LONDON, June 1 (Reuters) – Outbreaks of endemic diseases such as monkeypox and lassa fever are becoming more persistent and frequent, the World Health Organization’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, warned on Wednesday.
A logo is pictured on the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, November 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
As the climate change contributes to rapidly changing weather conditions like drought, animals and human are changing their food-seeking behaviour. As a result, diseases that typically circulate in animals are increasingly jumping into humans, he said.
“Unfortunately, that ability to amplify that disease and move it on within our communities is increasing – so both disease emergence and disease amplification factors have increased.”
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Natalie Grover in London; Twitter @NatalieGrover; Editing by Catherine Evans
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
NOIDA, India, May 16 (Reuters) – For construction worker Yogendra Tundre, life at a building site on the outskirts of the Indian capital New Delhi is hard enough. This year, record high temperatures are making it unbearable.
As India grapples with an unprecedented heatwave, the country’s vast majority of poor workers, who generally work outdoors, are vulnerable to the scorching temperatures.
“There is too much heat and if we won’t work, what will we eat? For a few days, we work and then we sit idle for a few days because of tiredness and heat,” Tundre said.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
High temperatures in the New Delhi area, which soared above 120 Fahrenheit (49 Celsius) in some regions on Sunday, have often caused Tundre, and his wife Lata, who works at the same construction site, to fall sick. That in turn means they lose income.
“Because of heat, sometimes I don’t go to work. I take days off … many times, fall sick from dehydration and then require glucose bottles (intravenous fluids),” Lata said while standing outside their house, a temporary shanty with a tin roof.
Scientists have linked the early onset of an intense summer to climate change, and say more than a billion people in India and neighbouring Pakistan are in some way at risk from the extreme heat. read more
India suffered its hottest March in more than 100 years and parts of the country experienced their highest temperatures on record in April.
Many places, including New Delhi, saw the temperature gauge top 40 Celsius. More than two dozen people have died of suspected heat strokes since late March, and power demand has hit multi-year highs.
Labourers work at a construction site on a hot summer day in Noida, India, May 12, 2022. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis
Read More
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on state governments to draw up measures to mitigate the impact of the extreme heat. read more
Temperatures in and around New Delhi are likely to be lower over the next three days, but the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast a heatwave again on Friday.
Tundre and Lata live with their two young children in a slum near the construction site in Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi. They moved from their home state of Chhattisgarh in central India to seek work and higher wages around the capital.
On the construction site, labourers scale up walls, lay concrete and carry heavy loads, using ragged scarves around their heads as protection against the sun.
But even when the couple finish their day’s work, they have little respite as their home is hot, having absorbed the heat of the sun all day long.
Avikal Somvanshi, an urban environment researcher from India’s Centre for Science and Environment, said federal government data showed that heat stress was the most-common cause of death, after lightning, from forces of nature in the last 20 years.
“Most of these deaths occur in men aged 30-45. These are working class, blue-collar men who have no option but to be working in the scorching heat,” Somvanshi said.
There are no laws in India that prevent outdoor activity when temperatures breach a certain level, unlike in some Middle Eastern countries, Somvanshi said.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Sunil Kataria in New Delhi; writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; editing by Neil Fullick, Bradley Perrett and Lisa Shumaker
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BRUSSELS, May 2 (Reuters) – Energy ministers from European Union countries hold emergency talks on Monday, as the bloc strives for a united response to Moscow’s demand that European buyers pay for Russian gas in roubles or face their supply being cut off.
Russia halted gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland last week after they refused to meet its demand to effectively pay in roubles.
Those countries already planned to stop using Russian gas this year and say they can cope with the stoppage, but it has raised fears that other EU countries, including Europe’s gas-reliant economic powerhouse Germany, could be next.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Civilians evacuated from Ukraine’s Mariupol, Russia renews shelling
Ukrainian evacuee recounts terror in the bunkers of Azovstal
Jill Biden to meet with Ukrainian refugees in Romania and Slovakia
How military technology reaches Russia in breach of U.S. export controls
It has also threatened to crack the EU’s united front against Russia amid disagreement on the right course of action.
With many European companies facing gas payment deadlines later this month, EU states have a pressing need to clarify whether companies can keep buying the fuel without breaching the EU’s sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow has said foreign gas buyers must deposit euros or dollars into an account at the privately owned Russian bank Gazprombank, which would convert them into roubles.
