COUNTER HEGEMONY MEETING

Putin's expanded BRICS summit proves he has friends — but risks buckling under its own contradictions

Thibault Spirlet,Huileng Tan
Updated Tue, October 22, 2024 


Russia is hosting a BRICS summit this week, showing the limits of attempts to isolate it.


The grouping is buoyant after ballooning from five members to nine.


A larger membership, though, widens the chance of internal conflict that impedes the bloc's aims.

Russia is flexing its muscles at the center of the BRICS economic bloc, which seeks to rival the West.

The nation is hosting a meeting of the group this week, the first since the group almost doubled its membership.

The larger grouping gives members more weight — and is a rebuke to Western-led attempts to isolate Russia economically.

But it also complicates things, introducing new competing interests and rivalries.

Geopolitical analysts say it could dilute the group's ability to take action and reduce it to a talking shop.

Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates are the new BRICS entrants, joining the earlier members Russia, India, China, Brazil, and South Africa. Saudi Arabia has been invited to join but has not formally done so yet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin touted the expansion as proof of the group's "growing authority" and role in international affairs.

Yet geopolitical tensions and competing interests within the group are dragging down Russia's efforts to use it to chip away at the dominance of the West, particularly the US dollar.

"BRICS expansion is no easy task," said Abishur Prakash, the founder of The Geopolitical Business, a strategy advisory firm in Toronto. "It risks creating rival camps within the group."
A 'raw' grouping

Since the bloc's founding in 2006 — with Brazil, Russia, India, and China as members before South Africa joined in 2010 — it has tried to challenge Western economic dominance.

Over the past two decades, its members experienced significant economic growth. After the recent expansion, its member states represent almost 46% of the world's population and about 25% of global exports.

Last year, more than 40 countries expressed interest in joining the bloc.

But Anton Barbashin, the cofounder and editorial director at Riddle Russia, an online journal on Russian affairs, described the group as a "raw collection" of countries.

He said it had "no chance" of political unity given its members' competing interests and starkly differing attitudes.

Members have grappled with internal disagreements over relations with the West, territorial claims, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Others are engaged in internal standoffs. India and China have clashed over disputed territory along their border, though they announced a deal on patrolling arrangements this week.

Some countries — notably India and South Africa — also have a tricky balancing act to do, engaging with the group without alienating their partners in the West.
Talking shop

Barbashin told BI that the BRICS summit was important for Russia because it had been cut out from other international platforms.

It's a way to communicate and possibly strike "some deals in the future that we don't necessarily foresee," he said.

In total, representatives of 32 countries are set to attend the summit this week, according to Moscow.

But Barbashin said the group's size masked its relative impotence.

"It's just a nice facade," he said, "and it falls within the idea that economic growth should translate into a greater political setting."

Leaders are expected to discuss how far members are willing to commit to the group.

Una Aleksandra Berzina-Cerenkova, the director at Riga Stradins University's China Studies Center, told Politico that "China uses BRICS to give it a mandate to push global visions and post-Western vision."

During a press briefing held by the Center for European Policy Analysis on Monday, one analyst foresaw major hurdles for the group to move past its status as a "debating club."

Evgeny Roshchin, a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, said the group would need to choose how to distribute power among its members should more join.

"Behind the rhetoric, there's a huge concern — even within Russia — whether the new members will become their equals," he said, noting that Russia could lose its leverage and decision-making among a large group of notionally equal members.
Taking on the dollar

Another challenge BRICS members like Russia and China face is trying to change the fundamentals of global financial-trading systems that rely overwhelmingly on the US dollar.

During a BRICS Business Forum in Moscow last week, Putin said group members were working on alternative payment systems as a rival to SWIFT.

The alternative systems would aid cross-border payments between members, according to a report by Russia's finance ministry, its central bank, and the consultancy Yakov & Partners.

It envisioned a network of payments using local currencies rather than a default reserve currency like the dollar.

Russia already has a model it can look to for transactions among central banks: the mBridge system under the Bank for International Settlements.

BRICS members are also toying with alternative currencies, spanning China's digital yuan and Moscow's interest in crypto.

The greenback, though, will be hard to dethrone — even without competing priorities and rivalry among BRICS members.

"Russia wants to create an alternative to Western financial infrastructures," Barbashin said.

But "there's no chance of making anything like a union or an alliance," he said.

He said that while BRICS members were united in a desire for change, "there's no real strategy within BRICS aside from fancy phrases to make it work."

Modi tells Putin that India wants peace in Ukraine

Updated Tue, October 22, 2024 
By Vladimir Soldatkin and Guy Faulconbridge

KAZAN, Russia (Reuters) -India's Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of the BRICS summit that he wanted peace in Ukraine and that New Delhi was ready to help achieve a truce to end Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two.

Putin, who ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, wants the BRICS summit to showcase the rising clout of the non-Western world after the United States and its European and Asian allies tried to isolate Russia over the war.

Russia is expecting 22 leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping who arrived on Tuesday, to attend the summit meeting of the BRICS, which accounts for 45% of the world's population and 35% of the global economy.

Putin, who is cast by the West as a war criminal, thanked Prime Minister Modi for accepting the invitation to visit Kazan, a city on the banks of the Volga, and said Russia and India shared a "privileged strategic partnership".

Modi thanked Putin for his "strong friendship", praised growing cooperation and the evolution of BRICS but also said that India felt the conflict in Ukraine should be ended peacefully.

"We have been in constant touch on the subject of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine," Modi said. "We believe that problems should be resolved only through peaceful means."

"We fully support the early restoration of peace and stability. All our efforts give priority to humanity. India is ready to provide all possible support in the times to come," he said, adding that he would discuss the issues with Putin.

The BRICS summit takes place as global finance chiefs gather in Washington amid war in the Middle East as well as Ukraine, a flagging Chinese economy and worries that the U.S. presidential election could ignite new trade battles.

With BRICS expanding - and a waiting list of potential members - there is anxiety among some about whether expansion will make the group unwieldy.

China and India, the top purchasers of Russian oil, have difficult relations, while there is little love lost between Arab nations and Iran.

SECURITY INTERESTS

When asked by BRICS reporters about the prospects for peace, Putin said that Moscow would not trade away the four regions of eastern Ukraine that it says are now part of Russia and that Moscow wants its long-term security interests taken into account in Europe.

Two Russian sources said that, while there was increasing talk in Moscow of a possible ceasefire agreement, there was nothing concrete yet - and that the world was awaiting the result of the Nov. 5 presidential election in the United States.

Russia, which is advancing, controls about one fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which it seized and unilaterally annexed in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas - a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - and over 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Putin said the West had now realised that Russia would be victorious, but that he was open to talks based on draft ceasefire agreements reached in Istanbul in April 2022.

On the eve of the BRICS summit, Putin met with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for informal talks that went on until midnight at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.

BRICS

Putin has praised both Sheikh Mohammed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who will not attend the summit in Kazan, for their mediation efforts over Ukraine.

"We are ready to make any efforts to resolve crises and in the interests of peace, in the interests of both sides," Sheikh Mohammed told Putin.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cancelled his trip following medical advice to temporarily avoid long-haul flights after a head injury at home.

The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 by then-Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill in a research paper that underlined the massive growth potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China this century.

Russia, India and China began to meet more formally, eventually adding Brazil, then South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has yet to formally join.

