Climate risks dwarf Europe's energy crisis, space chief warns

  

 

A Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite image shows Po River water levels in northern Italy


Italy DroughtThe dried riverbed of the Po river in Sermide, Italy, Thursday, Aug.11, 2022. The river Po runs 652 kilometers (405 miles) from the northwestern city of Turin to Venice. But Northern Italy hasn't seen rainfall for months and this year's snowfall was down by 70%. Higher than usual temperature did the rest, leaving the Po basin without its summer water reservoirs, with repercussions on its surrounding economy, tourism, and agriculture. (AP Photo/Luigi Navarra)

Thu, August 11, 2022 at 2:37 AM·4 min read

By Tim Hepher

PARIS (Reuters) - The head of the European Space Agency (ESA) has warned economic damage from heatwaves and drought could dwarf Europe's energy crisis as he called for urgent action to tackle climate change.

Director General Josef Aschbacher told Reuters successive heatwaves along with wildfires, shrinking rivers and rising land temperatures as measured from space left no doubt about the toll on agriculture and other industries from climate change.

"Today, we are very concerned about the energy crisis, and rightly so. But this crisis is very small compared to the impact of climate change, which is of a much bigger magnitude and really has to be tackled extremely fast," he said.

He was speaking in an interview as heatwaves and floods generate concerns over extreme weather across the globe.

More than 57,200 hectares have been swallowed by wildfire in France this year, nearly six times the full-year average.

In Spain, a prolonged dry spell made July the hottest month since at least 1961.

Utah's Great Salt Lake and Italy's Po River are at their lowest recorded levels. France's Loire is now on the watch list.

On Tuesday, Britain issued a new amber "Extreme Heat" warning.

That follows record temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) that placed a renewed focus on climate risks at July's Farnborough Airshow in southern England, where Aschbacher said the issue was humanity's biggest challenge.

"It's pretty bad. We have seen extremes that have not been observed before," Aschbacher told Reuters this week.

Soaring air temperatures are not the only problem. The Earth's skin is getting warmer too.

Aschbacher said ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite series had measured "extreme" land surface temperatures of more than 45C in Britain, 50C in France and 60C in Spain in recent weeks.

Land surface temperature drives air circulation.

"It's really the whole ecosystem that is changing very, very fast and much faster than what scientists expected until some years ago," he said.

"It is drought, fires, intensity of storms, everything coupled together, which are the visible signs of climate change."

As changes in temperature also become more marked, winds become stronger and unleash harsher storms.

"Typhoons are much more powerful than they used to be in terms of wind speed and therefore damage," Aschbacher said.

BREXIT FUNDING GAP

The Austrian scientist was named head of Paris-based ESA last year after leading the 22-nation agency's Earth observation work including Copernicus, which ESA says is the world's largest environmental monitoring effort, co-led by the European Union.

Together, the programme's six families of Sentinel satellites aim to read the planet's "vital signs" from carbon dioxide to wave height or temperatures of land and oceans.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images taken on roughly the same day in June between 2020 and 2022, released by ESA, show how the drought-stricken Po - whose plains sustain a third of Italy's agriculture - has retreated to expose broad sandbanks.

But the programme faces a Brexit funding gap of 750 million euros ($774 million) needed to help develop a second generation of satellites that Britain was to have contributed via the European Union and whose fate is now under discussion.

After leaving the EU last year, Britain remains a member of ESA and its 170-million-euro direct contribution is unaffected.

"We do still need the 750 million to complete development of this second generation of satellites," Aschbacher said.

"And yes, that is certainly an issue for climate monitoring globally but (also) for Europe in particular, because many of these parameters are aiming at priorities for Europe."

A funding package for Earth observation worth an estimated 3 billion euros will be discussed by ESA ministers in November.

Aschbacher dismissed what he called two myths voiced by critics who question the international climate drive.

"The first is that people think one can wait and by waiting somehow we will tough it out," he said. "The second is that it will cost a lot of money to deal with climate change ... and affect the poorest people, and we shouldn't do it," he said, adding that failing to heed warnings like this year's weather crisis could cost hundreds of trillions of dollars this century.

"Of course, you always have weather fluctuations ... but never of this magnitude. There is no doubt in my mind that this is caused by climate change," Aschbacher told Reuters.

