Russian soldiers who ran out of ammunition say they are being sent to ‘certain death’ in a video shared by a Ukrainian official
Rebecca Cohen – September 21, 2023
Russians attend military training.Arkady Budnitsky/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Russian soldiers who ran out of ammunition say they are being sent to ‘certain death’ in a video shared by a Ukrainian official
Russian soldiers say they are being sent to “certain death” in a video shared by Ukraine.
They say Russia asked a group of Russian artillerymen, who ran out of ammo, to fight on the front line.
They said they fled and left all of their weapons behind because they were not trained as infantry.
A group of Russian artillerymen said they were being forced to move to the front lines after running out of ammunition — despite lacking any training on how to fight at the front, according to a video shared by a Ukrainian official on Wednesday.
Artillerymen typically position themselves away from the front line, where they fire ranged weapons to support troops in front of them. Infantrymen are typically ground forces who engage in close-range combat using different types of weapons.
Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor in Ukraine’s internal affairs ministry, posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which the group of men claiming to be Russian soldiers say they are “servicemen in regiment number 1442” and are fighting in “the area of Klishchiivka.”
In the video, which includes subtitles written by Gerashchenko, the men say their infantry had been killed in battle, prompting Russia to try and reinforce the front line.
“We ran out of ammunition, so we got reassigned to infantry. We weren’t trained to be infantry. We were trained to be artillerymen. That’s it,” one of the men says in the video.
They said some soldiers were refusing the assignment and fleeing instead.
The men said that Russia was sending them to “certain death” by asking them to leave their positions as artillerymen to fight on the front lines. They added that others are fleeing, and some are “hanging themselves already” to get out of the new assignment.
“We’re not abandoning our duties, and we never have,” one man says in the video. “We’re just being sent to certain death. All of us. The unprepared.”
Water-starved Saudi confronts desalination’s heavy toll
Robbie Corey-Boulet – September 16, 2023
General manager Mohamed Ali al-Qahtani checks the quality of the ouput at the Ras al-Khair desalination plant (Fayez Nureldine)
Solar panels soak up blinding noontime rays that help power a water desalination facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, a step towards making the notoriously emissions-heavy process less environmentally taxing.
The Jazlah plant in Jubail city applies the latest technological advances in a country that first turned to desalination more than a century ago, when Ottoman-era administrators enlisted filtration machines for hajj pilgrims menaced by drought and cholera.
Lacking lakes, rivers and regular rainfall, Saudi Arabia today relies instead on dozens of facilities that transform water from the Gulf and Red Sea into something potable, supplying cities and towns that otherwise would not survive.
But the kingdom’s growing desalination needs –- fuelled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s dreams of presiding over a global business and tourism hub –- risk clashing with its sustainability goals, including achieving net-zero emissions by 2060.
Projects like Jazlah, the first plant to integrate desalination with solar power on a large scale, are meant to ease that conflict: officials say the panels will help save around 60,000 tons of carbon emissions annually.
It is the type of innovation that must be scaled up fast, with Prince Mohammed targeting a population of 100 million people by 2040, up from 32.2 million today.
“Typically, the population grows, and then the quality of life of the population grows,” necessitating more and more water, said CEO Marco Arcelli of ACWA Power, which runs Jazlah.
Using desalination to keep pace is a “do or die” challenge, said historian Michael Christopher Low at the University of Utah, who has studied the kingdom’s struggle with water scarcity.
“This is existential for the Gulf states. So when anyone is sort of critical about what they’re doing in terms of ecological consequences, I shake my head a bit,” he said.
At the same time, he added, “there are limits” as to how green desalination can be.
– Drinking the sea –
The search for potable water bedevilled Saudi Arabia in the first decades after its founding in 1932, spurring geological surveys that contributed to the mapping of its massive oil reserves.
Prince Mohammed al-Faisal, a son of King Faisal whom Low has dubbed the “Water Prince”, at one point even explored the possibility of towing icebergs from Antarctica to quench the kingdom’s growing thirst, drawing widespread ridicule.
But Prince Mohammed also oversaw the birth of the kingdom’s modern desalination infrastructure beginning in 1970.
The national Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) now reports production capacity of 11.5 million cubic metres per day at 30 facilities.
That growth has come at a cost, especially at thermal plants running on fossil fuels.
By 2010, Saudi desalination facilities were consuming 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, more than 15 percent of today’s production.
The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture did not respond to AFP’s request for comment on current energy consumption at desalination plants.
Going forward, there is little doubt Saudi Arabia will be able to build the infrastructure required to produce the water it needs.
“They have already done it in some of the most challenging settings, like massively desalinating on the Red Sea and providing desalinated water up to the highlands of the holy cities in Mecca and Medina,” said Laurent Lambert of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
– Going green? –
The question is how much the environmental toll will continue to climb.
