John Hanno – Page 269 – The Tarbabys Blog

‘There’s no path out of economic oblivion for Russia’:

Fortune

‘There’s no path out of economic oblivion for Russia’: New report reveals how corporate exodus has already wiped out decades of post–Cold War growth

Yvonne Lau – August 4, 2022

Over the past six months, Russia has fortified its economic defenses after Western countries pummeled it with sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.

Despite the crackdown, the Kremlin continues to rake in billions in oil and gas revenues, which helped the ruble rally to become the world’s best-performing currency this year.

But all is not well with the Russian economy.

The Western sanctions and widespread corporate exodus from Russia since Feb. 24 have ravaged the Russian economy—and its future prospects look even bleaker, according to a new report from Yale University researchers and economists led by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Yale School of Management professor and senior associate dean for leadership studies. It’s now become clear that the Kremlin’s “finances are in much, much more dire straits than conventionally understood” and that the large-scale “business retreats and sanctions are catastrophically crippling the Russian economy,” the researchers wrote.

Deterioration

As of Aug. 4, over 1,000 companies, including U.S. firms like Nike, IBM, and Bain consulting, have curtailed their operations in Russia. Though some businesses have stayed, the mass corporate exodus represents 40% of Russia’s GDP and reverses 30 years’ worth of foreign investment, says the Yale report.

The international retreat is morphing into a larger crisis for the country: a collapse in foreign imports and investments.

Russia has descended into a technological crisis as a result of its isolation from the global economy. It’s having trouble securing critical technology and parts. “The domestic economy is largely reliant on imports across industries…with few exceptions,” says the report. Western export controls have largely halted the flow of imported technology from smartphones to data servers and networking equipment, straining its tech industry. Russia’s biggest internet company, Yandex—the country’s version of Google—is running short of the semiconductor chips it needs for its servers.

At the same time, Russia’s “domestic production has come to a complete standstill—with no capacity to replace lost businesses, products, and talent,” the Yale report said. Russian producers and manufacturers are unable to fill the gaps left by the collapse of Western imports. Russia’s telecom sector for instance, now hopes to lean on China, India, and Israel to supply 5G equipment.

In the weeks following the Ukraine invasion, the Kremlin largely prevented a “full scale financial crisis” owing to quick and harsh measures, like restricting the movement of money out of the country and imposing a 20% emergency interest rate hike, Laura Solanko, senior adviser at the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies in Transition, an organization that researches emerging economies, told Fortunelast month. The ruble even rebounded from a March low, when it was valued at less than one U.S. cent.

Yet Russia’s financial markets are the worst-performing in the world this year, the report noted. “Putin is resorting to patently unsustainable, dramatic fiscal and monetary intervention to smooth over these structural economic weaknesses,” which has led to a government budget deficit for the first time in years and drained the Kremlin’s foreign reserves even with its continued inflow of petrodollars, the researchers wrote. The Russian government is giving subsidies to businesses and individuals to mitigate any economic shocks caused by sanctions. This “inflated level” of fiscal and social stimulus, on top of military expenditures, is “simply unsustainable for the Kremlin,” the report said.

And the ruble’s recent dramatic turnaround doesn’t indicate a strong Russian economy, but marks something far worse: the clear collapse of foreign imports. Sergei Guriev, scientific director of the economics program at Sciences Po, in France, and a research fellow at London-based think tank the Centre for Economic Policy Research, previously told Fortune that it represents a “very bad” situation for the nation.

The EU is now phasing out Russian energy, which could hit the Kremlin’s oil and gas profits. Such a scenario would severely strain the Kremlin’s finances, since Western countries have frozen half of its $300 billion in foreign reserves.

Heading toward economic oblivion

Russia’s precarious economic position means that it faces even more dire, long-term challenges ahead.

Sanctions aren’t designed to cause an immediate financial crisis or economic collapse, but are long-term tools to weaken a nation’s economy while isolating it from global markets, the report said. And the sanctions are doing exactly that for Russia.

