Shell

Putin Declares Martial Law in Occupied Ukraine as Evacuation of Civilians Starts

Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian occupation officials were moving civilians out of Kherson on Wednesday, another sign that Moscow’s hold on the strategic southern Ukrainian city was slipping, as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sought to reassert control over that and other occupied regions by declaring martial law.

The move by Mr. Putin was an effort to tighten the Kremlin’s authority over Kherson and three other Ukrainian regions he recently claimed to annex, even as his army loses ground in those areas to Ukrainian forces and as Western allies dismiss the annexations as illegal.

As Russian proxy officials in Kherson said they would move as many as 60,000 civilians to the eastern side of the Dnipro River and shift its civilian administration there, they appeared to be girding for a battle for control of the region. Amid a weekslong Ukrainian counteroffensive, the pro-Kremlin leader in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said the relocations would protect civilians and help Russian forces fortify defenses to “repel any attack.”

Ukrainian officials dismissed the plans as “a propaganda show.” Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, accused the Russian proxies of scaring civilians with claims that Ukraine would shell the city. He called it “a rather primitive tactic, given that the armed forces do not fire at Ukrainian cities — this is done exclusively by Russian terrorists.”

Ukrainian forces have been advancing gradually for weeks along both sides of the river in Kherson, a region that Moscow seized early in the war and has declared part of Russia. Since late August, Ukrainian troops have damaged bridges near the city of Kherson, making it harder for Moscow to resupply the thousands of troops it has stationed there.

Western analysts have suggested that the Russian positions in and around the city are untenable without the bridges, and U.S. officials have said that Russian commanders have urged a retreat from Kherson, only to be overruled by Mr. Putin. But Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Kherson region has moved more slowly than its recent advances in the east, and it was far from clear whether its forces could soon mount a push to retake the city of Kherson.

On Tuesday, the general Mr. Putin appointed earlier this month to command the war in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, said he was ready to make “difficult decisions” about the military deployments in the Kherson region, without specifying what those decisions would entail.

Ukrainian officials have greeted the hints of a Russian pullback of at least civil administrators with caution, saying the announcements could be intended for internal Russian audiences, signaling commitment to protecting civilians or preparation for a Russian military action in the area. Videos released on Russian media showed lines of civilians apparently boarding ferries at a river port to evacuate to the eastern bank of the Dnipro.

The Kherson region spans both banks of the river, with the city of Kherson, the regional capital, lying on the western side. The western bank is an expanse of pancake-flat farmland crisscrossed by rivers and irrigation canals, and one of the most pivotal battlefields of the war.

Ukrainian troops had through the summer whittled away at Russian supply lines by firing American-provided precision guided rockets at the four bridges over the Dnipro River in areas Russia controls. All are now mostly destroyed.

In late August, Ukraine opened an offensive with ground troops, advancing in bloody, slow-moving combat through several dozen villages while driving the Russian forces backward, toward the Dnipro. The Russian announcements of evacuating civilians and the civil administration could signal a faltering of military defenses, presaging a Russian pullback from the western bank of the Dnipro River in what would be a major setback for Moscow — but could also be a ruse.

Mr. Saldo, a Ukrainian politician who had switched sides at the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, told the Russian state news agency RIA on Wednesday that all ministries would evacuate to the eastern bank. The occupation government earlier on Wednesday said it would evacuate from 50,000 to 60,000 civilians across the river and onward to the occupied peninsula of Crimea or into Russia. Residents risked artillery fire from the Ukrainian Army or flooding from the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River, Mr. Saldo said.

Correction:

Oct. 19, 2022

An earlier version of this article misidentified the location that Russian proxy officials in Kherson, Ukraine, said they would move as many as 60,000 civilians to. It is the eastern side of the Dnipro River, not the western side.

— Andrew E. Kramer and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

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An Uptick in Elder Poverty: A Blip, or a Sign of Things to Come?

“We’re getting more and more older people who lived through this experiment with do-it-yourself pensions, and they’re coming into this age group without the same kind of incomes that older people have,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at the New School who specializes in retirement policy. “I don’t think it’s a blip.”

Even though the share of elderly people officially below the poverty line is low by historical standards in the United States, it remains among the highest in the developed world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The average poverty rate for older Americans also masks far higher shares among more vulnerable groups, with nearly one in five Black and Hispanic women 65 or older falling below the official poverty threshold in 2021. It’s higher for single people, too — a reality forced on hundreds of thousands of older Americans whose spouses died of Covid-19.

