LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Britain’s National Grid (NG.L) said it would pay customers to use less power on Monday evening and that it had asked for three coal-powered generators to be warmed up in case they are needed as the country faces a snap of cold weather.
The group said that it would activate a new scheme called the Demand Flexibility Service where customers get incentives if they agree to use less power during crunch periods.
The service, which has been trialled but not run in a live situation before, would run from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday, it said, adding that the move did not mean electricity supplies were at risk and advised people not to worry.
The measures were announced in order to “ensure that everyone gets the electricity they need,” Craig Dyke, Head of National Control at National Grid ESO, told BBC Radio on Monday, adding that 26 suppliers had signed up for the scheme.
[1/2] A British government advert offering people help with winter energy bills is seen on the side of a bus in Stockport, Britain, November 16, 2022. REUTERS/Phil Noble
Below freezing temperatures have been recorded across much of the UK in recent days with the national weather service, the Met Office, last week issuing severe weather warnings for snow and ice.
National Grid’s Dyke said consumers could make small changes to make money by reducing their energy usage, such as delaying cooking or putting on the washing machine until after 6 p.m.
National Grid said in December that over a million British households had signed up to the scheme, which is one of its strategies to help prevent power cuts.
The announcement about the coal-powered generators did not mean they would definitely be used, it said in a separate statement.
Coal-powered generators were last put on stand-by in December when temperatures dropped and demand for energy rose, but they were not needed on that occasion.
Reporting by William Schomberg and Muvija M in London, and Sneha Bhowmik in Bengaluru; editing by Tomasz Janowski, Andrew Heavens, Kirsten Donovan
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
LIMA, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Dozens of Peruvians were injured after tensions flared again on Friday night as police clashed with protesters in anti-government demonstrations that are spreading across the country.
In the capital Lima, police officers used tear gas to repel demonstrators throwing glass bottles and stones, as fires burned in the streets, local TV footage showed.
In the country’s southern Puno region, some 1,500 protesters attacked a police station in the town of Ilave, Interior Minister Vicente Romero said in a statement to news media.
A police station in Zepita, Puno, was also on fire, Romero said.
Health authorities in Ilave reported eight patients hospitalized with injuries, including broken arms and legs, eye contusions and punctured abdomens.
By late afternoon, 58 people had been injured nationwide in demonstrations, according to a report from Peru’s ombudsman.
The unrest followed a day of turmoil in Thursday, when one of Lima’s most historic buildings burned to the ground, as President Dina Boluarte vowed to get tougher on “vandals.”
The destruction of the building, a near-century-old mansion in central Lima, was described by officials as the loss of a “monumental asset.” Authorities are investigating the causes.
Romero on Friday claimed the blaze was “duly planned and arranged.”
Thousands of protesters descended on Lima this week calling for change and angered by the protests’ mounting death toll, which officially stood at 45 on Friday.
[1/6] A riot police officer points with a weapon during the ‘Take over Lima’ march to demonstrate against Peru’s President Dina Boluarte, following the ousting and arrest of former President Pedro Castillo, in Lima, Peru January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Sebastian Castaneda
Protests have rocked Peru since President Pedro Castillo was ousted in December after he attempted to dissolve the legislature to prevent an impeachment vote.
The unrest has until this week been concentrated in Peru’s south.
In the Cusco region, Glencore’s (GLEN.L) major Antapaccay copper mine suspended operations on Friday after protesters attacked the premises – one of the largest in the country – for the third time this month.
Airports in Arequipa, Cusco and the southern city of Juliaca were also attacked by demonstrators, delivering a fresh blow to Peru’s tourism industry.
“It’s nationwide chaos, you can’t live like this. We are in a terrible uncertainty – the economy, vandalism,” said Lima resident Leonardo Rojas.
The government has extended a state of emergency to six regions, curtailing some civil rights.
But Boluarte has dismissed calls for her to resign and hold snap elections, instead calling for dialogue and promising to punish those involved in the unrest.
“All the rigor of the law will fall on those people who have acted with vandalism,” Boluarte said on Thursday.
Some locals pointed the finger at Boluarte, accusing her of not taking action to quell the protests, which began on Dec. 7 in response to the ouster and arrest of Castillo.
Human rights groups have accused the police and army of using deadly firearms. The police say protesters have used weapons and homemade explosives.
Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Isabel Woodford; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Leslie Adler and William Mallard
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Greta Thunberg called on the global energy industry and its financiers to end all fossil fuel investments on Thursday at a high-profile meeting in Davos with the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
During a round-table discussion with Fatih Birol on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting, activists said they had presented a “cease and desist” letter to CEOs calling for a stop to new oil, gas and coal extraction.