($1 = 0.9685 euros)

(Reporting by Tim Hepher Additional reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Mark Potter)

'Hitting rock bottom' - drought, heat drain Spanish reservoirs

Wed, August 10, 2022 
By Vincent West

CIJARA, Spain (Reuters) - A flock of sheep shelter from the midday sun under the gothic arches of a medieval bridge flooded in 1956 to create the Cijara reservoir in central Spain, but now fully exposed as the reservoir is 84% empty after a severe drought.

In Andalusia, one of Europe's hottest and driest regions, paddle-boats and waterslides lie abandoned on the cracked bed of Vinuela reservoir, remnants of a rental business gone with the water, now at a critical level of 13%.

A nearby restaurant fears a similar fate.

"The situation is quite dramatic in the sense that it's been several years without rain and we're hitting rock bottom," said owner Francisco Bazaga, 52. "If it doesn't rain, unless they find some alternative water supply, the future is very, very dark."

A prolonged dry spell and extreme heat made July the hottest month in Spain since at least 1961. Spanish reservoirs are at just 40% of capacity on average in early August, well below the ten-year average of around 60%, official data shows.

"We are in a particularly dry year, a very difficult year that confirms what climate change scenarios have been highlighting," Energy Minister Teresa Ribera told a news conference on Monday, also highlighting that the drought was leading to devastating wildfires.

Climate change has left parts of the Iberian peninsula at their driest in 1,200 years, and winter rains are expected to diminish further, a study published last month by the Nature Geoscience journal showed.

The dry, hot weather is likely to continue into the autumn, Spain's meteorological service AEMET said in a recent report, putting further strain on Europe's largest network of dammed reservoirs with a holding capacity of 5.6 billion cubic metres.

At the Buendia reservoir east of Madrid, the ruins of a village and bathhouses have reappeared, caked in dried mud, Reuters drone footage showed, while at another dam near Barcelona a ninth-century Romanesque church has reemerged still intact, attracting visitors.

(Additional reporting by Albert Gea, Jon Nazca, Susana Vera, Borja Suarez, Editing by Andrei Khalip and Jane Merriman)

Wildfires burn, farmers struggle as another heatwave bakes western Europe






Wildfires continue to spread in the Gironde region

Thu, August 11, 2022 at 6:27 AM·4 min read
By Manuel Ausloos and Stephane Mahe

HOSTENS, France (Reuters) - European nations sent firefighting teams to help France tackle a "monster" wildfire on Thursday, while forest blazes also raged in Spain and Portugal and the head of the European Space Agency urged immediate action to combat climate change.

More than 1,000 firefighters, backed by water-bombing planes, battled for a third day a fire that has forced thousands from their homes and scorched thousands of hectares of forest in France's southwestern Gironde region.

With a dangerous cocktail of blistering temperatures, tinder-box conditions and wind fanning the flames, emergency services were struggling to bring the fire under control.


"It's an ogre, a monster," said Gregory Allione from the French firefighters body FNSPF said.

Heatwaves, floods and crumbling glaciers in recent weeks have heightened concerns over climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather across the globe.

The head of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, said rising land temperatures and shrinking rivers as measured from space left no doubt about the toll on agriculture and other industries from climate change.

ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-3 satellite series has measured "extreme" land surface temperatures of more than 45C (113F) in Britain, 50C in France and 60C in Spain in recent weeks.

"It's pretty bad. We have seen extremes that have not been observed before," Aschbacher told Reuters.

In Romania, where record temperatures and drought have drained rivers of water, Greenpeace activists protested on the parched banks of the Danube to draw attention to global warming and urge the government to lower emissions.

CLIMATE CHANGE RISKS

With successive heatwaves baking Europe this summer, searing temperatures and unprecedented droughts, renewed focus has been placed on climate change risks to farming, industry and livelihoods.

Severe drought is set to slash the European Union's maize harvest by 15%, dropping it to a 15-year a low, just as Europeans contend with higher food prices as a result of lower-than-normal grain exports from Russia and Ukraine.

Swiss army helicopters have been drafted in to airlift water to thirsty cows, pigs and goats sweltering under a fierce sun in the country's Alpine meadows.

In France, suffering its harshest drought on record, trucks are delivering water to dozens of villages where taps have run dry, nuclear power stations have received waivers to keep pumping hot discharge water into river, and farmers warn a fodder shortfall may lead to milk shortages.

In Germany, scant rainfall this summer has drained the water levels of the Rhine, the country's commercial artery, hampering shipping and pushing freight costs.

However, as Europe contends with another heatwave, one group of workers has little choice but to sweat it out: gig-economy food couriers who often fall between the cracks of labour regulations.

