Comet Leonard lights up the night sky this Christmas

Thomas Hornberger
Fri, December 24, 2021

Eighty-thousand years ago, Comet Leonard zoomed past Earth for the first time. Now, it's lighting up the skies once again. Leonard is the most anticipated and dazzling comet of the year. It was first discovered by Gregory Leonard, a senior research specialist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, earlier this year.

The comet came within 21 million miles of Earth — the closest it will get — on December 12, and is now heading out towards the sun. It's traveling at a speed of 158,084 miles per hour, relative to Earth, according to the astronomy site EarthSky.

"This is the last time we are going to see the comet," Leonard said in an interview posted by the University of Arizona. "It's speeding along at escape velocity, 44 miles per second. After its slingshot around the sun, it will be ejected from our solar system, and it may stumble into another star system millions of years from now."

/ Credit: / Getty Images

The comet can be seen at night about an hour after sunset above the southwestern horizon. Experts are saying to use Venus as a guide to help you find the comet. NASA says you may need binoculars to spot it.

This will be the last chance stargazers have for viewing before the comet travels deep into space — if it doesn't break up first. The comet, which is mostly made up of space dust, rock and ice, could disintegrate at any time.

The NASA and ESA Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager caught several images of the comet passing Earth last week. They used the images to create a video.

 

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

A Second Morgan Stanley Trader Linked to FX Probe Leaves the Lender

Donal Griffin
Thu, December 23, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- A Morgan Stanley currency trader, whose unit was tied to an internal probe into suspected mismarking in 2019, has left the firm, the second such departure in recent months.

Rodrigo Jolig, who helped run the New York-based bank’s FX options business before being suspended amid an internal probe two years ago, was discharged in November after the investment bank disclosed allegations about his conduct, according to filings from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The allegations against Jolig were linked to “valuation control processes and marking non-securities positions relative to profit and loss goals” and “communicating about affiliate business using an unapproved communication platform,” the Finra filing shows. The claims are similar to those levied against his former boss Thiago Melzer, the bank’s ex-head of FX options trading who was discharged in June, Bloomberg reported.

Jolig and Melzer were stars at the Wall Street lender until a series of complex transactions linked to the Turkish lira went awry in 2019, losing millions of dollars and prompting officials at the bank to investigate whether traders had been valuing the deals improperly, Bloomberg revealed at the time. The status of that review -- and its conclusions -- are unclear.

Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley in New York, declined to comment. Roberta Scrivano, a spokeswoman for Jolig, also declined comment.

Both Jolig and Melzer have since started hedge funds in their native Brazil, Bloomberg reported in September. Jolig is a partner in Alphatree Capital, a new hedge fund backed by the family of Brazilian property tycoon Elie Horn. Melzer has started a fund called Upon Global Capital, where he is chief investment officer.

Fund Critic Birdthistle to Take Reins at SEC’s Division of Investment Management

By Kenneth Corbin

BARRONS
Dec. 23, 2021 2:51 pm ET

The Securities and Exchange Commission has tapped a law professor and vocal critic of the mutual fund industry to head up the Division of Investment Management, the unit of the agency that develops policy governing the advisor and fund industries.

William Birdthistle will join the SEC from the Chicago-Kent College of Law, where his research has focused on securities regulation and investment funds, which figures to be an active area of policymaking under the agenda of Chairman Gary Gensler.


Birdthistle is a prominent critic of the fund sector, arguing that the industry is riddled with bad behavior among asset managers. As the head of the division that develops policy in the fund and advisor space, he will now have a chance to put his ideas into regulatory initiatives.

“Professor Birdthistle will bring remarkable expertise in investment funds to the SEC,” Gensler says in a statement.


William Birdthistle at the law library at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Illinois Institute of Technology

“The Division of Investment Management develops regulatory policies to oversee investment companies and investment advisors so that American investors can confidently save to buy homes, pay for college, or plan for retirement,” Gensler says. “I look forward to working closely with William to execute our mission.”

Birdthistle did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his priorities at the SEC. In a statement, he lauds the investment management unit’s “exceptional reputation for protecting investors in funds and the asset management arena,” and says he is eager to work with the chairman and staff “to help investors and others.”