The country is losing its richest and most educated citizens as its economy crumbles. Most estimates say that at least 500,000 Russians have fled the country since Feb. 24, with the “vast majority being highly educated and highly skilled workers in competitive industries such as technology,” the report said. Many wealthy Russians who flee are taking their money with them. One estimate is that 20% of Russia’s ultra-high-net-worth individuals have left this year. In the first quarter of 2022, official capital outflows stood at $70 billion, according to Bank of Russia estimates—but this figure is likely to be a “gross underestimate” of the actual amount of money that has left the country, the Yale team wrote.

Russian citizens are also set to become poorer, despite Putin’s minimum wage and pension income hikes. A former Putin aide predicts that the number of Russians living in poverty will likely double—and perhaps even triple, as the war continues. Russia “hasn’t seen the worst yet,” Russian political scientist Ilya Matveev, told Fortunelast month.

“There is no path out of economic oblivion as long as the allied countries remain unified in maintaining and increasing sanctions pressure against Russia,” the researchers wrote.

Heatwave in Paris exposes city’s lack of trees

Reuters

Heatwave in Paris exposes city’s lack of trees

Manuel Ausloos – August 4, 2022

PARIS (Reuters) – As a third heatwave baked France this week, the heat radiating off the asphalt outside the Garnier Opera house in Paris hit 56 degrees Celsius on urban planning expert Tangui Le Dantec’s thermometer. Shade was non-existent with barely a tree in sight.

The Place de l’Opera is one of numerous so-called urban heat islands in the French capital, lacking the trees that cool cities down by providing shade and seen as a key line of defence against climate change and increasingly hot summers.

Just a minute’s walk away, in the shade along the tree-lined Boulevard des Italiens, Le Dantec’s thermometer gave a reading of 28C (82 degrees Fahrenheit).

“Immediately there’s a bit of a breeze. You can breathe,” Le Dantec, who founded Aux Arbres Citoyens, an action group opposed to tree felling.

Paris ranks poorly among global cities for its green cover. According to data from the World Cities Culture Forum, only 10% of Paris is made up of green space such as parks and gardens compared to London at 33% and Oslo at 68%.

Last month was the hottest July on record in France, according to the national weather agency Meteo France, the searing temperatures underlining the need to strengthen the capital’s natural defences against global warming.

Paris City Hall wants to create “islands of freshness” and plans to plant 170,000 trees by 2026. It is also ripping up the concrete in dozens of school yards and laying down soil and vegetation.

“It’s a massive tree and vegetation-planting project that is underway, much bigger than under previous administrations,” said Jacques Baudrier, deputy Paris mayor tasked with the green energy transition in buildings.

However, City Hall’s green ambitions have provoked some protests. Le Dantec and other ecology campaigners say the local authorities have been felling scores of decades-old trees to make way for garden spaces.

In redrawing the city’s landscape, the felling of mature trees runs counter to the authorities’ own ambitions as saplings are more vulnerable to drought and less useful in fighting heat radiation, green activists say.

In April, green activist Thomas Brail shot video of more than 70 trees being felled on the city’s northern outskirts to make way for Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s vision for a “green belt” around the city.

City Hall’s urban planners say Paris cannot be redesigned to better confront climate change without felling some trees.

But Brail said: “These trees had a role to play.”

(Reporting by Manuel Ausloos and Lea Guedj; Editing by Richard Lough and Janet Lawrence)

How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will Have The Last Laugh on Samuel Alito

Politico

How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will Have The Last Laugh on Samuel Alito

John F. Harris – August 4, 2022

Justice Samuel Alito, in drafting Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, said he and the other justices who joined him in ending a constitutional right to abortion had no ability to foresee what the political implications would be. Even if they could know, he added, justices have “no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”

Does Alito genuinely write his opinions with no concern at all of what the practical political consequences might be?

In overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision he said was “egregiously wrong,” Alito asserted that the place to decide the morality and legality of abortion is not the Supreme Court but the political process in 50 states.

So what does Alito think now, in the wake of Kansas voters resoundingly rejecting a proposal to remove protections for abortion rights from their state constitution?

These are not gotcha questions. Alito presumably would answer that what happened in Kansas on Tuesday is precisely the kind of democratic process that the Supreme Court “short-circuited,” as he wrote in Dobbs, when it established a national right to abortion by judicial edict even as the issue remained deeply unsettled in the society.