The European Commission has told countries that complying with Russia’s scheme could breach EU sanctions, while also suggesting countries could make sanctions-compliant payments if they declare the payment complete once it has been made in euros and before its conversion into roubles.
After Bulgaria, Denmark, Greece, Poland, Slovakia and others last week urged clearer advice, Brussels is drafting extra guidance.
Russia on Friday said it saw no problem with its decree, which considers the buyer’s obligation fulfilled only after the hard currency has been converted to roubles.
While Bulgaria and Poland refused to engage with Moscow’s scheme, Germany has echoed the Commission’s workaround to allow companies to pay, and Hungary has said buyers can engage with Russia’s mechanism. read more
Payments in roubles can help to shelter Russia’s economy from the impact of sanctions, while the fuel revenues can help to finance what it calls a special military operation.
EU countries have paid more than 45 billion euros ($47.43 billion) to Russia for gas and oil since it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, research organisation the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found.
Russia supplies 40% of EU gas and 26% of its oil imports, a dependency that means Germany and others have so far resisted calls for an abrupt halt to Russian fuel imports for fear of economic damage.
The EU is edging towards a ban on imports of Russian oil by the end of the year, diplomats said, after talks between the Commission and EU countries at the weekend ahead of meetings this week.
Ambassadors will discuss at a meeting on Wednesday a sixth package of EU sanctions against Moscow being drafted by the Commission.
Ministers on Monday will also discuss the need to urgently secure non-Russian gas supplies and fill storage, as countries brace for supply shocks.
Dependency on Russian gas varies between countries, but analysts have said an immediate total cut-off of Russian gas would plunge countries, including Germany, into recession and require emergency measures such as factory closures to cope.
Austria, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia also had reservations over the weekend about the idea of an oil embargo, diplomats said.
The Commission will later this month unveil plans to end Europe’s dependency on Russian fossil fuels by 2027, including by expanding renewable energy and renovating buildings to consume less.
($1 = 0.9488 euros)
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Editing by John Chalmers and Barbara Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
April 20 (Reuters) – A wind-driven Arizona wildfire almost tripled in area on Wednesday after burning dozens of structures and forcing thousands to flee their homes in a drought-hit rural area.
The blaze, dubbed the Tunnel Fire, swept northeast over largely unpopulated hills and valleys 14 miles (23 km) north of Flagstaff, Arizona, according to a U.S. Forest Service statement.
Flames burned 16,625 acres, an area larger than Manhattan, moving through the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument which has a visitor center and hiking trails, the release said.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Smoke drifts from the Tunnel Fire north of Flagstaff, Arizona April 20, 2022. Mark Henle/USA Today Network via REUTERS
Driven by traditional gusty spring winds, the blaze forced more than 2,000 residents from their homes, the Coconino county Board of Supervisors said.
At least 25 structures were burned after the fire moved through parts of the Wupatki Trails and Timberline Estates communities, which are built in pine forest, the county sheriff’s office said.
The area is part of a swathe of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado caught in more than two decades of largely unrelenting drought after average temperatures in the area rose about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century, according to data from the Desert Research Institute and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Around 360 miles to the east, an elderly couple died in their in Ruidoso, New Mexico, home last week when a wildfire destroyed hundreds of houses and forced thousands to flee the mountain town. read more
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico;
Editing by Gareth Jones, Nick Macfie and Aurora Ellis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
OTTAWA, April 4 (Reuters) – Canada’s federal budget will include an investment of at least C$2 billion ($1.6 billion) for a strategy to accelerate the production and processing of critical minerals needed for the electric vehicle (EV) battery supply chain, two senior government sources said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, which is due to release its budget on Thursday, will make the investment to ramp up the extraction of processing of critical minerals including nickel, lithium, cobalt and magnesium, said the sources who are familiar with the matter but were not authorized to speak on the record.
The investment could be spread over more than one year, but the sources declined to comment on the time frame.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Canada last month announced financial support for building two facilities that will make battery materials for electric vehicles, and one battery gigafactory, but no agreements have yet been announced for mineral extraction or refining. read more
“There are some particular projects that we are looking at and working on at the present time,” Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in a recent telephone interview with Reuters.
All the potential projects, “whether they’re extraction or processing, need to be accelerated significantly, and that’s what the critical mineral strategy will be about,” he added.
Canada’s finance ministry declined to confirm whether the investment would be in the budget that will be presented by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in the House of Commons.
