Sanjeev Gupta's GFG Alliance strikes debt deal with Credit Suisse
Sun, October 10, 2021, 1:38 PM·1 min read


 Liberty Steel's Sanjeev Gupta pictured in Scotland


LONDON (Reuters) - The GFG Alliance said on Sunday it had agreed a debt restructuring deal with Credit Suisse for its Australian steel and coal mining assets, and announced plans to inject 50 million pounds ($68 million) into the restart of its Rotherham electric furnace in the United Kingdom.

GFG, owned by commodities tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, has been scrambling to refinance its cash-starved web of businesses in steel, aluminium and energy after supply chain finance firm Greensill Capital filed for insolvency in March.

The debt restructuring for its Australia assets will allow GFG to make a "substantial upfront payment" to Greensill Bank and Credit Suisse, with the balance paid in instalments until the new maturity date of June 2023, a statement from GFG said.

Zurich-based Credit Suisse had previously disclosed some $2.3 billion worth of loans exposed to financial and litigation uncertainties within Greensill-linked supply chain finance funds, with some $1.2 billion of its assets related to GFG.

Following the cash injection into its UK steel business, Liberty Steel, production will start in October with a plan for output to reach 50,000 tonnes per month as soon as possible, the statement said.

Jeffrey S. Stein, the chief restructuring officer, said in the statement that new lenders in Europe had expressed interest in refinancing GFG's steel assets.

In Europe, GFG said it had launched a legal action against private equity firm AIP, which said it had taken control of GFG's smelter in Dunkirk, Europe's largest primary aluminium producer.

($1 = 0.7332 pounds)

China rust-belt province warns of more power shortages in energy crisis


Mon, October 11, 2021,

BEIJING, Oct 11 (Reuters) - China's largest provincial economy in its northeast rust belt warned of worsening power shortages on Monday, despite government efforts to boost coal supply and manage electricity use in a post-pandemic energy crisis hitting multiple countries.

China's Liaoning province issued its second-highest level power shortage alert on Monday, the fifth in two weeks, warning the shortfall could reach nearly 5 gigawatts (GW).

Liaoning has the biggest economy and consumes the most power of the three provinces making up China's rust-best industrial region. It has been suffering widespread power cuts since mid-September. A level two power shortage alert indicates a demand gap of 10%-20% of total power demand.


The rebound in global economic activity as coronavirus restrictions are lifted has exposed shortages of fuels used for power generation in China and other countries, leaving industries and governments scrambling as the northern hemisphere heads into winter.

"The biggest power shortage could reach 4.74 gigawatts (GW) on Oct 11," a notice issued by the Liaoning Provincial Industry and Informatization Department said.

An order to curb power use had been put in place from 6 a.m. (2200 GMT on Sunday), it said.

The province also issued level two power crunch alerts for each of the last three days of September, when the daily power supply gap reached as much as 5.4 GW, leaving hundreds of thousands of households without electricity and forcing industrial plants to suspend production.

The power shortages follow tightening supply and sky-rocketing prices for coal, used to generate more than 70% of electricity in the region. Wind farms have also been idled due to slow wind speeds. Wind power made up 8.2% of Liaoning's power generation in 2020.

Last week, China's top two coal mining regions, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, ordered more than 200 of their mines to expand production capacity and prioritise coal supply to power plants in northeastern provinces, including Liaoning.

Analysts and traders, however, expect coal output will still fall short this winter, and China would still have to cut industrial power consumption by about 12% in the forth quarter.

China's thermal coal futures rose 8% to hit a daily upper-trading limit shortly after trade started on Monday.

Moody's Investors Service in a report said: "China's electricity cuts will add to economic stresses, weighing on GDP growth for 2022. And the risks to GDP forecasts could be larger as disruptions to production and supply chains feed through." (Reporting by Muyu Xu and Shivani Singh; Editing by Tom Hogue)

China Eyes Kazakh Coal As Energy Demand Soars


Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, October 9, 2021

China is the world’s biggest coal consumer. Neighboring Kazakhstan sits on some of the world’s biggest coal reserves. Yet they have never done much business trading the stuff, largely because it is expensive to move by rail.

That may be about to change.

Rolling blackouts caused by a coal shortage are threatening China’s economy. Gummed-up supply chains, the post-COVID consumption boom, and emissions-reduction targets are all to blame. But Beijing also miscalculated last year, imposing an informal ban on products from Australia, one of its largest coal suppliers, when Canberra called for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Coal prices have risen almost fourfold over the last 12 months, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, reaching record highs.

Now China is looking for new sources, willing to brave even the most indirect import channels.

The eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang received its first shipment of Kazakh thermal coal (the kind used in power plants) this week.

The delivery route was anything but optimal. Landlocked Kazakhstan first sent the coal at least a thousand kilometers in the wrong direction, overland to a Black Sea port in Russia. There a bulk carrier took on 136,000 tons for a 30-day, a 15,000-kilometer odyssey to Zhejiang, Bloomberg reported.