“As long as they can get away with it they will continue to invest in fossil fuels, they will continue to throw people under the bus,” Thunberg warned.
The oil and gas industry, which has been accused by activists of hijacking the climate change debate in the Swiss ski resort, has said that it needs to be part of the energy transition as fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the energy mix as the world shift to a low-carbon economy.
Thunberg, who was detained by police in Germany earlier this week during a demonstration at a coal mine, joined with fellow activists Helena Gualinga from Ecuador, Vanessa Nakate from Uganda and Luisa Neubauer from Germany to discuss the tackle the big issues with Birol.
Birol, whose agency makes policy recommendations on energy, thanked the activists for meeting him, but insisted that the transition had to include a mix of stakeholders, especially in the face of the global energy security crisis.
The IEA chief, who earlier on Thursday met with some of the biggest names in the oil and gas industry in Davos, said there was no reason to justify investments in new oil fields because of the energy crunch, saying by the time these became operational the climate crisis would be worse.
He also said he was less pessimistic than the climate activists about the shift to clean energy.
“We can have slight legitimate optimism,” he said, adding: “Last year the amount of renewables coming to the market was record high.”
But he admitted that the transition was not happening fast enough and warned that emerging and developing countries risked being left behind if advanced economies did not support the transition.
Youth climate activist Greta Thunberg takes part in a discussion on “Treating the climate crisis like a crisis” with International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol (not pictured) on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland January 19, 2023. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
‘REAL MONEY’
The United Nation’s climate conference, held in Egypt last year, established a loss and damage fund to compensate countries most impacted by climate change events.
Nakate, who held a solitary protest outside the Ugandan parliament for several months in 2019, said the fund “is still an empty bucket with no money at all.”
“There is a need for real money for loss and damage”.
In 2019, the then 16-year-old Thunberg took part in the main WEF meeting, famously telling leaders that “our house is on fire”. She returned to Davos the following year.
But she refused to participate as an official delegate this year as the event returned to its usual January slot.
Asked why she did not want to advocate for change from the inside, Thunberg said there were already activists doing that.
“I think it should be people on the frontlines and not privileged people like me,” she said. “I don’t think the changes we need are very likely to come from the inside. They are more likely to come from the bottom up.”
The activists later walked together through the snowy streets of Davos, where many of the shops have temporarily been turned into “pavilions” sponsored by companies or countries.
For daily Davos updates in your inbox sign up for the Reuters Daily Briefing here.
Writing by Leela de Kretser; Editing by Alexander Smith
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 16 (Reuters) – The prospect of imminent global recession cast a long shadow over Davos on Monday as participants gathering for the opening of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting counted the likely cost for their economies and businesses.
Two-thirds of private and public sector chief economists surveyed by the WEF expect a global recession this year, with some 18% considering it “extremely likely” – more than twice as many as in the previous survey conducted in September 2022.
“The current high inflation, low growth, high debt and high fragmentation environment reduces incentives for the investments needed to get back to growth and raise living standards for the world’s most vulnerable,” WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi said in a statement accompanying the survey results.
The WEF’s survey was based on 22 responses from a group of senior economists drawn from international agencies including the International Monetary Fund, investment banks, multinationals and reinsurance groups.
Meanwhile, a survey of CEO attitudes by PwC released in Davos on Monday was the gloomiest since the “Big Four” auditor launched the poll a decade ago, marking a significant shift from optimistic outlooks in 2021 and 2022.
The World Bank last week slashed its 2023 growth forecasts to levels close to recession for many countries as the impact of central bank rate hikes intensifies, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, and the world’s major economic engines sputter.
Definitions of what constitutes recession differ around the world but generally include the prospect of shrinking economies, possibly with high inflation in a “stagflation” scenario.
On inflation, the WEF survey saw large regional variations: the proportion expecting high inflation in 2023 ranged from just 5% for China to 57% for Europe, where the impact of last year’s rise in energy prices has spread to the wider economy.
A majority of the economists see further monetary policy tightening in Europe and the United States (59% and 55%, respectively), with policy-makers caught between the risks of tightening too much or too little.
“It is clear that there is a massive drop in demand, inventories are not clearing up, the orders are not coming through,” Yuvraj Narayan, deputy chief executive and chief financial officer of Dubai-based global logistics company DP World told Reuters.
