NUCLEAR = GREEN HYDROGEN
The Commercial Case For Green Hydrogen


Editor OilPrice.com
Thu, October 21, 2021

As the world has grown to recognize the seriousness of climate change and the ever-intensifying need to develop new forms of green, clean, energy production, there have been a number of new technologies that have been hyped up in the headlines as the energy of the future, but which never quite got out of the R&D stages. Think algal biofuel, which was all over the news for years, touted as a sort of green-energy silver bullet but which has never been able to reach anything close to commercial viability. Nuclear fusion, too, continues to be the subject of endless news reports and think pieces, but is still lightyears away from being a viable means of energy production. And now, the viability of another green energy wunderkind is being thrown into question: green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen has been the topic of much hope and many R&D efforts as a potentially viable replacement for hot-burning combustion fuels like coking coal, which have proven extremely tricky to replace with greener alternatives. Hydrogen burns extremely hot like fossil fuels but leaves behind nothing but water vapor. This makes it an extremely attractive possibility for high-emissions industries like steelmaking, which continue to rely on huge quantities of coking coal, and which therefore have a problematically enormous carbon footprint.

While hydrogen leaves behind no greenhouse gases when it is combusted, however, the process of making that hydrogen can have its own hefty carbon footprint. Hydrogen is only as green as the energy used to make it. There are quite a few ways of producing hydrogen, and most of them are quite energy-intensive, such as using electrolysis to split water molecules into two hydrogens and one oxygen. Lots of hydrogen is already being produced in this manner, but the electric currents used in the process are most often derived from fossil fuels. This is known as gray hydrogen. Green hydrogen, in theory, is hydrogen made from completely renewable energies. Some industry insiders refer to a third category -- blue hydrogen -- as hydrogen made from natural gas, which has somewhat lower greenhouse gas emissions than oil or gas.

In order to make green hydrogen a commercial fuel source for the future, we will have to have plentiful, and indeed, excess, amounts of green energy. As the current global energy crunch shows, we are a long, long way from that reality. Currently, clean energies make up such a small relative share of the global energy mix that the idea of a large-scale green hydrogen industry is somewhat fantastical.

Just this week, at CNBC’s Sustainable Future Forum, Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch said that there is currently “no commercial case” for green hydrogen. “We need to define boundary conditions which make this technology and these cases commercially viable,” Bruch said. “And we need an environment, obviously, of cheap electricity and in this regard, abundant renewable energy available to do this.”

While we’re clearly not there yet, Bruch contended, we could be soon if the right steps are taken. “You need the fine print and the policies to incentivize or make it mandatory: to switch from grey to green, to switch from gas to hydrogen, to switch from coal to hydrogen,” he said. “And then it will happen very fast.”

The transition can’t happen fast enough. Later this month representatives from all over the world are headed to Glasgow for the 26th annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), known as COP26. This is exactly the kind of forum in which big policy transitions and commitments to incentivize promising green energy technologies like green hydrogen can materialize in an actionable way. While there is still a lot of work to be done before green hydrogen could become a commercial reality, there is no time to waste. Helping industries like steelmaking go green with the help of hydrogen would be a huge step forward and an invaluable development for battling climate change.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

Biden delays release of secret JFK assassination files

Daniel Chaitin, Misty Severi

WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Fri, October 22, 2021

President Joe Biden ordered yet another delay in the release of secret files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy yet to see the light of day more than 50 years after his death.

A White House memo, signed by Biden, said "[t]emporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure."

The order comes in response to the archivist of the United States recommending the president “temporarily certify the continued withholding of all of the information certified in 2018” and “direct two public releases of the information that has” ultimately “been determined to be appropriate for release to the public,” with one interim release on Dec. 15 and one more comprehensive release in late 2022, according to the memo.

Former President Donald Trump ordered in 2018 that documentation still under wraps stay redacted for national security reasons, with a deadline of Oct. 26, 2021. His administration said the decision was made at the behest of the intelligence community.

This time around, delays associated with the coronavirus pandemic were to blame for the recommendation to put off the release.

