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Tag: Energy industry

  • Russia launches new Ukraine barrage as grain deal extended

    Russia launches new Ukraine barrage as grain deal extended

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russian airstrikes inflicted more damage on Ukraine on Thursday, with the latest barrage smashing into energy infrastructure, apartment buildings and an industrial site.

    At least four people were killed and 11 others wounded in drone and missile strikes around the country, authorities said.

    Separately, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres announced an extension of a four-month-old deal to ensure the safe delivery of export of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers from Ukraine through the Black Sea just days before it was set to expire.

    Guterres said in a statement the United Nations is also “fully committed” to removing obstacles that have impeded the export of food and fertilizer from Russia, which is one of two agreements struck between the two countries and Turkey in July. The deals signed in Istanbul are aimed to help bring down prices of food and fertilizer and avoid a global food crisis.

    There was no immediate confirmation of the agreement from Russia.

    Air raid sirens sounded all across Ukraine early Thursday amid fears that Moscow was unleashing its latest large-scale missile attack as the war approaches its nine-month milestone.

    In Kyiv, the city’s military administration said air defenses shot down at least two cruise missiles and five Iranian-made exploding drones.

    With the Kremlin’s forces on the ground being pushed back, Russia has increasingly resorted in recent weeks to aerial onslaughts aimed at energy infrastructure and other civilian targets in parts of Ukraine it doesn’t hold.

    Ukrainian air defenses this week appear to have had far higher rates of successful shoot-downs than during previous barrages last month, analysts say. The improvement results in part from Western-supplied air defense systems.

    But some missiles and drones still get through.

    Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, said a large fire erupted in Dnipro after the strikes on the city hit an industrial target. Eight people were wounded, the official said, including a 15-year-old girl.

    A Russian strike that hit a residential building killed at least four people overnight in Vilnia in the Zaporizhzhia region. Rescuers were combing the rubble for any other victims, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the Ukrainian presidential office.

    The Russian strikes also hit Ukraine’s southern Odesa region and the city of Dnipro for the first time in weeks, and

    An infrastructure target was hit on the Odesa region, Gov. Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning about the threat of a “massive missile barrage on the entire territory of Ukraine.”

    Multiple explosions were also reported in Dnipro, where two infrastructure objects were damaged and at least one person was wounded, according to the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.

    Officials in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters.

    Thursday’s blasts followed the huge barrage of Russian strikes on Tuesday. That was the biggest attack to date on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that also resulted in a missile hitting Poland.

    Russia has increasingly targeted Ukraine’s power grid as winter approaches. The most recent barrage followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.

    The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, called the strikes on energy targets “naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a Telegram post on Thursday.

    “Ukraine has already withstood extremely difficult strikes by the enemy, which did not lead to results the Russian cowards hoped for,” Yermak wrote, urging Ukrainians not to ignore air raid sirens.

    Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the extension of the grain deal a “key decision in the global fight against the food crisis.”

    ———

    Jamey Keaten in Geneva, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • US regulators to vote on largest dam demolition in history

    US regulators to vote on largest dam demolition in history

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    PORTLAND, Ore. — The largest dam demolition and river restoration plan in the world could be close to reality Thursday as U.S. regulators vote on a plan to remove four aging hydro-electric structures, reopening hundreds of miles of California river habitat to imperiled salmon.

    The vote by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the lower Klamath River dams is the last major regulatory hurdle and the biggest milestone facing a $500 million demolition proposal championed by Native American tribes and environmentalists for years.

    Approval of the application to surrender the dams’ operating license is the bedrock of the most ambitious salmon restoration plan in history, and if approved the parties overseeing the project will accept license transfer and could begin dam removal as early as this summer. More than 300 miles (482.80 kilometers) of salmon habitat in the Klamath River and its tributaries would benefit, said Amy Souers Kober, spokeswoman for American Rivers, which monitors dam removals and advocates for river restoration.

    “This is an incredibly important milestone,” she said. “This project really carries important lessons for rivers and the conservation movement, and the most important lesson is the leadership of the tribes. It’s because of the tribes that these dams will come out and the river be will restored.”

    The vote comes at a critical moment when human-caused climate change is hammering the Western United States with prolonged drought, said Tom Kiernan, president of American Rivers. He said allowing California’s second-largest river to flow naturally, and its flood plains and wetlands to function normally, would mitigate those impacts.

    “The best way of managing increasing floods and droughts is to allow the river system to be healthy and do its thing,” he said.

    “Instead of having reservoirs where a significant amount of that water evaporates, it’s better to have that river flow and allow the flood plains and wetlands filter the water and bring it down to groundwater where it doesn’t evaporate.”

    The Klamath Basin watershed covers more than 14,500 square miles (37,500 square kilometers) and the Klamath itself was once the third-largest salmon producing river on the West Coast. But the dams, constructed between 1918 and 1962, essentially cut the river in half and prevent salmon from reaching spawning grounds upstream. Consequently, salmon runs have been dwindling for years.

    Native tribes that rely on the Klamath River and its salmon for their way of life have been a driving force behind bringing the dams down. Members of the Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa tribes plan to light a bonfire and watch the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission meeting Thursday on a remote Klamath River sandbar via a satellite uplink to symbolize their hopes for the river’s renewal.

    Frankie Myers, Yurok vice chairman, told The Associated Press before the meeting that he was excited, but also anxious, about the outcome of the vote.

    “We’ve been doing this a long time and we’ve been let down so much over the last two decades,” he said. “If there’s still salmon in the water, they have a chance and we have a chance. …They will come down. They have to come down. Our existence depends on it.”

    But plans to remove the dams have been controversial.

    A group of homeowners who live around Copco Lake, one of the large reservoirs, have fought the dam removal plans for years and say the values of their lakefront homes have plummeted. A coalition formed to oppose the demolition plan argues that the money set aside to cover the demolition isn’t adequate, and that cost overruns and liability concerns would fall on the shoulders of taxpayers.

    They also question whether removing the dams will work to restore salmon because of changes in the Pacific Ocean that are also affecting the fish, said Richard Marshall, head of the Siskiyou County Water Users Association.

    “The whole question is, will this add to the increased production of salmon? It has everything to do with what’s going on in the ocean (and) we think this will turn out to be a futile effort,” he said. “Nobody’s ever tried to take care of the problem by taking care of the existing situation without just removing the dams.”

    Rate payers in the rural counties around the dams are also angered by the project, which is funded by $200 million from PacifiCorp and $250 million from a voter-approved water bond in California.

    U.S. regulators raised flags about the potential for cost overruns and liability issues in 2020, nearly killing the proposal, but Oregon, California and PacifiCorp, which operates the hydroelectric dams and is owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, teamed up to add another $50 million in contingency funds.

    The utility would face steep costs to add fish ladders and other environmental mitigations to the outdated dams in order to renew their hydroelectric license and in recent years has diversified their energy portfolio enough to absorb the loss of the dams, the company has said.

    If regulators approve on Thursday, Oregon, California and the Klamath River Renewal Corporation — the entity formed to oversee the demolition and environmental mitigation — must sign off on the license surrender and then work can begin. Regulators could also approve it, but add further specifications, or reject it altogether.

    If approved, Copco 2, the smallest dam, could come down as early as the coming summer, said Craig Tucker, natural resources policy consultant for the Karuk Tribe. In early 2024, the reservoirs behind the dams would be slowly drawn down, with the hope of putting the river fully back in its channel by late 2024, he said.

    The scope of the project exceeds the other largest U.S. dam demolition to date, when two century-old dams were breached on the Eolwha River on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in 2012, said Kober, of American Rivers. Environmental experts are unaware of any other river restoration project in the world with a bigger scope than the one planned for the lower Klamath, she added.