“There are far too many constraints imposed. It is no longer a free-flowing global economy and unless they find the right solutions it will only get worse,” he said, adding the group expects freight rates to drop by between 15% and 20% in 2023.
AVOIDING LAY-OFFS
Few sectors expect to be totally immune.
Matthew Prince, chief executive of cloud services company Cloudflare Inc (NET.N), said internet activity was pointing to an economic slowdown.
“Since New Year’s, when I catch up with other tech company CEOs, they’re like, ‘have you noticed the sky is falling?'” he told Reuters.
PwC’s survey found confidence among companies in their growth prospects dropped the most since the 2007-08 global financial crisis, although a majority of CEOs had no plans to cut the size of their workforce in the next 12 months or to slash remuneration as they try to retain talent.
“They’re trying to do cost reduction without human capital changes and large layoffs,” said PwC global chairman Bob Moritz.
Jenni Hibbert, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles in London, said activity was normalising and the executive search firm was seeing “a little less flow” after two years of strong growth.
“We are hearing the same mixed picture from most of our clients. People expect a market that’s going to be more challenged,” Hibbert told Reuters.
AID CUTS
Nowhere is the real-world impact of recession more tangible than in efforts to tackle global poverty.
Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said overseas development aid was being cut in budgets as donors started to feel the pinch, while recession would hit local health provision hard.
A common concern among many Davos participants was the sheer level of uncertainty for the year ahead – from the duration and intensity of the Ukraine war through to the next moves of top central banks looking to lower inflation with deep rate hikes.
The chief financial officer of one U.S. publicly traded company told Reuters he was preparing widely-varying scenarios for 2023 in light of economic uncertainty – in large part related to how interest rates will trend this year.
While there were few silver linings on the horizon, some noted that an all-out recession could give pause to the policy-tightening plans of the U.S. Federal Reserve and other major central banks that is making borrowing increasingly dear.
“I want the outlook to become a little weaker so that the Fed rates start going down and that whole sucking-out of liquidity by global central banks eases,” Sumant Sinha, chairman and CEO of Indian clean energy group ReNew Power, told Reuters.
“That will benefit not just India but globally,” he said, adding the current round of rate hikes was making it dearer for clean energy companies to fund their capital-intensive projects.
Reporting by Mark John, Maha El Dahan, Jeffrey Daskins, Leela de Kretser, Divya Chowdhury and Paritosh Bansal; Editing by Alexander Smith
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Big oil firms came under pressure at the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) from activists who accused them of hijacking the climate debate, while a Greta Thunberg-sponsored “cease and desist” campaign gained support on social media.
Major energy firms including BP (BP.L), Chevron (CVX.N) and Saudi Aramco (2222.SE) are among the 1,500 business leaders gathering for the annual meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos, where global threats including climate change are on the agenda.
“We are demanding concrete and real climate action,” said Nicolas Siegrist, the 26-year-old organiser of the protest who also heads the Young Socialists party in Switzerland.
The annual meeting of global business and political leaders opens in Davos on Monday.
“They will be in the same room with state leaders and they will push for their interests,” Siegrist said of the involvement of energy companies during a demonstration attended by several hundred people on Sunday.
The oil and gas industry has said that it needs to be part of the energy transition as fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the world’s energy mix as countries shift to low carbon economies.
[1/5] Climate activists display a banner during a protest ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2023 in the Alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland, January 15, 2023. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
On Monday, a social media campaign added to the pressure on oil and gas companies, by promoting a “cease and desist” notice sponsored by climate activists Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate and Luisa Neubauer, through the non-profit website Avaaz.
It demands energy company CEOs “immediately stop opening any new oil, gas, or coal extraction sites, and stop blocking the clean energy transition we all so urgently need”, and threatens legal action and more protests if they fail to comply.
The campaign, which had been signed by more than 660,000 people, had almost 200,000 shares on Monday morning.
Sumant Sinha, who heads one of India’s largest renewable energy firms, said it would be good to include big oil companies in the transition debate as they have a vital role to play.
“If oil people are part of these conversations to the extent that they are also committing to change then by all means. It is better to get them inside the tent than to have them outside the tent,” Sinha, chairman and CEO of ReNew Power, told Reuters, saying that inclusion should not lead to “sabotage”.
Rising interest rates have made it harder for renewable energy developments to attract financing, giving traditional players with deep pockets a competitive advantage.
As delegates began to arrive in Davos, Debt for Climate activists protested at a private airport in eastern Switzerland, which they said would be used by some WEF attendees, and issued a statement calling for foreign debts of poorer countries to be cancelled in order to accelerate the global energy transition.
