John Hanno – Page 147 – The Tarbabys Blog

The ‘great wealth transfer’ isn’t $72 trillion but $129 trillion, BofA says—and the government gave most of it to baby boomers

Fortune

The ‘great wealth transfer’ isn’t $72 trillion but $129 trillion, BofA says—and the government gave most of it to baby boomers

Hillary Hoffower, Chloe Berger – October 28, 2023

You’ve probably heard about the “great wealth transfer.” It’s the $72 trillion stack of assets that baby boomers are sitting on and going to pass onto millennials someday, thereby solving many of the economically beleaguered younger generation’s problems. But there was another, even more “massive” wealth transfer from the government to the baby boomers over the last 40 years, according to Bank of America Research.

The investment bank isn’t alone in coming to this conclusion. No less a figure than Ray Dalio, the billionaire and former leader of what was for many years the world’s biggest hedge fund, wrote on his LinkedIn page in August about a “coordinated government maneuver” that left household balance sheets rich and the state effectively broke. Dalio did not mention the boomers, or any generation, by name, but BofA has now done him one better.

Boomers have quite simply been the biggest beneficiary of a “massive wealth transfer,” wrote the BofA team led by Ohsung Kwon, echoing Dalio’s observation that trillions of wealth flowed from the public to the private sector thanks to government policy since the 1980s, when boomers were in their prime working years. BofA pointed to the ballooning government debt—from 31% of GDP to 120% during that period—and the 10-year Treasury yield shrinking from 12% to 4.6% today (it’s actually 4.9% as of press time).

So how many trillions? Over this period, BofA calculates, U.S. household net worth has skyrocketed from $17 trillion to $150 trillion. Boomers, alongside “traditionalists,” hold two-thirds ($146 trillion) of that total net worth. This means that government policy has resulted in a $129 trillion wealth transfer into the pockets of those boomers and older Americans, BofA said (it didn’t clarify the exact apportionment of wealth between these two groups).

At the top of the ladder

Just over a quarter of this wealth is held in financial assets such as real estate. No surprise there, considering that nearly all boomers locked in a low 3% mortgage rate, unlike those poor millennials—the only group that took on meaningful mortgage debt since 2021, now in the 8% range. Fortune has reported extensively on how millennials have not enjoyed a boomer level of success as they struggled to afford to buy a home for years before facing off with an overpriced, ultra-competitive pandemic housing market.

BofA’s findings are more evidence that boomers have had it pretty good, economically speaking. In addition to low interest rates and inflated housing prices boosting asset value, a 2020 Deutsche Bank report found that boomers shelled out less for education than millennials did and won’t have to pay for the environmental damage caused by the carbon emission-releasing companies they invested in.

While boomers have still had their fair share of economic challenges, like the Great Inflation of the 1970s, BofA found they ultimately benefited in the long run from an economy that’s set them up pretty nicely for wealth accumulation. In a 2021 memo to clients, billionaire (and boomer) Howard Marks wrote that the generation is so big that they’re still wielding enough political and financial power to advocate for a system that works for them, “Boomers have been and still are consuming more than their fair share of the pie. This will leave future generations saddled with substantial debt stemming from expenditures they didn’t benefit from proportionally,” he wrote.

Of course, four of the last five presidents are part of the baby boomer generation, and Congress is largely made up of boomers, if not traditionalists like the recently deceased Dianne Feinstein, with millennial figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jon Ossoff the major exception. President Joe Biden, of course, is what BofA would call a traditionalist, But George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama were all technically boomers.

As Jill Filipovic, author of “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk,” told Salon in an interview, boomers climbed the ladder and then “pulled it up behind them.” Standing at the lowest rung, three-fourths of millennials (and 82% of Gen Zers) feel they’re navigating economic struggles shaped by their parents, per a survey by OnePoll on behalf of National Debt Relief.

At the bottom of the ladder

Dealing with a hefty price tag for a college education and ensuing student debt, many young adults graduated into a post-recession thorny job market, bouncing around to find a well-paying role. Forced to tack on other gigs to make ends meet, many still aren’t seeing the fruits of their labor; a separate BofA report finds that the extra income isn’t giving them much more spending power.

The housing market is no rosier of a scene; while some millennials have made up some ground and started to househunt, many were pushed back to the last rung of the ladder when they were outbid by boomer cash offers. It’s led many young adults to depend on their more financially stable parents to afford a house. No wonder most millennials (and Gen Z) feel the economy is hurting their ability to be financially independent and like they’re falling behind.

“Millennials, and now Gen Z, have grown up amidst global and financial turmoil,” Suzanne Schmitt, Head of Financial Wellness at New York Life, told Fortune. “These two cohorts have witnessed economic changes in their formative years and may be more risk-averse when it comes to financial habits than their predecessors.”