BRICS' share of global GDP is forecast to rise to 37% by the end of this decade while the share accounted for by the Group of Seven major Western economies will decline to about 28% from 30% this year, according to International Monetary Fund data.

Russia is seeking to convince BRICS countries to build an alternative platform for international payments that would be immune to Western sanctions.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Dmitry Antonov, Gleb Bryanski and Marina Bobrova in Moscow; and Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Ros Russell)


Putin hosts Global South leaders at BRICS summit meant to counterbalance Western clout

Associated Press
Updated Tue, October 22, 2024 

KAZAN, Russia (AP) — China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi and other global leaders arrived Tuesday in the Russian city of Kazan for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies that the Kremlin hopes to turn into a rallying point for defying what some see as the Western liberal order.

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the three-day meeting also offers a powerful way to demonstrate the failure of U.S.-led efforts to isolate Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov touted the summit as “the largest foreign policy event ever held” by Russia, with 36 countries attending and more than 20 of them represented by heads of state.

The alliance that initially comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has expanded rapidly to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have formally applied to become members, and a few others have expressed interest in joining.

Observers see the BRICS summit as part of the Kremlin's efforts to showcase support from the Global South amid spiraling tensions with the West and help expand economic and financial ties.

Proposed projects include the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network SWIFT and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.

Putin is set to hold about 20 bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit, including Tuesday's encounters with China’s Xi, India’s Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The summit underlined the close relationship between Xi and Putin, who announced a “no-limits” partnership weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. They already have met at least twice this year, in Beijing in May and at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan in July.

Russia’s cooperation with India has also flourished as New Delhi considers Moscow a time-tested partner since Cold War times despite Russia’s close ties with India’s main rival, China.

Western allies want India to be more active in persuading Moscow to end the war in Ukraine, but Modi has avoided condemning Russia while emphasizing a peaceful settlement.

Modi, who last visited Russia in July, said this visit reflects the close friendship between the countries. Speaking at the start of his meeting with Putin, he also reaffirmed New Delhi's push for peace in Ukraine.

Putin hailed what he described as a “privileged strategic partnership" between Russia and India.

On Thursday, Putin is also set to meet with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who will be making his first visit to Russia in more than two years. Guterres has repeatedly criticized Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Putin to host BRICS summit looking to advance Russia's own interests

Oman Al Yahyai
Mon, October 21, 2024 


Putin to host BRICS summit looking to advance Russia's own interests


Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet with several world leaders in the upcoming days, including China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian.

They will all gather in the Russian city of Kazan on Tuesday for a BRICS summit, despite prior speculations that the Ukraine war and an international arrest warrant would isolate Putin.

BRICS, originally formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has expanded significantly this year. New members include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.

Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Malaysia have also formally applied, with other countries expressing interest.

Russian officials already view the summit as a major success. According to Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, 32 countries have confirmed participation, with more than 20 heads of state attending.

Ushakov mentioned that Putin plans to hold around 20 bilateral meetings, suggesting this could become “the largest foreign policy event ever held” on Russian soil.

World leaders pose during the BRICS summit in Xiamen, China, on 4 September 2017 - Wu Hong/Pool Photo via AP, File
Why has BRICS become more important recently?

For Putin, the event is essential both symbolically and practically. It shows Russia standing alongside global allies despite tensions with the West. On a practical level, the Kremlin will use the summit to negotiate deals aimed at improving its economy and war effort.

Analysts note that for other participants, the summit presents an opportunity to boost their narratives on the global stage.

China and India are particularly important partners for Russia. Moscow will explore ways to expand trade and evade Western sanctions, with India being a significant buyer of Russian commodities, while China could provide dual-use goods critical to Russia’s military efforts.

Additionally, Russia aims to gain wider support for an alternative payment system to bypass the global SWIFT network, in hopes that a platform involving key players like China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil could be immune from US sanctions.

Iran, another key participant, is expected to formalise a strategic partnership with Russia. This comes after Iran reportedly provided Russia with drones during its invasion of Ukraine, which both countries deny. In exchange, Tehran is seeking advanced Russian weapons to defend against potential threats from Israel.

Meanwhile, China views BRICS as a way to promote alternatives to the US-led global order. Beijing has been a key advocate for expanding the bloc, and the Kazan summit will deepen economic, technological, and military ties within the group.

Related

Turkey wouldn't be interested in joining BRICS if it was an EU member state, foreign minister says


How the BRICS expansion could shake up the world economy

While Putin will seek to emphasise his close relationship with Xi, experts are watching for signs of subtle distancing by China, especially regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine, as Xi seeks to maintain a neutral stance.

India’s Modi is expected to strike a delicate balance, maintaining the country's long-standing ties with Russia while also being mindful of Western pressure to encourage Moscow towards peace.

Likewise, Turkey’s Erdogan, frustrated with the West, is likely to use the summit to strengthen his standing and navigate between different global power blocs.

For Putin, this summit will show that Western efforts to isolate him have failed while highlighting the shifting global power balance, with emerging economies seeking a stronger international role.

Putin gathers allies to show West's pressure isn’t working

Steve Rosenberg - Russia editor
Tue, October 22, 2024

The Kremlin says the summit is one of the "largest-scale foreign policy events ever" in Russia [Reuters]

Imagine you're Vladimir Putin.

The West has dubbed you a pariah for invading Ukraine. Sanctions are aiming to cut off your country's economy from global markets.

And there's an arrest warrant out for you from the International Criminal Court.

How can you show the pressure is not working? Try hosting a summit.

This week in the city of Kazan President Putin will greet more than 20 heads of state at the Brics summit of emerging economies. Among the leaders invited are China’s Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Kremlin has called it one of the "largest-scale foreign policy events ever" in Russia.

"The clear message is that attempts to isolate Russia have failed," thinks Chris Weafer, founding partner of consultancy firm Macro-Advisory.

"It's a big part of the messaging from the Kremlin that Russia is withstanding sanctions. We know there are severe cracks beneath the surface. But at a geopolitical level Russia has all these friends and they’re all going to be Russia's partners."

So, who are Russia's friends?

Brics stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The grouping, often referred to as a counterweight to the Western-led world, has expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia, too, has been invited to join.

The Brics nations account for 45% of the global population. Added together, members' economies are worth more than $28.5tn (£22tn). That's around 28% of the global economy.

This year's Brics summit is taking place in Kazan, Russia [EPA]

Russian officials have indicated that another 30 countries want to join Brics or seek closer ties with the club. Some of these nations will take part in the summit. In Kazan this week expect a lot of talk about Brics representing the "global majority".

But apart from providing Vladimir Putin his moment on the geopolitical stage, what is the event likely to achieve?

Keen to ease the pressure from Western sanctions, the Kremlin leader will hope to convince Brics members to adopt an alternative to the dollar for global payments.

"A lot of the problems Russia's economy is facing are linked to cross-border trade and payments. And a lot of that is linked to the US dollar," says Mr Weafer.

"The US Treasury has enormous power and influence over global trade simply because the US dollar is the main currency for settling that. Russia's main interest is in breaking the dominance of the US dollar. It wants Brics countries to create an alternative trade mechanism and cross-border settlement system that does not involve the dollar, the euro or any of the G7 currencies, so that sanctions won't matter so much."

But critics point to differences within Brics. "Likeminded" is not a word you would use to describe the current membership.