The poverty rate is also not a bright line when it comes to financial hardship. It doesn’t take into account debt, which more seniors have accumulated since the Great Recession. Moreover, nearly one in four people 65 or older make less than 150 percent of the federal poverty line, or $19,494 on average for those living alone. Another measure, developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston and called the Elder Index, finds that it takes $22,476 for a single older person in good health with no mortgage to cover basic needs, with the cost escalating for renters and those with health problems.

“To some extent we’re splitting hairs when we talk about people who fall just above and just below, because they’re all struggling,” said Jan Mutchler, a demographer at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who helped devise the Elder Index. “The assumptions that go into what we’re calling hardship are just flawed.”

That’s true for Juanita Brown, 77, who lives on her own in Galax, a small town in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. A farmer’s daughter, she worked as a nanny, and then a certified nursing assistant, and then a preschool teacher. Her husband worked in the local textile industry, and after raising two children, they had built a substantial nest egg.

But then Ms. Brown’s mother developed Alzheimer’s disease and couldn’t support herself. Ms. Brown stopped working to take care of her, which cost another $500 per month in expenses. Her husband got prostate cancer, which required extended trips to the hospital in Winston-Salem, N.C.

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Iranian-made drones hit Ukraine’s Kyiv region for first time- officials

BILA TSERKVA/KYIV, Oct 5 (Reuters) – Dozens of firefighters rushed to douse blazes on Wednesday in a town near Ukraine’s capital Kyiv following multiple strikes caused by what local officials said were Iranian-made loitering munitions, often known as ‘kamikaze drones’.

Six drones hit a building overnight in Bila Tserkva, around 75 km (45 miles) south of the capital, said the governor of the Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba.

Ukraine has reported a spate of Russian attacks with Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones in the last three weeks, but the strike on Bila Tserkva was by far the closest to Kyiv.

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Iran denies supplying the drones to Russia, while the Kremlin has not commented.

“There was a roaring noise, a piercing sound. I heard the first strike, the second I saw and heard. There was a roar and then ‘boom’ followed by an explosion,” said 80-year-old Volodymyr, who lives across the street from the stricken building.

Other residents told Reuters they heard four explosions in quick succession, followed by another two over an hour later.

Ukrainian forces appear to have been caught on the back foot by the drones, which Kyiv says Moscow started using on the battlefield in September.

Speaking on television on Wednesday, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said the drones were launched from occupied areas in southern Ukraine, and that six further drones had been shot down before reaching their target.

“This is a new threat for all the defence forces (of Ukraine), and we need to use all available means to try to counter it,” Ihnat said, comparing the drone’s small size to an artillery shell.

The attacks left locals in Bila Tserkva shaken and seeking cover when subsequent air raid sirens sounded.

“It is beyond me what those Russians think. I do not know when we will manage to chase them from our territory. It is just tears and heartache for my Ukraine. That’s all I can say,” said 74-year-old Lyudmyla Rachevska.

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Reporting by Felix Hoske in Bila Tserkva and Max Hunder in Kyiv, writing by Max Hunder
Editing by Gareth Jones

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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47 People Charged For Stealing $250M In Minnesota Food Scheme

The defendants are accused of defrauding and stealing from a federal program that provides meals to low-income children.

Federal authorities have charged 47 people in what they’re calling the largest fraud scheme yet to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic by stealing and defrauding the government of $250 million.

Prosecutors say the defendants created companies that claimed to be offering food to tens of thousands of children across Minnesota, then sought reimbursement for those meals through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food nutrition programs. Prosecutors say few meals were actually served, and the defendants used the money to buy luxury cars, property and jewelry.

“This $250 million is the floor,” Andy Luger, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, said at a news conference. “Our investigation continues.”

Many of the companies that claimed to be serving food were sponsored by a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, which submitted the companies’ claims for reimbursement. Feeding Our Future’s founder and executive director, Aimee Bock, was among those indicted, and authorities say she and others in her organization submitted the fraudulent claims for reimbursement and received kickbacks.

Bock’s attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, said the indictment “doesn’t indicate guilt or innocence.” He said he wouldn’t comment further until seeing the indictment.

In an interview in January after law enforcement searched her home and offices, among other sites, Bock denied stealing money and said she never saw evidence of fraud.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice made prosecuting pandemic-related fraud a priority. The department has already taken enforcement actions related to more than $8 billion in suspected pandemic fraud, including bringing charges in more than 1,000 criminal cases involving losses in excess of $1.1 billion.