They are questions, however, that highlight how life is full of surprise and paradox, even for a Supreme Court justice who specializes in blustery self-assurance. Alito’s career as an advocate for social conservatism began long before he joined the court. His record is replete with deference to religious tradition and skepticism of loosening sexual mores on all fronts, including gay rights. His references to “abortionists” in the Dobbs opinion hardly conceal his personal disdain. There can be little doubt of how he would have cast his ballot if he were a Kansas voter.

Yet the Kansas result raises an arresting possibility: Alito’s long-term legacy may well be as the justice who facilitated a national consensus on behalf of abortion rights. Quite unintentionally, today’s hero of the “pro-life” movement could end up being a giant of the “pro-choice” movement.

Alito’s achievement was to take abortion out of the arena where it has been for a half-century — a place in which aggrieved advocates on both sides invoked a hypothetical world in which abortion is no longer legal — and move it to an emphatically real-world arena. In this new environment, all kinds of people who under ordinary circumstances would prefer not to have to think and argue about abortion must decide which side they are on.

There is good reason to be wary the old maxim of Fleet Street journalism — first simplify, then exaggerate — in some of the post-Kansas analysis. The impact of abortion politics on the mid-term elections remains murky. In most cases, voters will be choosing among candidates, not deciding a sharply framed referendum. Moreover, while Kansas is undoubtedly conservative, it is also a state with a Democratic governor and is not necessarily predictive of the dynamics in conservative states with abortion bans that took place immediately after the Supreme Court’s June ruling.

But if the Kansas result isn’t necessarily a portent of the politics of 2022 it is suggestive of the politics of 2032. Long-term, under current trends, it is easy to envisage a decisive shift that would leave a national resolution of the issue in favor of abortion rights, even in states that do not currently support that. It is hard to envisage the opposite result.

The difference lies in the gap between abstract politics and concrete politics. This is the same dynamic that makes Social Security highly popular among people who claim they disdain big government. The Kansas result, which mirrors polling showing solid majorities of people supported leaving Roe v. Wade intact, suggests that opponents of legal abortion do better when the prospect of an abortion ban is hypothetical, while abortion-rights supporters do better when the issue is tangibly real.

Values take on meaning not in the abstract but in the particular. What do you really believe when it is your adolescent child who is pregnant or has impregnated someone? Or your extramarital affair that results in a pregnancy? Or your obstetrician who calls to say she has unwelcome news from the results of a genetic test?

Thankfully, most people do not get to learn what they really believe by landing in such a situation. But lots of people — of all political persuasions — do get to learn. The Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on abortion policy, found that about one in five pregnancies in 2020 ended in abortion. In an earlier study, from 2017, it found that about one in four women will have an abortion by age 45.

Is that number surprising? As long as abortion was a legal right, plenty of these women and their partners were likely animated by plenty of other political issues. The question now is what has changed, and Kansas suggests an answer.

Even many abortion-rights advocates acknowledge there is some truth to what Alito asserted multiple times in his opinion: That the court hindered, rather than helped, a national resolution of the abortion question. Somewhat tauntingly, the Dobbs opinion cited a 1992 speech from one of the most prominent abortion-rights supporters of all, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that Roe “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believed, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.”

It was as if Alito was playing a joke on Ginsberg’s memory by quoting her. It seems entirely likely that she will end up having the last laugh.

Ukraine’s military intel leaks Russian soldiers discussing absurdity of orders on frontline

The New Voice of Ukraine

Ukraine’s military intel leaks Russian soldiers discussing absurdity of orders on frontline

August 4, 2022

One Russian serviceman breaks the news that those who are defending will not be given more medals, and will even have those that have already been issued taken away.

His interlocutor complains about the absurdity of the orders being given to the front line by senior Russian commanders:

“They sit there, send 20-200 people to their deaths and that’s it,” he says.

“Thirty people came in, 100 people came in. From the east. They f**king knocked off every single one. We went there previously. We had six 200s (killed), and six 300s (injured). One had bones crushed, and so did another one. So many had one leg hanging loose.”