As author of the 2016 book Empire of the Fund: The Way We Save Now, Birdthistle argues that Americans saving for retirement through fund-heavy 401(k) plans and IRAs are vulnerable to “the built-in flaws, perverse incentives, and litany of scandals that have bedeviled mutual funds,” according to a synopsis of the book.

“Though Americans often hear of the importance of low fees in fund investing, few are aware of the panoply of ways that some financial advisors have illegally diverted money out of mutual funds: from abetting hedge funds in trading after the legal deadline, to inflating the assets on which they are paid a percentage, to paying kickbacks for brokers to sell their funds,” the synopsis says.

Birdthistle joins the commission at a time when the chairman has laid out an ambitious regulatory agenda, and brought in staffers like Barbara Roper, a leading advocate for stricter investor protections, that signal a pivot toward a more muscular regulatory regime that has some industry leaders worried. Writing this week in Barron’s, Baird Vice Chairman John Taft warned that the industry is facing “the single most aggressive regulatory push we’ve seen from the SEC in decades.”

The addition of Birdthistle to the division of the SEC overseeing funds and advisors won’t likely allay any of those concerns.

“One would expect that he will bring a very strong pro-investor bias to the SEC Division of Investment Management, with a particular focus on transparency,” Bill Singer, a veteran securities attorney and the author of the Broke and Broker blog, says in an email to Barron’s Advisor.

“My expectation is that he will push for more clarity as to fees and will certainly seek to discourage the conflicts inherent in the ’40 Act community that are nurtured by the overlap of mutual funds, investment advisors, and brokerage firms,” Singer said, referring the 1940 Investment Advisers Act and Investment Company Act, the foundational statutes for regulation of advisors and fund companies.

Duane Thompson, president of the consultancy Potomac Strategies, anticipates that Birdthistle could advance the commission’s efforts to crack down on funds and advisors that advertise ESG investments, products that purport to make commitments around environmental, social, and governance practices. That could include ensuring that an advisor’s ESG disclosures on Form ADV are in line with their portfolios.

Thompson also notes that Birdthistle, an academic, follows a pattern of Gensler bringing in outsiders to head divisions, rather than the more customary selections of prominent Wall Street attorneys, suggesting that “a modest shakeup is in store in terms of prioritizing which regulatory issues to tackle.”

“Given the shakeup at the division levels by Chairman Gensler, I think there could be a few surprises in store for this part of the securities industry,” Thompson says. “We’ll just have to wait and see what Mr. Birdthistle has in mind.”

PRIVATIZATION CHICKENS HOME TO ROOST
U.K. Government Repeats Bulb Energy Mistake by Failing to Hedge

Todd Gillespie, Lucca de Paoli and Alex Morales
Thu, December 23, 2021




(Bloomberg) -- After nationalizing Bulb Energy Ltd., the U.K. government is making the same mistake that helped take down the nation’s seventh biggest supplier in the first place: failing to hedge adequately.

The energy firm, currently run by special administrator, isn’t buying power and gas in advance to shield its finances from rising prices as Treasury rules won’t allow the government to hedge, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details are private. Bulb’s employees are also being paid higher salaries as administrator Teneo Inc. seek to retain staff needed to run the firm.

All of that risks ballooning the 1.7-billion-pound ($2.3 billion) bailout bill that will eventually be paid by consumers. Gas prices in the U.K. have surged more than 60% since the government announced it was taking steps to run Bulb. The forced nationalization -- the first since the 2008 banking crisis -- had already been questioned as cheaper options were available.

“We’re focused on continuing to deliver the best possible service for our members during this period,” Bulb said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “In order to do this, we’ve offered team members who stay with Bulb - excluding our executive team - a payment on top of their normal salary.”

The U.K. energy market is facing a crisis, with 24 firms that supply households having failed since August, forcing millions of customers to switch supplier. As gas prices soared 500% this year, many small providers that weren’t hedged couldn’t afford to buy energy for their clients.

Bulb, which lacked the large balance sheets and generation capacity of bigger firms, was put into special administration on Nov. 22 after energy regulator Ofgem judged it too large to be absorbed through the normal process, in which a new supplier is appointed to take on the customers of failed rivals. The founder of Ovo Group, the U.K.’s second-largest supplier, cast doubt on the nationalization process.