"In some ways it’s a good job for the West that China and India can never agree about anything. Because if those two were really serious, Brics would have enormous influence," notes Jim O'Neill, former Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs.

"China and India are doing their best to avoid wanting to attack each other a lot of the time. Trying to get them to really co-operate on economic things is a never-ending challenge."

It was Mr O’Neill who, at the turn of the century, dreamt up the acronym "Bric" for four emerging economies he believed should be "brought into the centre of global policy making".

But the four letters would take on a life of their own, after the corresponding nations formed their own Bric group - later Brics, when South Africa joined. They would attempt to challenge the dominance of the G7: the world's seven largest "advanced" economies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US).

It's not just India and China who have their differences. There is tension between two of the newest Brics members, Egypt and Ethiopia. And, despite talk of detente, Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been regional rivals.

"The idea that they’re all going to fundamentally agree on something of great substance is bonkers really," believes Mr O’Neill.

And while Russia, fuelled by anti-Western sentiment, talks about creating a "new world order", other Brics members, like India, are keen to retain good political and economic relations with the West.

In Kazan, Vladimir Putin's task will be to skim over the differences and paint a picture of unity, while showing the Russian public – and the international community – that his country is far from isolated.

Russia BRICS Summit
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends his meeting with President of the New Development Bank Dilma Rousseff on the sidelines of BRICS Summit at Kazan Kremlin in Kazan, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (Alexander Nemenov, Pool Photo via AP)
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Israel's war against militants is expensive.

Paying the bill could force tough choices

DAVID McHUGH

Sun, October 20, 2024

On top of the grievous toll in human life and misery, Israel's war against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups has been expensive, and the painfully high financial costs are raising concerns about the long-term effect of the fighting on the country's economy.

Military spending has ballooned, and growth has stalled, especially in dangerous border areas that were evacuated. Economists say the country could face declining investment and higher taxes as the war strains government budgets and forces tough choices between social programs and the military.


Here is a look at the monetary costs Israel faces as a result of the conflict:

Spending on the military has soared

The Israeli government is spending much more per month on the military, from $1.8 billion before Hamas started the fighting by attacking Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, to around $4.7 billion by the end of last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The government spent $27.5 billion on the military last year, according to the institute, ranking 15th globally behind Poland but ahead of Canada and Spain, all of which have larger populations. Military spending as a percentage of annual economic output was 5.3%, compared with 3.4% for the United States and 1.5% for Germany. That pales in comparison to Ukraine, which spent 37% of its GDP and more than half its entire government budget on fighting off Russia’s invasion.

The war hurt growth and the labor supply

In the three months after Hamas attacked, Israel's economic output shrank 5.6%, the worst performance of any of the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of mostly rich nations.


The economy partly rebounded with growth of 4% in the first part of this year but grew only 0.2% in the second quarter.

The war has inflicted an even heavier toll on Gaza’s already broken economy, where 90% of the population has been displaced and the vast majority of the workforce is unemployed. The West Bank economy has also been hit hard, where tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers lost their jobs in Israel after Oct. 7 and Israeli military raids and checkpoints have hindered movement. The World Bank says the West Bank economy contracted by 25% in the first quarter.

In Israel, the war has imposed many economic burdens. Call-ups and extensions of military service threaten to crimp the labor supply. Security worries deter investment in new business, and disruptions in flights have kept many visitors away, cutting into the tourism industry.

Meanwhile, the government is paying for housing for thousands of people who had to leave their homes in the south near the border with Gaza and in the north where they were exposed to fire from Hezbollah.



One of the biggest concerns is the open-ended nature of the fighting, which has lasted more than a year. Israel's economy rebounded quickly from a 2006 war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. But that conflict lasted only 34 days.

Moody's Ratings cited that idea on Sept. 27, when it lowered the Israeli government's credit rating, two notches. The Baa1 rating is still considered investment grade, albeit with moderate risk, according to Moody’s.

The Israeli economy is still strong, with modest debt

Israel's economy is hardly collapsing. The country has a diversified, highly developed economy with a strong information-technology sector, which supports tax revenues and defense spending. Unemployment is low, and the TA-35 stock index is up 10.5% on the year.

Even amid the fighting, tech companies raised some $2.5 billion in capital during the third quarter, according to Zvi Eckstein, head of the Aaron Institute for Economic Policy at Reichman University.

Israel started the war “in the best economic condition” regarding government debt, which stood at a relatively modest 60% of GDP, Eckstein said. “We financed the war mainly with debt,” which has now risen to 62% but is still contained compared with France at 111% and in line with Germany at 63.5%.


The institute foresees debt reaching 80% of GDP, assuming the fighting does not markedly intensify and some sort of cease-fire or conclusion can be reached by the end of next year. Even then, higher defense spending is likely, especially if Israel maintains a military presence in Gaza after the war.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s budget for 2025 foresees a deficit of below 4%, saying that will ensure that Israel’s debt burden remains stable. Smotrich said the country has a stable shekel currency, rising share prices, a tight jobs market, strong tax revenues and access to credit, and a rebounding tech sector.

Moody’s questioned the deficit figures, forecasting a 6% deficit for next year.

The credit downgrade will lead to higher borrowing costs, meaning Israelis are likely to see cuts to public services and higher taxes, said Karnit Flug, a former head of Israel’s central bank and now vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute.

The U.S. stepped up military aid and could provide financial backing


Before the war, American military aid to Israel amounted to around $3.8 billion per year under a deal signed during President Barack Obama's administration. That comes to roughly 14% of Israel’s prewar military spending, much of which goes to U.S. defense companies.

Since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict across the Middle East, the United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project that was released on the anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Beyond strictly military aid, the U.S. has offered critical financial support for Israel during times of trouble. Congress in 2003 approved $9 billion in credit guarantees that let Israel borrow at affordable rates after the economy suffered during the so-called second intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

Some of those guarantees remain unused and could in theory be tapped to stabilize government finances if Israel faces unaffordable borrowing costs.

What's the way forward?

The government has convened a commission under former acting national security adviser Jacob Nagel, who negotiated Israel’s most recent U.S. aid package, to offer recommendations on the size of the future defense budget and to assess how increased defense spending could affect the economy.

Economist Eckstein said a budget that includes some tax increases and cuts in social spending would be needed to support a postwar rebound and pay for likely higher ongoing defense costs.

___

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

She survived the October 7 terror attack. A year later, she took her life. Her family blames the state for not helping.

Matthew Chance, Katharina Krebs and Ivana Kottasová, CNN

CNN
Tue, October 22, 2024 

Editor’s note: This story contains details of suicide and violence that some readers may find upsetting.

Meir Golan sank his face in the dense, dark orange soil. He seemed desperate to stay close to his daughter for as long as possible, holding tight onto Shirel’s shroud as she was being buried.

More than a year after Hamas and other armed groups launched their terror attack against Israel, Shirel Golan became their latest victim. She died by suicide on Sunday, the day she turned 22, after a year-long struggle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Shirel’s brother Eyal Golan told CNN her health problems began immediately after the October 7 attack. She was attending the Nova Music Festival near the border with Gaza when Hamas led its deadly rampage on southern Israel.

Once a happy woman who wouldn’t hesitate to drive for an hour to visit her family when they needed help, Shirel became quiet, slowly fading away after surviving the massacre.

“She didn’t come out from the house. She didn’t come to visit us, she was withdrawn,” he said.