    Across the U.S., 1,951 dams have been demolished as of February, including 57 in 2021, the organization said. Most of those have come down in the past 25 years as facilities age and come up for relicensing.

    ———

    Follow Gillian Flaccus here.

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  • Asia-Pacific leaders tackle trade, sustainability in Bangkok

    Asia-Pacific leaders tackle trade, sustainability in Bangkok

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    BANGKOK — The war in Ukraine, great power rivalry Asia, inflation and food and energy shortages are on the agenda as leaders prepare for the third back-to-back gathering this week, a Pacific-Rim summit taking place in a heavily guarded venue in Thailand’s capital.

    Leaders from the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum will meet formally in closed-door sessions Friday and Saturday. For some, it will be at least the third such opportunity for face-to-face talks in the past two weeks, though the U.S. is represented in Bangkok by Vice President Kamala Harris, who is attending instead of President Joe Biden.

    APEC’s official mission is to promote regional economic integration. Most of the business conducted happens on the summit’s sidelines in meetings such as a planned meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

    The two Asian powers have a history of tense relations, a legacy of Japan’s World War II aggression compounded by territorial disputes and China’s growing military might. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said the encounter would “carry great importance.”

    Xi, Harris and French President Emmanuel Macron will also speak at a business conference held just ahead of the summit meetings that is mostly closed to media apart from outlets sponsoring the event.

    The APEC meetings are being held in downtown Bangkok’s main convention center, which is cordoned off with some streets in the area completely closed to all traffic. Rows of riot police stood guard behind the barricades at a major intersection nearby, underscoring host Thailand’s determination to ensure the summit suffers no disruptions.

    “The APEC meeting this year takes place amidst a dual jeopardy. We need not be reminded of the severe security conflicts that know not what victory looks like. Meanwhile, the world is staring at the hyper inflation married to recession, a broken supply chain and scarcity and climate calamities,” Don Pramudwinai, Thailand’s foreign minister said in opening a meeting of foreign ministers and commerce ministers who were working on draft statements due to be issued after the summit.

    Apparently alluding to Russia and recent condemnation of its war on Ukraine, he also said there was a growing “cancel mentality” that makes “any compromise appear impossible.”

    Before the summit, Thai officials said they were hoping to steer APEC toward long-term solutions in various areas, including climate change, economic disruptions and faltering recoveries from the pandemic.

    “What we are going to do is to have all economies agree on a set of targets … climate change mitigation, sustainable trade and investment, environment resources conservation and, of course, waste management,” said Cherdchai Chaivaivid, director-general of Thailand’s Department of International Economic Affairs. “This is the first time that APEC is going to talk about this. This is the first time that we are going to open a new chapter in how trade, business, investment should be done.”

    APEC’s official mission is to promote regional economic integration, which means setting guidelines for long-term development of a free trade area. Most of its work is technical and incremental, carried out by senior officials and ministers, covering areas such as trade, tourism, forestry, health, food, security, small and medium-size enterprises and women’s empowerment.

    Leaders from the 21 economies on both sides of the Pacific Ocean often take the opportunity to conduct bilateral talks and discuss side deals. The Latin American contingent comes from Chile, Mexico and Peru. Other members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin and Biden are no-shows this year. Putin has been avoiding international forums where he would be showered with criticism over the invasion of Ukraine. Biden will be hosting his granddaughter’s wedding at the White House.

    That leaves Chinese leader Xi as the star attendee in Bangkok, where he also is making an official visit to Thailand just after obtaining a rare third term as top leader at a once-in-five years Communist Party congress.

    Biden is giving ground to China in the competition for friends and influence in Southeast Asia by skipping the APEC meetings. But U.S. officials say Washington has demonstrated its seriousness in relations with the region through frequent visits by Cabinet members including Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and other key senior officials.

    As host, Thailand invited three special guests to the meeting: the French president Macron; Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the prime minister of Saudi Arabia, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was to represent the Association of Southeast Asian Nations but will not attend after getting COVID-19.

    For Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the most welcome visitor may well be the Saudi leader, who is making an official visit to help restore friendly relations with Thailand after decades of disruption due to a theft of Saudi royal jewelry and the unsolved murders of Saudi diplomats in Bangkok.

    “This is a good opportunity, that Mohammed bin Salman is visiting Thailand and both countries will resume a good economic relationship after over 30 years,” the chairman of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, Sanan Angubolkul, told The Associated Press. “To have the French president join us also shows how important this region is.”

    The war in Ukraine remains a likely thorn in APEC’s consensus-oriented efforts. None of the earlier APEC meetings this year issued statements due to disagreements over whether to mention the conflict.

    Like Indonesia, which hosted the Group of 20 summit in Bali this week, and Cambodia, which hosted the ASEAN meetings, Thai officials have put the best possible face on the situation, contending that agreement on other points will allow APEC to move forward regardless.

    Skeptics doubt the meeting will accomplish much.

    “This APEC is only a photo opportunity for leaders. Its agenda has drawn much less attention than the ASEAN summit and G-20,” Virot Ali, a political scientist at Thailand’s Thammasat University, told The Associated Press.

    “I don’t think we will see any progress from APEC. The current geopolitics, trade war, COVID-19, and Russia-Ukraine war are the issues that people are paying more attention to and feeling more impact from,” he said.

    ———

    Associated Press journalists Grant Peck and Tassanee Vejpongsa contributed to this report.

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  • Arizona company adds $1B solar power parts plant in Alabama

    Arizona company adds $1B solar power parts plant in Alabama

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    MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Arizona-based First Solar Inc. has selected Alabama as the site of a more than $1 billion factory that will manufacture modules that generate solar power, the company announced Wednesday.

    First Solar said in a statement that the plant, to be located in Lawrence County in the Tennessee Valley region, will create more than 700 jobs.

    The factory is part of a previously announced plan to increase First Solar’s U.S. manufacturing capacity to more than 10 gigawatts by 2025, the company said. It already has three factories in Ohio, one of which is expected to begin production next year.

    First Solar describes itself as the only major solar manufacturer that has headquarters in the United States and is not making components in China. The project will bring the company’s total investment in U.S. manufacturing to more than $4 billion, it said.

    A bill signed by President Joe Biden in August will direct spending, tax credits and loans to bolster technology like solar panels; consumer efforts to improve home energy efficiency; emissions-reducing equipment for coal- and gas-powered power plants; and air pollution controls for farms, ports and low-income communities.

    First Solar CEO Mark Widmar said that legislation “has firmly placed America on the path to a sustainable energy future” and the new plants will help with the transition toward cleaner energy, which supporters say will help stem climate change.

    ———

    This story has been corrected to reflect that the plant will be in Lawrence County.

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  • Poland, NATO say missile strike wasn’t a Russian attack

    Poland, NATO say missile strike wasn’t a Russian attack

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    PRZEWODOW, Poland — NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance both said Wednesday a missile strike in Polish farmland that killed two people did not appear to be an intentional attack, and that air defenses in neighboring Ukraine likely launched the Soviet-era projectile against a Russian bombardment that savaged its power grid.

    “Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, at a meeting of the 30-nation military alliance in Brussels, echoed the preliminary Polish findings, saying: “We have no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack.”

    The initial assessments of Tuesday’s deadly missile landing appeared to dial back the likelihood of the strike triggering another major escalation in the nearly 9-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine. If Russia had deliberately targeted Poland, that could have risked drawing NATO into the conflict.

    Still, Stoltenberg and others laid overall but not specific blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.

    “This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility,” Stoltenberg said.

    Before the Polish and NATO assessments, U.S. President Joe Biden had said it was “unlikely” that Russia fired the missile but added: “I’m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.”