Energy providers that absorbed customers from smaller companies have already been granted 1.8 billion pounds by Ofgem to cover initial wholesale costs. That will also add to the mounting bills for the government and taxpayers over the coming year.

U.K. households are set for an 18-billion-pound increase in energy bills in 2022, according to Investec Plc. The surge in gas prices has left the energy price cap -- the ceiling for what firms can charge most customers -- on course to increase by 56% in April, to an average of 2,000 pounds per household a year, analysts Nathan Piper, Sandra Horsfield and Martin Young wrote in a report.

China Mobile Boosts Share Sale to World’s Second-Biggest in 2021

Bloomberg News
Thu, December 23, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- China Mobile Ltd., the country’s largest wireless carrier by revenue, is set to raise $8.78 billion from its Shanghai listing, making it the world’s second largest offering this year -- thanks in part to state support.

The state-run company, which was removed from the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year due to an investment ban ordered by former U.S. President Donald Trump, will exercise its over-allotment option for the offer due to strong demand from domestic retail and state investors, according a Shanghai bourse filing.

That would enable China Mobile to raise a total of 56 billion yuan from the sale, making it the world’s second largest offering this year after electric pickup truck maker Rivian Automotive Inc.’s $13.7 billion IPO, Bloomberg data show. It would also become one of the 10 largest share offers for the nation’s domestic stock market in a decade. Companies listing in mainland China had raised nearly a record $80 billion this year, up about 17% from 2020.

The A-share offer has attracted a total of 19 strategic investors, mostly state-owned entities including the National Council for Social Security Fund, China-Africa Development Fund, China Culture Industrial Investment Fund, National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, State Grid Yingda International Holdings Co., State Development & Investment Corp., China FAW Group Co., and state-run insurers like China Life Insurance Co. -- as well as the Brunei Investment Agency -- the filing shows.

The NYSE suspended trading in China Mobile in January, along with the Asian nation’s other major state-owned operators, China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. That development followed an order barring U.S. investments in Chinese companies the Trump administration deemed a threat to national security. China Telecom listed in Shanghai in August after raising more than $7 billion. China United Network Communications Ltd. is already trading on the exchange.

The strategic investors for China Mobile will pay 24.3 billion yuan for 49.9% of its planned A-share offer of 845.7 million shares ahead of exercise of the green shoe option, and they will be subject to lock-up period from 12 months to 36 months.

All of the over-allotment portion of the A-share offer, or 126.86 million shares, will be allocated to retail investors, according to the filing. Earlier this week, China Mobile said its A-share issue was 805.68 times covered from retail investors’ subscription.

Proceeds from the listing in the Chinese financial hub will be used to fund 5G network expansion, cloud infrastructure, smart-living projects and tech development that will cost the company 157 billion yuan in total, China Mobile has said.

China International Capital Corp. and Citic Securities Co. are sponsors of China Mobile’s A-share offer. The main underwriters include Huatai United Securities Co., BOC International (China) Co. and China Merchants Securities Co.

Hong Kong's pension scheme heads for first loss since 2018, prompting fund managers to seek wider investment scope

Fri, December 24, 2021

The Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF), Hong Kong's compulsory retirement scheme, is set to register its first loss in three years due to the equities slump that wiped out value in the city's stock market and the exchanges of Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The nearly 400 investment funds under the MPF scheme lost HK$14.8 billion (US$1.9 billion) in the first 11 months, according to the data provider MPF Ratings. The pension of each of the city's 4.5 million MPF members shrank by about HK$3,288, a loss that is unlikely to be recovered, with Hong Kong's key index still wallowing among the world's top losers as the year draws to a close.

The MPF funds suffered a 0.4 per cent loss on average in the first 11 months. If the trend continues this month, the HK$1.2 trillion (US$153.8 billion) pension scheme will post its first yearly loss since 2018 when the funds fell 8.21 per cent on average

Hong Kong and China equity funds were the worst performing MPF funds, losing 12.8 per cent in the year to November, according to MPF Ratings. A crackdown on Chinese tech companies, along with a slowdown in the property market and pandemic-driven economic slump contributed to a sell-off this year.