Speaking to CNN after Shirel’s funeral on Monday, Eyal said the whole family was in shock from her sudden death. The ceremony at the cemetery in Shirel’s hometown of Tel Mond, near Tel Aviv, drew a large crowd. Shirel’s family and friends surrounded the grave, sobbing and wailing loudly, visibly shaken by her death.

Eyal said Shirel’s parents, four siblings and other relatives had worried about her health and tried to keep an eye on her as much as they could. She was rarely left on her own, he said.

But as the family gathered to celebrate her birthday on Sunday, Shirel wandered off without anyone noticing, according to Eyal. By the time her boyfriend found her at the bottom of the family garden, she was gone.

Heartbroken and overwhelmed with guilt and anger, Eyal said he blames the Israeli health authorities for some of Shirel’s problems. He said no one from the government ever reached out to her or the family.

“They had the list of all the Nova visitors, and they knew (who) is dead, and (who) survived. If someone survived, let’s help them,” he said.

Instead, he said, the authorities only offered help to those who actively sought it. People who didn’t reach out – like Shirel – were left to their own devices.

CNN has asked the Israeli government for comment on the allegation, but did not immediately receive a response. A statement from Israel’s Welfare and Social Services Ministry published in Israeli media said that a “variety” of assistance is available to survivors.

Information about the program that is available on the government’s official website for survivors appears to confirm the Golan family’s point that help is available but only upon request.

Eyal said he was trying to convince Shirel to get help because he has a firsthand experience with PTSD after serving as a reservist with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the 2021 flare-up in violence between Israel and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

He said he was taking medication and had therapy to deal with the issue. “I’m taking care of myself with these tools and said to her, take it, please, use it for your own good,” he told CNN.

“I told her to talk to anyone, from our dad and mom, to a stranger in the street, talk to someone, please,” he said. “You don’t love to go to shrinks and psychiatrists, okay, go to visit your friends that also went the Nova Festival and survived. You can talk about it. You can overcome it,” he said he told her.

But he said Shirel refused.

It wasn’t until Eyal found the policeman who rescued Shirel from the Nova Festival site and reconnected the two of them that she began to open up.
‘They won’t help me’

The Nova Music Festival massacre was by far the deadliest of all the attacks of October 7, with nearly a third of the 1,200 people who died that day killed there.

There were so many dead and kidnapped that it took Israeli authorities months to determine the exact number of victims at the site. The IDF said 347 people, most of them young, were killed and some 40 others were taken hostage from the festival.

Many of the hundreds who survived are still struggling with mental health problems, including with PTSD, survivor’s guilt, depression, and anxiety.

But it’s not just the survivors themselves. Their families and friends and other people exposed to the secondhand violence are also having problems, Eyal said.

“Since October 7, we are a country in PTSD, every single one of us,” he said.

The Israeli government has established a public mental health assistance program almost immediately after the attacks, offering free therapy to anyone who needed it.

Survivors struggling with PTSD can get up to 36 appointments though the program, with anyone else eligible for up to 12 sessions.

According to a report by the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, nearly 1,900 of the roughly 3,000 survivors of the attacks have been referred for treatment as of July. More than 200 completed at least 24 sessions.

But the program is only available to those who request it. Shirel didn’t and nobody reached out to her offering it, according to her brother.

Some of the survivors have criticized the program as overly bureaucratic and not fit for purpose.

“I have had 36 hours of treatment, and I continue to pay for the psychologist I see by myself because of the bureaucracy of getting a compensation for the treatment,” Omer Leshem, a survivor of the Nova Festival attack, told a hearing in the Knesset in July.

“We were at the event, and no one was there to help us. And even now, they won’t help me,” he said.

Eyal Golan said the only help Shirel received was from the local authorities, which are strapped for cash and unable to offer adequate assistance.

“Only the municipal system helped her, but they have limited resources. They cannot pay for a lot of therapies,” he said. “The number of (sessions) is very limited, the variety of it is very limited.”

Unable to help his sister, Eyal said he has now made it his mission to raise awareness and try to convince anyone struggling with the same issues as Shirel to seek help.

“I hope that if I can share her story (with) the world, every person who suffers from PTSD will know that they are not alone,” he said.

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Three Mile Island nuclear plant gears up for Big Tech reboot





The Three Mile Island Nuclear power plant is seen at sunset in Middletown, Pennsylvania

Tue, October 22, 2024 
By Laila Kearney

THREE MILE ISLAND, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Giant cooling towers at Constellation Energy's Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania have sat dormant for so long that grass has sprung up in the towers' hollowed-out bases and wildlife roam inside.

Armed guard stations at an entrance to the shut concrete facility, surrounded by barbed wire, sit empty. The plant, which would run so loud when operating that workers were required to wear hearing protection, is nearly silent.

"It's still eerie walking in here and it's, just, quiet," Constellation regulatory assurance manager Craig Smith said during a tour of the plant last week. Smith, who worked at Three Mile Island when Constellation shut the site’s remaining reactor in 2019, is now preparing for a restart.

Constellation announced last month that it would revive the half-century-old Three Mile Island with the purpose of fueling Microsoft's data centers. Microsoft is expected to pay at least $100 a megawatt-hour, nearly double the typical cost of renewable energy in the region, as part of the 20-year power contract.

The agreement shows the dramatic lengths Big Tech is willing to go to procure electricity for its artificial intelligence expansion and the undertaking by the U.S. power industry to meet that demand.

The effort to restore Unit 1 at Three Mile Island is expected to take four years, at least $1.6 billion, and thousands of workers to complete the unprecedented task of restarting a retired nuclear plant.


Constellation has already ordered costly equipment for the site and identified fuel for the unit's reactor core, with work expected to start early next year, according to Reuters' interviews with company executives, contractors and a tour of the site.

Successfully resurrecting Three Mile Island, which is widely known for a 1979 partial meltdown that cast a pall over the U.S. nuclear sector for decades, would put the plant at the front edge of an industry revival.

Nuclear creates large amounts of carbon-free electricity. That is attractive to companies, like Microsoft, that have climate pledges and face increasing public scrutiny for their voracious power use.

Microsoft would consider signing other power purchase agreements to restart shut plants, Alistair Speirs, senior director of Microsoft's Azure Global Infrastructure, told Reuters.

"I don't think anything's off the table," Speirs said.

Relaunching Three Mile Island would supply to the regional grid 835 megawatts of electricity - enough for all of Philadelphia's homes - to help offset Microsoft's power consumption.



A restart of the plant, however, is not certain. Three Mile Island, which will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Complex, still requires licensing modifications and permitting. Local activists have also vowed to fight the project over safety and environmental concerns.

If the plan suffers the same lengthy delays and cost overruns that have plagued nearly every nuclear build in the country's history, it could stymie other deals and set back Big Tech's quest to rapidly expand, power experts say.

MILLIONS OF FEET OF BUILDING

Earlier this year, Constellation finished initial testing of the plant's Unit 1 to determine whether it was financially reasonable to resurrect it.

After learning that the central generator, which would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to replace, was in strong condition, the company moved ahead with its plan.

“We have a perfectly ready-to-go main generator just waiting for the rest of the plant to get started,” said Smith, standing in front of a row of massive turbines.


About a thousand carpenters, electricians, pipefitters and other tradesmen are expected to be deployed to the site, said Rob Bair, president of Pennsylvania Building Trades.

