livelihoods, farms and food sources. It also makes it dangerous to deliver assistance. The number of displaced people in Africa has tripled over the past decade to a record 36 million in 2022, according to U.N. data. That represents almost half the displaced people in the world. Most were displaced internally within their own countries by conflict.Whenever Isak had food, her youngest children were given top priority.“The children were getting weaker for months,” she said. She and other mothers say malnourished children swell up and their skin thins. They bruise easily.Just a week after the family arrived in Mogadishu in June, two of Isak’s daughters - 6-year-old Muna and 7-year-old Hamdi - fell ill one after another.They were weak and ran fevers, their legs bowed and limbs swelled. They began to cough and struggled to breathe.People who don’t get enough minerals or vitamins can develop iron-deficiency anaemia, which means they do not have enough healthy red blood cells to carry oxygen to tissues throughout the body. So as children starve, their bodies slowly suffocate.

FAO: Rising prices, food insecurity add to ranks of hungry - (AP) — Growing numbers of people in Asia lack enough to eat as food insecurity rises with higher prices and worsening poverty, according to a report released Tuesday by the Food and Agricultural Organization and other United Nations agencies.Nearly a half-billion people, more than eight in 10 of them in South Asia, were undernourished in 2021 and more than 1 billion faced moderate to severe food insecurity, the report said. For the world, the prevalence of food insecurity rose to more than 29% in 2021 from 21% in 2014.The COVID-19 pandemic was a huge setback, causing mass job losses and disruptions, and the war in Ukraine has pushed up prices for food, energy and fertilizer, putting an adequate diet out of the reach of many millions, it said.The report is the fifth annual stocktaking on food insecurity and hunger by U.N. agencies including the FAO, UNICEF, World Health Organization and World Food Program.Over those years, progress toward alleviating hunger and malnutrition has stalled and then backslid as growing numbers of people lost the wherewithal to get enough to eat. The prevalence of undernourishment as measured by the U.N. agencies was 9.1% in 2021, better than the 14.3% in 2000 but up slightly from 2020. Such figures show that “the slowdown in the fight against hunger continues,” said the report, which also highlights the growing food insecurity faced by people who have moved into cities, where they have less easy access to affordable food. “Reforming our agrifood systems to produce nutritious food and ensure equitable access to healthy diets is critical,” it said.The FAO’s Food Price Index has risen in the past several years, hitting a record in March 2022. It fell back as commodity prices declined somewhat later in the year but is still 28% above the 2020 level.The Asia-Pacific region imports nearly $2 trillion of food a year. Rising prices for basics like rice, wheat and oil hit the poor the hardest.It’s part of what the U.N. agencies call the “5F” crisis of not enough food, feed, fertilizer, fuel and financing. The conflict in Ukraine has dealt a heavy blow in many countries that depended on the region for wheat, edible oils and fertilizers.

UN food agency: Afghan malnutrition rates at record high - (AP) — Malnutrition rates in Afghanistan are at record highs with half the country enduring severe hunger throughout the year, a spokesman for the World Food Program said Thursday. The Taliban takeover in August 2021 drove millions into poverty and hunger after foreign aid stopped almost overnight. Sanctions on Taliban rulers, a halt on bank transfers and frozen billions in Afghanistan’s currency reserves restricted access to global institutions and the outside money that supported the country’s aid-dependent economy before the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces. “Half of Afghanistan endures severe hunger throughout the year, regardless of the season, and malnutrition rates are at a record high for Afghanistan,” said Phillipe Kropf, a spokesman for the U.N. food agency in Kabul. “There are seven million children (under the age of 5) and mothers who are malnourished, in a country with a population of 40 million.”

Why Pakistan Is Facing a Growing Food Crisis - As the country still reels from the devastating floods that hit over the summer, which government officials estimate damaged more than 80% of the country’s crops, it’s also contending with economic uncertainty that has left food and medicine lingering in ports. The State Bank of Pakistan says that their foreign exchange reserves have fallen to a critical level of $4.3 billion—barely enough for three weeks of imports. Pakistan’s economic crisis is twofold, says Uzair Younus, Director of the Atlantic Council’s Pakistan Initiative. Even before last year’s floods, food inflation was already high, especially in rural areas, and many struggled to keep up with the rise in prices. Before former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party came to power in 2018, the government borrowed heavily in dollars to fund growth, keeping an overvalued exchange rate. By 2018, the policy of using an overvalued exchange rate could not continue because the country’s foreign exchange reserves were sharply down. Khan’s party was forced to turn to the IMF in 2019 for a $6 billion economic bailout. The IMF program was suspended in March 2020 due to the arrival of COVID-19, and has undergone many starts and stops since then, as Younus says the government failed to meet some of the IMF’s demands. In an effort to stretch dollars, imports are being held at the ports, impacting everything from food to medicine. “Containers of onions are stuck at port because the payments are not being cleared by the bank, so onion prices are now soaring,” says Younus. “In a country of 230 million on the verge of default, shortages are bound to pop up across the supply chain, especially for imported food and medicine.” The country’s Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination issued a warning that the country could soon face a shortage of life-saving drugs in the new future, as local banks are refraining from opening letters of credit for the import of medicines’ raw material.

Economic Growth is killing the Planet. How do we Engineer an Alternative? - – In 1972, the Club of Rome released a report calledThe Limits to Growth that laid out the damage to the planet and to human beings of unrestrained increases in economic production and population. It was a straightforward extrapolation from then-current trends that took into account limited resources like water, fertile soil, and fossil fuels.That same year, the United Nations held its first environment conference, which led to the creation of the UN Environment Program. Climate change was barely on the conference agenda, but it would increasingly focus the attention of scientists and policymakers over the next two decades with the introduction of the term “global warming” in 1975, the Montreal Protocol in 1987 that restricted ozone-destroying chemicals, and the creation in 1988 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For half a century, in other words, the international community has issued warnings about the linked hazards of economic growth and climate change. Despite these warnings across five decades, very little has been done to engineer an alternate to unrestrained growth that can safeguard the planet and yet still secure a measure of prosperity fall all humans. Current doomsday scenarios of a future dominated by environmental disasters and economic deprivation are not the result of “sudden panicking,” points out Vedran Horvat, the director of the Institute for Political Ecology in Croatia and a panelist at a recent Global Just Transition seminar on post-growth alternatives. “We had 50 years to realize what the Club of Rome said in the 1970s. Already at that time we knew there were limits and boundaries to our growth and that the planet does not have unlimited resources. Already we are too late. But I don’t see that as a reason not to act. Now it’s a question of how we act.”“For the last 14 years, we’ve talked about green transition,” observes Simon Michaux, an associate professor of geo-metallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland. “But there’s been no feasibility study for macro-scale industrial reformation. We had some ideas, but we didn’t cost them out. We didn’t get to the point of determining what kind of power stations we would need, who would pay for them, and what kind of engineering we’d need to keep each one running. Here we are perhaps past peak oil, and we still don’t have a credible plan to phase out fossil fuels.”The lack of a plan and the urgency of the crisis are two major obstacles. A third challenge is the absence of consensus on how to move forward. “For the last two decades, those of us who are more and more worried about these conditions and the fact that things aren’t changing are aware of just how far we are going down the road we shouldn’t be going down,” says Susan Krumdieck, professor and chair in Energy Transition at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. “We’ve put on our superhero capes to fight. Unfortunately, we’re pulling in different directions.”One obvious difference in approach is between the richer countries of the Global North and the poorer countries of the Global South. “We’ve seen lots of initiatives like the Green New Deal in the United States which lack the perspective and participation of peripheral economies in the Global South,” notes Renata Nitta, a campaign strategist for Greenpeace International based in Brazil. “When you think of plans to decarbonize the economy and transition to electric vehicles, you have to ask where those raw materials come from. More than half of lithium resources, for instance, are based in Latin America in a very dry area where the mining takes a lot of energy and water and dispossesses traditional and indigenous communities.”

Can Elephants Save the Planet? - In findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Saint Louis University researchers and colleagues report that elephants play a key role in creating forests which store more atmospheric carbon and maintaining the biodiversity of forests in Africa. If the already critically endangered elephants become extinct, rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would lose between six and nine percent of their ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming. \"Elephants have been hunted by humans for millennia," Blake said. "As a result, African forest elephants are critically endangered. The argument that everybody loves elephants hasn't raised sufficient support to stop the killing. Shifting the argument for elephant conservation toward the role forest elephants play in maintaining the biodiversity of the forest, that losing elephants would mean losing forest biodiversity, hasn't worked either, as numbers continue to fall. We can now add the robust conclusion that if we lose forest elephants, we will be doing a global disservice to climate change mitigation. The importance of forest elephants for climate mitigation must be taken seriously by policy makers to generate the support needed for elephant conservation. The role of forest elephants in our global environment is too important to ignore." Within the forest, some trees have light wood (low carbon density trees) while others make heavy wood (high carbon density trees). Low carbon density trees grow quickly, rising above other plants and trees to get to the sunlight. Meanwhile, high carbon density trees grow slowly, needing less sunlight and able to grow in shade. Elephants and other megaherbivores affect the abundance of these trees by feeding more heavily on the low carbon density trees, which are more palatable and nutritious than the high carbon density species. This "thins" the forest, much like a forester would do to promote growth of their preferred species. This thinning reduces competition among trees and provides more light, space and soil nutrients to help the high carbon trees to flourish."Elephants eat lots of leaves from lots of trees, and they do a lot of damage when they eat," Blake said. "They'll strip leaves from trees, rip off a whole branch or uproot a sapling when eating, and our data shows most of this damage occurs to low carbon density trees. If there are a lot of high carbon density trees around, that's one less competitor, eliminated by the elephants."Elephants are also excellent dispersers of the seeds of high carbon density trees. These trees often produce large nutritious fruits which elephants eat. Those seeds pass through the elephants' gut undamaged and when released through dung, they are primed to germinate and grow into some of the largest trees in the forest.

Deadly flash flood hits popular scenic area on Yellow River in Henan, China - -At least 2 people died and 7 went missing on January 22, 2023, after a sudden flood swept away families celebrating the Lunar New Year on a beach downstream of the Sanmenxia dam on the Yellow River in Henan, China. The flood reportedly caused the water level in the river to rise by 1.8 meters (6 feet) in just six minutes, leaving little time for those affected to react. According to Red Star News, the tourists had gathered at a spot 1 – 2 km (0.6 to 1.2 miles) away from the scenic area and had ignored warning signs that read “Danger, deep water.” Eyewitnesses claim that someone had broken through a fence intended to keep people away from the river. A survivor named Qin Jialei told Red Star News that he walked to the middle of the river, about 1.5 km (0.9 miles) downstream from the Sanmenxia dam, at around 16:10 LT on Sunday, January 22. Five minutes later, the river started rising, surging around 1.8 m (6 feet) in just six minutes until Qin was completely submerged, according to the report. Qin said he then swam to a beach around 50 (164 feet) away. Despite reports that the sudden surge of water came from the nearby dam, officials have denied these claims. An official from the Sanmenxia municipal government stated that investigations are still underway to determine the cause of the sudden rise in water levels. However, a source close to the incident has suggested that responsibility for the tragedy likely rests with both the municipal government and the Yellow River Conservancy Commission under the water resources ministry in Beijing. The Sanmenxia Hydropower Station, located a few kilometers upstream of the incident, is both owned and controlled by the committee. Local officials have denied releasing water from the dam but acknowledged that some overflow of water is a part of “normal operations” ordered on a daily basis by the provincial authorities. Six of those rescued have been discharged from the hospital, while two are in stable condition.

Worst winter in a decade claims lives of more than 150 people and 70 000 livestock, Afghanistan - At least 157 people have died in Afghanistan’s harsh winter as of January 24, 2023, with the death toll doubling in less than a week. Officials are describing this winter as the worst in a decade. The country is suffering one of its coldest winters, with temperatures plummeting to as low as -28 °C (-18 °F) in early January – far below the nationwide average of between 0 and 5 °C (23 – 41 °F) for this time of year. In addition, around 70 000 livestock have frozen to death across the country. “Most of the people who lost their lives to the cold were shepherds or people living in rural areas. They didn’t have access to healthcare,” Acting Minister of Disaster Management Mullah Mohammad Abbas Akhund told the BBC. “We’re concerned about those who are still living in the mountain regions. Most of the roads which pass through the mountains have been closed due to snow. Cars have got stuck there and passengers have died in the freezing temperatures.” Abbas Akhund said that many areas of Afghanistan are now completely cut off by snow, adding that military helicopters had been sent to the rescue, but they couldn’t land in the most mountainous regions. While warmer temperatures are expected over the next 10 days, the death toll is expected to continue rising.

La Niña shows signs of ending. Is El Niño next? - – The long reign of La Niña may soon be over. According to the latest outlook released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center, there’s an 82% chance that by springtime – sometime between March and May – La Niña will have faded away. In the spring, La Niña is most likely to be replaced by conditions meteorologists refer to as “ENSO neutral,” which is when neither La Niña nor El Niño is present. Looking further down the forecast into late summer and early fall and there are signs of something we haven’t seen in years: the return of El Niño. By the August through October timeframe, there’s about a 50% chance El Niño will take hold. Of course, that means there’s also about a 50% chance it won’t. NOAA issues an “El Niño watch” when El Niño is possible within the next six months, explained Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center, and so far, no watch has been issued. The team that monitors ENSO patterns is waiting a bit to see if the probabilities firm up, she said. “We really do want to see more metrics in support of it before saying El Niño is possible and that we should be alert to it,” L’Heureux said. “But with that said, those probabilities are not nothing. They’re certainly something to keep an eye on and we will.” Both La Niña and El Niño usually grow strongest in the winter. A strong El Niño winter, if it were to develop, would be the inverse of what we’ve seen the last three years and would likely mean a cold, wet winter for California and the Southern U.S. El Niño usually means a warm, dry winter for the Pacific Northwest and Midwest. In the near term, L’Heureux emphasized, La Niña is still with us. Its effect was apparent in the Climate Prediction Center’s forecast for February released on Thursday.

Temps in one of Earth's coldest corners hit a 1,000-year high - Some of the coldest parts of the Greenland ice sheet have hit their warmest levels in at least a millennium — and the amount of melting they’re experiencing has also probably hit a thousand-year high. The findings in a new study underscore a grim trend for the world’s second-largest ice sheet. Temperatures are steadily rising, the ice is gradually shrinking and the world’s frozen places are vulnerable to the steady march of climate change. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reconstructs 1,000 years of Greenland climate history using enormous ice cores carefully drilled out of the ice sheet. Greenland contains some of the world’s oldest ice, frozen in place for hundreds or thousands of years. The ice contains trapped air bubbles and other chemical signatures that offer clues about what the climate was like when the water froze. Scientists can compare older ice with layers of newer ice to determine how the region’s climate has changed over time. For this study, the researchers drilled in north-central Greenland — one of the ice sheet’s coldest and highest-elevation regions. The ice cores contain information extending all the way up to 2011 and 2012 when they were extracted from the ice sheet. They suggest that temperatures between 2001 and 2011 were around 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the 20th-century average. And they were “exceptional” for the entire 1,000-year study period. Under the Paris climate agreement, nations are striving to keep global warming well below 2 C and below 1.5 C if at all possible. These are global targets, referring to temperatures averaged across the entire world — some places will warm faster and others slower. The new study indicates that one of the world’s coldest and iciest regions has already hit that threshold. And by the time the global average reaches 1.5 C — which could be within a decade or so — Greenland’s temperatures will likely soar even higher.

Rare outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) underway around the north pole - A rare outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) is in progress around the North Pole. During a typical Arctic winter, PSCs are only visible two or three times. Jónína Óskarsdóttir, a photographer based in Fáskrúðsfjörður, Iceland, was able to capture the display on camera today. She reports that the clouds have been visible for a couple of days and that Mt. Jökultindur was silhouetted by a sky full of nacreous color.1 Polar stratospheric clouds are a rare phenomenon as the stratosphere is typically very dry and cloud-free. According to NASA models, temperatures in the Arctic stratosphere have dropped to the range required for the formation of very rare Type II PSCs.Polar stratospheric clouds form in the stratosphere, which is the layer of the Earth’s atmosphere located above the troposphere, where weather occurs. The stratosphere is typically very dry, and normally there are no clouds at all. However, under certain conditions, PSCs can form. PSCs form when temperatures in the Arctic stratosphere drop to extremely low levels, typically around -85 °C (-121 °F). At these temperatures, water molecules can begin to come together and form tiny ice crystals. These ice crystals are then illuminated by high-altitude sunlight, creating intense iridescent colors.

Stratospheric temperature rise signals weakened polar vortex and Arctic air outbreaks in the northern hemisphere - The polar vortex, a large area of low pressure in the upper atmosphere that typically sits over the poles, is set to weaken as a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event unfolds in the northern hemisphere. This event has the potential to have a significant impact on winter weather, as it allows cold Arctic air to escape and cause outbreaks in Europe, Asia, Canada, and the United States. While it’s still too early to be sure of the exact outcome, weather models and temperature anomalies point towards a weakening of the polar vortex and the potential for cold air outbreaks in the northern hemisphere in the weeks ahead The temperatures in the stratosphere are already on the rise as a warming wave develops, as seen in the image below by NOAA/CPC. The current forecast calls for a strong incoming event that could raise the stratospheric temperatures to record high levels for this time of year. ncep gfs temperature at 10hPa for 2022-2023 january 21 2023 The red line represents the analysis, showing the stratospheric temperature increase since early January, after hitting record-cold temperatures in the middle stratosphere. The green lines, in the black box, represent the forecast, showing a stronger incoming event that could raise the stratospheric temperatures to record high levels for this time of year. Credit: NOAA/CPC As seen in the temperature anomalies in the stratosphere, they have been colder than normal for most of the season so far. However, the forecast shows a direct opposite pattern, with strong warm anomalies incoming. The ECMWF model shows warm anomalies taking over the stratospheric polar regions in the first days of February. While the polar vortex will be severely weakened and disrupted, it will still be present. The location of cold air outbreaks may depend on where the polar vortex splits or displaces, as well as other factors such as El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), that are influencing the weather at the time. A minor SSW, which is looking likely, is generally less likely to impact surface weather patterns than a major SSW. A minor SSW will likely cause a displacement of the stratospheric polar vortex over the next couple of weeks, with the polar vortex modeled to be displaced towards northern Europe. A major SSW can still occur after one or two minor warmings that weaken the polar vortex prior, and there is some support from ensembles for this to occur. Though most recent model runs suggest only 20-30% chance of a major SSW with zonal mean zonal winds at 10 hPa 60N reaching 0 m/s. While every SSW event is different, around 66% of them lead to colder conditions.

Extreme cold hits China’s Heilongjiang province: Moha drops to -53.0 °C (-63.4 °F) — The minimum temperature at Jingtao automated weather station in the town of Amur, Mohe City in Heilongjiang Province, China fell to -53.0°C (-63.4°F) on January 22, 2023, marking the lowest temperate ever recorded in the province and the lowest ever observed by the Chinese meteorological system (preliminary). China had a total of 18 weather stations recording temperatures of -50 °C (-58 °F) today, including two national weather stations and 16 automatic weather stations. Other notable temperatures include: Mohe -50.8 °C (-59.44 °F) Beijicun -50.3 °C (-58.54 °F) (new record, first -50 °C) Tulih – 49.1 °C (-56.38 °F) Huzhong – 48.9 °C (-56.02 °F) Xinlin -48.3 °C (-55.14 °F) (new record) Huma -47.6 °C (-57.68 °F) Tahe -47.1 °C (-53.78 °F) Genhe -45.6 °C (-49.08 °F) Automatic Weather Stations minimums: Jingtao -53.0 °C (-63.4 °F) Qianshao -51.4 °C (-60.52 °F) Mengwushiwei -51.1 °C (-60.02 °F) Shangkuli -50.9 °C (-59.62 °F) Moerdaoga -50.7 °C (-59.26 °F) Xinan -50.6 °C (-59.08 °F) In addition, out of the 7 times Mohe recorded ≤ -50 °C (-58 °F) temperatures, 3 occurred in the past three days, tying the record number of days (3) in 1969. While it is worth noting that these temperatures are considered to be extreme and are not commonly encountered in the region, on February 1, 2021, an official weather station in Mohe city recorded -49.7 °C (-57.45 °F). Average winter temperatures in Heilongjiang province are between -30 and -15 °C (-22 and 5 °F).

Brutal cold weather impacting Japan with remarkable sea-effect snow, extremely strong winds and temperatures seen once in 10 years expected - (video) Brutal cold weather is impacting Japan on Tuesday, January 24, 2023, bringing remarkable sea-effect snow. Recorded strong winds and temperatures seen only once in 10 years are expected on January 25. The weather is causing flights to be canceled and traffic disruptions due to frozen roads. As the strong winter patterns are expected to take hold through Thursday, some parts of the country could see their lowest temperatures in a decade, leading to a possibility of snowfall in Tokyo and Osaka, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. From the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido to the southwestern Kyushu region, cities are forecast to see subzero temperatures Wednesday morning, raising fears of frozen water pipes and icy road surfaces. JMA has said temperatures are expected to drop significantly to levels seen only once in 10 years. The cold weather is also causing travel disruptions, with Japan Airlines Co. and All Nippon Airways Co. canceling more than 200 flights on Tuesday, impacting more than 8 000 people, with some cancellations also slated for Wednesday. Additionally, the Sanyo Shinkansen suspended service between Shin-Osaka and Okayama on Tuesday night due to a snow-related technical problem and the Yamagata Shinkansen plans to suspend service between Fukushima and Shinjo on Wednesday.In Kami Nagata, Maniwa City, a remarkable 41 cm (16.14 inches) of snowfall was observed during the six hours until 19:00 LT on January 24, according to the JMA. In just six hours to 20:00 LT, 31 cm (12.2 inches) of snow was observed in Tsuyama and 28 cm (11 inches) in Imaoka, Mimasaka City. JMA said strong snow is expected to continue into the morning of January 25. In the Tsuyama, Katsuhide, and Maniwa areas, there is a growing risk of serious traffic disruptions due to heavy snowfall. The cold weather event is expected to continue throughout the week, with the Hokuriku region in central Japan seeing up to 90 cm (35.4 inches) of snowfall in the 24 hours through 18:00 LT on Wednesday, while the Tohoku region in the northeast could see up to 80 cm (31.5 inches) of snow. Up to 70 cm (27.6 inches) of snow is expected in the Kanto-Koshin region of eastern and central Japan, and the Kinki and Chugoku regions in western Japan, the agency said. Winds could reach up to 126 km/h (78.3 mph) in areas across the country, it said.

Decades-long growing rift in Brunt Ice Shelf finally breaks, creating new iceberg, Antarctica - On January 22, 2023, a massive rift on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica finally gave way, resulting in the formation of a new iceberg measuring 1 550 km2 (~600 mi2). The U.S. National Ice Center has named it Iceberg A-81. The rift, spanning most of the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, appeared ready to spawn an iceberg in 2019, posing an uncertain future for scientific infrastructure and a human presence on the shelf that was first established in 1955 by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Known as Chasm 1, this rift had been growing for decades. It began to grow in the 1970s, went dormant for a period, and then resumed growth in 2012. In early 2019, it was extending by as much as 4 km (2.5 miles) per year. However, even this growth spurt slowed down until the Antarctic summer of 2022-2023, when the chasm accelerated and broke past the McDonald Ice Rumples, a submerged knob of bedrock that had been holding this part of the shelf in place. The breaking of icebergs from ice shelves is a natural process, but the timing and size of this event has raised some questions among scientists. The BAS’s Halley Research Station, which is located on the shelf and studies Earth, atmospheric, and space weather processes, was relocated farther inland in 2016 as the chasm widened. Fortunately, it was not affected by the recent break. The breaking (calving) of icebergs from ice shelves is part of a natural, cyclical process of growth and decay at the limits of Earth’s ice sheets.1 As glacial ice flows from land and spreads out over the sea, shelf areas farthest from shore grow thinner. These areas are stressed by storms and tides and thin as they are melted from above or below, ultimately making them more prone to forming rifts and breaking away.

Giant iceberg breaks off from Antarctica. Aerial view is ‘spectacular’ - There’s a new iceberg off the coast of Antarctica. The yet-to-be-named, 600-square-mile iceberg broke away from the nearly 500-foot-thick Brunt Ice Shelf on Sunday during a particularly high tide known as a spring tide, according to a news release issued by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). The calving event is “part of the natural behaviour of the Brunt Ice Shelf” and “not linked to climate change,” BAS glaciologist Dominic Hodgson said in the news release.Satellite imagery captured the break, which occurred about 10 years after satellite monitoring detected growth in a previously dormant crack in the ice known as Chasm-1, and almost two years after a slightly smaller iceberg named A74 separated from the same ice shelf. A chasm is a crack in the ice shelf that extends all the way from the surface to the ocean underneath, while an ice shelf is a floating piece of ice that extends from glaciers formed on land.Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote in an email that while the iceberg “is a huge mass of ice, about 500 billion tons … it is far from being the largest iceberg ever seen, which rivaled Long Island.”The calving event is not expected to affect the BAS’s Halley Research Station, which was relocated further inland in 2016 as a precaution after Chasm-1 began to grow.

When scientists tagged a curious seal, he led them to signs of a potential climate disaster - This is a story about a curious seal, a wayward robot and a gigantic climate change disaster that may be waiting to happen. Scientists tagged a southern elephant seal on the island of Kerguelen, an extraordinarily remote spot in the far southern Indian Ocean, in 2011. The seal was a male close to 11 feet long weighing nearly 1,800 pounds, and they fitted his head with an ocean sensor, a device that these massive seals barely notice but that have proved vital to scientific research. Elephant seals like this one swim more than 1,500 miles south from Kerguelen to Antarctica, where they often forage on the seafloor, diving to depths that can exceed a mile below the surface. As summer in the Southern Hemisphere peaked, the seal made a standard Antarctic journey, but then went in an unusual direction.In March 2011, he appeared just offshore from a vast oceanfront glacier called Denman, where elephant seals are not generally known to go. He dived into a deep trough in the ocean bed, roughly half a mile below the surface. And that is when something striking happened: He provided an early bit of evidence that Denman Glacier could be a major threat to global coastlines.The seal swam through unusually warm water, just below the freezing point, but in the Antarctic, that is warm. Given its salt content and the extreme depths and pressures involved — in some regions Denman Glacier rests on a seafloor that is over a mile deep — such warm water can destroy large amounts of ice. And it certainly could have been doing so at Denman.A striking discovery came in 2019. Using satellite data and other techniques, scientists published a new elevation map of all the crushed-down land beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. And it showed that beneath Denman lay the deepest point of them all, about the depth of two Grand Canyons, or two miles below sea level. If water, rather than ice, were to someday fill this valley, Denman Glacier could raise global sea levels by nearly 5 feet.Almost simultaneously, scientists reported something else: Denman was reeling. The region of its “grounding line,” where the glacier touches both the seafloor and the ocean, had retreated backward more than three miles toward the center of Antarctica since 1996, bringing the sea to the edge of the newly discovered canyon.It was in this context that researchers now unearthed the nine-year-old measurements from the seal. “We dug out these data because we wanted to find out if warm water can indeed reach this glacier,” “The answer seemed to be yes.” But while the seal sensor proved the presence of warm water, it did not reveal how much of it might be hitting the glacier. […] But a scientific vessel in the region deployed their research tools called Argo floats. These clever robots dive to great depths, taking temperature and other readings periodically, and then surface again as long as there is not any ice above them. Then they radio the data back to the humans who are anxiously awaiting it.But not unlike that seal a decade earlier, one of the floats wound up in an unexpected place. It was carried off course by currents but, eight months later, fortuitously surfaced in front of Denman Glacier. It appeared “in a region we really wanted to sample, but is very difficult to sample with ships, it is often covered with quite heavy sea ice,” said Van Wijk. “So for us it is a case of getting very lucky.”The robot was a little more thorough in its explorations than the seal. It also measured water that was even warmer at very, very close to zero degrees Celsius. Thanks to these measurements, the scientists were able to determine just how much of this warm water is flowing toward Denman Glacier. It was massive.There are “about eight Mississippi Rivers going into the cavity,” according to Rintoul. The scientists calculated, in a paper recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, that with this volume of water and its temperature, there is the potential to melt 71 billion tons of ice from the underside of Denman Glacier, where its “ice tongue” floats out over the ocean, every year.

Slow slip events underway on Hikurangi subduction zone in New Zealand, releasing energy equivalent to M7 earthquake - Another slow-motion earthquake, or “slow slip event,” is now underway on the Hikurangi subduction plate boundary offshore the North Island’s east coast. The amount of slow slip movement during the last month has released energy equivalent to a magnitude 7 earthquake. GeoNet’s sensors have detected slow slip earthquakes off the East Coast North Island and the Manawatu region over the past 30 days These slow slip events, also known as slow-motion earthquakes, unfold over weeks to months and cannot be felt by humans. However, they can be detected using GeoNet’s network of continuously operating GNSS stations that track millimeter-level changes in land movement on a daily basis GNSS stations along the southern coast of the Hawkes Bay area and north of Gisborne have shifted eastward by 1 – 2 cm (4 – 8 inches) since the start of the year, GeoNet reported on January 20, 2023.1 These subtle land movements indicate that another slow-motion earthquake, or “slow slip event,” is now underway on the Hikurangi subduction plate boundary offshore the North Island’s east coast. Scientists estimate that the amount of movement on the subduction zone during the current event is now up to 7 or 8 cm (2.7 – 3.1 inches) over the last couple of weeks.These events come several months after a large slow slip event offshore Hawkes Bay in 2022, which occurred on a portion of the fault sandwiched between where the latest events are occurring. In addition to the slow slip event, two small swarms of earthquakes have been observed in the region near Ruatōria and Tokomaru Bay, with magnitudes ranging from 1 to 3.5. These earthquakes are likely related to the slow slip event, as they occur due to changes in stress in the earth’s crust.

Seismic data reveals surprising pause in Earth’s inner core rotation and a shift in direction - According to a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the inner core of the Earth may have stopped rotating faster than the rest of the planet around 2009 and then turned in an opposite direction. The data hint that the inner core might even be in the process of shifting back towards subrotation. If so, something is probably happening to the magnetic and gravitational forces that drive the inner core’s rotation. Such changes might link the inner core to broader geophysical phenomena such as increases or decreases in the length of a day on Earth. The research, conducted by seismologists at Peking University in Beijing, analyzed seismic data from the early 1990s and found that all paths that previously showed significant temporal changes have exhibited little change over the past decade. This globally consistent pattern suggests that inner-core rotation has recently paused. The study also found that this recent pattern is associated with a gradual turning-back of the inner core as a part of an approximately seven-decade oscillation, with another turning point in the early 1970s. This multidecadal periodicity coincides with changes in several other geophysical observations, especially the length of day and magnetic field. These observations provide evidence for dynamic interactions between the Earth’s layers, from the deepest interior to the surface, potentially due to gravitational coupling and the exchange of angular momentum from the core and mantle to the surface. This discovery could help to shed light on the many mysteries of the deep Earth, including what part the inner core plays in maintaining the planet’s magnetic field and in affecting the speed of the whole planet’s rotation — and thus the length of a day. However, the study’s findings are just the latest installment in a long-running effort to explain the inner core’s unusual rotation, and may not be the final word on the matter.

Asteroid 2023 BU to fly past Earth at 0.03 LD on January 26 - fourth closest on record - A newly-discovered asteroid designated 2023 BU will fly past Earth at a distance of 0.026 LD / 0.00007 AU (9 877 km / 6 137 miles) from the center of our planet at 21:17 UTC (± 02:22) on January 26, 2023.This is the third <1LD asteroid to fly past Earth since the start of the year and the fourth closest on record.2023 BU was first observed at Margo observatory in Nauchnij, Russia on January 21 — 5 days before its close approach.The object belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids and has an estimated diameter between 3.7 and 8.2 m (12.1 – 26.9 feet). The green line indicates the object’s apparent motion relative to the Earth, and the bright green marks are the object’s location at approximately half-hour intervals. The Moon’s orbit is grey. The blue arrow points in the direction of Earth’s motion and the yellow arrow points toward the Sun. (animation)

Asteroid coming exceedingly close to Earth, but will miss -- (AP) — An asteroid the size of a delivery truck will whip past Earth on Thursday night, one of the closest such encounters ever recorded. NASA insists it will be a near miss with no chance of the asteroid hitting Earth. NASA said Wednesday that this newly discovered asteroid will zoom 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometers) above the southern tip of South America. That’s 10 times closer than the bevy of communication satellites circling overhead. The closest approach will occur at 7:27 p.m. EST (9:27 p.m. local.) Even if the space rock came a lot closer, scientists said most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with some of the bigger pieces possibly falling as meteorites. NASA’s impact hazard assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out a strike, said its developer, Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “But despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” Farnocchia said in a statement. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.” Discovered Saturday, the asteroid known as 2023 BU is believed to be between 11 feet (3.5 meters) and 28 feet (8.5 meters) feet across. It was first spotted by the same amateur astronomer in Crimea, Gennady Borisov, who discovered an interstellar comet in 2019. Within a few days, dozens of observations were made by astronomers around the world, allowing them to refine the asteroid’s orbit.