    Three U.S. officials said preliminary assessments suggested it was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

    That assessment and Biden’s comments at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia contradicted information earlier Tuesday from a senior U.S. intelligence official who told The Associated Press that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.

    Ukraine, once part of the Soviet Union, maintains stocks of Soviet- and Russian-made weaponry, including air-defense missiles, and has also seized many more Russian weapons while beating back the Kremlin’s invasion forces.

    Ukrainian air defenses worked furiously against the Russian assault Tuesday on power generation and transmission facilities, including in Ukraine’s western region that borders Poland. Ukraine’s military said 77 of the more than 90 missiles fired were brought down, along with 11 drones.

    Russia said it didn’t launch the missile. A Defense Ministry spokesman said no Russian strike Tuesday was closer than 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the Ukraine-Poland border. The Kremlin denounced Poland’s and other countries’ initial response and, in rare praise for a U.S. leader, hailed Biden’s “restrained, much more professional reaction.”

    “We have witnessed another hysterical, frenzied, Russo-phobic reaction that was not based on any real data,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

    Still, Ukraine was under countrywide Russian bombardment Tuesday by barrages of cruise missiles and exploding drones, which clouded the initial picture of what exactly happened in Poland and why.

    The Polish president said the projectile was “most probably” a Russian-made S-300 missile dating from the Soviet era.

    “It was a huge blast, the sound was terrifying.” said Ewa Byra, the primary school director in the eastern village of Przewodow, where the missile struck. She said she knew both men who were killed — one was the husband of a school employee, the other the father of a former pupil.

    In Europe, NATO members Germany and the U.K. laced calls for a through investigation with criticism of Moscow.

    “This wouldn’t have happened without the Russian war against Ukraine, without the missiles that are now being fired at Ukrainian infrastructure intensively and on a large scale,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

    U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “This is the cruel and unrelenting reality of Putin’s war.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “a very significant escalation.” On the other end of the spectrum, China called for calm and restraint.

    Damage in Ukraine from the aerial assault was extensive and swaths of the country were without power. Zelenskyy said about 10 million people lost electricity but tweeted overnight that 8 million were subsequently reconnected, with repair crews laboring through the night. Previous Russian strikes had already destroyed an estimated 40% of the country’s energy infrastructure.

    The Russian bombardment also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported massive power outages after the strikes in Ukraine disconnected a power line to the small nation.

    Tuesday’s assaults killed one person in a residential building in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. It followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.

    With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark.

    ———

    AP journalists Vanessa Gera and Monika Scislowska in Warsaw; Lorne Cook in Brussels; John Leicester in Kyiv, Ukraine; Zeke Miller in Nusa Dua, Indonesia; Michael Balsamo and Lolita Baldor in Washington, James LaPorta in Wilmington, North Carolina, contributed.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Official says oil tanker hit by bomb-carrying drone off Oman

    Official says oil tanker hit by bomb-carrying drone off Oman

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An oil tanker associated with an Israeli billionaire has been struck by a bomb-carrying drone off the coast of Oman amid heightened tensions with Iran, an official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

    The attack happened Tuesday night off the coast of Oman, the Mideast-based defense official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they did not have authorization to discuss the attack publicly.

    The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a British military organization in the region monitoring shipping, told the AP: “We are aware of an incident and it’s being investigated at this time.”

    The official identified the vessel attacked as the Liberian-flagged oil tanker Pacific Zircon. That tanker is operated by Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping, which is a company ultimately owned by Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer.

    A phone number for Eastern Pacific rang unanswered Wednesday.

    While no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, suspicion immediately fell on Iran. Tehran and Israel have been engaged in a yearslong shadow war in the wider Middle East, with some drone attacks targeting Israeli-associated vessels traveling around the region.

    The U.S. also blamed Iran for a series of attacks occurring off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in 2019. Tehran then had begun escalating its nuclear program following the U.S.’ unilateral withdraw from its atomic deal with world powers.

    Iranian state media did not immediately acknowledge the attack on the Pacific Zircon.

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  • Qatar at World Cup pinnacle after years of Mideast turmoil

    Qatar at World Cup pinnacle after years of Mideast turmoil

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Hosting the World Cup marks a pinnacle in Qatar’s efforts to rise out of the shadow of its larger neighbors in the wider Middle East, where its politics and its upstart ambitions have brought both international attention and regional ire.

    The road to the tournament — and Qatar’s increased prominence on the global stage — has been fueled by the country becoming one of the top exporters of natural gas. That newfound wealth built the stadiums that fans will fill for the tournament, created the Arab world’s most recognized news network, Al Jazeera, and enabled Doha’s diplomatic outreach to the wider world.

    But that rise has not been without intrigue. A palace coup in 1995 installed a more assertive ruler in the country, who used Qatar’s wealth to back the Islamists who emerged stronger amid the 2011 Arab Spring protests — the same figures his fellow Gulf Arab leaders viewed as threats to their rule. A yearslong boycott of Qatar by four Arab nations that began in 2017 nearly sparked a war.

    And while the overt tensions have eased in the region, Qatar likely hopes the World Cup will serve to boost its standing as it balances its relations abroad to hedge against any danger to the country in the future.

    “They know there are these potential threats; they know they are very vulnerable,” said Gerd Nonneman, a professor of international relations and Gulf Arab studies at Georgetown University in Qatar. “Anything they can do to have an international network of if not allies, at least a sympathetic element, they will.”

    Qatar, a little larger than Jamaica or just smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut, is a peninsular nation that sticks out into the Persian Gulf like a thumb. It shares just a 60-kilometers (37-mile) border with Saudi Arabia, a nation 185 times larger, and sits just across the Gulf from Iran.

    Through its sovereign wealth fund, Qatar owns London’s famed Harrods department store, Paris Saint-Germain soccer club and billions of dollars in real estate in New York City. That wealth comes from its sales of liquified natural gas through an offshore field it shares with Iran, most of it going to Asian nations such as China, India, Japan and South Korea.

    That spigot of wealth began flowing in 1997, just after two major events that shook Qatar. The first, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent 1991 Gulf War, saw Doha and other Gulf Arab nations realize the need for long-term American military presence as a hedge, said Kristian Ulrichsen, a research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

    Qatar built its massive Al-Udeid Air Base, which is home to some 8,000 American troops and the forward headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command today.

    The second event that shook Qatar took place in 1995, when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani seized power in a bloodless coup from his father who was in Switzerland. Sheikh Hamad later put down a 1996 coup attempt by his cousin.

    Under Sheikh Hamad and flush with cash, Qatar created Al Jazeera, the satellite news channel that became known worldwide for airing statements from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The U.S. railed against the channel after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, though it provided the Arab world something beyond tepid state-controlled television for the first time.

    In December 2010, Qatar won its bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Just two weeks later, a Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire in protest and ultimately died of his burns — lighting the fuse for what became the 2011 Arab Spring.

    For Qatar, it marked a crucial moment. The country double-downed on its support of Islamists across the region, including Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood who would be elected president in Egypt after the fall of the longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Doha poured money into Syrian groups opposing the rule of Bashar Assad — with some funding going to those that America later described as extremists, like the Islamic State group.

    Qatar long has denied funding extremists, though it does maintain relations with the Palestinian militant group Hamas that rules the Gaza Strip, working as an interlocutor with Israel. But analysts say there was a recognition that things may have moved too fast.

    “They realize they stuck out their necks too far too soon … and they began to re-calibrate that,” Nonneman said.

    The Arab Spring soon chilled into a winter. A counterrevolution in Egypt supported by other Gulf Arab states saw the installation of military general turned President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in July 2013.

    A little over a week earlier, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Sheikh Hamad’s son, took over as ruler in Qatar in the ruling family’s own acknowledgment that a generational change was needed.