Additional reporting by Kathryn Lurie; Editing by Alexander Smith and Alex Richardson
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 11 (Reuters) – U.S. clean energy companies are offering better wages and benefits, flying in trainers from overseas, and contemplating ideas like buying roofing and electric repair shops just to hire their workers as firms try to overcome a labor shortage that threatens to derail President Joe Biden’s climate change agenda.
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law last year, provides for an estimated $370 billion in solar, wind and electric vehicle subsidies, according to the White House. Starting Jan. 1, American consumers can take advantage of those tax credits to upgrade home heating systems or put solar panels on their roofs. Those investments will create nearly 537,000 jobs a year for a decade, according to an analysis by BW Research commissioned by The Nature Conservancy.
Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics
But with the U.S. unemployment rate at an historic low of 3.5%, companies say they fear they will struggle to fill those jobs, and that plans to transition away from fossil fuels could stall out. Despite layoff announcements and signs of a slowdown elsewhere in the economy, the labor market for clean energy jobs remains tight.
“It feels like a big risk for this expansion. Where are we going to find all the people?” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group.
The shortage is anticipated to hit especially hard in electric vehicle and battery production and solar panel and home efficiency installations, forcing some of the companies into bold new approaches to find workers.
Korea’s SK Innovation Co Ltd, which makes batteries for Ford Motor Co’s (F.N) F-150 Lightning all-electric pickup truck in Commerce, Georgia, has pumped up pay and benefits as it ramps up its U.S. workforce to 20,000 people by 2025 from 4,000 today.
The battery maker is advertising pay between $20 and $34 an hour, above Georgia’s median hourly wage of $18.43, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is also covering 100% life insurance costs and matching retirement plan contributions up to 6.5%, above the national average of 5.6%, according to the Plan Sponsor Council of America. And the company is providing free food on the job.
“Georgia’s talent pool is not really massive. But we are trying to improve some of our policies to better source and retain workers,” said an SK official who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the matter.
Georgia state officials said SK’s hiring has been a success considering how quickly production had to ramp up to meet the company’s obligations to automakers.
While national residential solar installer SunPower Corp (SPWR.O) is recruiting aggressively, Chief Executive Peter Faricy said the company is also looking at what he called “crazy ideas” to secure labor – including buying up companies just for their workers.
“I’m not suggesting we will do this, but I want to give you an order of magnitude of what we’re considering. Like, should we acquire a roofing company and make them all solar installers? Do we go buy an electrical company and acquire 100 electricians?” he said.
SunPower also held talks within the last year with panel manufacturer First Solar Inc (FSLR.O) about developing a solar panel that would be easier to install, enabling crews to outfit two homes a day instead of just one, Faricy said.
SunPower’s competitor, Sunrun Inc (RUN.O), is deploying drones to survey roofs ahead of installation, reducing the number of workers required to scale roofs. It is also rewarding top crews with office parties.
“As best you can game-ify the experience for the employee… it just makes the industry more fun, more attractive,” Chris McClellan, Sunrun’s senior vice president of operations, said in an interview.
Offshore wind developer Orsted (ORSTED.CO), a Danish company that is planning to build projects off the East Coast, hopes to fly in employees from projects in the United Kingdom and Asia to help train staff. State reports have indicated that New York and Massachusetts face large offshore wind workforce gaps.
“We’re creating sort of an ecosystem where we don’t just have an offshore wind academy, but really train the trainers of the future,” said Mads Nipper, Orsted’s CEO, told Reuters.
The Biden Administration has repeatedly promised that new green energy jobs would be well-paying union jobs.
But many of those jobs have lagged the fossil fuel industry in pay, according to a 2021 study by BW Research, as clean energy companies have sought to contain costs to compete with entrenched industries. The IRA seeks to address that by tying prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements to the subsidies.
Those provisions — and the hiring challenges — have put pressure on some employers to use unionized labor.
Learning from its earlier hiring challenges in Europe and Asia, Orsted signed an agreement with North America’s Building Trades Unions to secure workers.
Even Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), a company that has been embroiled in disputes with workers trying to organize, has used union labor to build the electric charging infrastructure for its fleet of electric delivery vehicles in Maspeth, Queens, NY.
Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.
Corrine Case, an electrician represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said she was paid $43 an hour to install the charging system at Amazon.
A single mother, Case said she was excited about the job security offered by the rising demand for electricians to install charging stations.
“Our field is constantly changing because of new energy sources and to be a part of that is amazing,” she said.