There’s a silver lining, though, in the other great wealth transfer that is still pending. This could make millennials five times wealthier in 2030 than they were at the start of this decade, according to a Coldwell Banker estimate. Others are less optimistic. A survey from Alliant Credit Union finds that half of millennials think they’re inheriting at least $350,000 from their parents, while half of boomers report say they’ll give away less than $250,000. As Americans live longer and struggle to afford retirement during inflationary times, it’s likely the nest egg chips away a bit more. Even if there’s a large lump sum, many millennials don’t feel equipped to handle it.

Perhaps, then, that wealth transfer won’t be as “great” as the ones boomers already received, the one Bank of America called downright “massive.” It may not be repeated anytime soon.

Here are the places that could become too hot for humans due to climate change

Los Angeles Times – Opinion:

Here are the places that could become too hot for humans due to climate change

Daniel Vecellio – October 27, 2023

FILE - A sign displays an unofficial temperature as jets taxi at Sky Harbor International Airport at dusk, July 12, 2023, in Phoenix. The historic heat wave continues in Phoenix, but the end may finally be in sight for residents of Arizona's largest city. An excessive heat warning was expected to expire at 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10, and meteorologists were forecasting a high of 106 degrees (41.1 Celsius) on Monday, Sept. 11, and 102 (38.8 C) on Tuesday, Sept. 12. (AP Photo/Matt York, File) — A sign displays the temperature at dusk at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in July 2023. The area is experiencing record heat-related deaths this year. (Matt York / Associated Press)

Heat waves have always been part of summer, but the familiar short periods of oppressive conditions have grown into weeks to months of sweltering heat. Research has shown that heat waves have become longer, hotter and more frequent over the last half a century because of human-induced climate change.

The 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome, the Central Plains’ summer from hell the following year and this year’s Southwest sizzler are the most familiar recent examples in this country. But extreme heat has touched every continent over the last few years: Temperatures have regularly exceeded 122 degrees (50 Celsius) across the Asian subcontinent, and London’s thermometers reached 104 (40 C) for the first time last year, much earlier than climate models predicted.

But will such extended periods of heat and humidity come to regularly test the limits of human tolerance in places where much of the world’s population lives? It could happen sooner than we think.

We can study this question using the wet-bulb temperature, which combines the influence of heat and humidity on the human body. It denotes the temperature to which a parcel of air would cool by evaporating water into the environment, analogous to the cooling effect of sweat evaporating from skin. Scientists previously theorized that a wet-bulb temperature of 95 degrees — equivalent to an air temperature of 95 at 100% relative humidity — was the highest at which humans could cool themselves without the aid of fans or air conditioning. But lab testing of young, healthy, non-heat-acclimated people at Pennsylvania State University indicated that the wet-bulb limit was closer to 88.

Using this lower threshold based on actual experimental data, I and other scientists at Penn State and Purdue University examined when and where these conditions would appear in future climates using the latest models.

Unfortunately, the hot spots for exceeding this wet-bulb temperature threshold include some of the most populous parts of the world: the Indus River Valley in India and Pakistan, eastern Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. These regions comprise many low- to middle-income countries with vulnerable populations that will bear the brunt of climate change even though they contributed relatively little to its causes.

If global warming, currently at 1.2 degrees C (2.2 F) above the preindustrial baseline, is kept to 1.5 C (2.7 F), the extent and duration of temperatures exceeding the threshold can be limited. At 3 C (5.4 F) of warming, however, the duration of exposure in the world’s hot spots begins to increase exponentially, and physiologically intolerable conditions also begin to appear in the Americas.

Breaking the wet-bulb temperature threshold once, it’s worth noting, does not inherently make a place “too hot for humans.” Chicago, for example, would experience an average of one hour a year above the threshold at 2 degrees of warming, but one has to be exposed to these conditions for six continuous hours without taking precautions to reach dangerous core temperatures.

On the other hand, at the same 2 degrees of warming, the city of Hudaydah, Yemen, with a population of about 700,000, will experience an average of 340 hours a year of physiologically intolerable heat and humidity, putting the entire population at increased risk of dying. Divided into six-hour increments, that’s equivalent to 56 days a year of these extreme conditions.

Other populous global hot spots at 2 degrees of warming would include Aden, Yemen, with about 34 days a year of such conditions; Dammam and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with 37 and eight days, respectively; Bandar Abbas and Ahvaz, Iran, with 29 and three; Lahore, Pakistan, with 24; Dubai, with 20; and Delhi and Kolkata, India, with six and five.

Even in our current climate, extreme heat is already associated with dire health consequences. A Midwestern heat wave killed 700 people in Chicago in 1995. More than 70,000 died in Europe in the summer of 2003, and in 2010, 55,000 perished due to heat in Russia. More recently, an estimated 1,400 died across Oregon, Washington and British Columbia during the 2021 heat dome, and about 60,000 lost their lives due to extreme heat across Western Europe last year.

Thousands more have probably lost their lives in the heat waves that have afflicted the Global South, where the lack of public health capacity and reporting obscures the toll. Vulnerable populations die not only of heatstroke but also of complications related to cardiovascular, respiratory and renal illnesses.