    Gulf Arab countries, however, remained angry. A 2014 dispute over Qatar’s support of Islamists saw Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates withdraw their ambassadors — only to bring them back eight months later.

    But in 2017 after then-President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, those three nations and Egypt began a yearslong boycott of Qatar, closing off air traffic and severing economic ties even as construction on the stadiums continued.

    Things grew so tense that Kuwait’s late ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, who at the time mediated the dispute, suggested that “military action” at one point was a possibility, without elaborating.

    The dispute ended as President Joe Biden stood poised to take office, though regional tensions remain. Still, Qatar has found itself hosting negotiations between American officials and the Taliban, as well as assisting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Russia’s war on Ukraine has seen European leaders come to Doha, hopeful for additional natural gas.

    “They are at the center of attention again,” Ulrichsen said. “It gives them a seat at the table when there’s decisions being taken.”

    ———

    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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  • UN climate talks near halftime with key issues unresolved

    UN climate talks near halftime with key issues unresolved

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    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — As the U.N. climate talks in Egypt near the half-way point, negotiators are working hard to draft deals on a wide range of issues they’ll put to ministers next week in the hope of getting a substantial result by the end.

    The two-week meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh started with strong appeals from world leaders for greater efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and help poor nations cope with global warming.

    Scientists say the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere needs to be halved by 2030 to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. The 2015 pact set a target of ideally limiting temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, but left it up to countries to decide how they want to do so.

    With impacts from climate change already felt across the globe, particularly by the world’s poorest, there has also been a push by campaigners and developing nations for rich polluters to stump up more cash. This would be used to help developing countries shift to clean energy and adapt to global warming; increasingly there are also calls for compensation to pay for climate-related losses.

    Here is a look at the main issues on the table at the COP27 talks and how they might be reflected in a final agreement.

    KEEPING COOL

    The hosts of last year’s talks in Glasgow said they managed to “keep 1.5 alive,” including by getting countries to endorse the target in the outcome document. But U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has warned that the temperature goal is on life support “and the machines are rattling.” And campaigners were disappointed that agenda this year doesn’t explicitly cite the threshold after pushback from some major oil and gas exporting nations. The talks’ chair, Egypt, can still convene discussions on putting it in the final agreement.

    CUTTING EMISSIONS

    Negotiators are trying to put together a mitigation work program that would capture the various measures countries have committed to reducing emissions, including for specific sectors such as energy and transport. Many of these pledges are not formally part of the U.N. process, meaning they cannot easily be scrutinized at the annual meeting. A proposed draft agreement circulated early Saturday had more than 200 square brackets, meaning large sections were still unresolved. Some countries want the plan to be valid only for one year, while others say a longer-term roadmap is needed. Expect fireworks in the days ahead.

    SHUNNING FOSSIL FUELS

    Last year’s meeting almost collapsed over a demand to explicitly state in the final agreement that coal should be phased out. In the end, countries agreed on several loopholes, and there are concerns among climate campaigners that negotiators from nations which are heavily dependent on fossil fuels for their energy needs or as revenue might try to roll back previous commitments.

    MONEY MATTERS

    Rich countries have fallen short on a pledge to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance for poor nations. This has opened up a rift of distrust that negotiators are hoping to close with fresh pledges. But needs are growing and a new, higher target needs to be set from 2025 onward.

    COMPENSATION

    The subject of climate compensation was once considered taboo, due to concerns from rich countries that they might be on the hook for vast sums. But intense pressure from developing countries forced the issue of ‘loss and damage’ onto the formal agenda at the talks for the first time this year. Whether there will be a deal to promote further technical work or the creation of an actual fund remains to be seen. This could become a key flashpoint in the talks.

    MORE DONORS

    One way to raise additional cash and resolve the thorny issue of polluter payment would be for those countries that have seen an economic boom in the past three decades to step up. The focus is chiefly on China, the world’s biggest emitter, but others could be asked to open their purses too. Broadening the donor base isn’t formally on the agenda but developed countries want reassurances about that in the final texts.

    CASH CONSTRAINTS

    Countries such as Britain and Germany want all financial flows to align with the long-term goals of the Paris accord. Other nations object to such a rule, fearing they may have money withheld if they don’t meet the strict targets. But there is chatter that the issue may get broader support next week if it helps unlock other areas of the negotiations.

    SIDE DEALS

    Last year’s meeting saw a raft of agreements signed which weren’t formally part of the talks. Some have also been unveiled in Egypt, though hopes for a series of announcements on so-called Just Transition Partnerships — where developed countries help poorer nations wean themselves off fossil fuels — aren’t likely to bear fruit until after COP27.

    HOPE TILL THE END

    Jennifer Morgan, a former head of Greenpeace who recently became Germany’s climate envoy, called the talks this year “challenging.”

    “But I can promise you we will be working until the very last second to ensure that we can reach an ambitious and equitable outcome,” she said. “We are reaching for the stars while keeping our feet on the ground.”

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • 12 killed in Nigeria gasoline tanker explosion, police say

    12 killed in Nigeria gasoline tanker explosion, police say

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    ABUJA, Nigeria — At least 12 people were killed when a gasoline tanker crashed on a major road and then exploded in Nigeria’s northcentral Kogi State, police said Friday.

    The tanker had a brake failure along a major road in the Ofu council area on Thursday night when it collided with a vehicle obstructing the highway, causing a fireball, a police spokesman told The Associated Press.

    The vehicle “crushed cars on the way” and “12 people were killed” — all burnt to death, said William Ovye Aya with the Kogi police command.

    Bisi Kazeem with Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corps said 18 people were involved in the crash. Seven sustained “various degrees of injuries while the remaining 11 were burnt beyond recognition” at the scene, Kazeem said in a statement.

    The road has been cordoned off and road safety workers are working to identify the victims, Kazeem said.

    Such crashes are common along most major roads in Nigeria, with new measures introduced by the country’s road safety corps failing to curb their occurrence. Kogi is a known hot spot with more than 10 people killed in a similar crash in September.

    Authorities in Kogi are investigating the latest crash, Kingsley Fanwo, the state commissioner for information, told the AP.

    “As a state government, we have always been harping on this issue of road safety. It is becoming one occurrence too many,” Fanwo said.

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  • Famed painting ‘The Scream’ targeted by climate activists

    Famed painting ‘The Scream’ targeted by climate activists

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    COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Norwegian police said two climate activists tried in vain Friday to glue themselves to Edvard Munch’s 1893 masterpiece “The Scream” at an Oslo museum and no harm was reported to the painting of a waif-like figure appearing to scream.

    Police said they were alerted by the National Museum of Norway and had three people under their “control.” A third person filmed the pair that tried to affix to the painting, Norwegian news agency NTB said.

    The museum said that the room where the glass-protected painting is exhibited “was emptied of the public and closed,” and will reopen as soon as possible. The rest of museum remained open.

    Police said there was glue residue on the glass mount.

    A video of the incident showed museum guards holding two activists with one shouting “I scream for people dying” and another one shouts “I scream when lawmakers ignore science” while a person was shielding the painting from the protesters.

    Environmental activists from the Norwegian organization “Stopp oljeletinga” — Norwegian for Stop Oil Exploration — were behind the stunt, saying they “wanted to pressure lawmakers into stopping oil exploration.” Norway is a major producer of offshore oil and gas.

    “We are campaigning against ‘Scream’ because it is perhaps Norway’s most famous painting,” activist spokeswoman Astrid Rem told The Associated Press. “There have been lots of similar actions around Europe, they have managed something that no other action has managed: achieve an extremely large amount of coverage and press.”

    It was the latest episode in which climate activists have targeted famous paintings in European museums.

    Two Belgian activists who targeted Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” in a Dutch museum in October were sentenced to two months in prison. The painting wasn’t damaged and was returned to its wall a day later.