The SWCC says it wants to cut 37 million metric tonnes of carbon emissions by 2025.
This will be achieved largely by transitioning away from thermal plants to plants like Jazlah that use electricity-powered reverse osmosis.
Solar power, meanwhile, will expand to 770 megawatts from 120 megawatts today, according to the SWCC’s latest sustainability report, although the timeline is unclear.
“It’s still going to be energy-intensive, unfortunately, but energy-intensive compared to what?” Lambert said.
“Compared to countries which have naturally flowing water from major rivers or falling from the sky for free? Yeah, sure, it’s always going to be more.”
At desalination plants across the kingdom, Saudi employees understand just how crucial their work is to the population’s survival.
The Ras al-Khair plant produces 1.1 million cubic metres of water per day –- 740,000 from thermal technology, the rest from reverse osmosis –- and struggles to keep reserve tanks full because of high demand.
Much of the water goes to Riyadh, which requires 1.6 million cubic metres per day and could require as much as six million by the end of the decade, said an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media.
Looking out over pipes that draw seawater from the Gulf into the plant, he described the work as high-stakes, with clear national security implications.
If the plant did not exist, he said, “Riyadh would die”.
AP PHOTOS: Moroccan earthquake shattered thousands of lives
Sam Metz and Mosa Ab El Shamy – September 16, 2023
Children walk through the rubble of their town of Amizmiz which was damaged by the earthquake, outside Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy)A child reacts after inspecting the damage caused by the earthquake, in her town of Amizmiz, near Marrakech, Morocco, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. An aftershock rattled Moroccans on Sunday as they prayed for victims of the nation’s strongest earthquake in more than a century and toiled to rescue survivors while soldiers and workers brought water and supplies to desperate mountain villages in ruins. (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy)The foot of a man stuck under rubble while a rescue operation for him is underway, after an earthquake, in Moulay Brahim village, near Marrakech, Morocco, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. A rare, powerful earthquake struck Morocco late Friday night, killing more than 800 people and damaging buildings from villages in the Atlas Mountains to the historic city of Marrakech. But the full toll was not known as rescuers struggled to get through boulder-strewn roads to the remote mountain villages hit hardest. (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy)A woman tries to recover some of her possessions from her home which was damaged by the earthquake in the village of Tafeghaghte, near Marrakech, Morocco, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. Rescue crews expanded their efforts on Monday as the earthquake’s death toll continued to climb to more than 2,400 and displaced people worried about where to find shelter. (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy)A rescue team recovers the body of a woman who was killed by the earthquake, in the town of Imi N’tala, outside Marrakech, Morocco, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy
AMIZMIZ, Morocco (AP) — With their arms around each other, three boys walked through the streets of their town at the foot of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains.
It could have been a scene like millions around the world that day. But in the Moroccan town of Amizmiz, the boys were walking through rubble, one week after an earthquake rattled their community’s homes, schools, mosques and cafes. Their possessions were buried beneath tons of mud and clay bricks, along with an untold number of people whom the boys knew.
A little girl held her palms to her cheeks, stunned at the destruction.
Entire villages higher up the mountains were leveled. In many, at least half of the population appears to have died.
Photos of the disaster show how fathers, mothers, children and their animals remain trapped under bricks, appliances and fallen ceilings. Going without power for days, residents see at night by the light of their phones.
“It felt like a bomb went off,” 34-year-old Mohamed Messi of Ouirgane said.
When mud and clay brick — traditional materials used for construction in the region — turn to rubble, they leave less space for oxygen than collapsed construction materials in countries like Turkey and Syria, which were also hit by quakes this year.
The day after the quake, hundreds of residents of the mountain town of Moulay Brahim gathered to perform funeral rites, praying on rugs arranged neatly in the street before carrying blanket-covered bodies from the town’s health center to its cemetery.
“People are suffering here very much. We are in dire need of ambulances. Please send us ambulances to Moulay Brahim. The matter is urgent. This appeal must reach everyone, and on a large scale. Please save us,” said Ayoub Toudite, the head of a community group in Moulay Brahim. “We hope for urgent intervention from the authorities. There is no network. We are trying to call, but to no avail.”
The United Nations reported that roughly 300,000 people were likely affected by the earthquake. UNICEF said that likely included 100,000 children.
As the Moroccan government approved only limited assistance from four countries and certain NGOs, Salah Ancheu, a 28-year-old from Amizmiz, told The Associated Press that nearby villages desperately needed more assistance. Residents of his town swept all the rubble off the main road so that cars, motorycles and aid crews can reach villages further along the mountain roads. A giant pile of steel rods, baskets and broken cinderblocks lay just off the center of the road.