Davos 2023: Sleepwalking on megathreat mountain– A host of interconnected “megathreats” is imperiling our future. While some of these have been long in the making, others are new. The stubbornly low inflation of the pre-pandemic period has given way to today’s excessively high inflation. Secular stagnation – perpetually low growth owing to weak aggregate demand – has evolved into stagflation, as negative aggregate supply shocks have combined with the effects of loose monetary and fiscal policies. Where once interest rates were too low or even negative they have now been rising fast, driving up borrowing costs and creating the risk of cascading debt crises. The age of hyper-globalization, free trade, offshoring, and just-in-time supply chains has yielded to a new era of deglobalization, protectionism, reshoring (or “friend-shoring”), secure trade, and “just-in-case” supply-chain redundancies. Moreover, new geopolitical threats are increasing the risk of both cold and hot wars and further balkanizing the global economy. The effects of climate change are becoming more severe, and at a much faster pace than many had anticipated. Pandemics, too, are likely to become more frequent, virulent, and costly. Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and automation are threatening to produce more inequality, permanent technological unemployment, and deadlier weapons with which to prosecute unconventional wars. All of these problems are fueling a backlash against democratic capitalism, and empowering populist, authoritarian, and militaristic extremists from both the right and the left. What I have called megathreats others have called a “polycrisis” – which the Financial Times recently named its buzzword of the year. For her part, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, speaks of a “confluence of calamities.” The world economy, she warned last year, is facing “perhaps its biggest test since the Second World War.” Similarly, former US Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H. Summers argues that we are facing the most acute economic and financial challenges since the 2008 financial crisis. And in its latest Global Risks Report released just before elites gathered in Davos this month to discuss “cooperation in a fragmented world” the World Economic Forum warns of “a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come.” Thus, whatever one’s favored terminology, there is widespread agreement that we are facing unprecedented, unusual, and unexpected levels of uncertainty. In the near term, we can expect more instability, higher risks, more intense conflict, and more frequent environmental disasters.

Big Tech Helps Big Oil Spread Subtle Climate Denialism – Bloomberg --Fossil-fuel companies’ climate messaging may have changed to fit the new century, but the goal is the same the industry has had for decades: to delay action and protect profits for as long as possible. Even in the face of an increasingly obvious climate emergency, this message still resonates with many people. Maybe that’s because the biggest social media companies help amplify it. In the latest example, a study finds that industry groups, including an arm of the American Petroleum Institute, spent up to $4 million on nearly 4,000 Facebook and Instagram ads sowing climate misinformation before and during the United Nations climate conference last November, also known as COP27.

Google let Daily Wire advertise on ‘climate change is a hoax’ searches - A media outlet founded by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro paid Google to advertise on search pages questioning whether the climate crisis is real, according to new research from a disinformation watchdog group.The Daily Wire bought ads on search terms over the past year such as “climate change is a hoax” and “why is climate change fake”, meaning that when people Googled these phrases, stories from Shapiro’s outlet were some of the first results that appeared, the research found.Google [is] actually selling the right to climate deniers to spread disinformation. Google sold these ads even after announcing a new policy in October 2021 prohibiting ads that promote climate crisis denial. Its CEO, Sundar Pichai, publicly stated at the time that “when people come to Google Search with questions about climate change, we’ll show authoritative information from sources like the United Nations”.“Google’s hypocrisy knows no bounds,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the US and UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, which provided its research exclusively to the Guardian. “They’re actually selling the right to climate deniers to spread disinformation.”A spokesperson for Google didn’t contest the center’s new findings about the Daily Wire but said that “when we find content that crosses the line from policy debate or a discussion of green initiatives to promoting outright climate change denial, we remove those ads”.

Mayors want to fight climate change, but fear losing their jobs --Many mayors want to take forceful steps to combat climate change — like banning gas stoves or leaf blowers — but fear such moves would be political poison, a new poll shows. They do favor less controversial steps, like replacing gas-guzzling city vehicles with electric alternatives and supporting solar power, according to the first findings from the 2022 Menino Survey of Mayors, a nationally representative survey of U.S. mayors. The brutal realities of the election cycle prompt many officials to gravitate toward policies that won't alienate broad swaths of voters — even in the face of extreme weather and climate risks that threaten their cities and constituents. The 2022 Menino Survey of Mayors, named for former Boston Mayor Tom Menino, found broad consensus that humans are contributing to climate change — nine out of 10 respondents agreed — but partisan differences in what to do about it.Eighty-seven percent of Democratic mayors see a need for significant financial investments in climate action, vs. 43% of Republicans. Mayors on both sides of the aisle support replacing municipal vehicles with more fuel-efficient ones (75%)... but Democrats are far more likely to support a variety of other measures, such as requiring that new construction be solar-ready or using local money to support private home energy upgrades. The survey — released this week to coincide with the annual winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors — reflects a big gap between what mayors say they wish they could do, and what they think is realistic.One mayor told the pollsters they "wanted to ban leaf blowers" but "did not have the support." Another — described as "a progressive big-city mayor" — said of oil and gas restrictions: "[We're] not doing it, but ultimately, [it's] the right thing to do." A third said restrictions on gas and oil would flop and that they "would be hung" for going after lawn tools.

WTO chief calls for global carbon pricing -- Adopting a global carbon pricing scheme could help countries streamline supply chains and mitigate concerns about competition, according to the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO). “A shared global carbon-pricing framework would best provide certainty for businesses and predictability for developing countries,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Thursday evening at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.Today there are at least 70 different — and “fragmented” — carbon pricing setups around the world, according to Okonjo-Iweala. That inconsistency ultimately hampers the decarbonization of trade and supply chains, the World Economic Forum stated following Okonjo-Iweala’s address. As a result, the WTO has begun working with the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund to streamline carbon pricing, Okonjo-Iweala confirmed. In addition to expressing her support for shared global carbon pricing framework, Okonjo-Iweala also called for the elimination of “skewed” import tariffs that plague national borders today. Such tariffs, she explained, favor high-carbon imports over those whose production have generated fewer emissions. “Because of countries’ widespread tendency to impose higher tariffs on relatively clean finished goods, but lower tariffs on often more-polluting inputs and intermediates, trade policy skews in favor of dirtier products,” Okonjo-Iweala said. This discrepancy has resulted in what Okonjo-Iweala described as “an implicit subsidy” for carbon dioxide production — equivalent to between $550 billion and $800 billion per year. Eradicating this bias, she added, could decrease global carbon emissions by 3.6 percent while increasing global income by 0.65 percent. Okonjo-Iweala said she has been calling upon WTO members to bolster efforts “to liberalize trade and environmental good and services, bearing in mind all the sensitivities of developing countries.” Decarbonization of global trade and supply chains must occur in a way that is “leaving no one behind,” Okonjo-Iweala said. Developing countries, she explained, will need to obtain both “the capacity and infrastructure to demonstrate the low carbon content of their goods.” “Some have export baskets that are currently tilted heavily towards high carbon goods,”

Here's what we know about Kerry's offset gambit -New outlines of a hotly debated carbon credit initiative involving the U.S. government and two major philanthropies are raising questions about its ability to generate money while lowering emissions. Those come as the program’s organizers seem to disagree about whether it is, in fact, a carbon offsets program. New details of the plan came to light when the State Department, Rockefeller Foundation and the Bezos Earth Fund released a set of principles last week showing that corporations are expected to finance the initiative’s efforts to replace fossil fuel-fired electricity with renewable energy in developing countries. Advertisement The proposal, known as the Energy Transition Accelerator, would generate carbon credits to be purchased by companies and financial institutions that are trying to reduce their carbon footprint. A group of at least 20 business leaders, U.N. officials, climate advocates and financial experts will help design the program over the next 10 months. It is expected to be formally launched at the Dubai, United Arab Emirates, climate talks kicking off in November. The money is aimed at helping fill a persistent gap in climate finance that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, who first conceived of the idea, insists can’t be satisfied through public contributions from the Biden administration or other wealthy governments. “We’re either not trying to do it or we’re trying to do it on the cheap, and the result is that we’re not doing it,” Kerry said at an event during the Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi earlier this month. There are other uncertainties about the program, such as how it would ensure the credits it generates are trustworthy and whether they would successfully reduce emissions. But perhaps the most pressing questions involve money: Will enough businesses buy credits to help the world’s emerging economies transition from dirty to clean energy? “A tension lurking in the background of this is if this is really meant to be a very high-quality project, then it will presumably be a higher cost project, and there might be relatively fewer buyers,” said Danny Cullenward, policy director at Carbon Plan. “Conversely, if they maybe don’t do as good of a job on the quality side, they might hit a price point that would be more attractive to more buyers, but it might look more like some of the questionable projects that are out there.” Other concerns are more fundamental, such as whether the program is, in fact, designed to offset carbon emissions.

U.S. lawmakers ask Kerry to urge UAE to replace oil boss as COP28 president (Reuters) - Over two dozen U.S. representatives on Friday called on top U.S. climate envoy John Kerry to urge the United Arab Emirates to withdraw its appointment of the head of its state oil company as president of the COP28 climate summit it will host this year. The 27 Democratic members of Congress, led by California Congressman Jared Huffman, sent a letter to Kerry calling on him to persuade the future U.N. climate summit host to withdraw the appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, who is charged with shepherding the next round of climate negotiations. The lawmakers said the appointment jeopardizes the climate talks, which they say are already negatively influenced by the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists. "It risks undermining the very essence of what is trying to be accomplished," they wrote to Kerry. "Furthermore, as some of us have urged future COPs should require any participating company to submit an audited corporate political influencing statement that discloses climate-related lobbying, campaign contributions, and funding of trade associations and organizations active on energy and climate," they added. On Jan. 12, Kerry congratulated the UAE on the selection of Jaber. In an interview with Reuters last month, Kerry said having an oil state host the COP is a positive move because "it's so important that you have an oil and gas producing nation step up and say we understand the challenge of the climate crisis.” Al-Jaber, also UAE's minister of industry and technology and its climate envoy, will help shape the conference's agenda and intergovernmental negotiations to build consensus, his office said in a statement. Campaigners and some delegates criticized COP27, saying fossil fuel producers had watered down emission reduction ambitions and benefited from sympathetic treatment from Egypt, a natural gas exporter and frequent recipient of Gulf funds.

ADNOC breaks ground on world’s first fully sequestered CO2 injection project --ADNOC has begun work on the world’s first fully sequestered carbon dioxide (CO2) injection well in a carbonate saline aquifer. The project, which is expected to begin injecting CO2 in Q2 2023, marks another important step in ADNOC’s commitment to decarbonize its operations, reduce its carbon intensity by 25% by 2030 and deliver on its net zero by 2050 ambition. This innovative project will support ADNOC’s carbon capture and storage program, which is part of the suite of new projects and initiatives the company is advancing following the guidance by ADNOC’s Board of Directors to accelerate the delivery of its low-carbon growth strategy and the allocation of $15 billion to decarbonize its operations. CO2 injection well project Once operational, the project will initially fully sequester a minimum of 18,000 tons per annum of CO2 captured from Fertiglobe’s UAE operations for injection in Abu Dhabi’s onshore carbonate aquifers. The CO2 injection well project builds on ADNOC’s experience with its carbon capture facility at Al Reyadah, which has the capacity to capture up to 800,000 tons of CO2 per year. The well location for CO2 injection as well as targeted geological formations were identified using the results of ADNOC’s extensive 3D seismic survey and the company’s state-of-the-art subsurface modeling capacity. The project will contribute to the production of lower-carbon ammonia. This effective and cost-competitive hydrogen carrier can be scaled up quickly and has lower-carbon intensity than other fuels.

Trouble in Himalayan town swells scrutiny of India's hydropower push --Posters urging "NTPC Go Back" have appeared in Joshimath, a subsiding Indian Himalayan town where roads are cracking and houses crumbling - a crisis locals blame largely on a hydropower project led by India's biggest electricity producer NTPC. Residents in the tourist hub of Joshimath are demanding a halt to the project, in the latest of a wave of protests across regions where hydroelectric facilities are being built, as India boosts clean energy to cut its planet-heating carbon emissions. As Joshimath charity worker Kalawati Sah did her rounds assessing homes in areas marked as "unsafe" last week, she said the cracks were spreading to more structures. Locals attribute the sinking of their town in northern Uttarakhand state and the damage to infrastructure to tunnel-boring for the hydropower project and lack of a drainage system. Similar concerns have been raised over the past decade in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, one of four key states identified by India for expanding hydropower generation. Government estimates show that India has hydro potential of 145,320 megawatts (MW) - enough to power about 140 million households or all homes in the United States - but installed capacity had reached only about 47,000 MW by the end of 2022. Officials regard hydropower as essential for India to meet its 2030 renewable energy target of 500 gigawatts. But the projects are cutting through mountains and forests, forcing people from their homes and triggering calls to save sensitive ecological areas like the Himalayas - even though adopting clean energy could help curb climate change and limit the negative effects of warming temperatures on the mountains.

Manchin pushes to delay tax credits for electric vehicles (AP) — Ratcheting up his criticism, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Wednesday moved to delay new tax credits for electric vehicles, a key feature of President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law. Manchin said guidelines issued by the Treasury Department allow manufacturers in Europe and other countries to bypass requirements that significant portions of EV batteries be produced in North America.The climate law, officially known as the Inflation Reduction Act, “is first and foremost an energy security bill,” Manchin said, adding that the EV tax credits were supposed “to grow domestic manufacturing and reduce our reliance on foreign supply chains for the critical minerals needed to produce EV batteries.″ Manchin’s bid to delay the tax credits surfaced as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi visited the Washington, D.C., Auto Show on Wednesday to highlight the administration’s efforts to boost electric vehicles and related infrastructure. EV sales have tripled since Biden, a Democrat, took office two years ago, Granholm said. There are now more than 2 million EVs and 100,000 chargers on U.S. roadways, with more than $100 billion invested or pledged for EVs and their supply chains, including batteries, she said.

Manchin bill slaps back at Biden in EV tax credit fight - Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin took another swipe at the Biden administration Wednesday, releasing legislation that would stop the Treasury Department from issuing subsidies for consumer electric vehicles that don’t comply with strict sourcing requirements for batteries and battery minerals. The West Virginia Democrat brought out the “American Vehicle Security Act of 2023,” a bill that would bar automakers from making an end run around sourcing requirements under the newly minted Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA.Moreover, Manchin’s office suggested Tuesday that the bill would force some EV buyers who got a tax credit to return the money. In a statement, Manchin cast the bill as a means of reducing the United States’ reliance on countries like China for EV batteries and criticized Treasury for failing to issue guidance linking the incentives to sourcing provisions meant to grow domestic manufacturing. “The IRA and the EV tax credits must be implemented according to the congressional intent to ensure the United States, as the superpower of the world, is not beholden to countries that don’t share our values,” Manchin said.Sourcing requirements have emerged as a point of tension on Capitol Hill, the White House and beyond, with Manchin accusing Treasury of watering down the Inflation Reduction Act’s requirements. The senator, whose office wrote the relevant provisions, designed the nation’s EV strategy around that credit. But the IRS changed that calculation by focusing instead on the commercial vehicle credit.Manchin has argued that pushing drivers toward the commercial tax credit will hinder the federal government’s effort to move EV supply chains out of China and into the sphere of the United States and its allies (E&E Daily, Jan. 3).At issue are the Inflation Reduction Act’s commercial-vehicle tax credits, known in the tax code as 30D, which includes leased vehicles. Tax officials suggested last month that automakers could rely on that credit, which has no sourcing rules (Climatewire, Jan. 3).That would avoid complications around the consumer-vehicle tax credit. The tax credit places stringent but as yet unclear rules requiring half the minerals used in batteries be mined, processed or recycled domestically — before a $7,500-per-vehicle federal tax credit is issued. The new law’s EV incentives have become a political hot potato between the Biden administration and international allies, such as France, Germany and South Korea. Many foreign automakers are planning to build EV factories in the United States that would comply with the new rules, but until those factories open years from now, the companies’ customers will miss out on the tax credits.

Revealed: how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc -- The US’s transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market, causing needless water shortages, Indigenous land grabs, and ecosystem destruction inside and outside its borders, new research finds. It warns that unless the US’s dependence on cars in towns and cities falls drastically, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles by 2050 will deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining – and may even jeopardize the 1.5C global heating target. But ambitious policies investing in mass transit, walkable towns and cities, and robust battery recycling in the US would slash the amount of extra lithium required in 2050 by more than 90%. In fact, this first-of-its-kind modeling shows it is possible to have more transport options for Americans that are safer, healthier and less segregated, and less harmful mining while making rapid progress to zero emissions. The research by the Climate and Community Project and University of California, Davis, shared exclusively with the Guardian, comes at a critical juncture with the rollout of historic funding for electric vehicles through Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Acts. The global demand for lithium, also known as white gold, is predicted to rise over 40 times by 2040, driven predominantly by the shift to electric vehicles. Grassroots protests and lawsuits against lithium mining are on the rise from the US and Chile to Serbia and Tibet amid rising concern about the socio-environmental impacts and increasingly tense geopolitics around supply. The US’s affinity for cars, especially big ones, and sprawling cities and suburbs where driving to work, school and shop is often the only option, gives its transition to electric vehicles major global significance. No matter what path it chooses, the US will achieve zero emission transportation by 2050, according to the research. But the speed of the transition – as well as who benefits and who suffers from it – will depend on the number and size of electric vehicles (and batteries) Americans opt for going forward. “Preserving the status quo might seem like the politically easier option, but it’s not the fastest way to get people out of cars or the fairest way to decarbonize,” said Thea Riofrancos, associate professor of political science at Providence College and lead author of the report. “We can either electrify the status quo to reach zero emissions, or the energy transition can be used as an opportunity to rethink our cities and the transportation sector so that it’s more environmentally and socially just, both in the US and globally.”

US moves to protect Minnesota wilderness from planned mine | AP News -- The Biden administration moved Thursday to protect northeastern Minnesota's pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from future mining, dealing a potentially fatal blow to a copper-nickel project. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland signed an order closing over 350 square miles (900 square kilometers) of the Superior National Forest, in the Rainy River Watershed around the town of Ely, to mineral and geothermal leasing for 20 years, the longest period the department can sequester the land without congressional approval. The order is “subject to existing valid rights,” but the Biden administration contends that Twin Metals Minnesota lost its rights last year, when the department rescinded a Trump administration decision to reinstate federal mineral rights leases that were critical to the project. Twin Metals, which is owned by the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, filed suit in August to try to reclaim those rights, and reaffirmed Tuesday that it's not giving up despite its latest setback. “Protecting a place like Boundary Waters is key to supporting the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, upholding our Tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, and boosting the local recreation economy,” Haaland said in a statement. "With an eye toward protecting this special place for future generations, I have made this decision using the best available science and extensive public input.” Critics of the project hailed the decision as a massive victory and called for permanent protections for the wilderness. But supporters of Twin Metals said the order runs counter to the administration's stated goal of increasing domestic supplies of metals that are critical to the clean energy economy. The proposed underground mine would be built southeast of Ely, near Birch Lake, which flows into the Boundary Waters. The project has been battered by shifting political winds. The Obama administration, in its final weeks, chose not to renew the two leases, which had dated back more than 50 years. The Trump administration reversed that decision and reinstated the leases. But the Biden administration canceled the leases last January after the U.S. Forest Service in October 2021 relaunched the review and public engagement process for the 20-year mining moratorium. While the Biden administration last year committed itself to expanding domestic sources of critical minerals and metals needed for electric vehicles and renewable energy, it made clear Thursday that it considers Boundary Waters to be a unique area worthy of special protections. A day ago, the administration said it would reinstate restrictions on road-building and logging in the country’s largest national forest, the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. Twin Metals said it was “deeply disappointed and stunned” over the moratorium. “This region sits on top of one of the world’s largest deposits of critical minerals that are vital in meeting our nation’s goals to transition to a clean energy future, to create American jobs, to strengthen our national security and to bolster domestic supply chains," the company said in a statement. "We believe our project plays a critical role in addressing all of these priorities, and we remain committed to enforcing Twin Metals’ rights.”

Investors Plow Into Renewables, but Projects Aren’t Getting Built --Potential $40 billion spending spree for renewable-energy projects hits slowdown in wind and solar installations… Even as developers plan an unprecedented number of grid-scale wind and solar installations, project construction is plummeting across the U.S. Despite billions of dollars in federal tax credits up for grabs and investors eager to fund clean energy projects, the pace of development has ground to a crawl and many renewables plans face an uncertain path to completion. Supply-chain snags, long waits to connect to the grid and challenging regulatory and political environments across the country are contributing to the slowdown, analysts and companies say.

Dead whales and tough economics bedevil Biden’s massive wind energy push - Strandings in the Atlantic, supply chain woes and fossil fuel allies create tough head winds in the race to install thousands of enormous off-shore wind turbines. The school-bus-size humpback whale that washed ashore on a narrow beach in Brigantine, N.J., this month weighed in at 12 tons and took a heavy emotional toll on coastal towns helplessly witnessing a spate of such deaths. The humpback was one of nine large whales to get stranded over six weeks on or near beaches in the Northeast, not far from where developers of hundreds of offshore wind turbines are engaged in a flurry of preconstruction activity. The deaths have prompted pushback against the projects even though government scientists say they are unrelated. It’s the latest in a string of threats to a fledgling offshore wind industry that climate advocates say is central to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Surging costs from inflation and labor shortages have developers saying their projects may not be profitable. A raft of lawsuits and pending federal restrictions to protect sensitive wildlife could further add to costs. The uncertainty has clouded bright expectations for massive growth in U.S. offshore wind, which the Biden administration and several state governments have bet big on in their climate plans. State leaders and the Biden administration have homed in on the industry because the power of offshore winds can produce a rare round-the-clock source of greenhouse-gas-free electricity — and one difficult for future administrations to undo once turbines are in the ground. The administration set a goal for 30 gigawatts of new power from offshore wind by 2030. That is about 3 percent of what the country needs to get to 80 percent clean electricity by that time, according to estimates from a team led by University of California at Berkeley researchers. The industry paid more than $5 billion to the federal government for the right to build off the coast as the Biden administration made a large number of leases available last year. Some of the world’s largest energy companies, including BP, Shell, Equinor and Duke Energy, now plan to spend billions more constructing thousands of skyscraper-size turbines off America’s shores that will produce enough juice to power roughly 7 million homes, according to the American Clean Power Association, a renewable-energy trade group. The nation’s first large-scale project began construction off the coast of Massachusetts a little more than a year ago, and surveying vessels are now charting the East Coast for the next wave of construction. That work is happening in the same area where a die-off of humpback whales began seven years ago and where scientists and federal officials are now working to prevent the North Atlantic right whale, one of the world’smost endangered marine mammals, from going extinct.

How Biden can meet his 100% clean electricity goal - The Washington Post - It’s one of President Biden’s most important and ambitious climate goals: eliminating carbon pollution from America’s power sector by 2035.Meeting this goal will necessitate a massive transformation away from fossil fuels. It will slash planet-warming pollution from power plants, which rank as the nation’s second-biggest contributor to global warming. And it will allow Americans to power their electric cars, heat pumps and other appliances with clean electricity from renewable sources.Yet achieving this target is far from guaranteed. Last year, only about 40 percent of U.S. electricity came from clean sources. The landmark climate law that Biden signed last summer, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, is projected to leave the nation off track from meeting this goal in the coming years.However, a detailed new analysis finds that the Biden administration can still keep this central climate goal within reach if the Environmental Protection Agency enacts strong carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants. And the administration can ultimately meet this goal if state and federal policymakers take additional steps to accelerate the deployment of clean energy nationwide, according to the analysis by the environmental groups Evergreen Action and theNatural Resources Defense Council, which was shared exclusively with The Climate 202 before its broader release Monday.“The last two years have featured really important progress on climate and clean electricity, but it’s not ‘mission accomplished’ for the Biden climate agenda,” Sam Ricketts, a co-founder and senior adviser for Evergreen and co-author of the report, told The Climate 202.“It’s really incumbent upon the administration to use these next two years to make important progress on cleaning up the power sector, which will benefit the climate and also public health and environmental justice,” Ricketts added. The report looked at how the nation could achieve 80 percent clean electricity by 2030, an interim target consistent with the path to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035.

• It projected that the investments in the Inflation Reduction Act would increase the nation’s share of carbon-free electricity to 66 percent by 2030.
• But if the investments are coupled with strong power plant rules from the EPA, the United States could achieve a 76 percent clean grid by 2030, within striking distance of the 80 percent target, the analysis found.

Wind Turbines Are Burning, Collapsing in Green Energy Setback - No one's been killed or injured -- yet -- but a rash of wind turbine failures is jarring a key cornerstone of the green energy movement, according to a new Bloomberg report. The unwelcome trend of malfunctions -- which includes both breakdowns and total structural collapses -- is being witnessed in the United States and Europe alike. As this rare 2008 video of a collapse indicates, the phenomenon isn't brand new, but insiders say the frequency is spiking. The Hornslet Wind Turbine Collapse was a spectacular collapse of a wind turbine on February 22, 2008 and it is one of only a few structural collapses that have been captured on film https://t.co/LN4TwJHJMT | https://t.co/4i52AUyIPV pic.twitter.com/mLLz8PJp4w Perhaps most disturbingly, recently-manufactured windmills are among latest string of casualties. “We’re seeing these failures happening in a shorter time frame on the newer turbines, and that’s quite concerning,” Fraser McLachlan, CEO of GCube Underwriting Ltd tells Bloomberg. Last summer, a GE turbine that had been installed less than a year earlier buckled in half. Within a week, the same model notched another failure in Colorado. The failures aren't limited to a single manufacturer or model. The West's three biggest manufacturers -- GE, Vestas Wind Systems and Siemens are all facing hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs.Bloomberg reports that Vestas, GE and Siemens Gamesa have all confirmed that pressure to quickly introduce more powerful turbines has led to the stumbles. In response, they're slowing the pace of innovation.

Utilities use customer dollars to pay for lobbying. Lawmakers could stop it. - Electric and gas utilities have used money collected from customers to lobby lawmakers, butter up regulators, and slow the shift to clean energy. Beyond being occasionally illegal, the practice has stuck consumers with higher bills and led to higher carbon dioxide emissions, industry watchdogs say. In one particularly egregious example, the FBI arrested Larry Householder, who was the Republican leader of the Ohio House of Representatives in 2020 at the time of his arrest. It alleged that the Ohio utility FirstEnergy had given the lawmaker $60 millionin exchange for passing legislation bailing out its coal and nuclear power plants. His corruption trial began this week in Cincinnati. It’s one of a handful of utility scandals over the last decade that advocates for reform say have resulted in higher energy bills and more carbon emissions. But there are simple steps lawmakers could take to avoid these problems, according to a report the nonprofit utility watchdog Energy and Policy Institute published Thursday. The analysis, aimed at Congress, state legislators, and federal and state regulatory agencies, suggests passing tighter, clearer rules barring utilities from using ratepayer money for political activities. Policymakers also could require regular, mandatory disclosures of utilities’ political spending. To ensure compliance, utilities could face hefty fees for breaking the rules. Technically, federal and state regulations prohibit utilities from passing lobbying costs along to customers. But these laws are often vague, outdated, and “riddled with loopholes,” according to David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute and the report’s author. Much of utilities’ political spending moves through the shadowy world of trade associations, activity that isn’t strictly “lobbying” under the IRS definition of the practice. Working with trade groups like the Edison Electric Institute and the American Gas Association, utilities have blocked policies that would promote rooftop solar and electrify buildings. At the same time, they’ve kept the country hooked on fossil fuels by, for example, paying Instagram influencers to defend gas stoves. Nearly half of the 25 largest investor-owned electric utilities in the United States are working to delay climate action, a report from the think tank InfluenceMap found last year. While all kinds of companies engage in politics, the Energy and Policy Institute argues that utilities present a unique situation. For one, they have monopolies — people are generally forced to accept whatever company supplies their area. By raising rates, utilities can essentially compel customers to fund their political activity, “effectively turning them into a conscripted army of millions of small-dollar donors,” the report says. Utilities are almost always among the top three political spenders in the states where they’re based, Pomerantz said. Brian Reil, a spokesperson for the Edison Electric Institute, said that it “reports all lobbying as required and in those reports utilizes the broadest definition of lobbying that exists in federal law.” Reil said the new report was a “disingenuous attempt by the Energy and Policy Institute to negate the clean energy progress” that electric utilities have made, pointing to the institute’ssupport for the Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed last year. The American Gas Association did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment in time for publication. Even for utilities that have begun to shift to wind and solar power generation, stricter rules are needed to prevent more scandals and guard people’s pocketbooks, the report says. “If utilities are going to be at the center of our transition from fossil fuels to clean electricity,” the report states, “customers need to be able to trust that they are not corrupt.”

Puerto Rico officially privatizes power generation to Genera PR - A new private company will take over power generation units owned by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the public corporation currently in charge of generating energy on the U.S. territory. Genera PR, an independently managed subsidiary of the New York-based energy company New Fortress Inc., has been awarded a multimillion-dollar 10-year contract to operate, maintain and decommission the power generation units on the island. The power generation equipment in Puerto Rico, plagued by ongoing blackouts and decaying infrastructure, is on average about 45 years old — twice the age of those on the U.S. mainland. Some of them have been found to be six decades old. They’re mainly reliant on fossil fuels. The company and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) are currently undergoing a transition process set to last 100 days. Genera PR is expected to formally start operating in July. Officials in Puerto Rico have been taking steps toward privatizing power generation for some time. Genera PR's contract underwent various approval stages and the final one was announced Wednesday in alengthy news conference Under the terms of the new partnership, the Puerto Rican government has agreed to cover up to $15 million in transition costs to Genera PR, officials said. Additionally, the company will be paid a yearly fee of $22.5 million during the first five years. The fee will decrease after the fifth year, up to a minimum of $5 million per year. The exact amount will be determined by the number of power plants removed during the forfeiture process.

Puerto Rico Hands Control of its Power Plants to a Natural Gas Company - Puerto Rican authorities have hired a natural gas company to operate the island’s publicly-owned fleet of fossil fuel power plants, despite the commonwealth facing increasing pressure to rapidly transition its aging energy system to renewable sources. Gov. Pedro Pierluisi announced Wednesday that his government had signed a contract with New Fortress Energy, a New York-based company that currently supplies the territory with liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The company has already generated a series of controversies in Puerto Rico. Soon, New Fortress could manage contracts to purchase gas from itself on behalf of the island’s residents. Environmental and consumer advocates warned that the contract, which was negotiated in secret and remained confidential until after it was signed, will hamper the island’s efforts to phase out fossil fuels and drive electricity costs higher. “You’re bringing another private interest entrenched in the fossil fuel industry that is going to have a political and economic interest in continuing to sell fossil fuels to Puerto Rico,” said Cathy Kunkel, an energy analyst at CAMBIO, a Puerto Rican environmental advocacy group. “It’s hard to see how that’s not going to set back the renewable energy goals.” Puerto Rican law requires the island’s Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, to get 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. Last year, 97 percent came from fossil fuels.

How Texas' electricity plan could change the grid - After a boom in wind and solar generation, regulators in the nation’s top energy-producing state are pushing ahead with a plan that would incentivize more natural gas plants on the power grid.The new framework could remake Texas’ electricity mix for years to come, clouding the outlook for renewable energy even as federal incentives are pushing those sources onto the grid.The plan won approval from the state Public Utility Commission last week, setting terms for how the electricity market may change. The structure — which passed the PUC unanimously almost two years after winter blackouts crippled the state — is designed to aid reliability while retaining some of Texas’ unusual electricity system.Critics, however, warn that the PUC is pushing the state toward a market design rooted in the past instead of embracing renewable energy and accelerating efforts to cut electricity use when demand is highest. Some also say the proposal would raise power costs for customers. And powerful legislators question whether the PUC’s plan will offer the reliability its supporters promise.State Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Republican who leads the influential state Senate Business and Commerce Committee, labeled the PUC plan “unacceptable” in a Thursday Twitter post.In a letter to regulators last week, Schwertner said the PUC’s design represented a “substantial departure” from what legislators previously directed the commission to consider.Texas’ main power market has relied for years on a competitive design that allows generators to reap high prices when conditions are tight, potentially creating an incentive for companies to build more power plants. However, as renewable energy production becomes cheaper and a growing population pushes up demand, that structure is colliding with efforts to make sure there’s enough electricity during periods of extreme heat and cold.State lawmakers, Schwertner said, “did not direct the PUC to replace the state’s energy-only market with an unnecessarily complex, capacity-style design that puts the competitive market at risk without guaranteeing the delivery of new dispatchable generation.” With the PUC’s approval of a new outlook, legislators and officials from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) — the state’s main grid operator — will now debate next steps for the plan. Texas is seeking to try an unproven method to fix reliability problems plaguing numerous U.S. grid regions. Here are answers to five key questions about Texas’ new plan for electricity.