David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, reported “unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on the agencies” and National Archives and Records Administration, the White House memo said.

NARA “require[s] additional time to engage with the agencies and to conduct research within the larger collection to maximize the amount of information released," added the memo, which also said the archivist noted that “making these decisions is a matter that requires a professional, scholarly, and orderly process; not decisions or releases made in haste.”

Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Oswald was arrested and charged with the killings of Kennedy and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. The 24-year-old denied shooting Kennedy, claiming he was a "patsy," before he was shot dead soon after on national television by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

According to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which was signed into law by former President George H.W. Bush in an attempt to minimize conspiracy theories about Kennedy's death, the Congress declared, “all Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy ... should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination.”

Congress also found at the time that “most of the records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are almost 30 years old, and only in the rarest cases is there any legitimate need for continued protection of such records.”

Tens of thousands of the JFK assassination documents, with varying levels of redactions, have already been released.

Among the information that has not been made public are highly sensitive details about U.S. operations against Cuba in 1963, according to the Intercept. There are also unseen passages about surveillance techniques that detected Oswald's visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City weeks before Kennedy's assassination.

"Since the 1990s, more than 250,000 records concerning President Kennedy’s assassination — more than 90 percent of NARA’s collection — have been released in full to the public. Only a small fraction of the records contains any remaining redactions," the memo said.

A lot of the information that has been made available to the public is not accessible online. Under the order Friday, Biden instructed the archivist to issue a plan for the digitization of the records by Dec. 15.

DO NOT LET THIS WOMAN FIND BIGFOOT  
Hunter had never seen a bear in Missouri. Then she killed a 268-pounder, officials say



Mike Stunson
Fri, October 22, 2021

A hunter’s patience paid off as she became the first woman to bag a bear this hunting season in Missouri.

The Missouri Department of Conservation said Kelsie Wikoff, of Hume, spent 48 hours in a tree stand while she was hunting.

Her reward was a 268-pound male bear, which officials say she killed Thursday.

Wikoff would not reveal her hunting location on Facebook, but said she intends to mount the full body of the bear. She said she had never seen a bear in the state before, except on trail cameras.

“So thankful for all the people and support along the way,” the hunter said on Facebook, calling the harvesting “rewarding.”

Missouri is home to about 800 black bears, with officials saying a highly-regulated hunting season is essential to managing the bear population.

Bear season in Missouri is from Oct. 18 to Oct. 27. Officials said Friday nine hunters have harvested a bear this season.

#STOPBEARHUNTS

#ENDPREDATORHUNTING

The Backstory: Long before the Champlain Towers collapse, there was money laundering. Here's how we uncovered it.


Chris Davis, USA TODAY
Fri, October 22, 2021

When USA TODAY investigative reporter Monique O. Madan sat down to handwrite the letter, she didn’t hold out much hope for a response.

“Dear Mr. Rosello,” she started. “I know this is totally random, and I’m sorry to cold call you (or cold mail you.) I’m working on a story about Champlain Tower and I think you can help.”

Madan and five of her colleagues had been trying for months to track down former residents of the South Florida condominium building that had collapsed in June, killing 98 people in one of the biggest and most tragic stories of the year.

People observe the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, Fla., on June 25, 2021.

They wanted to know what people remembered about the earliest days of the condo tower. When did people first start noticing problems with the building? How did the homeowners’ association and government regulators respond to flooding in the building and to signs of crumbling concrete? Had someone made mistakes when the building was built?

But the effort wasn’t going well. The whole team was starting to wonder if anyone would be willing to talk.

“I made 160 phone calls to former residents and I got one person to talk to me for more than five minutes,” said Pat Beall, a veteran investigative reporter working for USA TODAY in South Florida.

Pedro “Peggy” Rosello was just one more name on a list of former residents. But he stood out on that list because of his current address: a federal prison cell in Miami.
We knew the Surfside story started long before the building's collapse. So we went back to the beginning.