Work will likely start in the first quarter of 2025 with restoring two 370-foot (113-m) high cooling towers, which were stripped bare after the plant shut.

"There is a ton of equipment that has to go back in those towers," said Bair, whose father helped build Unit 1, which opened in 1974.

Workers will be hoisted up the top of the towers to install lighting and restock the buildings from within. The structures' bases, which were once made of redwood, will be refurbished with modern materials.

Next, restorations inside of the plant will begin: some major equipment will be replaced. Constellation recently ordered the site's main transformer, which is expected to cost around $100 million including installation, to be delivered in 2027.

Piping and electrical work, scrubbing condensers and cleaning out power generators, will be among the next tasks. A million-gallon tank will be filled with water.


Much of the analogue control room, with a panel installed in the early 1970s, will stay the same. A benefit of keeping the analogue system is that it would be more secure against cyberattacks, officials said.

Completing the job will require several million feet of scaffolding, built by scaffologists, or carpenters with special licenses, to be assembled repeatedly around the island.

"And all of that has to be done before you can even put fuel on the site," Bair said.

The company has commissioned the fuel design for the reactor's core, said Constellation Chief Generation Officer Bryan Hanson. The core holds the enriched uranium, the fuel source for the plant, stacked in pellets and sealed in tubes.

Constellation, which is the biggest U.S. operator of nuclear plants, will tap into fuel from its existing enriched uranium reserves as one of the final steps before starting up.

The effort is part of a recent turnaround of U.S. nuclear power, which suffered from competition from cheap fuel and fears of meltdowns, said John Ciampaglia, CEO of Sprott Asset Management, which manages a large physical uranium fund.


In Michigan, Holtec is in the process of trying to restart another reactor site.

Constellation's stock price has soared by 135% so far this year amid fresh projections for record U.S. power consumption next year and a doubling of data center demand by 2030.

Not everyone is enthused about the prospect of a nuclear comeback. The power plants produce waste that can remain radioactive for thousands of years.

About a tennis court-size amount of spent nuclear fuel from Unit 1 is stored on Three Mile Island, which sits on a strip of land in the Susquehanna River. The decommissioning of Unit 2 is still underway about 45 years after the partial meltdown.

Local activist Eric Epstein, who remembers the March 1979 incident, said he will fight Constellation's request to resume operating and water use licenses.

"It's going to be a protracted battle," Epstein said.

The first chance for the challenges comes on Oct. 25, when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled its initial public hearing on Constellation's plan to restart Unit 1.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Marguerita Choy)


AI's surge is sparking demand for an unexpected GE Vernova product

Rob Lenihan
Mon, October 21, 2024 at 5:15 PM MDT 5 min read

If you're excited about the growth of artificial intelligence, we have some electrifying news for you.

AI takes up a good chunk of the world’s energy — and it will be using even more in the coming years.

The average ChatGPT query consumes nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search and Goldman Sachs Research estimated in a May study that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030.

Currently data centers worldwide consume 1% to 2% of overall power, but this percentage will likely rise to 3% to 4% by the end of the decade, the firm said.

"In the US and Europe, this increased demand will help drive the kind of electricity growth that hasn’t been seen in a generation," the Goldman study said.

Data center workloads nearly tripled between 2015 and 2019, but the demand for power remained relatively flat at about 200 terawatt-hours per year, Goldman said, as these facilities kept growing more efficient in how they used the power they drew.

But since 2020, the efficiency gains appear to have dwindled, and the power consumed by data centers has risen.
A

nalysts are issuing research reports for GE Vernova
SOPA Images/Getty Images

GE Vernova 'adding gigawatts of nuclear energy'

"Some AI innovations will boost computing speed faster than they ramp up their electricity use, but the widening use of AI will still imply an increase in the technology’s consumption of power," the report said.

Nuclear energy is being suggested as a way to meet the tech power demand.

Related: Nvidia stock hits record high as key AI player smashes Q3 earnings

Small modular reactors (SMRs) can generate up to roughly one-third the amount of power of a traditional reactor, and developers say they can be built faster and at lower cost than large power reactors.


On Oct. 16, the U.S. Department of Energy opened applications for up to $900 million in funding to support the deployment of small nuclear reactors.

“Revitalizing America’s nuclear sector is key to adding more carbon-free energy to the grid and meeting the needs of our growing economy—from AI and data centers to manufacturing and healthcare,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.

Some of the biggest names in the tech sector, including Amazon (AMZN) , Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google, and Microsoft (MSFT) , have all recently announced agreements with nuclear energy companies.

Scott Strazik believes his company can play a role in the brave nuclear world.

Strazik is CEO of GE Vernova (GEV) , one of three companies spun off from General Electric, a list that also includes GE HealthCare and GE Aerospace.


GE Vernova, which started trading as a stand-alone company in April, focuses on electrification and carbonization.

"I do think in the early 2030s this will start to scale," CEO Scott Strazik told the Wall Street Journal last month. "We’re going to be adding gigawatts upon gigawatts of nuclear capacity every year. So it’s going to take this decade to really validate the technology, get a few of the first projects cut into COD, or commercial operation date."


"And I’m highly confident in the 2030s this is going to be a very material part of the equation for us," he added.

GE Vernova's nuclear business, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, signed a series of Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) in September to support the delivery of its SMR technology in the United Kingdom.

Investment firms have been issuing research notes recently for GE Vernova.

Bank of America Securities said on Oct. 20 that, based on over 60 years of experience in nuclear power, GE Vernova has developed an SMR, the BWRX-300, that has won its first contract and has a pipeline of 28 units in various stages of regulatory approval, according to The Fly.

B of A, which said that it sees a "big opportunity in small reactors" for GE Vernova and called recent headlines about more nuclear investment "a positive" for the company.
Analyst: GE Vernova 'global leader in electric power'

The firm maintained its buy rating and $300 price target on the shares.

Deutsche Bank analyst Nicole DeBlase initiated coverage of GE Vernova with a buy rating and $354 price target.

GE Vernova is a global leader in the electric power industry, providing products and services that generate, transfer, orchestrate, convert, and store electricity, the analyst said.

DeBlase said the company is a pure play on global investment in power generating capacity, and the outlook for power investment "is stronger than it has been in decades."

She projected a 63% adjusted EBITDA annual growth through 2027 for GE Vernova.

On Oct. 18, RBC Capital analyst Christopher Dendrinos raised the firm's price target on GE Vernova to $262 from $246 and kept an outperform rating on the shares as part of a broader research note previewing third quarter results in the U.S. Clean Energy sector.

The current dynamics — including the election cycle, elevated current but expected lower future interest rates, changing trade policies and competitive environments — have produced mixed results, and the investor sentiment “remains bearish” on the space, the analyst said.

Dendrinos also sees limited upside opportunity ahead of the November election and risk that is “largely to the downside” heading into earnings, amid limited cash generation, upside due to competition among solar installers and project delays for utility scale operators.

Offsetting the negatives, however could be the company's strong Power and Electrification performance and gas turbine orders that could be up significantly and will drive shares higher, Dendrinos said.

Not everyone is on board with small nuclear reactors.

A 2022 study by Stanford University and the University of British Columbia said that “small modular reactors, long touted as the future of nuclear energy, will actually generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power plants.”

“Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our case study,” said the study's lead author Lindsay Krall.

"“These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies," she added.