The results of our study suggest that we need to prepare for, adapt to and mitigate extreme heat right now.

How do we put the brakes on the worst consequences of extreme heat? During these ever-worsening summer heat waves, we can prevent heat-related illnesses by opening cooling centers, monitoring vulnerable communities and shifting high-exertion activities to cooler parts of the day. To better prepare for future heat waves, we should also invest in adaptation and mitigation measures to deal with the warming that past emissions have already baked into our future climate.

Ultimately, a global effort to reduce the use of fossil fuels and bring net carbon emissions to zero as quickly as possible is the only way to avoid intolerable conditions for billions.

Daniel Vecellio is a postdoctoral research scholar at George Mason University’s Virginia Climate Center. He completed the work behind the extreme heat study while he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State.

U.S. consumers are ‘walking towards a cliff’ and the jobs market is beginning to ‘fray at the edges,’ warns market strategist

Fortune

U.S. consumers are ‘walking towards a cliff’ and the jobs market is beginning to ‘fray at the edges,’ warns market strategist

Eleanor Pringle – October 27, 2023

Forget about the blistering pace of economic growth in the United States this past quarter: Americans are hurting, and one market strategist believes life might be about to get a whole lot worse.

Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe, Longview Economics founder Chris Watling argues U.S. households are “walking towards a cliff, basically” and warned the excitement around strong retail sales is not justified. That poses a problem for U.S. growth as spending by consumers accounts for over two-thirds of the economy.

“They’re running out of cash. If you look at excess savings they’ve been run down quite hard,” said Watling, who serves as Longview’s CEO and chief market strategist. “If you look across the income quartiles, the bottom…quartiles are under pressure, [and] probably [have] spent all that excess savings.”

Indeed, backward-looking data suggests U.S. households appear to be in robust condition. According to predictions from the U.S. Census Bureau, retail and food services sales for September 2023 will hit $704.9 billion, up 0.7% from the preceding month and 3.8% higher than a year ago.

Wall Street also enjoyed a slew of positive third-quarter updates from major retailers. Just this week Amazon enjoyed a 13% bump in revenue, while Unilever reported underlying sales growth was up 5.2%.

Watling is unconvinced by such sales success, saying it has been buoyed by a household savings ratio that is now dwindling.

The London-based analyst isn’t alone in this observation. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser believes “cracks” are beginning to appear in consumer spending, while Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan suggested customers have now reached a tipping point.

“So it’s not quite all good news,” Watling continued. “Quite the reverse, I think there are some real challenges coming for the U.S. consumer.”

Labor market ‘fraying at the edges’

While the nation’s economy expanded at a 4.9% annual rate from July through September, its fastest in nearly two years, Watling added that some economic indicators are hinting at troubles beneath the surface.

Among them are car repayment delinquency rates for risky borrowers, which have pushed to the highest figure in three decades. Also worrying is a slowdown in the Kansas City Fed’s Labor Market Conditions Indicators (LMCI), which saw momentum drop into negative numbers earlier this year.

“The labor market’s under a lot of pressure,” said Watling. “We had a good payrolls month, but if you look at a lot of the indicators of where the labor market’s likely to go, a lot of them are fraying at the edges—they’re quite soft.”

Continued pressure on both consumers and the labor market could be what “kick-starts” a recession in the U.S. economy, Watling added.

“Bond King” Bill Gross is similarly unconvinced by the seemingly positive picture some datasets are painting.

Earlier this week Gross, former chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., or Pimco, tweeted that he was predicting a recession in the fourth quarter and urged his followers to return to the bond market.

Watling added that a further headache for the U.S. economy will be its stock market in the coming months, which he believes is massively overpriced.

When asked about the impact of this shaky consumer on Wall Street, he replied: “From our point of view, though, I can see a bounce for a month or two. It’s been quite beaten up; markets have been coming down since July, but I think net-net, you want to be underweight equities if you are looking beyond the next few months.

“Particularly, the U.S. equity market is too expensive; it’s overvalued…The U.S. in aggregate is overvalued—tech’s overvalued.”

He finished: “I think the U.S. is in for tough times.”

Donald Trump’s attorneys abandon their client for the truth and the law

New York Daily News – Opinion

Editorial: Donald Trump’s attorneys abandon their client for the truth and the law

New York Daily News Editorial Board – October 26, 2023

John Bazemore/Pool/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

Roy Cohn, the evil, crooked, disbarred New York lawyer, who mentored a young Donald Trump and taught him many of the nasty ways to bully, cheat and lie, was loyal to his client, but he still would absolutely sell out Trump to save himself from prison.

The moral, for an immoral man, is that a lawyer who engages in a crime with a client has no protection from prosecution.

And so many of Trump’s other attorneys have been lining up to rat out the rat in chief, as we saw vividly Tuesday, first with a morning guilty plea by lawyer Jenna Ellis before an Atlanta judge in the Georgia election interference criminal case. The afternoon saw disbarred New York lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump’s one-time fixer, spilling the beans before a Manhattan judge in state Attorney General Tish James’ civil case over Trump’s fake valuation of his holdings.