Like many other news organizations, USA TODAY – and its affiliated local newsrooms across Florida – rushed reporters to the tiny town of Surfside when the building collapsed. We wrote dozens of stories about the rescue efforts and told our readers about the people who lost their lives. In the earliest days of the tragedy, our reporters uncovered important factors that might have contributed to the collapse, including the fact the building had been sinking into the sand unusually quickly.

At the same time, we gathered a group of reporters from the USA TODAY investigations team to chase the story in a different way. We wanted to go back to the beginning and trace as many details as we could find about what people knew and when. This is a tried and true technique of investigative journalism. Events happen now, but often the crucial context lives in the past. It’s part of our job to piece the whole story together by gathering up the witnesses to those past events.

READ THE INVESTIGATION: Left to rot: Collapsed condo born of botched construction and evidence of money laundering

Our reporters started with a list of people culled from public records including deeds and mortgages for each unit in Champlain South. They reached out to current residents, too, and gained access to a trove of documents produced by the building’s homeowners’ association, which for years had been grappling with how to pay to repair crumbling concrete and other problems.

They began looking through public records that are generated from real estate transactions. Deeds filed in local courthouses show who buys a property and whether they borrowed money for the purchase. Those records also show the purchase price and who put up the money for the mortgage.

Dan Keemahill, a reporter on USA TODAY’s data team, examined sales records en masse. He analyzed 30,000 condo sales in the area to compare prices at Champlain South over time with those of other nearby condo buildings.
Over days and weeks, the reporters started to notice a pattern.

Instead of individual people buying condos and borrowing from a traditional bank, they were seeing purchases from LLCs – corporate entities that can obscure who is behind a real estate deal. Many buyers were coming from overseas or were listing P.O. boxes as their primary address. Some of the mortgages were issued by an attorney who worked for the developer.

“As I’m pulling these deeds, I’m trying to explain to myself what the legitimate reasons could be,” Beall said. “Once you started plugging in names of the corporations … you kept getting total dead ends. Here’s a corporation and there is no other information about it.”

Money laundering has long been a part of real estate in South Florida. Money made from criminal enterprises, including from cartels in Central and South America, gets pushed through real estate purchases in a way that eventually makes the money appear to be legally earned.

Experts told our reporters that money laundering associated with a building could affect the quality of construction and repairs in at least two ways. First, if developers are willing to launder money, they may also be willing to cut corners on construction. And second, if buyers are primarily in the market to wash their money, they may not care what happens long-term to the building they are buying into.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, when Champlain South rose from the coastline, Miami was awash in money from the booming drug trade. Money laundering was rampant.

"The era we’re talking about is when Miami suddenly came out of the ashes. So how do you rush to fulfill the demand? You cut corners. You attached roofs with paper clips. You bribe the inspectors," said Jorge Valdes, who was not involved in Champlain South but helped build dozens of homes, apartment complexes and high-rises in the Miami region as a chief money launderer for the Medellin Cartel.
More telltale signs of money laundering at Champlain South emerged from our review of sales data.

When the developers first started selling units around 1980, the prices were inflated compared with units in other towers selling nearby. Over time, the average price per square foot in the tower evened out and then dropped compared with other condo buildings – evidence that buyers began to notice the building falling into disrepair.

As Beall dug through deeds, she found one signed by Herbert Batliner, an investment adviser from Liechtenstein who had been investigated by German authorities for helping clients evade taxes. Another unit was bought by a couple listing a Panama P.O. box as their home address. To pay for it, they borrowed money from Stanley Levine, the Canadian lawyer who represented Champlain South’s developer. Within a few months of purchase, the couple stopped paying their assessments and a lien was placed on their unit.

Levine had his own problems, records show.

He had been indicted after being accused of attempting to bribe an official in Florida on an earlier project. Reporters also learned from other media accounts that one building contractor hired to work on the Champlain South project was forced to surrender his license after numerous infractions. The architect’s license had been suspended in Florida after sign structures he designed collapsed during Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

And then there was Rosello.

