COMEUPPANCE

Greg Abbott Faces Texas Grid 'Emergency' as Power Plants Fail

BY FATMA KHALED ON 12/25/22 

Arctic Blasts Threatens Texas Grid

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is facing a grid "emergency" this holiday weekend due to an electric energy shortage as an arctic blast causes failures at power plants in the state.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday declared that an emergency exists in Texas "due to a shortage of electric energy, a shortage of facilities for the generation of electric energy, and other causes." It added that this emergency order is meant to "serve the public interest."

The department's emergency order allows Texas grid operators to pollute more than allowed in an effort to boost electricity generation amid threatening cold temperatures. This means Texas power plants can burn dirtier fuel oil instead of natural gas to generate power through Christmas morning, according to The Texas Tribune on Saturday.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which serves 90 percent of the electric customers in the state, requested the emergency order exceed the usual federal air quality restrictions on Friday.

"For Texas, this severe winter weather system has caused a significant drop in temperatures over the last day. This temperature drop, accompanied by high winds in excess of 40 mph, has resulted in wind chill values across the state generally below ten degrees Fahrenheit, with some areas of Texas experiencing wind chills values well below zero degrees," the DOE wrote in its order. "As a consequence, the demand for electricity in ERCOT rose to an all-time winter peak on the morning of Friday, December 23, 2022, in excess of 74,000 MW. This severely cold weather is expected to last through Sunday morning."

The department added that the vast majority of generating units in the ERCOT region continue to run without any issue, however a small number of units have experienced "operating difficulties due to cold weather or gas curtailments."

Around 11,000 megawatts of coal and gas-fired power, 4,000 megawatts of wind and 1,700 megawatts of solar power generating units were "derated" or "outaged" due to severe weather conditions, according to the DOE.

On Friday afternoon, Reliant Energy, which serves over 1.5 million Texans, urged its customers to reduce their energy usage by limiting the use of large appliances. Temperatures in some parts of Texas reached a low of 1 degree by Thursday night, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Meanwhile, wind gusts reached up to 40 miles per hour in areas in North Texas, The Texas Tribune reported.



Many Texans experienced power outages on Friday amid strong winds and the brutally cold temperatures, with more than 77,000 customers losing power, according to PowerOutage.us. As of Sunday afternoon, a little more than 5,000 customers were without power.

Still, Texas officials assured residents that the power grid is up and running despite the challenges, and that the grid will not be severely impacted as it was in February 2021 when three severe winter storms and frigid temperatures stressed the grid. As a result, hundreds of people died and millions lost power for prolonged periods.

In a statement to Newsweek Saturday afternoon, Renae Eze, Abbott's communications director, said no Texans lost power due to the power grid and highlighted that the governor signed 14 bills into law to "weatherize the Texas power grid and ensure its stability and resiliency."

Abbott also defended the grid on Twitter.

"The ERCOT grid performed well again today. Yesterday, Texas had the highest power demand in any winter. Today was the 2nd highest demand day for winter power. During 2 extremely cold nights, the power grid has not failed. No Texan has lost any power because of the ERCOT grid," the governor tweeted Saturday.

On Sunday, Eze told Newsweek that "ERCOT provided more power during this cold weather event than any winter ever. Any outages were due to localized issues, such as downed power lines, or other grids like MISO that cover some parts of Texas."

Update 12/25/2022, 3:38 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include further comment from Eze.

Texas Governor Vows Grid Will Run Robustly in Upcoming Freeze




Shelly Hagan
Wed, December 21, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Texas Governor Greg Abbott and state officials are confident the power grid will continue running as a potent winter storm delivering sub-freezing temperatures makes its way to the state this week.

Abbott, along with the head of the state’s public utilities commission, energy grid and emergency management division, held a press conference Wednesday to reassure Texans the state’s electric grid — operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — will not see a repeat of last year’s failure that killed more than 200 people.

“We want to make sure everybody across the entire state of Texas hears directly from the head of the Public Utilities Commission as well as the head of Ercot to know exactly the way that both the PUC and Ercot are prepared to make sure that the power grid will remain up and running very robustly during this very cold snap,” Abbott said.

Texans are still reeling from the fatal winter storm Uri in February 2021 that caused the grid to fail, leaving millions of residents without power for hours and even days. State officials say they have made a number of reforms to the grid since then including reinforcing natural gas plants and pipelines to withstand extreme weather.

“The grid is ready and reliable,” Texas Public Utilities Commission Chairman Peter Lake said. “We expect to have sufficient generation to meet demand throughout this entire winter weather event.”

The grid operator is forecasting demand for electricity will reach a high Friday morning of 67.8 gigawatts as temperatures in Dallas linger below 25 degrees. That’s slightly higher than what officials had forecast last month to be the peak for power demand this winter.

Officials said the state is not expecting to see much rain but will see extremely cold temperatures with high winds beginning Thursday. Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said wind chills are forecast at minus 10F (minus 23C) in the Dallas metro area and as low as minus 30F (minus 34C) in the panhandle, the northern most portion of the state.

Texans should prepare for “life-threatening” wind chills, but officials remain confident in power grid

Gov. Greg Abbott and other leaders say Texans should protect their homes and vehicles as large portions of the state will experience dangerously cold temperatures.

BY EMILY FOXHALL DEC. 21, 2022

Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a 2021 press conference regarding the state’s emergency response to a winter storm. The state is bracing for subfreezing temperatures this week, but officials do not expect mass power outages

. Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune

State officials warned residents Wednesday to prepare their homes and vehicles for the coming freeze while trying to reassure on-edge Texans that the electric grid will stay online.

Temperatures are expected to plummet Thursday into single digits — with even lower wind chills. Leaders urged residents to check their car tires and batteries to be sure no one gets stranded on the road, to burn wood or gas inside only if there’s proper ventilation, and to insulate pipes.