“It’s a catastrophe,” he said. ‘’There aren’t ambulances, there aren’t police, at least for right now. We don’t know what’s next.’’
In parts of Amizmiz that weren’t leveled by the temblor, families began to return on Sunday to sort through the wreckage and retrieve valuables from homes where at least one floor remained standing. People cheered the trucks full of soldiers speeding through the road bisecting the town, as women and children sat under tents eating bread, cheese and vegetable stew.
Hafida Fairouje, who came from Marrakech to help her sister’s family in Amizmiz, said smaller nearby villages had nothing left, expressing shock that it took authorities about 20 hours after the earthquake to reach some of the nearby villages.
Morocco on Monday created a special government fund for earthquake-related efforts, to which King Mohammed VI later donated the equivalent of $97 million (91 million euros). Enaam Mayara, the president of the parliament’s House of Councilors, said it would likely take five or six years to rebuild some affected areas.
A foul stench permeated the air through the beginning of the week as rescuers worked to dig out bodies and sort through wreckage in smaller villages.
Aid began to arrive and piles of flour, blankets and yogurts were stacked in villages where most buildings were reduced to rubble. People said they had been given food and water, but they still worried about shelter and their long-term prospects.
Moroccan military forces and international teams from four approved countries — Qatar, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom — erected tents near Amizmiz while their teams wound through mountain roads to contribute to ongoing rescue efforts in villages such as Imi N’Tala, where a slice of mountain fell and destroyed the vast majority of homes and killed many residents.
Young boys sang “Hayya Hayya” — the theme song of the 2022 World Cup hosted in Qatar — as the country’s trucks drove through the mountains.
“The mountain was split in half and started falling. Houses were fully destroyed,” a local man, Ait Ougadir Al Houcine, said Tuesday as crews worked to recover bodies, including his sister’s. “Some people lost all their cattle. We have nothing but the clothes we’re wearing. Everything is gone.”
Families and children relocated to yellow tents provided by Moroccan authorities as fears set in about the time it would likely take to rebuild their homes.
“We just started the new school year but the earthquake came and ruined everything,” Naima Ait Brahim Ouali said, standing under an umbrella outside of a yellow tent as children play inside. “We just want somewhere to hide from the rain.”
After King Mohammed VI donated blood in Marrakech and later presided over an emergency response meeting, Moroccan officials said the government would fund both emergency relief and future rebuilding for residents of roughly 50,000 homes that were damaged or destroyed by allocating cash, depending on the level of destruction.
Scientists are sounding the alarm about a dangerous problem that will soon affect 2 billion people — here’s what to know
Laurelle Stelle – September 15, 2023
As the world has gotten hotter, more people are exposed to dangerously high temperatures each year. Recent findings published in Nature Sustainability show that without policy changes, the world will heat up enough by the end of the century that more than 2 billion people will live in life-threatening hot climates, as Science Hub reported.
What’s happening?
So far, the world’s average temperature has risen by just under 1.2 degrees Celsius (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial level due to human activity, according to Science Hub. The Paris Agreement — an international treaty to limit heat-trapping gases produced by each country and stop the world from getting hotter — proposed to cap the increase at 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, the new study found that with the current laws, population growth, and environmental conditions, the world will likely reach about 4.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the preindustrial benchmark, per Science Hub.
The researchers then looked at which areas would be most affected if the temperature increased to that level. They defined “unprecedented heat” zones as areas where the average temperature throughout the year, counting all seasons, is 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.
Science Hub reported that 40 years ago, only 12 million people worldwide lived in regions with temperatures surpassing that heat. Today, thanks to the warming we’ve already experienced, about 60 million people are affected.
The study found that by 2100, 2 billion out of the world’s projected population of 9.5 billion will live in areas with an average temperature higher than 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The most affected areas will be countries around the equator, noted Science Hub: India, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Pakistan.
Why is this heating worrisome?
The hotter the world gets, the more heat waves, droughts, and wildfires we experience. As Science Hub reported, studies have also linked the rising heat to everything from more contagious diseases to lower labor efficiency and more conflict between people.
“That’s a profound reshaping of the habitability of the surface of the planet, and could lead potentially to the large-scale reorganization of where people live,” study author Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, told ScienceAlert.
What’s being done?
Science Hub reported that if the global community reaches the goal set by the Paris Agreement, the affected population would be limited to half a billion people instead of 2 billion.
In the meantime, individuals can protect themselves from heat waves with these tips for cooling off.