 In the past 20 years, natural gas has displaced most coal-fired generation in Pennsylvania -Natural gas-fired power plants generated 2% of the electricity produced in Pennsylvania in 2001. Over the next 20 years, natural gas-fired generation in the state increased rapidly, reaching 52% in 2021. Natural gas displaced most coal-fired generation, which fell from 57% of the electricity generated in Pennsylvania in 2001 to 12% in 2021.Natural gas production has grown significantly in Pennsylvania over the past two decades, rising from 0.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2001 to 7.6 Tcf in 2021, making the amount of natural gas produced in Pennsylvania second only to Texas. Pennsylvania sits on top of the Marcellus shale, and the portions of the Marcellus under Pennsylvania and West Virginia constitute the largest natural gas field in the United States. Although natural gas has been produced in the Marcellus for a long time, production from the Marcellus became much more economical after fracking and horizontal drilling were developed. The first Marcellus shale natural gas well using these techniques was drilled in Pennsylvania in 2004. At the same time that natural gas production in Pennsylvania was increasing, coal production was declining, falling 40% from 74.1 million tons in 2001 to 42.5 million tons in 2021.Increased production in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the United States made natural gas abundant and relatively cheap. With access to inexpensive natural gas, utilities and power plant operators began to close aging coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania, many of which were built in the 1970s and 1980s, and to replace them with new natural gas-fired combined-cycle plants. Modern combined-cycle plants are more efficient than the typical coal-fired power plant, and they don’t have the same costs to comply with emissions regulations. As coal plants in Pennsylvania were retired and the remaining coal plants were used less, the share of Pennsylvania’s generation supplied by coal dropped.Although coal’s generation share started declining in Pennsylvania in 2007, it remained the largest source of in-state electricity generation until 2015, when nuclear power surpassed coal. Pennsylvania is home to eight nuclear reactors at four nuclear power plants; the second-highest share of electricity from nuclear power plants is generated in Pennsylvania, more than any other state except Illinois. In 2019, the remaining reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant closed, and as a result, along with significant investment in new combined-cycle natural gas plants, natural gas consumption surpassed nuclear as Pennsylvania’s largest source of in-state electricity generation.Most electric utilities and power plants in Pennsylvania participate in the PJM wholesale electricity market, which coordinates the electricity supply for all, or part of, 13 eastern states and the District of Columbia. To help ensure enough electricity is available to meet customer demand in the future, PJM holds capacity market auctions that payplants so that they can be counted on to meet future demand. Availability of those payments was another, although smaller, contributing factor in the growth of natural gas-fired generating capacity in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania waste coal plant to resume operations -A large waste coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania will soon begin operating again, potentially alleviating concerns among market participants about the effect of its prolonged absence on the state's Tier II renewable energy certificate (REC) market. The 525MW Seward Generation waste coal plant in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, is expected to resume operations in the coming week, a source with knowledge of the situation said today. The station, owned by Robindale Energy, is a prominent contributor to the Pennsylvania Tier II REC market, which covers in-state resources such as waste coal and large-scale hydropower generation. Rumors that the facility had ceased operations for the winter circulated in the market yesterday, raising the possibility of future constraints on supply that could lead to higher pricing for Tier II RECs. But those fears appear unfounded. Although the Seward facility had ceased operations due to damage caused by severe winter weather over the Christmas weekend, it will soon return to service, the source said. The Seward facility is the world's largest waste coal-fired power plant, consuming material left over from abandoned coal mining operations, according Robindale Energy. From June-October last year, its net generation totaled roughly 1.2mn MWh, according to US Energy Information Administration data.

Coal ash crackdown continues as EPA denies extensions for six power plants -The U.S. EPA on Wednesday denied six coal plants’ requests to keep dumping toxic ash into unlined or inadequately lined pits, signaling the agency’s commitment to enforce the 2015 federal coal ash rules that had been widely flouted by companies and ignored by regulators. The rules say that pits without legally compliant liners needed to stop receiving coal ash by April 2021, but many companies continued dumping ash in such pits and ponds, with more than 60 seeking extensions to the deadline. The EPA began a series of enforcement actions last year. The six plants covered by the new decisions had argued they should not have to meet the deadline since naturally occurring clay, archaic liners or other conditions made their pits essentially as safe as impoundments with modern liners. In its denials, the EPA cited holes in the companies’ arguments about the pits’ safety and faulted the companies for failing to comply with other provisions of the rules. “While of course it’s site-specific and they’re limited to these six applications that were before the agency, it does show EPA is taking a really close look at compliance with the rule,” said Sierra Club senior attorney Bridget Lee. “They’re going through the applications carefully, looking at everything at these sites. Highlighting all the places where the owners and operators have gone wrong is a really important step.” Extensions to the 2021 deadline were denied at DTE’s Belle River and Monroe plants in Michigan; the Coal Creek station in North Dakota; the Conemaugh plant owned by Talen Energy near Pittsburgh; the publicly-owned Salt River Project’s Coronado Generating Station amid Native American reservations in Arizona; and the Martin Lake Steam Electric Plant in eastern Texas. The Apache Generating Station in Arizona was granted an extension, on the condition it improves groundwater monitoring meant to check for pollution from coal ash. The ash pits will have to close after going through a public comment period and final EPA decision, assuming the EPA upholds their recent orders in final rulings. The decisions do not mandate how the pits must be closed, but the federal rules say coal ash repositories cannot be closed with ash contaminating groundwater, and the recent decisions would seemingly indicate that the companies could not legally leave the ash in place in these unlined or poorly lined pits.

China To Accelerate The Construction Of Coal-Fired Power Plants - China expects to add 70 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power generation this year, up from 40 GW of capacity from coal installed in 2022, a report from the power sector’s group, China Electricity Council, showed. The coal additions, however, will not be the biggest capacity increases in China in 2023, per the report quoted by Bloomberg.. Solar and wind will see massive growth in capacity additions this year, too, with solar power expected to add a huge 100 GW of capacity and wind—another 65 GW, China Electricity Council said. China’s electricity generation capacity from renewable sources is expected to jump above 50% for the first time this year. According to the power sector’s lobbying group, low-carbon electricity sources will account for over 52% of total power capacity in China by the end of 2023, up from 49.6% at the end of last year. After the end of the ‘zero Covid’ policy, China’s power demand is expected to jump by 6% in 2023, up from the 3.6% growth seen last year, according to the China Electricity Council. Although renewable energy installations are set to jump, coal-fired capacity additions in China will also surge this year as Beijing has put more emphasis on energy security since the autumn of 2021 when power shortages crippled its industry. In 2022, China said it would continue to maximize the use of coal in the coming years as it caters to its energy security, despite pledges to contribute to global efforts to reduce emissions. In recent months, China has significantly boosted its coal production, following government orders.

Brits are being paid to cut power use, as cold snap threatens supply - — More than a million British households and businesses are being offered cash incentives to cut their energy consumption during peak times, with supply margins expected to tighten more than usual as temperatures drop below freezing. On Monday, three out of five back-up coal power stations were told to fire up to provide back-up supply, although the measure was reversed early Tuesday. National Grid ESO, which has overall responsibility for managing Britain's electricity supply, said the public should not worry about blackouts. The steps were "precautionary measures to maintain the buffer of spare capacity we need," it said. The cold weather has combined with a drop in wind power — a key energy source for Britain — which frequently generates more than half of the country's electricity. Over the weekend and into this week, the wind power share has dropped below a quarter, with gas taking over as the primary source. Coal frequently supplies under 2% of this energy mix. In the summer of 2020, Britain marked a record 67 days and 23 hours without using coal. The government has set an October 2024 target to eliminate coal from electricity generation. The energy saving scheme ran from 5pm to 6pm Monday and will be active again on Tuesday between 4:30pm and 6pm. It sees households that have signed up to National Grid ESO's Demand Flexibility Service get discounts on their bills for cutting their electricity use during peak time. To qualify, consumers must be on a smart meter and customers of one of 27 registered suppliers, which include British Gas , EDF and Drax . This is the first full roll-out of the scheme, which was previously tested on a small scale. Supplier Octopus Energy said that participating customers would earn £4 worth of points for every unit of power saved, which can be converted into cash. The company expected the average household to save around £36 through the winter. This is then covered by National Grid ESO, which on Monday said it paid suppliers between £3 and £6 per kilowatt hour of energy saved. National Grid ESO was legally separated from listed utility firm National Grid in 2019. Lawmakers are in the process of attempting to fully nationalize it, in order to appoint an independent body to oversee the green transition.

Defiance grows in France against EU electricity market – As expected, French senators on Thursday (12 January) rejected a resolution to take the country out of the European electricity market. But while the resolution was largely expected to fail, the vote on the contrary revealed growing defiance against the EU market. The resolution, put forward by the French communist group, received emphatic support from other left-wing parties in what appeared as an unprecedented statement of distrust in the EU electricity market. Wholesale electricity prices have skyrocketed last year on the back of falling Russian gas supplies, low hydropower production caused by summer droughts and widespread failures in the French nuclear power fleet. But according to communist senator Fabien Gay, the problem has more to do with the market’s structure than with the Ukraine war or France’s ailing nuclear fleet – a view that seems to be gaining traction in the Senate. The 57 senators of the centre-right Union Centrist (UC) group unexpectedly supported Gay’s resolution, which suggested leaving the European electricity market altogether in response to soaring power prices.

Pakistan nationwide power outage continues into night - A massive power cut across Pakistan continued after night fell on Monday, affecting most of the country's 220 million residents, including in the metropolises of Karachi and Lahore. Pakistan's power system is a complex and delicate web, where problems can quickly cascade. The breakdown was caused by a fault in the national grid at about 7:30 am (0230 GMT), linked to a cost-cutting measure as the country's economy ails. "We hope that the electricity will be restored throughout the country by tonight," Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan said in a video statement. A variation in frequency on the national grid caused the cut, as power generation units were turned on early in the morning. The units had been temporarily switched off at night to save fuel, Khan earlier told the media. Localised power cuts are common in Pakistan and hospitals, factories and government institutions are often kept running by private generators. The machines are, however, beyond the means of most citizens and small businesses. In parts of northern Pakistan, temperatures were due to drop below freezing on Monday night with supplies of natural gas -- the most common heating method -- also unreliable due to load-shedding. The economy is already hobbled by rampant inflation, a falling rupee, and severely low forex reserves, with the power cut piling extra pressure on small businesses.

Public service or massive theft? Arguments begin in Ohio bribery and corruption case - Ohio Capital Journal — It depends on who you listen to. It was either a gargantuan bribery and money laundering scheme or it was a case of a conscientious public servant using his free speech rights to help the people of Ohio. Those were the stories told Monday by opposing counsel in the racketeering trial of former state House Speaker Larry Householder. He and a codefendant, lobbyist Matt Borges, are accused of participating in a scheme that used $61 million — largely from Akron-based FirstEnergy — to elect lawmakers who would make Householder speaker and then pass a $1.3 billion bailout that mostly benefited a former FirstEnergy subsidiary. In announcing Householder’s arrest in 2020, federal prosecutors said it was likely the biggest bribery and money laundering scandal in the state’s 217-year history. After 12 jurors and four alternates were seated last week, opening statements and testimony began on Monday in the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse in Cincinnati. Almost immediately, U.S. District Judge Timothy Black was admonishing lawyers. In the midst of her opening, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Glatfelter complained that talking amongst Householder’s attorneys was distracting her. Later, with the jury out of the courtroom, Black slammed the lawyers for muttering and making faces and told the lawyers to stop such “bush league” activity. Glatfelter proceeded to portray their client as an unprincipled official who pulled together a criminal scheme in a lust for power and to line his pockets. “Larry Householder sold the state out,” she said. “He ripped off the people he was elected to serve. Millions of dollars of bribe payments to pay for his political and personal gain.”

 Prosecutors: Corrupt plot to pass Ohio nuclear bailout followed meeting at ‘fancy’ Washington, D.C., steakhouse (Cleveland.com) — The plan that eventually became the corrupt scheme to pass the House Bill 6 nuclear bailout legislation followed a meal at a “fancy Washington, D.C. steakhouse” in January 2017, federal prosecutors said Monday in a Cincinnati courtroom. Emily Glatfelter, the lead federal prosecutor in the case, told jurors that ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder flew on Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp.’s private jet to Washington in January 2017. While Glatfelter didn’t mention the specific backdrop for the trip, Householder, who had just been elected to the Ohio House a couple months before, flew there with top FirstEnergy executives, including then-CEO Chuck Jones, for then-President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Glatfelter returned to the steakhouse meeting several times Monday during her opening arguments for Householder’s federal corruption charge, portraying it as a key event in the plot that eventually led Householder to appear in court. She described it each time as a “fancy” restaurant, describing the process through which Householder used tens of millions of dollars from FirstEnergy to build his political operation. “They sat down and they discussed Householder’s speaker plans, his financial needs and then to assess what FirstEnergy needed,” Glatfelter said. “FirstEnergy needed a bailout. They needed a legislative fix. FirstEnergy executives knew the current speaker of the House at the time, in 2017, wasn’t interested in giving them legislative help. And they said it was important for that reason that Householder become speaker.” Joining Householder on the corporate jet was Jones and Tony George, a Cleveland businessman whom Glatfelter described as a “mutual associate” of Householder and Jones. Householder at the time had just been reelected to the Ohio House but was making plans to become speaker of the Ohio House two years later. Another top FirstEnergy executive, Mike Dowling, joined them at the dinner, as did Jeff Longstreth, who at the time was Householder’s political manager and right-hand man, Glatfelter said. Longstreth flew coach though, and met them there, according to Glatfelter. “They talked about ways to fund his [Householder’s] efforts. But one [FirstEnergy’s] executives made clear that the money had to be non-disclosable,” Glatfelter said. Glatfelter said Householder and the FirstEnergy executives met at several more “fancy” Washington, D.C., restaurants during their trip that weekend. Householder then flew back to Ohio on the FirstEnergy corporate jet with the company executives, she said. Householder and company executives’ actions following the Washington, D.C., trip “demonstrated the contours of their corrupt deal,” Glatfelter said. Federal prosecutors wrapped up their opening statement Monday morning in the first day of what’s expected to be a six-week trial. Lawyers for Householder and his co-defendant, former Ohio Republican Party chairman Matt Borges, are scheduled to give their own opening arguments around 1 p.m.

Ex-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan announces his next career move - cleveland.com - Former U.S. Congressman Tim Ryan announced Thursday that he’s joining the leadership council of a political nonprofit that promotes the natural gas industry, where he pledges to boost the role of natural gas in meeting climate goals “securely, reliably and affordably.” Ryan, a Niles-area Democrat who lost a hard-fought battle for U.S. Senate to Republican JD Vance last year, will serve alongside former Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana at Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, the organization announced.

Ohio Court of Appeals Upholds Depth Severance Clause in Shale Lease - Marcellus Drilling News - The Ohio Court of Appeals recently issued a decision in a case involving lease language about a “depth severance clause” that is very important for both landowners and drillers to know about. In Tera LLC v. Rice Drilling D LLC, et al., a landowner in Belmont County, OH, signed a lease with language that leases both the Marcellus and Utica shale layers, but all other formations were “reserved to the lessor” (i.e. the landowner). However, the driller, Rice (now EQT), drilled into and produced hydrocarbons from the Point Pleasant layer that sits immediately below the Utica. According to the lease (and the decision by the court), that was a no-no.

Ohio Court of Appeals Upholds Depth Severance Clause in Lease - At issue in Tera LLC v. Rice Drilling D LLC, et al., Case No. 21 BE 0047 (Ohio Ct. App., 7^th Dist. January 18, 2023) were two (2) oil and gas leases, signed in 2013 and 2014, concerning approximately 271 acres in Belmont County, Ohio (the “Subject Leases”). The granting clause in the Subject Leases stated that the lessor was leasing to Rice Drilling D LLC (“Rice”) “all the oil and gas, minerals and their constituents (not including coal) in the formations commonly known as the Marcellus Shale and the Utica Shale…” All other formations were “reserved to the lessor.” As further clarification as to the limited scope of the leasehold granted to Rice, the Subject Leases also contained the following depth severance clause:“The Lessor reserves all rights not specifically granted to Lessee in the Lease. Lessor specifically reserves the right to all products contained in any formation: (1) from the surface of the Leased Premises to the top of the formation commonly known as Marcellus Shale, (2) in any and all formations below the base of Marcellus Shale to the top of the formation commonly known as Utica Shale, and (3) in all formations below the base of the Utica Shale.”Rice subsequently drilled six (6) horizontal wells in and through the leasehold. By 2017, all six (6) wells were in production.[1] The landowner, however, discovered that the wells were actually producing from the Point Pleasant formation, which is deeper than the Marcellus Shale and the Utica Shale. Since the Subject Leases were strictly limited to the Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale, the landowner asserted that Rice had no authority or right to extract hydrocarbons from the Point Pleasant formation. The landowner filed suit in October 2017 seeking damages for bad faith trespass and conversion.Rice did not dispute or deny that the six (6) wells landed in the deeper Point Pleasant formation. But Rice defended the suit by arguing that, in 2013 and 2014 when the Subject Leases were signed, the Point Pleasant formation was considered an “interval” contained within the Utica Shale formation. Rice further argued that industry custom and trade usage in 2013 routinely recognized the Point Pleasant formation as being part of the Utica Shale formation. As such, Rice contended that no subsurface trespass occurred because all six (6) wells were authorized under the Subject Leases. In essence, Rice asked the trial court to broadly interpret the depth severance clause to expand the meaning of the term “Utica Shale” to include the Point Pleasant formation.The landowner moved for summary judgment on the issue of liability. The landowner argued that the Subject Leases were unambiguous and that the depth severance clause plainly excluded all formations “below the base of the Utica Shale.” Since it was undisputed that all six (6) horizontal wells landed in the deeper Point Pleasant formation, the landowner suggested that the only issue ripe for trial was the amount of trespass damages. The trial court agreed.In June 2020, the trial court granted the landowner’s motion, noting that an oil/gas lease “conveys rights to extract all geological formations under the leased property, unless there is specific language of limitation.” Here, the depth severance clause clearly limited the leased formations. As such, the trial court concluded that Rice (and Gulfport) “acquired no interest in the oil and/or gas in the Point Pleasant formation.” The trial court also ruled that “…Rice and Gulfport knowingly, willfully and recklessly drilled their wells into the Point Pleasant formation and are therefore willful trespassers.”Given this finding, the trial court held that the damages “owed to the [landowner] are to be calculated without any deductions for the cost of drilling, operating, transporting and any other expense in removing the oil and gas from the [landowner’s] property.” A jury trial was subsequently conducted in July 2021 solely on the issue of damages. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the landowner in the amount of $40,129,357.62. Rice and Gulfport filed a timely appeal to the Seventh Appellate District.On appeal, Rice and Gulfport argued that the trial court erred when it concluded that the Subject Leases were unambiguous. In so holding, the trial court excluded extrinsic and parol evidence regarding industry custom and trade usage.[2] Rice and Gulfport argued that the phrase “commonly known as the…Utica Shale” in the granting clause was ambiguous and that the trial court erred by not admitting and considering evidence of what the oil and gas industry understood the “Utica Shale” to mean in 2013.The Seventh Appellate District disagreed and held that extrinsic evidence was not necessary. The panel observed that the phrase “commonly known as the …Utica Shale” was not ambiguous:“It is undisputed that the Point Pleasant is a formation below the Utica Shale. Consequently, we find that [the landowner] unambiguously reserved the Point Pleasant formation from the lease. To the extent that ambiguity exists within the “grant of lease” provision, we conclude that it is clarified by the plain language of the reservation section…”

Opinion: Fracking in Ohio's state parks is a recipe for disaster - The new state law requiring Ohio state parks to allow fracking on public lands is a recipe for ecological and economic disaster in Ohio. If there is just one methane leak poisoning groundwater with toxins and waste products from fracking fluid, there will be a mass exodus of talented people and good jobs fleeing Ohio. Is Ohio prepared to become the next poster child for ecological disaster? House Bill 507 is bad law passed in a lame-duck session without public comment. With this law, our legislators pandered to Ohio’s oil and gas industry and have risked our clean air, clean drinking water and the growth of sustainable jobs of the future in exchange for dirty energy and dark money. The federal government doesn’t regulate or require public disclosure of the ingredients in fracking fluid injected into the ground to bring up natural gas. That is the state’s responsibility. That means the Ohio Department of Natural Resources allows solvents, waste products and voltaic organic compounds (VOCs) to be injected into Ohio fracking wells, and possibly, eventually permeate our groundwater.Why are the ingredients of the oil and gas industry’s "secret sauce" for its fracking fluid protected when we know clean air and groundwater are essential to life? The fracking industry’s reputation for self-regulation in Ohio and nationwide is notably poor. In 2018, a fracking well at Powhatan Point on the Ohio River exploded and spewed methane gas into the air at the rate of 120 million tons per hour for nearly 20 days. American and Dutch scientists, which spotted the leak by satellite, agreed Powhatan was likely the largest methane leak in U.S. history. The amount of methane released into the air was more than the entire countries of France, Norway and the Netherlands combined in a year.Where were the Environment Protection Agency and ODNR then, and where are they today on legislation to protect the public from corporations like XTO Energy − a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil − which operates the Powhatan well? What reparation did XTO Energy make to Ohio, the nation, or the world to mitigate personal health effects and expected global warming amounts from that gargantuan leak?The fracking boom in Ohio did not provide the jobs and increased population originally promised to Ohioans. What it has done is build a goldmine for fossil fuel industry shareholders who found eager friends at the state house. Some of these politicians accept fossil fuel campaign and dark money donations − and reciprocate by passing laws like HB 507.The fracking industry needs strict regulation to ensure the health and safety of the people who live in and near fracked areas and to prevent future methane leaks. Methane contributes significantly to rising global temperatures.We live in a pivotal moment in history. Either we continue to hurtle faster toward environmental oblivion or begin to do the hard work necessary to implement sustainable energy strategies and solutions.

Ohio Law Labels Natural Gas 'Green,' but What Does It Mean? - Natural gas is officially labeled “green” in Ohio after Gov. Mike DeWine earlier this month signed House Bill (HB) 507 into law, though the green stamp may not carry much legislative weight for funding or regulations, according to the governor’s office. HB 507 passed the Ohio Senate last month, with the primary goal of ensuring state agencies would lease land for oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) activities. After some holdups at the state’s Department of Natural Resources Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) to fully adopt a state code from September 2021 to establish a standard lease form by which state agencies could enter contract with E&Ps, the Ohio Senate rolled in an amendment to HB507 that would expedite the standard lease form. No longer “may” state agencies lease land, but “shall lease, in good faith, a formation within a parcel of land” for oil and gas development, the legislation reads. The bill contains a qualifier that “‘Green energy’ includes energy generated by using natural gas as a resource,” as well as an energy source that emits reduced air pollutants, and thus reduces cumulative air emissions and “is more sustainable and reliable relative to some fossil fuels,” according to HB507. The green label for natural gas is unseen in the United States, but in Europe, regulators this summer voted to accept a proposal from the European Commission to classify new natural gas and nuclear power projects as green. The European Union, facing what the International Energy Agency has called an “energy crisis,” would allow subsidies and low-cost loans for natural gas and nuclear projects deemed sustainable. But in Ohio, the green label may not do much. As of December, permitting in the Utica Shale has declined by 43%, down by 19 permits, according to the latest data from Evercore ISI. Moving forward, it may be possible that the OGLMC’s issuance of permits rises as a result of other language in HB507, but not necessarily as a result of the green label.“Our legal team reviewed the ‘green energy’ provision, and the legislative language did not affect any funding or regulations,” said Dewine’s Press Secretary Dan Tierney. “It was more of an opinion statement by the General Assembly than anything. This was not administration language from our office.“Natural Gas is an important component of Ohio’s energy mix for many reasons, but of relevance here is the fact that natural gas is cleaner than coal and other fossil fuels,” he told NGI. “Thus, when we move to natural gas, we are helping our country and the world. While wind and solar are cleaner energy sources, we cannot replace fossil fuel with wind and solar overnight, making natural gas all the more important to our energy mix.”

Expansion project planned at Utica Shale Academy - The Utica Shale Academy is looking to expand and has applied for $2.4 million to construct a new building in Salineville. Superintendent Bill Watson said an application was made to the Governor’s Office on Appalachia and would match current funds to help erect a $4.8 million, two-story facility on grounds that USA owns along East Main St. The site, which is located adjacent to the Hutson Building, would feature 5,090 square feet of space for offices, several classrooms, machinery, lockers and restrooms for those working with heavy equipment operation, plus students can also learn CNC plasma cutting. A building has been razed with work on the separate 2,800-square-feet outdoor welding lab currently ongoing, and Watson said officials hope to learn later this year if the construction project will become a reality. “We submitted for a $4.8 million project, but we had nearly 50-percent leverage with two $600,000 equity grants and some ESSER (Emergency Elementary and Secondary School Relief) funding and asked for $2.4 million to build a facility next to the welding lab,” Watson said. “It will be for heavy equipment operation and will also be used for recovery to work. I’ve reached out to [jails and public health commissions in] Jefferson, Columbiana and Mahoning counties to work with recovering addicts and get them back into the workforce.” The expansion comes on the heels of the acquisition of the former Huntington Bank building at 50 E. Main St., which is being used as the Energy Center in collaboration with Youngstown State University. That building was acquired in partnership with YSU using funds from a $300,000 capital budget bill allocation which was acquired by Ohio Sen. Michael Rulli and Rep. Tim Ginter (both R-Salem), and the facility houses megatronics, hydraulics, pneumatics, AC/DC electric, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC’s), diesel mechanics and horticulture.

14 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Jan 16-22 | Marcellus Drilling News - New shale permits issued for Jan. 16-22 in the Marcellus/Utica included only 7 new permits in Pennsylvania, 5 new permits in Ohio, and 2 new permits in West Virginia–for a grand total of 14. The top recipient of permits for last week, scoring nearly half, was Coterra Energy (the former Cabot Oil & Gas), with 6 permits issued in northeastern PA’s Susquehanna County. Others: Brooke County, Carroll County, Clay County, Diversified Gas & Oil, Elk County, Energy Companies, INR, Monroe County, Mountain V O&G, Seneca Resources, Southwestern Energy

Murrysville Council approves 2nd fracking well operation on Plum border - Murrysville Council last week unanimously approved what will be the municipality’s second unconventional gas drilling operation on a property straddling the border with Plum. Canonsburg-based Olympus Energy is seeking to build the Hermes unconventional gas drilling well on a 147-acre property just southwest of the Rolling Fields Golf Club, on the 5000 block of Logans Ferry Road. The land is zoned rural-residential and is in the municipality’s oil and gas overlay district. Part of the property extends into Allegheny County and neighboring Plum. Olympus officials said the rough timeline for the project upon approval is 120 days of construction, 240 days of drilling and 240 days for completion. An initial round of drilling would take place between December 2023 and February 2024, with completions to follow in April 2024, project engineer Ryan Dailey said. A second round of drilling would take place in spring 2025, for a total of eight wells, Lucas said. Olympus Energy owns and operates the Titan well pad off Bollinger Road. Plans for the fracking well also include proposed road improvements, including installing a traffic light at the intersection of Saltsburg Road and Golden Mile Highway and widening Saltsburg’s intersection with Logan Ferry Road to better accommodate truck traffic to and from the site. Olympus attorney Blaine Lucas said the Hermes project ultimately would include eight wells. Councilwoman Jamie Lee Korns abstained from voting, as her husband works as an attorney for law firm Babst Calland, which is representing Olympus.

Businesses, groups tell lawmakers regulatory burden, high energy costs must be lowered - Pittsburgh Business Times --A Pennsylvania Senate panel was told that higher energy costs were strangling businesses and consumers alike and that regulatory burdens on the energy industry need to be lowered to keep the commonwealth competitive. The hearing, held at the Boilermakers Local 154 center on Banksville Road, drew representatives from business and labor to outline an “all-of-the-above” approach to the state’s energy needs, with natural gas in the dominant position but with help from coal, solar and other energy sources. The Republican lawmakers and the officials who testified mostly talked about the strength of Pennsylvania’s energy industry and how it can be leveraged to help boost the economy and lower costs for the future. “We can build products right here in Pennsylvania and have good paying jobs,” said state Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie, chairman of the Senate Majority Policy Committee who convened the hearing. “If we regulate ourselves too much it takes our energy costs up and then our jobs and our energy go over to China.” Jeff Kotula, president of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, said it wasn’t just foreign countries that Pennsylvania businesses and the economy lose to. He and others mentioned the loss of a $1 billion investment by U.S. Steel in the Mon Valley, and said the decisions by bureaucrats on regulations can have a wide-ranging impact. “It has job creation and economic impacts that radiate throughout our country,” Kotula said. Lauren Connelly, VP of local government affairs and advocacy at the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, said that the region’s current and future economy depends on the ability to use all of its energy assets. She said that jobs and economic growth opportunities will be missed. “We know we’re losing deals and investment to other states that are streamlining these (regulatory) processes,” Connelly said. That has been impacting the Pennsylvania natural gas industry, said David Callahan, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition. Callahan said permitting in Pennsylvania is unpredictable and often more time consuming that it should be because regulators sometimes go beyond what is in the law. Laughlin agreed, saying that he had seen businesses caught up in the “hamster wheel of red tape” while trying to get projects approved. “You never get your permits, you just run around,” Laughlin said.

Southern officials deal with oil spill aftermath -- Officials with the Southern Huntingdon County School District are dealing with the aftermath and making plans after finding a heating oil tank spill at Spring Farms Elementary School on Jan. 22. Dwayne Northcraft, the district superintendent, said the leak was discovered by their maintenance staff early morning Jan. 22. “Our alarms went off around 5:30 a.m. Sunday saying the heating oil tank was low on fuel, but the tank was filled the prior Thursday (Jan. 19),” he said. “Our maintenance supervisor went to the school to physically check the tank to see if it was full. It turned out the 9,000-gallon tank had only about 1,300 gallons left, which meant that around 7,600 gallons of fuel had leaked.” The 9,000-gallon tank is a fiberglass tank that was installed on the elementary school property in 1991. Northcraft said the district has been in contact with the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Huntingdon County Emergency Management Agency, and they will be hiring a company that specializes in the mitigation efforts of oil spills like this one. As of today, the fiberglass tank in question will be removed by Wagner’s Excavating. Currently, there are no visible signs of heating oil in the stream in front of the elementary school, the basement of the school and the well. The well has been pumped twice. “So far, we’ve determined the oil leaked quickly from the tank, and it’s likely around or under the tank,” said Northcraft. “When the excavator removes the tank, we’ll be able to detect just how far the oil has leaked and determine the path of the oil.” Northcraft said the school would remain off-limits to students for the next few weeks, but teachers can get any materials needed to teach their classes. “We could use bottled water, but we also don’t want to compromise our well, as we use it for other things,” he said. “Without knowing where the majority of the oil is located, we don’t want to put heating oil through our water system and on-site sewage treatment and contaminate that. If we contaminate that, it means we would likely contaminate the stream. So we’re trying to prevent that.”

What happens if the largest owner of oil and gas wells in the US goes bankrupt? - EHN— Diversified Energy Company, the largest owner of oil and gas wells in the country, might abandon up to 70,000 oil and gas wells throughout Appalachia without plugging them, according to a new report.The company, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, spent the last five years acquiring tens of thousands of aging, low-producing conventional oil and gas wells and some fracking wells primarily in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. Conventional oil and gas wells are traditional wells where fossil fuels are extracted through vertical boreholes.A new report, published by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a progressive think tank, finds that the company’s financial liabilities exceeded its assets by more than $300 million in June2022. According to the report’s authors, it’s rare for an oil and gas company’s liabilities to exceed its assets to this extent, prompting concerns that Diversified Energy will go bankrupt without plugging its wells.“We don’t want to see citizens and taxpayers have to pay for plugging these well after this company is gone,” Ted Boettner, author of the report and a senior researcher with the Ohio River Valley Institute, told EHN. “The way Diversified’s business model is set up, this is a distinct possibility.”Boettner’s report expands on a previous report on Diversified Energy published by the same organization in April 2022 that found the company did not have enough funds on hand to plug its rapidly growing inventory of wells. That report also found that the company claims it can plug wells at a cost less than half the industry average, claims dying wells will continue producing for decades longer than can be reasonably anticipated, and misrepresents methane emissions.“These unusual assumptions — as well as accounting practices that function to punt cleanup costs down the line — are not used by any other company in the industry,” Kathy Hipple, report coauthor and research fellow at the Ohio River Valley Institute, said in a statement at the time. The new report finds that those practices have continued, with the company acquiring additional wells while lowering the amount it expects to pay to decommission them.

The next debate on pipeline safety - For months, lawmakers have wrestled with how to make it easier to build large energy projects, such as pipelines (a GOP priority) and renewable energy transmission lines (championed by Democrats).But now one federal watchdog is asserting that current pipeline safety standards are too lenient, writes POLITICO’s E&E News reporter Mike Soraghan.The National Transportation Safety Board said the formula used to calculate a pipeline’s “potential impact radius” significantly underestimates the danger of explosions, and it is urging regulators to modify the calculation.At least twice since 2017, explosions have blown steel debris beyond that so-called blast zone, including one in Kentucky that killed a woman in a nearby mobile home.A particularly brutal example occurred in 2000. An extended family of 12 was sleeping on the banks of New Mexico’s Pecos River when a nearby gas pipeline ruptured, killing everyone.The blast was 675 feet from the campsite, but today’s formula would have considered the family safe at 600 feet away.The metric used for determining a pipeline’s blast zone is based on a number of assumptions, including that a person in the area could immediately understand what is happening and then run 200 feet within five seconds of an explosion.But that’s an unrealistic assumption — “a fantasy story” — said safety advocate Royce Deaver, who worked as a pipeline consultant from Exxon Mobil Corp. for over three decades.The agency that oversees pipeline rules, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, said it would “strongly consider” modifications to ensure bigger safety margins. But that agency, an arm of the Department of Transportation, has faced questions about its own track record on safety. A 2015 POLITICO investigation found that the agency lacked the resources to inspect the country’s millions of miles of oil and gas lines, and that it had granted the industry it regulates significant power to influence the rulemaking process.