“This is a dangerous storm coming our way,” said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. “The temperatures will be extremely cold and the winds will be high, which will generate some very dangerous wind chills.”

Forecasters predicted life-threatening minus-10-degree wind chills in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and wind chills as low as minus 30 degrees in the Panhandle, Kidd said. Aside from light precipitation in the Panhandle, the state was expected to stay dry.

The lack of concerns over icy roads and infrastructure makes this a different threat than the 2021 Winter Storm Uri, which overwhelmed the state’s main electric grid and killed hundreds of people. Officials are promising that, this time, the power will stay on.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the grid that powers most of Texas, and the Public Utility Council made improvements after Uri, such as ensuring natural gas-fired plants have additional sources of fuel on site and improving communications among electricity regulators, oil and gas regulators, and the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

“The grid is ready and reliable,” said Peter Lake, chair of the Public Utility Commission, which regulates grid operators, on Wednesday. “We expect to have sufficient generation to meet demand throughout this entire winter weather event.”

ERCOT officials expected power demand to be highest from Thursday night through Saturday morning. The peak — near 70,000 megawatts — was predicted Friday morning, when grid operators expected to have nearly 85,000 megawatts of supply if all goes as planned.

“We do expect to have sufficient generation supply to meet the forecasted demands,” said Pablo Vegas, ERCOT’s president and CEO.

Of course, in an extreme scenario, the grid could still face rolling blackouts or tight conditions, and ERCOT could still issue a conservation notice. There may also be local power outages that have nothing to do with the viability of the power grid, caused by things such as wind knocking trees onto power lines.

Gov. Greg Abbott said he knew that state leaders needed to earn back the public trust after 2021’s deadly outages. He said he believed they started to do that by meeting surging demand over the summer.

ERCOT kept prices high during the blackout per the governor's instructions, former head says

KUT 90.5 | By Mose Buchele
Published February 23, 2022 

Julia Reihs

ERCOT manages the electric grid and power flow for 24 million Texans.

The former top manager of Texas' electric grid said in court Wednesday he was following Gov. Greg Abbott’s directions when he kept electricity prices as high as legally allowed in the aftermath of last February's devastating blackout.

His testimony was first reported by the Houston Chronicle.

Bill Magness was testifying in a suit filed against the Electric Reliability Council of Texas by the Brazos Electric Cooperative. In the wake of the blackout, Brazos filed for bankruptcy protection after being hit with a $1.9 billion energy bill. It claimed the grid manager illegally and unnecessarily inflated energy costs.

Before the blackout, electricity traded on the grid for about $50 per megawatt hour. ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission's decision to increase the price to $9,000 and peg it there even after energy started returning to the grid created billions of dollars of debt for utilities and ratepayers across the state.

In his testimony, Magness said former Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker instructed him to do whatever was necessary to stop outages from returning to the grid once power had been restored.

That included keeping prices high to ensure the grid stayed stable.

“She told me that the governor had conveyed to her that if we emerged out of rotating outages, we just could not go back into them," he said. "We needed to do whatever we needed to do to try to make that happen."

The Public Utility Commission oversees ERCOT; as chair of the commission, Walker was an Abbott appointee.

A spokesperson for the governor's office said last year that Abbott was not involved “in any way” in the decision to keep energy prices high.

The decision to keep prices high to keep the grid stable proved controversial, leading to billions of dollars in unexpected costs, much of which will be paid out on ratepayers bills for years to come.

In response to a request for comment, the governor's office did not directly address the question of energy pricing.

"As Texans would expect, Governor Abbott was adamant to everyone involved that they must do what was needed to keep the lights on and to prevent the loss of life," Press Assistant Sheridan Nolen wrote in an email. "This is the same instruction Governor Abbott gave to the PUC and ERCOT earlier this year: do what needs to be done to keep the power on."

Cascading risks: Understanding the 2021 winter blackout in Texas

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102106Get rights and content


Abstract

The Texas freeze of February 2021 left more than 4.5 million customers (more than 10 million people) without electricity at its peak, some for several days. The freeze had cascading effects on other services reliant upon electricity including drinking water treatment and medical services. Economic losses from lost output and damage are estimated to be $130 billion in Texas alone. In the wake of the freeze, there has been major fallout among regulators and utilities as actors sought to apportion blame and utilities and generators began to settle up accounts. This piece offers a retrospective on what caused the blackouts and the knock-on effects on other services, the subsequent financial and political effects of the freeze, and the implications for Texas and the country going forward. Texas failed to sufficiently winterize its electricity and gas systems after 2011. Feedback between failures in the two systems made the situation worse. Overall, the state faced outages of 30 GW of electricity as demand reached unprecedented highs. The gap between production and demand forced the non-profit grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), to cut off supply to millions of customers or face a systems collapse that by some accounts was minutes away. The 2021 freeze suggests a need to rethink the state’s regulatory approach to energy to avoid future such outcomes. Weatherization, demand response, and expanded interstate interconnections are potential solutions Texas should consider to avoid generation losses, reduce demand, and tap neighboring states’ capacity.

FULL ARTICLE/PDF

Cascading risks: Understanding the 2021 winter blackout in Texas - ScienceDirect

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER SAID ALICE 

Russian Meat Magnate Who Criticised Putin’s War Dies After Hotel Fall

By Delena Oza 

Last updated Dec 27, 2022

A Russian sausage magnate who briefly criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has died after falling from the third-floor window of a luxury hotel in India.

Pavel Antov was a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party and a multi-millionaire, having founded one of the country’s largest sausage makers. He was reportedly on a trip to celebrate his upcoming 66th birthday when he was found lying in a pool of blood outside the Hotel Sai International in Rayagada, in the southern state of Odisha.

An unnamed police official told India’s NDTV news outlet they suspected that he took his own life after becoming depressed about the death of his friend, who was found dead in the same hotel.

Vladimir Bidenov was found unconscious in his hotel room on Thursday, surrounded by empty wine bottles.

