3 reasons everyone's quitting their job, according to Biden's labor secretary

Juliana Kaplan
Fri, January 7, 2022

Rachel Flores

In November, 4.5 million workers quit their jobs, including 1 million in leisure and hospitality.

It further cemented 2021 as the year of quitting, with eight months of nearly record quits.

The labor head said workers may be seeking better jobs or dealing with virus and childcare concerns.

The past year cemented a new American pastime: quitting your job.

For eight months, workers left at nearly record highs. In November, the most recent month that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released data for, a record 4.5 million workers said, "I quit." That's 3% of the whole workforce.

One big clue as to why so many Americans are leaving their jobs comes from who, exactly, is quitting. A record-breaking 1 million leisure and hospitality left their jobs in November, with low-wage sectors disproportionately leading departures. With hiring still robust, that suggests that the pay of many low-wage employers won't cut it anymore.

At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest data release showed that the economy added just 199,000 jobs in December — a far cry from the 450,000 payrolls economists predicted.

Following the release of the jobs data, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh told Insider that there were many reasons people were quitting — and homed in on three reasons that might explain the number of quits and low payrolls.

1. People want better work

"I think a lot of people are looking to better themselves," Walsh said. "They're quitting the job that they're in, and they're going to be looking for better-paying jobs and more opportunities."

In December, the jobs site Indeed released a survey of 1,000 workers who had left at least two jobs since March 2020. Of those respondents, 92% said: "The pandemic made them feel life is too short to stay in a job they weren't passionate about."

When it comes to the November quitters, Nick Bunker, the economic-research director at Indeed, previously told Insider that "lots of workers in those lower-wage industries seem to be leaving jobs for greener pastures, where they can get higher wages."

Walsh added "that's why it's important for us to make investments in workforce development" and job training.

2. They're worried about COVID-19

"A lot of people obviously are concerned about the virus as well," Walsh said. Fears for personal health and of contracting the virus have continually been cited as one major driver of pandemic labor shortages. That's especially salient right now, as the US has had a surge in cases amid the rise of the Omicron variant. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 705,264 new COVID-19 cases on January 5, which came after a huge spike beginning in mid-December.

That could also point to why workers were leaving the primarily in-person leisure and hospitality industry. In November, even pre-Omicron, the country was regularly logging tens of thousands of cases.

3. Childcare remains hard

"Childcare is a major issue in this country," Walsh said, adding: "It's not being supported in a lot of ways right now."

He said 100,000 people had left the childcare sector since February 2020. Insider previously reported that likely aggravated childcare deserts, areas where the number of children outnumber licensed care slots by at least three to one. Several childcare workers previously told Insider that while they loved their jobs, they were considering leaving over low pay and hard working conditions.

In November, the US lost daycare workers for the second month in a row, shedding 2,100 jobs in that sector.

"We have to do more to support childcare," Walsh said. For example, the stalled Build Back Better Act would lower childcare costs, increase its accessibility, and aim to institute universal pre-K. But that legislation is on the back burner.

Canada is Chinese citizens' least favorite country, according to state media survey


Carl Samson
Fri, January 7, 2022

Canada, once a hot travel destination among Chinese people, has become China’s least favorite country, according to a recent survey from state-run Global Times.

The poll, conducted by the Global Times Research Center with market survey firm DATA100, gathered 2,148 responses across 16 Chinese cities from Dec. 10-15, 2021.

The survey showed Canada at the bottom of the ranking, with only 0.4% of respondents saying they like the North American country.

Singapore, on the other hand, received a positive response from 14% of participants, emerging at the top of the list, alongside China itself. The two most popular countries were followed by Germany, France, the U.S., Russia and Maldives.

Singapore was also the country Chinese people said they would like to visit the most (17.1%), followed by Maldives and France. Previous data gathered since 2018 reportedly showed that the island city-state did not even crack the top six up until now.

Japan, which ranked No. 1 in 2019 and 2020, fell to sixth place in 2021.

The poll results reflect ongoing tensions between Ottawa and Beijing. On Dec. 25, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged Western countries to stand united against China, claiming that the East Asian state has been “playing” them against each other.