Natural Gas Price Volatility ‘Simply Noise’ for Heavily Hedged CNX, Says CEO - Appalachian Basin pure-play CNX Resources Corp. is aiming to lock in elevated natural gas prices and protect itself from market swings through an aggressive hedging strategy, CEO Nick Deluliis said Thursday.He said “from a macro perspective, we expect the recent pricing volatility to continue in 2023 as the US domestic markets continue to fluctuate with shifting weather expectations, uncertain domestic production levels,” and growing liquefied natural gas demand from around the world. “How gas prices unfold in 2023 will depend on a difficult to predict combination of those three core elements.” The CEO said “while the extreme volatility in the natural gas markets will significantly impact near term results, prices along the strip are still materially higher than in recent years and as such, the rates of returns on previous capital investments remain not just high, but improved in this environment…” As a result, “the future business plan not only remains intact, but even stronger,” he added. CNX is forecasting capital expenditures (capex) of $575-675 million in 2023, including $430-475 million for drilling and completions. Total capex in 2022 was $566 million.Plans are to run one to two drilling rigs and one continuous, all electric hydraulic fracturing crew throughout the year, Deluliis said.CNX is expecting “modestly lower” production in 2023 versus 2022, he said. Management expects production levels to be at their lowest during the first quarter, then to accelerate as the year progresses.Production “is a result for us, not an objective within our strategy and business model,” he told analysts.“Most importantly, we’re expecting to return to our 2022 production level run rate around mid-year 2023 plus or minus, and from there return to more elevated annual levels in 2024 and beyond,” the CEO said.

US natgas jumps 9% as Freeport LNG asks to start restart process and colder forecasts (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures jumped about 9% on Monday from a 19-month low in the prior session on Freeport LNG's request to begin the restart process for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant in Texas and on forecasts for colder weather and higher heating demand over the next two weeks than previously expected. Freeport LNG, the second-largest U.S. LNG exporter, said it had completed repairs to its plant and asked U.S. regulators for permission to take early steps to restart the fire-idled facility. Freeport has said repeatedly that the plant is on track to restart in the second half of January, pending regulatory approvals. Analysts, however, said the plant would likely return in February or later due to the large amount of work needed to satisfy federal regulators. Freeport has already delayed the plant's planned restart date many times from October to November to December and most recently to January. Its return to service will boost demand for gas and prices will likely jump. The facility, which shut in a fire on June 8, 2022, can pull in around 2.1 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of gas and turn it into LNG when operating at full power. That is about 2% of U.S. daily production. Front-month gas futures for February delivery rose 27.3 cents, or 8.6%, to settle at $3.447 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). On Friday, the contract closed at its lowest since June 10, 2021. The front-month contract rose out of technically oversold territory for the first time in four days, on track for its biggest daily percentage gain since early November when it rose about 9.7%. But with prices down about 52% over the past five weeks, gas speculators last week boosted their net short futures and options positions on the New York Mercantile and Intercontinental Exchanges to the most since March 2020, according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Commitments of Traders report. Shares outstanding in the U.S. Natural Gas Fund, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) designed to track the daily price movement of gas, hit 55.2 million on Friday, its fourth record high in a row, according to Refinitiv data. Purchases of UNG so far this year have already hit three of the top 10 biggest daily share purchases on record. With colder weather coming, Refinitiv forecast U.S. gas demand, including exports, would jump from 130.8 bcfd this week to 139.9 bcfd next week. Those forecasts were higher than Refinitiv's outlook on Friday.

U.S. natgas drops 6% to 19-month low on forecasts for less cold, Freeport delay -(Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures dropped about 6% to a 19-month low on Wednesday on forecasts for less cold weather and lower heating demand next week than previously expected and a growing belief in the market that Freeport LNG's liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant in Texas will not actually restart for weeks or months. "With a less severe (weather) outlook across Texas and MidCon (Midcontinent region), narrowing odds for disruptive freeze-offs soften the February outlook," analysts at EBW Analytics, a consultancy, told customers in a note, referring to the freezing of oil and gas wells - freeze-offs - that reduce output. Earlier this week, Freeport said its export plant was ready to begin the process of exiting a seven-month outage, pending regulatory approval. But some analysts have stuck with their earlier estimates that it will take until February, March or even later for the plant to actually start pulling in big amounts of pipeline gas. Freeport, the second-biggest U.S. LNG exporter, is important because the market expects gas prices and demand to rise once the plant restarts. The facility, which was shut by a fire on June 8, 2022, can pull in about 2.1 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of gas and turn it into LNG when operating at full power. That is about 2% of what U.S. gas producers pull out of the ground each day. Front-month gas futures for February delivery fell 19.1 cents, or 5.9%, to settle at $3.067 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), their lowest close since June 3, 2021. In another sign of fading hopes that extreme cold will eventually supercharge gas prices this winter, the premium on March futures over April NGH23-J23, which the industry calls the widow maker, fell to a deficit. That put gas futures into contango, with forward prices (April) higher than earlier contracts (March). Analysts have said that March, the last month of winter when demand for heating fuel is high, should never trade below April, the first month of spring when demand is lower. The industry calls the March-April spread the "widow maker" because rapid price moves resulting from changing weather forecasts have forced some speculators out of business. "The collapsing (March-April) spread was driven by the blowtorch warmth of recent weeks and plummeting winter supply adequacy risks," On a daily basis, gas output was on track to drop about 1.7 bcfd over the past two days to a preliminary three-week low of 97.4 bcfd on Wednesday as cold weather starts to cause wells to freeze in some producing basins like the Bakken in North Dakota, the Permian in Texas and Appalachia in Pennsylvania. With colder weather coming, Refinitiv forecast U.S. gas demand, including exports, would jump from 130.9 bcfd this week to 138.7 bcfd next week. The forecast for this week was higher than Refinitiv's outlook on Tuesday, while the forecast for next week was lower.

EIA's US gas storage estimate outpaces consensus as NYMEX bears push prices under $3 -The US Energy Information Administration on Jan. 26 estimated a 91 Bcf withdrawal from domestic gas storage last week in a report that modestly outpaced market expectations. The agency's still-largely-bearish report failed to turn back an overnight selloff in NYMEX Henry Hub prompt-month futures, which dropped below $3/MMBtu for the first time since May 2021, data from CME Group and S&P Global Commodity Insights showed. Last week's inventory drawdown narrowly outpaced analysts' consensus projection for an 84 Bcf withdrawal, expected by S&P Global Commodity Insights' weekly US gas storage survey. EIA's latest estimate, though, was less-than-half the size of the five year-average storage pull of 185 Bcf and only a fraction of the year-ago withdrawal of 217 Bcf, both reported in the corresponding week. Following a third-consecutive bearish storage report from EIA, US stocks are now building on a surplus. At 2.729 Tcf, inventories are now 128 Bcf, or nearly 5%, above the five-year average and 107 Bcf, or more than 4%, above the year-ago level, agency data shows.Since mid-December, benchmark US gas futures prices have pulled back by more than 55%, falling from winter highs around $7/MMBtu just six weeks ago. Since late August, prices are down from sustained highs in the $8-$9 range, S&P Global data shows. This week's push to prices levels below $3 comes as the outlook for US storage this year looks increasingly bearish. Many analysts are now projecting a high-side inventory level near 4 Tcf by early November -- well above the 2022 inventory high at 3.65 Tcf. Added pressure on the NYMEX also comes as many US oil and gas producers prepare to release their 2023 guidance, highlighting the recent strength in domestic output. After a late December freeze, US production staged a surprisingly rapid recovery into the new year to trend at a record monthly average of 97.9 Bcf/d in January. According to many analysts' projections, US output should continue to grow this year at a modest pace – despite expected inflation in oilfield equipment and services. According to the National Weather Service, nearly all of the continental US faces an outsized risk for below-average temperatures in the six- to 10-day forecast with the exception of a handful of states stretching from Florida to the Carolinas. In a slightly longer-dated forecast, the risk for below-average temperatures is lower, but still includes most of the Midwest and the Northeast – both key regions for US heating demand. For the week ending Jan. 27, S&P Global's supply-demand and storage models are predicting an inventory drawdown in the range of 140-160 Bcf in what-would-be a relatively bearish late-January withdrawal estimate compared with a five-year average drawdown of 181 Bcf and a year-ago withdrawal of 261 Bcf, data from EIA shows.

February Natural Gas Futures Fall Below $3; Spot Prices Slip - Natural gas futures could not shake their losing ways on Thursday. Weak weather, strong production and another anemic storage print sent prices lower a third consecutive day. The February Nymex gas futures contract settled at $2.944/MMBtu, down 12.3 cents day/day. It marked the first front month close below $3 since mid-2021. March shed 6.7 cents to $2.848. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. dropped too, falling $1.735 cents to $3.585. Production held close to 100 Bcf/d on Thursday, as it has most of January, hanging within striking distance of record levels even as demand so far this year proved modest. Benign weather across much of the Lower 48 this month minimized heating needs and natural consumption, weighing on prices. Diminished export capacity also played a role. The 2.38 Bcf/d Freeport LNG facility, out of commission since a fire last June, was expected to return to service late in 2022. It has yet to relaunch, however, amid regulatory delays. Regulators gave the nod this week to begin the restart process, but it remained unclear when Freeport would ramp back to full capacity. Those bearish factors were amplified Thursday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) inventory report, which showed utilities withdrew 91 Bcf of natural gas from storage for the week ended Jan. 20. It extended a trend of uninterrupted weak storage results so far in 2023. The print for the Jan. 20 week compared with a five-year average draw of 185 Bcf and a year-earlier pull of 217 Bcf. The decrease lowered inventories to 2,729 Bcf, but it left stocks well above the year-earlier level of 2,622 Bcf and the five-year average of 2,601 Bcf. After the EIA report, the end-of-the winter strip in March fell below the first month of the summer strip in April. “Incredibly,” this created a situation in which gas sold during withdrawal season traded below the coming injection season

U.S. natgas jumps 6% in low volume trade ahead of contract expiration (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures jumped about 6% on Friday from a 20-month low in the prior session as late buying during a low-volume day ahead of the expiration of the February contract caused prices to swing wildly from negative to positive several times in the last half hour of trade. Traders noted this usually happens as some gas sellers seek to exit their front-month futures positions on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) before they expire because they do not want to deliver gas to the Henry Hub in Louisiana. Volatility often peaks near contract expiration days because trading volumes are usually extremely low since few in the market want to deliver or take gas from the Henry Hub. There were only about 3,476 front-month contracts traded on the NYMEX on Friday. That compares with an average of 138,000 front-month contracts traded daily on the NYMEX over the past five years (2018 to 2022). In 2022, gas prices soared by a record 46% on the day the February contract expired before plunging 26% the next day when the March contract became the new front-month. On its last day as the front-month, gas futures NGc1 for February delivery rose 16.5 cents, or 5.6%, to settle at $3.109 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). On Thursday, the contract closed at its lowest since May 2021. For the week, the contract lost about 2%, putting it down for a sixth week in a row for the first time since October. During those six weeks, the front-month has dropped about 53%. The March NGH23 contract, which will soon be the front-month, was little changed on Friday at $2.84 per mmBtu. Earlier in the day, gas futures were down about 4% due in part to a growing belief that there is more than enough gas in storage for the rest of the winter. The weather, meanwhile, is expected to turn from warmer than normal now to colder than normal from Jan. 30 to Feb. 6 before turning warmer than normal again through mid-February. That should keep heating demand mostly low, at least when the weather is warmer than normal, and allow utilities to continue pulling less gas from storage for at least a fourth or even fifth week in a row. Gas stockpiles were currently about 5% above the five-year (2018-2022) average and are on track to rise to 7% above normal in next week's federal storage report.

Natural gas ends unchanged, raising questions on whether it has bottomed -- Natural gas futures fell for a sixth week in a row although Friday’s flat close raised questions on whether the ferocious selloff in the heating fuel over an unseasonably warm winter was coming to an end. The front-month March gas contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Henry Hub settled at $2.849 per mmBtu, or metric million British thermal units — down 10% from a week ago but virtually unchanged from Thursday’s close. Gas futures have lost 57% of their value over the past six weeks after an unusually warm start to the 2022/23 winter led to a collapse in demand for the heating fuel. Prior to this week’s plunge to $2 levels, gas hit 14-year highs of $10 per mmBtu in August, and even traded as high as $7 in December. Friday’s flat close, however, raised hopes among some traders that the market may have bottomed with Thursday’s 21-month low of $2.688 for March gas. The collapse in gas prices came after record high production of above 100 billion cubic feet per day on the average in October and November, and after tepid heating demand for the winter, which officially began on Dec. 21. Due to weak consumption, U.S. gas in storage stood at 2.729 tcf, or trillion cubic feet, at the close of last week, up from the year-ago level of 2.622 tcf. Notwithstanding the latest week’s slide in gas prices, weather forecasts show a likely return to freezing conditions February onwards. Texas-based LNG export terminal Freeport is also reported to be readying to resume operations in February. Freeport consumed 2 bcf per day of gas until its sudden closure in June left the market with some 420 bcf of idle supply. Traders are estimating that it could take till late next month for LNG shipments to again leave the terminal. Despite this, another poor storage report for next week could send prices lower again, warned some traders. The Energy Information Administration reported that utilities drew 91 bcf, or billion cubic feet, from the U.S. national gas storage for heating and electricity generation last week. That was higher than the forecast, as well as the prior week’s draw of 82 bcf. Analysts said weekly gas consumption had to be between 100 and 200 bcf a week in order to meaningfully send prices higher. “Other than the lack of significantly cold winter weather, the looseness of the supply/demand imbalance continues to be led by hefty dry gas production, which is up by more than 5 bcf/d year-over-year, Further price deterioration is still possible and will begin to subside when producers decide to more aggressively put on the brakes with regard to additional production plans this year,” .

Natural gas feeds half of humanity – Mackinac Center --Half of the people on Earth are alive today thanks to nitrogenous fertilizers made of and with natural gas.So why are governments at home and abroad scrambling to cut off humanity’s natural gas supply? Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has spent years trying to shut down the Line 5 natural gas pipeline – precipitating an international disagreement that puts the state in conflict with both the Biden administration and the Trudeau government. Other natural gas projects in the United States have been attacked, shut down, or blocked, while investment in oil and gas is also under fire.The Dutch and Canadian governments plan to cut fertilizer usage significantly despite heavy backlash. The leadership ofSri Lanka curtailed fertilizer use – until massive crop failures helped fuel an economic crisis and a popular uprising that toppled the government. United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently brought back the country’s moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, during an energy crisis that leaves thousands of Britons at risk offreezing to death. Meanwhile, an estimated four trillion cubic meters of natural gas sit unused under the English countryside.Natural gas provides many well-known benefits to society, but one of the lesser-known benefits is right on your plate. Fertilizers produced using natural gas are essential in feeding the global population.An estimated 44 percent of the world’s people were consuming food produced with nitrogen fertilizers in 2000, according to an article in Our World in Data. That percentage had risen to 48 percent by 2008. The article, which summarized findings published in Nature Geosciences by scientist and policy analyst Vaclav Smil, estimated that by 2015, three-and-a-half billion people were alive thanks to these products.

U.S. Coast Guard responds to spill in Mississippi River after vessel capsizes - The U.S. Coast Guard said it was responding to an oil spill in the Mississippi River after a dredging vessel capsized in the vicinity of mile marker (MM) 85, near Meraux, Louisiana, on Monday morning. “The reported maximum capacity aboard the vessel is 5,500 gallons of diesel and 100 gallons of hydraulic oil. The discharge amount is unknown but it has been contained,” the Coast Guard said in a statement. Coast Guard Sector New Orleans Incident Management Division is coordinating with Wood Resources in overseeing the response and has recovered more than 3,360 gallons of oily water mixture, it added. The waterway from MM 81 to MM 86 was closed for eight hours, but has since reopened with restrictions in place in order to facilitate recovery operations. There were no immediate reports of any impact to wildlife.

Crews have cleaned up most of the oil that spilled out of the Keystone pipeline in Kansas - The pipeline company that spilled nearly 600,000 gallons of oil onto fields and into a stream in north-central Kansas says it has cleaned up more than 85% of the crude. Meanwhile, the Washington County, Kansas, newspaper reported that the Keystone pipeline is by far the county’s biggest source of tax revenue. The county’s second-biggest source of tax revenue? Also a pipeline operator.TC Energy estimates that 588,000 gallons of crude oil spewed out when the Keystone pipeline burst on Dec. 7 — the biggest spill yet on the Canadian company’s largest oil pipeline system.The company says crews have recovered about 516,000 gallons. More than 800 workers are on site, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.Much of the work focuses on Mill Creek. Several miles of the stream have been blocked off to facilitate the intensive cleanup and contain the contamination.A state environmental agency said last week that it was seeing a drop in chemical levels downstream from the isolated segment of the creek. The Washington County News reported Thursday that seven of the county’s 10 biggest taxpayers involve pipelines. But revenues from the Keystone pipeline eclipse the rest, and only kicked in recently because a 10-year tax exemption expired. The county, two school districts and other local units of government get more than $1.9 million combined in taxes from the Keystone this year, the newspaper said. The second-biggest source of tax revenue, another pipeline owned by Northern Natural Gas, paid about $670,000 to local units of government in Washington County last year.

Oil refineries release lots of water pollution near communities of color, data show : NPR - Oil refineries release billions of pounds of pollution annually into waterways, and that pollution disproportionately affects people of color, according to a new analysis of Environmental Protection Agency regulatory data.The pollution includes heavy metals, nitrogen and other compounds that can kill aquatic animals, feed harmful algae and make waterways dangerous for humans to fish in, swim in or even touch. The pollution affects communities across the country, but is especially concentrated along the Gulf Coast, in California and near Chicago.The new findings underscore health and environmental dangers across fossil fuel operations, from the wellhead to pipelines, refineries and consumer use.The report was published by the Environmental Integrity Project, an independent watchdog group that routinely analyzes public data collected by the EPA."This is a highly polluting industry discharging large volumes of wastewater," says Eric Schaeffer, executive director the Environmental Integrity Project, and former director of the EPA's Office of Civil Enforcement.The report authors examined EPA water pollution data from 2019 to 2021 for 81 major refineries across the country – about two thirds of all refineries operating in the U.S. Refineries are required to tell the government how much pollution they release into waterways.Most refineries included in the analysis reported releasing extra pollution, beyond what they are legally permitted to. But less than a quarter of those with violations were penalized by the EPA, the data show."We have a chronic problem with enforcement of the [Clean] Water Act," Schaeffer says.ExxonMobil, which operates some of the largest refineries in the country including multiple facilities that the report found are among the largest emitters of key pollutants, declined to comment specifically about its operations. Instead, the company referred NPR to a general environmental statement by the American Fuel & Petroleum Manufacturers trade group.

US seeks accelerated return of SPR crude loans --President Joe Biden's administration said it plans to start refilling the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) by accelerating the return of some of the 24.4mn bl of crude it loaned out last year.ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and Phillips 66 were among the companies that took long-term loans of crude from the SPR as part of an "exchange" program meant to lower fuel prices. Nearly all of that crude had been scheduled to return to the SPR over a four-month period beginning on 1 June 2024, according to contracts obtained by Argus Media.US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said the administration had a strategy to begin refilling the SPR that would "accelerate" the return of some of the loaned out crude. The SPR is currently at its lowest levels in nearly 40 years, but still has 371.6mn of crude in inventory."I have no concerns that we will be able to refill and replenish the SPR, and do it at a savings to taxpayers," Granholm said today.The US Energy Department did not respond to requests for details on when crude would return to the SPR, or the volume of borrowed crude set to be returned on an accelerated timetable.Biden announced the exchange program in November 2021, marking an effort to combat rising fuel prices by offering loans of crude from the SPR. At one point when the program was open to bidding, prompt-month Nymex WTI crude futures were $19/bl more than futures prices at the end of the program in September 2024.Under the terms of the SPR exchange contracts, companies were able to select a "return period" that required them to return crude loans over a period ranging from 3-33 months. As payment for the loan, companies had agreed to return 2.3-9.1pc more crude than they borrowed from the SPR.Of an initial 21.7mn bl of crude loaned from the SPR, 20.4mn bl was contracted to be returned between 1 June 2024 and 30 September, according to contracts obtained through a public records record. If the existing contracts remain intact, companies will also have to add a total of nearly 1.8mn bl of additional crude to the SPR as payment for the loans.Beyond accelerating the return of crude loans, the administration is also working on a plan to buy 60mn bl of crude for the SPR at a targeted price of $67-72/bl, using revenue from last year's emergency sale of 180mn bl at an average price of $96/bl. The Energy Department earlier this month called offa "pilot" purchase of up to 3mn bl of crude because it said the offers were too high. Granholm said the administration planned to announce soon a plan for the crude purchases.

Senate Republican leaders introduce bills restricting Biden's SPR authority as WH threatens veto - Republican leaders on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led by Ranking Member John Barrasso, R-Wyo., introduced companion bills of House legislation targeting President Biden's use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The first bill, the Secure Auction for Energy Reserves Act which Barrasso introduced with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, would prohibit the federal government from selling SPR stocks to China and other countries of particular concern. Earlier this month, the House passed similar legislation, the Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, by a margin of 331-97."China is profiting from President Biden’s political abuse of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," Barrasso said in a statement. "Meanwhile, America has become more vulnerable to true energy and national security emergencies." "Our legislation will ban SPR sales to China and other hostile nations," he continued. "It will also ban SPR sales to state-owned companies which purchase oil from Russia, Iran, and other nations the U.S. has sanctioned. Adversaries cannot be allowed to benefit from America’s security reserve."Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced two bills to restrict President Biden's authority on Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases. (Associated Press)Collins added that it is "inexcusable that our emergency stockpile of crude oil is being sold to dictators overseas." She said legislation was necessary to ensure Americans primarily benefit from future SPR releases.Over the summer, the Biden administration was heavily criticized after reports that it had sold SPR oil to China which reportedly used the stocks to bolster its own reserves. The White House then fired back, saying it was legally required to sell the oil to the highest bidder. The second legislation Senate Republicans introduced Tuesday, the Strategic Production Response Act, would require the Department of Energy to only tap the SPR when there is a severe energy supply interruption and not until the Interior Department issues a plan to increase oil and gas production on federal lands and waters.

Republicans launch newest fight against Biden's oil drawdowns - Republicans are aiming to neutralize one of the main tools that President Joe Biden used to lower gasoline prices before last year’s elections — his prolific releases of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The House GOP is calling a vote this week on legislation, H.R. 21 (118), that would prohibit releases from the underground petroleum stockpile unless the government approves a corresponding increase in domestic gas and oil production on federal lands. Two weeks ago, the House passed legislation that would ban sales from the reserve to China. Both measures are typical examples of the not-gonna-pass messaging bills that a party offers when it takes over a chamber of Congress, although the China bill picked up significant Democratic support. Senate Republicans led by Energy Committee ranking member John Barrasso of Wyoming have released similar legislation on the oil reserve this week, as the GOP uses the issue to express frustration with Biden’s broader efforts to wean the economy off fossil fuels to combat climate change. But Republicans are casting their latest proposal in national security terms — accusing Biden of recklessly making politically timed sales from an emergency reserve created in response to the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s. “The SPR was created during a time of energy scarcity,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said in an interview, adding that Biden should instead unleash production from the nation’s fracking hot spots. “You don’t need an emergency reserve to bail you out of high energy prices. You just need to use the Bakken or Permian Basin.” Congress has also turned to the petroleum reserve for non-emergency reasons over the years, with lawmakers of both parties pushing oil sales to raise money for needs such as highway construction and drug approvals,, and former President Donald Trump once proposed selling off half the SPR’s supplies to shrink the federal deficit. Now, though, Republicans argue that Biden has left the U.S. vulnerable to a severe supply disruption by ordering emergency drawdowns after gasoline prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The GOP voiced similar complaints when then-President Barack Obama sold oil from the reserve in response to supply disruptions amid the Arab Spring. Biden’s releases last year — including a massive release just before the election — totaled more than 200 million barrels of oil from the reserve, a network of underground salt caverns that now holds 372 million barrels. That’s down from 638 million barrels when Biden took office and the reserve’s lowest level since 1983.The Treasury Department has estimated that the Biden administration’s releases reduced gasoline prices by up to 40 cents per gallon. The national average price was $3.446 a gallon Tuesday, down from an all-time high of $5.016 in June.The Biden administration has initiated a plan to begin refilling the reserve, but Republicans accuse the president of failing to explain why Russia’s invasion and the subsequent spike in fuel prices qualified as an emergency. They also complain that he hasn’t tended to preserving the physical condition of the reserve’s infrastructure, saying its pipelines, pumps and caverns have been degraded from frequent drawdowns.

U.S. House passes bill limiting drawdowns from strategic oil reserve (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday limiting the ability of the energy secretary to tap the strategic oil reserve without developing plans to increase the amount of public lands available for oil and gas drilling. Representatives backed the bill 221 to 205, with support from only one Democrat. President Joe Biden would veto the legislation should it pass Congress, the White House said this week. The bill is expected to face an uphill battle in the Senate, which unlike the House, is controlled by Biden's fellow Democrats. The Strategic Production Response Act, or H.R.21, requires the U.S. energy secretary to develop a plan to increase oil and gas leasing on federal lands, including submerged ones on the Outer Continental Shelf, before tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It would not stop the president from tapping the SPR in case of an emergency, such as a hurricane that halts production of crude. Republicans, who took control of the House this month, have pushed a series of political messaging bills that appeal to conservative voters. Republican backers of the bill said the Biden administration acted recklessly in selling 180 million barrels from the reserve last year, or 1 million barrels a day for six months, in the biggest release ever. That drawdown and others Biden approved have pushed the level of the SPR to its lowest level since 1983. The SPR should be used only to address true emergencies, said Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican and chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "President Biden has turned a longtime bipartisan strategic asset, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, into a political tool to cover up the consequences of his expensive rush-to-green agenda," said Rodgers. The Biden administration, which is pursuing an aggressive policy to curb climate change by supporting the energy transition off fossil fuels, has said it sold the oil to counter gasoline prices that had risen to $5.00 a gallon and helped fuel the highest inflation levels in decades. Oil prices spiked last year on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and as the world began to emerge from the pandemic. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters at the White House this week that Biden "will not allow the American people to suffer because of the backwards agenda that House Republicans are advancing."

Meet the top House recipients of oil and gas money - The oil and gas industry donated millions of dollars to members of the House in the last election cycle. Now, many of the top recipients are well-positioned to advance its interests.Two of them — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) — serve in leadership positions. Several more have been assigned to House committees where they will wield outsize influence over energy and climate policy.Of the top 10 recipients of oil and gas money in the 2022 election cycle, eight are Republican, according to data from OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending. The contributions include donations of more than $200 from individuals, as well as money from political action committees that represent energy companies and organizations, including the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Koch Industries Inc.McCarthy was the top recipient with $616,563 in oil and gas donations. Scalise received $368,291 from the industry, enough to land him fourth on the list. Six of the top 10 lawmakers hail from Texas, including Rep. Wesley Hunt, a rising star in the Republican party.That an industry would give money to politicians to gain influence is neither new nor unique to the fossil fuel sector. But it highlights the problem with American campaign financing, said Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush. The contributions buy real influence, he said. And oftentimes, it has nothing to do with the interests of the constituents in a congressional district, he said. “These industries pick their favorites and back their favorites and expect their legislation or a lack of regulation in return,” he said, adding, “This is a pattern that you see a lot, and fossil fuels is definitely a GOP industry.”

WildFire Energy creates largest consolidated acreage position in Eagle Ford with new acquisition — WildFire Energy acquired approximately 377,000 net acres and approximately 1,350 wells in the Brazos Valley region of its Eagle Ford asset from Chesapeake Energy Corporation. With the acquisition, WildFire will operate approximately 2,000 gross wells on approximately 600,000 net acres in the eastern Eagle Ford encompassing Burleson, Brazos, Robertson, Madison, Lee, Washington, and Grimes counties of Texas. shale production rig in Eagle Ford basin The acquired Brazos Valley acreage had an average net daily production of approximately 27,700 boe (85% liquid) during the third quarter of 2022. As of December 31, 2021, net proved reserves associated with these properties were approximately 96.8 MMboe. "This acquisition is highly synergistic with our existing assets and the combined size of the overall business positions WildFire Energy as a leading operator in the Eastern Eagle Ford basin. The consolidation of 600,000 contiguous acres is transformative to the business and will drive economies of scale to deliver more high-margin barrels to the advantageous Gulf Coast market," said Steve Habachy, President and COO of WildFire Energy.

Earthquakes rattle Permian shale cost discipline - A recent spike in earthquakes in the US Permian basin of west Texas and southeast New Mexico is drawing renewed scrutiny to wastewater disposal methods from shale operations, adding another potential layer of costs for producers. Back-to-back 5.4 magnitude earthquakes that struck the heart of the Permian basin in late 2022 have lent a new urgency to calls to restrict the use of wastewater injection wells, which have been linked to increased seismic activity. Oil regulator the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) has responded by expanding the boundaries of areas identified as most at risk and has asked producers that operate within theses areas to limit the amount of wastewater they pump underground, as well as to curb the use of deep wells. As a result, the industry is facing higher costs, as drilling waste will have to be trucked and disposed of elsewhere. "If we continue to see the scale of the kind of five or greater magnitude events that we saw at the end of last year, you'll start to see a larger impact from a cost and a logistical standpoint for disposal," Rystad Energy senior analyst Ryan Hassler says. This threatens to impose an additional burden on operators that are already grappling with record inflation, a tight labour market and equipment shortages in the Permian basin, where production is growing at a record pace. Disposal of wastewater costs around 40-70¢/bl, while hauling it is up to four times as expensive, according to industry estimates. Even as the RRC has stepped up efforts to tackle the increase in injection-induced earthquakes, critics have accused it of being too slow to act. "The fact that we're having such high magnitude earthquakes would indicate they are not doing enough," watchdog Commission Shift's executive director, Virginia Palacios, says. And the risk of aftershocks can extend to more than a year after the initial earthquake, making it more difficult to assess whether enough is being done now.

In West Texas, Water Is Scarce For Fracking, Expensive For Recycling, Cheap For Disposal Wells, And It Causes M5 Earthquakes. – Forbes - The Permian basin of West Texas and New Mexico is desert for the most part. The desert is called the Chihuahuan but is not raw desert like the Sahara, but desert due on average 10 inches of rainfall per annum. Sparse, scrubby bushes like creosote and mesquite and few big trees, like Cottonwoods that exist along creekbeds that carry water. Water is scarce in the Permian. But not oil! The Permian basin is the premier basin in the US for oil and gas production. It produces over 5.5 MMbpd (million barrels of oil per day), which is a big part of total US production approaching 12 MMbpd. Success out there has enabled Texas to remain # 1 US state in crude oil production and last year has propelled New Mexico to # 2.Fracking is key to success in the Permian basin where the shale technique starts with a horizontal well 1-2 miles long, and pumps about 40 separate frac treatments along the well. Total water used is 20 million gallons, which would fill a football stadium to 40 feet above the grassed area. For use in fracking, freshwater has to come from cities, or aquifers, or by recycling produced water.Since a widespread drought hit the Southwest US about 30 years ago, freshwater is not cheap anymore. And if fracking water competes with aquifer water pumped up by ranchers, this spells trouble. Water is produced up a well along with oil and gas. It’s too salty for use but it can be cleaned up. How much produced water? Typically 1 - 5 barrels for each barrel of oil. The Permian basin produces 5 MMbopd which would translate to 5 – 25 MMbwpd (million barrels of water per day). Such enormous volumes of produced water have to be disposed of in some way, or recycled.The Marcellus shale, the queen of gas shales, has very few disposal wells by state government edict. Produced water is recycled or can also be trucked to Ohio where it’s poured into disposal wells.Recycling of produced water has increased in the Permian in the last few years. This includes on-site clean up and recycling of dirty water to use it on the next fracking job. Or sending the dirty water for commercial cleanup, such as in a desalination plant.Although cleanup/recycle methods are more expensive, they are gaining traction as oil and gas companies are feeling pressure to fix a problem that has caused two earthquakes of M5 (magnitude 5) that occurred one month apart at the end of 2022. This is not good for the industry’s image, even if the quakes caused limited damage to property.In 2022, the combined Midland and Delaware sub-basins of the Permianproduced 7 billion barrels which amounts to 19 MMbwd. A large fraction of this was injected via disposal wells into deep geologic layers. This enormous volume of water was much greater than what Oklahoma produced in a year, 2015, when that state recorded 890 earthquakes of M > 3. Looking at Culberson County, where most of the recent earthquakes have occurred (see Figure 1), injected volumes in 2020 were almost 0.7 MMbwpd.In the Permian basin, earthquakes have increased in proportion to volumes of water injected in disposal wells. The correlation is strong, as it was in Oklahoma. Warnings have appeared that the Permian basin might follow the earthquake trajectory of Oklahoma, which led to a 5.9M quake, Oklahoma’s largest ever, even after regulators had recognized the problem and reduced injections into disposal wells. Such delays fell in the range of 6-12 months.So what has happened in the Permian? The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) acted quickly after a 5.4M quake occurred in Culberson County on November 16, 2022 (Figure 1).Injection volumes in the Culberson area had to be reduced about 70% from early 2022 — and this was to be completed by mid-2023. This area has 78 disposal wells that are active. 19 of these are deep wells operated by Chevron and Coterra. The new injection limits had to be 745,000 bwpd in Chevron’s 10 wells, and 615,000 bwpd in Coterra’s 9 wells.The clincher from RRC was how RRC would react if another M5 earthquake occurred in the area. If another M4.5 or larger quake occurs in the Culberson area, deep disposal wells close to the source of the quake will be shut in for two years. That would mean finding alternatives to dispose of the produced water: either truck the water to disposal wells in other areas or cleanup/recycle the produced water onsite.However, this would be just a mild hand slap, and would barely touch the huge profits being made out of the Permian basin.