“China as a whole has been buying more thermal and coking coal from Kazakhstan since the start of the year, as power cuts have become more frequent and coal supplies dwindle,” the South China Morning Post reported on October 5.

But how much coal China buys from Kazakhstan is something of a mystery. Figures the two sides provide to the UN's international trade statistics database do not match

Whereas Kazakhstan reported shipping 28.5 million kilos of coal to China in 2016, China reported receiving only 10.5 million. In 2019, the last year for which complete data is available, Kazakhstan told the UN that it had sold China 39 million kilos; China said it bought 150 million kilos.

Political scientist and sometimes opposition leader Petr Svoik is inclined to believe the higher figures, explaining that Kazakh customs officials have been playing with data on commodity sales to China for years.

"There are several reasons” for the inconsistencies, Svoik told Eurasianet. “On the one hand, they have different methods of accounting for commodity groups. On the other hand, there is corruption and smuggling.”

Transparency Kazakhstan, the local branch of the international anti-corruption watchdog, has reported on such data discrepancies with other countries as well, also blaming graft in the customs agency.

There is one thing the data agree on: Kazakh coal is a drop in the bucket for China, which imported 308 million metric tons in 2019, according to the IAE, three times Kazakhstan’s total production. (China is also the world’s largest coal producer.)

But for Kazakhstan, which is struggling to wean itself off the climate-warming fuel, its neighbor's crisis creates new opportunities. For now, 90 percent of coal mined in Kazakhstan is used locally, where it is sold at state-regulated prices, which are one-third lower than export prices.

As Kazakhstan switches from coal to gas and some renewables to meet its emissions targets, it will free up coal supplies to sell abroad, the Association of Mining and Metallurgical Enterprises, a lobby group, told the Kursiv business newspaper on October 4.

With higher coal prices, sending this dirtiest of fuels straight across the border by rail becomes more economical, even if the net warming effects on the global climate remain the same.

By Eurasianet.org

Shale Oil Is Booming Again in the Permian

David Wethe, Kevin Crowley and Sergio Chapa
Mon, October 11, 2021, 

(Bloomberg) -- Oil prices around $80 a barrel are once again spurring a revival of shale drilling in America’s biggest oil field, where production is expected to return to pre-pandemic highs within weeks.

Only this time, the surge is being driven by private operators, rather than the publicly traded companies that fueled the previous booms. And they see little reason to slow things down.

Increased access to financing and strong oil demand has created an opening for closely held producers, most of whom are backed by private equity or family money, to ramp up output in West Texas and southeast New Mexico. With the other major U.S. shale basins either holding steady or declining, according to BloombergNEF, the surging growth in the Permian isn’t likely to risk upsetting OPEC or tanking crude prices as it did in previous shale booms—at least not yet.

“It’s a win for the privates without being a loss for the oil markets,” said Raoul LeBlanc, an analyst at IHS Markit Ltd. “The big takeaway is that private growth won’t ruin the party.”

It’s a tenuous balance, and one that could shift quickly if oil prices continue to march higher. U.S. production growth was so strong over the past decade—and took so much market share from OPEC and its allies—that the cartel was willing to engage in all-out supply wars in both 2014 and 2020. The temperature has since come down as global demand for oil surges, especially amid a need to supply fuel-hungry Europe and Asia, removing some competitive pressure between suppliers.

That dynamic is exactly the signal private drillers have been waiting for. Trigo Oil & Gas LLC, three-person upstart company, just drilled its first two wells in Reeves County, Texas, near the New Mexico border, with a third on the way. After spending most of the pandemic trying unsuccessfully to finance the wells, Trigo scored deals in August with two Oklahoma City-based investors, right before a lease was about to expire, said its 37-year-old chief executive officer, Travis Wheat.

Private oil companies like Wheat’s will make up more than half of U.S. production growth next year, Rystad Energy said. And the surge has already started. According to onshore U.S. rig data from Lium LLC, little-known Mewbourne Oil Co., founded by Louisiana-born army officer Curtis Mewbourne in 1965, is now running 17 drill rigs in the U.S., more than Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. combined. Endeavor Energy Resources LP, owned by octogenarian billionaire Autry Stephens, and CrownQuest Operating LLC, led by Republican donor Tim Dunn, are together operating the same number of rigs as Permian heavyweight ConocoPhillips.

With private fleets running hot, production from the Permian Basin will likely reach its pre-pandemic record high of 4.9 million barrels a day as soon as this month and will continue climbing steadily in 2022, Rystad Energy forecasts. The Permian is a particularly attractive place to ramp up production because of its low breakeven costs and high rates of productivity.

So what are all the public companies in the Permian doing? They have ratcheted back growth rates significantly.

Chastened by a decade of poor returns, public companies such as Pioneer Natural Resources Co. and Diamondback Energy Inc. are paying back debt and passing profits back to shareholders via dividends and stock buybacks rather than reinvesting the bulk of their cash in new wells. Integrated majors Exxon and Chevron are also preaching prudence. Public shale companies can “walk and chew gum” with prices around $80 a barrel, IHS’s LeBlanc said, meaning they can keep growing production just modestly and still return significant amounts of cash to investors.