“We’ve been competing, and China has been from time to time very cleverly playing us off each other in an open market competitive way,” Trudeau told Global News. “We need to do a better job of working together and standing strong so that China can’t, you know, play the angles and divide us one against the other.”

Canadians also seem to feel similarly about the Chinese. A survey by Research Co. and Glacier Media found that 68% of Canadians have an unfavorable opinion of China.

Canada and China’s relationship began to sour in 2018 with the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition warrant. In an apparent retaliation, the “Two Michaels” – Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor – were detained in China on national security charges.

In September 2021, Meng reached a deal with U.S. prosecutors, and Kovrig and Spavor were subsequently released.

In early December, Canada also joined the U.S. and other Western allies in declaring a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics. The stance was taken in protest of China’s alleged human rights abuses, most notably in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

“We are extremely concerned by the repeated human rights violations by the Chinese government,” Trudeau told reporters, according to Politico. “I don't think the decision by Canada or by many other countries to choose to not send diplomatic representation to the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics is going to come as a surprise to China. We have been very clear over the past many years of our deep concerns around human rights violations.”

Shortly after, the Chinese Embassy in Canada responded to the move, calling it a purely political show, according to the Global Times.

Featured Image via Justin Trudeau (left) and CGTN (right)

US companies plan to ‘do more, not less’ business in China: Ian Bremmer

Akiko Fujita

·Anchor/Reporter

Sat, January 8, 2022, 

A broad crackdown on private enterprise, regulatory tightening, and uneasy U.S.-China relations have done little to discourage American companies from doing business in the world’s second largest economy.

In fact, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer says executives plan to double down on their investments.

“I talked to CEOs of Western companies literally every day, and I will tell you that on balance, the majority of them are planning on doing more business in China over the next 10 years, not less,” Bremmer told Yahoo Finance Live. “The reason for that is simple. It's because China is on track, still to be the world's largest economy by 2030. And corporations ultimately want to be where their markets are going to be.”

The sheer size of the Chinese market has long made it the most valuable asset for U.S. multinationals operating in the country. The International Monetary Fund estimates China will become the world’s largest economy in the early 2030s.

But those growth prospects for American companies have increasingly been clouded by geopolitical risks and a shifting domestic environment. As China's President Xi Jinping looks to secure a third five-year term, and cement his legacy, he has reshaped the priorities of the economy under the aim of “common prosperity,” going after some of China’s biggest companies including Alibaba and Tencent.

That has coincided with slowing growth in the economy. China’s GDP expanded at 4.9% in the third quarter, dragged down in part by supply chain constraints, global energy crunch, COVID-19 uncertainty, and a debt-ridden property mark.

“China today is more economically unequal than the United States. And China is ostensibly a socialist economy. that shouldn't be happening and Xi Jinping is trying very hard to address that,” Bremmer said. “If that means breaking some eggs, in terms of local Chinese corporations and what they are and aren't allowed, the kind of wealth they can amass the kind of business practices that they can have for technology companies and consumer internet for video game companies... they're going to take action. Clearly this is creating more concern about Chinese growth and the sustainability of that growth.”

"China today is more economically unequal than the United States," Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer.

U.S. policy against China have only added to the jitters for executives. Last month, President Biden signed a law banning imports from the Xinjiang region, where Western countries have accused the Chinese of carrying out genocide against Uyghur Muslim minorities. Intel (INTC) and Walmart’s (WMT) Sam’s Club faced backlash domestically, after Chinese users took to social media platforms calling out the companies for complying with the new import ban. A Walmart representative later denied those allegations, saying customers simply couldn’t find the products "because of a misunderstanding" of the app’s search function.

In a recent survey by the U.S. China Business Council (USBC), 45% of U.S. companies said they have felt pressure to make statements about political issues, with the pressure coming from both the U.S. and Chinese governments, as well as consumers. One-third of those who responded said that nationalism has increasingly played a role in consumer decisions, with heightened U.S.-China tensions.

China investment in the U.S. is down significantly, while U.S. investment in China continues at a slower pace as the result of an "unpredictable business environment," according to Doug Barry, USBC senior director for communications and publications.