Federal officials repeatedly described the alleged fraud as “brazen,” and decried that it involved a program intended to feed children who needed help during the pandemic. Michael Paul, the agent in charge of the Minneapolis FBI office, called it “an astonishing display of deceit.”

Luger said the government was billed for more than 125 million fake meals, with some defendants making up names for children by using an online random name generator. He displayed one form for reimbursement that claimed a site served exactly 2,500 meals each day Monday through Friday — with no children ever getting sick or otherwise missing from the program.

“These children were simply invented,” Luger said.

He said the government has so far recovered $50 million in money and property and expects to recover more.

The defendants in Minnesota face multiple counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and bribery. Luger said some of them were arrested Tuesday morning.

According to court documents, the alleged scheme targeted the USDA’s federal child nutrition programs, which provide food to low-income children and adults. In Minnesota, the funds are administered by the state Department of Education, and meals have historically been provided to kids through educational programs, such as schools or day care centers.

The sites that serve the food are sponsored by public or nonprofit groups, such as Feeding Our Future. The sponsoring agency keeps 10% to 15% of the reimbursement funds as an administrative fee in exchange for submitting claims, sponsoring the sites and disbursing the funds.

But during the pandemic, some of the standard requirements for sites to participate in the federal food nutrition programs were waived. The USDA allowed for-profit restaurants to participate, and allowed food to be distributed outside educational programs. The charging documents say the defendants exploited such changes “to enrich themselves.”

The documents say Bock oversaw the scheme and that she and Feeding Our Future sponsored the opening of nearly 200 federal child nutrition program sites throughout the state, knowing that the sites intended to submit fraudulent claims. “The sites fraudulently claimed to be serving meals to thousands of children a day within just days or weeks of being formed and despite having few, if any staff and little to no experience serving this volume of meals,” according to the indictments.

One example described a small storefront restaurant in Willmar, in west-central Minnesota, that typically served only a few dozen people a day. Two defendants offered the owner $40,000 a month to use his restaurant, then billed the government for some 1.6 million meals through 11 months of 2021, according to one indictment. They listed the names of around 2,000 children — nearly half of the local school district’s total enrollment — and only 33 names matched actual students, the indictment said.

Feeding Our Future received nearly $18 million in federal child nutrition program funds as administrative fees in 2021 alone, and Bock and other employees received additional kickbacks, which were often disguised as “consulting fees” paid to shell companies, the charging documents said.

According to an FBI affidavit unsealed earlier this year, Feeding Our Future received $307,000 in reimbursements from the USDA in 2018, $3.45 million in 2019 and $42.7 million in 2020. The amount of reimbursements jumped to $197.9 million in 2021.

Court documents say the Minnesota Department of Education was growing concerned about the rapid increase in the number of sites sponsored by Feeding Our Future, as well as the increase in reimbursements.

The department began scrutinizing Feeding Our Future’s site applications more carefully, and denied dozens of them. In response, Bock sued the department in November 2020, alleging discrimination, saying the majority of her sites were based in immigrant communities. That case has since been dismissed.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Live Updates: Zelensky Visits Newly Reclaimed City as Ukraine’s Blitz Presses On

WASHINGTON — Russia has covertly given at least $300 million to political parties, officials and politicians in more than two dozen countries since 2014, and plans to transfer hundreds of millions more, with the goal of exerting political influence and swaying elections, according to a State Department summary of a recent U.S. intelligence review.

“The Kremlin and its proxies have transferred these funds in an effort to shape foreign political environments in Moscow’s favor,” the document said. It added, “The United States will use official liaison channels with targeted countries to share still classified information about Russian activities targeting their political environments.”

The State Department document was sent as a cable to American embassies around the world on Monday to summarize talking points for U.S. diplomats in conversations with foreign officials.

Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, confirmed at a news conference on Tuesday that the findings on Russia were the result of work by U.S. intelligence agencies. He added that Russian election meddling was “an assault on sovereignty,” similar to Russia’s war on Ukraine. “In order to fight this, in many ways we have to put a spotlight on it,” he said.

The State Department cable and release of some of the intelligence findings amount to an initial effort by the Biden administration to use intelligence material to expose the scope of Russian interference in global political processes and elections, and to rally other nations to help combat it.

U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate who defeated Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. Its methods included the use of cyberoperations to spread online disinformation. U.S. intelligence officials also found that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized a campaign to try to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he ran for office against Mr. Trump in 2020.

The new document says that a range of Russian agencies and individuals carry out the global operations, including the Federal Security Service and other security agencies, as well as business figures.