China’s $10 trillion hidden debt mountain could be the ‘ticking time bomb’ that Joe Biden warned of
Joseph Wilkins – August 27, 2023
The Chinese national flag flies behind security cameras on Tiananmen Square on June 4, 2012 on the 23rd anniversary of China’s crackdown of democracy protests in Beijing.ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images
China has faced many economic problems this year, from deflation and record youth unemployment to a property crisis.
But now, an even more worrisome threat is emerging: the colossal hidden debt of China’s local governments.
Some estimates put the liabilities of China’s local financing vehicles close to $10 trillion.
For some time now, markets have been buffeted almost on a daily basis by gloomy economic news filtering out of China.
The world’s second-largest economy is grappling with a raft of economic troubles — ranging from deflation to record youth unemployment, and a deepening property crisis — and its much-anticipated post-pandemic rebound has failed to materialize.
China’s mounting economic woes prompted US President Joe Biden to call the Asian economy a “ticking time bomb”.
And now, a lesser-known, but no less ominous, economic threat is rearing its head: China’s colossal hidden-debt problem.
This mainly refers to a mountain of liabilities accumulated by the country’s local governments, mostly to fund regional infrastructure projects such as building roads and bridges. An analysis by the Chinese media outlet Caixin Global estimated the outstanding obligations of the so-called local government financing vehicles, or LGFVs, at close to a staggering $10 trillion.
The Chinese government deems such debt a form of off-the-books lending and as such, the market is opaque. Here, Insider demystifies the shadow sector and explains the significance of LGFVs to the wider Chinese economy.
What are China’s LGFVs?
These funding bodies were set up by China to facilitate financing for regional infrastructure projects. Originally established to support infrastructure projects such as highways, airports, and energy installations, the LGFVs were designed to provide funding outside of the official government constraints.
The notion of “hidden debt” was defined by China’s State Council in 2018 as any borrowing that does not form a part of on-budget government spending – in essence, off-the-books financing.
The LGFV sector has grown exponentially since the 2008 global financial crisis, when the Chinese government made efforts to ensure that the nation’s infrastructure and public services segments expand fast enough to sustain its remarkable economic growth, according to Bloomberg.
Figures from Bloomberg and the International Monetary Fund estimate the total value of LGFV debt as more than $9 trillion – not far from the Caixin assessment. The local governments’ bonds alone total at about $2 trillion, and any defaults would rock the Asian nation’s $60 trillion financial system, according to Bloomberg.
In 2023, the LGFVs’ hidden debt climbed above 50% of China’s GDP for the first time, IMF data show.
Why does this matter?
For months, China’s local administrations have struggled to turn their financing vehicles profitable – increasing pressure on the national government to prop up the ailing sector via costly interventions.
As risks tied to the sector mount, banks are unwilling to lend more, investors are turning their backs on bonds, and viable projects are harder to come by, according to several anonymous employees interviewed by Bloomberg.
As a result, the local governments have been struggling to generate enough income or raise funding to meet the costs of servicing their debt.
“The most important variable impacting China’s economic growth over the next two years will be the success or failure of local government debt restructuring,” Logan Wright, head of China markets research at Rhodium Group, told Bloomberg.
But Beijing has so far refrained from intervening in the sector, in a bid to encourage self-sufficiency.
Echoes of the property crisis
Although none of the LGFVs have actually defaulted on their debt yet, the mounting stress in the sector echoes the crisis in China’s real-estate industry, which began in 2021 and has reverberated around global markets ever since.
“A collapse in local government investment would be comparable to the economic impact of the crisis in the property market,” Wright told Bloomberg.
China’s enormous property sector accounts for about 30% of the country’s overall output. Headwinds faced by the sector include heavy debt burdens and sluggish demand for new properties. This was a contributing factor in stunting the nation’s second-quarter GDP growth, which came in at 6.3%, below forecasts of up to 7.1%.
Indeed, any turmoil originating from China’s mountainous hidden debt would send shockwaves across the global economy.
The ‘curse of 35’: In China, millennials are already too old for some employers
Berry Wang and Jessie Yeung – August 26, 2023
When Han lost her job as an interface designer in Beijing in February, she figured her 10 years of experience meant she wouldn’t need to look long for alternative work.
But with the job hunt dragging on, she’s beginning to worry. She’s sent off hundreds of job applications – and been invited to only four interviews.
Out of options in her chosen profession, she has turned to part-time jobs to make ends meet, working as a food delivery driver – where she was “lucky to earn 20 yuan ($2.8)” a day – and as a shopping guide, which she gave up after developing acute appendicitis, she says from standing too long.
“I tried every possible job, but they were either too energy-consuming or paid too little,” she said. “It’s difficult to maintain basic life every day, it seems.”
The root of Han’s problem, she believes, is that she has simply become too old in the eyes of many would-be employers. She is 34 years old.