FREE WORKER TRAINING
In their hunt for workers, solar, wind and electric vehicle companies have expanded programs offering free and subsidized training to military veterans, women and the formerly incarcerated.
SK told Reuters that it has been recruiting at military job fairs and American Legion chapters and collaborating with programs like the Georgia National Guard’s Work for Warriors and the Manufacturing Institute’s Heroes MAKE America.
Some solar companies have tried to recruit veterans, saying the skills learned in military life translate well to the industry.
Utility scale solar developer SOLV Energy, SunPower and Nextracker last year teamed up with nonprofit Solar Energy International to fund a women-only training program for solar installers. More than 30 women attended the week-long course in Colorado.
In October, the nonprofit Solar Hands-On Instructional Network of Excellence (SHINE) teamed up with the Virginia Department of Corrections on a pilot program to train 30 prison inmates and recently incarcerated people in solar panel installation. SHINE’s director David Peterson said the group is discussing expanding the program.
In California, the nonprofit Grid Alternatives has trained 150 inmates at the Madera County jail in solar installation since 2017 and is expanding its program this year to other facilities in the state. Potential employers are more open to hiring the formerly incarcerated once they see they have received some training, Tom Esqueda, the nonprofit’s outreach manager, said.
In Los Angeles, nonprofit Homeboy Industries, which works to rehabilitate former gang members, is using the potential job opportunities for solar panel installers to help recruits for its state-funded jobs program. Homeboy trains 50-60 people a year as solar panel installers.
More than 80% of the people who have gone through the training in the last year have found jobs in solar, according to Jackie Harper, who oversees the program.
“I’m going to be sticking with this,” said Marco Reyes, 28, who went through the program after his release from prison in February and earns $23 an hour as an installer in Valencia, California.
He now plans to train in the electrical end of solar installation, which would bump up his pay.
“Everyone has a chance to move up the ladder into a better position,” he said. “This job to me is a life changer.”
Read more:
Korea’s Hanwha Qcells to invest $2.5 bln in U.S. solar supply chain
U.S. solar installations to fall 23% this year due to China goods ban -report
Reporting by Nichola Groom and Valerie Volcovici; Edited by Richard Valdmanis and Suzanne Goldenberg
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BRASILIA, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Supporters of Brazil’s far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro invaded the country’s Congress, presidential palace and Supreme Court on Sunday, in a grim echo of the U.S. Capitol invasion two years ago by fans of former President Donald Trump.
Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in an October election, announced a federal security intervention in Brasilia lasting until Jan. 31 after capital security forces were initially overwhelmed by the invaders.
Lula, who was only inaugurated on Jan. 1, blamed Bolsonaro for inflaming his supporters after a campaign of baseless allegations about potential election fraud following the end of his rule marked by divisive nationalist populism.
The president’s allies also raised questions about how public security forces in the capital Brasilia were so unprepared and easily overwhelmed by rioters who had been planning on social media for days to gather for weekend demonstrations.
“These vandals, who we could call … fanatical fascists, did what has never been done in the history of this country,” said Lula in a press conference during an official trip to Sao Paulo state. “All these people who did this will be found and they will be punished.”
The capital invaders left a trail of destruction in their wake, throwing furniture through the smashed windows of the presidential palace, flooding parts of Congress with a sprinkler system and ransacking ceremonial rooms in the Supreme Court.
The sight of thousands of yellow-and-green clad protesters running riot in the capital capped months of tension following the Oct. 30 vote.
Bolsonaro, an acolyte of Trump’s who has yet to concede defeat, peddled the false claim that Brazil’s electronic voting system was prone to fraud, spawning a violent movement of election deniers.
“This genocidist … is encouraging this via social media from Miami,” Lula said, referring to Bolsonaro. “Everybody knows there are various speeches of the ex-president encouraging this.”
Bolsonaro was silent for nearly six hours about the chaos in Brasilia before posting on Twitter that he “repudiates” Lula’s accusations against him.
The former president, who has rarely spoken in public since losing the election, also said peaceful demonstrations are part of democracy but invading and damaging public buildings “crosses the line.” He flew to Florida 48 hours before the end of his mandate and was absent from Lula’s inauguration.
The violence in Brasilia could amplify the legal risks Bolsonaro faces. It also presents a headache for U.S authorities as they debate how to handle his stay in Florida. Prominent Democratic lawmakers said the United States could no longer grant Bolsonaro “refuge” in the country.
The Bolsonaro family lawyer, Frederick Wassef, did not respond to a request for comment.