The restrained strategy for the public companies is working for them: Five of the 10 best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year are shale.

That newfound austerity means public oil companies in the U.S. now look like less of a risky investment, allowing them to attract the lowest bond yields they’ve ever seen. But because they’re using their cheap credit to retire debt instead of fuel new exploration, it will take until 2023 before the country’s total production will reach pre-Covid levels at current prices, three of the four major forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg said. Only Enverus forecasts the U.S. to be at its pre-pandemic high by December next year.

To be sure, shale oil production is notoriously difficult to predict: If prices march quickly upwards as has happened lately in natural gas, producers can respond with more wells within months. Rising costs to drill and complete in the shale patch due to supply-chain snarls and widespread inflation could also shift the equation. And if more public drillers buy out their private rivals, as was the case with Pioneer buying DoublePoint Energy LLC for $6.4 billion earlier this year, the new public owners might put a cap on activity. Egged on by investors eager to see more consolidation, there have been 159 deals in the U.S. oil and gas sector so far this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, more than in all of 2020.

But for now, private producers are finding open road with little pushback from OPEC or the majors to slow them down.

That’s music to Wheat’s ears. The former high school quarterback, who cut his teeth in the Barnett Shale after graduating college and named his company after the Spanish word for wheat, landed Trigo’s financing right at the nick of time. After cratering during the pandemic, West Texas Intermediate crude futures are up about 60% this year, making those brand-new wells highly profitable.

“Capital was so hard to come across,” Wheat said. “We kept driving, kept moving forward, got fortunate and made a little bit of fate.”

How Evergrande's Rags-to-Riches Founder Is Trying to Save His Empire

Bloomberg News
Mon, October 11, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- Four years after vying with Jack Ma for the title of Asia’s richest man, Evergrande chairman Hui Ka Yan’s fortune is plunging and his sprawling real estate empire is on the verge of collapse.

It’s a stunning reversal for a man who fought his way from poverty in rural China to build one of the world’s largest property companies. In previous times of trouble, Hui had been able to rely on the help of his tycoon friends and local government support. This time, with $305 billion in liabilities and the company’s asset prices plunging, Hui appears more alone than ever.

“There’s no interest to bail him out,” said Desmond Shum, whose book about his dealings with China’s political elites, “Red Roulette,” described how he once went shopping with Hui for a superyacht. “In the situation he’s in now, I don’t think any political connections will come to his rescue.”

What happens to Hui is open to question, including whether he will retain ownership of his empire. One of his allies and fellow billionaire Zhang Jindong lost control of the retail arm of his Suning conglomerate when it received a state-backed bailout in July -- partly because he helped Hui out during a tight spot. Other heads of failed companies have met with worse fates, from arrest to execution.

Hui’s empire is turning into one of the biggest victims of President Xi Jinping’s efforts to curb the debt-fueled excesses of conglomerates and defuse risks in the nation’s housing market. Evergrande and its affiliated companies were built through an aggressive mix of dollar debt issuance, share sales, bank loans and shadow financing -- funding avenues that have been all but cut off. The group now faces at the minimum a debt restructuring, which could be China’s largest ever.

Even his long-term backers may be losing patience. Chinese Estates Holdings Ltd., controlled by the family of property mogul and fellow poker pal Joseph Lau, has been selling Evergrande stock and said it could unload its entire stake.

Hui remains in charge of the group and was seen publicly at the Communist Party’s 100th anniversary celebration in Tiananmen Square in July, illustrating the power of his political connections. He met with employees last month, and signed a public statement emphasizing the importance of finishing construction of sold properties.

Evergrande didn’t immediately respond to questions seeking comment.

Yet the lack of public support for Hui from Beijing and his tumbling fortune -- down $15 billion this year -- is forcing him to intensify efforts to save his empire, such as selling stakes in some of Evergrande’s once-prized assets. This includes reportedly selling a majority holding in its property services unit to another developer controlled by the billionaire Chu family.

Hui has survived plenty of challenges in the past. He was born in Henan province in 1958. After losing his mother as an infant, he was raised by his grandmother and his father, who cut wood for a living. Education provided an escape from poverty. Hui graduated from Wuhan Institute of Science and Technology in 1982, just as Deng Xiaoping was opening up the economy. After working at a steel company, he quit his job in 1992 to try his luck in real estate.

Expanding Empire

He founded Evergrande in 1996 in the southern city of Guangzhou, and over the next decades built the firm into a colossus that controlled land five times the size of Manhattan. Hui didn’t stop at property, accruing interests in soccer and volleyball teams, bottled water, online entertainment, banking and insurance. He vowed to eclipse Elon Musk with the “most powerful new energy automobile company in the world.”

As the company grew, so did Hui’s wealth. His personal fortune swelled to $42 billion at its peak in 2017. His majority holding in Evergrande meant he benefited generously from dividends -- pocketing $8 billion alone since 2011, according to Bloomberg calculations.