Han, who CNN is identifying by only her last name due to privacy concerns, is among the many millennial workers in China who fear they have succumbed to the “curse of 35.”
The term was originally coined on social media to describe rumored lay-offs of older workers by major tech companies, but it has since become so widespread it is referenced even by advisers to China’s ruling Communist Party.
Anyone who doubts the curse’s potency need only look at the countless online job listings and recruitment sites that state explicitly that candidates should be no older than that age, which many experts don’t even consider middle-aged.
Or look on social media; in June, a traveler’s complaint that hostels in Beijing commonly turn away customers older than 35 sparked heated debate, as did a recruitment drive by a Taoist temple in June when it said new monks must be “under 35 years old.”
Indeed, even the Chinese government rules out candidates above 35 for many of its civil servant positions – a policy challenged by a lawmaker at last year’s annual gathering of China’s parliament and top political advisory body.
A job fair in Congjiang, China, on August 20, 2020. – Stringer/AFP/Getty Images
“Invisible age discrimination for 35-year-olds has always existed in the workplace,” lawmaker Jiang Shengnan told the gathering, reported state-run China Youth Daily. “It’s a huge waste of talent to reject candidates for their age.”
Even top academics and officials have acknowledged the issue. In a 2022 report by the state-run paper People’s Daily, a professor at the government-run Central Party School – which educates Chinese Communist Party cadres – referred to the curse as a “common phenomenon in the mass labor market” and blamed it for causing widespread public anxiety.
This year, the state-run news agency Xinhua proposed what it saw as a possible solution – special policies favoring workers above 35, along with financial assistance and regulations against ageism.
For many among China’s hundreds of millions of millennials, solutions can’t come fast enough. With China still struggling to recover from the economic damage of the pandemic and signs its growth is slowing, unemployment has become a pressing concern for many. Nationally, the official jobless rate surged to a near-record high of 6.1% last year, and while the end of lockdown brought some relief, it remains at 5.2%.
Leaders or bust
The issue has been brought to the fore in part by the rise of China’s tech industry and its notorious “996 culture” – working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
It’s an uncompromising schedule that’s even harder for older employees with families to attend to, but it’s a common expectation in the country’s highly competitive – and relatively young – tech sector.
Experts also point out that young workers hired straight from school tend to be cheaper, though others suggest the preference is not only about keeping expenditure low.
A 2021 Xinhua report reasoned that employees who hadn’t been promoted to management levels by 35 may be perceived as less successful, thus more susceptible to layoffs.
The Central Party School professor made this point in his report last year, saying: “Generally speaking, most employees with 10 years of experience will become leaders or team managers if their abilities are really good. In other words, the ’35-year-old threshold’ is not about age itself, but a measure of work ability for employers.”
But these limits mean many people find themselves like Han, the Beijing resident: overqualified, educated, experienced, and struggling to keep themselves afloat with gig work.
This is especially true as more and more people pursue masters’ and PhD degrees in the hopes of gaining an edge in the crowded job market – thus ironically delaying their entry into the old job market.
The content creator Tao Chen in a video posted on Chinese social media. – Douyin
One content creator, Tao Chen, gained nationwide attention in March after posting about his experience online. After graduating from the prestigious Sichuan University with a master’s degree in philosophy, he was laid off from a journalism job, then embarked on a string of failed business projects. At 38 years old, with few other prospects, he became a food delivery driver – eventually giving up that job too because the income wasn’t enough to make ends meet.
“Although I had really good work experience and a master’s degree, I’m really uncompetitive after 35 years old,” Tao Chen said in his Douyin video. More than 98% of his job applications were unanswered, while the rest found he was “unfit” for the role.
“I almost had a mental breakdown,” he said.
New twist on an old story
For many Chinese women, the “curse” builds upon and further compounds the entrenched gender discrimination that has long plagued the workplace.
Female workers in this age range often say they face pressures from employers reluctant to pay maternity leave. They report missing out on promotions because their employer fears they will take a long stint off, or worse – they might not get employed in the first place.
“Seeing this age, many companies aren’t willing to recruit you,” said Han, the Beijing resident. “They prefer the young ones. After all, I might get married and have kids in their eyes. Even though I tell them I do not intend to get married, they wouldn’t believe it.”
When 35-year-old Shenzhen resident Liu returned to her job at a bioengineering firm after a six-month maternity leave, she was expecting to join a new project. Instead, she said, she was abruptly laid off and her position given to a fresh graduate.
Months later, she has yet to find another job. Liu, who requested a pseudonym for privacy reasons, believes it was her maternity leave that prompted her dismissal.
“They are very realistic. When I don’t need you, I replace you with cheaper labor,” she said.