By 6:30 p.m. local time (2130 GMT), some three hours after initial reports of the invasion, security forces had managed to retake the capital’s most iconic three buildings.
Brasilia Governor Ibaneis Rocha, a longtime Bolsonaro ally facing tough questions after Sunday’s security lapses, said on Twitter more than 400 people had been arrested and authorities were working to identify more.
The invasions were condemned by leaders around the world.
U.S. President Joe Biden called the events an “assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power,” adding that Brazil’s democratic institutions had full U.S. support.
“Using violence to attack democratic institutions is always unacceptable,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote on Twitter. “We join Lula in urging an immediate end to these actions.”
Far from the capital, Brazilian industries were on alert for a fresh round of unrest from Bolsonaro supporters, whose post-election highway blockades have disrupted grains shipments and meatpacking operations in recent months.
State-run oil company Petrobras stepped up security at its refineries, in a cautionary measure after attack threats against assets including Brazil’s biggest fuel plant, three company officials said, declining to be named as information is private.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4.SA), as the company is formally known, said in a statement that all its assets and refineries are operating normally.
Analysts warned the unrest could trigger more volatility in Brazil’s financial markets, which have swung sharply in recent weeks on doubts about how Lula will reconcile big spending promises with stretched public finances.
JUDGES DENOUNCE “TERRORISTS”
The Supreme Court, whose crusading Justice Alexandre de Moraes has been a thorn in the side of Bolsonaro and his supporters, was ransacked by the invaders, according to images from social media showed protesters clubbing security cameras and shattering the windows of the modernist building.
Both Moraes and the court’s Chief Justice Rosa Weber vowed punishment for the “terrorists” who had attacked the country’s democratic institutions. The heads of both houses of Congress denounced the attacks publicly and moved up plans to fly back to the capital, according to people familiar with the matter.
Rocha, the Brasilia governor, said he had fired his top security official, Anderson Torres, previously Bolsonaro’s justice minister. The solicitor general’s office said it had filed a request for the arrest of Torres.
Torres told website UOL he was with his family on holiday in the United States and had not met with Bolsonaro. UOL reported he was in Orlando, where Bolsonaro is now staying.
“Vandalism and ransacking will be combatted with the rigor of the law,” Anderson tweeted on Sunday afternoon, adding he had directed police in the capital to restore order urgently.
On Saturday, with rumors of a confrontation brewing in Brasilia, Justice Minister Flávio Dino authorized the deployment of the National Public Security Force. On Sunday, he wrote on Twitter, “this absurd attempt to impose the will by force will not prevail.”
In Washington in 2021, Trump supporters attacked police, broke through barricades and stormed the Capitol in a failed effort to prevent congressional certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Trump, who has announced a third bid for the presidency, in 2024, had pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, not to certify the vote, and he continues to claim falsely that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread fraud.
Reporting by Adriano Machado, Anthony Boadle, Lisandra Paraguassu, Ricardo Brito, Peter Frontini, Gabriel Araujo; Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Brad Haynes, Daniel Wallis and Lincoln Feast.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Activists call for faster action on climate change
Pollen warning issued as plants bloom early
Governments get short-term gas-price respite
LONDON/BRUSSELS, Jan 4 (Reuters) – Record-high winter temperatures swept across parts of Europe over the new year, bringing calls from activists for faster action against climate change while offering short-term respite to governments struggling with high gas prices.
Hundreds of sites have seen temperature records smashed in the past days, from Switzerland to Poland to Hungary, which registered its warmest Christmas Eve in Budapest and saw temperatures climb to 18.9 degrees Celsius (66.02°F) on Jan. 1.
In France, where the night of Dec. 30-31 was the warmest since records began, temperatures climbed to nearly 25C in the southwest on New Year’s Day while normally bustling European ski resorts were deserted due to a lack of snow.
The Weather Service in Germany, where temperatures of over 20C were recorded, said such a mild turn of the year had not been observed in the country since records began in 1881.
Czech Television reported some trees were starting to flower in private gardens while Switzerland’s office of Meteorology and Climatology issued a pollen warning to allergy sufferers from early blooming hazel plants.
The temperature hit 25.1C at Bilbao airport in Spain’s Basque country. People basked in the sun as they sat outside Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum or walked along the River Nervion.
“It always rains a lot here, it’s very cold, and it’s January, (but now) it feels like summer,” said Bilbao resident Eusebio Folgeira, 81.
French tourist Joana Host said: “It’s like nice weather for biking but we know it’s like the planet is burning. So we’re enjoying it but at the same time we’re scared.”