His companies bought luxurious mansions, including one in Sydney that had to be sold in 2015 after the Australian government found the purchase violated foreign investment rules. He was the only director of a company that owned a $100 million house in the hills above Hong Kong island, before stepping down recently, according to company registry filings.

Hui made sure he aligned his business with areas that meshed with the priorities of China’s Communist Party leaders, particularly Xi -- from making the country a global tech leader to winning the World Cup. He’s a member of the Political Consultative Committee, which helps advise the government on policy. In 2018, he was included on an official list of 100 outstanding entrepreneurs.

Hui touted the millions of jobs the company created and billions of yuan paid as taxes. He also emerged a philanthropist, topping Forbes’s China list for charitable giving.

“Everything in Evergrande, it’s from the party, the country, and society,” Hui said in a speech the same year. “So we should bear social responsibility.”

New Era

Yet there was increasing concern about the size of the company’s debts, which by 2018 had swelled to more than $100 billion. That year, China’s central bank singled Evergrande out for having the potential to pose systemic risks to the financial system, along with HNA Group, Tomorrow Holding Co. and Fosun International Ltd. China’s era of conglomerates expanding through aggressive debt-fueled acquisitions was ending.

Hui, pledging to cut his dependency on leverage, turned -- as he had often done in the past -- to friends and corporate connections to raise money.

His companies notched up some $3.6 billion of transactions since 2018 with the real estate empires run by three other Chinese magnates -- members of the so-called Big Two Club because of their fondness for a poker game of the same name. They include Chinese Estates’ Lau. Among their investments were buying stakes in Hui’s electric car and property services units, as well as an online sales platform.

But regulators kept tightening the screws. Shadow loans -- non-bank financing that accounted for almost one-third of Evergrande’s debt in 2019 -- dried up, opaque borrowing via joint ventures was scrutinized, and regulators prevented fresh borrowing with its “three red lines” policy to limit leverage.

Such measures helped trigger a liquidity crisis for Hui in 2020. A failed backdoor listing for Evergrande’s mainland unit left it on the hook for as much as $20 billion in repayments to investors. A leaked letter by Evergrande to the provincial Guangdong government (documents the company said were fabricated) warned that the company faced a potential default that could roil the financial system. Soon after, an agreement to avoid most of the repayments was secured, backed by local officials. Hui stepped back from the brink -- but it wasn’t for long.

Disputes with suppliers over unpaid bills started making headlines. Some sought asset freezes, others brought projects to a grinding halt. Local support dwindled, at least publicly, as Xi intensified his crackdown on the real estate sector and pushed ahead with his campaign to create “common prosperity.” Behind the scenes, officials urged Hui to solve his company’s debt problems as quickly as possible.

Despite Evergrande’s size, there’s little sign Beijing will act to help.

Hu Xijin, editor in chief of state tabloid Global Times, said in a Weibo post last month that companies such as Evergrande cannot be ‘too big to fail’ once they blow up. “They must have the ability to save themselves through the market,” he said.

A major bailout would send the wrong message when Xi is trying to rein in billionaires and close the nation’s wealth gap, said Donald Low, director of the Institute for Emerging Market Studies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

“Rescuing Evergrande creates moral hazard, increases the likelihood of more debt binges like Evergrande’s, and perhaps most importantly, undercuts the President’s efforts to promote common prosperity as a bailout would be seen – correctly – as a massive subsidy for the rich,” Low said.

Instead, Hui has been stepping up asset sales to find the cash to repay the company’s many creditors -- from retail investors demanding payment on some 40 billion yuan in Evergrande high-yield investment products, to the 1.6 million homebuyers who put deposits on apartments that have yet to be built, as well as bondholders. The company is Asia’s largest issuer of junk bonds. International ratings firms have repeatedly downgraded the company’s debt as concern grew the firm will default.

Evergrande agreed last month to sell part of its holding in a mainland bank to the local government in a deal that S&P Global Ratings said marked the first step toward solving the company’s liquidity crisis. Evergrande also negotiated the sale of a 51% stake in its property services unit to Hopson Development Holdings Ltd., Cailian reported Oct. 4.

“If they can sell this unit successfully, it will help to repay short-term debts but it will also limit the future growth of the company,” said Kenny Ng, a strategist at Everbright Sun Hung Kai Co.

Pressure is mounting. Evergrande hasn’t given any indication that it paid two recent dollar bond coupons, despite financial regulators encouraging the company to take all measures possible to avoid a near-term default on dollar bonds. It’s missed interest payments to at least two of its largest bank creditors. The company’s shares -- which are currently suspended -- are down 80% this year, while its dollar bonds are at record lows.

Contagion meanwhile is spreading to other parts of the property sector, prompting rising default risks as weaker developers struggle to meet upcoming obligations. The nation’s dollar junk bond yields have surged to their highest in about a decade.