“Canada has an abundance of valuable critical mineral deposits, and with the right investments, this sector can create thousands of new good jobs, grow our economy, and make Canada a vital part of the growing global critical minerals industry,” said Adrienne Vaupshas, press secretary for Freeland.
There are “many active conversations” between the Canadian government and companies “on the need to accelerate and scale up the production of raw materials used in EV batteries,” one of the sources said.
Canada, which is home to a large mining sector, has a multi-billion-dollar fund set up to invest in green technologies and is trying to woo companies involved in all levels of the EV supply chain to safeguard the future of its manufacturing heartland in Ontario as the world seeks to cut carbon emissions.
Ontario is geographically close to U.S.-based automakers in Michigan and Ohio, and General Motors Co (GM.N), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Stellantis NV (STLA.MI) have all announced plans to make electric vehicles at factories in the Canadian province.
MINERALS FROM MINING WASTE
Since it can take many years – even a decade or more – to open new mines, Wilkinson said some of the projects being considered involve “tailings from existing mines from which you could extract critical minerals.”
“We’re looking at brines and oil sands, tailings ponds, and all of those things,” he said.
Brendan Marshall, the vice president of economic and northern affairs for the Mining Association of Canada, said this kind of project would require research.
“There needs to be research and development” to develop technologies that can identify and separate critical minerals “from the general waste stream,” Marshall said.
Canada’s critical mineral strategy will focus on, among other things, driving research, innovation and exploration, one of the sources said.
GM said on Monday that it was investing C$2 billion on two plants, including one that will produce an electric vehicle for commercial use in Canada. Last month, GM said it had partnered with South Korea’s POSCO Chemical (005490.KS) to build a facility to make battery materials in Quebec. read more
Scott Bell, the president and managing director of GM Canada, said last month that Canada’s abundance of nickel and other raw materials would be used to make cathode active material in the Canadian province, without elaborating.
“These companies are going to need those critical minerals that our country has, so we need to start aggressively ramping up the mining and processing required,” Canadian Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said in Vancouver last week.
Demand for minerals needed for batteries, including lithium and cobalt, could increase by almost 500% by 2050, the World Bank estimates. Currently Asia, and in particular China, dominates global production and processing of critical minerals, rare earths and rare metals used to make EVs.
Constantine Karayannopoulos, president and chief executive officer of Neo Performance Materials Inc(NEO.TO), a rare earths and rare metals processing company based in Toronto, said Canada and North America have a lot of catching up to do.
“We are behind the eight ball collectively in the West, behind China,” Karayannopoulos said in a telephone interview. “China is dominating this space … We need a lot of money (to build the supply chain) because we’re playing catch-up.”
($1 = 1.2517 Canadian dollars)
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Steve Scherer
Editing by Paul Simao
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. securities regulator on Monday proposed requiring U.S.-listed companies to disclose a range of climate-related risks and greenhouse gas emissions, part of President Joe Biden’s push to join global efforts to avert climate-related catastrophes.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) unveiled its long-anticipated draft rule under which companies would disclose their own direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. It would also require companies to disclose emissions generated by their suppliers and partners, known as Scope 3 emissions, if they are material.
SEC chair Gary Gensler said the agency was responding to investor demand for consistent information on how climate change will affect financial performance of companies they invest in. But prominent Republicans accused the regulator of overstepping its legal authority, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vowed to fight parts of the rule.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
The draft proposal, subject to public feedback and likely to be finalized later this year, should help investors get the information they are seeking while also increasing the reporting burden for Corporate America.
It would also require companiesto disclose the “actual or likely material impacts” that climate-related risks will have on their business, strategy and outlook, including physical risks as well as possible new regulations such as a carbon tax.
Companies that have set emissions goals or announced other plans to transition away from fossil fuels would have to provide details on how and when they expect to do so. read more
“Companies and investors alike would benefit from the clear rules of the road,” Gensler said.
Senator Patrick Toomey, the Senate Banking Committee’s top Republican, blasted the rule, saying it “extends far beyond the SEC’s mission and expertise.”
Progressives and activist investors have pushed for the SEC to require Scope 3 emissions disclosure to hold companies accountable for all the carbon dioxide and methane they help generate. Corporations have been pushing for a narrower rule that will not boost compliance costs too sharply.