The Hang Seng Index has lost about 15 per cent so far this year through December 22, erasing about US$283 billion of market value from its 64 blue-chip members. The CSI 300 Index, which tracks the biggest companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, fell 5.6 per cent. MSCI China, a gauge of more than 741 companies listed in onshore and offshore markets, slumped 23 per cent.

To enhance longer term returns, analysts said the pension regulator should continue to relax investment restrictions on MPF fund managers.

The Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority (MPFA) in November last year relaxed rules, allowing MPF fund managers to invest in yuan-denominated Chinese shares listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Analysts attributed this year's milder loss to the easing of the investment rules. Before that, Hong Kong and China equity funds could only have Hong Kong stocks or Chinese stocks listed overseas in their portfolio but not shares listed on mainland bourses.

MPF: Hong Kong's pension regulator mulls allowing members to invest in sovereign bonds

"Before the relaxation, we only had 300 stocks in the original Hong Kong equity sleeve," said Jacky Cheng, senior associate at consultancy firm Willis Towers Watson. "Now, under the new Hong Kong and mainland sleeve, we have more than 1,000 stocks."

Cheng said the combined returns of the mainland-listed shares and Hong Kong were better than Hong Kong stocks alone in the past three-year period.

"The easing of rules does raise the profile of Chinese equities as a whole, arousing interest from investors to tap into the structural growth opportunities both in the onshore and offshore China equities space," said Ronald Chan, head of equities for Asia at Manulife Investment Management, the largest MPF provider in Hong Kong.

While the MPF's investment returns have not been good this year, Chan said Manulife's MPF China Value Fund, which has exposure to A shares and is one of the most popular funds in the company's MPF profile, showed cumulative returns of 29.7 per cent for three-year period to November and 52.9 per cent over a five-year horizon.

"Over the longer term, China A-shares provide opportunities in companies and sectors that are not available in China H shares and Hong Kong names, helping investors diversify and look for exposure in China's structural growth," Chan said.

The MPFA, meanwhile, is set to continue easing rules further. Next year, the MPF will allow investments in Chinese government bonds.

Christopher Hui Ching-yu, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, said on Wednesday that the government will seek legislators' approval by the middle of next year to amend a law to allow pension funds to invest in bonds issued by the central government and the mainland's policy banks.

"This initiative will further diversify the products for MPF investment, which is not only responding to the MPF industry but also helping MPF schemes members seize the opportunities in the mainland bond markets to strive for better return," said Ayesha Macpherson Lau, chairwoman of the MPFA.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2021 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
China Cements Rare Earths Dominance With New Global Giant




Bloomberg News
Thu, December 23, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- China formed a rare-earths giant by merging some key producers, creating a behemoth that will strengthen its control over the global industry it has dominated for decades.

The group is formed through merging rare-earth units of government-owned companies including China Minmetals Corp., Aluminum Corp. of China and Ganzhou Rare Earth Group Co., according to a stock exchange filing from China Minmetals Rare Earth Co. The new entity, China Rare-Earths Group, will speed the development of mines in the south, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Bloomberg News reported in September that China was planning to create two giants -- one in the country’s north and the other in the south, each focusing on a different subset of materials. China controls most of the world’s mined output of rare earths, a broad group of 17 elements that are used in everything from smartphones to fighter jets, and has a stranglehold over processing.

The move aims to better allocate resources, realize green development and upgrade deep-processing of the rare-earth sector, according to CCTV. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission will hold a 31.21% stake in the new group, while Chinalco, China Minmetals and Ganzhou Rare Earth Group will each own 20.33%, it said.

“This is part of a broader repositioning of Chinese industry to feed the supply chain for the coming years of electrification, and it’s a recognition that the supply chain is the key tool for success in the coming decade,” said Jim Litinsky, the CEO of MP Materials, which is the only U.S. producer of rare earths. “It’s great for the business in the sense that I think the West is increasingly realizing that there needs to be an integrated localized supply chain.”

China Minmetals Rare Earth surged as much as 8.5% in Shenzhen and Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. gained more than 5% in Shanghai.

Read more on how China’s grip on rare earths began with decision 30 years ago

The country’s dominance of the sector has been an increasing concern. The little-known materials were thrust into the spotlight in 2019 when China considered export controls as part of its trade war with the U.S., which relies on the country for 80% of its imports. While ultimately no restrictions were ever implemented, it highlighted the risks of being dependent on one country and spurred a raft of announcements from Western economies pledging to boost their rare-earths independence.