As Hui looks increasingly isolated, time will tell if the billionaire can find his way out of his current challenge. Even if he does, his empire is likely to look very different, as Xi pursues his ambitious plans to remodel China’s economy.

A shrinking workforce means “China must rely exclusively on productivity for economic growth,” said Alejandra Grindal, chief economist at Ned Davis Research. “An overleveraged and unproductive real estate company, such as Evergrande, is not conducive to a productive outlook.”

US wages are going up, and those who don’t adapt to the new reality will fail

Gene Marks
Sun, October 10, 2021

Photograph: Étienne Laurent/EPA

There is a significant shortage of labor across the United States. Yes, federal unemployment Covid payments ran out after Labor Day. But still, many workers are reluctant to return to work, wary of their health and safety as the Delta variant continues to rage. Many are looking to switch jobs amid reports of the “great resignation” and employers are desperate to do whatever they can to retain workers as demand continues to remain strong.

As a result, job openings are at a historic high and small businesses across the country are begging for workers. So what happens when the demand for a critical commodity is high and the supply of that commodity is in short supply? It’s simple economics: prices go up. Wages are going up.

According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly earnings of all employees in the US working for private companies rose to $30.85 in September, following large increases in the prior five months. It’s a fair bet that wages will increase even more in the very near future if people are going to eat and heat their homes.

Many small business owners across the country – and across industries – get this.

For example, there’s Amanda Cohen, who owns a vegetarian restaurant in New York City and who raised her starting wages to $25 an hour. She says she hasn’t “had a single problem” attracting workers to her business. “We put the focus on ‘staff comes first and everything comes second’,” she told a Business Insider reporter. “I can’t succeed without a staff.” Cohen has raised her prices 30% to cover these costs.

Hourly wages are up at restaurants and retailers elsewhere. And wage increases aren’t just happening in the restaurant and retail sector.

The furniture manufacturer Ethan Allen recently announced an expansion into Vermont along with an increase in its starting wage to $16 an hour as well as wage increases for more experienced associates. A manufacturer of trailers in Wisconsin is raising wages for the second time in a year in response to the labor shortage there. Another manufacturer in Dayton, Ohio, is giving every employee a $10-an-hour raise. The National Association of Manufacturers says that its members plan to increase wages 3.5% over the next year and I’m not sure that’s even enough.

The founder of a construction company in Los Angeles is having a hard time finding workers and admits that “the easiest way, which is the hardest way” to get and keep workers on his job sites is “to pay them more”. A company that builds roads in Tennessee bumped up their starting wages to $14 an hour (this is Tennessee, not San Francisco). A New York construction firm raised hourly raises to $25 and is now paying hiring bonuses. Paper hangers, pile driver operators and roofers have seen their wages increase more than 15% over just the past five years.

Wage increases are affecting small businesses everywhere – from the Hudson, New Hampshire, landscaper that is paying workers $25 an hour to just “see if they want to pursue a position” to the trucking companies in Wisconsin that are offering hiring bonuses between $5,000 to $15,000. Service industry wages overall are up about 10% this year.

This is not temporary. Once you increase an employee’s wage you’re not going to ever take it away from them in the future. Which means there’s an enormous shift in overhead structures at small and large firms happening across the country, a shift that will continue for the foreseeable future.

I have some clients that are still operating as if it’s pre-Covid. When they’re looking for employees they’re offering compensation similar to the rates they paid before. It hasn’t dawned on them that times have changed and the basic principles of economics are playing out in front of them: when demand exceeds supply, prices go up. Those businesses that accept this reality will adapt and continue to profit. They will hire good people and succeed. Those business owners that refuse to understand this simple concept simply won’t.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M; WAGE THEFT
Australian watchdog sues CBA for underpaying staff

Sun, October 10, 2021, 

 An office building with the Commonwealth Bank logo is seen in Sydney

(Reuters) - Australia's workplace watchdog said

 https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/news-and-media-releases/2021-media-releases/october-2021/20211011-cba-litigation-media-release 

it has sued the country's largest lender Commonwealth Bank of Australia and its brokerage arm for not paying more than 7,000 workers around A$16.4 million ($12 million) in entitlements.

The issues around unpaid entitlements date back to 2010 and were self-reported by CBA to the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) in early 2019 with remediation almost complete, the bank said in a statement.

The case against CBA comes months after the country's largest supermarket chain Woolworths Group was sued by the FWO

 https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/australian-watchdog-sues-woolworths-over-staff-underpayments-2021-06-18

 for underpaying staff in a growing list 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-wages-factbox-idUSKBN20D0FM

 of companies caught up in underpayment scandals.

The FWO alleges that CBA failed to make sure its employees were not paid less than the overall minimum entitlements required and that the bank did not make top-up payments for any shortfall.

The FWO is seeking penalties of A$666,000 per serious breach and up to A$66,600 for non-serious breaches in the civil case against the bank.

CBA and its brokerage arm, CommSec, have since improved their systems and processes, the bank said.

The bank added it would continue to engage with the FWO to resolve the proceedings and that it does not believe further payments to affected employees are needed.