Men can be affected, too. Liu remembers witnessing a male colleague who had just become a father being given what she called inappropriate assignments, like being sent on a business trip immediately after the birth.
She said she had also seen millennial and middle-aged employees being singled out for embarrassment by being asked to raise their hands in meetings if they were over 30 or by not being invited to company parties.
Liu suspects the biggest motivation for employers is simply their bottom line. “Many companies consider cost efficiency,” Liu said. “They think my salary is higher than new graduates, so they’d rather choose the graduates.”
‘I can see through their tricks’
Experts say the best way to guard against both ageism and gender inequality is through legal reform.
Yiran Zhang, assistant professor at Cornell Law School, said that while China’s labor law prohibited discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, gender, and religious belief, it does not do so on the grounds of age.
And even in areas where some protection was offered – such as for mothers taking maternity leave – enforcement of the law is weak, and gender discrimination remains common, she said.
Employees who do successfully sue their employer may only receive low damages, disincentivizing some from pursuing legal action, Zhang added.
Students and graduates at a college job and internship fair in Suqian, China, on August 9, 2023. – Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images
“A large amount of age discrimination is intersectionality – discrimination of age, gender, pregnancy, and caregiving duties,” said the assistant professor.
Zhang and other experts noted there had been attempts in the past to legislate against age discrimination, with some politicians seeing it as a priority to lift the falling birth rate, but so far these have failed to pass in parliament.
Some small progress came earlier this year, when several provinces and regions relaxed age restrictions for civil servant jobs, raising the limit from 35 to 40, state media reported.
Meanwhile, Liu – the former project manager in Shenzhen – now hopes to make a living as a content creator so she doesn’t have to return to a traditional workplace riddled with ageism and discrimination.
“I have been in both big companies and small companies, I can see through their tricks,” she said. “I just want to run away from there.”
Private jet crash in Russia kills 10. Wagner chief Prigozhin was on passenger list
Associated Press – August 23, 2023
FILE – Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin is shown prior to a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 4, 2017. A business jet en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed Wednesday Aug. 23, 2023, killing all ten people on board, Russian emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, officials said, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board. (Sergei Ilnitsky/Pool via AP, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More
MOSCOW (AP) — A private jet crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board.
Prigozhin’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in late June. The Kremlin said the founder of the Wagner private military company, which fought alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, would be exiled to Belarus.
But the mercenary chief has since reportedly popped up in Russia, leading to further questions about his future.
A plane carrying three pilots and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass. It was not clear if Prigozhin was among those on board, though Russia’s civilian aviation regulator, Rosaviatsia, said he was on the manifest.
Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing emergency officials, that eight bodies were found at the site of the crash.
Flight tracking data reviewed by The Associated Press showed a private jet registered to Wagner that Prigozhin had used previously took off from Moscow on Wednesday evening and its transponder signal disappeared minutes later.
The signal was lost in a rural region with no nearby airfields where the jet could have landed safely.
In an image posted by a pro-Wagner social media account showing burning wreckage, a partial tail number matching a private jet belonging to the company could be seen. The color and placement of the number on the engine of the crashed plane matches prior photos of the Wagner jet examined by The AP.
Also this week, Russian media reported, citing anonymous sources, that a top Russian general linked to Prigozhin — Gen. Sergei Surovikin — was dismissed from his position of the commander of Russia’s air force. Surovikin, who at one point led Russia’s operation in Ukraine, hasn’t been seen in public since the mutiny, when he recorded a video address urging Prigozhin’s forces to pull back.
As the news about the crash was breaking, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at an event commemorating the Battle of Kursk, hailing the heroes of Russia’s “the special military operation” in Ukraine.
The ruble has plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since war in Ukraine began as Putin’s economy sputters
Jennifer Sor – August 8, 2023
The ruble has plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since war in Ukraine began as Putin’s economy sputters. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino
Russia’s currency in recent days has plunged to its lowest level against the greenback since the war in Ukraine began.
The ruble traded around 96 against the US dollar on Tuesday, a 30% decline from January.
Russia’s economy is struggling in the face of western sanctions and war in Ukraine, experts say.
Russia’s currency just plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since the beginning of its war in Ukraine — another sign that the nation’s economy is sputtering as the conflict drags on and its economy is burdened with Western sanctions.
The ruble has traded around 96 against the dollar since last Friday. It’s the cheapest Russia’s currency has been since Putin began his invasion of Ukraine in February last year, which caused the ruble to briefly plummet to 120 against the dollar.
Economists have been sounding the alarms for Russia’s economy for the past year, as the nation has been slammed by sanctions and soaring military spending. Restrictions on oil and natural gas trade led Russia’s energy revenue to tumble 45% in first three months of the year. Meanwhile, government spending surged 34%, leading Russia to post a $29 billion budget deficit over the first quarter– a 107% decline from last year’s $14 billion budget surplus.