After the mayor of Palermo on the island of Sicily in July ordered horses carrying tourists be given at least 10 litres of water per day, bicycle courier Gaetano Russo filed a suit demanding similar treatment.

"Am I worth less than a horse," Russo was quoted as saying in a Nidil CDIL union statement.

"HEARTBROKEN"

Britain's Met Office on Thursday issued a four-day "extreme heat" warning for parts of England and Wales.

In Portugal, more than 1,500 firefighters spent a sixth day fighting a wildfire in the central Covilha region that has burned 10,500 hectares (40 square miles), including parts of the Serra da Estrela national park.

In Spain, electrical storms triggered new wildfires and hundreds of people were evacuated from the path of one blaze in the province of Caceres.

Macron's office said extra fire-fighting aircraft were arriving from Greece and Sweden, while Germany, Austria, Romania and Poland were all deploying firefighters to help tackle wildfires in France.

"European solidarity at work!" Macron tweeted.

Firefighters said they had managed to save the village of Belin-Beliet, which emptied after police told residents to evacuate as the flames approached. But the blaze reached the outskirts, leaving behind charred houses and ruined tractors.

"We've been lucky. Our houses were saved. But you see the catastrophe over there. Some houses could not be saved," said resident Gaetan, pointing to houses burnt to the ground.

The Gironde was hit by big wildfires in July.

"The area is totally disfigured. We're heartbroken, we're exhausted," Jean-Louis Dartiailh, a local mayor, told Radio Classique. "(This fire) is the final straw."

(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Wildfires spread, fish die off amid severe drought in Europe

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SYLVIE CORBET and VANESSA GERA
Thu, August 11, 2022 at 2:21 AM·5 min read


PARIS (AP) — Firefighters from across Europe struggled Thursday to contain a huge wildfire in France that has swept through a large swath of pine forest, while Germans and Poles faced a mass fish die-off in a river flowing between their countries.

Europe is suffering under a severe heat wave and drought that has produced tragic consequences for farmers and ecosystems already under threat from climate change and pollution.

The drought is causing a loss of agricultural products and other food at a time when supply shortages and Russia's war against Ukraine have caused inflation to spike.

In France, which is enduring its worst drought on record, flames raged through pine forests overnight, illuminating the sky with an intense orange light in the Gironde region, which was already ravaged by flames last month, and in neighboring Landes. More than 68 square kilometers (26 square miles) have burned since Tuesday.

The French wildfires have already forced the evacuation of about 10,000 people and destroyed at least 16 houses.

Along the Oder River, which flows from Czechia north into the Baltic Sea, volunteers have been collecting dead fish that have washed ashore in Poland and Germany.

Piotr Nieznanski, the conservation policy director at WWF Poland, said it appears that a toxic chemical was released into the water by an industry and the low water levels caused by the drought has made conditions far more dangerous for the fish.

“A tragic event is happening along the Oder River, an international river, and there is no transparent information about what is going on,” he said, calling on government authorities to investigate.

People living along the river have been warned not to swim in the water or even touch it.

Poland’s state water management body said the drought and high temperatures can cause even small amounts of pollution to lead to an ecological disaster but it has not identified the source of the pollution.

In northern Serbia, the dry bed of the Conopljankso reservoir is now littered with dead fish that were unable to survive the drought.

The water level along Germany's Rhine River was at risk of falling so low that it could become difficult to transport goods — including critical energy items like coal and gasoline.

In Italy, which is experiencing its worst drought in seven decades, the parched Po River has already caused billions of euros in losses to farmers who normally rely on Italy's longest river to irrigate their fields and rice paddies.

“I am young and I do not remember anything like this, but even the elderly in my village or the other villages around here have never seen anything like this, never ever,” said Antonio Cestari, a 35-year-old farmer in Ficarolo who says he expects to produce only half his usual crops of corn, wheat and soy because his river-fed wells have such low water levels.

The Po runs 652 kilometers (405 miles) from the northwestern city of Turin to Venice. It has dozens of tributary rivers but northern Italy hasn’t seen rainfall for months and this year’s snowfall was down by 70%. The drying up of the Po is also jeopardizing drinking water in Italy’s densely populated and highly industrialized districts.

Over in Portugal, the Serra da Estrela national park was also being ravaged by a wildfire. Some 1,500 firefighters, 476 vehicles and 12 aircraft were deployed to fight it but the wind-driven blaze 250 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Lisbon was very hard to reach, with inaccessible peaks almost 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) high and deep ravines. The fire has charred 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of woodland.