Barnett Shale targeted as Permian Basin operators move into new plays - About 20 years ago, the shale revolution was launched in the Fort Worth Basin where the Barnett Shale has yielded one of the nation’s largest onshore natural gas fields. As that revolution headed west toward the Permian Basin, producers tried to crack the Barnett code but couldn’t quite fit the pieces together. But they managed to take the technological advancements in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that opened the Barnett, applied them to the Spraberry and Wolfcamp formations – as well as the Bone Spring – and as a result the Permian is now producing a record 5.5 million barrels a day. But as the prime rock in those venerable formations begins to play out, operators are looking for the next target, and beginning to revisit the Barnett. “You’ll see different plays – the Barnett Woodford has been tested already and Pioneer has several thousand locations there.” Rich Dealy, Pioneer’s president and chief operating officer, told the Reporter-Telegram the company is drilling four Barnett wells this year and will gauge their productivity. It all depends on the economics, he said. “By the end of 2023, we will have a better understanding of what the productivity is and how the Barnett can compete with our Spraberry and Wolfcamp wells,” he said. “Other operators had previously drilled Barnett gas wells out west in Culberson County with limited success,” Steve Pruett, Elevation’s president and chief executive officer, told the Reporter-Telegram by email. “We were drilling deeper Devonian horizontal wells and had strong shows in the Barnett, which is above the Devonian carbonate at 10,500 feet.” Pruett noted that the economics of the over-pressured Barnett were stronger than the company’s drilling locations in the Delaware and Southern Midland Basin, so the Delaware and southern Midland Basin locations were sold so the company could focus on the development of the Barnett on the Central Basin Platform. “We are now drilling our 47th well in the play, and we have over 70 locations remaining to drill. The Barnett is gassier than the Wolfcamp, but it produces less water, thus the wells are cheaper to operate than the Wolfcamp or Spraberry wells,” Pruett wrote.

Texas Oil & Gas Industry Paid Record $24.7Bn In Taxes And Royalties - The Texas oil and natural gas industry has paid $24.7 billion in state and local taxes and state royalties – by far the highest total in Texas history. According to just-released data from the Texas Oil & Gas Association (TXOGA), the previous record of just over $16 billion set in 2019 was shattered by 54%. “The Texas oil and natural gas industry plays an extraordinary role in securing our state and national economy and advancing global stability. However, growth is not guaranteed, and policy can promote prosperity, or hinder it. Policies and politics in Texas and across our nation will determine if we can continue to deliver for Texans while meeting our nation and the world’s energy needs,” TXOGA President Todd Staples stated. The amount of $24.7 billion translates to roughly $67 million every day that pays for Texas’ public schools, universities, roads, first responders, and other essential services. Production taxes and royalties to state funds more than doubled over fiscal year 2021. Production taxes grew by $5.8 billion, a 116% increase and royalties to state funds increased by $2.2 billion, a 102% increase. Oil and natural gas production taxes exceeded $10 billion for the first time in Texas history. Staples detailed how oil and natural gas tax and royalty revenue is used to support education, transportation, healthcare, and infrastructure both locally in communities across Texas and through royalty and tax revenue that is paid into the Economic Stabilization Fund (Rainy-Day Fund), the Permanent School Fund (PSF), and the Permanent University Fund (PUF) – all of which are funded almost exclusively with taxes and state royalties paid by the oil and natural gas industry. In 2022, 99% of the state’s oil and natural gas royalties were deposited into the PSF and the PUF, which support Texas public education. Each fund received $2.1 billion – more than double the amounts from last year. The Rainy-Day Fund received $1.5 billion from oil and natural gas production taxes. The value of these two funds now stands at an estimated $56.8 billion and $28.8 billion respectively.

Jet fuel prices up as demand jumps, refinery outages limit supply (Reuters) - Jet fuel prices have risen to levels never recorded in January as demand from China's lifting of COVID-19 travel restrictions and U.S. refinery outages, with the surge likely to continue, analysts and refining executives say. Chinese flight activity has more than tripled since early December to more than an average of 10,700 flights per day, according to data from flight tracking firm Airportia. Jet fuel this year will be the largest source of oil demand growth, says the International Energy Agency, which monitors energy consumption. This month's demand should hit 6.6 million barrels per day, the highest reading since February 2020, said Viktor Katona, an analyst at data firm Kpler. Prices are climbing in Asia, Europe and the United States. In Singapore, jet fuel is trading around $122.30 per barrel, up 14% in the last two weeks. Europe's price for the fuel has climbed to $115 per tonne, the highest since June. New York spot prices were quoted on Thursday at $2.45 above U.S. ultra-low sulfur diesel, a premium not seen at this time of the year since at least 2011. Refining outages in the United States are feeding the price run-up. Cold weather along the U.S. Gulf Coast recently knocked out some processing plants and pushed up the premium for jet fuel, said Gary Simmons, chief commercial officer at Valero Energy (NYSE:VLO). "Overall, we expect jet demand to increase significantly this year," he told an earnings call on Thursday, as air travel continues to rise. U.S. East Coast supplies are likely to remain scarce until mid-February, he said. A Feb. 5 European Union embargo on imports of seaborne Russian refined products will also pressure European supplies and will increase the call on U.S. refiners to fill the gap, analysts said. U.S. jet fuel inventories ended last year at 34 million barrels, the lowest since 1990, according to U.S. government data. Total jet fuel supplied, a proxy for demand, stood at 1.56 million barrels per day in 2022, the highest since 2019.

U.S. crude oil production will increase to new records in 2023 and 2024 – EIA - In our January 2023 Short-Term Energy Outlook, we forecast that crude oil production in the United States will average 12.4 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2023 and 12.8 million b/d in 2024, surpassing the previous record of 12.3 million b/d set in 2019. In 2022, U.S. crude oil production averaged an estimated 11.9 million b/d. Increased production in the Permian region and, to a lesser extent, in the Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico (GOM) drives our forecast growth in production. We base our forecast on our expectations of crude oil prices and infrastructure capacity additions.Our forecast of crude oil production in the Permian increases by 470,000 b/d to average 5.7 million b/d in 2023.Completion of new natural gas pipelines will allow producers to transport more of the natural gas that is produced along with crude oil (associated natural gas) to market, removing a potential constraint on crude oil production. Producers currently flare some of the natural gas they produce. We forecast that crude oil production in the GOM will increase by 120,000 b/d in 2023, while production in other regions of the United States (except for the Permian) declines slightly.In 2024, we forecast that crude oil production in the Permian will increase by 350,000 b/d, while production in the GOM declines slightly. We forecast that production in other U.S. crude oil-producing regions increases by 70,000 b/d in 2024.We forecast the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price will average $77 per barrel (b) in 2023 and $72/b in 2024, down from $95/b in 2022. Despite declining crude oil prices, we expect the WTI price will remain high enough to support crude oil production growth, especially in the Permian, where data from the Dallas Fed Energy Survey indicate that average breakeven prices range from $50/b to $54/b.

Halliburton Forecasting North American E&P Spending to Rise 15%-Plus from 2022 -North America natural gas and oil customers are likely to increase their overall capital spending by at least 15% year/year, with well completions equipment already fully contracted, Halliburton Co. CEO Jeff Miller said Tuesday.Well completions fetched higher prices, while exploration and production (E&P) customers clamored for more products, signaling a solid business environment ahead for natural gas and oil, Miller said during a quarterly conference call. As an example, Halliburton’s operating margin climbed to 17.5% in 4Q2022, up 460 basis points year/year and the highest since early 2012.“Everything I see today points toward continued oil and gas tightness,” Miller said during the call. “Given the increased spend required to grow and replace production, I expect activity to remain strong and service intensity to increase through 2023. I see the same supply side challenges in the international markets, with one indicator being that despite OPEC’s 2022 production quotas, several members did not meet their goals.”Miller noted the “resilience of oil and gas demand throughout 2022, even as central banks raised interest rates to combat inflation…It’s clear to me that oil and gas is in short supply, and only multiple years of increased investment in both stemming declines and reserve additions will solve short supply.”E&Ps need to make investments, which in turn “will drive demand for oilfield services for the next several years,” Miller noted. “The unique feature of this upcycle, as I see it, is the investor-driven return discipline by both operators and service companies, which I expect drives a longer duration cycle and translates into years of increasing demand for Halliburton services.”

IPT Well Solutions’ Recent Trial Finds Cost Effective, Green Hydraulic Fracturing Alternative - Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracing," is a technique used in the oil and gas industry to extract resources from the ground. It involves injecting a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals into a well to create fractures in the rock and release oil and gas. While it is a useful tool for accessing energy resources, it also has the potential to impact the environment if not properly regulated and controlled. That's why companies like IPT Well Solutions are constantly looking for ways to make the process safer and more environmentally friendly. Recently, IPT Well Solutions conducted a trial of a new, environmentally friendly acid during frac operations for GMT Exploration in the DJ basin. The trial took place on a 2.5 mile lateral well aimed to improve efficiency, lessen any environmental impact, and reduce costs. The use of this acid in this trial can be safely applied during select stages closer to the perforations. The trial compared the acid alternative to the standard hydrochloric acid that is typically used in frac operations. The team used the standard acid for 20 stages, then switched to the new acid alternative for 23 stages, and finally went back to the standard acid for the remaining 17 stages. While there were some initial difficulties with accurately applying the acid alternative, the trial showed that it reduced stage pump time and had no negative effects on treatment performance. It also led to fewer pad requirements, as it doesn't need to be removed from the surface at the start of frac operations. IPT Well Solutions discovered the benefits of the acid alternative didn't stop at reducing the environmental footprint, it also found significant operational cost reductions. As a result of this success, GMT Exploration plans to continue using this product in the future with the help of IPT Well Solutions stimulation experts. The IPT Team is dedicated to finding industry solutions that improve efficiency, cut costs, and have a positive impact on the environment. The success of this trial is an encouraging sign that companies like IPT Well Solutions are making real progress in finding ways to reduce the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing operations while still being able to access the energy resources that are so important to our modern way of life. It also highlights the potential for acid alternatives to be used more widely in the industry, as a way to reduce costs and the environmental impact while maintaining high levels of completion efficiency.

Boulder to consider ban on gas hookups this year | KUNC -New research, published in December, found rates of childhood asthma were higher in homes with gas stoves. The peer-reviewed study was another piece of evidence indicating the dangers of gas and its effects on the climate and human health. Responding to the science, local governments across the country have accelerated their efforts to wean off gas. Already, nearly 70 cities in California alone have adopted gas bans or electrification ordinances since 2019. But Colorado has largely been absent from this conversation. Last year, Crested Butte, a small mountain town of roughly 1,700, became the first and only locality in the state to ban gas in new buildings. Now Boulder, a hub of climate research and solutions — the gas stove research came out of Rocky Mountain Institute, founded in Colorado, now with an office in Boulder — is joining the electrification conversation. Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said the latest gas stove research only increases the council’s interest in exploring a gas ban in new buildings. “We already had it on the agenda for 2023 to consider requiring all-electric construction in new buildings when we update our building codes this year,” he said in an email. Right now, Boulder’s building codes sport an Energy Conservation Code and a Building Performance Ordinance, both of which aim to reduce building emissions, though not to the extent that an all-electric ordinance would. Brockett added that until this point, the council’s interest in a gas ban was mostly for greenhouse gas reductions, to mitigate climate change. Boulder has a goal of shifting to 100 percent renewables by 2035. “These new health reports add a significant additional reason to consider the change,” Brockett said. Gas stoves, like gas-powered furnaces and water heaters, emit methane — a short-lived but powerful greenhouse gas. They also abet a system of facilities and pipelines that leak the global warming pollutant into the atmosphere before it’s burned for cooking, heat or power. In Boulder, commercial buildings make up 45% of greenhouse gas emissions, with residential buildings adding another 16%. That’s in part due to gas. Xcel Energy, Boulder’s supplier of power, derives 29% of its energy from gas.

COPL reports first oil production at Cole Creek Unit in Wyoming — Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited (COPL) and its partners announced first oil production from the Frontier 1 sands at its Cole Creek Unit. The company began recompletion operations on the well 11-27-35n-77w at the end of Dec. 2022 to evaluate the light oil potential of the reservoir sands. The lowest of three Frontier 1 sands was perforated with sixty-five ft. of perforations with no subsequent stimulation. Initial fluid recoveries were black heavy degraded oil, black emulsion, minor brown un-gasified light oil and water. An excess of 800 Bbl. of light freshwater drilling mud was lost into the formation during drilling 10.5 years ago, as well as cement during cementing operations. The well was then put on pump for clean up as it is the most cost-effective method to recover the invaded fluids and the resultant freshwater degraded crude oil from the near well bore area. Fluid entry from the reservoir has remained constant through pumping at rates between 125-135 bpd. Gasified light oil volumes increased over the last week with increasing oil cuts up to 86% at week’s end, with the well slugging heavy black degraded oil, emulsion and drilling mud periodically at higher water cuts (up to 85%). The proportions of heavy black degraded oil, emulsion and drilling mud are decreasing as the well continues to clean up through pumping operations. COPL has opted to continue with the current process of well cleanup rather than a hydrocarbon-based stimulation to remove the degraded oil and emulsion from the near well-bore area. A stimulation of this type would remove the damage, though at a significant cost, monetary and time.

Daily natural gas spot prices in western United States exceed $50.00/MMBtu in December -On December 21, 2022, daily natural gas spot prices at three major trading hubs in the western United States (Pacific Gas & Electric [PG&E] Citygate, Northwest Sumas on the Canada-Washington border, and Malin, Oregon) were higher than $50.00 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). These hub prices were higher than in any other market and averaged $48.12/MMBtu above the Henry Hub benchmark, which was $6.14/MMBtu on December 21. PG&E Citygate in Northern California and Malin, Oregon, the northern delivery point into the PG&E service territory, reported the highest natural gas spot prices since December 2000—in both real and nominal terms—according to pricing data from Natural Gas Intelligence. The price at Southern California (SoCal) Citygate was highest on December 13 at $49.67/MMBtu.Several events occurring simultaneously in the West contributed to prices rising to these levels:

• Widespread, below-normal temperatures
• High natural gas consumption
• Lower natural gas imports from Canada
• Pipeline constraints, including maintenance in West Texas
• Low natural gas storage levels in the Pacific region

Note: Some prices exceeded the published range. The price at SoCal Citygate for February 12, 2021, averaged $144.00/MMBtu. The price at Sumas for March 1, 2019, averaged $161.33/MMBtu. From the end of November to mid-December, below-normal temperatures stretched from Western Canada to California, leading to more demand for natural gas for heating. In the first three weeks of December, natural gas consumption in the residential and commercial sectors in the Pacific Northwest and California, combined, increased by 23% from the second half of November; in the electric power sector, natural gas consumption increased 14%, according to data from Point Logic.Natural gas supply did not keep pace with the increased demand. The western region receives most of its supply from other parts of the United States and Canada. Net natural gas flows from Canada dropped by 4% in the first three weeks of December compared with the second half of November, and 9% less natural gas was delivered from the Rocky Mountains.Reduced pipeline capacity because of maintenance in West Texas led to less natural gas flowing west, raising Southern California natural gas prices. In addition, natural gas storage inventories in the Pacific that were 30% below their previous five-year average (as of December 16) also contributed to higher prices. In Northern California, PG&E’s injections to rebuild natural gas inventories over this past summer were lower than in summer 2021.

Rockies, Midcontinent Producers Slash Natural Gas Price Forecasts, Citing ‘Too Much Supply’ -- Oil and gas executives in the Rockies and Midcontinent have downwardly revised their expectations for Henry Hub natural gas prices over the near term, according to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The Kansas City Fed’s quarterly Tenth District Energy Survey gauges current and expected oil and gas activity in the Tenth Federal Reserve District. The district encompasses the western third of Missouri; all of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wyoming; and the northern half of New Mexico. Respondents, on average, forecasted Henry Hub prices of $5.01, $5.52, $5.78 and $6.19/MMBtu for six months, one year, two years and five years from now, respectively. These predictions were down substantially from the third quarter survey, when companies predicted average prices of $7.46, $6.48, $6.16 and $6.51 for the same time frames. “Too much supply currently,” one respondent said in the latest survey. “Will force prices down and activity down.” By 2025, though, increased liquefied natural gas export capacity combined with flat to declining supply “will require higher prices.” The same respondent added, “Drilling and completion costs are continuing to increase while forward commodity prices are decreasing, putting pressure on drilling economics.” Asked what natural gas prices were needed for drilling to be profitable across the fields in which they operate, the average response was $4.32/MMBtu. NGI’s Henry Hub Daily Price Snapshot showed an average price of $2.930 as of Friday. The average price needed to spark a substantial increase in drilling, meanwhile, was $6.13. “Inflation pressures are currently high and will need to be arrested before [natural gas production] growth can be resumed or accelerated,” one participant said. “There are tremendous price increases tied to increased activity today.” The same respondent predicted that new methane rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency “will decimate small producers with older properties if implemented as currently written.” Pipeline bottlenecks also are hindering the ability of gas to get where it’s needed, said another participant. “While the market price may be increasing and driving inflation through natural gas dependent products, the supply side cannot respond due to lack of infrastructure between growing supply areas and growing domestic and foreign markets,” the respondent said. On the bullish side for prices, one executive said that “five-plus years of underspending will show up on the production side. Demand will be stronger than anticipated. Prices could be higher.”

Gas pipelines explode. How far away is enough to survive? - An extended family of 12 was sleeping on the banks of New Mexico’s Pecos River on an August morning two decades ago when a nearby gas pipeline ruptured. The explosion spit out three sections of severed steel pipe and opened a blowtorch 2 ½ feet wide. Flames reached across the desert terrain to the family’s campsite, scorching their pickup trucks and melting sleeping bags. No one survived. All 12 family members — linked by marriage and shared grandchildren — died at the campsite, or later at the hospital. That included 6-month-old twins Timber and Tamber Heady. The blast was 675 feet from the campsite, not far enough to spare them. But federal regulators later adopted a formula, still in use today, that would have deemed the family safe at 600 feet away. Now a federal safety watchdog is urging regulators to change the calculation, which sets what’s called a “potential impact radius,” or PIR. It has many other names: “blast zone,” “incineration zone,” “hazard area.” Whatever one calls it, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says the formula significantly underestimates the danger of gas pipeline explosions and called it “inconsistent” with evidence in a recent report (Energywire,, Sept. 15, 2022). Other safety advocates put it more bluntly. “The whole thing was a fantasy story, like a fairy tale,” said Royce Deaver, a pipeline consultant who worked for Exxon Mobil Corp. for more than 33 years. He has criticized the impact formula for years, and his research was cited in the NTSB report. Critics say the industry-crafted formula shows how federal pipeline oversight is tilted away from safety in favor of pipeline operators. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has indicated it is willing to change the formula, telling the NTSB it would “strongly consider” modifications to ensure bigger safety margins. ‘You’re gonna run’ Any increase in the radius of the blast zone could mean costly pipe upgrades for oil and gas companies. But even the engineer who devised the formula has acknowledged it has gaps. “Don’t assume that you can stand and watch this fire at the edge of the PIR,” Mark Stephens told a Transportation Research Board (TRB) panel in October. “You can’t. You’re gonna run. You’re just likely to survive.”

Oil industry takes offshore fracking case to Supreme Court - The fossil fuel industry is asking the Supreme Court to resolve a legal battle over hydraulic fracturing off the California coast — a fight companies say carries “enormous practical and legal significance.”On Wednesday, the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobil Corp. and DCOR LLC filed a petition for justices to reverse a 2022 ruling from a lower bench that upheld a ban on all new permits for unconventional oil production methods on the Pacific outer continental shelf.A ruling by the high court could have implications for the pace of the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels. The Pacific outer continental shelf is estimated to contain about 10 billion barrels of untapped oil and 16 trillion cubic feet of untapped natural gas, industry challengers said.“If allowed to stand, the decision below will undermine the development of oil, natural gas, and renewable energy on the entire Outer Continental Shelf,” industry lawyers said.The region has already produced 1.3 billion barrels of oil and 1.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the petition.On the other side of the legal dispute, environmental groups hailed the June ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as a key victory toward curbing rising greenhouse gas emissions and protecting the biodiverse Pacific outer continental shelf, sometimes known as the “Galapagos of North America.”Environmental groups have fought to block well stimulation practices such as offshore fracking, acid fracturing and matrix acidizing, which are techniques used to boost production from declining reservoirs (Energywire, June 6, 2022).“The decision to halt fracking was exceedingly well-reasoned, and I hope the court rejects the oil industry’s reckless attempt to overturn the 9th Circuit’s ruling,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. The environmental group is among those that took legal action to prevent future offshore fracking in the Pacific Ocean. Monsell added: “Fracking is dangerous to whales, sea otters and other marine wildlife, and this dirty, harmful technique has no place in our ocean.”

Big Oil Asks US Supreme Court to Reinstate Offshore Fracking in California - The American Petroleum Institute and a pair of oil companies filed a petition for certiorariwith the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday in a bid to overturn a lower federal court ruling that blocked fracking in public waters off California's coast."The decision to halt fracking was exceedingly well-reasoned, and I hope the court rejects the oil industry's reckless attempt to overturn the 9th Circuit's ruling," Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in a statement. "Fracking is dangerous to whales, sea otters, and other marine wildlife, and this dirty, harmful technique has no place in our ocean."CBD and the Wishtoyo Foundation sued the Trump administration to stop offshore fracking in 2016. Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a similar case.In 2018, U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez ordered a prohibition on permits for offshore fracking in federal waters off California, ruling that the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) had failed to adhere to multiple federal laws.A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Gutierrez's decision last June, arguing that the DOI violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Coastal Zone Management Act when it allowed fracking in offshore oil and gas wells in all leased public waters off California.In late August, the Biden administration, of which Harris is the vice president, asked the 9th Circuit for an en banc review to overturn the panel's ruling. The Biden administration's request, which drew the ire of environmentalists because it would have enabled offshore fracking to resume, was denied in September.

Containership spills oil off Vancouver - An oil spill was reported in English Bay, Canada, on January 21, that came from a Greek-owned containership.According to information, the incident involving the 8,468-teu Europe (built 2004), which had arrived from Prince Rupert and remained anchored off Vancouver. More specifically, the coast guard said a pilot notified it of pollution from a ship in the area. The organisation identified the Danaos-owned post panamax as the culprit. Namely, a spill was visible from the air close to Spanish Banks beaches, but the most recent updates informs that the oil had not reached the shore. According to estimations, around 60 and 100 litres of fuel was released into the water, the coast guard said, while a boom has been deployed around the vessel. In addition, the ship’s owner has also activated a response and has contracted the Western Canada Marine Response Corporation (WCMRC) to respond. In the meantime, a helicopter, drones and pollution response vessels were sent out to look for any remains of the fuel released. As the Canadian Coast Guard reported, responders reported some non-recoverable sheen off Point Grey and the North Arm, and an initial drone and helicopter surveys of shorelines found no impact to shorelines. Transport Canada has now launched an inspection of the vessel.

Coast Guard To Contain Oil Spill From Ship In English Bay - On Saturday, January 21, at 11:40 am local time, containership MV Europe docked in the English Bay in British Columbia started leaking oil. First Nations and government agencies are fighting to contain the oil spill. An estimated 60-100 litres of oil have already blackened the waters of Vancouver as per a Canadian Coast Guard estimate who are working from both air and water to monitor the slick formed by the oil spill. They boomed around the ship to contain the oil spill, which stopped the oil spill, as there had been no new oil leakage since Saturday. They are working aggressively to identify sensitive zones so that the ship owners and the response partners can act swiftly to protect those areas, said the Coast Guard. They are likely to announce an update on the situation soon.

Cleanup underway to contain oil spill in Sudbury's Ramsey Lake - Contractors have been deployed to Sudbury's Ramsey Lake to clean up a residential oil spill that migrated to the shoreline on Jan. 17. The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks estimates around 812 litres of home heating fuel spilled onto the ground from a storage tank at a property on Gennings Street, near the lake. While Ramsey Lake is the main source of the city's drinking water, ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler said there is only a low risk to the thousands of people who get their municipal drinking water from the lake. "There is a low risk to the David Street water treatment plant intake because the spill happened over two kilometres away," he said in an email to CBC News. The spill on the property happened on Jan. 14, at which point Public Health Sudbury and Districts notified area residents. Wheeler said the ministry is aware of six homes that directly draw their drinking water from an area near the spill, and they have all been contacted. He said cleanup crews installed absorbent containment booms and pads around the property and near the shoreline. Wheeler added the ministry does not yet know when the cleanup efforts will be complete.

Canadian energy giant Suncor faces multiple charges for death of contractor in frozen tailings pond - An astounding 28 charges have been laid under the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Act against two companies in relation to the death of a contract worker in the province’s oil sands. Patrick Poitras, 25, of Saint-André, New Brunswick was drowned in a frozen tailings pond at the Suncor base mine about 30 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, Alberta on January 13, 2021. He had been operating a bulldozer on the frozen pond when the ice beneath gave way and the vehicle fell through. Christina River Construction is facing nine charges in the fatal incident, while Suncor Energy is facing 19 counts. Both Suncor and the contractor face charges under sections 3 and 195 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHS). These include failing to ensure the health and safety of a worker by permitting the use of a John Deere dozer on ice when it was unsafe to do so, directing a worker to use a dozer on ice that was too thin to support the load, failing to measure ice thickness prior to the start of the job, and failing to use ground penetrating radar to gain a profile of the ice. Suncor was also charged with failing to have the site monitored by an ice engineer and incorrectly calculating the dozer’s weight when determining whether it was safe to operate on the ice. A plea hearing for the charges is scheduled for March 15, 2023 at the Fort McMurray provincial courthouse. It is government policy that any court proceedings resulting from work site fatalities must be completed before investigation reports are published.

Colombia’s choice to halt new oil and gas exploration contracts “absolutely urgent”— Colombia’s Energy and Mines Minister Irene Velez said that the government’s decision not to award new oil and gas exploration contracts was “absolutely urgent” and needs “immediate action.” Speaking in a panel on energy transition from the World Economic Forum at Davos, Velez doubled down on President Gustavo Petro’s campaign promise to transition the country away from fossil fuels. Her remarks signal a stark difference to comments by Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo, who has said Colombia is open to the possibility of new oil and gas exploration contracts given its high fiscal revenue dependence on fossil fuels. “We have decided not to award new oil and gas exploration contracts, and while that has been very controversial, it’s a clear sign of our commitment in the fight against climate change,” Velez said in a panel alongside the CEOs of Repsol and Honeywell International. “This decision is absolutely urgent and needs immediate action.” Velez said the administration’s decision to halt new exploration required investment in other sectors, such as agriculture and tourism, to “leave behind coal and hydrocarbons while surviving as a nation.” While new exploration won’t be allowed, Petro has said oil, gas and coal producers with existing contracts could “carry on normally.” Still, the government, which owns 88.5% of state oil company Ecopetrol SA, has spooked investors with its plans to transition toward renewables.

Brazil increases gas reinjection, flaring --Brazil increased natural gas reinjections and flaring in December from the same month in 2021, decreasing the amount of gas available to the market, according to preliminary data from oil and gas regulator ANP. Gas reinjections — when gas is pumped back into wells to enhance oil recovery or avoid flaring — amounted to almost 69.5mn m³/d in December, up by 14pc from the same month in 2021. But it decreased by 3.8pc from November. Gas flaring rose to 3.7mn m³/d, an 11pc increase from December 2021 and a 1.6pc rise from the previous month. There was 52.8mn m³/d of gas available to the market, a 3pc decrease from the previous year and 5pc less than in November. Total gas production rose to 140.1mn m³/d, 6pc higher than in December 2021. Production was 0.1pc lower than in November. Gas consumption on production platforms rose to 14.6mn m³/d, up by 2.1pc from the same period in 2021 and down by 0.1pc from November.

Brazil losing $1 million per day on oil rig that hasn’t started drilling - The conflict between Brazil’s ambitions to become a more responsible environmental steward while also ramping up lucrative oil exports has turned into an early test for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Petrobras oil rig offshore Brazil Off the coast of northern Brazil where the Amazon River enters the South Atlantic, state-controlled oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA has had an oil rig on site since early December that hasn’t started drilling. The entire industry is waiting to see if the exploration well opens up a new oil frontier in an area known as the Equatorial Margin. World-class finds in Guyana, north of this site, have helped generate further excitement about the area. The delay is costing Petrobras a fortune of about $1 million a day for the rig, three helicopters, support boats and workers, according to calculations by consultancy Wood Mackenzie Ltd. The holdup: State authorities are reviewing a permit for Petrobras to operate a wildlife rescue facility to be used in the event of an oil spill, and it could take them until mid-April to make a decision. Petrobras and other operators have had little success over the past decade exploring Brazil’s basins off its southern coast, which has made the Equatorial Margin a major priority. The country needs to find more reserves, otherwise, production will start declining in the 2030s. At the same time, Lula has also vowed to strengthen the country’s environmental agencies and oversight, which goes beyond just reversing deforestation in the Amazon. A report by Lula’s transition team, which was delivered to the mines and energy ministry in late December, recognized that oil exploration in sensitive areas like the Equatorial Margin may be incompatible with its environmental goals. Petrobras didn’t provide a date for starting the well when contacted by Bloomberg. Deep-water drillships like the ODN II cost between $300,000 and $500,000 a day just in rig rental fees, according to ABESPetro, an association of oil service providers

Music is Love - U.S. LNG, Underground Storage Help Save Europe From Another Tough Winter | RBN Energy - With the war in Ukraine ongoing and Europe largely cut off or quitting Russian natural gas imports, many feared that global gas prices would skyrocket this winter, but prices have fizzled out instead and are at their lowest level since September 2021. That’s not to say gas prices are low, as they are still well above historic norms and high enough to incentivize LNG imports and the development of future LNG capacity. But despite losing its largest gas supplier, and prices running up in the months ahead of this winter, Europe appears to be in much better shape than it was last winter and gas prices have been relatively calm and on the downswing. So why is that? The difference between this winter and last largely boils down to storage inventories and the ability to attract LNG cargoes. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the European gas market, the impact of U.S. LNG supplies, and what it all means for developing LNG projects. Like the U.S., Europe — or at least continental Europe — has a robust underground gas storage system. It works similarly to the U.S. system in that gas is injected into storage during the spring, summer and fall and then withdrawn as needed in the winter. And just like in the U.S., starting withdrawal season with low inventory levels leaves the European market more exposed to weather-related price volatility. Going into the winter of 2021-22, that’s exactly what happened. Due to a confluence of factors, Europe began the season with the lowest level of gas reserves in more than a decade. Then the market was hit with the 1-2 punch of cold weather and rising geopolitical tensions with its largest gas supplier, Russia. Prices were volatile as inventories were drawn down and Russian aggression accelerated, culminating in its invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022. Prices peaked in March before calming slightly in the spring, but the decline in prices was very short-lived.When we last checked in with our friends across the pond back in September (see Beyond the Sea), Europe was aggressively working to refill storage inventories, unwilling to face the winter without Russia and a storage safety net. Over the course of summer and fall, European offtakers outbid Asian offtakers and other end-users for LNG cargoes while imposing austerity measures on consumers to hoard gas for the winter. Europe’s gas-bidding behavior, combined with a steady stream of reductions and cutoffs from Russia, pushed prices to their highest levels ever, including a startling single-day settlement record of nearly $100/MMBtu for TTF on August 26. It may have been an uncomfortable journey from a pricing perspective (just ask the now partially state-owned German utility, Uniper); from an individual perspective, as hot-water use, street lighting, and more were curbed; and from an economic perspective, as industrial end-use was curtailed or priced out of the market, but it worked. While Europe began the winter of 2021-22 with a record-low storage inventory level (right end of yellow line in Figure 2), it began this winter (right end of orange line) with storage comfortably above 90% full.European gas imports from Russia are now nearly non-existent, but there is still one path through Ukraine flowing some gas. (It’s important to note that was not the case while inventories were being replenished last year.) Although reduced from years past, that gas was there to help refill inventories, along with a record-setting amount of LNG.