Yet, even with those headwinds, Barry said his members report plans to increase investments in China, because ‘they don’t want to miss out, if growth in markets slows.’

Bremmer said the White House policy is predicated on that understanding.

“The reality of U.S. foreign policy towards China is to avoid crisis precisely because our economies are enormously interdependent,” Bremmer said. “That's not going to end anytime soon.”

Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @AkikoFujita

ARMED STRUGGLE IS NOT TERRORISM
Colombia's leftist ELN rebels claim responsibility for bombing

 A destroyed truck of the Police Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) is seen after an explosion in Cali

Sat, January 8, 2022, 2:41 PM·2 min read

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's leftist rebel National Liberation Army (ELN) on Saturday claimed responsibility for an attack in the country's third-largest city, Cali, that injured more than a dozen police officers.

ELN operatives carried out the bombing, which was directed against members of ESMAD, the Colombian national police's feared anti-riot unit, late on Friday, while they were traveling in a vehicle.

"At 9:55 pm on Jan. 7, our units carried out an operation against ESMAD ... in the city of Cali," the ELN said in a statement published on a website belonging to its so-called urban front, adding that its members withdrew uninjured.

The ELN and national police both confirmed that 13 officers were injured in the attack, with police officials saying that some were seriously hurt. No deaths were reported.

The attack drew condemnation from the government and police, with President Ivan Duque decrying it as an attempt by the rebels to influence presidential elections later this year.

"Colombia does not and will not bend to terrorism and our government will never reward terrorists," Duque said in a message on Twitter.

Colombia is offering a reward of 1 billion pesos for information regarding El Rolo, the leader of the ELN's urban front, and 350 million pesos for information concerning those who planned and executed the attack, said General Jorge Vargas, the country's top police official. Together, the two rewards amount to around $334,000.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY IN PRACTICE
The ELN is estimated to have some 2,350 combatants and has fought the government since its 1964 founding by extremist Roman Catholic priests.

Peace talks between the ELN and Colombia's government were put on ice after a rebel bombing killed 22 police cadets in 2019.

The government accuses Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro of harboring ELN rebels and dissident members of the demobilized FARC guerrillas who reject a 2016 peace deal, something the government in Caracas has repeatedly denied.

(Reporting by Oliver Griffin and Luis Jaime Acosta; Editing by Paul Simao)

PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT

From Texas to India, a patent-free Covid vaccine looks to bridge equity gaps


Evan Bush
Fri, January 7, 2022

Millions of doses of a new, cheap coronavirus vaccine will soon be available in India, and they will arrive with one distinction neither Moderna nor Pfizer can claim: They’re patent-free.

The new CORBEVAX inoculation, which was developed in Texas with decades-old technology and little support from the U.S. government, received emergency use authorization last week from India’s drug regulation agency.

The researchers behind the vaccine stand with little to gain financially.

“We don’t own any intellectual property,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a researcher who helped lead the vaccine’s development.

Efforts to immunize the world are falling far short of some expectations, and human rights campaigners are pressuring pharmaceutical companies to transfer new vaccine technology to speed global access to shots.

And while doubts linger about CORBEVAX’s effectiveness against the omicron variant and a lack of public data, its development, outside the path of typical pharmaceutical development and stripped of the same financial incentives for inventors, represents a model for others and could bolster their arguments, vaccine equity advocates said.

About 59 percent of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to Our World in Data, which tracks government reports globally. But fewer than 9 percent of residents in low-income countries have received a dose.

Calling it the “World’s Coronavirus Vaccine” in a news release, Hotez and colleagues say CORBEVAX — which is cheap and stable and could be relatively easy to scale — will be key to addressing global equity gaps.

When Covid-19 began spreading around the world, Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi, researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine and leaders of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine, got to work — with a head start.

About a decade ago, the pair developed vaccine candidates for coronaviruses like SARS and MERS until funding ran out. Their other work had centered on neglected diseases associated with poverty, like hookworm infections.

“That’s all we know how to do is make durable, low-cost vaccines for global health,” Hotez said.