Antov was the founder of Vladimir Standard, a major meat producer, and had a declared annual income of just under £130 million ($232 million).

In July, he posted a story on his WhatsApp messaging app, criticising Russia’s missile attacks on Kyiv as “terrorism”. He was referring to reports of a girl that had been pulled from rubble after her house had been shelled.

Shortly afterwards, Antov apologised for the post and said it had been posted by someone else. He said he was “a supporter of the president and my country’s patriot” and “shared the goals” of the Kremlin’s invasion.

Alexei Idamkin, Russia’s consul general in Calcutta, told the Tass news agency that there was no foul play in the lawmaker’s death.

Source link

Oil magnate who criticised Russian war against Ukraine dies after falling from hospital window
September 1, 2022

President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Lukoil chair, Ravik Maganov
By Biodun Busari

A Russian oil oligarch, Ravik Maganov has been confirmed dead after falling off a hospital window in Moscow, the Russian capital city on Thursday.

Some section of the media has described the said incident as ‘strange’ as Maganov’s company criticised President Vladimir Putin after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Business Insider reports that his death suggested it was a suicide which has been the latest in a series of untimely or unexplained deaths in Russian energy magnates.

The 67-year-old Maganov was the chair of the board of directors of Lukoil, one of the largest energy companies in Russia.

Maganov was in Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital when he “fell out of the window” and died from his injuries, an “informed source” told the Russian news agency Interfax.

Read also: Russian oligarch killed by crossbow wielding assailant

The Russia Information Agency (RIA) followed up with confirmation from a representative of the presidential administration, which manages the hospital campus.

Maganov’s death comes almost six months to the day after Lukoil released a statement expressing “deepest concerns” about Putin’s war in Ukraine.

On March 3, the company’s board of directors warned about “the tragic events in Ukraine,” calling for a ceasefire and “serious negotiations and diplomacy.”

The board specified that it would “continue its operations in all countries and regions where it is present.”

In May, another former Lukoil executive, Alexander Subbotin, died in an apparent heart attack in his residence in Moscow.

Updated: A list of oligarchs and Putin critics found dead since Ukraine war

By Aleksandar Brezar & David Mac Dougall with AP • 

 Updated: 22/09/2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin seen through a bus window, which reflects sky and clouds, during his visit to Kaliningrad in July 2005 - Copyright AP Photo

Another mysterious death among Russian top executives last week drew further attention to the ever-increasing number of suspicious demises among the oligarchs and critics of President Vladimir Putin, raising questions on whether they have become all too common to be completely coincidental.

Ivan Pechorin, a top manager at the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, was found dead in Vladivostok after allegedly falling off his luxury yacht and drowning near Cape Ignatyev in the Sea of Japan two days before, according to the local administration.

"On September 12, 2022, it became known about the tragic death of our colleague, Ivan Pechorin, Managing Director for the Aviation Industry of the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic," a statement from the company said.

Pechorin is said to have been tasked with modernising Russia's aviation industry and worked directly under Putin.

Earlier this year, the company’s 43-year-old general director Igor Nosov also died from a reported stroke after taking over the reins in May 2021.

Meanwhile, another aviation expert died under strange circumstances: the former head of the Moscow Aviation Institute Anatoly Gerashchenko was pronounced dead after falling down "several sets of stairs" on Wednesday, according to a statement issued by the institute.

Geraschenko led the institute -- which closely collaborates with the Russian Ministry of Defence and has aided the development of the likes of MiG fighter jets -- until 2015, but it is believed to have remained in an advisory role since.

The Russian aviation industry has long been suspected of having direct ties with espionage.

In 2018, former deputy director of the Russian national air carrier Aeroflot Nikolai Glushkov -- who famously claimed that about one-fourth of the company's employees were officers of one of the branches of the country's intelligence -- was found hanged in his home in New Malden, London.

Glushkov was a notable Kremlin critic and a close friend of the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was also found dead with a ligature around his neck in 2013.

Glushkov's death also occurred right after the novichok poisoning of former GRU spy and double agent Alexei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, prompting the investigators to label it as suspicious.

The results of an inquest finalised in April 2021 showed that Glushkov was unlawfully killed, with his death made to look like a suicide by hanging.

'Tripped and fell while smoking'

The news of Pechorin's death came less than two weeks after the chairman of the board of Russia's largest private oil company, Ravil Maganov, died in what Russian news agencies cited as an accidental fall from a hospital window.

Initially, a statement by his company Lukoil said Maganov “passed away after a severe illness” on 1 September but did not give further details.

Russian news reports later stated his body was found on the grounds of Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital, where Russia's political and business elite are often treated.

Maganov appeared to have fallen from a sixth-story window, the reports said. Some sources claimed he tripped and fell while smoking, stating a pack of cigarettes was found by the window. The news site RBK also said police were investigating the possibility of suicide.

Lukoil was one of a few Russian companies to publicly call for an end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, calling in March for the “immediate cessation of the armed conflict”.

Ravil Maganov: Russian oil executive 'dies after plunging from 6th-floor hospital window'

Incidentally, Maganov was not the first Lukoil official to die under suspicious circumstances since Kremlin's full-scale aggression against its western neighbour began in late February.

A former top manager Aleksandr Subbotin was found dead in the basement of a residence in a Moscow suburb in May.

Russian news reports said the house belonged to a self-styled healer, Shaman Magua, who practised purification rites.

Magua testified that Subbotin came to his house under the influence of alcohol and drugs and demanded that the healer, whose real name is Aleksei Pindurin, performs a healing ritual for hangover symptoms.

Investigators said the preliminary cause of Subbotin's death was determined to be heart failure.