    Earlier this month, climate protesters threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting in a German museum and a similar protest happened in London, where protesters threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery. In both those cases, the paintings also weren’t damaged.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the climate and environment at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Paris Metro workers strike for wage hike, disrupt commutes

    Paris Metro workers strike for wage hike, disrupt commutes

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    PARIS — Striking subway workers shut down half of the Paris Metro lines Thursday, a nationwide day of walkouts and protests by French train drivers, teachers and other public-sector workers demanding the government and employers increase salaries to keep up with inflation.

    Expecting major disruptions on their morning commutes, many Parisians biked or walked to work. Others took buses that were provided as an alternative way to reach offices and workplaces, or reverted to their pandemic lockdown routines and worked from home.

    Protest rallies were planned in Paris and other French cities later Thursday, amid deepening worker discontent around Europe.

    The strikes in France build on multiple union actions in recent months by French workers demanding higher wages to keep up with the rising cost of living. Last month, a strike by oil refinery workers caused nationwide fuel shortages that disrupted lives and businesses. The French government intervened to force them back to work.

    Europe has faced a series of protests and strikes in recent months over soaring inflation. Nurses, pilots, postal workers. railway staff and others have walked off the job, seeking wages that keep pace with inflation as Russia’s war in Ukraine has driven up energy and food prices.

    Labor unions also have organized street protests to pressure governments to do more to ease rising bills even as European leaders have passed energy relief packages.

    Nationwide general strikes over cost of living increases caused by inflation and higher energy costs linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine snarled traffic through much of Belgium and shut down public services in Greece on Wednesday.

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  • Global stocks decline ahead of US inflation update

    Global stocks decline ahead of US inflation update

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    BEIJING — Global stock markets fell Thursday ahead of a U.S. inflation update that will likely influence Federal Reserve plans for more interest rate hikes as investors waited to see who will control Congress after this week’s elections.

    London, Shanghai, Frankfurt and Tokyo declined. U.S. futures were higher. The euro fell back below $1.

    Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index tumbled Wednesday as votes were counted to decide whether Republicans take control of Congress, possibly leading to changes that can unsettle markets. Investors were rattled by the crypto industry’s latest crisis of confidence and weaker profit reports from The Walt Disney Co. and some other companies.

    Forecasters expect U.S. government data Thursday to show inflation eased in September but stayed near a four-decade high. That might reinforce arguments that rates have to stay elevated for an extended period to slow economic activity and extinguish inflation.

    “An upside surprise today would present a challenge for officials who expect to slow the pace of rate hikes,” Rubeela Farooqi of High-Frequency Economics said in a report.

    In early trading, the FTSE 100 in London was 0.1% lower at 7,285.86. The DAX in Frankfurt lost 0.1% to 13,647.47 and the CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.2% to 6,417.98.

    On Wall Street, futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.3%.

    On Wednesday, the S&P 500 lost 2.1%, erasing gains from a three-day rally leading up to Election Day.

    Disney sank 13.2% for the largest loss in the S&P 500 after reporting quarterly results that fell short of analysts’ expectations.

    The Dow fell 2% and the Nasdaq composite, dominated by tech companies, tumbled 2.5%.

    Facebook parent Meta Platforms rose 5.2% after saying it will cut costs by laying off 11,000 employees, or about 13% of its workforce. It is down nearly 70% for the year.

    In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 1.7% to 16,081.04 and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo sank 1% to 27,446.10. The Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.4% to 3,036.13.

    The Kospi in Seoul declined 0.9% to 2,407.70 and Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 was off 0.5% at 6,964.00.

    India’s Sensex shed 1% to 60,447.97. New Zealand, Bangkok and Jakarta declined while Singapore and Malaysia gained.

    The Philippines’ market benchmark lost 0.5% after the government reported the economy grew by 7.6% in the three months ending in September.

    Investors worry rate hikes this year by the Fed and central banks in Europe and Asia to cool inflation might tip the global economy into recession. Traders hope indicators that show U.S. housing sales and other activity weakening might prompt the Fed to back off plans for more rate hikes.

    In the United States, Republicans were within nine seats of the 218 needed to control the House of Representatives as votes still were being counted in some states. Control of the Senate depended on races in Nevada and Arizona that hadn’t been decided.

    The outcome will determine how the next two years of President Joe Biden’s term play out. Republicans are likely to launch a spate of investigations into Biden, his family and his administration if they take power. A GOP takeover of the Senate would hobble the president’s ability to appoint judges.

    Still, the election “impact on markets is pretty irrelevant beyond the very near term,” said David Chao of Invesco in a report. “Investors should be worried about inflation, since that will help to dictate the Fed’s future path.”

    Forecasters expect Thursday’s data to show inflation decelerated to 7.9% in September from the previous month’s 8.3%. However, prices were expected to rise 0.6% compared with August, accelerating from July’s 0.1% increase.

    Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices to show a clearer trend, is expected to accelerate to 6.5% from August’s 6.3%. That suggests costs of rent, medical services, autos and other goods and services still are rising in response to strong demand.

    Traders expect the Fed to raise rates again next month but by a smaller margin of one-half percentage point after a series of 0.75 percentage-point increases. The Fed’s key lending rate is a range of 3.75% to 4%, up from close to zero in March. A growing number of investors expect it to exceed 5% next year.

    Also Wednesday, cryptocurrencies fell amid worries about the industry’s financial strength after a big player, Binance, called off a deal to buy troubled rival FTX. That at least temporarily ended hopes for a bailout after FTX users scrambled to pull out their money.

    Bitcoin fell 14% from a day earlier to $15,900. That is down 77% from last year’s high of $69,000.

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps dictate rates for mortgages and other loans, fell to 4.08% from 4.13% late Tuesday. The two-year yield, which tends to more closely track expectations for Fed action, dropped to 4.60% from 4.66%.

    In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude shed 49 cents to $85.34 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the price basis for international oil trading, lost 42 cents to $92.23 per barrel in London.

    The dollar gained to 146.31 yen from Wednesday’s 145.56 yen. The euro declined to 99.83 cents from $1.0073.

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  • UN experts urge stringent rules to stop net zero greenwash

    UN experts urge stringent rules to stop net zero greenwash

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    SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Companies pledging to get their emissions down to net zero better make sure they’ve got a credible plan and aren’t just making false promises, U.N. experts said in a report Tuesday urging tough standards on emissions cutting vows.

    Released at the the U.N.’s flagship climate conference in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the group of experts set out a number of strict recommendations for businesses, banks, and local governments making net zero pledges to ensure that their promises amount to meaningful action instead of “bogus” assurances. Countries are not included in the group’s scope as their emissions-cutting commitments are set out in the 2015 Paris deal.

    The group called the report a roadmap to prevent net zero from being “undermined by false claims, ambiguity and “greenwash.”

    United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed the group exactly a year ago at last year’s U.N. climate summit to draw up principles and recommendations aimed at clarifying the confusion around the growing number of net zero claims made by businesses and organizations. There’s been little transparency or uniform standards when it comes to net zero pledges, resulting in a boom in the number of hard to verify claims, the U.N. experts and environmental groups say.

    “Using bogus ‘net zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. It is rank deception,” Guterres said at the COP27 summit. “This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff. The sham must end.”

    Since the Paris Agreement in 2015 set a global target of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) there’s been a groundswell of support for the concept of “net zero” — drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions and canceling out the rest — as the main way to meet that goal.

    So-called non-state actors include corporations, investors, and local and regional governments, which aren’t covered by the Paris Agreement’s requirements. Their voluntary carbon cutting pledges must be “ambitious, have integrity and transparency, be credible and fair,” the experts said.