As new mRNA vaccine technology raced ahead, the pair continued to pursue decades-old technology to create a recombinant protein vaccine. Their method, which uses yeast to create a key component of the coronavirus, is similar to what has been used to create hepatitis B vaccines since the 1980s.

“Nobody was paying attention to these conventional technologies,” Bottazzi said.

Hotez and Bottazzi attracted little government funding, even as the government’s vaccine development effort, Operation Warp Speed, showered pharmaceutical companies with cash. But they kept at it.

“A lot of the vaccine producers in low- and middle-income countries realized they were going to be on the outside,” Bottazzi said. “We provided an attractive alternative.”

To this day, countries like India remain without access to the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have largely been purchased and distributed by wealthy countries. Boosters, and even fourth doses, are being administered in rich countries before access to first and second doses are available worldwide.

“No country can boost its way out of the pandemic,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said in December.

Hotez and Bottazzi hope CORBEVAX can fill the gap in India and other countries.

Biological E, the company that licensed CORBEVAX in India and ran clinical trials there, said it will soon be able to produce 100 million doses each month, the company said in a statement. The Indian government has ordered 300 million doses already.

CORBEVAX has some advantages. Research and development for the vaccine in Texas cost no more than $7 million, most of which was provided by philanthropists, Hotez and Bottazzi said.

The vaccine is relatively cheap to produce and easy to store, and it can be created anywhere hepatitis B vaccines are manufactured.

Because the technology is nearly a half-century old, many countries are familiar with it and have perfected use of its technology, said Jeremy Kamil, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at LSU Health Shreveport, who wasn’t involved in developing CORBEVAX.

“There’s nothing prohibitively pricey about all of this,” Kamil said, adding that protein subunit vaccines are generally stable and will be much easier to store than mRNA vaccines.

Clinical trials conducted by Biological E found that the vaccine was safe and effective, the company said in a statement. The company said the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective against the original strain of Covid-19 and more than 80 percent effective against the delta variant.

Data from a clinical trial with more than 3,000 participants have yet to be published, which leaves experts wary.

“Until they are showing the data, there’s going to be questions about what it really means,” Kamil said.

Hotez said Biological E was working to get the data published.

Achal Prabhala, a public health activist and researcher based in Bangalore, India, called Biological E a “blue-chip” vaccine manufacturer but objected to what he called “science by press release” and said there needs to be public data on how effective CORBEVAX is against the omicron variant.

Kamil had concerns about how the vaccine would hold up against the omicron variant, which has reduced the effectiveness of many vaccines, particularly those that rely on technology other than mRNA.

CORBEVAX is designed to introduce people’s immune systems to the coronaviruses’ receptor-binding domain — part of the spike protein targeted by many vaccines.

“It’s the most rapidly changing part of the spike. Omicron basically remodeled the entire thing,” Kamil said. “I would guess that might not be very effective against omicron.”

Kamil said that it should be relatively easy to update the vaccine formula to better protect against the variant, if necessary, but that it would take time.

Although questions remain about the CORBEVAX’s effectiveness in a shifted landscape in which the omicron variant is dominant, experts said its development should be a model for immunizing the world population and reducing vaccine inequity.

“For its practical utility, I wish it had come out months earlier,” Prabhala said, saying it would have been helpful before the omicron variant emerged. But “its symbolic utility is priceless.”

Prabhala, who has collaborated with Human Rights Watch, argues that expanding the manufacturing of mRNA vaccines would be the best way to drive up access to effective vaccines around the world. Human Rights Watch and other organizations are pressuring Moderna and Pfizer to more readily share vaccine formulas and manufacturing technology with countries in need of shots. (Moderna and Pfizer have shared some technology and argued that localizing vaccine production could take resources away from expanding manufacturing capacity within their supply chains).

Prabhala said about 120 facilities around the world, including some in poorer countries, could produce mRNA vaccines if the pharmaceutical companies transferred their technology.

Hotez and Bottazzi’s approach is an ethic to point toward, Prabhala said.

The longer it takes to vaccinate the world, the more chances the coronavirus will have to mutate as it infects new hosts.

“We know variants emerge more rapidly in unvaccinated populations,” Kamil said. “If we don’t address vaccine equity, we are always going to be playing catch-up with the latest variant.”