Yet, it is Ravil Maganov's demise that caught the attention of the press, having been the most well-publicised in a string of accidental self-defenestrations and other suspicious deaths of those who either profited from good relations with Putin or were a thorn in his side -- or both.
Anti-war oligarchs die under strange circumstances

At least another eight Russian oligarchs have died in strange circumstances almost since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine. All had in common close links to the Kremlin, immense wealth, a connection to Russian gas and an anti-war stance on Ukraine.

This has raised the suspicions of international investigators, who are beginning to believe that these deaths may, in fact, have been staged suicides or assassinations due to their stance on the Kremlin's aggression against Ukraine or their links to corruption in the Russian gas company Gazprom.

Russia is using gas as 'weapon of war,' says French ecology minister, as Gazprom suspends delivery

Explained: What is Gazprom and what makes it so powerful?

It all started in St Petersburg in the run-up to the war.

Only a month before the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, a top executive of the gas company Gazprom was found dead in his cottage near St Petersburg.

Leonid Shulman, 60, was found in the bathroom of the house with slashed wrists, local news reported, citing a source.

According to the police authorities, a suicide note was allegedly found next to his body, in which he recounted his suffering after a leg injury -- which Gazprom claimed caused him to take a leave of absence.

The version has been questioned after the Warsaw Institue think tank stated that Shulman, who was the head of the transport service at Gazprom Invest, was involved in a possible corruption case at the Russian gas giant.

The morning after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, Alexander Tyulyakov, 65, a senior executive of Gazproms's Corporate Security, died at his home in the same village as Shulman. According to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, his body was found hanged in the garage.

The same newspaper quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying that Gazprom's own security unit arrived at the scene of the suicide at the same time as the police and was also investigating the death.

One of two deaths that have taken place abroad is that of Mikhail Watford, who lived with his family in the UK. On 28 February, the Ukrainian-born 66-year-old oil and gas magnate, who also built a property empire in London, was found dead at his home in Surrey.

Watford's cause of death was determined as death by hanging, but his wife and children, who were at home at the time, were unharmed. UK authorities were treating Watford's death as unexplained but not suspicious.

It later emerged that Watford, commonly referred to as Misha, had changed his surname from Tolstosheya after moving to the UK in early 2000.
Murder-suicides escalate suddenly among Putin-friendly oligarchs?

In March, the bodies of Russian billionaire Vasily Melnikov and his family were found in his luxury flat in Nizhny Novgorod, a city in western Russia.

Melnikov had made his fortune working for one of the medical companies affected by Western sanctions.

According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Melnikov, along with his 41-year-old wife and two young children, aged 10 and 4 respectively, died of stab wounds. The murder weapon was allegedly found at the scene of the crime.

The newspaper reported that the oligarch had killed his family before committing suicide, although neighbours and other relatives disagreed with the official version.

Other media have claimed that Melnikov's company, which imports medical equipment to Russia, was on the verge of bankruptcy due to Western sanctions imposed in retaliation for the war in Ukraine.

Russia forced to strip grounded aircraft for parts as Western sanctions over Ukraine bite hard

Sanctions 'catastrophically crippling' Russian economy, study finds

The latest case has taken place in Spain, more specifically in Lloret de Mar, where Russian oligarch Sergei Protosenya, 55, was found dead along with two other family members on 19 April.

The former head of the gas giant Novatek, with a personal worth of €400 million, was found hanged, along with those of his wife and daughter, who were stabbed to death in the family villa.

What was initially classified by the police as a double homicide followed by Protosenya's suicide was later categorically denied by his son.

Several family friends have also come out in public to state that Protosenya is, in fact, the third victim of a "staged suicide" and that the oligarch would have been incapable of murdering his family.

The Catalan police are still actively investigating the case.

Just a day before the death of Protosenya and his family, the body of Russian oligarch Vladislav Avayev was found in his Moscow flat, along with the bodies of his wife and 13-year-old daughter. His daughter Anastasia, 26, was the one who discovered the crime scene.

Russian state-owned news agency TASS quoted a source close to law enforcement as saying that preliminary evidence pointed to Avayev -- former advisor to Putin and former vice-president of Gazprombank -- killing his wife and daughter and then committing suicide.

A pistol was found in the oligarch's hand, and the flat was locked from the inside.

Gazprombank is Russia's third-largest bank and is associated with Gazprom, the world's largest publicly traded natural gas company.

Avayev was not the last Gazprom top-level manager to die under strange circumstances, however.

On 2 May, Andrei Krukovsky, the 37-year-old director of a Sochi ski resort owned by the gas giant, died after allegedly falling off a cliff while hiking near the Achipse fortress, the scenic area's landmark monument.

“The general manager of the Krasnaya Polyana resort, Andrei Alekseevich Krukovsky, tragically passed away. He loved the mountains and found peace there,” TASS news agency reported.

The Krasnaya Polyana is one of the most popular ski venues in Russia and was a part of the Olympic complex during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

And on 4 July, multi-millionaire businessman Yuri Voronov was found in the swimming pool at his home in the affluent Vyborgsky neighbourhood of St Petersburg with a gunshot wound to his head.

The police retrieved a handgun at the scene, while bullet casings were found at the bottom of the pool, local media reported.

The 61-year-old Voronov, whose death was deemed to have been a suicide, was the CEO of Astra-Shipping transport and logistics company, a subcontractor to Gazprom with lucrative contracts tied to its operations in the Arctic.
Self-defenestrations the most suspicious

Maganov's death on Thursday also follows the pattern of prominent Russians falling out of windows to their deaths.

In October 2021, a Russian diplomat was found dead after he fell from a window of the Russian embassy in Berlin, Der Spiegel reported.

The unidentified man was a second secretary at the embassy, but German intelligence sources told the newspaper they suspected he was an undercover officer with Russia's FSB.

Investigative outlet Bellingcat said it used open-source data to identify the man as Kirill Zhalo, the son of General Alexey Zhalo, deputy director of the FSB's Second Service, responsible for dealing with internal political threats for the Kremlin.