In the Netflix docuseries "Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami," director Billy Corben lays out Rosello’s time as a notorious drug smuggler working alongside the likes of Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta. The series describes the high-rolling lifestyle of drug smugglers in South Florida. In one scene, a photo of Rosello lying in a bed inside his Champlain South unit holds the screen as the narrator speaks.

The location is not mentioned in the series, but Corben connected the dots in a Twitter post not long after the tower collapsed. Our reporters noted the post and interviewed Corben.

It was yet another hint at what might have been happening in the early days of Champlain South -- and another name for reporters to add to their pile.

By now, the reporting team had called hundreds of people and sifted through thousands of pages of records. Erin Mansfield, a reporter on USA TODAY’s quick-strike investigations team, was writing letter after letter by hand, in English and Spanish, trying to find residents willing to talk. Fellow reporters Katie Wedell and Sudiksha Kochi had all but reached the end of their list of possible contacts.
“The fact that nobody wanted to talk, I think it really speaks to the trauma that this story carries. It’s one like no other,” Madan said. “They felt very naked. They didn’t feel like talking about it. They didn’t see any point to it.”

The reporters kept writing and calling.

Rosello received Madan’s first letter in his prison cell, but he didn’t respond.

“I thought maybe he was flooded with letters because this documentary had come out,” Madan said. “I thought my letter would get lost in fan mail or whatever.”

A second letter got her a little closer. Rosello’s best friend called to screen Madan, asking what kinds of questions she wanted to ask and looking for previous stories she had written. Madan told her she had been a longtime reporter in Miami and that she was committed to the story because it was important. It was personal.

“I just wanted to make clear to him that I care deeply about the stories that we tell,” Madan said.

Still, Rosello didn’t call.

Madan tried a third letter and was researching what it would take to arrange a meeting at the prison when her cellphone rang. She didn’t recognize the number.

Rosello's voice came softly through the speaker: “My girl told me I could trust you.”

Over the next few weeks, Madan said, she talked to Rosello roughly 20 times. Each time, because of prison rules, the conversation lasted no more than 15 minutes.

Rosello talked of how, in the early days, Champlain South offered an under-the-radar refuge where cocaine dealing, Ferraris and indoor hot tub parties abounded. When he arrived there in 1988 as a renter, the luxury condo on Collins Avenue was a hub where kingpins partied, out of sight of undercover police.

“All the attention was still on South Beach, so I could walk into an elevator knowing nobody would catch on to me,” he told Madan. “But at the end, the building fell, just like our once cocaine empire.”

BIAFRAN FREEDOM FIGHTER POLITICAL  PRISONER
Nnamdi Kanu: Nigeria separatist pleads not guilty to terrorism

Fri, October 22, 2021

This was the first time Nnamdi Kanu (in white) had been seen in public since June

The Nigerian separatist Nnamdi Kanu has pleaded not guilty to charges levelled against him by the authorities, including terrorism and treason.

His appearance in court was the first time he had been seen in public since he was captured abroad and repatriated in June.

Mr Kanu's initial arrest in 2015 triggered protests by his supporters.

The authorities deem his Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) group a terror organisation.

Journalists were barred from entering the court in the capital, Abuja, with critics calling it a "secret trial".

At the trial, the Ipob leader appeared healthy and happy in pictures taken with his lawyer that are circulating online, including one photo where he can be seen smiling.

There was a strong security presence at the court proceedings, including the army and police who were deployed outside the premises.

Along with terrorism and treason, Mr Kanu is facing charges of running an illegal company and publishing defamatory material, which appears to relate to comments he made about President Muhammadu Buhari.

He is also alleged to have encouraged Ipob members to attack Nigerian security operatives, BBC Pidgin reports.

His lawyer Ifeanyi Ejiofor said the charges against the separatist leader had no basis in Nigerian law, the BBC's Chris Ewokor reports.

The case has now been adjourned to 10 November.

Mr Kanu was originally arrested in 2015 but he fled Nigeria in 2017 while out on bail.

Ipob wants a group of states in the south-east of the country, which mostly comprises the Igbo ethnic group, to break away from Nigeria and form an independent nation called Biafra.