Cyprus reportedly discovers a Covid variant that combines omicron and delta

PUBLISHED SAT, JAN 8 2022
Jessica Bursztynsky@JBURSZ

KEY POINTS

A researcher in Cyprus has discovered a strain of the coronavirus that combines the delta and omicron variant, Bloomberg News reported Saturday.

Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, called the strain “deltacron.”

It’s still too early to tell whether there are more cases of the strain or what impacts it could have.


Staff at CSL are working in the lab on November 08, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia, where they will begin manufacturing AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine.
Darrian Traynor | Getty Images

A researcher in Cyprus has discovered a strain of the coronavirus that combines the delta and omicron variant, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.

Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, called the strain “deltacron,” because of its omicron-like genetic signatures within the delta genomes, Bloomberg said.

So far, Kostrikis and his team have found 25 cases of the virus, according to the report. It’s still too early to tell whether there are more cases of the strain or what impacts it could have.

“We will see in the future if this strain is more pathological or more contagious or if it will prevail” against the two dominant strains, delta and omicron, Kostrikis said in an interview with Sigma TV Friday. He believes omicron will also overtake deltacron, he added.

The researchers sent their findings this week to GISAID, an international database that tracks viruses, according to Bloomberg.

The deltacron variant comes as omicron continues its rapid spread across the globe, causing a surge in Covid-19 cases. The U.S. is reporting a seven-day average of more than 600,000 new cases daily, according to a CNBC analysis Friday of data from Johns Hopkins University. That’s a 72% increase from the previous week and a pandemic record.

ROARING TWENTIES SPECULATORS

Bitcoin ETF Goes From Boom to Bust After a Record U.S. Debut

Vildana Hajric

Fri, January 7, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- The crypto bloodbath has transformed a famous Bitcoin ETF that launched the most successful debut ever into one of the biggest losers for an issuer in their first two months of trading.

With a 30% drop, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy exchange-traded fund, ticker BITO, is now one of the 10 worst performers when looking at returns two months after a public listing, Bloomberg Intelligence data analyzed by Athanasios Psarofagis show.

Thank the wider retreat in digital currencies as the Federal Reserve readies to withdraw pandemic stimulus. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset by market value, lost more than 34% in the two months after BITO’s debut on Oct. 19, and is down significantly from a November peak of above $68,000 per coin. Since the start of the year, Bitcoin is roughly 10% lower.

“Timing can be tough sometimes with ETFs,” Psarofagis said. “You aren’t hearing much about the performance flop of BITO since it went live.”

When it made its first showing, BITO saw turnover of almost $1 billion, which solidified it as the best debut behind only a fund that had pre-seed investments, Bloomberg data showed at the time. The fund also drew in $1 billion in assets in just two days, a record. For the crypto industry, it underscored pent-up demand for Bitcoin exposure in an ever-maturing institutional ecosystem.

But BITO is down near 9% this week alone. And flows data show initial euphoria also hasn’t kept up. It hasn’t seen a single day of inflows since 2022 started.

The fund is based on futures contracts and was filed under mutual fund rules that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has said provide “significant investor protections.” An ETF that directly holds Bitcoin does not yet exist in the U.S. due to a multitude of regulatory concerns.

Still, Psarofagis says its performance thus far won’t necessarily impact future industry growth. “You can see some other ETFs had a rough start out of the gate but can still raise assets,” he said in reference to his list.

N.Y. governor proposes 1st-ever statewide ban on gas hookups in new buildings

Ben Adler

·Senior Climate Editor

Fri, January 7, 2022

As the centerpiece of a multipronged initiative to combat climate change, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed on Wednesday a first-of-its-kind statewide ban on natural gas hookups in all new buildings.

“New construction in the state will be zero-emission by 2027, and we will build climate-friendly electric homes and promote electric cars, trucks and buses,” Hochul said in her annual State of the State speech.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks at a news conference. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

In a policy outline released Wednesday ahead of her State of the State address, Hochul’s office laid out her plan to curb on-site greenhouse gas emissions. In effect, the plan means that new buildings could have neither oil or gas burners for heat or hot water, nor gas stoves. The plan would also require energy analyses of every new building’s energy usage, known as “benchmarking.” Hochul’s climate change agenda also sets a goal of 2 million electrified homes by 2030.