Ellis’ plea, in the wide-ranging conspiracy indictment against Trump et al brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, was the third by a Trump lawyer in that case. Last week, Sidney Powell switched sides and then so did Ken Chesebro.

Powell and Chesebro are also two of the six unnamed co-conspirators in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Trump brought in Washington. Ellis was evidently too small a fish for Smith.

A very big fish is Mark Meadows. He is no lawyer, but as Trump’s White House chief of staff was the top of the food chain during those nightmare years. Meadows has cut his own deal with Smith to testify, ABC News reported Tuesday. Tellingly, Meadows is not one of the half dozen co-conspirators and can provide a road map to Smith.

Trump trusted his lawyers, going back 50 years when Cohn was first retained after the Nixon Department of Justice accused the Trump family real estate business of illegally discriminating against minority renters of their apartments. The charges were true, but Cohn concocted a phony suit against DOJ. Misusing the legal system was Cohn’s specialty and Trump learned well.

Trump trusted Cohen to do his dirty work, like arranging the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, which landed Cohen in trouble. After he was convicted of federal felonies and disbarred in 2019 — by the same Manhattan appellate court that disbarred Cohn two months before he died in 1986 — Cohen told Congress about Trump’s false bookkeeping before Cohen reported to prison.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance was listening to Cohen’s testimony and started a criminal probe. In 2022, new DA Alvin Bragg wrongly dropped the prosecution, but Tish James picked it up on the civil side.

Trump has already been found guilty. The ongoing trial downtown will establish the size of his financial penalty. The four pending criminal cases (by Willis, Smith and the document case by Smith and the hush-money payments by Bragg) could put Trump in prison.

There’s another New York lawyer, whose law license has been suspended by that same appellate court, Rudy Giuliani. He is Smith’s co-conspirator No. 1 and also a target of Willis. It was U.S. Attorney Giuliani who helped bring down Cohn in 1986 by forcing him to pay $7 million in taxes, interest and penalties for nearly three decades of stiffing the IRS.

Giuliani should save himself and rat out Trump.

Nicolle Wallace Dogs Trump By Turning One Of His Worst Insults Against Him

HuffPost

Nicolle Wallace Dogs Trump By Turning One Of His Worst Insults Against Him

Ed Mazza – October 26, 2023

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace is putting Donald Trump in the dog house.

The former president left a New York courtroom in a huff on Wednesday as former attorney Michael Cohen testified against him in his fraud trial there. He was also fined $10,000 for insulting one of the judge’s clerks, a direct violation of a gag order in the case.

Trump, Wallace said on Wednesday, “couldn’t take the heat ― lost any ability to control his impulses.”

Then, she compared the former president to her dogs.

“I have vizslas, so all of the training of that breed is about impulse control: teaching them not to run after the squirrel and not to roll in horse poop,” she said. “Trump has less impulse control than a hunting dog. Couldn’t keep himself out of trouble.”

Trump loves to compare his opponents to dogs, saying, for example, that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) “choked like a dog” during his 2012 presidential run and that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was “sweating like a dog” during a 2016 debate.

Now, he’s being dogged in return by the MSNBC host:

What is Hamas, and what’s happening in Israel and Gaza?

BBC News

What is Hamas, and what’s happening in Israel and Gaza?

BBC – October 26, 2023

Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip on 7 October, killing more than 1,400 people and taking more than 220 hostages.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 7,000 people have been killed in the territory since Israel launched retaliatory air strikes, and a ground offensive is expected.

What is happening in the Gaza Strip?

Hospitals in Gaza are admitting emergency cases only as fuel runs out, according to the World Health Organization.

The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, say is has significantly reduced its operations because it has almost exhausted its fuel reserves.

Small quantities of fuel retrieved from existing reserves are being used to maintain the water supply in the south of Gaza. However, they will run out soon.

An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman said Gaza still had fuel but “Hamas prefers to have all of the fuel for its warfighting capabilities, leaving civilians without it”.

More than 70 aid lorries have now entered the territory through the Rafah crossing with Egypt since Israel imposed a “complete siege” at the start of the conflict.

However, these have provided only a fraction of the needs of people in Gaza. Unrwa called it “a drop in the ocean of overwhelming needs”. About 500 lorries were allowed into Gaza every day before the start of the war.

What is the Rafah crossing and why is it Gaza’s lifeline?

An estimated 1.4 million people in Gaza have been displaced, according to the UN.

Hundreds of thousands moved from the north of the territory to the south, after being told by the Israeli military to leave for their own safety.

The WHO has also warned that it is “almost impossible” for patients in hospitals in northern Gaza to be evacuated.

The southern city of Khan Younis, normally home to 400,000 people, has seen its population increase to about 1.2 million. Many families are sharing homes, or sleeping in tents.