In 1967 Igbo leaders declared independence for the state of Biafra, but after a civil war, which led to the deaths of up to a million people, the secessionist rebellion was defeated.

But the idea of Biafra has never gone away and despite arrests of his members, Mr Kanu's movement has seen a recent swell in its numbers.

 

Truckers in Brazil disband blockade after provoking fuel shortages


FILE PHOTO: Truckers block highways in support of President Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil

Roberto Samora and Gram Slattery
Fri, October 22, 2021, 9:31 AM·2 min read

SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Truckers blockading a major refinery in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais disbanded on Friday, allowing fuel supplies to normalize in the nation's second most populous state.

The protesters, principally truckers who deliver fuel, had been demanding a decrease in taxes on diesel. Since Thursday, they had blocked roads near the REGAP refinery near state capital Belo Horizonte, an action that spooked industry leaders and motorists and caused some gas stations in Minas Gerais to run low on fuel.

Truckers have grown increasingly vocal in recent months as a rise in global crude prices has pushed up the cost of diesel domestically and eaten into margins. Trucker groups have threatened a general strike next week, a move that could prove crippling for Brazil's economy, if widely observed.

A truckers strike over high fuel prices in 2018 ground the economy to a halt, and destroyed the remaining political capital of the already unpopular government at the time. As a result, Brasilia remains attentive to their demands.

On Thursday evening, President Jair Bolsonaro, who is expected to run for re-election next year, said that the government would give Brazil's 750,000 truckers 400 reais ($70) each, to help cushion the impacts of rising fuel prices.

Shortly after, four key Treasury officials quit amid signs the government is looking to lift a constitutional spending cap, a move that battered local equities markets and the real currency.

Speaking in Brasilia on Friday, Bolsonaro played down overspending concerns, saying that the payment to truckers would cost the government less than 4 billion reais in total.

Brazil-listed shares in Vibra Energia SA and Ultrapar Participacoes SA, the owners of the nation's largest and second-largest gas station chains, respectively, were both down over 3.5% in afternoon trade. The benchmark Bovespa equities index was off 1.1%.

(Reporting by Roberto Samora in Sao Paulo and Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

'Rolling coal' to blow a thick cloud of exhaust like video of a busy Texas restaurant shows is legal in most states


Kenneth Niemeyer
Thu, October 21, 2021, 11:33 AM·2 min read


"Rolling coal" is legal in most states. Toa55/Getty Images

A viral TikTok video showed a Texas driver blasting a dark cloud of exhaust into a fast-food restaurant.

The practice of "rolling coal" to blow excess exhaust from a truck is only illegal in a handful of states.

People can report vehicles emitting excessive exhaust in North Texas, but drivers can't be ticketed for it.

"Rolling coal" - when drivers blow thick exhaust clouds from the tailpipe of a truck - may be obnoxious, but it isn't illegal in most US states.

Only a handful of states including Maine, Utah, New Jersey, Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut have laws that specifically prohibit the practice.

Most state laws that ban exhaust blasts also make it illegal to add modifications to the truck that would give it the ability to create excess amounts of exhaust.

New Jersey SB 2418, which went into effect in 2015, says "retrofitting any diesel-powered vehicle with any device, smokestack, or other equipment which enhances the vehicle's capacity to emit soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions" is prohibited.

A viral TikTok video viewed over 1 million times showed a Texas pickup truck driver blasting a large amount of black exhaust into a Whataburger fast-food restaurant.

Police have not arrested another teen driver in the state after he ran over a group of cyclists in Waller while trying to blow exhaust on them last month. The Waller Police Department posted a statement on Facebook that said it is still investigating the circumstances of the incident, and will submit its findings to the local district attorney to determine what charges may be warranted.

Still, the practice of "rolling coal" is not illegal in Texas.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality decommissioned a state-wide smoking vehicle reporting program in 2015. People in the northern region of the state can still submit reports of vehicles emitting excessive exhaust to the North Central Texas Council of Governments through its reporting program, but vehicles can only be reported in 16 of the state's 254 counties.