In December of the same year, the founder of nationalist blog Sputnik and Pogrom Yegor Prosvirnin died after falling out of a window of a Moscow apartment building.

Prosvirnin's naked body was found next to a knife and a gas canister after shouts and yelling were heard from his apartment, local media reported.

Prosvirnin, a right-wing activist, originally supported Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 but later became a vocal critic of Putin, predicting a civil war in Russia and the collapse of the Russian Federation.

Russian police raids home of journalist whose outlet investigated Alexei Navalny’s poisoning

Alexei Navalny says Russian prison has changed his status to 'terrorist'

And on 14 August, Dan Rapoport, Latvian-American investment banker and outspoken Putin critic who had just left Ukraine after the Russian invasion, was found dead in front of a luxury apartment building in Washington DC.

Police say they were not treating Rapoport's death as suspicious, the Washington-based Politico reported, but the case remains under investigation.

Rapoport became rich while in Moscow before falling out of favour with the Kremlin, mostly due to his support for the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, according to reports.

In 2017, Rapoport's then-business partner, Sergei Tkachenko, also fell to his death from his Moscow apartment's window.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, at least four health care workers have fallen out of windows in Russia, with only one surviving despite grave injuries.

At least three incidents of doctors self-defenestrating from hospital windows took place over a two-week period between April and May 2020, with media reports claiming they had protested working conditions during the worst wave of infections in the country prior to the incidents.

In December 2020, a top Russian scientist developing a novel COVID-19 vaccine, Alexander Kagansky, was found dead after falling from his high-rise apartment in St Petersburg.

According to Russian outlets, police claimed Kagansky stabbed himself and then jumped to his death.

WW IV.0

South Korea sends drones to Kim Jong Un’s airspace in unprecedented move

Jon Herskovitz and Shinhye Kang - Bloomberg News (TNS)

South Korea sent drones across the border into North Korea for the first time on Monday, an unprecedented tit-for-tat military move after Kim Jong Un’s regime dispatched five unmanned aerial vehicles into its air space.

The exchange of drones, which briefly stopped flights from taking off at major airports near Seoul, came as Kim opened a major political meeting to set security, economic and political policy for the coming year, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Tuesday. He has spent the past year improving his atomic arsenal, showing no interest in returning to nuclear disarmament talks that have been stalled for three years.

Kim’s regime sent five drones across the border on Monday, the first time he has done so in more than five years. The first one crossed the border at 10:25 a.m. and returned after flying for about three hours. Four more were detected Monday afternoon and later vanished from radar, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Yonhap News Agency said one may have come into the Seoul area to possibly take photos of the presidential office. South Korea’s military said it responded by scrambling fighter jets and military helicopters, with local media including Yonhap saying about 100 shots were fired at North Korean drones that broached its airspace near western coastal islands.

South Korea later deployed manned and unmanned reconnaissance assets to areas close to the border and into North Korea that conducted reconnaissance and photographed military facilities, the JCS said in a statement. The move is consistent with South Korea’s strategy over the past year to respond to North Korean provocations with similar maneuvers.

Kim has found space to ratchet up tensions as the U.S. and its allies focuses on Russia’s war in Ukraine. The moves increase the risks for the first major deadly clash in years, such as when North Korea bombarded the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong with artillery in 2010.

Kim has been modernizing his inventory of missiles over the past several years to make them easier to hide, quicker to deploy and more difficult to shoot down. This year, he has tested missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons to U.S. allies South Korea and Japan, as well as firing off intercontinental ballistic missiles with ranges to hit the American mainland. South Korea has said it's expecting Kim to test a nuclear bomb in the near future.

North Korea on Nov. 18 test-fired an ICBM with Kim’s daughter on hand for the launch, marking her first official appearance in state media. The move signaled that there’s another generation ready to take over the Cold War’s last continuous family dynasty and it will depend on nuclear weapons for its survival.

Kim has used year-end, multiday political events to make major speeches at their conclusion. In his opening comments, “he stressed the need to lay out more exciting and confident struggle policies based on valuable facts that achieved practical advance while persevering all difficulties,” KCNA said.

(With assistance from Sangmi Cha.)


©2022 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. 

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

North Korea Sends Drones Into South Korea in Brazen Incursion

 
December 26, 2022 
William Gallo

 A suspected North Korean drone is viewed at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, June 21, 2017. South Korea says Dec. 26, 2022, it fired warning shots after North Korean drones violated the South’s airspace. 

(Lee Jung-hoon/Yonhap via AP, File)

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA —

North Korea sent several small drones into South Korean airspace Monday, Seoul officials said, prompting South Korea’s military to fly its own unmanned surveillance aircraft north of the sensitive border.

South Korea also scrambled fighter jets and attack helicopters to respond to the North Korean incursion but failed to bring down any of the drones, according to South Korean military officials.

While one of the drones returned to North Korea, the status of four others is not known, said South Korean military officials who spoke to reporters on background late Monday.

It’s not clear if the North Korean drones were armed, though South Korean officials say they were small – with a wingspan of only about 2 meters.

North Korea has sent tiny, crudely built UAVs into South Korea for apparent surveillance missions at least four other times since 2014, though this is the first reported incursion in more than five years.

Monday’s incident appeared particularly brazen, as the North Korean drones were reported to have flown around populated areas of South Korea for much of the day.

The first North Korean UAV crossed the border near South Korea’s northeast island of Ganghwa at 10:25 am local time and was quickly followed by the others, according to South Korean military officials.

Four of the drones flew near Ganghwa, while the other flew as far as the northern part of the Seoul metropolitan area, which is approximately 50 kilometers away, officials added.

As of 8:00 pm local time, there was no indication that any of the drones had been captured. There were no reports of damage in South Korea.

According to South Korea’s transport ministry, aircraft departures were temporarily halted at South Korea’s main Incheon Airport and the smaller Gimpo Airport, both of which are close to the reported North Korean intrusions.