    Among its 10 specific recommendations, businesses can’t claim to be net zero if they continue to invest or build new fossil fuel supplies, deforestation or other environmentally destructive projects. They can’t buy cheap carbon offset credits “that often lack integrity instead of immediately cutting their own emissions.”

    Guterres said he was deeply concerned about lack of “standards, regulations and rigor” in the market for voluntary carbon credits. Climate experts say offsets can be problematic because there’s no guarantee they’ll deliver on reducing emissions.

    Lobbying to undermine ambitious government climate policies is a no-no, the experts said. And companies can’t focus only on emissions they generate directly from, say, manufacturing but have to include all the carbon dioxide spewed along the way in their sourcing supply chains for parts and raw materials.

    “I think these are kind of no-nonsense, practical things that a regular person would expect,” Catherine McKenna, who heads up the group of 17 high-level experts that authored the report, told the Associated Press.

    The guidelines would help consumers who “want to choose products that are good for the environment and mean that the company is tackling climate action” and young people looking for jobs who “don’t want to work for climate laggards,” McKenna said.

    Business, environmental and corporate watchdog groups generally supported the proposals.

    “This surge of interest from the corporate sector to zero out emissions is truly inspiring,” said Ani Dasgupta, CEO of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, cautioning that “any corporate net-zero targets with loopholes or weak guardrails would put our planet and billions of people in peril.”

    In order to keep the Earth from warming less than 1.5 degrees, the U.N. says carbon dioxide emissions must peak by 2025, fall by nearly half by 2030, and to reach net zero by the middle of the century.

    The only way to do that now is to reduce the amount of heat trapping greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere and balance out the remaining emissions by permanently removing them, through planting trees, or through technologies yet untested at scale such as capturing carbon emissions at sources such as factory smokestacks and storing them underground.

    Along the way, net zero has become a corporate buzzword for companies and groups seeking to burnish their green credentials, though environmental activists worry it’s becoming greenwash.

    McDonald’s has opened net zero restaurants in the United States and United Kingdom powered by solar panels and wind turbines. Airline group IATA set a long term goal for the aviation industry to reach net zero by 2050. Even oil companies have jumped on the bandwagon. Chevron touts its “net zero aspiration” and Shell flaunts its “drive for net zero emissions.”

    Private equity firm Carlyle Group was an early adopter of net zero commitment, but did not include its largest oil and gas investment in a recent financial risk report on greenhouse gas emissions.

    Organizers of this year’s soccer world cup hosted by Qatar say the massive building spree of stadiums, highways and subway system for the event was all carbon neutral — a claim experts have cast doubt on.

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Asian markets mixed ahead of US elections, inflation data

    Asian markets mixed ahead of US elections, inflation data

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    TOKYO — Asian stocks were mixed Tuesday ahead of the U.S. midterm elections with trading likely to stay bumpy in a week that brings new inflation data and other events that could shake markets.

    Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 gained 1.3% to 27,876.20 on strong earnings reports. The Kospi in Seoul advanced 1.1% to 2,397.41 and Australia’s S&P/AXS 200 gained 0.4% to 6,958.90.

    Hong Kong’s Hang Seng sank 0.6% to 16,488.44, while the Shanghai Composite index shed 0.8% to 3,052.93. Thailand’s SET gained 0.7%. India’s markets were closed for a holiday.

    The week is full of potentially market-moving events, including U.S. inflation data and the election, which could leave the U.S. government split between Democrats and Republicans.

    For Tuesday, at least, “Look for markets to trade political headline spin rather than substance,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

    Every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is up for election this year, along with about a third of the U.S. Senate. On the line is control of both houses of Congress, currently under Democratic leadership.

    Voters are also electing governors in most of the states this year. They’ll be in office in 2024 when the next presidential election happens and could affect election laws or vote certifications. Many state legislative and local authorities also are on the ballot.

    A divided government would likely bring gridlock rather than big, sweeping policy changes that could upset tax and spending plans. Historically, when a Democratic White House has shared power with a split or Republican Congress, stocks have seen stronger gains than usual.

    On Monday, the benchmark S&P 500 rose 1% to 3,806.80 while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.3% to 32,827.00 and the Nasdaq composite added 0.9% to 10,564.52.

    Analysts say a strong performance by Democrats in the elections could lead to increased spending to help the economy that might fuel inflation and leave the Federal Reserve obliged to continue to hike interest rates to get prices under control.

    It may take a while to get clarity because of the process to count votes that came in through the mail.

    Economists expect a report Thursday to show the consumer price index rose 8% in October from a year earlier, slightly lower than September’s 8.2% inflation rate.

    Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, “It is still all about inflation and while this report might not be as hot as the last few, it still should show that rents and the core-service sector part of the economy are still hot,” Edward Moya of Oanda said in a report.

    Higher rates put the brakes on the economy by making it more expensive to buy a house, car or anything else on credit, though they take time to take effect. Rate hikes could bring a recession, and they tend to drag on prices for stocks and other investments.

    A fourth straight month of moderating inflation from June’s 9.1% rate could afford the Federal Reserve leeway to loosen up a bit. The Fed has said that it may soon dial down the size of its increases to half a percentage point, after pushing through four straight mega increases of three-quarters of a point.

    Monday’s gains for Wall Street came despite a shaky showing for its most influential stock. Apple rose 0.4% after dropping earlier in the day. It had warned customers they’ll have to wait longer to get the latest iPhones after anti-COVID restrictions were imposed on a contractor’s factory in China.

    Earnings reports are also causing share prices to swing.

    The reporting season for summertime profits is roughly 85% done, and S&P 500 companies are on track to deliver growth of a little more than 2%. Analysts are forecasting a drop in S&P 500 profits for the final three months of the year, of nearly 1.5%. They had been forecasting growth of 4% at the end of September.

    In other trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 50 cents to $91.29 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It lost 82 cents to $91.79 per barrel on Monday.

    Brent crude, the international pricing standard, gave up 45 cents to $97.47 per barrel.

    The U.S. dollar was unchanged at 146.63 yen. The euro slipped to $1.0008 to $1.0016.

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  • Greek PM: Gas exploration to start off Crete in coming days

    Greek PM: Gas exploration to start off Crete in coming days

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    ATHENS, Greece — Exxon Mobil is poised to start a delayed gas prospecting project off southwestern Greece, the country’s leader said Monday amid tensions between Greece and Turkey over offshore rights and as Europe seeks alternative energy sources due to the war in Ukraine.

    The U.S. energy giant will start seismic exploration “in the coming days” southwest of the southern Peloponnese peninsula and the island of Crete, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told private Antenna TV.

    The project has been heavily criticized by environmental groups, which argue that the deep-sea prospecting would have “unbearable” consequences on endangered Mediterranean whales and dolphins. Critics also highlight the potential risk of spills, and say the project, if successful, would increase Greece’s use of fossil fuels amid the planet’s climate change crisis.

    Mitsotakis insisted Monday that Greece remains dedicated to “fast green transition.” But he added: “Our country … must ascertain whether it currently has the ability to produce natural gas, which would contribute not only to our own energy security but also to that of Europe.”

    European countries are scrambling to replace their former dependency on Russian fossil fuels following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent damaging of pipelines designed to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany.

    Meanwhile, Greece and Turkey are at loggerheads over offshore exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean, and Turkish prospecting east of Crete in 2020 prompted a military build-up and bellicose rhetoric.

    In 2019, Greece granted rights for exploration — which, however, didn’t go ahead — in two blocks of seabed south and southwest of the island of Crete to a consortium of TotalEnergies and Exxon Mobil with Greece’s Hellenic Petroleum.

    The areas include the Mediterranean’s deepest waters. The Hellenic Trench, at 5,267 meters (17,300 feet) is a vital habitat for the sea’s few hundred sperm whales, and for other cetaceans already threatened by fishing, collisions with ships and plastic pollution.