However, Israel has continued to carry out strikes on what it says are Hamas military targets in southern Gaza.

Some of those who initially fled the north of Gaza are now returning because the situation in the south is so bad, the UN has said.

The UN’s regional humanitarian chief has said: “Nowhere is safe in Gaza.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has suggested a temporary ceasefire to allow more aid to enter Gaza, and and EU leaders are also expected to call for one.

Will Israel invade Gaza?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday: “We have set two goals for this war: to eliminate Hamas by destroying its military and governing abilities, and to do everything possible to bring our captives home.”

“All Hamas terrorists are dead men walking – above ground, below ground, outside Gaza.”

Mr Netanyahu said Israel would launch a ground incursion, but did not detail when it would start.

On Thursday morning, the IDF said it had carried out a “targeted raid” on defensive positions in northern Gaza with tanks and armoured bulldozers. It said this was “part of preparations for the next stages of combat”.

Israeli forces have carried at least two other raids into Gaza since the conflict started. In one, on 22 October, one soldier was killed and three were injured.

The IDF has massed tens of thousands of soldiers along the territory’s perimeter fence, along with tanks and artillery. It has activated some 300,000 reservists, alongside its standing force of 160,000.

Hamas is thought to have about 25,000 people in its military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

One of Israel’s main targets is Hamas’s vast labyrinth of underground tunnels, which contain bunkers for leaders and operational headquarters.

Graphic based on 2021 Israeli military map showing destroyed sections of Hamas's "Gaza Metro" tunnel system — Graphic based on 2021 Israeli military map showing destroyed sections of Hamas’s “Gaza Metro” tunnel system

Hamas has previously claimed the tunnels stretch for 500km (310 miles). Many have entrances hidden within houses, mosques, schools and other public buildings.

Israel’s troops are likely to avoid going into tunnels unless they have to, instead using explosives to destroy them.

A major challenge for the Israeli troops will be close-quarters fighting in densely populated urban areas. It is thought that Hamas will lay booby traps and improvised explosive devices at entry points such as doorways, and along narrow streets.

What is Hamas and what does it want?

Hamas is a Palestinian group which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. The group is sworn to Israel’s destruction and wants to replace it with an Islamic state.

Hamas has fought several wars with Israel since it took power. It has fired – or allowed other groups to fire – thousands of rockets into Israel, and has carried out other deadly attacks.

In response, Israel has repeatedly attacked Hamas with air strikes. In 2008 and 2014, it also sent troops into Gaza.

Together with Egypt, Israel has blockaded the Gaza Strip since 2007 for what it describes as security reasons.

Hamas – or in some cases its military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades – has been designated a terrorist group by Israel, the United States, the European Union and the UK, as well as other powers.

Iran backs the group, providing it with funding, weapons and training.

What was the Hamas attack on Israel?

Homes attacked in Kfar Aza kibbutz — Hamas killed families in their homes in the kibbutz of Kfar Aza

On 7 October, hundreds of Hamas gunmen crossed from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel by breaking through the heavily-fortified perimeter fence, landing by sea, and using paragliders.

It was the most serious cross-border attack Israel has faced in more than a generation, according to the BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen.

The gunmen killed 1,400 people, most of them civilians, in a series of raids on military posts, kibbutzim and a music festival, and took hostages back into Gaza.

Given the resources of Israel’s security services, it was astounding that the attack by Hamas was not anticipated, the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner says.

It came at a time of soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

This year has been the deadliest on record for Palestinians who live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which could have motivated Hamas to strike Israel.

Hamas might also have been seeking to score a significant propaganda victory to boost its popularity among ordinary Palestinians.

The capture of Israeli hostages is thought to be designed to pressure Israel to free some of the estimated 4,500 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The Israeli military believes 224 people are still being held in Gaza.

They include 20 children and at least 10 people aged over 60. Soldiers were also taken hostage.

The Hamas tunnel city beneath Gaza – a hidden frontline for Israel

Reuters

The Hamas tunnel city beneath Gaza – a hidden frontline for Israel

Jonathan Saul and Stephen Farrell – October 26, 2023

FILE PHOTO: An Israeli soldier keeps guard next to an entrance to what the Israeli military say is a cross-border attack tunnel dug from Gaza to Israel, on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip border near Kissufim — An Israeli soldier keeps guard next to an entrance to what the Israeli military say is a cross-border attack tunnel dug from Gaza to Israel, on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip border near Kissufim

FILE PHOTO: A general view shows the interiors of what the Israeli military say is a cross-border attack tunnel dug from Gaza to Israel, on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip border near Kissufim — A general view shows the interiors of what the Israeli military say is a cross-border attack tunnel dug from Gaza to Israel, on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip border near Kissufim

JERUSALEM/LONDON (Reuters) – What lies in wait for Israeli ground troops in Gaza, security sources say, is a Hamas tunnel network hundreds of kilometres long and up to 80 metres deep, described by one freed hostage as “a spider’s web” and by one expert as the “Viet Cong times 10”.