The governor’s proposal comes on the heels of New York City becoming the largest locality in the United States to ban gas hookups in new buildings last month. New York City also already has an energy benchmarking law on the books, which was passed in 2016.

The statewide plan drew praise from some experts.

“When we passed the city bill, we said, ‘If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,’ and it’s really exciting to see the governor prove that out, to take these ambitions statewide,” Ben Furnas, who served as former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s director of climate and sustainability, told Yahoo News. “It’s a proof point for the entire country that this makes a lot of sense.”

While the New York City law and the governor’s statewide proposal would apply only to new buildings, Furnas argued that regulations requiring electric heating for new and renovated buildings will galvanize the market and eventually make them the norm, even for owners of existing buildings.

“I think as heat pump technology for heating and hot water improves, as induction stoves become the most modern and exciting type of stove on the market, and, I think, as you see federal incentives to encourage these shifts — [and] potentially other regulatory steps that municipalities could take — I think you’re going to see, as people are replacing fossil fuel appliances in their home, they’re going to be shifting more and more to modern electric versions of these things,” Furnas said.

Electric stove. (Getty Images)

A study by the think tank RMI found that by 2040, the ban on new gas hookups in New York City will reduce the emissions that cause global warming by the equivalent of taking 450,000 cars off the road. Out of New York state’s population of 19.45 million, 11 million residents live outside New York City, so expanding the policy to the rest of the state would presumably produce similar or even greater benefits.

While the measure would have to be passed by the state Legislature, it already enjoys some support in the state Capitol.

“Growing the demand for natural gas is exactly what the world does not need right now,” New York state Sen. Brian Kavanagh, who has sponsored legislation to phase out the use of natural gas in residential and commercial buildings, told the publication Stateline on Thursday. “If you build buildings that rely on fossil fuels, you are baking in very long-term needs."

Kavanaugh, like Hochul and the large majority of members in both chambers of New York’s Legislature, is a Democrat. On the other side of the aisle, 20 Republican-dominated states have passed laws preventing local governments from banning fossil fuel infrastructure.

In 2019, New York passed a law requiring the state to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. According to a 2021 state government report, buildings are the biggest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in New York, accounting for 32 percent of the total. Currently, New York still relies on fossil fuels including natural gas to produce much of its electricity, but it has a goal, also mandated in state law, of reaching 70 percent renewable energy by 2030.

Nationally, the gas industry opposes bans on new gas hookups, arguing that electric heat pumps are more expensive for consumers than gas boilers. Furnas said, however, that isn’t necessarily true.

People walk past a new building construction site in midtown Manhattan in October. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

“For a new construction, our analysis showed that it was about comparable,” Furnas said. “For a retrofit, a lot of it is very site-dependent, and part of the impetus for setting a date certain for new buildings is it’s really going to help jump-start a much more robust market and competitive heat pump market. And I think you’ll see, as that technology improves and as developers and contractors get used to installing them in new buildings, you’ll have much more competitive products on the market and installers who are used to doing that kind of work.”

President Biden’s Build Back Better proposal includes customer rebates for electric heat pump installation, but that bill’s prospects for passage remain uncertain.

Although Hochul’s proposal would be trailblazing at the state level, it wouldn’t take effect for five years, which some environmental activists criticized as an excessively slow timeline. (In a concession to real estate developers, New York City also set 2027 as the deadline for large buildings, but buildings shorter than seven stories will have to stop being built with gas burners and stoves by 2024.) Climate activists also are frustrated that the governor has not embraced the Build Public Renewables Act, a bill with supporters in the state Senate and Assembly that would require the New York Power Authority to build out only renewable energy. In December, 55 legislators from both chambers of the state Assembly sent a letter to Hochul asking her to back the proposal, but it was not included in her State of the State agenda.

"As we face increasing hardship from climate change, we need to see more from the governor,” Patrick Robbins, coordinator of the New York Energy Democracy Alliance, told Yahoo News. 