    These mammals are particularly sensitive to the underwater noise produced by seismic surveys for fossil fuels, in which sound waves are bounced off the seabed to locate potential deposits. Sonar used by warships has been shown to have deadly effects on whales, and experts say seismic surveys can do the same.

    ———

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

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  • China trade down on weak global demand, virus curbs

    China trade down on weak global demand, virus curbs

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    BEIJING — China’s trade shrank in October as global demand weakened and anti-virus controls weighed on domestic consumer spending.

    Exports declined 0.3% from a year earlier to $298.4 billion, down from September’s 5.7% growth, the customs agency reported Monday. Imports fell 0.7% to $213.4 billion, compared with the previous month’s 0.3% expansion.

    China’s global trade surplus edged up 0.9% from a year earlier to $85.2 billion.

    Forecasters expected Chinese trade to weaken as global demand cooled following interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and other central banks to rein in surging inflation.

    At home, consumer demand has been hurt by a “Zero COVID” strategy that has repeatedly shut down large sections of cities to contain virus outbreaks. That has disrupted business and confined millions of people to their homes for weeks at a time.

    Economic growth picked up to 3.9% over a year earlier in the quarter ending in September from 2.2% in the first six months of 2022. But forecasters say activity is weakening as closures spread in response to a spike in infections.

    “The economy slowed again in October due to the tightened Covid controls as well as the slowing external demand,” said Larry Hu of Macquarie Group in a report.

    The downturn in Chinese demand hurts developing countries that supply oil, soybeans and other raw materials and the United States, Europe, Japan and other suppliers of consumer goods and microchips and other components and technology needed by manufacturers.

    Exports to the United States rose 35.3% over a year earlier to $47 billion despite lingering tariff hikes in a trade war over Beijing’s technology ambitions. Imports of U.S. goods rose $52.4% to $12.8 billion.

    China’s politically sensitive trade surplus with the United States swelled 29.9% to $34.2 billion.

    Imports from Russia, mostly oil and gas, more than doubled, rising 110.5% over a year ago to $10.2 billion.

    China can buy Russian energy exports without running afoul of sanctions imposed on President Vladimir Putin’s government by the United States, Europe and Japan. Beijing is stepping up purchases to take advantage of Russian discounts. That irks Washington and its allies by topping up the Kremlin’s cash flow and limiting the impact of sanctions.

    Exports to the 27-nation European Union edged up 5.5% to $44.1 billion while imports of European goods shrank 15.5% to $21.4 billion. China‘s surplus with the EU widened by 38.1% to $22.7 billion.

    For the first 10 months of the year, China’s exports rose 11.1% to $3 trillion while imports gained 3.5% to $2.3 trillion, the General Administration of Customs announced. The country’s trade surplus was $727.7 billion.

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  • Kyiv prepares for a winter with no heat, water or power

    Kyiv prepares for a winter with no heat, water or power

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is warning residents that they must prepare for the worst this winter if Russia keeps striking the country’s energy infrastructure — and that means having no electricity, water or heat in the freezing cold cannot be ruled out.

    “We are doing everything to avoid this. But let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything for the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die. And the future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation Sunday that about 4.5 million people were without electricity. He called on Ukrainians to endure the hardships and “we must get through this winter and be even stronger in the spring than now.”

    Russia has focused on striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the last month, causing power shortages and rolling outages across the country. Kyiv was having hourly rotating blackouts Sunday in parts of the city and the surrounding region.

    Rolling blackouts also were planned in the Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator, Ukrenergo, said.

    Kyiv plans to deploy about 1,000 heating points, but it’s unclear if that would be enough for a city of 3 million people.

    As Russia intensifies its attacks on the capital, Ukrainian forces are pushing forward in the south. Residents of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied city of Kherson received warning messages on their phones urging them to evacuate as soon as possible, Ukraine’s military said Sunday. Russian soldiers warned civilians that Ukraine’s army was preparing for a massive attack and told people to leave for the city’s right bank immediately.

    Russian forces are preparing for a Ukrainian counteroffensive to seize back the southern city of Kherson, which was captured during the early days of the invasion. In September, Russia illegally annexed Kherson as well as three other regions and subsequently declared martial law in the four provinces.

    The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson already has moved tens of thousands of civilians out of the city.

    Russia has been “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians that they’re leaving when in fact they’re digging in, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Forces, told state television.

    “There are defense units that have dug in there quite powerfully, a certain amount of equipment has been left, firing positions have been set up,” she said.

    Russian forces are also digging in in a fiercely contested region in the east, worsening the already tough conditions for residents and the defending Ukrainian army following Moscow’s illegal annexation and declaration of martial law in Donetsk province.

    The attacks have almost completely destroyed the power plants that serve the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the region’s Ukrainian governor, said. Shelling killed one civilian and wounded three, he reported late Saturday.

    “The destruction is daily, if not hourly,” Kyrylenko told state television.

    Moscow-backed separatists have controlled part of Donetsk for nearly eight years before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Protecting the separatists’ self-proclaimed republic there was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for the invasion, and his troops have spent months trying to capture the entire province.

    Between Saturday and Sunday, Russia’s launched four missiles and 19 airstrikes hitting more than 35 villages in nine regions, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south, according to Zelenskyy’s office. The strikes killed two people and wounded six.

    In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, 15,000 remaining residents were living under daily shelling and without water or power, according to local media. The city has been under attack for months, but the bombardment picked up after Russian forces experienced setbacks during Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

    The front line is now on Bakhmut’s outskirts, where mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian military company, are reported to be leading the charge.

    Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the group who has typically remained under the radar, is taking a more visible role in the war. In a statement Sunday he announced the funding and creation of “militia training centers” in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions in the southwest, saying that locals were best placed to “fight against sabotage” on Russian soil. The training centers are in addition to a military technology center the group said it was opening in St. Petersburg.

    In Kharkiv, officials were working to identify bodies found in mass graves after the Russians withdrew, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office, told local media.

    DNA samples have been collected from 450 bodies discovered in a mass grave in the city of Izium, but the samples need to be matched with relatives and so far only 80 people have participated, he said.

    In one sliver of good news, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported Sunday. Europe’s largest nuclear plant needs electricity to maintain vital cooling systems, but it had been running on emergency diesel generators since Russian shelling severed its outside connections.

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    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Haiti gang leader to lift fuel blockade amid shortages

    Haiti gang leader to lift fuel blockade amid shortages

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    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A powerful gang leader announced Sunday that he was lifting a blockade at a key fuel terminal that has strangled Haiti’s capital for nearly two months.

    The announcement by Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer nicknamed “Barbecue,” followed government claims of at least some success in efforts to reclaim the terminal, as well as a United Nations resolution targeting Cherizier with sanctions. But it remained unclear who actually controls the terminal and the surrounding area, and there had been no evidence that any fuel had been able to leave.

    In a speech posted on social media, Cherizier called on truck drivers to come and fill their tanks.

    “Drivers can come to the terminal without any fear,” he said.

    If fuel can leave, that would ease a crisis that began when Cherizier’s G9 gang federation seized control of the area surrounding a fuel depot in Port-au-Prince on Sept. 12 to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

    The gang’s blockade cut off access to about 10 millions gallons of diesel and gasoline and more than 800,000 gallons of kerosene, forcing gas stations to close, hospitals to cut back on critical services and banks and grocery stores to operate on a limited schedule.

    It also hindered efforts to cope with a cholera outbreak that has killed dozens and sickened thousands. Clinics have warned they were running out of fuel and had difficulty accessing potable water.