EU regulators outline trading risks of gas price cap -- The EU's soon-to-be-launched gas price cap will change trading behaviour in potentially disruptive ways for financial stability, regional regulators have warned. In their initial assessments of the EU's so-called market correction mechanism (MCM), EU financial regulator Esma and energy regulator Acer conclude that while trading behaviour is unchanged for now, it could shift dramatically and in destabilising ways if the MCM's activation becomes imminent. The MCM, which will apply from 15 February, would be triggered if the TTF front-month derivative on the Ice Endex exchange holds above €180/MWh for three working days and is at least €35/MWh above Acer's LNG reference price basket, and would limit prices to €35/MWh above this price basket. It will initially apply to TTF exchange-based transactions with an expiry date between the front month and the front year — the European Commission must decide by the end of March whether to extend the mechanism to cover other EU virtual trading points. Market participants are likely to adapt their trading behaviour in such a way to avoid being bound by the price limit if it becomes likely that the MCM will be activated, Esma said. One alternative is to trade on the over-the-counter (OTC) market, while another is to switch to non-EU venues such as the UK's NBP, which would be used as a proxy hedge of gas for EU delivery. Another option is to trade contracts with an expiry date before the front month or after the front year, while firms still have the option of trading in EU markets other than the TTF unless they become part of the MCM. But as none of these alternatives is a perfect substitute, disruptive effects may materialise, Esma said — in particular affecting the ability of non-financial counterparties to adequately manage the risks associated with their business activity. While these behaviour changes "would appear rational on an individual basis, it would trigger significant and abrupt changes of the broader market environment, which could impact the orderly functioning of markets, and ultimately financial stability," the regulator warned.

Yellen says setting price caps on Russian refined oil products 'complicated' - Western countries are working to structure price caps on Russian refined petroleum products to ensure continued flow of Russian diesel, but the markets are complicated and there is a chance things do not go to plan, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. Group of Seven countries and Australia implemented a price cap on Russian oil Dec. 5, banning the use of Western-supplied maritime insurance, finance and other services for cargoes priced above $60 per barrel. They are now finalizing two separate price caps on Russian refined petroleum products, such as diesel and fuel oil, that are due to take effect on Feb. 5 along with a European Union ban on diesel imports, Yellen told reporters in Dakar, Senegal. One will cover high-value products typically sold at a premium to crude, while another will apply to low-value products like fuel oil, she said told reporters traveling with her in Africa. Yellen said setting the new price caps had proven "more complicated" than for crude, given the range of different refined products and price structures, and the importance of ensuring continued supplies of Russian diesel to the market. "It's more complicated, but we've been working hard to figure out how to achieve the same objectives," as with the broader cap on Russian crude, she said. "You know, there's always the potential that things may not go according to plan but we've studied these markets very carefully and we believe that we're going to come out with a set of caps that will achieve the same things that we've achieved with crude so far," she said, adding that adjustments could still be made over time.

185 global ports can bunker LNG - Offshore Energy -Ports around the world are ramping up their efforts to develop LNG bunkering infrastructure as demand for LNG-fuelled ships hits new highs. Over the past year, 44 global ports have joined the club of global ports able to provide LNG bunkering. Namely, according to the data from Clarksons, in January 2022, LNG bunkering was available at 141 ports worldwide. Today, this number has increased to 185 ports worldwide, with a further 50 facilities planned by 2025. Insights from the shipbroker show that 61% of tonnage ordered last year (35% by number) was alternatively fuelled. Over half of tonnage ordered (397 orders, 36.7m GT) was LNG dual fuel, and 1.4% of orders were LNG “ready” (31 orders). Based only on existing orders, DNV forecasts the number of LNG-fuelled ships will reach 876 by the end of this decade. However, if current growth trends continue, LNG bunkering coalition SEA LNG believes the market can expect to see 2-4,000 LNG-fuelled ships in operation by 2030. By the end of 2022, there were 40 LNG bunker vessels operating in northern Europe, the Mediterranean, United States, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, China, Singapore, Brazil, and Australia. In addition, 2022 saw commercial ship-to-ship bunkering of LNG taking place for the first time in China, the Caribbean, and Russia. Namely, China welcomed its first seagoing LNG bunkering vessel last year. The 30,000 cbm Hai Yang Shi You 301, described as the world’s largest LNG bunker vessel, was officially put into operation by China State Shipbuilding Corporation’s subsidiary Guangzhou Shipbuilding International following a conversion project for the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

India's natural gas imports to rise on lower global prices - Petronet LNG - India's liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports are set to recover as global prices ease, the chief executive of the country's top gas importer Petronet LNG Ltd said. Asian spot LNG prices have fallen due to mild weather in Europe and ample inventories, from an average of $30-$35 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) in the December quarter to around $17/mmBtus, A.K. Singh said. India wants to raise the share of gas in its energy mix to 15% by 2030 from 6.2% at present. However, a spike in global gas prices last year, triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, cut demand for cleaner fuel from price-sensitive Indian customers. "Now the export cargoes are hovering at $17 (million British thermal units). We definitely expect that we will get the movement of more cargoes coming to our country." Singh said at the company's earnings press conference. "In previous months it was a lot of volatility," he added. India's gas imports in October and November declined by about a fifth to about 1.8 million tonnes from this fiscal year's peak of 2.2 million tonnes in May, according to government data. Data for December has not yet been released. Due to low local demand, Petronet operated its 17.5 million tonnes a year Dahej LNG terminal on the west coast at 68% capacity in the December quarter. The capacity use has improved to 81% and is expected to rise further as global prices ease, Singh said. Petronet supplies gas, mostly procured under long-term deals with Qatar and Australia, to Indian energy companies for sale to end-users. These companies have also booked capacity at Dahej to import gas directly.

China Becomes World's Biggest LNG Buyer With Flurry Of Long-Term Deals - China is rapidly becoming the world's most dominant force in liquefied natural gas, with Chinese buyers accounting for 40% of recent long-term LNG contracts among global players, according to Nikkei Asia.Take Chinese energy giant Sinopec Group, which reached a 27-year agreement with state-owned QatarEnergy late last year to buy 4 million tonnes of LNG annually. The imports are due to begin around 2026. As a key client, China is also negotiating to invest in a massive Qatari project to expand LNG output.At the same time, a private-sector Chinese energy company, ENN Group, signed a contract last year with Texas-based Energy Transfer to buy 2.7 million tonnes of LNG annually for 20 years. ENN increased its purchasing agreement with NextDecade, also headquartered in Texas, to 2 million tonnes a year for 20 years as well. In addition, NextDecade has agreed to supply 1 million tonnes of LNG yearly to China Gas Holdings, whose principal shareholder is an investment vehicle controlled by the city of Beijing. Imports are to start in the latter 2020s.Over 2021 and 2022, China closed long-term LNG purchasing contracts worth nearly 50 million tonnes a year, European research firm Rystad Energy reports. In this not so covert attempt to corner the LNG market, China has tripled the scale of purchases through long-term contracts in just two years, up from the annual volume of roughly 16 million tonnes from 2015 through 2020.In 2020 and 2021, spot transactions accounted for 40%-50% of China's natural gas imports, well above the estimated 30% for Japan. But China appears to have changed strategy to fit long-term demand. Long-term contracts offer more stability in supplies compared with spot contracts.In 2021, China surpassed Japan as the world's top LNG importer. But last year, imports apparently dropped 18% to around 65 million tonnes on the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet China's demand for natural gas in 2030 is projected to be over 50% higher than in 2021.Amid global efforts to reduce carbon emissions, many countries have converged on natural gas as a relatively clean bridge fuel. The Institute of Energy Economics, Japan predicts annual worldwide LNG demand will reach 488 million tonnes in 2030, up about 40% from 2020. But global supply is on track to fall short of demand by 7.6 million tonnes a month in 2025.The China contingent are addressing the risk of being cut off from the LNG supply chain at a time when U.S. and allies work to create China-free supply chains for semiconductors. Long-term contracts are seen as a hedge against such disruptions.

Investigation: Ukraine buys huge amounts of Russian fuels from Bulgaria – In 2022, Ukraine bought a huge amount of fuels from Bulgaria made from Russian oil, according to data by the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute, provided exclusively to EURACTIV Bulgaria. From January to November 2022, Bulgaria exported €700 million worth of fuels to Ukraine, and if the trend continues in December, the total value for the year will exceed €825 million. Compared to the period before the war, this is a 1,000-fold increase, as Bulgaria’s 2021 fuel exports to Ukraine totalled only €750,000. The current scale of Bulgarian oil exports to Ukraine is so large that it corresponds to about 1% of the size of the entire Bulgarian economy. The main fuel export from Bulgaria to Ukraine is gas oil (also known as red diesel), which makes up more than 90% of deliveries. Gasoline supplies have also increased rapidly over the past six months, which is explained by Russian attacks on Ukrainian critical infrastructure. Diesel fuel is used in heavy industry to power machinery, generators, and off-road vehicles, as well as in agriculture and marine shipping. The producer of gas oil in Bulgaria is the country’s only refinery, located in the port city of Burgas, owned by the Russian oil company Lukoil, which still operates mainly with Russian oil imported by tankers via the Black Sea, thanks to a derogation from EU sanctions. The refinery in Burgas can afford to export fuel at significantly lower prices because it works with its own raw material. Last year, because of Western sanctions, Russian oil prices on world markets were on average $20-30 per barrel lower than stock market prices. Bulgarian statistics show that Ukraine is now the Balkan country’s third-largest trading partner thanks to the export of fuels, having replaced the USA. In 2021, Ukraine ranked eighth among the countries outside the ЕU as a destination for Bulgarian exports. Fuel exports from Bulgaria to Ukraine peaked in November 2022, when €130 million worth of petroleum products were exported. The avalanche of oil exports то Ukraine began in May, when €40 million worth of products were exported, and reached €105 million in June. From June until the end of the year, levels were consistently high.

India Becomes Largest Importer Of Russian Crude - India has become the largest seaborne importer of Russian crude in the wake of the EU ban on seaborne oil imports and subsequent G7 price cap for exports. According to Poten & Partners, exports to India increased to 1.2 million barrels per day in November last year. The volumes of exports eased slightly in December 2022. India is followed by China, which has increased its intake of Russian crude, from around 600,000 barrels per day in the beginning of the year to around 940,000 barrels per day in November. “While India is targeting mostly European barrels from the Black Sea and some from the Baltic, China has focused on the Russian exports from the Far East. Currently, China buys almost all crude exported from Kozmino as other traditional customers Korea and Japan reduced their imports. Turkey initially increased its purchases from the Kremlin, but its imports of Russian crude have fallen by more than 50 percent since peaking in August,” Poten stated. The exact data on the shift in exports are not available as transparency of the Russian trade flow data has been reduced due to the conflict, sanctions, and the increased use of ship-to-ship transfers as well as by shutting off vessels’ AIS responder to hide their destination. The sanctions also resulted in the use of the ‘shadow fleet’ which are older vessels near-retirement used to circumvent western sanctions. These vessels are mostly owned by offshore companies in countries with more lenient shipping rules. The result of this trend has been an ‘ageing’ of the tanker fleet calling on Russian ports. “For example, in January 2022, 40% of the Aframax voyages ex-Russia were done on tankers that were younger than 10 years and only 28% on vessels that were older than 15 years. No vessels older than 20 years were utilized. By December, this age profile had changed dramatically – only 22% of the Aframaxes were less than 10 years old and 50% was over 15 years old. Several voyages were performed on vessels older than 20 years and one Aframax employed was even older than 25 years,” Poten added. The ton-mile demand generated by Russian crude oil exports has tripled since the February of 2022, driving more ton-mile demand, and tightening the oil markets. This trend has been very supportive for the freight market and is likely to continue in 2023. For January to date, Europe has imported around 1 million barrels per day of clean products from Russia, most of which is diesel. Rather than weaning itself of Russian supplies this month, Europe has maximized import volumes, Gibson said in its weekly tanker report.

Pakistan could start importing Russian oil after March - Russia could start exporting oil to energy-starved Pakistan after March if terms are agreed, and is discussing with Islamabad whether payment could be made in the currencies of "friendly" countries, Russia's energy minister said on Friday. Pakistan has been battling a balance of payment crisis with foreign exchange reserves falling to $4.6 billion, barely enough to cover three weeks of imports - mostly for oil. It said in October it was considering buying discounted Russian crude, citing neighbouring India, which has been purchasing from Moscow. Pakistani officials and Russian Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov, who is in Islamabad for an annual inter-governmental commission on trade and economy, said the key elements of the deal had yet to be agreed. "As for the supply of crude oil and petroleum products, we conceptually agreed on the development and signing of an agreement that will determine and resolve all issues of logistics, insurance, payment, volumes," Shulginov told reporters in Russian, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. Shulginov also said "negotiations are going on" about settlement in the currencies of "friendly" countries, meaning non-Western countries that have not imposed economic sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Oil is generally paid for in dollars. Shulginov said the two sides had "established a timeline of this agreement in our joint statement - which is late March", according to RIA.

The black hell of Albania's ageing oil fields - The people of Zharrez in central Albania live amid a stinking apocalyptic landscape of leaking oil wells and rusting storage tanks, the soil blackened from spills of crude that seep into their water. "We all have health problems," said Milita Vrapi, one of 2,000 villagers who live cheek by jowl with the Balkan nation's largely unregulated oil industry. "The air is very heavy. I often feel dizzy and nauseous with headaches and persistent fatigue," she said the 49-year-old mother as a ramshackle rig wheezed into life only four metres from her home. The water is undrinkable and the vegetables in her garden no longer grow, she said. Abandoned wells and storage tanks and rusted and leaking pipelines litter the oil-rich Patos-Marinza area, where swamps and little lakes of black crude scar the landscape. Much of the equipment in the oil fields has not been maintained for nearly three decades. "Black gold has brought millions of dollars out of the ground, but local residents have hardly benefited from it," said villager Marsilin Senka, while clutching his two-month-old baby, who has acute bronchitis. The air stinks from old wells that have been left open and crude left to rot in crumbling tanks and open-air pits. In summer some locals say it is unbreathable. Zharrez alone has around a dozen wells run by state-owned Albpetrol -- most half a century old -- just a stone's throw from homes. Others in the area are operated by the Chinese Bankers Petroleum group. "Pollution is not a priority for the oil companies," Senka added. "More than 18,000 square metres are heavily polluted by crude oil because infrastructure has been left abandoned for more than 25 years, with harmful effects on the environment and the health of the inhabitants," said Qani Rredhi, the head of the village's environmental group. Even human rights groups have condemned the situation, with the Albanian Helsinki Committee saying in its latest report that "the proximity of residential areas and greenhouses to oil fields and old wells... and the lack of safety and rehabilitation measures are of great concern."Locals say the oil fields may be responsible for myriad health problems affecting residents. "The number of inhabitants who complain of respiratory problems, high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the blood or who suffer from illnesses linked to industrial activities is very high,"

Beetaloo gas fracking could start soon, despite NT government delay in implementing Pepper inquiry recommendations - ABC News --The gas industry's peak body says licences to begin fracking in the Northern Territory could be issued in a month, despite the government missing a key deadline. The NT government had repeatedly claimed it would implement all 135 recommendations of the Pepper Inquiryby the end of 2022, paving the way for industry to ramp up production in the Beetaloo Basin. The Beetaloo Basin is located 400 kilometres south of Darwin and stretches across an area more than twice the size of Tasmania, which contains enough shale gas to power Australia for an estimated 200 years. Since the Northern Territory governmentlifted a temporary ban on fracking in 2018, a number of exploration permits have been issued to gas companies in the region.But the NT government has promised to implement all 135 recommendations of the Pepper Inquiry – intended to mitigate the risks associated with any onshore shale gas development – before it allows companies to move into production.Despite being "due for completion" by the end of 2022, according to the NT government's website, 35 recommendations were yet to be completed.NT environment minister Lauren Moss said all the recommendations would be implemented before production begins.Does carbon capture and storage mean we can keep burning gas?The technology is being hailed as one way Australia can open new oil and gas projects while simultaneously combating climate change. But there are doubts CCS is up to the task. But critics and environment groups have maintained the recommendations were "impossible" to enact and have raised concerns the NT government is caving to pressure from the oil and gas industry.

Pipeline Rumble: farmers the final line of defence in Narrabri fight over Santos gas fracking - These pipelines represent the head of the snake”, says Coonamble farmer David Chadwick.“Australia is the biggest gas exporter in the world that has somehow found itself with the some of the dearest energy costs in the world, and a gas shortage. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out this industry has “played” successive decades of politicians and bureaucrats to end up in this mess.“We are the driest inhabited continent in the world and here is Santos prepared to sacrifice our only secure water supply, the Great Artesian Basin, that sits under 22% of our most productive country.“The Great Artesian Basin is our only secure water supply and it underwrites our $80b agriculture industry. That is why there is a 97% objection to the project across the five shires that surround Narrabri. No water equals no food. This is food versus gas. You can’t eat coal and you can’t drink gas. What’s going in our grandchildren’s lunchboxes?” Having squared away governments, as well as both major political parties, the two major media houses and even environment agencies and regulators, Santos faces a last bloody hurdle in its epic battle against local communities to get its Narrabri gas fracking project off the ground. That’s the farmers. It is the farmers which may kill it.Santos needs to have its gas piped to the Hunter for processing. That means a pipeline; and that means coming onto farmers’ land to survey it, and run a pipeline through. Last Friday NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean issued the company with the authority to force its way onto farmers’ land to conduct surveys for a crucial pipeline, while the Gomeroi people filed an appeal in the Federal court to overrule a decision by the Native Title Authority in support of the project. The battle for Narrabri is still very much afoot. According to Peter Wills, Quirindi landowner, “For Matt Kean to sign off on a gas pipeline to be surveyed in 2023 is incredible. He’s just trashed his reputation with that signature.” Santos’ Narrabri gas project is set to frack for LNG in the Northwest Slopes region of New South Wales. The project would involve drilling up to 850 wells which environmentalists say is highly likely to negatively impact the water table.Meanwhile, the Gomeroi people have made an appeal to a decision by the National Native Title Tribunal which rules that the public benefit of the gas

Santos edges in on fracking the Liverpool Plains despite repeated denials - Santos is denying it, but local farmers on the pristine Liverpool Plains tell a different story. Santos is poised to start fracking in the Gunnedah Basin, Callum Foote reports.During Santos’ 2018 annual general meeting, Tamber Springs farmer and former Gunnedah Shire councillor David Quince, asked Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher what Santos’s plans were with the petroleum exploration areas it controls on the Liverpool Plains.Gallagher’s response was that “What I said last year, and I will reiterate it again this year, we have no plans to drill wells in the Liverpool Plains. The Narrabri Gas Project is contained to areas that you are familiar with and that’s all I can say. Our plans are simply not to drill in the Liverpool Plains and the fact that the permit area that we have covers the Liverpool Plains is something that we have to live with. We can’t cut it off, it’s there but our plans are to the north of that as you are well aware.”However, Santos’ acquisition of the Hunter Gas Pipeline in August last year drew the company one step closer to doing what they never said they would do, but what farmers have long suspected, frack the pristine farmland of the Liverpool plains.The Petroleum Exploration Licences (PELs) that lie under the Liverpool plains and slopes are PELs 1 and 12. These tenements are held by a wholly owned subsidiary of Carbon Minerals, Australian Coalbed Methane (ACM).According to Carbon Minerals’ latest annual report, the PELs 1 and 12 are subject “to a Joint Venture with Santos” with ACM holding a 35% interest in the PELs and Santos holding the remaining 65%. Santos is the project operator.In April last year, the NSW government renewed the licence that Santos and ACM have over the PELs for six years until April 2028.As a part of the renewal, Santos must reactivate a multi-well pilot in the region and conduct geological studies with the joint venture partners holding a technical committee meeting on 6 June 2022 “to further discuss the planned work program and budget for on-ground activities in Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL) 1 and PEL 12 during the calendar year 2022.”Santos and CEO Kevin Gallagher have yet to respond to queries regarding whether the group has changed his position on Santos’ plans in the Liverpool plains.Says Quince, “To state that Santos’ ‘plans are simply not to drill in the Liverpool Plains’ is simply not credible. Carbon Mineral’s Annual Financial Report for the year ended 31st December 2017, page 2 reports “The Group’s planned exploration activities are currently awaiting resolution of some of the community concerns and pending finalisation of the government regulatory framework in relation to the group’s activities.”Based on advice received by the group from the project operator (Santos) proposed exploration activity will recommence in the near future.Quince believes that Gallagher has misled his shareholders “Santos is an old Australian company and there are probably a lot of elders and retail investors who have shares in Santos and they probably support drilling in the Pilliga, not knowing the ins and outs, but they probably would be mortified to think of drilling on the Liverpool slopes and plains, Sydney’s major food bowl.”

Company fined $19,500 for oil spill, which reached Ahuriri Estuary -- A truck servicing company has been fined $19,500 for discharging oil into a drain leading to an important wetland and wildlife refuge. The penalty follows the company, Truck Stops (NZ) Ltd, having already forked out nearly $10,000 to clean up the accidental oil spill, upstream of the ecologically significant Ahuriri Estuary in Napier. It also spent $7500 to remove oil from its Napier yard and to fix valves, lines and a pump in a washdown bay. The company, through its lawyer Richard Flinn, told the Napier District Court that the spill in December 2021 was due to a systems failure stemming from “accidental, one-off events”. These were a wrongly positioned valve in a service pit, the failure of a waste pump, and significant rainfall which triggered the system to discharge into the stormwater network. The company was prosecuted by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council. It pleaded guilty to a single charge of discharging a contaminant under the Resource Management Act. Judge Melinda Dickey said that on the morning of December 15, 2021, council staff discovered an oily sheen on the surface water of Plantation Drain at Ford Road in Napier, close to the Onekawa industrial area. The contaminants had flowed out of the drain into Purimu Stream and on to the Ahuriri Estuary/Te Whanganui ā Orotū. The estuary is designated a significant conservation area under the Regional Coastal Environment Plan, a wetland of ecological importance, and it includes a wildlife refuge. Council pollution officers put hydrocarbon-sorbent booms in place and used a specialist vacuum truck to collect the oil.They then traced the spill back to the Truck Stop yard on Ford Rd through the stormwater system, by lifting manholes on a number of industrial properties.

Qatar to buy stake in TotalEnergies' $27 billion projects - QatarEnergy is reportedly in talks to buy a stake from French multi-energy company TotalEnergies’ $27 billion cluster of energy projects in Iraq, Reuters reported, citing sources.“QatarEnergy is looking to acquire a stake of around 30% in the project, one source said,” Reuters noted.An investment from Qatar is expected to contribute an important victory for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani, who took office last year after a long period of political turmoil.French major TotalEnergies has been operating in Iraq since the late 1920s. The company currently has a 22.5% interest in the Halfaya oil field. The company also signed major multi-energy agreements in Iraq covering the construction of a new gas network and treatment units, the construction of a large-scale seawater treatment unit, and the construction of a 1 GW photovoltaic power plant, according to its website.

Iran Oil Gushes Into Global Market -- Iran’s oil exports are surging, offering solace to both Tehran and a global market fretting over the prospect of sanctions squeezing Russian supply. Much of it appears to be finding its way to China. The Persian Gulf country’s oil exports surged to about 1.3 million barrels a day in November, and last month held near the highest in four years, according to data from Vortexa Ltd. and Kpler, two well-known shipping analytics firms. The surge is a boost for global markets as sanctions on Moscow threaten to tighten oil supply from a key producer. The picture is more nuanced for the US and its allies — who want low oil prices but have also been trying to curb Iranian exports in order to restrict the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. The increase appears to be bound for China, the world’s biggest oil importer, under the banner of shipments from Malaysia. Beijing’s intake from the Asian nation surged to a record in December, figures from China’s customs administration show. Malaysian exports to China on that scale are unfeasible. They were almost triple the average daily crude output from the Southeast Asian nation over the first nine months of 2022. The flows also surpassed those of OPEC giants Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. “China’s crude imports from Iran picked up to a new record in the last month of 2022,” Malaysian waters have long been a hub for transferring crude and petroleum products from one tanker to another, sometimes masking the origin. Barrels from Iran and Venezuela have previously been re-branded as oil from Malaysia and Oman. The official data show Malaysia as China’s third-biggest supplier of crude last month, trailing only Saudi Arabia and Russia. Shipments from Iraq were at 5.06 million tons, while flows from the UAE were at 4.95 million tons in December. Across 2022, China imported a total of 35.7 million tons of crude from Malaysia, making the Southeast Asian nation the sixth-biggest supplier, ahead of Brazil, and OPEC members Kuwait and Angola. Officially, China hasn’t imported any Venezuelan crude since 2019 and has only taken oil from Iran on four occasions since the end of 2020, the customs data show.

Envoy Says USA to Boost Pressure on China to Stop Importing Iran Oil - The Biden administration’s top Iran envoy said it will increase pressure on China to cease imports of Iranian oil as the US tries to enforce nuclear sanctions. “China is the main destination of illicit exports by Iran,” and talks to dissuade Beijing from the purchases are “going to be intensified,” US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said in a Bloomberg Television interview Monday. The US reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic and its petroleum exports in 2018 after pulling out of an agreement aimed at containing its nuclear program. In response, Tehran has ramped up uranium enrichment activities and restricted international monitoring. Meanwhile, Iranian crude shipments have surged in recent months in defiance of Washington’s censure. Much of that flood of oil appears to be heading to China, the world’s biggest importer. The US will “take steps that we need to take in order to stop the export of Iranian oil and deter countries from buying it,” Malley said. “We have not lessened any of our sanctions against Iran and in particular regards to Iran’s sale of oil.”

Record oil supply will not meet 2023 demand surge: IEA -Oil prices continued to remain volatile at the start of 2023 and went below the $80 per barrel mark after steep declines on the first two consecutive days at the start of the year. Record oil supply of 101.1 million barrels per day in 2023 will not meet surging global demand, leading to a significant shortfall in availability by the end of 2023, according to the International Energy agency. In its latest forecast, the IEA has projected demand to rise by 1.9 million barrels per day to 101.7 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, an upgrade from its previous forecast for a 1.7 million bpd increase, and supply to increase by one million bpd to 101.1 million bpd. These compare with respective forecasts of 101.6 million bpd and 100.8 million bpd made in December. The Paris-based EIA significantly lowered its price forecast for Brent crude oil for 2023 and 2024. The agency in its short term energy outlook lowered Brent price forecast to $83.1 per barrel for 2023 versus its previous forecast of $92.3 per barrel. This compares to the 2022 average price of $100.94 per barrel i.e. a decline of 18 per cent in 2023. The forecast for 2024 was further lower at $77.57, a y-o-y decline of 6.6 per cent. In terms of monthly trend, Brent crude averaged at $80.4 during December-2022 after witnessing a monthly decline of 11.8 per cent, the biggest decline since April-2020. The decline in Opec crude basket was similar at 11.2 per cent to average at $79.7 per barrel. The IEA’s monthly Oil Market Report (OMR) forecast shows supply outstripping demand by nearly one million bpd in the current quarter and in the second quarter again marginally, before a flip. Demand in the third and fourth quarters will be 1.6 million bpd and 2.4 million bpd, respectively, above supply, it said. The IEA cautioned that the timing and pace of a Chinese demand recovery and of Russian supply resilience will affect its forecasts.

OPEC+ Set To Keep Oil Production Unchanged - The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee of the OPEC+ group is expected to recommend keeping the current levels of oil production when it meets next week, in a wait-and-see approach amid significant uncertainties about supply and demand in the coming weeks, OPEC+ delegates told Bloomberg on Tuesday.The JMMC is meeting online on February 1 to review the situation on the oil market and potentially recommend actions for the OPEC+ alliance to take.However, in view of the uncertainties about Chinese demand and Russian supply in February and March, OPEC+ is widely expected to keep the current production levels, which reduced target output by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) from November onwards. Yet, the actual cut is estimated to have been around 1 million bpd.In December, OPEC-13’s average December production rose by 91,000 bpd, according to the MOMR, to 28.971 million bpd, with nearly all of the gains coming from Nigeria. But December’s OPEC-10 production – the members bound by the OPEC+ pact – was still substantially below the production quota, with the group underproducing by more than 800,000 barrels per day.Going forward, OPEC, OPEC+, and market participants will look to China and Russia for the most immediate clues on global demand and supply.Analysts and the market expect Chinese oil demand to rebound after the reopening of the world’s largest crude oil importer after nearly three years of Covid-related lockdowns.Saudi oil giant Aramco expects the Chinese reopening and a pick-up in jet fuel demand to lead to a rebound in global oil demand this year, Amin Nasser, the CEO of the world’s biggest oil firm, told Bloomberg in an interview last week.On the supply side, the upcoming EU embargo on seaborne imports of refined petroleum products from Russia – beginning on February 5 – could lead to curtailments in Russian crude oil production. Moreover, Brent oil prices have recently stabilized in the upper $80s, which could mean that OPEC+ will not rush to change production policy just ahead of the EU embargo on Russian diesel and other products, analysts say.

 UN: Cost is new obstacle to oil transfer from Yemen tanker - The rising cost of purchasing or leasing a vessel that can hold more than 1 million barrels of crude oil now in a rusting old tanker off the coast of war-torn Yemen is the latest obstacle to resolving the grave threat of massive environmental damage from a possible oil spill or explosion, the UN said Tuesday. UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said the availability of very large crude oil tankers "has decreased in the past six months, basically due to events having to do with the war in Ukraine." He said just as the UN was finally gearing up its operation to transfer oil from the FSO Safer tanker, the cost of buying a very large crude oil carrier is now about 50 per cent more than what was budgeted in the original UN plan, and the leasing cost has also increased. "So we have some additional expenses, and it's a little bit harder finding the right ships, but we're proceeding with the work," Haq said. He said donors have generously pledged more than $84 million of the funding required, and additional funding from the private sector is expected soon. Haq said more than $73 million of pledges has been disbursed and essential preparatory work has begun. "All of the technical expertise is in place to undertake the procurement for the complex operation," he said. "This includes a marine management consultancy firm, maritime legal firm, insurance and ship brokers and oil spill experts" as well as contracting a salvage company that will carry out the emergency operation which is at an advanced stage. "However, the key challenge at present is procurement of a very large crude carrier," Haq said. "The UN cannot begin the emergency operation until it is certain that a safe crude carrier will be in place to take on the oil." He said the UN is working with a maritime broker and other partners "to find a workable solution and remains confident the work can begin in the coming months." The United Nations and Yemen's Houthi rebels signed a memorandum of understanding last March aimed at resolving the environmental threat posed by the Safer tanker to the Red Sea. The Safer tanker is a Japanese-made vessel built in the 1970s and sold to the Yemeni government in the 1980s to store up to 3 million barrels of export oil pumped from fields in Marib, a province in eastern Yemen that is currently the scene of limited fighting. The ship is 360 metres (1,181 feet) long with 34 storage tanks.

Oil Prices See Modest Gains On China Demand Hopes - Oil prices traded higher on Monday in thin trade, with many markets in eastern Asian countries closed for the Lunar New Year holiday. Benchmark Brent crude futures rose 0.3 percent to $87.89 a barrel, while WTI crude futures were up 0.3 percent at $81.85. Investor confidence has surged on hopes around China's demand recovery after the recent easing of travel restrictions. Chinese oil demand rose by nearly 1 million barrels per day (bpd) sequentially to 15.41 million bpd in November, the highest level since February, according to recent data from the Joint Organizations Data Initiative. China is the second largest importer of crude oil in the world. Executive director of International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, had said last week that energy markets could be tighter in 2023, especially if the Chinese economy recovers and the Russian oil industry struggles under sanctions. Both OPEC and IEA mentioned Chinese demand recovery as the driving force behind oil consumption in 2023.

Oil Rally Falters as Growing Stockpiles Outweigh China Demand -- Oil prices fell slightly Monday as rising stockpiles in the US outweighed optimism that Lunar New Year festivities in China boosted demand. West Texas Intermediate dipped 2 cents to $81.62 a barrel on Monday, marking only the second time oil prices have dropped in the last 12 trading sessions. WTI’s prompt spread sold off after a build in inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma. Stockpiles at the delivery point for benchmark US crude futures rose by about 1.6 million barrels from Jan. 13-17, according to traders, who cited data from Wood Mackenzie. Oil has shaken off a weak start to 2023 as the end of China’s Covid-Zero policies have spurred the world’s largest oil importer to boost its import quotas and prompted analysts to raise their projections for demand. Expectations that the Federal Reserve is close to ending its series of aggressive rate hikes also have buoyed prices. Several measures of technical strength have bolstered crude markets as well. Brent futures crossed above their 100-day moving average for the first time since November, which could spur more buyers to enter the market. Meanwhile, net bullish bets on Brent futures surged to a two-month high last week. Russia’s seaborne crude exports dropped last week, contributing to the smallest inflow into the country’s coffers since Moscow sent its forces into Ukraine. Moscow is set to publish a decree detailing a ban on Russian firms selling oil to clients adhering to a price cap, Kommersant said. Further restrictions on Russian energy flows are due to kick in early next month as the war in Ukraine grinds on. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed confidence at the weekend that curbs on Russian crude sales can be expanded to refined products.