“This proposal will be the light in a pathway toward addressing President Biden’s priority of disclosing climate risk to investors and all areas of our society,” said Tracey Lewis, a policy counsel at Washington-based advocacy group Public Citizen. “There will be a lot of critics,” she added.
The SEC said the Scope 3 requirement would include carve-outs based on a company’s size, and that all the emissions disclosures would be phased in between 2023 and 2026.
It was not immediately clear how many companies would have to make Scope 3 disclosures, given they would have largely have the discretion to decide what counts as ‘material.’
The Chamber of Commerce, the country’s biggest business lobby, called the proposal too prescriptive and complained it would force companies to disclose information that was largely immaterial at the expense of more meaningful data.
“The Supreme Court has been clear that any required disclosures under securities laws must meet the test of materiality, and we will advocate against provisions of this proposal that deviate from that standard,” Tom Quaadman, an executive vice president with the group, said in a statement.
The Investment Company Institute, which represents global investors, broadly welcomed the rule.
“The enhanced disclosure that the proposal calls for will provide investors with comparable, consistent, qualitative, and quantitative information.”
LEGAL CHALLENGES
The SEC spent the past week shoring up the draft against potential legal challenges, six sources told Reuters.
Corporate groups have argued there is no agreed methodology for calculating Scope 3 emissions, saying it can lead to double-counting, and that providing so much detail would be burdensome and would expose companies to litigation if third-party data ends up being wrong.
The SEC tried to address that concern by proposing Scope 3 disclosures would be protected by a legal safe harbor that already exists for companies’ forward-looking statements.
Any legal challenges to the rule will likely argue that the SEC lacks the authority to require Scope 3 emissions data, something the agency’s lone Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce said on Monday in voting against the proposal.
Some experts said the SEC’s authority in this area was clear, noting investors poured more than $649 billion into environmental, social and governance-focused funds worldwide last year and were calling for better data.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Katanga Johnson in Washington
Editing by Michelle Price, David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Katanga Johnson
Washington-based reporter covering U.S. regulation at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, previously e3xperience in Ecuador, alumnus of Morehouse College and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
March 16 (Reuters) – Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has questioned 19 financial companies to clarify their investment policies on fossil fuels, his office said on Wednesday, showing the breadth of a review that could see firms losing state pension mandates.
Letters were sent to companies including BlackRock Inc, (BLK.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Wells Fargo & Co among others “that may be boycotting the fossil fuel industry,” according to a statement and other material sent by a spokesman for the Republican state official.
Even if companies currently hold oil and gas investments today, some may be “selling the hope of a ‘green’ tomorrow with promises to divest or reduce” fossil fuel exposure, Hegar said in the statement.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Another round of letters will soon be sent to more than 100 other publicly-traded investment companies “that appear to have one or more funds boycotting fossil fuels,” according to Hegar’s letter.
Under a new state law, Hegar will draw up a list of financial companies found to boycott fossil fuels. Those firms could then be barred from managing state pension money. read more Hegar told companies they have 60 days to provide details.
At stake is access to state pension funds like the $197 billion Teacher Retirement System of Texas, which has about $2.5 billion with BlackRock for example.
Major investors face balancing acts as some pension funds and endowments move to divest from fossil fuel stocks over climate change concerns. High energy prices have helped keep other investors in the stocks however. read more
A spokesman said Hegar was not available for further comment.
Representatives for BlackRock, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo did not comment. In a previous letter, BlackRock had argued to Texas officials that as a long-term investor in fossil fuel companies, “we want to see these companies succeed and prosper.”
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Bernard Orr
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, March 5 (Reuters) – Forty-nine mushers and their teams of huskies trotted through Alaska’s largest city on Saturday to start the 50th annual running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, an event transformed by climate change and commercialism since its humble beginnings.
The starting gate has been returned to downtown Anchorage, a year after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted organizers to launch the 2021 race from a secluded riverside spot north of the city and off limits to the usual crowds of spectators.
Contestants forged through unusually warm and sloppy
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
conditions on the first day of the run, with temperatures hovering between freeze and thaw. Wet snow soaked teams and spectators lining the city trail.
Fortunately for the mushers and dog teams more accustomed to crisp, cold weather, the 11-mile (17.7-km) Anchorage portion of
the race is merely ceremonial, with timed competition starting
on Sunday at Willow, about a 75-mile drive north.