Illinois gets a foot of rain, the U.S.’s 3rd 1,000-year rain in 1 week

Yahoo! News

Illinois gets a foot of rain, the U.S.’s 3rd 1,000-year rain in 1 week

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – August 3, 2022

The United States saw its third 1-in-1,000-year rain in a week on Monday night and Tuesday morning, as southern Illinois was drenched by 8 to 12 inches of rain in 12 hours. An area just south of Newton, Ill., recorded 14 inches of rainfall in just 12 hours, according to the National Weather Service. Thunderstorms brought damaging winds and heavy rainfall through midafternoon on Tuesday.

Heavy rain events such as this are becoming more common due to climate change.

The NWS office in Lincoln, Ill., received about 20 reports of flooding on Tuesday as roads turned into rivers. Several flash flood warnings were issued in the region.

Roughly 30,000 customers of CenterPoint Energy in the Evansville, Ill., area lost power on Tuesday, and more than 2,000 were still without power as of noon Central time on Wednesday.

The extraordinarily heavy rain in Illinois comes on the heels of similar events in Kentucky and Missouri. Record-breaking rainfall caused flash flooding in the St. Louis area last Tuesday, trapping cars, closing roads and causing at least one death. Last Thursday, rural areas of eastern Kentucky were flooded after receiving up to 14 inches of rainfall. The death toll, at the most recent count, stood at 37.

Although more rain actually fell in Illinois on Tuesday morning — a foot in the area southeast of Springfield, Ill., for example — the flooding was worse in St. Louis because urbanized areas are more heavily paved and less able to absorb water.

Weather map showing precipitation in Central U.S., centered on Illinois, with color indication of high precipitation south of Springfield. — One-day observed precipitation on Tuesday. (National Weather Service)

All three inundations are considered 1,000-year rain events because the amount of rain that fell during such a short window has only a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.

But that was before climate change. Due to rising concentrations of heat-trapping gases, mainly from the combustion of fossil fuels, the global average temperature has increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. With each degree Celsius of increased temperature, the air can hold 7% more moisture. Therefore, unusually heavy rains are becoming more frequent and severe.

This is especially true in the already-wet Northeast and Midwest. Last year, the Detroit area got 6 inches of rain in June and 8 inches in August, flooding basements and cars, and Hurricane Ida dumped more than 3 inches of rain on New York City in just one hour, resulting in flooding that killed 11 people and shut down the subway system.

Academic studies have shown that extreme rainfall and flooding will get worse in the future, especially if climate change continues unabated.

China warns that its temperatures are rising faster than global average

Reuters

China warns that its temperatures are rising faster than global average

August 3, 2022

The Wider Image: The thaw of the Third Pole: China's glaciers in retreat — The Wider Image: The thaw of the Third Pole: China’s glaciers in retreat

FILE PHOTO: A tree stands on the dried-up riverbed of Ai River in Dandong — A tree stands on the dried-up riverbed of Ai River in Dandong

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s average ground temperatures have risen much more quickly than the global average over the past 70 years and will remain “significantly higher” in the future as the challenges of climate change mount, a government official said.

In its annual climate assessment published this week, China’s weather bureau described the country as “a sensitive region in global climate change”, with temperatures rising 0.26 degrees Celsius (0.47 degrees Fahrenheit) a decade since 1951, compared to the global average of 0.15 degrees.

“In the future, the increase in regional average temperatures in China will be significantly higher than the world,” said Yuan Jiashuang, vice-director of China’s National Climate Center (NCC), at a Wednesday briefing.

He warned that changing weather patterns in China will affect the balance of water resources, make ecosystems more vulnerable and reduce crop yields.

Extreme weather has wreaked havoc in recent weeks, with lengthy heatwaves causing droughts and forest fires across the world. Historically high rainfall in some countries has also caused deadly floods.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned last month that “no nation is immune” from climate change and said the world now had to choose between “collective action or collective suicide”.

China has already endured weeks of torrid weather, with temperatures reaching in excess of 44C (111F) in southwestern Yunnan and Hebei in the north.

As many as 131 Chinese weather stations have recorded temperatures that equalled or exceeded historical highs, up from 62 for the whole of last year, according to NCC data.

China’s 2021 climate assessment said coastal water levels last year were at their highest since 1980. Glacial retreat also accelerated, active permafrost along the Qinghai-Tibet Highway reached a record high and sea ice continued to decline.