The latest round of consolidation follows restructuring efforts by Beijing that created six licensed groups in 2016. The government also controls production, granting annual quotas to the firms. This year’s volume has been set at 168,000 tons.

Rare earth prices have surged this year as demand outpaced supply, while a power shortage exacerbated disruptions and a broad rally in commodity prices increased production costs. Neodymium and praseodymium -- two elements used in permanent magnets -- have jumped to the highest in a decade.

“The new boom cycle is about the fact that in EV we’re going from low single-digit penetration to all vehicles in decades, so the amount of scale needed to be successful is enormous,” Litinsky said.

What the US could learn from China's nuclear power expansion

HOW TO BUILD RITE
Daniel Van Boom 

One of the world's great powers is making significant progress toward reaching carbon neutrality. It's not the US.

Like many countries, China has made a pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2060. Unlike many countries, it's actually doing something to get there. That's not a reference to its commitment to stop financing overseas coal plants, nor its steady expansion of wind and solar power. China's progress comes in the form of 150 new nuclear reactors, which it plans to construct over the next 15 years.

Just the mention of nuclear power is enough to make some wince. There's a powerful perception that these plants are unsafe and devastate the local environment. Yet nuclear power is clean, reliable and safe. Traumatic imagery of nuclear meltdowns like those at Chernobyl and Fukushima obscure the statistics: Coal kills about 350 times as many people per terrawatt produced as nuclear.

China's expansion of nuclear power will be the biggest in the history of the world, but its merits go beyond simple scope. The country is also pioneering the use of "Generation 4" reactors, which promise to be safer and more efficient. One such design is known as a "pebble bed reactor," where atomic fuel is encased within graphite balls that can withstand more heat than nuclear fission is capable of generating. These pebble bed reactors are said to be incapable of meltdown. On Tuesday, China became the first country in the world to connect a Generation 4 PBR to the grid. Another is under construction.

The US and Europe were once enthusiastic about nuclear power, which promised to produce energy "too cheap to meter." Development of new plants reached a peak in the '70s, but a meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 1979 soured enthusiasm. Seven years later, the Chernobyl incident in the Soviet Union killed it entirely. Two decades after that, as governments were rethinking their aversion to nuclear energy, Fukushima in 2011 acted as a nail in the coffin.

Since Fukushima, however, climate change has altered the equations by which we calculate nuclear energy's merit. The world needs to drastically ramp up power production, yet it can no longer rely on the polluting means it's long been accustomed to. Solar and wind power are important elements of a carbon-neutral future, but there's fierce debate over whether they alone will be sufficient. Acceptance of nuclear power has been on the rise as a result, with a May study reporting that 76% of Americans are in favor of atomic energy, the highest percentage since pre-Fukushima.

"If you're going to decarbonize the global energy system, you're going to need a lot of energy, a lot more than we have," said Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force. "We [support] nuclear from around the bend. It's not like we're pro nuclear, we're pro 'anything that can solve the climate problem'."

China's nuclear expansion is a double opportunity. The People's Republic emits nearly a third of the world's carbon and burns six times as much coal as the US. If nuclear energy can reduce those emissions, the whole planet will benefit. An even better scenario would be China developing cheap, safe reactors that can be constructed around the world. Many governments make big claims about reducing carbon, but few have charted a course to actually getting there. Nuclear adoption will help.

China has not come out of 2021 in a positive light. In addition to ongoing genocide in Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party this year embarked on a heavy-handed Big Tech crackdown and has set a questionable example on COVID management. But on the topic of nuclear energy, at least, it appears China has something to teach the US.

For its part, the US has gone the opposite route. In April, New York's Indian Point Power Plant had its final reactor shut down. California plans to close two reactors in 2025 that generate 15% of its carbon-free electricity. Less nuclear doesn't necessarily mean more solar or wind, as environmentalists hope, but rather more natural gas. New York's gas usage was 30% higher in November compared to the same month last year, according to S&P research, with the closure of the Indian Point plant being a major cause.

PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach, California, in 2012. Bloomberg/CNET

Nuclear's great costs

The public's association of nuclear power with calamity is one reason why atomic energy has languished in the West. The other key issue is cost. Nuclear plants were once relatively affordable to build, but many argue they're prohibitively expensive. The price tag for two overdue reactors being built in Georgia looks to exceed $27 billion.

It doesn't have to be this way, says Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He points to numerous reasons that costs have ballooned. First, giant infrastructure projects of all kinds have seen more delays and cost increases in the West, not just nuclear power plants. Second, the US and much of Europe went on a 20-year nuclear hiatus after Chernobyl. Nuclear construction know-how and efficiency were lost during that time.

Then there are simple organizational flaws.

"In Asia, the company that designs the plant is often the same company that builds and then operates the plant," he said. "In the US we have seen the technology companies that create the blueprints for components and modules toss them over the fence to another company that then has to build them."

"If the two sides have not talked to each other from the very beginning, there is no guarantee that what was designed is actually constructible."

Nuclear power in the US does have one specific challenge not faced by other industries: the complex web of regulations that's been spun in the years since Chernobyl. China's method of nuclear expansion is similar to the one proven to work by France in the '70s: Design a few plants and then build a lot of them. Meanwhile, different states in the US have different safety requirements, which inhibits any company's ability to standardize design.

"Nuclear needs to be heavily regulated, but it's inefficiently regulated," Cohen said. "Is it really plausible that we're going to have 27 designs in the world?"

He looks to the airplane industry as an example of how to streamline. Companies like Boeing and Airbus have only a handful of aircraft designs. That makes it easier to mass produce, but it also simplifies problem solving. It's easier to work out why 1,000 planes have the same issue than to solve 20 different issues across 20 different designs.

"If China can bring a cheaper unit to the world, just as they brought cheap solar panels, then bring it on," he said.

© Provided by CNET The tristructural isotropic, or TRISO, particle fuel for X Energy's nuclear power plant design. X Energy

Green future

China's nuclear ambitions don't end at its own borders. One of President Xi Jinping's signature projects is the Belt and Road Initiative, which sees China building bridges, airports and other infrastructure across the developing world. If China can make capable reactors at competitive prices, they can be exported across Africa and energy-hungry countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. One senior Chinese Communist Party member said he hopes China will build 30 reactors overseas by the end of the decade.

"China has already announced that they're not going to make any coal investment overseas, so the next phase of infrastructure is going to be nuclear," said Sha Yu, associate research scholar at the Center for Global Sustainability. Yu expects that nuclear's space in China's energy mix will expand considerably in the next three decades, from around 4% now to between 15% and 25% by around 2050.

Such advancements may prod the US into revitalizing its interest in atomic energy. Several companies already have next-generation nuclear plants in development. X-Energy has a pebble bed reactor it hopes will be operational by 2027, and the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower is advancing toward meltdown-proof reactors that run off depleted nuclear fuel. NuScale last month struck a deal to build a small modular reactor in Romania.

The question is how much these activities will be supported by the government. There are some signs of life. President Joe Biden's landmark infrastructure bill will see just under $10 billion devoted to nuclear projects, including $3.2 billion that will go to developing Generation 4 technology. More was to come in Biden's Build Back Better legislation, though that bill's future is now in doubt.

"The Biden Administration's plan is to have a carbon-free grid by 2030. That is an enormous challenge, and the resources that are being discussed now are not commensurate with its magnitude," said MIT's Buongiorno.

"It's a fantastic start, but we're going to need a lot more."

Report shows the extent of Republican efforts to sabotage democracy

Ed Pilkington in New York 

THE GUARDIAN

The Republican assault on free and fair elections instigated by Donald Trump is gathering pace, with efforts to sabotage the normal workings of American democracy sweeping state legislatures across the US.

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Paula Bronstein/AP

A year that began with the violent insurrection at the US Capitol is ending with an unprecedented push to politicize, criminalize or in other ways subvert the nonpartisan administration of elections. A year-end report from pro-democracy groups identifies no fewer than 262 bills introduced in 41 states that hijack the election process.

Of those, 32 bills have become law in 17 states.