The Palestinian Islamist group has different kinds of tunnels running beneath the sandy 360-sq-km coastal strip and its borders – including attack, smuggling, storage and operational burrows, Western and Middle East sources familiar with the matter said.

The United States believes Israel’s special forces will face an unprecedented challenge having to battle Hamas militants while trying to avoid killing hostages held below ground, a U.S. official said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that Iraq’s nine-month-long battle to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State might prove to have been easier than what awaits the Israelis – likely to be “a lot of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), a lot of booby traps, and just a really grinding activity”.

Even though Israel has invested heavily in tunnel detection – including a sensor-equipped underground barrier it called an “iron wall” – Hamas is still thought to have working tunnels to the outside world.

After the last round of hostilities in 2021, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yehya Al-Sinwar, said: “They started saying they destroyed 100kms of Hamas tunnels. I am telling you, the tunnels we have in the Gaza Strip exceed 500kms. Even if their narrative is true, they only destroyed 20% of the tunnels.”

HOSTAGE WITNESS

There has been no corroboration of the comment by Sinwar, who is thought to be hiding underground ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive.

But the estimate of hundreds of kilometres is widely accepted by security analysts, even though the blockaded coastal strip is only 40km (25 miles) long.

With Israel in full control of Gaza’s air and sea access and 59km of its 72km land borders – with Egypt 13km to the south – tunnels provide one of the few ways for Hamas to bring in weapons, equipment and people.

While it and other Palestinian groups are secretive about their networks, recently released Israeli hostage, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, said: “It looked like a spider’s web, many, many tunnels,” adding: “We walked kilometres under the ground.”

Hamas believes that with Israel’s overwhelming aerial and armoured military superiority, tunnels are a way to cut some of those advantages by forcing Israel’s soldiers to move underground in cramped spaces the Hamas fighters know well.

An Israeli military spokesperson said on Thursday: “I won’t elaborate on the number of kilometres of tunnels but it is a high number, built under schools and residential areas.”

Urging the United Nations Security Council to intervene, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for an immediate cessation of “aggression” on Gaza and moves toward “a political solution instead of military and security solutions”.

UNDERGROUND CITY

Israeli security sources say Israel’s heavy aerial bombardments have caused little damage to the tunnel infrastructure with Hamas naval commandos able to launch a seaborne attack targeting coastal communities near Gaza this week.

“Although we have been attacking massively for days and days, the (Hamas) leadership is pretty much intact, as is the ability to command and control, the ability even to try and launch counter attacks,” said Amir Avivi, a former brigadier general whose senior positions in the Israeli military included deputy commander of the Gaza division, tasked with tackling tunnels.

“There is a whole city all over Gaza underneath with depths of 40-50 metres. There are bunkers and headquarters and storage and of course they are connected to more than a thousand rocket launching positions.”

Other sources estimated depths of up to 80 metres.

One Western security source said: “They run for miles. They are made of concrete and very well made. Think of the Viet Cong times 10. They have had years and lots of money with which to work with.”

Another security source, from one of Israel’s neighbouring countries, said Hamas’s tunnels from Egypt remain active.

“The supply chain is still intact these days. The network involved in facilitating co-ordination are some Egyptian military officers. It is unclear if there is knowledge of this by the Egyptian army,” he said.

A small number of narrower, deep, smuggling tunnels were still operating until recently between Egypt and Gaza, according to two security sources and a trader in the Egyptian city of El Arish, but they had slowed to a near-halt since the Israel-Hamas war started.

Egyptian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Wednesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said while inspecting military units in Suez that the army’s role was to secure Egyptian borders.

LONG GAME

Hamas was created in Gaza in 1987 and is thought to have begun digging tunnels in the mid-1990s, when Israel granted Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization some degree of self-rule in Gaza.

The tunnel network is a key reason why Hamas is stronger in Gaza than in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israel’s settlements, military bases and monitoring devices make it harder to get anything in from Jordan.

Tunneling became easier in 2005 when Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza, and when Hamas won power in a 2006 election.

Shortly afterwards Hamas’s military wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, captured Gilad Shalit and killed two other Israeli soldiers after burrowing 600 metres to raid the Kerem Shalom base on the Gaza border.

A year later Hamas launched a military strike against Arafat’s forces in Gaza using tunnel-mounted attacks.

Although the military tunnels remained off-limits to outside eyes, during that era Gaza smugglers would show off their scarcely concealed commercial tunnels under the Rafah border.

These were around three feet (one metre) wide and used winch motors to haul goods along the sandy tunnel floors in hollowed-out petrol barrels.

One Rafah tunnel operator, Abu Qusay, said a half-mile tunnel took three to six months to dig and could yield profits of up to $100,000 a day. The most profitable item was bullets, bought for $1 each in Egypt and fetching more than $6 in Gaza. Kalashnikov rifles, he said, cost $800 in Egypt and sold for twice that.