The Kremlin has pumped so much money into the economy that it’s creating a boom — but this house of cards could topple anytime soon
Huileng Tan – August 1, 2023
The Kremlin has pumped so much money into the economy that it’s creating a boom — but this house of cards could topple anytime soon. The Russian economy has been doing far better than expected even amid sweeping sanctions, but most analysts do not expect this to last.(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Russia’s wartime economy is thriving, the New York Times reported Monday.
The Kremlin implemented measures to boost military equipment output, benefits, and mortgage subsidies.
These measures have boosted the demand — and prices — for a range of goods and services in Russia.
Nearly 18 months after the Ukraine war started, Russia’s economy appears to be humming along — baffling economists who predicted catastrophic outcomes following sweeping sanctions against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
While some economists have questioned the quality and veracity of Russian data releases, a New York Times report on Monday offered a nuanced picture of the country’s wartime economy and how it’s helping drum up popular support for Vladimir Putin.
Soldiers fighting the war are also earning far higher salaries than average earnings in poorer regions of Russia, the Times reported. For instance, Russia was offering a minimum of 160,000 rubles, or about $1,740, in monthly wages for contract soldiers last September — three times the national average, Reuters reported at the time.
Large payouts for those who died in the war — for example, a 5 million rubles payout for families of Wagner Group fighters who died in the war — are circulating in the economy.
These measures have boosted the demand — and prices — for a range of products and services in Russia, the Times reported.
Corporate loans have increased 19% in the year to June as investments grew, the Times said, citing the Russian central bank’s figures. Meanwhile, the value of mortgages taken out from Russia’s top 20 banks surged 63% in the first half of the year from a year ago, the Times reported, citing the state-run lender Dom.RF, and the real estate research firm Frank Media.
“As an economist, I don’t know how this bubble can be deflated,” Alexandra Prokopenko, a researcher with the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and a former advisor at the Russian central bank, told The Times.
“One day it could all crash like a house of cards,” he added.
Economy experts, however, are not optimistic about Russia’s economic outlook even as they acknowledge the current robustness of its economy.
In April last year, the Russian central bank’s governor Elvira Nabiullina said the country’s reserves wouldn’t last infinitely. In December, she also expressed concerns about inflation and the tight labor market due to Putin’s military draft. She repeated her concerns about price rises and the labor shortage in her July rate hike announcement.
Ariel Chernyy, an economist at Italian bank UniCredit, forecasts Russia’s GDP to grow by 1% this year — reversing a 2.1% contraction last year, according to a July 6 note seen by Insider.
Chernyy said the country’s economic resilience is due to government spending and the implementation of import-substitution projects that are boosting the domestic industry.
But it “does not mean a higher GDP growth rate that can be sustained in the long term” due to a shrinking labor pool and other issues like inferior import substitutes, he added.
Is the Atlantic Ocean current system nearing collapse? Scientists weigh in
Li Cohen – July 31, 2023
A study out this week raised a dire warning about the future of the planet and humanity, suggesting a system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean could totally collapse as early as 2025 — a frightening scenario that was the premise for the 2004 film “The Day After Tomorrow.”
But some scientists say that while a collapse is possible, it’s just one of many potential scenarios that could unfold and is unlikely to occur this century.
The study, published in Nature Communications, focuses on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, a system of ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean. This system is part of a global conveyor belt as it circulates water from north to south in the Atlantic, helping disperse warm waters. This system, along with other ocean currents, is crucial to helping maintain the Earth’s climate — and scientists believe it is being affected by climate change, as melting ice alters the balance in northern waters.
The AMOC “is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region,” the study says, adding that there has been other research in recent years indicating that its circulation is weakening.
“We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future [carbon] emissions,” it says.
Peter Ditlevsen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute and the lead author of the study, told CBS News he believes it’s “most likely” the system could collapse in about 30 years, around 2057. In the study, the range for a collapse was estimated to be anywhere between 2025 and 2095.
But, he says, there’s an “uncertainty”: “You cannot be completely sure.”
That’s because measurements of the AMOC only go back 20 years, providing a small amount of data to work into configurations. So his team looked at records of sea surface temperatures and climate model simulations to try to predict the fate of the current system.
The global conveyor belt, shown in part here, circulates cool subsurface water and warm surface water throughout the world / Credit: NOAA
“We know that there’s a tipping point out there in the future. And that when you approach that tipping point, they start to be unstable in a very specific way,” Ditlevsen said.
But Marlos Goes, a scientist at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, said the likelihood of this study’s results coming to fruition within this century “is very small.” Such a timeframe, he said, is just “one scenario … out of hundreds.”