Drivers with out-of-state vehicles can not be reported to the NCTCOG and reported drivers also do not receive a ticket or citation after the report.

According to the council's website, when a vehicle is reported for excessive exhaust, the driver is sent a letter "encouraging" the owner to "have the vehicle checked out by their mechanic and to voluntarily repair it."

While "rolling coal" is not illegal in Texas, some public officials in the state think it should be, according to the Houston Chronicle.

" 'Rolling coal' when a person is in the vicinity and when the individual 'rolling coal' intentionally or knowingly causes that excess exhaust to contact that bystander is at a minimum an assault," Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis wrote on Facebook.

Rolls-Royce Just Flew a Boeing 747 Jumbo Using 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel


Rachel Cormack
Thu, October 21, 2021

The world may be one step closer to cleaner air travel thanks to Rolls-Royce.

The company has just completed a successful test flight in a Boeing jumbo jet using 100 percent Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). The 747 in question was equipped with a Trent 1000 turbofan engine running solely on unblended SAF while the remaining three RB211 mills used standard jet fuel, according to Rolls-Royce. Boeing was on hand to provide technical support, while World Energy provided the low-carbon fuel for the flight.

The aircraft flew from Tuscon airport in Arizona across New Mexico and Texas, before arriving back at the airport just shy of four hours later. Rolls-Royce said there were no engineering issues during the test, which is further proof that SAF is a viable alternative to fossil jet fuel and could be suitable for commercial use.

One of the 747’s engines ran solely on unblended SAF. - Credit: Rolls-Royce


To recap, SAF is made from waste materials, such as the cooking oil or animal fats used in restaurants. Instead of flooding landfills, the waste is turned into this sustainable jet fuel that reduces carbon dioxide emissions by up to 80 percent. The biofuel also results in 90 percent less particulate matter (that white stuff you see in the sky) and eliminates sulfur oxide.

Aircraft are currently only certified to operate on a maximum of 50 percent SAF blended with conventional jet fuel, though Rolls-Royce says it continues to support efforts to green light non-blended SAF. In fact, just last week, the company announced plans to make all its Trent engines compatible with 100 percent SAF by 2023.

“We believe in air travel as a force for cultural good, but we also recognize the need to take action to decarbonize our industry,” Simon Burr, Rolls-Royce’s director of product development and technology for civil aerospace, said in a statement. “This flight is another example of collaboration across the value chain to make sure all the aircraft technology solutions are in place to enable a smooth introduction of 100 percent SAF into our industry.”

The flight proved SAF is a viable alternative to fossil jet fuel. - Credit: Rolls-Royce

World Energy is the world’s first (and America’s only) SAF producer currently working on a commercial scale, though that may soon change. President Biden recently recognized the need to significantly increase the production of SAF, launching a sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge to produce 3 billion gallons of the fuel a year by 2030. This is part of a wider aviation climate action plan that is to be released in the coming months.

The geography of the Great Resignation: First-time data shows where Americans are quitting the most

Alyssa Fowers and Eli Rosenberg
Fri, October 22, 2021

Kentucky, Idaho, South Dakota and Iowa reported the highest increases in the rates of workers who quit their jobs in August, according to a new glimpse of quit rates in the labor market released Friday.

The largest increase in the number of quitters happened in Georgia, with 35,000 more people leaving their jobs. Overall, the states with the highest rates of workers quitting their jobs were Georgia, Kentucky and Idaho.

The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics builds out a portrait of August's labor market, with historic levels of people leaving jobs and a near-record number of job openings showing the leverage workers have in the new economy. It offers the first detailed insight into the state-by-state geography of this year's Great Resignation.

"It is a sign of health that there are many companies that are looking for work - that's a great sign," said Ben Ayers, senior economist at Nationwide. "The downside is there are many workers that won't come back in. And long term you can't sustain a labor market that's as tight as it is right now."

Nick Bunker, an economist at the online jobs platform Indeed, said it was notable that more-rural states had the highest quit rates.