($1 = 1.3661 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Indranil Sarkar and Nikhil Kurian Nainan in Bengaluru; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel)

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/10/australias-woolworths-settles-2019.html

Southern California beach set to reopen after oil spill

By AMY TAXIN

Few people visit the beach a week after the ocean was closed to surfing and swimming due to an offshore pipeline leak in Huntington Beach, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021. Access the Ocean water has been shut to surfing and swimming for a week since an offshore oil pipeline leaked crude into the water off the coast of Orange County. (AP Photo/Amy Taxin)

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California beach that had been closed since an undersea pipeline leaked crude into ocean waters last week is set to reopen Monday, officials announced Sunday night.

City and state beaches in Huntington Beach will reopen after water quality tests revealed no detectable levels of oil associated toxins in the ocean water, the city of Huntington Beach and California State Parks said in a news release. They are still urging visitors to avoid areas that smell of oil and not to touch any oiled materials that wash ashore.

That news will likely please surfers and beach-goers like Richard Beach, who returned to the waves in Huntington Beach with his bodyboard — until lifeguards jet skis chased him out on Sunday. He trekked back across the beach, passing workers in hazmat suits tasked with clearing the sand of sticky, black blobs that washed ashore after the spill.

“The water’s perfect,” said Beach, 69. “Clear all the way to the bottom.”

Huntington Beach and nearby coastal communities have been reeling from last week’s spill that officials said sent at least about 25,000 gallons (95,000 liters) and no more than 132,000 gallons (500,000 liters) of oil into the ocean. It was caused by a leak about 5 miles (8 kilometers) off the coast in a pipeline owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy that shuttles crude from offshore oil platforms to the coast.

The spill was confirmed on Oct. 2, a day after residents reported a petroleum smell in the area. The cause is under investigation and officials said they believe the pipeline was likely damaged by a ship’s anchor several months to a year before it ruptured. It remains unknown when the slender, 13-inch (33-centimeter) crack in the pipeline began leaking oil.

On Sunday, there was no smell of oil and the sand looked largely clear by the Huntington Beach pier, where workers combed the sand for tar. But local officials worry about the environmental impact of the spill on wetlands, wildlife and the economy. With the ocean off limits in the community dubbed Surf City USA, relatively few people were at the beach and shops that cater to them have been hurting.

Officials in the city of 200,000 people have been testing the water to ensure it’s safe for people to get back in and said they’ll continue the testing for at least two more weeks.

Since the spill, residents have been allowed to walk on the sand in Huntington Beach but not on the shoreline or enter the water, and parking was blocked off for nearby state beaches. Popular surfing and swimming spots in Newport Beach and Laguna Beach have also been closed.

In Huntington Beach, shops selling everything from bikinis and stars-and-stripes boogie boards to sand toys and fishing gear have been taking a hit. Marian Johnson, who owns “Let’s Go Fishing” on the pier, said sales have been halved since the spill.

Mike Ali, who owns the nearby shop Zack’s, said since the water closure he had to shut three of his four locations and slash his workers’ hours. People are coming in for bike rentals and food to his one store that remains open, but without surf lessons, event catering and beach bonfires, business has tanked 90%, he said.

“It could be a year to two years to get the tourism to come back,” Ali said, adding that a 1990 oil spill wound up diverting would-be visitors to beaches south and north of the city.

Rich Toro, 70, still took his regular 25-mile (40 kilometers) bike ride down to Huntington Beach on Sunday. But he said he wouldn’t race to get back into the water in light of the spill and worries about the impact on wildlife. Since the incident, officials have reported 38 dead birds and nine dead fish, while 27 oiled birds have been recovered and are being treated.

On Sunday morning, only a handful of people played beach volleyball in Huntington Beach while a few others did exercises or laid on the sand.

But the water closures didn’t deter everyone. While fishing is barred along the shore of virtually all of Orange County, Michael Archouletta, 29, said he came down from East Los Angeles and saw no signs on the pier preventing him from dropping a line. A school of fish swam beneath the pier nearby.

“If this was so dangerous, the fish would be dead,” Archouletta said.

Cyberattacks concerning to most in US: Pearson/AP-NORC poll

THE RULING IDEAS ARE THE IDEAS OF THE RULING CLASS

By ALAN SUDERMAN

 In this Sept. 16, 2017, file photo, a person uses a smart phone in Chicago. Most Americans across party lines have serious concerns about cyber attacks on U.S. computer systems and view China and Russia as major threats. That's according to a new poll by The Pearson Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (AP Photo, File)


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Most Americans across party lines have serious concerns about cyberattacks on U.S. computer systems and view China and Russia as major threats, according to a new poll.

The poll by The Pearson Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about 9 in 10 Americans are at least somewhat concerned about hacking that involves their personal information, financial institutions, government agencies or certain utilities. About two-thirds say they are very or extremely concerned.

Roughly three-quarters say the Chinese and Russian governments are major threats to the cybersecurity of the U.S. government, and at least half also see the Iranian government and non-government bodies as threatening.