In 2007 the military wing is thought to have brought its commander Mohammed Deif into Gaza through a tunnel from Egypt. Deif was the mastermind behind Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack into Israel, which killed 1,400 people and hostages were taken.

TUNNEL HUNTING

Professor Joel Roskin, a geomorphologist and geologist with Israel’s Bar-Ilan University said it was difficult to map the tunnel network accurately from the surface or space, adding highly classified information was essential for 3D mapping and imagery visualization.

Among the elite units tasked with going underground is Yahalom, specialist commandos from Israel’s Combat Engineering Corps known as the “weasels”, who specialise in finding, clearing and destroying the tunnels.

Earlier this week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Yahalom fighters, telling them: “I rely on you, the people of Israel rely on you.”

Israeli sources said what awaits them is formidable and they faced an enemy that has regrouped and learned from previous Israeli operations in 2014 and 2021.

“There are going to be a lot of booby traps. They have thermobaric weapons that they didn’t have in 2021, which are more lethal. And I believe they acquired a lot of anti-tank weapon systems that are going to try to hit our APCs (armoured personnel carriers), tanks,” said Amnon Sofrin, a former brigadier general and former commander of the Combat Intelligence Corps.

Sofrin, who was also previously head of the intelligence directorate with Israel’s Mossad spy agency, said Hamas would also be trying to kidnap soldiers.

Daphne Richemond-Barak, professor at Israel’s Reichman University and author of the book Underground Warfare, said the conflicts in Syria and Iraq had changed the situation.

“What the IDF (Israeli military) is likely to face inside the tunnels is also all of the experience and all of the knowledge that has been gained by groups like ISIS (Islamic State) and has been … passed on to Hamas.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem and Stephen Farrell in London, additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington, Nafisa Eltahir and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Screw You, Republicans, and Your Stupid, Useless Prayers

The New Republic

Screw You, Republicans, and Your Stupid, Useless Prayers

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – October 26, 2023

Here we go again. At least 18 people were killed and upwards of 60 people injured in Lewiston, Maine, late Wednesday evening. This is the 565th mass shootings that has been reported in 2023 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The senseless violence has also tapped into another fruitless round of Republican leaders issuing “thoughts and prayers” to the families of victims while continuing to pocket large donations from gun lobbyists.

In the last decade, the National Rifle Association has spent more than $37 million on its political lobbying, with GOP legislators reaping the bulk of it, including Senators Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell, according to data from OpenSecrets. Meanwhile, the money behind “gun rights” lobbying groups has dwarfed gun control efforts every year dating back to 1998.

Their unbroken influence over the political right has swept votes on issues ranging from bans on assault weapons to high capacity magazines, both of which Maine’s own Senator Susan Collins voted against.

Like Collins, other Republicans are once again offering us nothing but their thoughts and prayers.

Recent changes to the House’s leadership are unlikely to change circumstances, either. Just last week, now-Speaker Mike Johnson entertained a meeting with a group against gun control legislation, Women for Gunrights.

Roughly 63 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with U.S. gun laws, according to a 2023 Gallup poll, which noted that just 54 percent of Republicans were satisfied with their own party-driven policies—a five point decrease from 2022.

“Praying for everyone’s safety in Maine, and for the victims and their families,” tweeted Florida Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost. “But unlike some in Congress, I don’t believe the only thing we can do about gun violence is pray. Every minute our leaders fail to act = more people dead to senseless gun violence.”

Hate running? Get an under-desk treadmill and do this cozy TikTok walking workout instead

techradar.

Hate running? Get an under-desk treadmill and do this cozy TikTok walking workout instead

Matt Evans – October 24, 2023

Woman using a walkingpad in front of TV.

I consume quite a bit of online fitness content. It’s the nature of my job. Quite often, I get recommended on my feed clips of influencers running at night, gymming in the early hours of the morning, and people who are obviously on steroids, or using filters to change the shapes of their faces and bodies.

They’re the hardest workers in the room, rising and grinding, going hard rather than going home. It’s exhausting to watch, and I can see why it’s off-putting for new fitness starters. The influencers pushing the limits, using performance-enhancers, and editing their pics to attain perfection make exercise – and by extension, themselves – unattainable.

Therefore, it was quite refreshing to run across ‘cozy cardio’, the latest trend making low-impact exercise accessible and acceptable using the best under-desk treadmills at home. First popularized by TikToker Hope Zuckerbrow, she uses her walking pad for 30 minutes while watching TV, reading or listening to lofi music, occasionally wearing a fluffy bathrobe and sipping a protein coffee.

The trend exploded, getting reported on in several major news outlets (including, apparently, this one), and similar to its predecessor, the ‘hot girl walk’, the concept is aimed at making exercise a comforting, healing activity for people who might be intimidated by the gym or running outdoors. Walking to lose weight, sure, but also walking for pleasure and, well, coziness.