Crude oil price rises slightly; focus on China demand and US outlook --Crude oil prices rose slightly in early Asian trade on Tuesday in a market focused on prospects of demand recovery from top importer China and on the global economic outlook ahead of company earnings. Brent crude had risen 5 cents to $88.24 per barrel by 0116 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 13 cents to $81.75 per barrel. Crude oil prices in physical markets have started the year with a rally, as China, no longer held back by pandemic controls, has shown signs of more buying and as traders have worried that sanctions on Russia could tighten supply. However, crude prices are wavering as the dollar stabilizes and over exhaustion from China-reopening headlines, according to OANDA analyst Edward Moya. In the United States, “the economy still could rollover and some energy traders are still skeptical on how quickly China’s crude demand will bounce back this quarter,” Moya wrote in a note. Demand for products has lifted the oil market and refining margins. The 3-2-1 crack spread , a proxy for refining margins, rose to $42.18 per barrel on Monday, the highest since October. Investors have piled back into petroleum futures and options at the fastest rate for more than two years as concerns about a global business cycle downturn have eased. U.S. investors are fairly certain the Federal Reserve will implement a small interest rate rise next week even as it remains committed to taming inflation, which recent data shows is slowing. This week traders are watching for more business data that could indicate the health of global economies during an earnings reporting season.

Traders Weighed Demand Expectations Following the Latest U.S. Economic Data - The oil market traded lower on Tuesday as traders weighed demand expectations following the latest U.S. economic data. S&P Global reported that U.S. business activity contracted in January for the seventh consecutive month. Also, spurring concerns of a U.S. recession, the Conference Board Leading Economic Index for the U.S. in December fell by 1% to 110.5 and by 4.2% over the six month period between June and December 2022. As seen in the accompanying chart, LEI readings at these lows are accompanied by recessions. The crude market traded mostly sideways in overnight trading before it breached its previous low and traded to $80.75. The market bounced off that level and rallied to a high of $82.22 early in the morning. However, the market erased any of its gains and sold off sharply on concerns about the economy as well as the expected builds in U.S. oil inventories, with the API and EIA weekly petroleum stock reports forecast to show a build of 1 million barrels in crude stocks. The market extended its losses to $1.96 as it sold off to a low of $79.66 in afternoon trading. The March WTI contract settled at $80.13, down $1.49 or 1.8%, the largest one-day decline since January 4th while, the March Brent contract also settled down $2.06 or 2.34% at $86.13. Meanwhile, the product markets ended the session sharply lower, with the heating oil market settling down 12.37 cents at $3.4272 and the RBOB market settling down 4.78 cents at $2.6487. Five OPEC+ sources said an OPEC+ panel is likely to endorse the producer group's current oil output policy when it meets next week. Ministers from OPEC+, meet virtually on February 1st. The panel, called the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, can call for a full OPEC+ meeting if warranted. Five OPEC+ sources said the JMMC would discuss the economic outlook and the scale of Chinese demand, and was unlikely to suggest tweaks to current policy. One said oil's rebound in 2023 make any changes unlikely. At their last meeting in December, the group left policy unchanged and their next full meeting is not scheduled until June.Separately, Bloomberg reported that OPEC+ delegates said they expect an advisory committee of ministers to recommend keeping oil production levels unchanged when they meet next week amid a tentative recovery in global demand.JP Morgan raised its forecast for Chinese crude demand to 770,000 bpd but maintained its projection for a 2023 price average of $90/barrel for Brent crude. It sees prices ending the year at $94/barrel. JP Morgan analysts said "Absent any major geopolitical events, it would be difficult for oil prices to breach $100 in 2023 as there should be more supply than demand this year." Diesel imports into Europe from Asia, the Middle East and Russia are set to reach 7.2 million tons in January.

WTI Holds Losses After API Reports Biggest Cushing Build Since April 2020 Oil prices traded down today after punching up to seven-week highs with WTI back to a $79 handle after weak 'soft' survey data poured more cold water on the idea of a 'soft landing'., along with disappointing results from a handful of economic-activity bellwethers, such as Union Pacific and 3M. These results have tempered optimism for the economy in the near-term. Oil prices declined on "uncertainty about how much of a demand boost we'll see, and concerns over a weakening U.S. economy constrains the upside," "With the latest PMI numbers in US, Europe and the U.K. showing signs of weakness despite lower energy prices, some doubt is creeping in around any sort of rebound in economic activity," After two crazy weeks of inventory builds (in crude and at Cushing), all eyes are on this week's data as the impact of storms and deep-freezes begins to wear off. It's the second week in a row with no release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, "but at the same time refinery maintenance could lead to an increase in crude oil supply," There's an "expectation that we could see an increase in supply in the Cushing, Okla. delivery point," he said. However, oil products are "still very tight and the focus will be on both gasoline and diesel supplies."

• Crude +3.378mm
• Cushing +3.928mm - biggest build since April 2020
• Gasoline +620k
• Distillates -1.929mm

Crude inventories rose for the 5th straight week, but the size of the build was much more 'normal' than the last two.

WTI Rebounds On Small Crude Build; Cushing Stocks Soar Most Since April 2020 --Oil prices drifted sideways to modestly lower overnight after the notable builds reported by API, as mixed company earnings and weaker business activity spurred concerns about the US economy While there’s expectation that China’s oil demand will rise after it ditched restrictive Covid rules, there’s still uncertainty about the strength of the rebound.“After Brent found some resistance just ahead of the $90 mark yesterday, it looks like the market is taking a breather after the rally on Chinese demand optimism,” “Products seem to have settled after cracks surged earlier in the week, which had also helped drive crude up. The market will be watching Cushing inventories, due to rising inventories widening the WTI-Brent spread.” With API drains having stalled, commercial crude stockpiles have swelled by more than 27 million barrels in the prior two weeks. Today's official data:

• Crude +533k
• Cushing +4.267mm - biggest build since April 2020
• Gasoline +1.763mm
• Distillates -507k

US crude inventories built for a 5th straight week, but only a small 533k barrels (well below API and expectations). However, Cushing stocks soared 4.267mm barrels last week - the biggest build since April 2020 (up 4 weeks in a row). Distillates stocks drew down for the 4th week in a row...

Oil Mixed After EIA Data Shows Builds for Crude, Gasoline -- New York Mercantile Exchange oil futures moved mixed post-inventory trade Wednesday, with nearby-month RBOB and ULSD contracts softening in reaction to the U.S. Energy Information Administration showing commercial crude and gasoline inventories increased more than expected last week while demand for middle distillates fell back below 4 million barrels per day (bpd). U.S. commercial crude oil inventories increased by 532,000 barrels (bbl) during the week ended Jan. 20 compared with expectations for stocks to have gained 100,000 bbl. At 448.5 million bbl, nationwide crude oil stockpiles now stand 3% above the five-year average. Oil stored at Cushing, Oklahoma, hub, the delivery point for West Texas Intermediate, jumped by 4.3 bbl from the previous week to 35.7 million bbl. U.S. refiners again increased run rates by a smaller-than-expected 0.8% last week to 86.1% of capacity after utilization fell to the lowest weekly level since Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 shuttered much of the refining capacity in Texas and Louisiana. For the week, refiners processed 128,000 bpd more crude at an average of 14.981 million bpd, which is still near the lowest processing rate since late March 2021. Slow recovery in refinery runs follows a smattering of disruptions while also indicating some refiners are moving units into seasonal maintenance, which is heaviest in February. Domestic oil production, meanwhile, remained unchanged at 12.2 million bpd. In the gasoline complex, commercial stockpiles gained 1.8 million bbl in the reviewed week to 232 million bbl compared with expectations for a 1 million bbl increase. Demand for motor fuel edged up 88,000 bpd to 8.142 million bpd. Distillate demand, however, decreased by 146,000 bpd to 3.878 million bpd after consumption fell the lowest level since April 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic shuttered large chunks of the economy. Domestic distillate stocks declined by 507,000 bbl to 115.3 million bbl. Total products supplied to the U.S. market over the last four-week period averaged 18.9 million bpd, down 10.9% from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, gasoline supplied to the domestic market averaged 7.8 million bpd, down 4.7% from the same year-ago period. Distillate fuel supplied averaged 3.6 million bpd over the past four weeks, down 13.6% from the comparable year-ago period. Near 11 a.m. EST, NYMEX WTI for February delivery advanced to $80.58 per bbl, up $0.45, RBOB February contract declined $0.0279 to $2.6208 per gallon, and front-month ULSD futures dropped $0.0671 to $3.3577 per gallon.

Oil closes flat as refinery outages counter 16-month high in crude stocks - Oil prices closed flat on Wednesday as unplanned refinery outages faced off with crude stockpiles at 16-month highs. New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude for March settled up 2 cents, or 0.02%, at $80.15 per barrel after a session high of $81.22 and low of $79.45. The U.S. crude benchmark settled down 1.8% on Tuesday after rising nearly 15% over the past two weeks on bets of a huge pickup in demand from China, which this month abandoned COVID-related restrictions that had been weighing on energy usage in the world’s largest oil importer. London-traded Brent crude for March delivery settled down 1 cent, or 0.01%, at $86.12 per barrel, after a session high at $88.71 and bottom of $85.42. The global crude benchmark fell 2.3% in the previous session after rallying 11% over the past two weeks. U.S. crude stockpiles have risen to their highest in 16 months after unplanned refinery outages led to six straight weeks of inventory builds, the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, said Wednesday. The EIA said crude stockpiles rose by 533,000 barrels in the most recent week to January 20, bringing total builds to 30.3 million since the week ended December 24. According to the EIA, which serves as the statistical arm of the U.S. Energy Department, the total crude stockpile of 820.1M barrels as of last week was the highest since September 2021. A rash of unplanned refinery outages has led to the pile-up of crude on the market. The EIA said U.S. refineries operated at just 86.1% of their capacity last week versus the above 90% run level typical for this time of year. PBF Energy, a refinery producing diesel in Chalmette, Louisiana was shut after a fire on Saturday, with Reuters reporting on Tuesday that the disruption could last at least a month. Exxon Mobil, meanwhile, announced Monday that it will perform planned maintenance on several units at its Baytown, Texas, petrochemical complex. Scheduled maintenance could be lengthier than expected this season, with many U.S. Gulf Coast refineries still running below capacity after Winter Storm Elliott disrupted some 1.5M barrels per day of refining capacity in December. A Suncor refinery in Commerce City, Colorado, has been offline since the storm. Overhauls are also delayed by legacy problems caused by the now three-year-old coronavirus pandemic, with refiners reportedly planning twice as many overhauls this spring than usual. These disruptions to normal refinery operations have restrained the rally expected in crude prices since the start of the year, with WTI trading at just around $80 a barrel versus forecasts for $85 and above. The issues have, however, worked in favor of gasoline prices as the profit margin on a barrel of the leading automobile fuel for March delivery hit $36.88 on Wednesday, up from $34.91 last week, CME data showed. The average price of gasoline at U.S. pumps has climbed to $3.481 per gallon from $3.102 a month ago, the American Automobile Association said Wednesday. On the gasoline inventory front, the EIA reported a build of 1.763M barrels for last week. Gasoline inventories have gone up by almost 10M barrels to date since 2023 began. Distillates, which are refined into heating oil , diesel for trucks, buses, trains and ships and fuel for jets, have been the strongest component of the U.S. petroleum complex lately in terms of demand. Distillate stockpiles have fallen by more than 4M barrels since the start of the year.

Oil extends rally on upbeat U.S. economy, refinery outages -- Oil’s rally extended on Thursday as upbeat U.S. economic data helped crude futures rise while lower-than-usual refinery runs pushed up retail prices of gasoline at pumps across America. New York-traded West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, crude for March settled up 86 cents, or 1.1%, at $81.01 per barrel. WTI has risen a cumulative 1.5% in the past two sessions after a weighted drop of 1.4% in the prior two days, resulting in a flat week thus far for the U.S. crude benchmark. London-traded Brent crude for March delivery settled up $1.35, or 1.6%, at $87.47 per barrel. The global crude benchmark rose a total 1.6% over the past two days after a drop of 1.7% in the preceding two, resulting in a flat week as well for Brent, just like WTI. Overall, WTI has risen about 1% for January and Brent almost 2% on bets of a pickup in demand from China, which announced at the start of this month an end to three years of COVID-related restrictions that had been weighing on energy usage in the world’s largest oil importer. The China move aside, U.S. refinery runs have also fallen below seasonal norms due to inclement weather and unplanned outages that have sent retail gasoline prices rising after dropping to a one-year low in December. Thursday’s rise in WTI and Brent came after a better-than-expected U.S. GDP number for the fourth quarter of last year, released earlier on Thursday by the Commerce Department. Q4 gross domestic product expanded by an annualized 2.9%, down from the year-on-year expansion of 3.2% in the third quarter, but still higher than Wall Street economists’ forecasts for a 2.6% growth. GDP aside, U.S. durable goods orders for December came in twice more than expected, with a 5.6% gain. Sales of new homes in the United States rose for a third straight month in December after the Fed slowed its rate hike for the first time last month after aggressive monetary tightening since June. The “better-than-expected U.S. GDP data supports the argument that the Fed could still deliver a soft-landing” to the economy versus fears of a recession, A rash of unplanned refinery outages have led to the pile up of crude on the market and boosted gasoline prices at the pump. The disruptions have caused crude inventories to swell by some 30 million barrels over the past five weeks and gasoline stockpiles to rise by around 10 million barrels, restraining the rally in both crude and gasoline futures. But they have worked in boosting pump prices of gasoline prices as the profit margin on a barrel of the leading automobile fuel for March delivery hit $36.88 on Wednesday, up from $34.91 last week, CME data showed.

WTI Tops $81 After US Macro Data Eases Recession Fears - Oil futures nearest delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange and Brent crude traded on the Intercontinental Exchange settled Thursday's session higher, propelled by another round of U.S. economic data showing the broader economy is still underpinned by solid growth momentum despite some pockets of weakness, raising hopes for a so-called "soft-landing" -- a scenario where inflation is easing without a recession. Thursday's round of macroeconomic data in the United States showed more evidence that the economy could still avoid recession, which would be supportive for the short-term demand outlook. For starters, the U.S. economy closed out 2022 in solid shape even as gross domestic product slowed to 2.9% in the final three months of the year, according to data released this morning by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Economists mostly expected a softer reading of 2.6%. Further details of the report revealed the increase in real GDP was broad-based, driven by gains in private inventory investment, consumer spending, and federal and local government spending. Personal income increased $311 billion in the fourth quarter compared with an increase of $283.1 billion in the three months ending in September 2022. The gain primarily reflected increases in compensation led by private wages and salaries, government social benefits, and personal interest income. That could be supportive of consumer discretionary spending this year should the national unemployment rate remain near historically low levels. In the labor market, weekly unemployment claims dropped again last week, suggesting demand for labor is still plentiful even as some large employers announce job cuts. Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, fell 6,000 to 186,000 last week, with several large states, including California, Texas, New York, and Michigan, reporting large declines in jobless claims. There were 10.5 million job openings in November, down from the peak of 11.9 million in March, but far exceeding the number of unemployed Americans seeking work, a mismatch that continues to fuel competition for workers. Despite some encouraging macroeconomic data, demand for refined fuels that is closely tied to industrial activity and consumer spending remains weak, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Distillate fuel oil supplied to the U.S. market -- a proxy for demand -- fell below 4 million bpd last week, some 678,000 bpd or 14% below last year's consumption rate. Middle distillate demand closely correlates with economic activity, with the middle of the barrel mostly consumed in industrial and commercial sectors, including construction, trucking, farming and for heating. Manufacturing conditions in the U.S. deteriorated significantly at the start of the year, hit by rising interest rates and a lack of consumer demand. A combination of weak fuel demand along with a slow recovery in refinery run rates pushed U.S. crude oil inventories to the highest level since June 2021. At 448.5 million bbl nationwide, crude oil stockpiles now stand 3% above the five-year average. At settlement, West Texas Intermediate futures for March delivery advanced to $81.01 bbl, up $0.86 on the session, and Brent March futures on ICE rallied $1.35 bbl to $87.47 bbl. NYMEX RBOB February contract advanced to $2.6121 gallon, and front-month ULSD futures gained $0.0352 to $3.3965 gallon.

ULSD Falls as G7 Mulls $100 Cap for Russian Diesel Exports - New York Mercantile Exchange oil futures and Brent crude traded on the Intercontinental Exchange declined in afternoon trade Friday, with the February ULSD contract falling as much as 4% in reaction to reports the G7 coalition is considering a price cap of $100 bbl for the Russian diesel exports -- a level that will allow Moscow to continue fuel shipments to the global market with minimum interruptions. The Group of Seven nations along with European partners on Friday began intense negotiations on price limits for Russian fuel exports, which include gasoline and middle distillates ahead of an EU embargo on Russian fuel imports. The embargo comes into full force on Feb. 5. Earlier reports suggested the discussed price cap in the $100 to $110 bbl range is rather generous. For context, diesel futures in northwest Europe are currently trading at about $130 bbl, according to ICE Futures Europe data. Russian supplies have been recently trading at a large discount to those from elsewhere, with diesel roughly in the $100 bbl range, meaning the impact on Russian producers may not be as disruptive as previously feared. The blueprint for the price cap follows a similar measure already applied to Russian crude exports that have so far resulted in little interruption in the global oil market while the revenues to Kremlin coffers fell sharply at the start of 2023. While the $100 cap may not be too impactful, the EU's imports ban could be, according to analysts. At the start of 2023, Europe continued to source more than a quarter of its diesel imports from Russia, according to tanker-tracking data. Finding a replacement for these volumes would not be an easy task. A Swiss bank expects Russian oil output to fall below 9 million bpd in 2023 from around 10 million bpd last year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates the impact of Western sanctions might be deeper, with Russian daily crude output forecast to average 8.5 million bbl this year. Moscow admitted in recent days that Western sanctions will likely reduce its refinery operations but free up more crude oil to sell. At settlement, West Texas Intermediate futures for March delivery declined below $80 bbl to $79.68 bbl, down $1.33 on the session, and Brent March futures on ICE fell $0.81 to $86.66 bbl. NYMEX RBOB February contract dropped back $0.0235 to $2.5886 gallon, and front-month ULSD futures plummeted $0.131 to $3.2655 gallon.

Oil ends lower ahead of OPEC+ committee meeting, EU ban on Russian oil products - Oil futures declined on Friday, with U.S. prices below $80 a barrel and settling at their lowest in more than a week, as uncertainty over the outlook for the market climbed ahead of an OPEC+ committee meeting and European Union ban on Russia oil products. Prices for oil had gained in early dealings, buoyed by improving demand prospects driven by China’s economic reopening and expectations that the U.S. economy could achieve a “soft landing” and avoid a recession later this year. West Texas Intermediate crude for March delivery fell by $1.33, or 1.6%, to settle at $79.68 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down from an intraday high of $82.48. Based on the front-month contract, prices settled 2.4% lower for the week, at their lowest since Jan. 18. according to Dow Jones Market Data. March Brent crude the global benchmark, lost 81 cents, or 0.9%, to $86.66 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, for a weekly decline of 1.1%. April Brent the most actively traded contract, fell 88 cents, or 1%, to $86.40. Back on Nymex February gasoline shed 0.9%, to $2.5886 a gallon, with prices down nearly 2.2% for the week, while February heating oil fell 3.9% to $3.2655 a gallon, posting a 5.8% weekly loss. February natural gas tacked on 5.6% to settle at $3.109 per million British thermal units. The contract, which expired at the settlement, ended down 2.1% for the week. March natural gas the new front-month contract, added less than 0.1% to $2.849 per million BTUs. Oil traders aimed to book profits ahead of the end of month and took a “safe position” ahead of the an OPEC+ committee meeting and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decision both on Feb. 1, and the European Union’s ban on imports of Russian oil products on Feb. 5, said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at The Price Futures Group. Oil prices posted losses for the week, but that’s after posting two consecutive weeks of gains. Market analysts pointed to several factors for the recent rise in crude-oil prices, including a U.S. economy that’s holding up stronger than expected, China’s reopening after lifting COVID restrictions, and the expectation that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies won’t boost production. The OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC), which reviews the oil market and has no ability to make official production policy decisions, will meet on Feb. 1. The next full meeting of the policy-setting OPEC+ is scheduled for June. Traders will also weigh the impact of the EU ban on imports of Russian oil products, and an expected price cap on Russia oil products on Feb. 5. The coming price cap on Russian refined products proposed today of $100 per barrel on premium oil products and $45 per barrel on low value products “relieved fears of a major constraining impact set to follow from this coming price cap,” Meanwhile, natural-gas futures saw a strong rebound on Friday, the front-month contract’s expiration day, after settling Thursday at the lowest since May 2021. Prices still fell for the week, and trade over 30% lower year to date. “Mild weather forecasts, elevated production levels, and healthy inventory levels are all contributing to the sharp downtrend right now,” analysts at Sevens Report Research wrote in Friday’s newsletter. “Futures remain oversold and a potentially violent short-covering rally is possible near term, but there is no sign of a bottom forming in the natural-gas market yet.”

Mass protests grow against Israel’s far-right government -- The third round of mass protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to give his fascistic government absolute powers and neuter the judicial system saw increased numbers of people participating across Israel’s main cities. Around 120,000 people took part in demonstrations in Tel Aviv Saturday evening, including several thousand attending one called by the Jewish-Arab activist group Standing Together. At least 7,000 rallied opposite the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, more than 6,000 in Haifa, 1,500 in Be’er Sheva and hundreds in Herzliya and Rosh Pina. The numbers testify to the anger and concern over the trajectory of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history that took power at the end of last year. However, the leading lights of the former “government of change” and its supporters are seeking to maintain control of the movement, prioritizing the government’s plans to weaken the High Court over other broader social, economic and political issues that are also animating the movement. The new government, made up of Netanyahu’s Likud party, the fascistic and racist parties Religious Zionism, Jewish Power and Noam, and the reactionary religious parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, is committed to Jewish supremacy and apartheid rule as embodied in the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law. This includes the permanent seizure of the Palestinian territories; Jewish prayer at the al-Aqsa Mosque; the rollback of already circumscribed anti-discrimination measures through sweeping changes to Israel’s legal system; and stepped-up police and military repression against the Palestinians and workers, Jewish and Palestinian, in Israel itself. The economic costs of implementing such an agenda mean the gutting of education, health and what remains of Israel’s public services, under conditions where 21 percent of the population live in poverty and 28 percent of children suffer from food insecurity. Implementing this agenda is bound up with Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s plans to curtail the High Court’s ability to strike down laws and allow parliament to override any such rulings. As well as appointing judges, the government would abolish the post of attorney general. This would pave the way to end Netanyahu’s trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases and the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence. More importantly, it would speed up settlement construction in preparation for annexing much of the West Bank.

Nine Palestinians killed in Israeli raid in Jenin - - Nine Palestinians have been killed during an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank - the deadliest in years - Palestinian officials say. A woman aged 61 was reported among the dead in the flashpoint town of Jenin. The Israeli military said its troops went in to arrest Islamic Jihad "terror operatives" planning "major attacks". The Palestinian presidency accused Israel of a "massacre" and later announced it had ended co-ordination with Israel on security matters. A 10th Palestinian was meanwhile shot and killed during a confrontation with Israeli troops in the town of al-Ram, near Jerusalem, as residents protested against the Jenin raid, Palestinian officials said. Tensions have recently risen in the West Bank, as the Israeli military continues what it describes as an anti-terrorism offensive that began last year following a series of deadly attacks in Israel. Heavy gunfire and explosions echoed across the crowded, urban Jenin refugee camp, as fierce battles between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces raged for three hours on Thursday morning. The Palestinian health ministry identified three of those killed as Magda Obaid, 61, Saeb Izreiqi, 24, and Izzidin Salahat, 26. Twenty people were also wounded, four of them seriously, it said. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops entered Jenin to arrest an Islamic Jihad "terror squad", who it accused of being "heavily involved in planning and executing multiple major terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers". It said forces surrounded a building and that three armed suspects were "neutralised" after they opened fire, while a fourth suspect surrendered. The IDF said troops were shot at by other Palestinian gunmen and returned fire, hitting targets. It added it was looking into "claims regarding additional casualties".

Palestinian teacher shot while giving first aid to militant - BBC News -Israeli forces shot dead a 57-year-old Palestinian teacher who went to give first aid to a fatally wounded militant, according to paramedics and the man's family. Jawad Bouaqneh, a father of six, was killed outside his family home in Jenin refugee camp. It came during a night of Israeli army raids in the occupied West Bank. His death raises the number of Palestinians killed this month to 17, including civilians and militants. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops had come under heavy fire from Palestinian gunmen and they responded with live fire. It said it was aware of a report that a civilian was killed "in the area of the exchange of fire" and the incident was being "reviewed". Mr Bouaqneh's son Farid said they heard a man - later confirmed to be the fatally wounded militant - calling for help outside their home. "My father went out to help the man, to provide first aid," he said. "We dragged him inside and... they shot my father in the upper body and I moved him inside as he was covered in blood," he told Reuters news agency, standing at a doorway with a blood-stained floor. Palestinian paramedics said Mr Bouaqneh and a medic were both approaching the wounded militant outside the house."At that moment the Israeli soldiers shot high velocity bullets at them and a bullet hit the teacher... in the chest while he was trying to help the injured," the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) said in a statement to the BBC. "[The medic]... was wearing a clear first aid vest when the shooting happened," it said, adding both the men who were shot were declared dead at hospital.

Israel, Gaza fighters trade fire after deadly West Bank raid (AP) — Gaza militants fired rockets and Israel carried out airstrikes early Friday as tensions soared following an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank that killed nine Palestinians, including at least seven militants and a 61-year-old woman. It was the deadliest single raid in the territory in over two decades. The flare-up in violence poses an early test for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government and casts a shadow on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s expected trip to the region next week. Of the five rockets fired at Israel, three were intercepted, one fell in an open area and another fell short inside Gaza, the military said. It said the airstrikes targeted an underground rocket manufacturing site for Hamas as well as militant training areas. The rockets set off air raid sirens in southern Israel but there were no reports of casualties on either side. Both the Palestinian rockets and Israeli airstrikes seemed limited so as to prevent escalation into a full-blown war. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and several smaller skirmishes since the militant group seized power in Gaza from rival Palestinian forces in 2007. Thursday’s deadly raid in the Jenin refugee camp was likely to reverberate on Friday as Palestinians gather for weekly Muslim prayers that are often followed by protests. Hamas had earlier threatened revenge for the raid. Raising the stakes, the Palestinian Authority said it would halt the ties that its security forces maintain with Israel in a shared effort to contain Islamic militants. Previous threats have been short-lived, in part because of the benefits the authority enjoys from the relationship and also due to U.S. and Israeli pressure to maintain it. The Palestinian Authority already has limited control over scattered enclaves in the West Bank, and almost none over militant strongholds like the Jenin camp. But the announcement could pave the way for Israel to step up operations it says are needed to prevent attacks. On Thursday, Israeli forces went on heightened alert as Palestinians filled the streets across the West Bank, chanting in solidarity with Jenin. President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning, and in the refugee camp, residents dug a mass grave for the dead. Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Abbas had decided to cut security coordination in “light of the repeated aggression against our people.” He also said the Palestinians planned to file complaints with the U.N. Security Council, International Criminal Court and other international bodies. Barbara Leaf, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East, said the Biden administration was deeply concerned about the situation and that civilian casualties reported in Jenin were “quite regrettable.” But she also said the Palestinian announcement to suspend security ties and to pursue the matter at international organizations was a mistake.

US military kills senior Islamic State official in Somalia (AP) — U.S. special operations forces have killed a senior Islamic State group official and 10 other terrorist operatives in remote northern Somalia, the Biden administration announced Thursday. The operation carried out on Wednesday targeted Bilal al-Sudani, a key financial facilitator for the global terrorist organization, in a mountainous cave complex. “This action leaves the United States and its partners safer and more secure, and it reflects our steadfast commitment to protecting Americans from the threat of terrorism at home and abroad,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. President Joe Biden was briefed last week about the proposed mission, which came together after months of planning. He gave final approval to carry out the operation this week following the recommendation of Austin and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, according to two senior Biden administration officials who briefed reporters on the operation on the condition of anonymity. Al-Sudani, who has been on the radar for U.S. intelligence officials for years, played a key role in helping to fund IS operations in Africa as well as the ISIS-K terrorist branch operating in Afghanistan, Austin said.

US-Backed Kurdish Delegation Meets With Assad Govt In Damascus - A Kurdish delegation representing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) concluded a visit to Damascus on Friday after meeting with several representatives of the Syrian government over the prior few days, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported. The delegation was headed by the foreign relations chief of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), Badran Jia Kurd, and arrived in the capital on January 17. According to the report, the last few meetings did not result in anything significant, but the "prevailing impression" is that both sides are willing to continue along the path of dialogue, despite US warnings. "These are preliminary understandings between the two sides, on things such as Syrian territorial integrity, the national flag, and the presidency of Bashar al-Assad," it states. It adds that Washington has repeatedly warned the SDF "not to engage in bilateral dialogue with the Syrian government [and not to] think of any military solutions with it," even if the reconciliation process fails. This is based on the "realization that any military solution [between the two] may turn into a war of a civil and ethnic nature," it adds, which could be referring to a potential outbreak of direct clashes between Turkish and Kurdish ground forces, or even Syrian and Turkish ground forces. Nonetheless, sources have told the newspaper that the overall atmosphere of the visit to Damascus and the Kurdish-Syrian talks were "positive," particularly for the SDF, which reportedly appreciated Syria’s firm position not to go forward with reconciliation until there is a clear and official Turkish intent to withdraw its military forces from the country. "There is a consensus between the two sides on the need to maintain the course of dialogue while searching for points of convergence to take advanced steps in the future," the sources were quoted to have said. In the aftermath of the 18 January meeting between US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, the SDF has expressed renewed fear over Turkey's long-promised ground offensive.

Saudi Arabia signs agreements worth $2.7bln to boost real estate sector growth - Saudi Arabia has signed agreements and MoUs of more than 10 billion Saudi riyals ($2.66 billion) to set up four investment funds to develop commercial, tourism and residential projects, state-owned SPA news agency reported. A part of the investments will also be made in the field of real estate development and construction techniques. No further details were given about the real estate funds. The agreements were signed at the Real Estate Future Forum held in Riyadh today, in the presence of Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing Majed bin Abdullah Al-Hogail. Al-Hogail stated that the forum would deal with 10 strategic areas, the most important being the role of regions, governorates, ministries and secretariats in harmonising the empowerment in the real estate sector, future of investment, regulations and private sector participation. In December 2022, global ratings agency S&P Global Ratings said the kingdom will see sustained property market growth, fuelled by Vision 2030 and the Iskan programme, with $1 trillion slated for real estate and infrastructure projects.

Erdogan Tells Sweden: Don't Expect To Join NATO After Quran Burning Incident - It seems the weekend Quran burning controversy in Stockholm was the straw that broke the camel's back. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued some definitive sounding comments on Monday saying that "Sweden should not expect support from us for NATO." On Saturday anti-Turkey demonstrations in the Swedish capital included an incident where a copy of the Quran was burned in front of the Turkish embassy. The Quran-burning has enraged Turkish officials, especially coming off of another protest less than two weeks ago wherein a Kurdish group hanged an effigy of President Erdogan and tweeted out images. Erdogan on Monday said that Swedish authorities allowing it to happen (given police were looking on and didn't intervene) said it's proof they allow terrorists in their country. According to Turkey's Daily Sabah, Erdogan "slammed Sweden for allowing terrorist sympathizers and others freely distribute hate propaganda, saying that Stockholm should not expect Türkiye to support its NATO bid." According to one translation, Erdogan addressed Sweden, saying that if it "does not respect the religion" of Turkey or Muslims, "then you will not receive any support from us on NATO." On Sunday, Erdogan had reiterated demands that both Sweden and Finland as part of their NATO membership aspirations hand over hundreds of Kurdish terrorists. "First of all, they need to extradite nearly 130 terrorists in order for their bids to pass our parliament; unfortunately, they have yet to do this," Erdoğan said at a youth rally, according to state news agency Anadolu. But both countries have argued this in some case would require changing free speech laws. Sweden recently said it simply can't give Turkey what it wants, particularly in cases centered on protected free speech.

Turkey Angrily Cancels Key NATO Talks With Sweden & Finland - As expected Turkey on Tuesday announced it has indefinitely postponed any future rounds of talks with Sweden and Finland regarding their NATO membership bids. A major meeting was expected to take place in Brussels in February, but this has been dramatically canceled, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported based on diplomatic sources. Via AFP NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was supposed to attend the talks, and when it was planned the two countries were widely perceived as very close to their NATO accession being approved. President Erdogan himself on Monday lashed out at Sweden in particular, blasting Swedish authorities for allowing a far-right activist to burn a Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm over the weekend. Erdogan stated bluntly that Sweden should no longer expect support from Turkey to join NATO given it allows "terrorists" in its midst. Turkey has also expressed deep dissatisfaction at both Nordic countries' failure to crack down on Kurdish groups banned by the Turkish state. Amid continuing Turkish anger, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto has said a diplomatic "time-out" is now needed in order to reassess. At the same time, Finland has suggested it could seek NATO membership without Sweden, after the two earlier indicated a joint membership bid process.