Related: Alarm as Texas quietly restarts controversial voting program

The largest number of bills is concentrated in precisely those states that became the focus of Trump’s Stop the Steal campaign to block the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. Arizona, where Trump supporters insisted on an “audit” to challenge Biden’s victory in the state, has introduced 20 subversion bills, and Georgia where Trump attempted to browbeat the top election official to find extra votes for him has introduced 15 bills.

Texas, whose ultra-right Republican group has made the state the ground zero of voter suppression and election interference, has introduced as many as 59 bills.

“We’re seeing an effort to hijack elections in this country, and ultimately, to take power away from the American people. If we don’t want politicians deciding our elections, we all need to start paying attention,” said Joanna Lydgate, CEO of the States United Democracy Center which is one of the three groups behind the report. Protect Democracy and Law Forward also participated.

One of the key ways that Trump-inspired state lawmakers have tried to sabotage future elections is by changing the rules to give legislatures control over vote counts. In Pennsylvania, a bill passed in the wake of Trump’s defeat that sought to rewrite the state’s election law was vetoed by Democratic governor Tom Wolf.

Now hard-right lawmakers are trying to bypass Wolf’s veto power by proposing a constitutional amendment that would give the legislature the power to overrule the state’s chief elections officer and create a permanent audit of election counts subject to its own will.

In several states, nonpartisan election officials who for years have administered ballots impartially are being replaced by hyper-partisan conspiracy theorists and advocates of Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged. In Michigan, county Republican groups in eight of the 11 largest counties have systematically replaced professional administration officials with “stop the steal” extremists.

Several secretaries of state, the top election officials responsible for presidential election counts, are being challenged by extreme Republicans who participated in trying to overturn the 2020 result. Trump has endorsed for the role Mark Finchem in Arizona, Jody Hice in Georgia and Kristina Karamo in Michigan who have all claimed falsely that Trump won and should now be in his second term in the White House.

Jess Marsden, Counsel at Protect Democracy, said that the nationwide trend of state legislatures attempting to interfere with the work of nonpartisan election officials was gaining momentum. “It’s leading us down an anti-democratic path toward an election crisis,” she said.

Exxon Cuts Baytown Refinery Rates After Extinguishing Fire


Barbara Powell and Francesca Maglione
Fri, December 24, 2021



(Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. says an overnight fire at its Baytown, Texas, refinery that injured four people has been extinguished.

The blaze occurred at 1 a.m. local time at the plant, which is the fourth-largest in the U.S., capable of processing more than half a million barrels of oil a day. Gasoline trading in New York jumped as much as 4 cents per gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The fire at units involved in gasoline production comes as U.S. stockpiles of the fuel hit their lowest for this time of year since 2015. Gasoline futures, meanwhile, are at their highest seasonally in eight years. Prices rose 1.8% to settle at $2.2061 per gallon in New York.

The blaze broke out in a unit called a reformer feed hydrotreater, according to Wood Mackenzie’s Genscape unit. Other units impacted include a toluene benzene unit and a nearby cooling tower, according to a person familiar with operations.

Reformer feed hydrotreaters remove sulfur from partially refined oil to help the finished gasoline meet clean-air rules. The units process feedstock used by reformers to make high-octane gasoline. The toluene unit extracts aromatics from feed sent to it by the reformer. If the fire impact is prolonged, it could affect prices of premium gasoline.

Exxon spokeswoman Julie King said Baytown is adjusting rates at other Baytown facilities to focus on stabilizing the affected units, but did not discuss the impact on fuel production.

The injured workers are in stable condition after being transferred to a local hospital, said Casey Cook, a public information officer at the Baytown Fire Department.

A Baytown woman who allegedly suffered injuries during the refinery explosion near her home has filed a lawsuit against Exxon, Potts Law Firm said Friday in a statement. The lawsuit, filed in Harris County, alleges that Tona Credit suffered hearing loss and related balance issues resulting from the concussive force of the blast at the gasoline-producing refinery unit.

It’s the second such blaze at Baytown in the last two years. In 2019 a fire on the plastic-producing side of the industrial complex injured about 37 people.

Air quality monitoring at the site and fence line has shown no adverse impact so far, King said.

Exxon on Wednesday reported a leak at one of Baytown’s sulfur-removal units, according to a filing with a state regulator. The leak was discovered at around 10 p.m. Tuesday, according to the filing.