I’m not intimidated by either the gym or running, and I normally detest wellness trends on social media. They’re rarely backed by science and occasionally promote people doing potentially dangerous things for clout rather than health. However, this trend is anything but. Bringing exercise into your comfort zone with a low-intensity workout, in your own space on your own terms, is great. I love the idea of using exercise as a comforting, healing activity, and I’m a huge lofi music fan.

For those who decry the trend’s followers as ‘not working out properly’ or ‘hard enough’, I’d say it’s far preferable to not working out at all, as it’s beneficial for both body and mind. The Journal of the American Medical Association found that “associations between physical activity and depression suggest significant mental health benefits from being physically active, even at levels below the public health recommendations.”

Another report from Cambridge University found that 11 minutes of brisk walking every day is enough to reduce your risk of early death. Clearly, any amount of extra walking you can fit into your day is a Good Thing.

A sedentary lifestyle can be toxic for both body and mind, and activity – even low-intensity, enjoyable activity – is the panacea. If you don’t want to walk in the dark winter months, under-desk treadmills (or walking pads) are a way to get your steps in while you’d otherwise be watching one of the best streaming services.

Below are three of the best under-desk treadmills, or walking pads, we’ve tested, and the ones I’d recommend getting for all your cozy cardio needs. There are likely to be heavy discounts on many under-desk treadmills during the Black Friday sales period, and these are a few models worth keeping an eye out for. I’d also recommend getting one of the best fitness trackers to keep an eye on your step count.

Walking this many minutes a day can undo the harmful effects of sitting, study finds

Today

Walking this many minutes a day can undo the harmful effects of sitting, study finds

Linda Carroll – October 25, 2023

Getty Images

Sitting all day is well-documented to be harmful for your health, from impeding your blood flow to increasing your risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. Previous research has even shown that while regular physical activity can reduce some of the negative impact of sitting all day, it can’t undo all of it.

However, a new study found that brief periods of exercise may be more beneficial for your health than previously thought, even if you spend most of the day sitting. This strategy of small bursts of movement throughout the day is also known as “exercise snacking.”

Published Oct. 24 in the The British Journal of Sports Medicine, the new research found that the current recommendation of getting 150 minutes a week of moderate to rigorous physical activity can counteract the harm to your body from sitting for prolonged periods, the study’s lead author, Edvard Sagelv, a researcher at The Arctic University of Norway, told NBC News via email.

“This is the beautiful part: We are talking about activities that make you breathe a little bit heavier, like brisk walking, or gardening or walking up a hill,” he said. “Only 20 minutes of this a day is enough, meaning, a small stroll of 10 minutes twice a day — like jumping off the bus one stop before your actual destination to work and then when taking the bus back home, jumping off one stop before.”

The data came from almost 12,000 people ages 50 and older who wore movement-detection devices for 10 hours a day for four days and were tracked for at least two years. The researchers found that sitting for more than 12 hours a day versus eight hours increased risk of death by 38% — but this only applied to people who got less than 22 minutes of moderate to rigorous activity a day. They also found that the more people exercised, the more the risk of death decreased.

What about lower intensity activity? This only benefitted people who spent 12 or more hours a day sitting.

Previous research also shows the benefits of “exercise snacks.” Another study published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that 30 to 40 minutes a day of moderate-to-vigorous activity mostly counteracts the damage done by lots of time sitting and, better yet, that the exercise can be done in short spurts.

“Physical activity of at least moderate intensity, equivalent to the current recommendations from the World Health Organization (150 to 300 minutes of activity of at least moderate intensity per week for adults), seems to attenuate the risk of death associated with high sedentary time,” said the study’s lead author, Ulf Ekelund, a professor in the department of Sport Medicine at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo.

“It is possible to split up the activity to as short as 1-minute bouts,” Ekelund said in an email. “We examined accumulated time in minutes in light, moderate and vigorous intensity, which effectively means that ‘every single minute counts.’ The newly released (WHO) guidelines suggest that you can accumulate physical activity in small bouts (such as taking the stairs) throughout the day.”

The study examined how various amounts of exercise and sitting interacted with one another. The researchers totaled all the minutes during the day that were shown to be active and sedentary by the accelerometers. It also found that you can undo the damage of sitting.

“We observed that those who were most active did not have a statistically increased risk of death regardless of high sitting time compared with the group with the highest MVPA (moderate-to-vigorous physical activity) and lowest sedentary time,” Ekelund said. “Those in the middle group (11 minutes per day) had no increased risk of death if they belonged to the least sedentary (about 8.5 hours per day).”

It’s important to remember that sitting time includes not only time in the office but during the rest of the day, as well.

Sports medicine expert Matthew Darnell, Ph.D., is intrigued by the idea of short bouts of activity adding up to the recommended amounts.

“I really like that term (exercise snacks),” Darnell said. “It could be as simple as going for a walk around the block two times a day. Those little exercise snacks add up over time.”

However experts stress that you shouldn’t assume these studies mean you can sit all day except for a 22 minute walk and not have any negative health effects. Talk to your doctor or a trainer about the right amount of exercise for you based on your daily routine.