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The incident is likely to raise questions about South Korea’s ability to prevent North Korean drone incursions and whether the South Korean military acted quickly enough to stop the unmanned vehicles.

According to a South Korean military background briefing, South Korea fired about 100 shots but failed to bring down any of the North Korean drones.

One of the South Korean aircraft involved in the response – a KA-1 light attack aircraft – crashed east of Seoul, though officials have not explained why. Neither pilot in the plane was injured, officials said.

In response, South Korea’s military said it sent a drone into North Korea on a reconnaissance mission. The South Korean drone reached about as far into the North as the North Korean drones intruded into the South, before returning south of the border, officials added.

North Korea Claims Spy Satellite Progress, Posts Imagery of Seoul, Incheon

In a statement, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff condemned North Korea’s “clear act of provocation” and vowed the South would continue to respond “thoroughly and firmly” to North Korea.

This is the first known North Korean drone incursion into South Korea since 2017, when a suspected North Korean drone mounted with a camera took photos of a U.S. anti-missile battery before crashing on its way back to the North.

In 2014, a similar North Korean unmanned aerial vehicle took pictures of military installations and even the residence of South Korea’s president before crashing near the border.

South Korean officials say the drones identified Monday appeared to be similar to those used in the 2014 and 2017 incidents.

North Korea has not commented on the incursion, but in the past has denied sending spy drones into South Korea.

North Korea has steadily ramped up tensions this year, launching a record number of missiles and conducting artillery shelling in sensitive border areas.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative who took office in May, has responded with corresponding shows of military might, often within a few hours of the North Korean provocations.

For school New Year's Eve parties in Moscow, some music is apparently deemed inappropriate

 

For school New Year's Eve parties in Moscow, some music is apparently deemed inappropriate

They are musicians condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Written byDaria Dergacheva

Posted 27 December 2022 

Screenshot of Monetochka's YouTube video

In December 2022, the Russophone segments of Twitter and Telegram saw a viral message spread out.  It was presented as a copy of an alleged message distributed among Moscow-based schools for those organizing New Year's Eve parties that lists Russian and Ukrainian bands that “should not” be played during such events.

While it remains unclear if this was indeed a copy of a real message, many of the bands and musicians mentioned are included in a list whose concerts indeed are now prohibited in Russia since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, because the bands are considered “anti-patriotic” or “anti-Russian.”

Global Voices chose a few songs from the list of “prohibited” bands for you to enjoy.

Monetochka is a singer from Yekaterinburg, a Russian city of 1.5 million people in the Urals region.  She was only 15 when she became popular with the songs that she wrote. Since that time, she has issued several very popular albums. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022, she left the country and spoke openly to condemn the war.

This is her latest video with the song “Burn, burn.” She sings: “Burn, my country, burn, do not stop the fire,” condemning what Russia has become.

One of the most popular Ukrainian bands included in the list is Okean Elzy.  The band has been on the world’s music scene since 1994, and its leader Svyatoslav Vakarchuk is also a political activist.  This year, the band has had a lot of concerts in Europe in support of Ukraine.  This is an old song but it very symbolic and timely: it is called “Without fight,” and is about a person never giving up without putting up a fight.

Another prohibited artist is a rap musician Oxxxyimiron. He is one of the most popular Russian rap stars, and took part in civic protests. He also left the country after the start of the invasion. This song, called “Oida,” is condemning the war and Putin.

Overall, the list includes 29 artists and bands.  Some of them, such as Little Big and Manizha, have even represented Russia at the Eurovision contest in previous years.  Some are very old classics, such as Boris Grebenschikov or DDT rock band.  All of them have explicitly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This post is part of RuNet Echo, a Global Voices project to interpret the Russian language internet. All Posts · Read more »

Written byDaria Dergacheva

Internet shutdowns in India 2022

India|Digital Rights
SFLC.in
26 December 2022

Demonstrators gather on the day of a nationwide call by farmers’ unions for a “Chakka Jam” (a protest blocking traffic) against new agri laws and the suspension of the internet, New Delhi, India, 6 February 2021. Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

The year 2022 has seen 75 incidents of internet shutdowns in India, according to a report by SFLC.in.

This statement was originally published on sflc.in on 23 December 2022.

The previous decade has witnessed an exponential increase in internet shutdowns in India with a total count of 690, out of which 110 had been implemented in the year 2021. The year 2022 has seen 75 shutdowns till the publication of this report. The negative impact of the same cannot be measured in monetary terms alone, but through focusing on the flagrant infringement of fundamental rights, along with restricted access to essential services, bringing the lives of millions across the nation to a virtual standstill. In order to combat the lacuna of awareness on the rampant misuse of internet shutdowns in India, SFLC.in has published a detailed report attempting to fully understand their frequency, extent and impact in India. This scoping and assessment exercise analyzes various patterns and trends behind the imposition of these shutdowns, studies the legal mechanism and policy outlook adopted, maps the stakeholders involved and assesses the impact of the same.

The report is heavily based upon the Internet Shutdowns tracker maintained by SFLC, which documents every single internet shutdown that has taken place pan-India since 2012, notably the only real-time database of its kind in the country. The methodology behind the tracker forms the basis of the empirical sources of the report, tracking the duration, impacted region, nature of the shutdown (whether preventive or reactive), nature of the services suspended, as well as the reasons for which the shutdown has been imposed, as per the orders of the Government. Wherever sufficient information has not been made available in the public domain, SFLC.in has robustly filed requests under the Right to Information Act and gathered data upon response to these requests.

Moreover the report analyzes the impact of internet shutdowns from a human rights and economical perspective, and how they affect the access to basic essential services, such education and healthcare. According to studies, India has suffered a loss of $174.6 million in the year 2022 alone, due to internet shutdowns, with long-term shutdowns leading to drastic impacts on the livelihood of people, directly contributing to the loss of employment. It brings to light the indiscriminate detriment caused to minority and underprivileged groups and their increased vunerabilty due to the hapazard use of Kill Switch.