    Gunfire echoed from the area around the terminal on Thursday as Haiti’s National Police fought to reassert control. Police Chief Frantz Elbé said in a voicemail shared with The Associated Press on Friday: “We won a fight, but it is not over.”

    Official police social media accounts posted a video on Sunday with no sound stating officers were still “busy” at the terminal and saying “an important provision is taken to secure the perimeters.”

    Cherizier stressed that neither the gang nor anyone working on its behalf has negotiated anything with the prime minister, despite claims by some politicians to have done so.

    “This is a fight for a better life,” he said of the gang’s actions. “The situation has worsened. … We are not responsible for what happened to the country.”

    Cherizier then asked whether Haitians are happy with their living conditions, whether they feel safe, whether their children can go to school without being kidnapped and whether they have food and medical care.

    Many in the country of more than 11 million people are living in even deeper poverty at a time of double-digit inflation. Meanwhile, kidnappings and gang violence has increased following the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.

    Spokespeople for Haiti’s National Police and the office of the prime minister could not be immediately reached for comment following Cherizier’s announcement.

    But some people on social media celebrated Cherizier’s announcement, referring to him as “Father” or “Mr. President.”

    In early September, Henry announced his administration could no longer afford to subsidize petroleum, leading to sharp increases in prices that unleashed large protests.

    On Oct. 7, almost a month after the blockade began, Henry requested the immediate deployment of foreign troops. The U.N. Security Council has yet to vote on the request, though it voted to impose sanctions on the gang leader himself.

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    Associated Press writer Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed to this report.

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  • Kyiv prepares for a winter with no heat, water or power

    Kyiv prepares for a winter with no heat, water or power

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is warning residents that they must prepare for the worst this winter if Russia keeps striking the country’s energy infrastructure — and that means having no electricity, water or heat in the freezing cold cannot be ruled out.

    “We are doing everything to avoid this. But let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything for the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die. And the future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media.

    Russia has focused on striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the last month, causing power shortages and rolling outages across the country. Kyiv was scheduled to have hourly rotating blackouts Sunday in parts of the city and the surrounding region.

    Rolling blackouts also were planned in the nearby Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator, Ukrenergo, said.

    Kyiv plans to deploy about a 1,000 heating points, but noted that this may not be enough for a city of 3 million people.

    As Russia intensifies its attacks on the capital, Ukrainian forces are pushing forward in the south. Residents of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied city of Kherson received warning messages on their phones urging them to evacuate as soon as possible, Ukraine’s military said Sunday. Russian soldiers warned civilians that Ukraine’s army was preparing for a massive attack and told people to leave for the city’s right bank immediately.

    Russian forces are preparing for a Ukrainian counteroffensive to seize back the southern city of Kherson, which was captured during the early days of the invasion. In September, Russia illegally annexed Kherson as well as three other regions of Ukraine and subsequently declared martial law in the four provinces.

    The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson already has moved tens of thousands of civilians out of the city.

    Russia has been “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians that they’re leaving when in fact they’re digging in, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Forces, told state television.

    “There are defense units that have dug in there quite powerfully, a certain amount of equipment has been left, firing positions have been set up,” she said.

    Russian forces are also digging in in a fiercely contested region in the east, worsening the already tough conditions for residents and the defending Ukrainian army following Moscow’s illegal annexation and declaration of martial law in Donetsk province.

    The attacks have almost completely destroyed the power plants that serve the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the region’s Ukrainian governor, said. Shelling killed one civilian and wounded three, he reported late Saturday.

    “The destruction is daily, if not hourly,” Kyrylenko told state television.

    Moscow-backed separatists have controlled part of Donetsk for nearly eight years before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Protecting the separatists’ self-proclaimed republic there was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for the invasion, and his troops have spent months trying to capture the entire province.

    While Russia’s “greatest brutality” was focused in the Donetsk region, “constant fighting” continued elsewhere along the front line that stretches more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.

    Between Saturday and Sunday, Russia’s launched four missiles and 19 airstrikes hitting more than 35 villages in nine regions, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south, according to the president’s office. The strikes killed two people and wounded six, the office said.

    In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, 15,000 remaining residents were living under daily shelling and without water or power, according to local media. The city has been under attack for months, but the bombardment picked up after Russian forces experienced setbacks during Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

    The front line is now on Bakhmut’s outskirts, where mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian military company, are reported to be leading the charge.

    Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the group who has typically remained under the radar, is taking a more visible role in the war. In a statement Sunday he announced the funding and creation of “militia training centers” in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions in the southwest, saying that locals were best placed to “fight against sabotage” on Russian soil. The training centers are in addition to a military technology center the group said it was opening in St. Petersburg.

    In Kharkiv, officials were working to identify bodies found in mass graves after the Russians withdrew, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office, told local media.

    DNA samples have been collected from 450 bodies discovered in a mass grave in the city of Izium, but the samples need to be matched with relatives and so far only 80 people have participated, he said.

    In one sliver of good news, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported Sunday. Europe’s largest nuclear plant needs electricity to maintain vital cooling systems, but it had been running on emergency diesel generators since Russian shelling severed its outside connections.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • UN chief warns planet is heading toward `climate chaos’

    UN chief warns planet is heading toward `climate chaos’

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    UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Thursday that the planet is heading toward irreversible “climate chaos” and urged global leaders at the upcoming climate summit in Egypt to put the world back on track to cut emissions, keep promises on climate financing and help developing countries speed their transition to renewable energy.

    The U.N. chief said the 27th annual Conference of the 198 Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change — better known as COP27 — “must be the place to rebuild trust and re-establish the ambition needed to avoid driving our planet over the climate cliff.”

    He said the most important outcome of COP27, which begins Nov. 6 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, is to have “a clear political will to reduce emissions faster.”

    That requires a historical pact between richer developed countries and emerging economies, Guterres said. “And if that pact doesn’t take place, we will be doomed.”

    In the pact, the secretary-general said, wealthier countries must provide financial and technical assistance – along with support from multilateral development banks and technology companies – to help emerging economies speed their renewable energy transition.

    Guterres said that in the last few weeks, reports have painted “a clear and bleak picture” of global-warming greenhouse gas emissions still growing at record levels instead of going down 45% by 2030 as scientists say must happen.

    The landmark Paris agreement adopted in 2015 to address climate change called for global temperatures to rise a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times, and as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

    Guterres said greenhouse gas emissions are now on course to rise by 10%, and temperatures are on course to rise by as much as 2.8 degrees Celsius under present policies by the end of the century.

    “And that means our planet is on course for reaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible and forever bake in catastrophic temperature rise,” the secretary-general warned.

    He said the 1.5 degree goal “is in intensive care” and “in high danger,” but it’s still possible to meet it. “And my objective in Egypt is to make sure that we gather enough political will to make this possibility really moving forward,” the U.N. chief said.

    “COP27 must be the place to close the ambition gap, the credibility gap and the solidarity gap,” Guterres said. “It must put us back on track to cutting emissions, boosting climate resilience and adaptation, keeping the promise on climate finance and addressing loss and damage from climate change.”

    Rich countries, especially the United States, have emitted far more than their share of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, data shows. Poor nations like Pakistan, where recent floods left a third of the country under water, have been hurt far more than their share of global carbon emissions.

    Loss and damage has been talked about for years, but richer nations have often balked at negotiating details about paying for past climate disasters, like Pakistan’s flooding this summer.

    “Loss and damage have been the always-postponed issue,” Guterres said. “There is no more time to postpone it. We must recognize loss and damage and we must create an institutional framework to deal with it.”

    The secretary-general said Thursday that “getting concrete results on loss and damage is the litmus test of the commitment of the governments to close all of these gaps.”

    “COP27 must lay the foundations for much faster, bolder climate action now and in this crucial decade, when the global climate fight will be won or lost,” Guterres said.

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