In Britain, where temperatures hit a record 40.3 degrees Celsius (104.5 degrees Fahrenheit) in July, the weather office has issued a new warning for “extreme heat” from Thursday through Sunday, with temperatures forecast to reach 36 C (96.8 F).

It has been one of the driest summers on record in southern Britain, and the Met Office weather service said there is an “exceptional risk” of wildfires over the next few days.

London Fire Brigade said its control room had dealt with 340 grass, garbage and open-land fires during the first week of August, eight times the number from last year. Assistant Commissioner Jonathan Smith said “the grass in London is tinderbox dry and the smallest of sparks can start a blaze which could cause devastation.”

In Switzerland, a drought and high temperatures have endangered fish populations and authorities have begun moving fish out of some creeks that were running dry.

In Hausen, in the canton of Zurich, officials caught hundreds of fish, many of them brown trout, in the almost dried-up Heischerbach, Juchbach and Muehlebach creeks this week by anesthetizing them with electric shocks and then immediately placing them in a water tank enriched with oxygen, local media reported. Later, the fish were taken to creeks that still carry enough water.

Despite all the harm caused by the extreme weather, Swiss authorities see one morbid upside: they believe there's hope of finding some people who went missing in the mountains in the last few years because their bodies are being released as glaciers melt.

In the Swiss canton of Valais, melting glaciers have recently revealed parts of a crashed airplane and, at separate locations, at least two skeletons. The bodies have not yet been identified, news website 20Minuten reported Thursday.

Spanish state television showed dozens of trucks heading to France having to turn around and stay in Spain because wildfires had forced authorities to close some border crossings. TVE reported that truckers, many carrying perishable goods, were looking for ways to cross the border because the parking areas around the Irun crossing were full.

France this week is in its fourth heat wave of the year as it faces what the government describes as the country's worst drought on record. Temperatures were expected to reach 40 C (104 F) on Thursday.

___

Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland. Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Jill Lawless in London, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Andrea Rosa in Ficarolo, Italy and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed reporting.

___

Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

America’s summer of floods: climate crisis fueling barrage, scientists say

Oliver Milman in New York

THE GUARDIAN


An entire building and roads washed away by raging waters in Yellowstone. People desperately swimming from their homes in St Louis. Dozens dead after torrential downpours in Kentucky. The summer of 2022 has been one of extreme floods in the US, with scientists warning the climate crisis is worsening the devastation.


© Provided by The GuardianPhotograph: Derik Holtmann/AP

The deadliest of the recent barrage of floods, in Kentucky, was described as “heartbreaking” by Joe Biden as he surveyed ruined houses and inundated cars on Monday. At least 37 people died after five days of pounding record rain washed down mountainsides and drowned entire towns, an event that scientists say is a once in 1,000 year occurrence.

Such extremes are no longer such outliers, however, with St Louis breaking its one-day rainfall record by 8am on 26 July, swamping city streets and houses, a disaster quickly followed by a similarly severe storm that hit Illinois. On Friday, Death Valley in California, a place known for its searing dry heat, got a year’s worth of rain in just three hours, causing huge sheets of flooding that washed away and damaged hundreds of miles of roads.

In an 11-day span, the US experienced at least four flooding events that would each normally be expected once every 1,000 years, or have a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year. Scientists say extreme rainfall spurred by climate breakdown is rendering many of these historical norms obsolete.

“We are going to have to change the labeling because these are not one-in-1,000-years events any more,” said Andreas Prein, an expert in climate extremes at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “It’s shocking to see all of this flood damage but it follows a pattern. These rare events are becoming more and more common and our infrastructure is just not keeping up.”

America’s summer of flooding has thrown up extraordinary spectacles, such as a large building being wrenched from its foundations and carried away by surging flood water in Yellowstone in June. The main road entrances to the national park were severed by what officials called “unprecedented” flooding and took a month to fully reopen.

This week, a dozen motorists had to be rescued from the windows of their cars after intense rainfall caused roads in Denver to become more like swimming pools.

Although flooding has always occurred in the US, the climate crisis is worsening such events, as well as making them more frequent. The federal government’s most recent national climate assessment found that heavy precipitation events have increased in the north-east US by 55% since the 1950s, with such events growing by 27% in the south-east, including Kentucky. The midwest, scene of the record St Louis flooding, has seen a 42% increase in extreme rainfall in this time.