The overall trail has been restored to its traditional 1,000-mile (1,600-km) distance from Anchorage to the Bering Sea gold-rush town of Nome after a COVID-forced shortening of the course last year. Still, several pandemic restrictions remain in effect.
Mushers, volunteers and fans gathered for this year’s renewal of Iditarod festivities in Anchorage were instructed to mask up and take other precautions to prevent the spread of the lingering virus.
The pandemic also forced one last-minute switch. Nic Petit, a top musher, had to pull out of the race after testing positive for COVID-19. Four-time champion Jeff King, who had planned to sit out this year’s contest, then stepped in to drive Petit’s dog team to Nome.
King got the call from Petit on Tuesday afternoon. He said Petit is trusting him to manage “a really nice dog team.”
“I think he knows I know what I’m doing,” King said at the downtown Anchorage start area.
Other returning winners are Dallas Seavey, who claimed a record-tying fifth victory last year, and his father, Mitch Seavey, a three-time champion who holds the Iditarod speed record of eight days, 3 hours and 40:13 minutes.
Riley Dyche?s dog team during the ceremonial start of the 50th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S. March 5, 2022. REUTERS/Kerry Tasker
Read More
The field also includes Pete Kaiser, who in 2019 became the first Native Yup’ik musher to win the race, 2018 champion Joar Leifseth Ulsom of Norway, and four-time winner Martin Buser.
Those and others should be contenders for this year’s title, said Leifseth Ulsom. “A whole bunch of them are really good teams,” the Norwegian said in the Anchorage starting area.
Seventeen of this year’s mushers are women. The Iditarod is one of the few high-profile sports evens where women and men compete on equal footing.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
The Iditarod has come a long way in the half century since it began in 1973 as a low-budget, novelty event that drew a field of all-amateur mushers and took the winner 20 days to complete.
Now, top Iditarod contestants are professionals with high-tech gear bearing sponsors’ logos. Teams are tracked by global positioning satellite, and live coverage is beamed worldwide to audiences through internet streaming services. Winners typically reach the finish line in just nine days.
The modern race attracts major corporate backing, though in recent years,animal rights activists who condemn the race as cruel to the dogshave pressured some companies to drop support.
Climate change has wrought some of the greatest changes in the world’s most famous sled-dog race, as it has for much of life in the far north.
Three times, most recently in 2017, unseasonably warm conditions forced the Iditarod to move its day-two restart – following the ceremonial Anchorage launch – much farther north, to Fairbanks.
In 2020, flooding swamped the ultra-thin Bering Sea ice that teams had to skirt near the end of the race. Three racers and their dogs had to be rescued from the coastal site only 25 miles (40 km) from the Nome finish line. Contestants who followed had to be rerouted farther inland to avoid standing water.
The course, though running at full length again this year, has still been altered somewhat, with checkpoints relocated to minimize contact with Native Alaska villages that remain vigilant against renewed coronavirus outbreaks because of scarce healthcare resources.
Organizers say such precautions are fitting for an annual race that honors a famed dog-sled relay run nearly a century ago to deliver diphtheria serum to Nome in 1925.
“Vaccinations and dogs and Iditarod go way back, to the beginning of the race,” said Paige Drobny, a musher from Cantwell, Alaska, who is promoting vaccination on behalf of her sponsor, a Fairbanks healthcare consortium.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage; Writing by Steve Gorman; editing by Richard Pullin and David Gregorio
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
U.S. President Joe Biden hosts a virtual roundtable on securing critical minerals at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 22, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden, who has earned praise for his efforts to rally European allies and other nations against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, will turn to uniting Americans in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.
With the conflict in Ukraine raging, Biden intends to use the annual speech both to stress the importance of countering Putin and to push his domestic economic agenda, including reintroducing elements of his stalled Build Back Better program, administration officials said.
“There’s no question that this speech is a little different than it would have been just a few months ago,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Monday, referring to the Ukraine conflict. “The president will lay out the efforts… he has led on to rally the world to stand up for democracy and against Russian aggression.”
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Democrats are expected to have a difficult time holding onto control of the U.S. House of Representatives – and perhaps the Senate as well – in Nov. 8 mid-term elections, which would likely cripple Biden’s policy goals.
A rebound in Biden’s public standing would help.
“The (speech) comes at a good time,” said John Geer, a political scientist and an expert in public opinion at Vanderbilt University. “He needs to grab the national stage and set a course that offers a brighter future.”