The report also dives into the legislative framework behind the imposition of internet shutdowns and the interwoven web of applicable legislations and procedures prescribed for their regulation. It also extensively covers the judicial precedents and policy developments in the regulation of internet shutdowns, in India and across the world. Lastly, in order to accurately assess the role which each societal stakeholder which affects, and gets affected in the chain of causality during an internet shutdown, the report dissects each stakeholder group and maps the extent and intensity of the impact suffered by them due to an internet shutdown.

Read the report

Genocide Orphans Evicted As U.K.-Rwanda Asylum Treaty Goes Into Effect

December 23, 2022 African Stream 

Screenshot from African Stream video report / credit: African Stream

Editor’s Note: African Stream originally published this report.

Check out parts 1 and 2 of African Stream’s exclusive report in the videos below.

India Becomes Top Sugar Producer As Sugarcane Workers Fall Into Debt Due to Climate Change Destabilizing Farming

December 26, 2022 Sanket Jain 

A sugarcane cutter in the fields of western Maharashtra in India looking after her child as she juggles several tasks, often overlooking her own health / credit: Sanket Jain

KHOCHI, India—Anita Bhil regrets taking just a day off after more than two months of work without stop.

Since the first week of October, she has been cutting sugarcane for roughly 12 hours each day using a sickle. She then piles a bundle onto her head to walk over to a tractor. Each bundle of sugarcane weighs 20 kilograms (44 pounds). That’s about the equivalent of a large packed suitcase. By the end of each day, Bhil will have carried 50 bundles on her head and she will have tied together more than 100 bundles of sugarcane stems.

“In the past three years, my body has gotten used to this back-breaking labor,” said Bhil, who’s in her late 20s.

However, October’s devastating rainfall in Khochi village, followed by a sudden drop in temperature, then unusually high temperatures amid winter, caused her to be feverish. She took anti-inflammatory analgesics, returning to work the next day, despite an ailing body.

“Had I not taken a [day] off, I would have cut another 2,000 kilograms (4,410 pounds) of sugarcane,” Bhil said. A landless farm worker from the indigenous Bhil community, she had never before felt the need to migrate from her Chhavadi village in the Dhule district of western India’s Maharashtra state.

However, things have changed since 2018, she said. Incessant rainfall, rapid changes in the local climatic pattern, heat waves, and other recurring climatic events began destroying her region’s farms. For instance, between July and October of this year, natural disasters have affected more than 2.46 million hectares (6 million-plus acres) in Maharashtra alone.

For Bhil, these climate-induced events meant having no choice but to migrate 375 miles to the fields of western Maharashtra to cut sugarcane, moving from one plot to another on any given day. “No one in my family had ever entered this line of work,” she said.

Despite her deteriorating health, sugarcane cutter Anita Bhil refuses to stop working. “If I take a break, it will push me much deeper into poverty,” she said / credit: Sanket Jain

Bonded Labor

In India, the sugar industry impacts the livelihoods of 50 million farmers and their families, who have helped produce more than 500 million metric tons of sugarcane worth 1.18 trillion Indian Rupees ($14.26 billion) from October 2021 to September of this year. That turned India into the largest sugar producer and consumer worldwide in 2021-22. However, producing sweet sugar has come with the bitter taste of labor-law violations, inequality and the perpetuation of the grinding cycle of poverty. In Maharashtra, more than 1 million sugarcane cutters migrate hundreds of miles from their villages, working 15 hours a day for five to six months each year.

With income sources drying up, Bhil and her husband, Kunal, 35, took out a loan of 50,000 Indian Rupees ($615) to pay for each year of their children’s education and meet everyday expenses for up to five months. That meant both had to cut more than 181,000 kilograms (399,036 pounds) of sugarcane in roughly five months, an average of 1.2 tons (2,645 pounds) daily. For cutting 1,000 kilograms of sugarcane, plus tying and loading them onto tractors, these workers in Kolhapur’s Khochi village, where they are working now, are paid $3.40.

Anita has reported a consistent decline in her physical and mental health, which means the amount of sugarcane she has been cutting has been decreasing. She’s been keeping a mental count of every kilogram of sugarcane because last year, by the time the season ended, the couple was 54,000 kilograms short of their target. That is why they returned to the sugarcane fields this year. Yet, every hour lost to a health ailment pushes workers deeper into bonded labor. “I won’t be able to meet this year’s target as well,” Kunal said.

However, what makes sugarcane cutting appear lucrative to poor people is the advance sums.

“It’s a debt trap,” explained Narayan Gaikwad, 75, who has spent more than four decades fighting for the rights of cane cutters, farm workers and daily wage earners. A member of All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Gaikwad has unionized hundreds of sugarcane cutters in the Kolhapur district.

“The wages have fallen drastically in the farming sector because of tremendous losses caused by rains and heat waves,” he said.

In the Dhule district, for 10 hours of work, men are paid $1.80, while women earn $1.20. But over in the sugarcane fields of western Maharashtra, workers like Anita and Kunal Bhil are paid $3.40. However, no one can be assured work will be available because of the impact climate change has had on farming. And yet, it’s better than what they faced on their family farm in Chhavadi village.

“When there’s no work in the fields, you are forced to take loans from private money lenders,” Gaikwad explained. “To repay this loan, workers then take loans from sugarcane contractors—it’s a vicious debt cycle.”

On any given day, 49.6 million people around the world are forced into modern slavery, said an International Labour Organization report. The report finds that one-fifth of people involved in forced labor exploitation are in debt bondage, which is most prominent in the mining, agriculture and construction sectors.

“Marginalized communities, ethnic and religious minorities, and indigenous peoples are among the groups at particular risk,” it mentions.