China also recorded a 7.9% increase in vegetation cover in 2021 compared to the 2001-2020 average, and the assessment noted growth periods for many plants are starting earlier each year.

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Tom Hogue)

Western U.S. faces water and power shortages due to climate change, U.N. warns

Yahoo! News

Western U.S. faces water and power shortages due to climate change, U.N. warns

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – August 2, 2022

The two largest reservoirs in the United States are at “dangerously low levels,” threatening the supply of fresh water and electricity in six states and Mexico, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned on Tuesday.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which are both man-made reservoirs on the Colorado River, are currently at their lowest levels ever, in part because of an ongoing drought exacerbated by climate change.

“The conditions in the American West which we’re seeing around the Colorado River basin have been so dry for more than 20 years that we’re no longer speaking of a drought,” said Lis Mullin Bernhardt, an ecosystems expert at UNEP. “We refer to it as ‘aridification’ — a new, very dry normal.”

The river is also struggling thanks to overconsumption due to a growing population and an outdated agreement that guarantees allotments for its neighboring states. The reservoirs provide water for agricultural and residential use in Arizona, California, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada and New Mexico.

If conditions don’t improve, Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at risk of reaching “dead pool” status, in which the water is so low it stops flowing out of a reservoir. That would disable the hydroelectric dams that help provide power for millions of residents of the western U.S.

“We are talking about a 20-year period of droughtlike conditions, with an ever-increasing demand on water,” Bernhardt said. “These conditions are alarming, and particularly in the Lake Powell and Lake Mead region, it is the perfect storm.”

The Hoover Dam water intake towers at Lake Mead, with low levels of water. — The Hoover Dam water intake towers at Lake Mead on July 12 near Boulder City, Nev. (George Rose/Getty Images)

The falling water levels have been a concern for U.S. officials for some time. In June, Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that maintaining “critical levels” at Lake Mead and Lake Powell would require significant reductions in water deliveries.

“What has been a slow-motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said at the Senate hearing.

Due to the declining water levels in Lake Mead, which is near Las Vegas, three dead bodies long buried under the water have recently been exposed.

Some water use restrictions have already been put in place. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California instituted emergency water curtailments in June, typically limiting outdoor watering to one or two days per week.

A boat buried in dry earth on Saddle Island. — A sunken boat, now high and dry, on Saddle Island on July 28 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nev. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

The drought in the West has had a number of effects in recent years, including unusually bad wildfire seasons.

Climate scientists say disruptions to the water cycle, especially drought, will become more common as a result of rising global temperatures.

Will Texas run out of groundwater? Experts explain how drought taps out water wells.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Will Texas run out of groundwater? Experts explain how drought taps out water wells.

Dalia Faheid – August 1, 2022

Water levels in wells across Texas are running low because of the extreme drought, groundwater experts say.

Drought conditions in the state are getting worse by the week. As of July 28, 97% of Texas was in a drought, affecting 24.1 million Texans, per the U.S. Drought Monitor.

“A lot of public supply wells and a lot of even domestic wells have started going dry,” Natalie Ballew, director of the groundwater division at the Texas Water Development Board, told the Star-Telegram.

Many communities, specifically in Central Texas, are experiencing significant water supply issues and they’re having to truck water in from other places, Ballew said. That includes areas like Concan and Utopia in Uvalde County, and Leakey in Real County. That’s causing a myriad of issues for those residents, with ranchers going as far as selling off their cattle because they don’t have water for them.

In North Texas, because people pump more water in the summer, groundwater levels usually start falling around April or May and then come back up in September. Because of the drought, that decline has become much steeper this summer, says Doug Shaw, general manager at the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District. The district serves the counties of Hood, Montague, Parker and Wise.

In one area where levels are measured in real-time, Peaster in Parker County, water levels from July 2 to 24 fell 1.75 feet. Usually, the water level in that region will decline that much over the entire summer, instead of in just a few weeks. That could be indicative of a larger decline in the water table, Shaw says.

MIke Massy stands next to an old water well on his ranch in Hood County that dried up. Massey said he drilled a new well a few feet away that has worked for years.

What are the signs that a water well is impacted by drought?