The broad consensus highlights the growing impacts of cyberattacks in an increasingly connected world and could boost efforts by President Joe Biden and lawmakers to force critical industries to boost their cyber defenses and impose reporting requirements for companies that get hacked. The poll comes amid a wave of high-profile ransomware attacks and cyber espionage campaigns in the last year that have compromised sensitive government records and led to the shutdown of the operations of energy companies, hospitals, schools and others.





“It’s pretty uncommon nowadays to find issues that both large majorities of Republicans and Democrats” view as a problem, said David Sterrett, a senior research scientist at the AP-NORC Center.

Biden has made cybersecurity a key issue in his young administration and federal lawmakers are considering legislation to strengthen both public and private cyber defenses.

Michael Daniel, CEO of the Cyber Threat Alliance and a former top cybersecurity official during the Obama administration, said the poll shows the public is firmly aware of the kind of threats posed online that cybersecurity experts have been stressing for years.

“We don’t need to do a whole lot more awareness raising,” he said.

The explosion in the last year of ransomware, in which cyber criminals encrypt an organization’s data and then demand payment to unscramble it, has underscored how gangs of extortionist hackers can disrupt the economy and put lives and livelihoods at risk.

One of the cyber incidents with the greatest consequences this year was a ransomware attack in May on the company that owns the nation’s largest fuel pipeline, which led to gas shortages along the East Coast. A few weeks later, a ransomware attack on the world’s largest meat processing company disrupted production around the world.



Victims of ransomware attacks have ranged from key U.S. agencies and Fortune 500 companies to small entities like Leonardtown, Maryland, which was one of hundreds of organizations affected worldwide when software company Kaseya was hit by ransomware during the Forth of July weekend.

“We ended up being very lucky but it definitely opened our eyes that it could happen to anyone,” said Laschelle McKay, the town administrator. She said Leonardtown’s I.T. provider was able to restore the town’s network and files after several days.

The criminal syndicates that dominate the ransomware business are mostly Russian-speaking and operate with near impunity out of Russia or countries allied with Russia. The U.S. government has also blamed Russian spies for a major breach of U.S. government agencies known as the SolarWinds hack, so named for the U.S. software company whose product was used in the hacking.

China has also been active. In July, the Biden administration formally blamed China for a massive hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software and asserted that criminal hackers associated with the Chinese government have carried out ransomware attacks and other illicit cyber operations.

“The amount of Chinese cyber actors dwarfs the rest of the globe, combined,” Rob Joyce, the director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, said at a recent conference. “The elite in that group really are elite. It’s a law of large numbers.”

Both Russia and China have denied any wrongdoing.

Older adults are much more likely to view Russia and China as serious threats. A large majority of adults over 60 say the Russian and the Chinese governments are a big threat, but only about half of those under 30 agree.

Democrats — at 79% — are somewhat more likely than Republicans — at 70% — to say the Russian government is a big threat. Former President Donald Trump, a Republican, has routinely downplayed Russian aggression. In his first comments after the SolarWinds hack was discovered in December, Trump contradicted his secretary of state and other top officials and suggested without evidence that China was behind the campaign.

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,071 adults was conducted Sept. 9-13, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Omnibus, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

German companies urge next government to step up on climate

By FRANK JORDAN

FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2021, file photo, a power plant fires coal from the nearby Garzweiler open-cast mine near Luetzerath, western Germany. Dozens of large German companies have urged the country's next government to put in place ambitious policies to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord.

 (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)

BERLIN (AP) — Dozens of large German companies have urged the country’s next government to put in place ambitious policies to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord.

In an open letter Monday, 69 companies said the next government needs to put Germany “on a clear and reliable path to climate neutrality” with a plan for doing so within its first 100 days in office.

The signatories included chemicals giant Bayer, steelmaker ThyssenKrupp and sportswear firm Puma.

The center-left Social Democrats narrowly beat outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Union bloc in last month election. They are due to meet Monday with the environmentalist Greens party and the pro-business Free Democrats to discuss forming a coalition government.

“Climate protection was the decisive topic in the federal election and the parties must place it at the top of their agenda in building the new federal government,” said Michael Otto, board chairman of mail order company Otto Group and president of the Foundation 2 Degrees, which organized the letter.

Earlier this year, Merkel’s government adopted a plan to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2045, five years earlier than previously planned.

But official figures show that Germany is slipping behind on its ambitions for cutting greenhouse gases, with 2021 emissions forecast to rebound sharply after a pandemic-related economic slump.

The foundation, which says its members have an annual turnover of about 1 trillion euros ($1.16 trillion) and employ more than five million people worldwide, wants the next government to support the rollout of renewable energy and enact a climate-friendly tax reform that includes a strengthened carbon pricing system to prevent investments in power-hungry industries going abroad.

Pointing toward the upcoming U.N. climate summit in Glasgow and Germany’s presidency of the Group of Seven major economies next year, the companies said the government must also work to set international standards for the global financial system and climate-neutral products.