A September 2021 report by Anti-Slavery International and International Institute for Environment and Development issued a warning: “Climate and development policy-makers and planners urgently need to recognize that millions of people displaced by climate change are being, and will be, exposed to slavery in the coming decades.”

Loading sugarcane on a tractor is risky because the slippery sugarcane fields of western Maharashtra almost lead to imbalance, and many workers have reported fractures in the past / credit: Sanket Jain

Recurring Climate Disasters

Kunal was once proud of the diversity of crops farmers cultivated in his region: Soybean, cotton, maize, sorghum, and others. However, since 2018, it’s become increasingly difficult to see these crops here.

“None of them could survive the changing climate.”

Kunal’s father and two uncles collectively own 16 acres. Last year, on four acres, he cultivated pearl millet and was able to harvest just 17 quintals (3,747 pounds). “I was expecting at least 35-40 quintals.”

As a result, he couldn’t sell a single kilogram and kept the entire harvest for household needs.

The monsoon rains started late in his region. By the time the crop was ready, rainfall was too heavy to allow for harvesting. This was surprising, given Kunal comes from a drought-prone region.

“We always cultivate crops that don’t require much water, but now everything has changed.” When he decided to shift to other crops, the delayed rainfall and the devastating October rains destroyed even this crop.

“We can’t decide what to grow because of the fluctuating climate.” Moreover, the losses aren’t restricted to the farming fields. Of his three daughters, Kunal brought two of them to the sugarcane fields. “Who will take care of children back in the village when everyone migrates?” he asks.

Kunal, who became a helping hand too early in his life, couldn’t go to school. “I never wanted this to happen to my children, but looking at the climate disasters, I think even they will have to do this work.”

Every year, more than 1 million farm workers migrate hundreds of miles from Maharashtra’s farming villages to the fields of western Maharashtra to cut sugarcane / credit: Sanket Jain

Paying for the Sins of the Global North

Between 1991 and 2001, climate disasters led to 676,000 deaths and affected an average of 189 million people living in developing countries every year, according to the Loss and Damage Collaboration’s report. “In the first half of 2022, six fossil fuel companies made enough to cover the costs of extreme climate- and weather-related events in all developing countries and still have nearly $70 billion left over in pure profit.”

Loss and Damage refer to the economic and non-economic impacts of climate change that cannot be avoided through mitigation or adaptation. Oxfam’s report said the estimated cost of Loss and Damage can range from $290 billion to $580 billion. Research published in Lancet found that from 1850 to 2015, the Global North was responsible for 92 percent of excess emissions, the United States 40 percent and the European Union 29 percent.

In 1991, Vanuatu, an island country in the south Pacific Ocean, first proposed on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) compensation for the impacts of rising sea levels due to climate change. It took 31 years for the issue to be addressed at a COP.

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), held last month in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, ended with an agreement to establish a Loss and Damage fund.

However, several details, such as its operation and which countries would contribute to this fund, haven’t been finalized. The negotiations ended with an agreement to establish a “transitional committee,” which would make recommendations on operationalizing the funding and adopting it at the next COP.

To top it off, no agreement remains about what counts as Loss and Damage. Meanwhile, thousands of workers like Anita Bhil are being pushed every day into bonded labor.Sugarcane cutter Sarla Bhil said she started migrating to sugarcane fields for work only three years ago because of recurring climate disasters, which are devastating crops in her region / credit: Sanket Jain

‘No Option But to Migrate’

After cutting cane for more than two months this year, Prakash Bhil, 32, said he made a firm decision.

“No matter what, I won’t return next year to cut sugarcane.” He paused for a few moments and said, “But…” Then he stopped again. Almost teary-eyed, he placed his hand on the right leg. He thought it might be fractured, but he couldn’t visit a doctor because of the workload. “But it all depends if I will be able to cut enough sugarcane this year and whether rains create any havoc in my village,” Bhil said. “I just hope my children get a good education.”

Last year, the fields where he worked saw devastating rains, washing away cotton, soybean and sorghum. “Nothing survived.” Earlier, he found work for at least 25 days a month. “Now even finding 15 days of work is becoming difficult,” he said, referring to the impact of incessant rainfall.

Unable to pay off a $74 loan from last year, he returned to the sugarcane fields. “This year, I took an advance of $245 and won’t be able to repay it because of my poor health.” While he’s resting, the entire burden has fallen on his wife, a frail Sarla in her early 20s.

Anita Bhil brought her infant daughter to the sugarcane fields because no one was available back home to provide childcare / credit: Sanket Jain

Back to Work 3 Days After Giving Birth

“There are massive labor rights violations in the production of sugar,” said Narayan, the organizer. He then shared the story of a sugarcane cutter who had migrated to the Kolhapur district. She was 9 months and 9 days pregnant.

“She was cutting sugarcane for seven hours and started experiencing labor pains in the evening. The case was so complicated that three public hospitals rejected her.” Narayan then took her to the district hospital and ensured a safe childbirth. “After three days, she was back to cutting cane,” Narayan added. “A decade since then, nothing much has changed.”

For more than seven years, community healthcare worker Shubhangi Kamble in Maharashtra’s Arjunwad village has been helping make public healthcare accessible to sugarcane cutters by going door to door, providing healthcare on the spot and connecting workers with doctors and hospitals. She said the cutters’ situation has been getting worse every year, attributing it to declining incomes caused by climate change impacts.

“Sugarcane cutters are trapped in debt, and no matter what happens to their health, they don’t take a break. Many do not even complete their prescribed medical course because they can’t afford the costly medicines,” she shared. In the past three years, complaints of body aches, fatigue, and dizziness have increased among cane cutters, especially among women, according to Kamble.

One among them is Anita Bhil, who, despite her deteriorating health, is adamant about not taking a break.

“A day’s off can push an entire generation into poverty,” Bhil said, as thuds of chopping sugarcane reverberated throughout the fields.

Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.