Water levels decline for two reasons, Ballew says. The first is in drought conditions, when water levels decline because we depend on rainfall to infiltrate down into our aquifers and refill them. Another way a water well can run low is from pumping in surrounding areas. If you have increased pumping going on in one location, that’s going to decrease the water level of that well, as well as impact nearby wells.

How can you tell if your well level is declining because of your neighbor’s increased pumping, extreme drought conditions, or both?

“If you’re kind of out in the middle of nowhere and you don’t have a bunch of pumping going on from irrigation and you’re seeing your water level decline, that could be an indication that it’s drought related,” Ballew explained. It also depends on how far down your well goes. If you have a shallow well located near a river, and your water level runs low, you can assume it’s related to the drought.

With extreme drought, water wells can run dry. You can tell your water well is running dry when your pump isn’t working well or if your water quality is poor, Ballew says. You might start to notice a lot more sand, sediment or air in the pump, Shaw says.

To have enough coverage for a typical well, you should have about 40 to 100 feet of water above the pump, Shaw says.

Can I drill a well on my property?

Texas operates under what’s called a “rule of capture,” which means if you own the land, you can drill a well there. If you’re located within a groundwater conservation district, however, you’ll have to abide by their regulations on groundwater withdrawal. That may include getting a permit to drill the well, registering the well with the district, and/or getting a production permit so that they can manage how much is getting pumped out. In Texas, there are 98 of these districts, covering nearly 70% of the state, according to the Texas Water Development Board.

The Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District has the following requirements:

You must register your new well prior to drilling.
Property must be at least 2 acres.
Well must be drilled at least 50 feet from the nearest property line.
Well must be drilled at least 150 ft away from any other registered wells.

The Northern Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, which covers Tarrant County, has these requirements:

All wells drilled after Oct. 1, 2010, must be registered.
Unless exempt, you’ll need to get an operating permit from the district prior to drilling, construction or operating of the well. An exempt well is a well that is not a public water supply well and not capable of producing more than 17.36 gallons per minute or is used solely for domestic, livestock, poultry, or agricultural purposes. A non-exempt well is a well capable of producing more than 17.36 gallons per minute, and must submit semi-annual water well production reports to the District at a rate of $0.155 per 1,000 gallons.
For non-exempt wells, you’re required to report groundwater production no later than Jan. 31 and July 31 for the previous 6-month periods each year.
A person who drilled, deepened, completed or otherwise altered a well shall, within 60 days after the date the well is completed, file a well report.

If you do plan on drilling a well on your property, make sure you have a licensed water well driller do it, Ballew says, as they’re often familiar with the groundwater resources in the area.

Can you use well water during a drought?

While you can still use water from a well even if the level has dropped, conserving the water during a drought should be a priority so that it doesn’t run dry.

“In times of drought, when people with private wells or public water supply wells are pumping more and more often, then you never get this opportunity for the wells to kick off and the water levels to come back up,” Shaw says. “And then so what that does is over a larger area, you will see a decline in the water table.”

Eighty to 90% of the groundwater produced is used for lawn irrigation. To conserve, minimize outdoor water tools like sprinklers. Instead, use a soaker hose or another efficient tool to water your yard, Shaw says.

To find out if your water level is running low, you can get your well sampled by your local groundwater conservation district every three months at no charge.

How long does it take a well to replenish water?

The good news — once we get rain, wells that have gone dry do rebound. “It’s not going to be dry forever,” Ballew says.

But how quickly wells replenish after the dry season can vary. Some aquifers, like the Edwards Aquifer In Central Texas, respond really quickly to precipitation.

For other aquifers, like the sand-based Upper Trinity Aquifer, it takes time for the rainfall to actually get down into it, so you would need much more consistent rain. There has to be complete saturation before water passes into the aquifer, Shaw says. Water levels will rebound, however, when people aren’t pumping as much water, usually around wintertime.

“Right now what we’re seeing is a seasonal decline. Water levels are dropping as water is moving from the aquifer towards pumping centers, towards areas where a lot of water is being pumped,” Shaw said. “Once we get to a time of the year where people aren’t watering their lawns, there is less water traveling towards the pumping centers, you will see water levels come back up.”