THE COUNTRY NOT THE STATE

Georgia's shark-owning billionaire tells voters: Don't risk war with Russia

 A pro-government rally in support of a bill on "foreign agents" in Tbilisi

By Felix Light
Mon, October 21, 2024 

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia's saviour. Russia's stooge. Philanthropist. Oligarch. Bidzina Ivanishvili has been called all these things, and more.

The billionaire, Georgia's richest person and the founder of its ruling party, is seldom seen in public and, of late, almost exclusively behind bulletproof glass. Yet his presence looms large over this small European country caught been Russia and the West and an election that could shape its destiny.


Ivanishvili can gaze down on downtown Tbilisi from a massive steel-and-glass clifftop mansion that rears about 60 metres over the capital, complete with helipad. He indulges exotic passions like keeping sharks and zebras and collecting rare trees.

The 68-year-old is viewed by many friends and foes alike as Georgia's most powerful figure, or eminence grise, even though he hasn't held public office for over a decade. He has cast Saturday's election as an existential fight to prevent a "Global War Party" in the West pushing Georgia into a ruinous conflict with former overlord Russia, like he says it did with Ukraine.

"Georgia and Ukraine were not allowed to join NATO and were left outside," he said in a rare public appearance at a pro-government rally in Tbilisi on Apr. 29.

"All such decisions are made by the Global War Party, which has a decisive influence on NATO and the European Union and which only sees Georgia and Ukraine as cannon fodder."

While most of Georgia's 3.7 million people are keen to move closer to the West by joining the EU and NATO, and largely don't trust Russia, opinion polls show, Ivanishvili's message resounds with many who want to avoid Ukraine's fate at all costs.

Memories are fresh of a 2008 war with Russia over the Moscow-backed breakway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which lasted five days and ended in Georgia's defeat.

Oleg Machavariani's home is only six miles from South Ossetia. The 75-year-old retired civil servant fears a rerun of history should the staunchly pro-Western and anti-Russian opposition win power.

"I think the first thing that will happen is that we'll get sucked into war."

Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream is on course to become the country's most popular party in the election, opinion polls indicate, though it is set to lose ground nationally since 2020 when it won a narrow majority in parliament.

Ivanishvili, who was strongly pro-Western throughout his party's first decade in power, was not available to be interviewed for this article, while Georgian Dream says it remains committed to integration with the West, and to a pragmatic policy towards neighbouring Russia.

Reuters interviews with several former close associates of the billionaire, as well as voters on both sides of the spectrum and Georgia experts, offer a window into the influence wielded by this mysterious magnate in the South Caucasus nation.

'THE CONSOLIDATION OF POWER IS HUGE'

Allies in the highest halls of power speak of him in near-messianic terms.

"When the people had lost all hope forever, a man appeared who gave it back to them," two-time former Prime Minster Irakli Garibashvili said of Ivanishvili's initial election win in 2012, after which he served as premier for one year.

Garibashvili was among a string of officials who heaped praise on Ivanishvili, the party's honorary chair, in speeches at a rally in September when - unlike the tycoon - they weren't shielded by bulletproof glass. Current premier Irakli Kobakhidze said Ivanishvili had sacrificed everything, including his wellbeing, to deliver Georgia from political enemies.

Ivanishvili spent much of the 1990s in Russia, founding banking, metals and telecoms companies and growing wealthy in the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

His political opponents paint a picture of a power-hungry oligarch who wields dangerous control over former Soviet state Georgia. Many dub his party "Russian Dream". Some brand him a Kremlin asset, without presenting evidence for this.

"He has turned Georgia into a private company, of which he is the 100% owner," said Gia Khukhashvili, Ivanishvili's former top political adviser, who helped him launch Georgian Dream before their relationship broke down in 2014 when Khukhashvili accused him of retaining power from behind the scenes.

Giorgi Gakharia, who served as a Georgian Dream prime minister from 2019-21 and resigned after accusing Ivanishvili of interfering in government matters, echoed the critique.

"The consolidation of power is huge," said Gakharia, who now leads the For Georgia party, one of four main blocs of Georgia's splintered opposition running in the Oct. 26 election.

"There is not even one independent institution anymore in this country," said Gakharia, who listed the heads of Georgia's central bank, electoral commission, state audit office and judiciary as all being ultimately answerable to the magnate.

"All these people are directly connected with Ivanishvili. They are loyal to him."

Georgia's justice ministry, audit office and central bank didn't respond to requests for comment. The electoral commission said suggestions it was influenced by the ruling party were "unfounded and detrimental to the integrity of the electoral process."

'180-DEGREE TURN' ON WEST RHETORIC

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ivanishvili has all but reversed Georgia's long-standing alignment with the West, one which he himself championed while prime minister in 2012-13.

This year, the Georgian Dream government has pushed through bills on "foreign agents", which requires organisations receiving more than 20% of funding from abroad to register as such, and cracked down on LGBT rights, decisions praised by Moscow and denounced by critics as anti-democratic and Russian-inspired.

The moves, along with increased anti-Western rhetoric from Tbilisi, have led to the U.S. and EU suspending some aid to Georgia and the bloc freezing the country's membership application.

Giorgi Margvelashvili, Georgia's president in 2013-18 and a close colleague of Ivanishvili in opposition and the early years in power, said the billionaire had appeared sincerely pro-Western while in frontline politics.

He described him as a calm, strategic thinker who sought to balance a pro-EU and NATO policy with an imperative to avoid provoking Georgia's vast northern neighbour.

Margvelashvili said there had nonetheless been a new hostility in Ivanishvili's anti-West rhetoric since the Ukraine war, a shift which seemed to him deeply out of character.

"We can only speculate what forced Bidzina Ivanishvili into this kind of political turmoil," Margvelashvili said. "Suddenly changing the rhetoric 180 degrees is not his style."

NATO agreed at a 2008 Budapest summit that Georgia would eventually become a member. That was a few months before the war with Russia, and little progress has been made since.

Many Georgians are wary of the ordeal of Ukraine, where the pro-Western Maidan protests of 2013-2014 ousted a pro-Russian government before Moscow annexed Crimea and began supplying arms to separatists in the country's east.

Russian officials have repeatedly said they don't interfere with sovereign states and have accused the West of meddling in Georgian politics. Russia's foreign spy chief Sergei Naryshkin said this month he was sure Georgians would make the "correct" choice and vote for "healthy, patriotic forces".

Ex-adviser Khukhashvili said Ivanishvili had told him that he left Russia after Putin's rise to power in 2000, believing the president would crack down on politically ambitious businessmen. Khukhashvili said Ivanishvili's shift in foreign policy since the Ukraine conflict was an attempt to spare himself and Georgia from Putin's wrath.

Ivanishvili himself took a big hit in the West in 2020, when a rogue banker at Credit Suisse embezzled about $1 billion of his cash. Though much of the money has been recovered, his allies have cited the case as proof that he is under "de facto" U.S. sanctions. The U.S. has repeatedly said that Ivanishvili hasn't been sanctioned.

LET 'ORDINARY PEOPLE' LEAD GEORGIA

Natalie Sabanadze, a former Georgian ambassador to the EU, told Reuters Georgian Dream also drew strength from the unpopularity of the opposition, which has struggled to shake off its association with the divisive figure of former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, who ruled until 2012 and is now serving a six-year jail term for abuse of power.