"Service-sector jobs tend to be concentrated in more dense, urban parts of the country, so to see the quits rate pick up in other places was interesting," he said. That "may be a sign there's more competition in those parts of the country than other parts."

The data comes on top of another government snapshot showing that 4.3 million people quit jobs in August - about 2.9% of the workforce, a pandemic-era record.

The phenomenon is being driven in part by workers who are less willing to endure inconvenient hours and poor compensation, and are quitting to find better opportunities. There were 10.4 million job openings in the country at the end of August - down slightly from July's record high, which was adjusted up to 11.1 million, but still a tremendously high number. This gives workers enormous leverage as they look for a better fit.

Mary Kaylor is part of that groundswell.

She left her job in early July after her employer began calling workers back to the office, saying they'd have to be at their desks at least four days a week.

But her old commute - 90 minutes each way, or worse with traffic, from where she lives north of Baltimore to her office in Alexandria, Va. - was no longer acceptable to her.

"It was affecting my health, and I couldn't get my work done," she said. "I decided, 'Why am I doing this?'"

So Kaylor resigned, even though she did not have another job lined up. It didn't take long for her to land on her feet, however.

Just a few weeks after she quit, a recruiter reached out to her on LinkedIn about a position at Robert Half, a San Ramon, Calif.-based consulting company. The job allowed her to work remotely, and she said she felt that the company had a very employee-centric culture that made the switch easy from afar. She started the new position in August.

"Everything that I had read about the jobs market being hot and opportunities being out there was absolutely 100% correct," she said.

Now she says she has a job she likes, but with more balance at home and time to take care of herself with no commute.

"I've been able to get back to a regular workout and exercise routine - time to run in the morning and do yoga," she said. "All the time I used to spend sitting on the Beltway I can spend outside, so I'm excited about that."

A volcano erupts in Spain – and challenges notions of recovery


Colette Davidson
Fri, October 22, 2021

In the first few days after the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted, Roberto Leal frantically helped his family evacuate their homes in a rush to escape the spewing gray plumes of smoke and rivers of lava engulfing his isle on the Spanish Canary Islands. But soon, it swallowed up his own lifetime of memories too.

“I always thought it was going to stop,” he says. “But then the town church fell, my uncle’s house, my parents’ house, my brother’s and sister’s houses. On the 20th day, mine fell as well.”

Now, he and his extended family have been dispersed across the island in temporary housing – with little idea of when they might return if ever. “Where will we go for Christmas? New Year’s?” he asks, his eyes welling.

He joins some 7,000 people who have been forced from their homes since the La Palma volcano shot up from flat ground on Sept. 19. It has since destroyed more than 1,900 homes and more than 2,000 acres of land, including 600 acres of banana, grape, and avocado plantations – the island’s primary economic resource along with tourism.

Experts estimate that Cumbre Vieja is only halfway through its course, and no one can predict when it might end. On Wednesday and Thursday the area around the volcano registered 124 earthquakes. It’s creating a unique set of challenges for first responders and local authorities who are rushing to address immediate needs while the longer-term consequences mount.

It could be years before the ground cools enough to rebuild, and many whose homes have been swallowed up wonder whether they will ever feel confident enough to return. Amid so many unknowns, islanders are relying on the solidarity of local charities, churches, the military, and neighbors who are scrambling to preserve a sense of home, whatever form that takes.

“Completely different this time”

La Palma has seen a swell of volunteerism and donations since the volcano first erupted, some organizing with the Twitter handle #MasFuertesQueElVolcan, or “Stronger Than the Volcano.” People with second homes or extra rooms are offering their beds; hotels, recreation centers, and schools are also coming forward.

The Red Cross has received €3.3 million (about $3.8 million) in donations for immediate needs, but they say this relief work is unlike anything they have ever done before. “Our aid efforts are completely different this time,” says Miguel Angel Reyes, a technical coordinator for the Red Cross in La Palma. “With a forest fire or flood, people can go back home after about a week. With this type of emergency, it’s been a month and we can’t do anything to stop the volcano.”