Although rain is the easiest way to replenish the water, there are two other long-term solutions. One way is through a “managed aquifer recharge,” which floods an area with water using a different source like surface water and lets it infiltrate down into the aquifer. Another is aquifer storage and recovery, where you take water, pump it down into an aquifer and store it for later use.

What causes wells to run dry?

Shaw says we’ll likely see a lot more wells going dry this year. There are a number of reasons why your well may go dry, and they’re more pronounced this summer with the amount of pumping and the drought.

“As far as people’s wells going dry and having to replace their wells, it could be a situation a lot of it is maybe the well was drilled 20, 30, 40 years ago, and water levels were significantly higher than they are now. And so the well had plenty of water in it and now it doesn’t,” Shaw says. “You see another scenario where maybe the well just wasn’t drilled deep enough to begin with, maybe they didn’t fully penetrate the aquifer when they drilled the well, so it never had enough coverage or water above the pump. But this year has been extra stressful on the pump, and maybe it wasn’t able to keep up.”

If your water well runs dry, try to drill deeper into your existing well. If you can’t get any water that way, you’ll have to drill a new well elsewhere. In some instances, you may be able to drill just a mile away, but that may not work in all areas. Or you may need a smaller pump so that there’s enough water above the pump, Shaw says. Reach out to your county or local groundwater conservation district to get some assistance, Ballew recommends.

Russian official says Ukraine carried out drone attack on Black Sea fleet HQ

Reuters

Russian official says Ukraine carried out drone attack on Black Sea fleet HQ

July 31, 2022

(Reuters) – A senior official in Russian-annexed Crimea accused Ukraine on Sunday of carrying out a drone attack ahead of planned celebrations to mark Navy Day, injuring five and forcing the cancellation of festivities.

The accusation comes hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to oversee Navy Day celebrations in his hometown of St Petersburg and approve Russia’s naval doctrine as Moscow presses on with its military intervention in Ukraine.

“An unidentified object flew into the courtyard of the fleet’s headquarters,” Mikhail Razvozhayev, governor of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

“According to preliminary information, it is a drone.”

He said Ukraine had decided to “spoil Navy Day for us”.

The Ukrainian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Razvozhayev said that five employees of the fleet headquarters had been injured in the incident and that the Federal Security Service (FSB) was investigating its circumstances.

“All celebrations have been cancelled for security reasons,” Razvozhayev said. “Please remain calm and stay home if possible.”

Navy Day is an annual Russian holiday during which its fleets stage naval parades and honour its sailors.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, prompting a major row with the West which deepened over Moscow’s role in an insurgency of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

When someone dies, what happens to the body?

The Conversation

When someone dies, what happens to the body?

Mark Evely, Program Director and Assistant Professor of Mortuary Science, Wayne State University – July 31, 2022

When a life ends, those who remain deal with the body. <a href= — When a life ends, those who remain deal with the body. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Upwards of 2.8 million people die every year in the United States. As a funeral director who heads a university mortuary science program, I can tell you that while each individual’s life experiences are unique, what happens to a body after death follows a broadly predictable chain of events.

In general, it depends on three things: where you die, how you die and what you or your family decide on for funeral arrangements and final disposition.

In death’s immediate aftermath

Death can happen anywhere: at home; in a hospital, nursing or palliative care facility; or at the scene of an accident, homicide or suicide.

A medical examiner or coroner must investigate whenever a person dies unexpectedly while not under a doctor’s care. Based on the circumstances of the death, they determine whether an autopsy is needed. If so, the body travels to a county morgue or a funeral home, where a pathologist conducts a detailed internal and external examination of the body as well as toxicology tests.

Once the body can be released, some states allow for families to handle the body themselves, but most people employ a funeral director. The body is placed on a stretcher, covered and transferred from the place of death – sometimes via hearse, but more commonly these days a minivan carries it to the funeral home.

State law determines who has the authority to make funeral arrangements and decisions about the remains. In some states, you can choose during your lifetime how you’d like your body treated when you die. In most cases, however, decisions fall on surviving family or someone you appointed before your death.

Preparing the body for viewing

In a 2020 consumer survey conducted by the National Funeral Directors Association, 39.4% of respondents reported feeling it’s very important to have the body or cremated remains present at a funeral or memorial service.