Despite deteriorating relations with the West, the ruling party can still rely on a "status-quo factor", especially among rural and public-sector workers, said Sabanadze, a senior research fellow at London think-tank Chatham House.

Indeed, in the poor, rural western part of Georgia where Ivanishvili grew up, he's revered by many locals as a philanthropist. Levan Ivanashvili, district mayor in the town of Sachkhere, pointed out projects financed by the favourite son: three schools, a football stadium, swimming pool, hospital and hotel, as well as a restoration of the historic castle.

Other voters have had enough.

"Mr Ivanishvili has done positive things for Georgia in the past, but he has declined, Georgia under him is declining," Nikoloz Shurgaia said at an opposition rally in Tbilisi. "Let a new generation of politicians, ordinary people, lead Georgia to a better future."

(Reporting by Felix Light; Additional reporting by Lucy Papachristou in London and Simon Lewis in Washington; Editing by Pravin Char)

UK 

Water companies push for higher bills again as customers face up to 84% hike

Thames Water has asked to raise its bills by 53 per cent by the 2029-2030 financial year (EPA)

Howard Mustoe
Tue, October 22, 2024

THE INDPENDENT

Water companies are lobbying for bill rises of up to 84 per cent in the next five years in a fresh blow to customers.

Firms including beleaguered Thames Water have applied to the regulator, Ofwat, to hike tariffs so they can upgrade their networks, often after years of underinvestment.

The increases will also pay for higher energy costs since pumping water around the country uses plenty of power, as does treating sewage. Energy costs make up around a tenth of water companies’ costs.


Southern Water wants bills to rise the most from today’s prices, by 84 per cent, with Thames Water asking for a 53 per cent rise. Northumbrian water has requested the least, at 21 per cent for the 2029-2030 financial year.

Since being privatised in 1989 by the then Conservative government, many water companies have been accused of underinvestment and paying large dividends to their new owners.

Thames Water has come in for particular scrutiny because of its parlous financial position. It has been teetering on the edge of collapse and is trying to raise money from its investors.

Southern Water is asking for the largest bill hike, a rise of 84 per cent 

(Chris Ison/PA) (PA Archive)

The company has £15bn of debt and it is in talks with 90 of its creditors who hold about two-thirds of those borrowings.

The companies have also been criticised for the amount of raw sewage that has been dumped into rivers and the sea.

The firms can release sewage when rainfall is high to prevent flooding, but these releases have grown in frequency and have led to more beaches being shut.

The Environment Agency has warned against swimming at 24 sites in the UK because of drops in water quality, warning of the risk of sickness for those who do.

Earlier this month Ofwat said water companies were being hit with £157.6m in penalties after they missed pollution and leak targets. Thames Water accounted for more than a third of the fines at £56.8m.

The firms’ poor performance has led to calls for the companies to be renationalised, but that would cost £99bn, an unlikely figure given Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ plan to shore up public finances.

Baroness Hayman, a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) minister, told the House of Lords last month: “Given the significant costs attached, the Government has no intention to nationalise water companies.”

Labour vowed to “put failing water companies under special measures to clean up our water” in its 2024 general election manifesto.

Ofwat will make a final decision on water companies’ plans to raise bills from 2025 to 2030 in December.

Bonus payments to water company bosses rise to £9.1m amid sewage scandal

A third of Americans agree with Trump that immigrants ‘poison the blood’ of US

Michael Sainato

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, October 18, 2024 

A new poll has revealed that more than one-third of Americans agree with Donald Trump’s warning that undocumented immigrants in the US are “poisoning the blood” of America.

A significant 34% of the respondents to the poll, conducted by the Brookings Institution and Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), agreed with the statement previously made on the election campaign trail by the former US president and Republican party nominee for the White House, Donald Trump.

“One-third of Americans (34%) say that immigrants entering the country illegally today are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, including six in 10 Republicans (61%), 30% of independents, and only 13% of Democrats,” a summary of the annual poll stated, which surveyed more than 5,000 individuals from 16 August to 4 September.

“This is a truly alarming situation to find this kind of rhetoric, find this kind of support from one of our two major political parties,” said Robert Jones, president and founder of the PRRI, during a presentation of the poll’s findings. “That language is straight out of Mein Kampf. This kind of poisoning the blood, it’s Nazi rhetoric.”

Trump told supporters during a rally in New Hampshire in December 2023 that immigrants coming into the US are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

“They let – I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

He repeated the phrase in a social media post after the rally and had previously used it in a September 2023 interview.

“Blood poisoning” was a term used by Adolf Hitler in his Mein Kampf manifesto. Trump’s comments incited a strong rebuke from the Biden campaign at the time.

Related: Where do Harris and Trump stand on the key election issues?

The former Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie responded to Trump’s comments by stating: “He’s disgusting.”

The television presenter Geraldo Rivera recently cited the comments made by Trump in an interview with NewsNation, explaining why he would not vote for the former president. “I don’t know how any Latino person of any self-esteem, any self-respect, would be in favor of the ranting, the poisoning the blood of the country.”

The poll also found nearly one in four Trump supporters, 23%, believe if he loses the election that he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.

Nearly 1 in 5 Republicans believe if Trump loses he should do ‘whatever it takes’ to put himself in White House

Gustaf Kilander
Mon, October 21, 2024 

Nineteen percent of Republicans believe former President Donald Trump should do “whatever it takes” to return to power, even if that means calling the results invalid if he loses, a new national poll shows.

The group of Republicans willing to depart from democratic norms and possibly even use violence to get their way is getting bigger as Trump continues to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that November’s showdown has already been rigged.

The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, reveals how Trump has molded the Republican Party in his image as he motivates its most extreme members.

Democrats argue that Trump is a threat to democracy, and some in the party – 12 percent in the poll – say Vice President Kamala Harris should also reject the results if she loses.

The poll also shows that 29 percent of Republicans “believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” Sixteen percent of independents and eight percent of Democrats say the same.

The president and founder of the research institute, Robert Jones, told Axios, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers ... are keeping me up at night.”

He added those saying that the loser of the election should do whatever it takes to assume power are essentially backing a coup, calling it “pretty dark and worrisome.”

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waves during a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A new poll shows a number of Republicans believe he should do “whatever it takes” for him to get to the White House (AP)

Forty-one percent of Americans who trust conservative news outlets back the idea of using political violence to acheive political goals – and 30 percent of loyal Fox News viewers support the idea, according to the survey.

Among those who don’t watch TV news, 18 percent said they would support political violence, and the same was true for 13 percent of those who said they don’t trust mainstream media.

There are also differences in support for political violence along racial and religious lines, with 33 percent of Latter-day Saints and 28 percent of white evangelical Protestants believing that “patriots” may have to resort to violence to “save the country.”

Among Hispanic Catholics, that figure was 18 percent, among Black Protestants, it was 14 percent, and 10 percent of Jewish Americans backed the idea of using political violence.

However, there are some issues that appear to unite most Americans, such as limiting Supreme Court Justices to serve until a certain age or a specific number of years instead of for life, which 73 percent of Americans agreed with, according to the poll.

Meanwhile, 68 percent of Americans are also united in opposing legislation that would make it illegal to use or receive FDA-approved drugs, such as the abortion pill mifepristone, in the mail.