A road ends where flood waters washed away a house in Gardiner, Montana, in June. Photograph: David Goldman/AP

As the Earth’s atmosphere heats up due to the burning of fossil fuels, it holds more water vapor that can be unleashed in huge downpours. Climate change is also causing broader shifts in weather patterns, some of which are still to be fully understood, said Prein.

“Climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of flooding and it will likely get worse with further warming,” he said. “We are also seeing these repeated storms hit the same area, like Kentucky, again and again in a short period of time, which isn’t well understood. But we know the hot temperatures, like the eastern US has just had, has helped build the water in the atmosphere.”

Some places have suffered a disconcerting whiplash between severe drought and severe flooding. Heavy rain on parched, drought-ridden land can cause flash flooding and even deadly mudslides.

Las Vegas, in the grip of the worst drought in centuries and a record low level of its main water supply in nearby Lake Mead, saw its streets turn into rivers and its casinos become inundated after flooding rains on 29 July.

“This is a city that is tearing out ornamental grass to save water and then gets flooded like this,” said Prein. “It shows there is an intensification of the hydrological cycle, instead of having an afternoon shower for a couple of days and then fine weather you get these bigger, clustered events that dump a lot of rain very quickly.”


An aerial view of houses submerged under flood waters in Jackson, Kentucky. Photograph: Leandro Lozada/AFP/Getty Images

The connection between these increasingly disastrous floods and the climate crisis is often unclear to many Americans, including Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky, who said after the recent disaster in the east of the state, “I wish I could tell you why we keep getting hit here in Kentucky … I cannot give you the why, but I know what we do in response. The answer is, everything we can.”

Kentucky was hit by large floods last year, too, and finds itself at a “crux” of extreme weather, according to Megan Schargorodski, the interim state climatologist. The state is now routinely subjected to scorching heat, drought and tornadoes, as well as floods.

“People here were hit by tornadoes in December and were still emotionally recharging from that when this new tragic event happened,” Schargorodski said. “It’s barely enough time to recover – we are being bombarded by one significant weather event after another.

“We are a very conservative state so we stray away from explicitly mentioning climate change because some people stop listening. But we can talk about the trends and the need to adapt. If you’re not prepared in securing your home and ensuring your exit routes, you’re going to face a lot more risks. So preparedness is what we need to focus on.”

Canadian Housing Correction Accelerates, Prices Seen Falling 25%


Ari Altstedter
Thu, August 11, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Canadian homes could lose as much as a quarter of their value as market declines set off by rapidly rising interest rates play out much faster than anticipated, according to Desjardins Securities Inc.

After hitting a peak in February, average home prices in Canada are now expected to fall as much as 25% by the end of next year, economists Randall Bartlett, Helene Begin and Marc Desormeaux said in a report Thursday, with both the declines so far and the rate hikes driving them already out-pacing previous forecasts.

An unprecedented boom over the course of the pandemic drove Canadian home values to record levels, but they’ve reversed just as fast since the Bank of Canada began raising interest rates in March to prevent the broader economy from overheating. While the declines so far have been sharpest in markets with the biggest pandemic run-ups, mainly Toronto and the communities around it, signs are emerging that the weakness is now spreading across the country too.

Royal Bank of Canada has predicted this will be the biggest real-estate correction Canada has seen in at least 40 years. National sales and price data for July are due next week, with Toronto already reporting a 3.9% decline in its home-price index on the month -- capping its worst four-month drop since 2005.

Nevertheless, because the increases the previous two years were so dramatic, average prices should still end 2023 higher than they were before the pandemic, according to the Desjardins economists.

“Canada’s housing market is correcting quickly, and faster than we anticipated,” Bartlett, the firm’s senior director of Canadian economics, and his colleagues said. “While we don’t want to diminish the difficulties some Canadians are facing, this adjustment is helping to bring some sanity back to Canadian real estate. Many markets are returning to balance, and affordability is on track to gradually improve as prices fall.”

Several killed as Somaliland protesters clash with police

Thu, August 11, 2022 

Several people were killed and dozens wounded on Thursday after police opened fire on anti-government demonstrators in several towns in the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland, opposition party members and witnesses said.

Hundreds of people took to the streets in the capital Hargeisa and the cities of Burao and Erigavo after negotiations between the government and opposition parties broke down, with the latter accusing the authorities of seeking to delay a presidential election due in November.

Protesters carried placards saying "Hold the election on 13th November 2022" and chanting anti-government slogans.