To prepare for that, the funeral home will usually ask whether the body is to be embalmed. This process sanitizes the body, temporarily preserves it for viewing and services, and restores a natural, peaceful appearance. Embalming is typically required for a public viewing and in certain other circumstances, including if the person died of a communicable disease or if the cremation or burial is to be delayed for more than a few days.

A funeral home director and an intern stand by a mortuary table. <a href= — A funeral home director and an intern stand by a mortuary table. John Moore/Getty Images News via Getty Images

When the funeral director begins the embalming process, he places the body on a special porcelain or stainless steel table that looks much like what you’d find in an operating room. He washes the body with soap and water and positions it with the hands crossed over the abdomen, as you’d see them appear in a casket. He closes the eyes and mouth.

Next the funeral director makes a small incision near the clavicle, to access the jugular vein and carotid artery. He inserts forceps into the jugular vein to allow blood to drain out, while at the same time injecting embalming solution into the carotid artery via a small tube connected to the embalming machine. For every 50 to 75 pounds of body weight, it takes about a gallon of embalming solution, largely made up of formaldehyde. The funeral director then removes excess fluids and gases from the abdominal and thoracic cavities using an instrument called a trocar. It works much like the suction tube you’ve experienced at the dentist.

Next the funeral director sutures any incisions. He grooms the hair and nails and again washes the body and dries it with towels. If the body is emaciated or dehydrated, he can inject a solution via hypodermic needle to plump facial features. If trauma or disease has altered the appearance of the deceased, the embalmer can use wax, adhesive and plaster to recreate natural form.

A funeral director prepares to apply makeup to a man who died of COVID-19. <a href= — A funeral director prepares to apply makeup to a man who died of COVID-19. Octavio Jones/ Getty Images North America via Getty Images

Lastly, the funeral director dresses the deceased and applies cosmetics. If the clothing provided does not fit, he can cut it and tuck it in somewhere that doesn’t show. Some funeral homes use an airbrush to apply cosmetics; others use specialized mortuary cosmetics or just regular makeup you might find at a store.

Toward a final resting place

If the deceased is to be cremated without a public viewing, many funeral homes require a member of the family to identify him or her. Once the death certificate and any other necessary authorizations are complete, the funeral home transports the deceased in a chosen container to a crematory. This could be onsite or at a third-party provider.

More people in the U.S. are now cremated than embalmed and buried. <a href= — More people in the U.S. are now cremated than embalmed and buried. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America via Getty Images

Cremations are performed individually. Still in the container, the deceased is placed in the cremator, which produces very high heat that reduces the remains to bone fragments. The operator removes any metal objects, like implants, fillings and parts of the casket or cremation container, and then pulverizes the bone fragments. He then places the processed remains in the selected container or urn. Some families choose to keep the cremated remains, while others bury them, place them in a niche or scatter them.

The year 2015 was the first year that the cremation rate exceeded the casketed burial rate in the U.S., and the industry expects that trend to continue.

When earth burial is chosen, the casket is usually placed in a concrete outer burial container before being lowered into the grave. Caskets can also be entombed in above-ground crypts inside buildings called mausoleums. Usually a grave or crypt has a headstone of some kind that bears the name and other details about the decedent.

Some cemeteries have spaces dedicated to environmentally conscious “green” burials in which an unembalmed body can be buried in a biodegradable container. Other forms of final disposition are less common. As an alternative to cremation, the chemical process of alkaline hydrolysis can reduce remains to bone fragments. Composting involves placing the deceased in a vessel with organic materials like wood chips and straw to allow microbes to naturally break down the body.

I’ve seen many changes over the course of my funeral service career, spanning more than 20 years so far. For decades, funeral directors were predominantly male, but now mortuary school enrollment nationwide is roughly 65% female. Cremation has become more popular. More people pre-plan their own funerals. Many Americans do not have a religious affiliation and therefore opt for a less formal service.

Saying goodbye is important for those who remain, and I have witnessed too many families foregoing a ceremony and later regretting it. A dignified and meaningful farewell and the occasion to share memories and comfort each other honors the life of the deceased and facilitates healing for family and friends.