Opinion

An Alarming Number of Republicans Want Trump to Do Another Coup

Edith Olmsted
Mon, October 21, 2024 

NEW REPUBLIC


Nearly one in five Republicans say that if Trump loses the election he should declare the results invalid, and do whatever it takes to assume office, according to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institute published earlier this month. An even larger number support their party using violence to advance their political aims.

If Trump loses, there are quite a few ways he could try to fight his way into the White House. Politico speculated that the Republican nominee could potentially undermine the vote certification process, convince Republican-led state legislatures to appoint alternate electors, and lobby for a GOP-led House to accept his alternate electors, essentially allowing the House to choose the president.

Meanwhile, only 12 percent of Democrats surveyed said that if Kamala Harris loses, she should call the results invalid, and seize the office.

49 percent of Americans believe that Trump would use the office of president to become dictator, while only 28 percent hold a similar concern about Harris. While disturbing, it’s not particularly surprising, considering Trump’s explicitly authoritarian plan to enact massive deportations and undermine rights and public education. There’s also that pesky promise to become a dictator on “day one.”

The survey also found that Republicans were more likely to support political violence than Democrats, with 29 percent of Republicans believing that true American patriots may resort to violence to save the country, compared with only 8 percent of Democrats agreeing with that statement.

Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, told Axios that the results were particularly disturbing. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers … are keeping me up at night,” Jones said.

BTO

Back-to-office orders have become common. Enforcement not so much

Roger Vincent
Mon, October 21, 2024 

(Photo illustration by Jim Cooke / Photos via Getty Images)


Since Cynthia Clemons' employer announced last month that she was required to be in the office two days each week, the switch from remote work hasn't been smooth.

The self-described extrovert, who works as an organizer for the nonprofit Abundant Housing LA, said she so far hasn't "gotten into a rhythm of being productive at a desk again."

"I feel like I'm back in grade school and being forced to sit down and do my homework," she said. "Maybe it's a matter of getting used to it."


More than four years after the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled work culture by closing offices and forcing people to work from home, friction between bosses and their employees over the terms of their return shows no signs of abating.

About 80% of organizations have put in place return-to-office policies, but in a sign that many managers are reluctant to clamp down on the flexibility employees have become accustomed to, only 17% of those organizations actively enforce their policies, according to recent research by real estate brokerage CBRE.

Read more: More evidence that bosses want you back to work in the office despite COVID's endless grip

"Some organizations out there have 'mandated' something, but if most of your organization is not following that mandate, then there is not too much you can do to enforce it," said Julie Whelan, head of research into workplace trends for CBRE.

So, for many employers, setting rules for how often workers must come to the office has turned into a tricky search for a Goldilocks formula that will keep both bosses and workers reasonably happy — or at least not in open conflict. Managers may yearn for the days when daily attendance was a given, but their employees have moved on to a new normal and appear to be in no mood to go back.

The tension "is due to the fact that we have changed since we all went to our separate corners and then came back" from pandemic-imposed office exile, said Elizabeth Brink, a workplace expert at architecture firm Gensler. "It's fair to say that we have different needs now."

A disconnect persists between employer expectations for office attendance and employee behavior, CBRE found. Sixty percent of leaders surveyed said they want their employees in the office three or more days a week, while only 51% reported that employees work in the office at that frequency.

Conversely, 37% of employees show up one or two days a week, yet only 17% of employers are satisfied with that attendance.

CBRE surveyed 225 corporate real estate executives who oversee portfolios of office buildings to analyze trends among occupants seeking to implement hybrid work models.

As employers struggle to get their employees back in person, they also are also calculating whether to shed office space to cut down on rent, typically the largest cost of operating a business after payroll. Some employers are eliminating personal desks in favor of unassigned work stations that can be occupied as needed, allowing businesses to shrink their office footprints.

Such downsizing has contributed to widespread office vacancies in some urban centers including downtown Los Angeles, where overall vacancy is more than 30%, according to CBRE.

In efforts to raise attendance, companies are experimenting with carrots and sticks, trying to make the office a more appealing place to visit while testing methods to enforce in-office policies.

Read more: As high-rise offices lose their luster, can this part of downtown L.A. find a way forward?

At Los Angeles financial services firm Wedbush Securities, most employees are expected to be in the office one-third of the days of the month while working remotely the rest of the time. The reduction in required time on-site has allowed the firm to cut its office footprint dramatically from more than 100,000 square feet in downtown L.A. to 20,000 square feet in an ongoing move to new quarters in Pasadena.

President Gary Wedbush is depending on supervisors "to keep their teams honest" about how often they show up at work, he said, but some compliance measures may be coming.

"There definitely needs to be some type of enforcement function," he said, though the firm hasn't settled on one yet. Among the options are tracking security badge swipes or checking where company laptops are plugged in during the day.

Attendance will also be "an important factor" in performance evaluations, Wedbush said. "We need to have colleagues be together to collaborate, because we definitely think that's going to support and continue to improve our client experience. We feel very strongly about that."

Employees at the DTLA Alliance business improvement district in downtown Los Angeles do not have to follow a formal or enforced attendance policy, Executive Vice President Nick Griffin said, but "the expectation is you should default to working in the office unless there is a good reason otherwise."

"I personally prefer being in the office, to be close to my team and to be able to chat through things at the drop of a hat," he said. "That's very valuable to me."

Flexibility is helpful to employees, though, he said. Some of Griffin's staff work from home now and then, and he highlighted an employee with a small child who lives far from the office who is allowed to work remotely most of the time while being "among the most productive members of our team."

"One of the things that we have found is that good employees are good employees, whether they're in the office or remote, and mediocre employers are mediocre, whether they're chained to their desk or not."

The DTLA Alliance's accommodation of the employee with a young child and a long commute reflects the challenge bosses have in meeting the desires of employees in different stages of their lives and careers as companies move past one-size-fits-all attendance policies.

Younger people may value the freedom to get their work done around going to the gym or meeting with friends, while an older employee might be juggling commuting to the office with child care or elder care, Whelan said.

"First of all, regardless of generation, from baby boomers down to Gen Z, flexibility is important," Whelan said. "Nobody wants to be told anymore that there's one place they need to be from eight to six, five days a week."

An employee works in a common space at the Los Angeles offices of ChowNow, an online food-ordering platform. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Bosses, meanwhile, see value in having people of all experience levels in the office to build a corporate culture and shared sense of mission.

"The crux of this challenge is keeping people at younger stages engaged and feeling like they're part of something bigger, and that they're getting that knowledge-sharing and mentorship they need to really further their career," Whelan said. "The younger generation needs the older generation to be there to pass down that knowledge."

Being in the office can boost employees' mental health, Brink said, especially if it has a variety of work spaces that allow staff to both collaborate and work privately.

"One of the reasons people do want to come in to the office is to connect with one another," she said, "because it's been really challenging for many people to be so isolated."

Free food and drinks, comfortable furniture, and communal work tables can be draws, Brink said. Some newer offices have library-type spaces designated as quiet zones, where cellphones and conversations are not allowed.

"That can be really helpful for people who need that intense focus," she said.

Offices will remain "a very core piece of organizational culture" in the years ahead, Whelan said, but how often employees will be required to be there is far from settled.

"I do believe that it will take a generational change in management before this story is really fully told," she said. Future generations of leadership may decide to vary in-office requirements depending on the goals of their organizations at particular points in time.

"It will become less of a conversation of how many days of the week and more of a conversation about, are the things that I'm supposed to be accomplishing with my team together being accomplished?"

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.