Ukraine Rocked By Corruption Scandal, Wave Of Top Officials Resign: Sports Cars, Mansions & Luxury Vacations As People Suffered -- The Ukrainian government on Tuesday confirmed the resignation of multiple high ranking officials amid large-scale corruption allegations, in what's being called the biggest mass resignation and graft scandal since the Russian invasion began. Some dozen officials have quit their posts after a huge political shake-up over allegations and probes into cases ranging from bribery, to mismanagement of aid funds for purchasing food, to embezzlement, to driving expensive cars while common people suffer under wartime conditions. A top presidential adviser and four deputy ministers - among these two defense officials, along with five regional governors were forced out of their posts. And among the regional governors to step down included officials overseeing regions which have seen intense fighting, including the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, where Russian forces have lately reported gains. Zelensky to Congress in Dec. visit: aid to Ukraine is an investment in democracy and "not charity". Via Reuters In reference to the announcement by a senior government official, Oleg Nemchinov, international reports detail the following list: Deputy Prosecutor General Oleskiy Symonenko Deputy Minister for Development of Communities and Territories Ivan Lukeryu Deputy Minister for Development of Communities and Territories Vyacheslav Negoda Deputy Minister for Social Policy Vitaliy Muzychenk And the regional governors of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Sumy and Kherson And separately, "the defense ministry had earlier announced the resignation of deputy minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who was in charge of the army's logistical support, on the heels of accusations it was signing food contracts at inflated prices." In this case regarding the food contracts, Shapovalov is accused of signing a deal with an unknown, shady firm. In his role as deputy defense minister, his is the most notable and visible resignation. Crucially he would have had no small part in overseeing the billions of dollars flowing from the pockets of US and European taxpayers as authorized defense aid. He purchased military rations at inflated prices in what appears a scheme to line the pockets of contractors, and potentially involving kickbacks to himself. Deputy Minister of Defense Vyacheslav Shapovalov has resigned over to the food procurement scandal. https://t.co/kP3U8CjHd2 — Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) January 24, 2023

Ukraine forces pull back from Donbas town after onslaught | AP News -- (AP) — Ukrainian forces have conducted an organized retreat from a town in the eastern region of the Donbas, an official said Wednesday, in what amounted to a rare but modest battlefield triumph for Russia after a series of setbacks in its invasion that began almost 11 months ago. The Ukrainian army retreated from the salt mining town of Soledar to “preserve the lives of personnel,” Serhii Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s forces in the east, told The Associated Press. The soldiers pulled back to previously prepared defensive positions, he said. Russia claimed almost two weeks ago that its forces had taken Soledar, but Ukraine denied it. Moscow has portrayed the battle for the town not far from the Donetsk province city of Bakhmut, as key to capturing all of Ukraine’s Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops for almost nine years and controlled some territory before Russia’s full-scale invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the safety of ethnic Russians living in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk province, which together make up the Donbas, as justification for the invasion. Putin illegally annexed the Ukrainian provinces and two others in late September. The withdrawal of Ukraine’s troops from Soledar takes the Russian forces a step closer to Bakhmut, but military analysts say the town’s capture is more symbolic than strategic. The fighting in eastern Ukraine has stood mostly at a stalemate for months. Ukraine’s military has said its fierce defense of Soledar and Bakhmut helped tie up Russian forces. Many of Russia’s troops around Soledar belong to the Wagner Group, a private Russian military contractorand the fighting reportedly has been bloody. Since its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has prioritized taking full control of the Donbas, where it has backed a separatist insurgency since 2014. Russia has seized most of Luhansk, but about half of Donetsk remains under Ukraine’s control. “Russia is not reducing combat activity in Donbas, leaving a scorched desert where the Russian military manages to advance,” Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on state television. Taking control of Soledar potentially allows Russian forces to cut supply lines to Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, though the strength of Ukraine’s new defensive positions was not known.

Germany approves long-awaited delivery of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine as US finalizes plans to send Abrams | CNN — Germany confirmed it will send a long-demanded contingent of Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine in a major sign of support for Kyiv that is expected to be matched by the United States.The announcement by Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday, coupled with an anticipated decision by the US to send about 30 M-1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, marks a landmark moment that followed weeks of intense pressureon Berlin from some of its NATO allies.Scholz told his Cabinet of his decision that Germany will further strengthen its military support for Ukraine, German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said. “The Federal Government has decided to make Leopard 2 battle tanks available to the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said.“This is the result of intensive consultations that took place with Germany’s closest European and international partners. This decision follows our well-known line of supporting Ukraine to the Ukraine to the best of our ability.”The announcement came a day after CNN reported that the Biden administration is finalizing plans to send US tanks to Ukraine, a move that appeared to break the diplomatic logjam with Scholz’s government. German officials had openly stated that they would only send their Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine if the US sent Abrams tanks as well, despite US officials repeatedly stressing that the Abrams tanks are overly complex and difficult to maintain.The dispute over whether the Germans would send Leopards to support Ukraine threatened to show some of the first cracks in the united Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the announcement from Scholz and news that Washington is readying its own shipment appears to show the US and its allies are still working in lockstep when it comes to supporting President Volodymyr Zelensky and his nation’s fight against the Russians.The Germans’ goal is to assemble two tank battalions with Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine, the government statement said. In a first step, Berlin will provide a company of 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks from Bundeswehr stocks, with the training of the Ukrainian crews to begin quickly in Germany. In addition to training, the package will also include logistics, ammunition and maintenance of the systems. The German defense minister said the Leopard tanks could be operational in Ukraine in about three months. Boris Pistorius, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said training would come first, then the tanks would be sent east.

Russia fumes over NATO tanks heading to Ukraine, revealing a Kremlin coming to grips with reality -— Russia responded with anger and scorn after Germany and the United States revealed that they would be supplying Ukraine with powerful, advanced battle tanks. Moscow invoked history and warned of a broader conflict.But in doing so, the Kremlin only highlighted its own political and military constraints.The move was a “blatant provocation,” said Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, ahead of President Biden’s announcement on Wednesday afternoon that his administration would send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine in the coming weeks and months. Germany said the same day that it was sending 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks. “A losing scheme,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “We have repeatedly said that these tanks go up in flames like all the other armor,” he boasted, even as Russian forces continued to experience astonishing battlefield losses, including an estimated 123,000 soldiers killed and some 3,100 tanks lost. “NATO must be destroyed, there are no other options,” mused Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent state television host whose impassioned tirades are valued by the Kremlin for their reach and visceral appeal. “Of course this is an escalation, of course this is a movement strictly towards nuclear midnight,” said another state television host, Anatoly Kuzichev, referencing the recent decision by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move its Doomsday Clock to within 90 seconds of an atomic-weapons exchange.

Russia strikes Ukraine's cities hours after Western countries pledge tanks to Kyiv - Ukraine has urged the West to get military hardware into the hands of its troops as quickly as possible, as Russia fired missiles toward Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities just hours after Germany and the US announced their plans to provide modern tanks to the country.Russia launched 55 missiles at Ukraine on Thursday morning, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Telegram. Shmyhal said the salvo was aimed at the country’s “energy facilities” and some power substations had been hit.“The main targets were energy facilities to deprive Ukrainians of power and warmth,” Shmyhal said on Telegram. “The majority of missiles and drones were intercepted by our defenders. Unfortunately there were hits at substations. Nevertheless the situation in the power grid remains under control. Power engineers are doing everything to provide power supply.”Emergency power outages were introduced in the Kyiv region after the attack. One person died in the capital, and an air raid alert was in place across the whole country, according to the city’s mayor. The person who died was identified as a 55-year-old man, who was killed “due to the fall of missile fragments,” Popko accused Russia of using the Iranian-made attack drones it sent to Ukraine overnight to try and distract Ukrainian air defense units. Fifteen attack drones were fired over over the capital on Thursday, “aimed not only at hitting targets on the ground,” he said. “According to the new tactics of the aggressor, the drones constitute the first wave of a combined air attack for detecting and exhausting Ukrainian air defense.”

Ukraine faces logistics hurdles ahead of tank deliveries from Germany, U.S. - The Washington Post— Nearly a year into the war in Ukraine, Western allies finally agreed to send Kyiv the battle tanks it says it so desperately needs.The first battalion will have roughly 40 tanks, including newer German Leopard 2A6s, and could arrive by spring.But the broader package pieced together this week by the United States and other European nations includes a hodgepodge of tank models, each with different delivery times and unique logistical hurdles. Military experts are unsure if they will have a decisive effect on the battlefield — and Ukrainian forces still need to be trained on how to use them. Ukraine has said that it needs at least 300 tanks to support a large-scale spring offensive against the Russians and has called the Western move to donate them a game changer. On Thursday, in apparent retaliation for the tank pledges a day earlier, Russia bombarded Ukrainian towns and cities with dozens of missiles, killing at least 11 people, officials said. “No single weapons system or platform can be a game changer,” He said that the impact of the “limited number” of tanks arriving in March will depend on training and how well the new formations are integrated on the front line. But because Germany waited so long to decide whether to send tanks, “it is unlikely that the Leopard 2 will play a significant role in any spring offensive,” he said.Moscow on Thursday slammed the deliveries as an “escalation.”Still, the Ukrainians are now expecting a planned transfer of 14 Challenger 2 tanks from Britain, as well as an eventual delivery of 31 M1A2 Abrams tanks from the United States. The M1A2 is a variant first fielded in the 1990s. It includes more modern electronics and targeting systems than its older cousin, the M1A1, and a 120 mm main cannon.European countries are also dusting off decades-old stocks. Spain has mulled sending a batch of older Leopard 2A4s that have been mothballed for a decade and may need extensive repairs. Germany is rushing ahead with the newer A6 variant, with thermal imaging and a significantly more powerful high-velocity gun.

New barrage of Russian strikes in Ukraine kills at least 11 (AP) — Russia fired more missiles and self-exploding drones at nearly a dozen Ukrainian provinces early Thursday, causing the first war-related death in Kyiv this year and killing at least 11 people overall, according to Ukrainian authorities. The attacks adhered to Russia’s recent pattern of striking power plants and other critical infrastructure about every two weeks. However, the latest onslaught came after Germany and the United States upped the ante in Russia’s 11-month war by promising Wednesday to send high-tech battle tanks to Ukraine and green-lighting other allies to do the same. The spokesperson for Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, Oleksandr Khorunzhyi, said that in addition to the dead at least 11 people were wounded. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person was killed during the attacks, the city’s first such death since New Year’s Eve. Two others were injured, he said. The head of the Kyiv city administration, Serhii Popko, said Ukrainian air defenses shot down 15 cruise missiles heading to the area. The regional prosecutor’s office in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia province said three people were killed and seven injured in a strike on an energy facility. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said Thursday’s volley involved a total of 55 missiles, of which 47 were intercepted. Self-exploding drones swept in overnight before the missile strikes. As air raid sirens echoed across the country, civilians, some tugging pet dogs on leashes, poured into subway stations, underground parking lots and basements to seek shelter. It was the first such barrage of Russian firepower across the country since Jan. 14. Russia has carried out massive strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities since early October, part of a strategy to try to hamper Ukrainian forces and to keep civilians in the cold and dark this winter before what many experts predict could be a springtime offensive as more conscripts reach the battlefields. Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko acknowledged that some sites were hit, resulting in emergency power outages.

German General Kujat Warns the Ukraine War Is Lost, Revives the Stab-in-the-Back Charge Against the US and NATO for “Exposing Germany to Russia” - A fresh German general has issued a public warning that the war on the Ukrainian battlefield by the US and NATO armies is lost, and that Germany will be lost next if the advance of the Russian forces toward Kiev and Lvov isn’t halted quickly by an armistice, partition and demilitarization of the Ukraine, and time to rebuild the German army.Retired Major General Harald Kujat — son of a Wehrmacht soldier killed fighting the Red Army who grew up to become chief of the German army and then of the NATO military staffs — is the author of a military assessment in which he blames the German press, ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, British prime minister Boris Johnson, and other NATO allies he doesn’t name for a new German version of the stab in the back .In this scheme, according to Kujat, the NATO allies have aimed at sabotaging Germany’s power in Europe. This is being carried out, he said, by escalating the “risk of a conventional attack on Germany”, and “pursuing the goal of exposing Germany to Russia in particular”. Without explicitly targeting the US, Kujat blames Washington for establishing a direct nuclear threat to Russia in the Aegis missile batteries now installed in Poland and Romania; for making Germany a direct party to the war in the Ukraine by allowing “the US [to] train Ukrainian soldiers in Germany”; and for destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines to Germany.Kujat’s assessment was published in Switzerland on January 18; German publication followed onJanuary 20. Attacked in the past by mainstream German media, and by US government officials, Kujat’s new statement has been ignored in Germany and the US.“The longer the war lasts, the greater the risk of expansion or escalation,” Kujat warned, adding the German army, German territorial security, and German industrial might will be the loser because “Russia could surpass the Western escalation at any time with its own.” Kujat meant this to include the use of nuclear weapons.Kujat is the most senior German officer to make public an attack on the German and allied war to defeat Russia in Europe.He follows Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, head of the German Navy, who was forced to resign in January 2022, after a public speech in which he said that “the Crimea Peninsula is gone: It will never come back — this is a fact”; and that Russian security concerns should be addressed with “respect”. “What [Putin] really wants is respect. And, my God, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost. … It is easy to give him the respect he really demands — and probably also deserves.” After Schönbach’s ouster, no serving German officers have dared to risk public criticism of the war policy in Germany. Instead, they are expressing themselves through retired officers. Brigadier General Erich Vad, the ex-head of the military group in Merkel’s chancellery, issued a detailed attack earlier this month; read the details here.

While slashing pensions, Macron demands 40 percent hike in French military budget - As he pledges to cut €13 billion per year from pensions, French President Emmanuel Macron aims to raise military spending €118 billion over the next six years. On Friday, speaking at an airbase in Mont-de-Marsan, he announced a nearly 40 percent rise in military spending, to €413 billion in the period of 2024-2030. As Macron and all the NATO powers spend billions of euros on waging war on Russia in Ukraine, this plan exposes the ruling elite’s undisguised contempt for public opinion and the social needs of the working class. Macron’s pension cuts are opposed by 80 percent of the French people. Yet he wants to transfer hundreds of billions of euros from retirees to the banks and the military, arguing that further, major escalations of the war are unavoidable. Such announcements show that stopping the decimation of workers’ living standards by austerity and inflation requires building a movement against NATO imperialist wars. With NATO teetering on the brink of launching an all-out global war on Russia, Macron demanded that France prepare for further, explosive military escalation and high intensity wars. “We must never be one war late. We must be ahead by one war,” Macron said, insisting that France must be ready for “more brutal and more numerous wars.” He announced a comprehensive modernisation of the warheads, missile launch systems of France’s nuclear missiles, and an increase in the size of its ballistic-missile submarine fleet. Praising France’s nuclear deterrent program, Macron said: “Deterrence is one issue that makes France a different country in Europe. We are seeing again in Ukraine its vital importance. It deserves the considerable efforts that we devote to it.” The budget expends enormous resources on the latest methods of spying and drone warfare. Macron announced a 60 percent rise in military intelligence and cyber warfare budgets, increasing France’s fleet of reconnaissance and killer drones, and building new air defense systems to scan for enemy drones, many of which can evade radar. The budget also allows for building a new aircraft carrier, replacing all Mirage jets with newer Rafale fighters and buying large quantities of the new Scorpion armored vehicle. Macron called for a major increase in the French military-industrial complex’s ability to put out large quantities of heavy weapons for use in overseas wars. Demanding to “build up our stocks of munitions, logistics capacity and support,” he said: “We must be more alert, reinforce national emergency preparedness and have the necessary means for military intervention on little warning, even far from metropolitan France.”

Issues at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia 'of increasing concern' -WENRA head -Organisational and management issues at Ukraine's Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are "of increasing concern", Olivier Gupta, head of the Western European Nuclear Regulators' Association (WENRA), said on Monday. Brokering a deal on a safe zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is getting harder because of the involvement of the military in talks, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi said earlier this month. The Soviet-era plant, Europe's largest, was captured by Russian forces in March, soon after their invasion of Ukraine. It has repeatedly come under fire in recent months, raising fears of a nuclear disaster.

Pakistan cenbank raises key rate by 100 bps to contain inflation -Pakistan's central bank raised key rate by 100 basis points as expected as it struggles to rein in persistently high inflation. Eighteen of the 22 economists and market watchers surveyed by Reuters had said there would be a hike -- 14 of them predicted 100 basis points (bps), three expected 200 bps, and one said 150 bps. Four respondents expected rates to remain unchanged. "The committee found that the 1% increase was inevitable," central bank chief said in his statement. In its last policy meeting in November the bank unexpectedly pushed up the rate by 100 bps to 16%. It has now raised rates by a total of (625 + today's) bps since January 2022

Modi's party threatens India democracy with disinformation law - India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology filed a draft amendment last week to a recent media law that could have sweeping consequences for free expression in the world’s largest democracy. According to the proposed language, any information marked as “fake” by the fact-checking division of India’s Press Information Bureau will need to be taken down by “online intermediaries,” a category that would include social media companies. This latest move potentially casts a pall over journalism in the country. Two industry associations — the Editors Guild of India and Digipub, a group of news sites in India — have published strong statements arguing that the amendment could give arbitrary and discretionary power to the Indian government. And they are right to be concerned. Within a few days of mooting the amendments, the Indian government contacted Twitter to take down posts linking to a BBC documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom. The government hasreportedly invoked emergency powers under a related IT law. The new amendments can only strengthen the censors’ hand in these matters. Like many democracies around the world, India is drowning under a tide of rising misinformation and outright dishonest political spin. Multiple organizations dedicated to fact-checking the skewed narratives and distortions have sprung up, and they are fighting a desperate battle. The problem is that fake news is often weaponized by the government itself. One recent viral story on Indian social media claimed that Modi had gotten Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the war in Ukraine in order to let Indian students exit the country. While the origin of the story might not be traceable to the government, Amit Shah, the government’s home minister, amplified this narrative in an interview, saying that both Ukraine and Russia had temporarily stopped the war at Modi’s behest. Fact-checkers quickly found statements from the External Affairs Ministry from earlier in the year contradicting these claims, showing that the government had in fact not been able to do much. But the damage was done. The misinformation had gone viral, and the facts of the episode are now openly contested in the public sphere.

A group of friends attended a vigil in Beijing. Then one by one, they disappeared - When one by one, the friends of a young woman living in Beijing began disappearing — detained by the police after attending a vigil together weeks earlier — she felt sure that her time was nearing. “As I record this video, four of my friends have already been taken away,” the woman, age 26, said, speaking clearly into the camera in a video recording from late December obtained by CNN. “I entrusted some friends of mine with making this video public after my disappearance. In other words, when you see this video, I have been taken away by the police for a while.” The woman — a recent graduate who is an editor at a publishing house — is among eight people, mainly young, female professionals in the same extended social circle, that CNN has learned have been quietly detained by authorities in the weeks following a peaceful protest in the Chinese capital on November 27. That protest was one of many that broke out in major cities across the country in an unprecedented showing of discontent with China’s now-dismantled zero-Covid controls. CNN has confirmed that two of those eight were released on bail Thursday evening and Friday, respectively, just days ahead of the Lunar New Year. One release was confirmed to CNN on Friday by her lawyer, who declined to comment further on whether she had been charged with a crime. The second was confirmed by a source with direct knowledge. CNN has not been able to confirm whether others were released and if so, how many. Two of the young women detained, including the editor, have been formally charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” people directly familiar with their cases said Friday — a step that could bring them closer to standing trial, with neither granted bail as of that day. The overall number of people detained in connection with the protests within China’s notoriously opaque security and judicial systems also remains uncertain. Beijing authorities have made no official comment about the detentions and the city’s Public Security Bureau did not respond to a faxed request for comment from CNN. There has been no public confirmation from the authorities involved that these or any other detentions were made in connection with the protests. CNN followed up on Monday with the district branch that is believed to be responsible for those detained following Beijing’s November 27 protest, but the branch didn’t respond prior to publication. What is known about these detentions, carried out quietly in the weeks after November 27, stands as a chilling marker of the lengths to which China’s ruling Communist Party will go to stamp out all forms of dissent and free speech — and the tactics used to counter perceived threats. The account that follows has, except where otherwise indicated, been reconstructed from interviews with three separate sources, who each directly know at least one of the people who were detained and are familiar with the circumstances of others within that circle. CNN has agreed not to name any sources due to their concerns about retribution from the Chinese state and the sensitivities of speaking to foreign media. CNN is also not naming those detained for similar reasons.

Chip Sales Plunge In China, Buffeting Global Industry -Chip sales in China have tumbled at a whopping rate, as productivity in the semiconductor-related sector has contracted dramatically, indicating that the country’s manufacturing industry is shrinking, according to the latest industrial report. The Washington-based Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) released data on Jan. 9 indicating that compared to the same period in 2021, China’s chip sales plummeted by 21.1 percent in November of 2022. Meanwhile, in the United States, chip sales rose by 5.2 percent; sales in Europe increased by 4.5 percent year-on-year; and sales in Japan went up by 1.2 percent. According to SIA statistics, in 2021, China alone made up $192.3 billion, or 34.6 percent, of $555.9 billion in global semiconductor industry sales, ranking first in the world. As the world’s largest chip market, the Chinese market’s sharp decline has dragged down the yield of the global industry, with November 2022 seeing global semiconductor industry sales slide to $45.5 billion. That is 2.9 percent less than the previous month and 9.2 percent less than the same period of the previous year, respectively. “Global semiconductor sales decreased in November [2022], largely due to market cyclicality and macroeconomic headwinds,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO of SIA. The SIA represents most U.S. semiconductor companies and nearly two-thirds of non-U.S. semiconductor companies. China’s chip imports have faced a serious decline since last October when the United States imposed sanctions on Chinese semiconductor companies. Chinese customs data showed that China imported 40.5 billion integrated circuits in November 2022, a 25.3 percent drop from 54.22 billion units in November 2021. Last October, the United States issued a semiconductor and equipment export control order against the Chinese Communist regime. The new ban restricts exports to China of logic chips below 14/16 nanometres, DRAM memory chips below 18 nanometres, and NAND flash memory chips above 128 layers, as well as related manufacturing equipment. The move could be a heavy blow to a wide range of manufacturing areas, including automobiles, mobile communications equipment, and computers.

Nigeria, China trade volume surges to $26bln in 2022 --Trade volume between Nigeria and China increased to nearly $26 billion in 2022, The Punch newspaper reported. The West African nation began exporting 20 containers of agro-commodities to China as part of its plans to increase non-oil export. The aim is to boost export to China and other countries in the far-east region. Ginger, sesame seeds and other agro-commodities were loaded in 20 containers in Abuja for export to China. China Trade Office/Embassy in Nigeria official Allen Znang said that the trade volume between Nigeria and China reached almost $26 billion last year and is set to increase further. He revealed Nigeria and China trade volumes are more than three times the trade volume with Ghana, four times with Kenya and six times with Cameroon.

Diaspora remittances now Kenya’s largest foreign exchange earner - Kenya is now earning more foreign exchange from diaspora remittances than each of its major exports – coffee, tea and horticulture – in spite of persistent criticism of a poor diaspora policy. The latest figures from the Central Bank of Kenya reveal that the country’s diaspora remittances rose by 8.34 percent to $4.027 billion in 2022, closing in on exports, which brought in $5.77 billion worth of foreign currency in the same period. Compared with 2021, Kenya’s total exports rose 7.5 percent, a slower growth rate than the diaspora remittances, which are projected to keep growing as the world’s economy continues to recover. Tea, Kenya’s leading export, earned the country $1.2 billion in 2022, followed closely by horticulture at $901 million, chemicals ($521 million), coffee ($301 million) and petroleum products ($77 million), highlighting the crucial role of remittances in bringing in foreign currencies. The administration of President William Ruto says it is paying more attention to the diaspora and has since established a state department to respond to specific issues of Kenyans abroad.

What food banks need to prevent the worst of the coming recession -After a year of rising inflation and shocks to supply chains during 2022, little relief is expected in 2023, with many of the world’s economies now staring down the prospect of recession in the coming year. So much so, as countries and international businesses gathered at Davos, the World Economic Forum is called for “bold collective action” to address the “sheer number of ongoing crises.” Ultimately, the access to healthy food will be at the forefront of the coming economic upset, with acute food insecurity projected to reach new peaks, surpassing even the food crisis of 2007 — 2008. Poorer communities generally pay a higher proportion of their incomes on basic needs like food, and as such, will be most affected by the continued economic crisis. In Colombia, for instance, although inflation sits at around 12 percent, food inflation reached 32 percent in December 2022, disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable in society. The potential of a recession this year also comes on the heels of other recent famines and food crises. The demand for food bank services, which provide communities with a vital buffer against hunger and food insecurity, has already risen significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic in many areas of the world, and in the last year. Now, entering the fourth year of the pandemic, and with economic instability seemingly here to stay, food banks will continue to play an outsized, crucial role in addressing the interconnected crises of the present day. From hunger and nutrition challenges to the rising impact of — and our food systems’ contribution to —climate change, food banks offer a multifaceted solution in both the short- and long-term. Crucially, food banks can also become embedded as a central solution to food insecurity in our societies, helping to ensure that, if a recession does arrive, people already in vulnerable situations are not left to fend for themselves. To protect the most vulnerable in society against these rising challenges, countries and businesses must further incorporate food banks into their plans to address the interconnected crises of hunger, climate change and rising economic insecurity. To begin with, governments should move to adopt more supportive policies for food donation and broader social protection. The Global Food Donation Policy Atlas, a collaboration between the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC) and my organization The Global FoodBanking Network (GFN), shows that in many parts of the world, ineffective policies around food donation and food waste are preventing food banks from achieving their full potential in supporting communities. For instance, few governments have adopted tax incentives to promote greater levels of food donation from manufacturers, retailers and other businesses — despite this being a vital means to reduce food waste and ensure healthy and nutritious food can feed those who need it most.

Brazil, Argentina Holding Talks Over Possible Common Currency -Brazil and Argentina plan to advance talks about a common currency for financial and commercial transactions in an effort to improve economic integration, leaders of the two nations said on Jan. 21. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was sworn in on Jan. 1, and Argentine leader Alberto Fernandez shared details about the talks regarding a shared currency in a joint article published on the Argentine website Perfil, CNBC reported. “We intend to overcome the barriers to our exchanges, simplify and modernize the rules and encourage the use of local currencies,” the two leaders wrote. “We also decided to advance discussions on a common South American currency that can be used for both financial and commercial flows, reducing costs operations and our external vulnerability,” the article said. Argentina’s economy minister Sergio Massa told the Financial Times that the two nations - South America’s two largest economies - will announce this week that they are beginning preparatory work on the common currency.

'Polling Earthquake': Austria's Anti-Immigration Freedom Party (FPÖ) Is Now Country's No.1 Party - Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ), known for its strict stance on immigration and opposition to Russia sanctions, is now the top party in Austria once again after seven years. Described as a “polling earthquake” by Austrian newspaper Heute.at, the party would win 28 percent of the vote, according to the monthly poll conducted by Unique opinion research Institute for news magazine Profil. At the same time, the Social Democrats (SPÖ) lost 2-percentage points, dropping to 24 percent. SPÖ fell even farther on the question of chancellor, with only 12 percent of respondents say they would vote for Pamela Rendi-Wagner, while last month that was 15 percent. Currently, the FPÖ, led by Herbert Kickl, has a 4-point lead over SPÖ. Kickl has gained in popularity, with 17 percent saying they would vote for him, while in December, only 15 percent said they would.

Norway, Sweden and Denmark Say “No” To Cash -- Norway’s largest bank DNB proposes to stop using cash as a means of payment in the country. According to the DNB bank’s executive Trond Bentestuen, more that half of all cash transfers in the country are made without the banks’ control, and so could be used for illegal purposes. He commented to local news media outlet VG.no: “Today, there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation and [the country’s central bank] Norges Bank can only account for 40 percent of its use. That means that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control. We believe that is due to under-the-table money and laundering.” Norway has already became one of the leading countries to propose using electronic money. Several banks have already refused to accept or offer cash transactions in their branches all over the country. The widespread adoption of mobile payment solutions and bankcards turned out to be more popular among Swedes than old-fashioned cash payments. A study by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has shown that Sweden may become the world’s first cashless country. Niklas Arvidsson, an industrial technology and management researcher at KTH,commented that now of all Swedish crowns in circulation, “only somewhere between 40 and 60 percent is actually in regular circulation”. Moreover, Bengt Nilervall from the Swedish Federation of Trade explained that moving to a cashless society is safer and saves money. The Chamber of Commerce of Denmark has also proposed to allow most retailers (except for essential services like hospitals, post offices, etc.) to make all money transactions electronically and ban cash. Moreover, the Danish government has “set a 2030 deadline to completely do away with paper money.”

BNP Frankfurt office raided by prosecutors in Cum-Ex probe - BNP Paribas's Frankfurt offices were raided by German prosecutors as part of their vast investigation into the Cum-Ex scandal that has swept up Wall Street's biggest banks. A spokesperson for the bank confirmed the search and said it's cooperating. A Cologne prosecutors' spokesman said that the agency raiding a bank in Frankfurt since Tuesday without disclosing its name. Prosecutors are investigating a total of 58 suspects who work or used to work for the lender. Some of them also saw their homes raided, they said. Cum-Ex was a trading strategy across Europe that siphoned off billions of euros in government revenue, by taking advantage of tax laws that seemed to allow multiple investors to claim refunds of a tax on dividends that was paid only once. Germany moved to abolish the practice in 2012. While dating back more than a decade, the Cum-Ex scandal continues to roil the financial industry. Prosecutors in Cologne are investigating more than 1,500 people and are ramping up the pressure on international banks. The French lender is the latest in a long line of institutions targeted by officials. Most recently international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright was raided. Bank of America's Merrill Lynch premises were targeted in recent months along with Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase. Barclays' Frankfurt office was also hit by prosecutors.

Portuguese teachers mount nationwide strike - A nationwide teachers strike is underway in Portugal amid a rising tide of class struggles in Portugal and internationally, three years into the COVID-19 pandemic and as NATO wages war on Russia in Ukraine. Last Monday, teachers began an 18-day strike called by eight union confederations, which had previously rejected calls for strikes, claiming it was “not an appropriate time.” They called a strike under mounting pressure from teachers who held one of the largest protests since the Carnation Revolution toppled Portugal’s far-right regime in 1974. Called by the Union of All-Education Professionals (STOP), up to 100,000 teachers, school staff and parents marched in Lisbon. They waved banners demanding “respect,” “dignity in the profession,” “a public school system (that works),” calling on Socialist Party (PS) Education Minister João Costa to resign. The PS government is threatening to ban the strike. “What is happening is that there is a strike one day at one hour and the next day at another. In our opinion, this does not respect basic principles of what a strike should be,” Costa said. This echoes the PS attack on the 2017-2018 Portuguese nurses strikes, which it attacked by declaring that crowd-funding of strikes is illegal. Teachers are demanding an end to professional instability, precarity and unpaid overtime, calling for more hiring and higher wages. Teachers have lost 20 percent of their purchasing power since 2009. Teachers are also demanding to retire without penalty after 36 years of service, since obtaining a permanent job as a teacher can take decades of work. The average monthly salary for teachers in the lowest pay band is roughly €1,100 ($1,191.08), and even those in the highest pay band are typically under €2,000. Low wages have been compounded by the skyrocketing cost of living triggered by EU bank bailouts and the NATO war in Ukraine. Inflation reached 9.6 percent in 2022, and food prices rose 18.9 percent.

Quantifying The Macroeconomic Impact of Covid-19-Related School Closures on Human Capital - The COVID-19 pandemic led to the partial or full closure of schools in almost all countries around the world. On average, across OECD countries, school buildings were fully closed for 13 weeks and partially closed for a further 24 weeks between March 2020 and October 2021, which combined is equivalent to around one full school year. [1]. Learning losses stemming from school closure may be difficult to make up and so may have a long-term economic impact on the students affected, with possible enduring macroeconomic consequences (Ilzetzki 2020, Kuhn et al. 2020, Popova et al. 2020).We exploit a new measure of human capital, derived in Égert et al. (2022), that combines mean years of schooling (MYS) and OECD data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The new measure is a cohort-weighted average of past PISA scores (representing the quality of education) of the working-age population and the corresponding mean years of schooling (representing the quantity of education). Weights for PISA scores and mean years of schooling are estimated from regressions which consider how well the cohort-weighted variables explain scores from the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIACC).Based on this new measure, we can compute separately the effect of the pandemic on PISA scores and mean years of schooling (MYS) and feed this into the stock measure of human capital. For each cohort impacted, we add up the effects of the pandemic on MYS and PISA test scores to estimate the overall effect on human capital. We calculate these using the elasticities of MYS and PISA with respect to human capital, estimated in Égert et al. (2022). We then calculate a population-weighted average of the impact of each cohort affected to provide the global effect on human capital.The new measure of human capital shows a robust correlation with productivity for OECD countries in cross-country time-series panel regressions. This helps us quantify the macroeconomic losses due to school closures, reflected in losses in PISA scores and mean years of schooling.