“Preexisting investments and a gas ban that won't take effect for five years are simply not enough. We need Gov. Hochul to pass the Build Public Renewables Act in the budget this year."

DIVIDE AND CONQUER 
France says Putin trying to bypass EU over Ukraine by talking solely to U.S

YOU CAN PLAY MORE THAN ONE CHESS GAME AT A TIME


Fri, January 7, 2022

PARIS (Reuters) -France's foreign minister said on Friday that Russia was trying to bypass the European Union by holding talks directly with the United States over Ukraine.

Talks between U.S. and Russian diplomats will begin in Geneva on Monday after weeks of tensions over Russian troop deployments near its border with neighbouring Ukraine, with envoys on each side trying to avert a crisis.

"(Russian President) Vladimir Putin wants to bypass the European Union... he wants to put dents in the EU cohesion, which is solidifying", Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFM TV and RMC Radio.

"You can't envisage EU security without the Europeans." France has just taken over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.

French President Emmanuel Macron later told a news conference that he was planning to have discussions with Putin soon, to discuss topics including Ukraine - but he gave no details and did not say when that could take place.

Russia has moved nearly 100,000 troops close to its border with Ukraine. It says it is not preparing for an invasion but wants to see the West back off from its support for Ukraine's government and has demanded guarantees that NATO will not expand further eastwards.

"Putin has proposed to discuss with NATO to sort of return to the zones of influence from the past...which would mean Russia restore the spirit of Yalta," Le Drian said referring to the conference between World War Two Allied powers in February 1945 that gave the Soviet Union control over its eastern European neighbours.

"This is not our point of view, but we have to accept the discussion."

Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, drawing sanctions and condemnation from the West. Kyiv wants the territory back.

Le Drian said any further military incursion into Ukraine by Russia would bring "serious strategic consequences", with one option being a review of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea.

He said that despite Putin's assurances that he was beginning to withdraw troops from the region, Paris had yet to see that happen.

Senior French and German diplomats met with Russian counterparts in Moscow on Thursday as part of efforts to revive peace talks over eastern Ukraine.

(Reporting by John Irish, Benoit Van Overstraeten and Sudip Kar-GuptaEditing by Angus MacSwan and Frances Kerry)

STALINISTS OF A FEATHER
Cambodia to take 'different approaches' to Myanmar crisis as ASEAN chair

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen speaks during a ceremony at the

 Morodok Techo National Stadium in Phnom Penh

Sat, January 8, 2022

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen did not seek to meet former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit to the country this week and will take "different approaches" to the crisis there, Cambodia’s foreign minister said on Saturday.

The comments by Prak Sokhonn indicate Cambodia, this year's chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), will likely invite junta officials to ASEAN meetings - possibly starting with a foreign minister's meeting Jan. 17.

The regional grouping had last year taken the unprecedented step of excluding junta chief Min Aung Hlaing from its annual leaders' summit.

Hun Sen, who himself seized power in a 1997 coup and has in subsequent elections been criticised over crackdowns on his political opponents, returned from Myanmar on Saturday after a two-day trip.

His visit was the first by a head of government since the army overthrew the civilian administration of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1 last year, sparking months of protests and a bloody crackdown.

Myanmar's state media on Saturday reported that Min Aung Hlaing had thanked Hun Sun for "standing with Myanmar". The army has said its takeover was in response to election fraud and was in line with the constitution.

Prak Sokhonn, who accompanied Hun Sen to Myanmar, on Saturday denied the trip amounted to backing the junta, saying it was another way of working to implement a five-point ASEAN peace plan adopted in April.

He also confirmed that Hun Sen did not ask to meet with Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate who has been in detention since the army takeover last year and faces more than a dozen criminal charges.

Prak Sokhonn, expected to take up the post as special envoy for Myanmar, said the refusal of the current envoy, Brunei's foreign minister, to visit without guarantees he could meet with Suu Kyi was unproductive.

"If they build a thick wall and we use our head to hit it, it is useless," Prak Sokhonn told reporters. "Cambodia uses different approaches to achieve the five-point consensus."

(Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by David Holmes)