Scientists have not yet analysed the specific ways in which climate change affected the recent high temperatures, but January’s warm weather spell fits into the longer-term trend of rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change.
“Winters are becoming warmer in Europe as a result of global temperatures increasing,” said Freja Vamborg, climate scientist at the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
It follows another year of extreme weather events that scientists concluded were directly linked to global warming, including deadly heatwaves in Europe and India, and flooding in Pakistan.
“The record-breaking heat across Europe over the new year was made more likely to happen by human-caused climate change, just as climate change is now making every heatwave more likely and hotter,” said Dr Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London.
Temperature spikes can also cause plants to start growing earlier in the year or coax animals out of hibernation early, making them vulnerable to being killed off by later cold snaps.
Robert Vautard, director of France’s Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, said that while temperatures peaked from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2, the mild spell has lasted for two weeks and is still not over. “This is actually a relatively long-lived event,” he said.
EMPTY SLOPES
French national weather agency Meteo France attributed the anomalous temperatures to a mass of warm air moving to Europe from subtropical zones.
It struck during the busy skiing season, leading to cancelled trips and empty slopes. Resorts in the northern Spanish regions of Asturias, Leon and Cantabria have been closed since the Christmas holidays for lack of snow.
On Jahorina mountain above the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, it should have been one of the busiest weeks of the season. Instead, the chair-lifts hung lifeless above the grassy slopes. In one guesthouse a couple ate dinner alone in the restaurant, the only guests.
A ski jumping event in Zakopane, southern Poland, planned for the weekend of Jan. 7-8 was cancelled.
Karsten Smid, a climate expert at Greenpeace Germany, said while some climate change impacts were already unavoidable, urgent action should be taken to prevent even more drastic global warming.
“What’s happening right now is exactly what climate scientists warned us about 10, 20 years ago, and that can no longer be prevented now,” Smid said.
WEATHER EASES GAS STRAIN
The unusually mild temperatures have offered some short-term relief to European governments who have struggled to secure scarce gas supplies and keep a lid on soaring prices after Russia slashed deliveries of the fuel to Europe.
European governments have said this energy crisis should hasten their shift from fossil fuels to clean energy – but in the short term, plummeting Russian fuel supplies have left them racing to secure extra gas from elsewhere.
Gas demand has fallen for heating in many countries due to the mild spell, helping to reduce prices.
The benchmark front-month gas price was trading at 70.25 euros per megawatt hour on Wednesday morning, its lowest level since February 2022 – just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The head of Italy’s energy authority predicted that regulated energy bills in the country would fall this month, if the milder temperatures help keep gas prices lower.
However, a note by Eurointelligence cautioned that this should not lull governments into complacency about Europe’s energy crisis.
“While it will give governments more fiscal breathing room in the first part of this year, resolving Europe’s energy problems will taken concerted action over the course of several years,” it said. “Nobody should believe this is over yet.”
Reporting by Kate Abnett, Richard Lough, Alan Charlish, Krisztina Than, Luiza Ilie, Susanna Twidale, Riham Alkousaa, Jason Hovet, Emma Pinedo, Kirsten Donovan, Federico Maccioni; writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Mark Heinrich
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
This content was produced in Russia where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine
MOSCOW, Jan 4 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin sent a frigate to the Atlantic Ocean armed with new generation hypersonic cruise missiles on Wednesday, a signal to the West that Russia will not back down over the war in Ukraine.
Russia, China and the United States are in a race to develop hypersonic weapons which are seen as a way to gain an edge over any adversary because of their speeds – above five times the speed of sound – and manoeuvrability.
In a video conference with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Igor Krokhmal, commander of the frigate named “Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov”, Putin said the ship was armed with Zircon (Tsirkon) hypersonic weapons.
“This time the ship is equipped with the latest hypersonic missile system – ‘Zircon’,” said Putin. “I am sure that such powerful weapons will reliably protect Russia from potential external threats.”
The weapons, Putin said, had “no analogues in any country in the world”.
More than 10 months since Putin sent troops into Ukraine, there is no end in sight to the war which has descended into a grinding winter artillery battle that has killed and wounded tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.
Russia has also used hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles in Ukraine.
Along with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle which entered combat duty in 2019, the Zircon forms the centrepiece of Russia’s hypersonic arsenal.
Russia sees the weapons as a way to pierce increasingly sophisticated U.S. missile defences which Putin has warned could one day shoot down Russian nuclear missiles.
ATLANTIC VOYAGE
Shoigu said the Gorshkov would sail to the Atlantic and Indian oceans and to the Mediterranean Sea.