“As businesses, we are prepared to fulfil our central role in climate action. We call upon the new German government to make the transformation to climate neutrality the central economic project of the coming legislative period,” they said.

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Follow AP’s coverage of climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-change

A bird stars in rare feel-good tale about Afghan evacuations

By ISABEL DEBRE

French Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Xavier Chatel, speaks to The Associated Press as Juji, a rescued yellow-beaked mynah carried into the United Arab Emirates by a fleeing Afghan refugee, sits in a cage, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021. The small bird rescued from Kabul by Chatel during France’s frantic evacuations has touched a global nerve, providing an uplifting counterpoint to the crises afflicting Afghanistan amid the Taliban takeover (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell)


ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The mynah bird squawks from a new cage in the French ambassador’s sunlit living room in Abu Dhabi, a far cry from its life as the pet of a young Afghan woman who has since found refuge in France.

Talkative, yellow-beaked “Juji” had a brief star turn on social media, its story of survival amid the frenzied evacuations from Taliban-run Afghanistan striking a nerve with a global audience.

While searing scenes from the American-led airlift from Kabul after 20 years of war — such as those of Afghans falling to their deaths after trying to cling to the wheels of a military transport jet — gripped the world, France also was intensely involved in evacuating those who had risked their lives to cooperate with its government over the years.

Juji, a rescued yellow-beaked mynah carried into the United Arab Emirates by a fleeing Afghan refugee, sits in a cage at the French ambassador's home in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021 The small bird rescued from Kabul by French Ambassador to the UAE, Xavier Chatel, during France’s frantic evacuations has touched a global nerve, providing an uplifting counterpoint to the crises afflicting Afghanistan amid the Taliban takeover (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell)

French Ambassador Xavier Chatel was scrambling to support the efforts at Al-Dhafra air base in the United Arab Emirates. Thousands of Afghan evacuees flooded the base near the UAE capital, along with military bases across the region, to be screened by American, French and other authorities over 12 sweltering days in August.

“There were many exhilarating stories because there were artists, there were musicians, there were people who were so relieved that they could be evacuated,” Chatel told The Associated Press Sunday from his residence overlooking the turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf. “But at the same time there was also an outpouring of distress.”

Some 2,600 Afghan interpreters, artists, journalists, activists and military contractors squeezed onto flights out of Kabul to Abu Dhabi on their way to Paris with barely enough time to consider all they’d left behind. French authorities had started evacuations around a year ago, with 2,400 people airlifted from Kabul in the months before the fall, Chatel said.

In the midst of the chaos at Al-Dhafra, Chatel received a security alert. Officers, on the lookout for al-Qaida and Islamic State extremist threats, had discovered illegal cargo on board.

A woman no older than 20 appeared, clutching a mystery cardboard box. Packed inside was her beloved pet with clipped wings — the famously chatty mynah, common in its range across Southeast Asia.

But because of sanitary concerns, there was no way she could take the small bird with her to Paris.

She was in tears, Chatel said, her body shaking. He declined to disclose details about the young woman and her circumstances for privacy reasons, except to say that “she had lost everything. She had lost her country. She had lost her house, she had lost her life.”

Chatel’s story of what happened next took hold on Twitter last week and turned Juji into a minor sensation, providing an uplifting counterpoint to the economic and humanitarian crises afflicting Afghanistan amid the Taliban takeover.

After receiving detailed instructions about Juji’s dietary preferences — cucumbers, grapes, bread slices and the occasional potato — Chatel decided to adopt the bird, promising he’d take good care of it.

The young woman found the ambassador on Twitter soon after landing in France. Top of her mind upon starting a new life as a refugee was her pet stranded on the Arabian Peninsula.

Chatel replied with videos of Juji snacking on fruit, flitting around its white cage and even learning French from his marble-floored living room. After chirping in Pashto for its first few days in Abu Dhabi, Juji had managed to utter something akin to “Bonjour.”

“(The woman) told me something which still remains with me,” Chatel said. “The fact that the bird was still alive and that he was well looked after gave her faith and and hope to start again.”

Exactly why the story was so avidly embraced on social media remains a mystery, Chatel said. But there were no good news days out of Afghanistan during the anguished withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at Kabul airport in late August, killing scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, and those who managed to escape their homes for new lives abroad were grappling with feelings of bewilderment and guilt. With the country’s economy in free fall, ordinary people have struggled to survive.

At Al-Dhafra air base in August, you could see the fear in people’s faces, Chatel said. Children cried at the sound of popping balloons. One woman said she had “forgotten” her parents in a traumatic haze at Kabul airport. Parents arrived with stories of children they’d abandoned.

Until Chatel can devise a way to reunite Juji with its former owner, he said the black-winged bird remains a reminder to France of those frantic days — the courage of those embarking on new lives and the emotional toll of so many left behind.

“In the middle of this,” Chatel said, “in the middle of these hundreds of people arriving here, there was this girl and there was this bird.”