"Peace can only prevail in Somaliland with the provision of fair and free elections, let those who defend democracy prevail," Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, the leader of the main opposition Waddani party, told a crowd in Hargeisa.

One protest organiser, Ahmed Ismail, told AFP that three people including a woman were killed in Hargeisa, and 34 others admitted to hospital.

"Several people including one of the security guards of our party leader were killed, we are still investigating the overall fatalities which can be higher," a Waddani member told AFP, requesting anonymity.

One person died in Erigavo during clashes between the protesters and police, eyewitness Abdullahi Mohamud said.

"The police tried to stop the demonstrators from reaching the main intersection of Erigavo town but the determined protesters overran their blockades," he said.

"We will not stop these demonstrations... until the president (Muse Bihi Abdi) announces he is ready for the election," said Heybe Adan, one of the protesters.

- 'Atrocities' -

In a press conference late Thursday, Waddani leader Abdullahi accused the government of committing "atrocities" against the protesters.

"This was a peaceful demonstration and we have led people who carried only placards and whistles, but the government has committed violations by using excessive power, live bullets, tear gas," he said.

The unrest has sparked worry among some Western nations, with the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Denmark and others releasing a joint statement expressing concern about "reports of public disorder and the excessive use of force" during Thursday's protests.

"We call upon all sides to ensure that both the demonstrations and police response are peaceful and follow the rule of law," the statement said, urging all parties to hold talks and "reach consensus on a roadmap for elections."

The poll is scheduled for November 13, but the opposition has voiced concern that the government is dragging its feet over preparations.

The government's decision to register new political parties ahead of the election also angered Waddani and the opposition Justice and Welfare party (UCID) over fears it will dilute support for them.

The former British protectorate declared independence from Somalia in 1991 but the move has not been recognised by the international community, leaving the Horn of Africa region of about four million people poor and isolated.

Somaliland has however remained relatively stable while Somalia has been wracked by decades of civil war, political violence and an Islamist insurgency.

nur/amu/kjm

Iowa motorist accused of hitting abortion rights protester

Wed, August 10, 2022 

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa man faces two criminal charges accusing him of driving his vehicle through a group of abortion rights protestors in Cedar Rapids in June and striking a woman before driving away, court documents posted online Wednesday said.

David Alan Huston, 53, of Swisher, is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon — a vehicle — and leaving the scene of a personal injury accident, according to the court documents.

There is no evidence to indicate the crash was politically motivated, Black Hawk County Attorney Brian Williams said in a statement. He said there also is no evidence that any protestors acted aggressively.

Huston did not immediately return messages Wednesday seeking comment on the charges, and online court records did not yet list an attorney for him.

A group organized by Indivisible Iowa and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa were protesting in front of the federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids to support abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that make abortion legal nationwide.

Iowa law bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The state Supreme Court in June cleared the way for stricter limits when it reversed an earlier court decision that found the Iowa Constitution guaranteed the right to abortion. The Republican governor has promised to work through the courts to revive a six-week ban that was previously blocked.

Video of the June 24 crash shows protesters were crossing a street when a large pickup drove through the group, even as other vehicles waited for them to cross, Williams said in a statement. Protesters tried to to stop the pickup by blocking its path, resulting in one woman being struck. Court documents do not indicate the extent of her injuries.

Huston “then left the scene without any attempt to exchange information,” court documents say.

The crash happened in Linn County, but prosecutors asked a judge to shift the case to Black Hawk County due to a potential conflict of interest.

 Billionaire Mark Cuban Takes Surprise Stance on Controversial New Tax

The entrepreneur Mark Cuban just took a stand in a debate that's hotly controversial in business circles and Congress.

BY LUC OLINGA


No subject is more controversial in economic circles right now than taxes. Tensions heighten even more when the specific subject is a new tax aimed at businesses.

Simply put, the business community hates taxes.

No surprise, then, that last week, when the U.S. Senate agreed to a 1% tax on share buybacks as a way to partly finance President Joe Biden's climate and health-care bill, the proposed measure prompted a lot of debate. Opinion on the benefits and disadvantages of buybacks is sharply split.

The House is expected to vote on the bill this week.

Enter Mark Cuban, one of the most listened-to and admired entrepreneurs.

The "Shark Tank" star has never made a secret of his aversion to share buybacks. He says buybacks "are not good for most employees of the companies that do" them.