Gen. Fernando Morón Ruiz of the Spanish army, which has provided shelter and emergency services to displaced people, says that “the situation of uncertainty and leaving everything behind has been very intense. We want to give people a sense of control and support. When they come (to shelter in army barracks) they can share the same experience as others, and this has provided a sense of resilience against fate and a bit of hope.”

General Morón’s soldiers are also working in the exclusion zone, removing ash that has piled up on roofs to heights of 1 ½ feet, to prevent their collapse.

“What can we learn from this?”

The residential hillsides in Tajuya, about three miles from the mouth of the volcano, offer a direct view of Cumbre Vieja, and full audio too. Deafening booms, as the volcano spits out rocks, are incessant. Piles of black ash collect on top of Sandra Riccoboni’s newly planted potato patches and leave a fine dust on her beloved orange trees.

“It’s horrid, like having a plane inside my head. … Sometimes the volcano goes berserk and the house starts to shake,” says Ms. Riccoboni, who has lived in her home for nearly 50 years. “You start crying at night, thinking maybe it’s your time to go. I’ll have nowhere to live. … I’m a bit old to start over again.”

This sense of control lost is something the Rev. Domingo Guerra is trying to help residents in the area sort through. Since the eruption, his church in Tajuya has become a meeting point, remaining open 24/7. Donations have poured in from around the world, and local churches are collaborating to distribute clothes and personal care items and provide floor space to sleep.

“There’s so much frustration. People are perplexed about what to do now,” says Mr. Guerra. “Humans aren’t owners of the earth, we’re the caregivers, and things like this make us seem even smaller. God is asking us, what can we learn from this? What do we really need in order to be happy?”

That question is measured in the tangible and intangible. In all, Mr. Leal’s family lost eight homes, as well as several banana plantations on which they had relied to make a living. The cedar chest that Mr. Leal’s grandfather handcrafted for his grandmother decades ago was too heavy to carry and had to be left behind, consumed by fiery crimson lava and pulled down the hillside into the Atlantic.

Some residents already have return on their minds, though. Local architect Jose Henry Garritano Pérez, for example, knows what he wants to do once Cumbre Vieja finally calms down, and he says history gives him hope.

Sweeping a fine layer of ash from his desk, he pulls up a photo on his mobile phone of the land where the San Juan volcano struck the south of the island in 1949. It’s now covered in leafy green trees, growing on soil spread over the lava.

Mr. Garritano Pérez has the same hopes for Todoque, the neighborhood where his home was among the many flattened by lava from Cumbre Vieja. He is working with architects across Spain to create plans for a natural park, comprising residential areas and agricultural patches currently covered in lava. He says that once it cools, homes can be built and fresh soil can be laid down.

“We can do it again”

“We already live on lava. Towns [in Tenerife] like Garachico are built on lava. People once said that was impossible, but nothing is impossible,” he says. “If for some reason people don’t want to live there again, we can at least do this for agriculture to bring money to the island. Whatever happens, we need to do this.”

Not all experts agree. Some geologists say the ultimate thickness of the hardened lava will determine whether it takes weeks or years to fully cool. Others say the magma will need to be broken up by dynamite in order for the soil to be useable again.

For local photographer Jonatan Rodríguez, the notion of home is comforting in this time of uncertainty. Mr. Rodríguez says he cried last week as he locked up his house in La Laguna, the latest town to receive an evacuation order, not knowing if he’d ever see it again.

He says if he has to start over and build a new house, he will, but it’s the daily routine he’ll miss most – going out to get bread, saying hello to neighbors in the street, playing racquetball with friends. Still, he’s confident the people of La Palma can restore what has been lost.

“We have a beautiful expression in the Canary Islands: ‘We’re made of sea salt and lava,’” says Mr. Rodríguez. “I think if the lava takes my house, I’ll rebuild on the land. We’ve built on a volcano before, and we can do it again.”

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No end in sight: Stunning images from the month-long eruption of Spain's La Palma volcano | Reuters.com