Biden should tout his work helping the world resist Putin’s advances, Geer said, while celebrating the effectiveness of vaccines and other measures that have brought about a sharp decline in COVID-19 cases and easing of guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Public opinion polls have shown Biden out of favor with the majority of Americans for months. The most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken last week, showed him at 43% approval.
Even with the jobless rate at 4%, most voters remain pessimistic about the economy, largely due to skyrocketing consumer prices. A quarter of Democrats think the party has failed to take advantage of its rare control of the White House and both houses of Congress. read more
While aides believe Biden’s perceived strength in handling COVID helped him win the presidency, some voters, especially Republicans, think the country has not moved quickly enough to ease pandemic restrictions as case counts have fallen.
On Tuesday, members of Congress attending Biden’s speech at the U.S. Capitol will not be required to wear masks for the first time in months, a sight that could provide helpful optics for the president.
Authorities are reinstalling fencing around the Capitol as Washington prepares for planned trucker protests against pandemic-related restrictions, but it does not appear that the convoys will cause major disruptions. read more
U.S. ECONOMY, RUSSIA SANCTIONS
Biden must convince viewers at home that the economy is, in fact, in solid shape despite inflation concerns, and that tough sanctions imposed by Washington and allies are worth the pain. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could cause gasoline prices to skyrocket.
The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, is set to attend the speech, sitting with the president’s wife Jill Biden.
Biden will also lay out a strategy to address the nation’s “unprecedented mental health crisis” in his speech, the White House said. With social media platforms playing a role in the youth mental heath crisis, the White House said, Biden will call on Congress to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, and demand technology companies stop collecting personal data on children.
The president will also call on Congress to support his agenda to fight climate change and boost clean energy, a senior administration official said.
About two-thirds of Americans support Biden slapping Russia with economic sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. read more
Even so, Americans are concerned about domestic issues, including the economy and high inflation, and allies hope Biden will highlight his successes and address their worries in his speech.
“They want to hear what the solutions might be to contain inflation but while continuing to move a pro-family, pro-worker agenda,” said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.
Saunders said Biden needed to address voting rights, as well. “He’s got to talk about the importance of fighting back and not thinking that the battle is over with as far as voting rights is concerned,” he said.
Matt Bennett, vice president of Third Way, a moderate Democrat think tank, said that Biden should aim for a sweeping tone about U.S. leadership on the world stage and the economy.
“The most important thing,” Bennett said, “is that he shows America that he is in command of world and domestic events. No policy idea or accomplishment is going to make a real difference.”
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by James Oliphant and Trevor Hunnicutt. Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Jason Lange, and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Heather Timmons, Colleen Jenkins, Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O’Brien
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
SYDNEY, March 1 (Reuters) – Military helicopters airlifted stranded people from rooftops of flooded neighbourhoods in eastern Australia and a tenth victim was found on Tuesday following days of torrential rain as the wild weather slowly shifts south toward Sydney.
The death toll rose to 10 after a woman believed in her 80s was found dead inside a flooded property, police said.
Floodwater from the deluge, which began late last week, submerged several towns and bridges in Queensland and New South Wales, and was moving to the south with heavy rains and possible flash flooding forecast for Sydney.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
“This rather significant weather system … we will see it come into the central coast of Sydney and we are already experiencing elements of that right now,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said during a media briefing.
Sydney, Australia’s largest city and home to more than 5 million people, could receive up to 150 mm (6 inches) of rains within a six-hour period on Tuesday afternoon, the Bureau of Meteorology said. Sydney’s mean rainfall for March is 138 mm, according to official data.
New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet described the extreme weather as a “one-in-a-one thousand-year event” and said emergency crews carried out more than 1,000 rescues in the state after receiving 6,000 calls for help so far.
Hundreds of people are still stuck at their homes in the northern New South Wales city of Lismore, facing its worst floods on record, amid reports of some spending the night on rooftops. Mayor Steve Krieg told Channel Seven that nine people were still missing with 400 rescues yet to be carried out.
Around 50 people were rescued after they became stuck on a bridge overnight when fast rising waters submerged both ends, authorities said.
Australia’s east coast summer has been dominated by the La Nina climate pattern, which is typically associated with greater rainfall, for a second straight year. read more
Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city, received around 80% of its annual rainfall over the last three days, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said on Tuesday.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Register
Reporting by Renju Jose; editing by Richard Pullin & Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.