Cuban reiterated his dislike of share buybacks in a lengthy exchange, consisting of multiple tweets on Twitter, with Norbert J. Michel, vice president and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.
Buybacks Reward Holders Who Want to Sell

"A little-appreciated fact is that most repurchased shares either go to employees, who later sell to investors, or are acquired to reduce equity dilution after employees have sold stock," Michel tweeted on Aug. 10. Michel commented on a Wall Street Journal column titled "The Virtues of Stock Buybacks."

"Why not just buy back shares from those employees and eliminate their pricing risk when they sell?" Cuban commented.

"They could do both (compensate with shares and buy shares from them later?)?" Michel responded.

"But they rarely buy those shares directly from employees," Cuban argued. "And employees can't time their sales to the announcement. So the emps who can least afford the risk and may be the least financially literate, own all pricing risk when they are able to or need to sell."

Share buybacks, also called stock repurchases, are one of the ways in which a company shares its financial successes with shareholders.

In a buyback, as the name suggests, a company buys its own shares in the market. Such moves reduce the company's shares outstanding and increase the proportionate stakes of the shareholders. They are also seen as a way for the company to invest in itself.

Cuban says share buybacks reward shareholders who want to sell all or part of their holdings. He calls buybacks "the epitome of financial engineering."
'I Would Have Made the Tax 2%'

"Buybacks, IMHO [in my humble opinion], are everything wrong with what companies do. It's a response to pressure from big investors, to CSuite who want to engineer EPS [earnings per share], to try to goose the stock, to hit bonuses," the billionaire blasted out.

He says that "there are no good taxes," but he seems to think that the new tax can be justified and he explains why: "[When] Congress sees financial engineering, and it's to the exclusion of a significant number of stakeholders, of all the bad taxes, taxing buybacks rockets to the top of the list."

He added:

"If it were my call, I would have created an exemption to the tax that said if all employees receive shares at an equal ratio to their W2 + Kx pay, then no tax," Cuban argued.

"But we know few CEOs would accept that," he said.

He suggests that Congress should've doubled the announced tax on share buybacks.

"So I would have made the tax 2% 🙂" the billionaire said.

"I think a tax on buybacks is a good idea, actually," Cuban repeated in a phone interview with CNBC on Aug. 11. "I don't have a problem with that at all. In fact, I think it's a good idea."

The proposed stock-buyback tax would take effect in 2023. That, some analysts say, could spur a buyback frenzy for the rest of 2022, which could boost the markets.

In 2021, S&P 500 share repurchases totaled $883 billion, 73% more than the $511 billion distributed as dividends, according to some estimates. Unlike dividends, share buybacks lift earnings per share by reducing share counts. They also allow investors to defer or avoid paying taxes. 

 

Russia Confirms Brittney Griner Prisoner Exchange Talks Are Happening

Stephanie Holland
Thu, August 11, 2022

Photo: Christian Petersen (Getty Images)

In the week since WNBA star Brittney Griner was found guilty on drug charges and sentenced to nine years in prison, it’s been theorized by journalists and pundits that prisoner exchange talks would get more serious now that Russia’s legal process has played out. It appears those opinions are true.

According to The Washington Post, the Russian government is now confirming that negotiations for a possible prisoner swap are happening. Talks were first authorized by President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in April when they met in Geneva.

“Instructions were given to authorized structures to carry out negotiations,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ivan Nechayev. “They are being conducted by competent authorities,”

As we previously reported at The Root, Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed that the United States made a “substantial offer” to exchange the two-time Olympic gold medalist and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who has been detained since 2018 on alleged spying charges, for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer currently serving 25 years in federal prison.

With two countries engaged in public saber-rattling and posturing, it was beginning to feel like no one was actually concerned about bringing Brittney home. Confirmation of talks means things are at least moving in the right direction.

Former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson recently told This Week host George Stephanopoulos that he’s “optimistic” about a possible two-for-two deal that would bring Griner and Whelan home.

“I think she’s going to be freed,” Richardson said. “I think she has the right strategy of contrition, a good legal team. There’s going to be a prisoner swap, though. And I think it will be two-for-two involving Paul Whelan. We can’t forget him. He’s an American Marine wrongfully detained, too.”

It’s important to note that when a deal does happen we won’t hear about it until the Phoenix Mercury center is on her way home or already on American soil. Despite how unexpectedly public these negotiations have been, it’s rare for us to find out when a deal has actually been made.

The scientific theory of why some Americans don't want Brittney Griner to come home from a Russian prison

Meredith Cash
Thu, August 11, 2022

Brittney Griner.

Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool/AP Photo

The WNBA superstar Brittney Griner has been sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison.

The US government has classified her as wrongfully detained and is working to negotiate her freedom.

Some Americans don't want her to return. A political scientist said two theories could explain why.

Some Americans are rooting against Brittney Griner's return home to the United States.

The WNBA superstar was arrested in February after customs agents at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport said they found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. She was found guilty of drug smuggling in early August and sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison.

Griner was escorted out of the courtroom after receiving her verdict and sentence.

Evgenia Novozhenina/Pool/Reuters

Given the timing of her detainment, the nature of her alleged offense, and the reputation of Russian courts, Griner is widely considered to be a political pawn that Moscow is using as leverage against the United States. As such, the State Department classified Griner as wrongfully detained in May.

Even despite the "strong signal that the US government does not believe that there is a legitimate case against her," as an expert previously told Insider, many of the two-time Olympic gold medalist's compatriots are opposed to the Biden administration's efforts to secure her freedom through negotiating a prisoner exchange with the Kremlin.

And there could be a scientific explanation to why they've sided with a foreign adversary instead of supporting their fellow American.

Griner competed for Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

Dani Gilbert, an expert on hostage taking and recovery and a Rosenwald Fellow in US Foreign Policy and International Security at Dartmouth College's John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, told Insider that her research suggests that "how someone came to be in need of assistance affects whether or not the public thinks that person should receive it."

This phenomenon, she said, is called the "deservingness heuristic."

Gilbert used poverty as an example for her explanation. People who believe that poor people are simply unlucky are the ones who are willing to support programs that provide assistance. But those who deem poor people lazy are less likely to support those same programs.

Her research, which she conducted along with a colleague at the University of California San Diego, suggests that that same theory applies to the public perception of hostages and wrongfully detained people. Griner is no exception.

Griner in her defendant's cage during her Russian drug-smuggling trial.

Dmitry Serebryakov/AP Photo

"The fact that the American public might be really focused on the alleged drug possession and the outlandish accusation of drug smuggling might make the American public less willing to pay attention to this case," Gilbert said, adding that the public may also be "less supportive of government efforts to bring her home."

She continued, "That's the kind of dynamic that might really be in play."

"It's unfortunately quite predictable that Americans respond this way," Gilbert added.

Gilbert further explained that personal characteristics could have an effect on the way the public regards Griner's situation: Though "gender tends to be less influential in how the American public and how the media care about, sympathize with, pay attention to Americans who are held hostage abroad" than some other factors, "race is a huge deal here."

Griner.Evgenia Novozhenina/Pool/Reuters

This concept is aptly called "the missing white woman syndrome," Gilbert said.

"A white girl or a white woman who is taken captive or arrested or something like that elicits tons of sympathy from the American public in a way that women and girls of color do not," she explained. Gilbert believed that the fact that Griner is Black "could be a huge part of the lack of attention to her case."

"And then there are other demographic characteristics, including the fact that she is openly gay, that she is gender nonconforming, not traditionally feminine — all of these work against public sympathy for someone in her position," Gilbert added.

Griner's beliefs may also play a role in her perceived deservingness of spending nine years in a Russian penal colony. Though she's not particularly political — having cast her first vote during the 2020 presidential election — she's received serious criticism for her views on the national anthem.

Griner on the bench as the Phoenix Mercury competed in the 2021 WNBA Finals.

Rick Scuteri/AP Photo

"I honestly feel we should not play the National Anthem during our season. I think we should take that much of a stand," Griner told the Arizona Republic in July 2020, when many athletes knelt or stayed off the court when the anthem played in order to protest police brutality and honor Black Americans who were killed by police, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

"I don't mean that in any disrespect to our country," she added. "My dad was in Vietnam and a law officer for 30 years. I wanted to be a cop before basketball. I do have pride for my country."

Still, some see Griner as unpatriotic. Gilbert mentioned Facebook comments she saw that basically said, "If you hate the United States so much, how does it feel now?"

Griner behind bars.

Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool/Reuters

"I think that feeds in, in a way, to the whole deservingness thing," Gilbert said. "People decide in their minds, if someone protests or has a particular political persuasion, that that suddenly means that they're not worthy of government assistance."

"What we should really be focused on is the fact that she was wrongfully detained and is sitting in Russian prison in illegitimate arrest," she added. "And that any American in that situation deserves help to come home."