According to state-of-the-art climate models and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group that works to assess the science behind climate change, “it’s not going to collapse in the 21st century at all,” Goes said.
“It may in the following century. It depends on the [emissions] pathways,” he told CBS News. “If the emissions go unabated the way they are going right now … that could be a potential force for this collapse. But the probability of that single scenario that they analyzed in that study is very unlikely.”
What is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation?
The AMOC is a long current cycle in the Atlantic Ocean that transports warm water across the globe. It’s an incredibly slow-moving system that takes roughly 1,000 years to move any given cubic meter of water through its entirety, according to NOAA.
It is part of the global conveyor belt, a system of deep ocean currents driven by temperature, salinity and the wind on the ocean surface. The belt begins where warm water from the Gulf is thrust into a cold atmosphere of the Norwegian Sea. From there, the now much cooler water sinks lower into the ocean and is carried south. The conveyor belt takes that cold water all the way down to Antarctica.
/ Credit: USGS
Is the Gulf Stream going to collapse?
The Gulf Stream is a warm ocean current that runs from the coast of Florida and up to North Carolina, where it then diverts and goes across the Atlantic. It’s also part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. The latest study makes no mention of the Gulf Stream, specifically, but because it is part of this system, it would be impacted by such a collapse.
However, Goes told CBS News that wouldn’t disappear. The Gulf Stream is primarily driven by wind rather than temperature and salinity, as the AMOC as a whole is, meaning it would still function.
This image by NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center shows the temperature of the Gulf Stream along the U.S. East Coast. / Credit: NOAA Ocean Prediction Center
“We would have a Gulf Stream just if we had the wind, if we didn’t have this formation in the North Atlantic,” Goes said. “…So even if the AMOC collapses, we’ll still have a Gulf Stream, but it would be much weaker.”
What would happen if the AMOC shut down?
A collapse of the system was the inspiration for the 2004 disaster film “The Day After Tomorrow.” In the movie, ocean current systems stopped because of global warming, triggering another Ice Age.
But Ditlevsen said, “That’s not gonna happen.” The principle of it, however, is the same, he said.
“You get colder Europe, northern Atlantic region, which is maybe not nice for us living in Scandinavia because it will be more similar to what’s going on in Alaska,” he said.
“But worse is that, the heat that’s not coming here stays in the tropics, heating them even more,” he continued. “The livelihood of people in the tropics can be severely threatened by this. … These are climate changes that are going to happen very fast.”
The AMOC won’t collapse just yet, some say — but it is slowing
Even though Goes says the chances of the AMOC collapsing within the next few decades are low, the current system is at risk. In 2021, another study found that the system is the weakest it’s been in at least 1,600 years. Researchers found that the current has slowed down an “unprecedented” amount — 15% since 1950.
Other research has found that it could be reduced up to 45% within the next 70 years or so.
Goes said that even just a slowdown of the currents, and not a total collapse, could impact people around the world.
“Generally, when the AMOC weakens or collapses, you have a cooling of the North Atlantic because this heat wouldn’t be carried further north, and there’s a warming of the South Atlantic. This would shift the precipitation patterns further south,” he said. “And that could influence all the sub-Sahara, the African and South American continents in the tropical bands. It would have influence on the storms in the North Atlantic, in Europe.”
But it would also release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs 90% of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and without the current, the ocean won’t be able to absorb as much, Goes said, a situation that would only add to the already rampant global warming the planet is facing. It would also increase sea levels along the U.S. coast.
Urgent action could stop a slowdown
A drastic change or shutdown of the AMOC wouldn’t necessarily be detectable right away, Goes said. In fact, it could take 40 to 50 years to emerge.
“By the time we detect that, it will be too late,” he said. “We really need to act now. This is one of the tipping points of the world.”
Once a tipping point such as a slowdown or shutdown of the AMOC is passed, it could cause a cascade of impacts that could cause “irreversible and severe changes in the climate system,” according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Even though a full collapse of the AMOC within the next few decades isn’t probable, it is possible, Goes said, and it could come with high risk.
Scientists are continuing to monitor the system to learn what they can about its current state. But to help prevent a continued slowdown or a potential full shutdown, both Goes and Ditlevsen agreed that global emissions must be reduced drastically. Those emissions, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, are trapping heat in the atmosphere and causing sea ice to melt. When that ice melts, it adds fresh water to the AMOC, disrupting the salinity and temperature it relies on to move.
“If we stop our emissions, it will not collapse,” Ditlevsen said. “The disturbing part about this study is that we have to react much faster than we perhaps would like to do. … It’s yet another wake-up call or warning sign that we have to react faster than we do.”