“This ship, armed with ‘Zircons’, is capable of delivering pinpoint and powerful strikes against the enemy at sea and on land,” Shoigu said.
Shoigu said the hypersonic missiles could overcome any missile defence system. The missiles fly at nine times the speed of sound and have a range of over 1,000 km, Shoigu said.
The main tasks of the voyage were to counter threats to Russia and to maintain “regional peace and stability jointly with friendly countries”, Shoigu said.
A U.S. Congressional Research Service report on hypersonic weapons says that Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles are designed to be used with nuclear warheads.
The target of a hypersonic weapon is much more difficult to calculate than for intercontinental ballistic missiles because of their manoeuvrability.
Beyond Russia, the United States and China, a range of other countries are developing hypersonic weapons including Australia, France, Germany, South Korea, North Korea and Japan, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, +79856400243; editing by Philippa Fletcher
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BRASILIA, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Brazilian markets delivered a withering verdict on leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s first full day in office on Monday, after he pledged to prioritize social issues and ordered a budget-busting extension to a fuel tax exemption.
Lula’s decision to extend the fuel tax exemption, which will deprive the Treasury of 52.9 billion reais ($9.9 billion) a year in fiscal income, was a stinging rebuke of his finance minister Fernando Haddad, a Workers Party (PT) loyalist who had said it would not be extended.
Haddad, who is seeking to dispel market fears that he might not maintain fiscal discipline, took office on Monday, pledging to control spending. “We are not here for adventures,” he said.
Markets seemed unconvinced.
The real currency lost 1.5% in value against the dollar in afternoon trading, while the benchmark Sao Paulo stock market index (.BVSP) ended 3.06% down. Shares of state-run oil company Petrobras (PETR4.SA) retreated nearly 6.45%.
In speeches delivered at his inauguration in Brasilia on Sunday, Lula promised that tackling hunger and poverty would be “the hallmark” of his third presidency after two previous stints running the country from 2003 to 2010.
Financial analysts said the start of Lula’s third presidency was in line with his campaign promises, and looked similar to earlier Workers Party policies that led to a deep recession.
Lula narrowly defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in October, swinging South America’s largest nation back on a left-wing track.
On Monday, Lula instructed ministers to revoke steps to privatize state companies taken by the previous administration, including studies to sell Petrobras, the Post Office and state broadcasting company EBC.
On Sunday, he signed a decree extending an exemption for fuels from federal taxes, a measure passed by his predecessor aimed at lowering their cost in the run-up to the election, but which will deprive the Treasury of 52.9 billion reais ($9.9 billion) a year in fiscal income.
The federal tax exemption for fuels will last one year for diesel and biodiesel and two months for gasoline and ethanol, a decree published in the official gazette showed on Monday.
Gabriel Araujo Gracia, analyst at Guide Investimentos, said Lula’s plans to increase social spending, expand the role of state banks and abolish a constitutionally mandated spending ceiling harked back to the worst days of Workers Party rule.
“The policies remind us of Dilma Rousseff’s government rather than Lula’s,” Gracia said, referring to Lula’s handpicked successor, who was impeached while in office. “Her policies led to Brazil’s worst recession since 1929.”
Lula, who lifted millions of Brazilians from poverty during his first two terms, criticized Bolsonaro for allowing hunger to return to Brazil, and wept during his speech to supporters on Sunday as he described how poverty had increased again.
Allies said Lula’s newfound social conscience was the result of his 580 days in prison, Reuters reported on Sunday.
Lula kicks off his third presidential term after persuading Congress to pass a one-year, 170 billion-reais increased social spending package, in line with his campaign promises.
“The package ended up being bigger than expected, with potential repercussions for public debt sustainability,” Banco BTG Pactual said in a research note.
Lula spent his first day in office meeting with more than a dozen heads of state who attended his inauguration.
The meetings started with the king of Spain, and continued with South American presidents, among them the leftist leaders of Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, as well as representatives from Cuba and Venezuela, and Vice President Wang Qishan of China.
On Twitter, Lula said he had received a letter from Chinese leader Xi Jinping expressing a desire to increase cooperation between the two countries.
“China is our biggest trading partner, and we can further expand relations between our countries,” Lula added.
The new president is also set to attend the wake of Brazilian soccer star Pele, who died on Thursday at 82 after battling colon cancer.
Lula will pay his respects and pay tribute to Pele and his family on Tuesday morning, the president’s office said in a statement.
($1 = 5.3633 reais)
Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Marcela Ayres and Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.