The document named two men, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Aleksandr Babakov, both close associates of Mr. Putin, as involved in the influence or interference campaigns. In April, the Justice Department charged Mr. Babakov, who is also a Russian lawmaker, and two other Russian citizens with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions and conspiring to commit visa fraud while running an “international foreign influence and disinformation network to advance the interests of Russia.”

The Russians pay in cash, cryptocurrency, electronic funds transfers and lavish gifts, the document said. They move the money through a wide range of institutions to shield the origins of the financing, a practice called using cutouts. Those institutions include foundations, think tanks, organized crime groups, political consultancies, shell companies and Russian state-owned enterprises.

The money is also given secretly through Russian Embassy accounts and resources, the document said.

In one Asian country, the Russian ambassador gave millions of dollars in cash to a presidential candidate, the document said. U.S. agencies have also found that Russia has used false contracts and shell companies in several European countries in recent years to give money to political parties.

“Some of Russia’s covert political financing methods are especially prevalent in certain parts of the world,” the document said. It added, “Russia has relied on state-owned enterprises and large firms to move funds covertly across a number of regions including Central America, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and on think tanks and foundations that are especially active across Europe.”

As of last year, the document said, a Russian business figure was trying to use pro-Russian think tanks in Europe to support far-right nationalist parties. The document warned that in the coming months, Russia might use its “covert influence tool kit,” including secret political financing, across broad swaths of the globe to try to undermine the American-led sanctions on Russia and to “maintain its influence in these regions amid its ongoing war in Ukraine.”

Although U.S. intelligence agencies have been studying Russian global election interference and influence for years, the intelligence review was ordered by senior administration officials this summer, U.S. officials said. Some of the findings were recently declassified so they could be shared widely. The review did not examine Russian interference in U.S. elections, which intelligence agencies had been scrutinizing in other inquiries, a U.S. official said.

Officials say one aim of the U.S. campaign to reveal details about Russian political interference and influence is to strengthen democratic resilience around the world, a pillar of President Biden’s foreign policy. Administration officials are focused on ensuring that nations that took part in last year’s Summit for Democracy, which Mr. Biden held in Washington, can buttress their democratic systems. The administration plans to convene a second summit soon.

The State Department summary listed measures that the United States and partner nations could take to mitigate Russia’s political interference campaigns, including imposing economic sanctions and travel bans on known “financial enablers” and “influence actors.”

The department also recommended that countries coordinate intelligence sharing, improve foreign investment screening, strengthen investigative capabilities into foreign financing of political parties and campaigns, and enforce and expand foreign agent registration rules.

It said governments should also expel Russian intelligence officers found to be taking part in related covert financing operations.

The State Department said in the summary that it was urging governments to guard against covert political financing “not just by Russia, but also by China and other countries imitating this behavior.”

Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.

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Ukraine’s Nuclear Plant Partly Goes Offline Amid Fighting

Over the past several weeks, Ukraine and Russia have traded blame over shelling near the plant.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Saturday that the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine was disconnected to its last external power line but was still able to run electricity through a reserve line amid sustained shelling in the area.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi said in a statement that the agency’s experts, who arrived at Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, were told by senior Ukrainian staff that the fourth and last operational line was down. The three others were lost earlier during the conflict.

But the IAEA experts learned that the reserve line linking the facility to a nearby thermal power plant was delivering the electricity the plant generates to the external grid, the statement said. The same reserve line can also provide backup power to the plant if needed, it added.

“We already have a better understanding of the functionality of the reserve power line in connecting the facility to the grid,” Grossi said. “This is crucial information in assessing the overall situation there.”

In addition, the plant’s management informed the IAEA that one reactor was disconnected Saturday afternoon because of grid restrictions. Another reactor is still operating and producing electricity both for cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for households, factories and others through the grid, the statement said.

The Zaporizhzhia facility, which is Europe’s largest nuclear plant, has been held by Russian forces since early March, but its Ukrainian staff are continuing to operate it.

The Russian-appointed city administration in Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia plant is located, blamed an alleged Ukrainian shelling attack on Saturday morning for destroying a key power line.

“The provision of electricity to the territories controlled by Ukraine has been suspended due to technical difficulties,” the municipal administration said in a post on its official Telegram channel. It wasn’t clear whether electricity from the plant was still reaching Russian-held areas.

Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Kremlin-appointed regional administration said on Telegram that a shell had struck an area between two reactors. His claims couldn’t be immediately verified.

Over the past several weeks, Ukraine and Russia have traded blame over shelling near the plant, while also accusing each other of attempts to derail the visit by IAEA experts, whose mission is meant to help secure the site. Grossi said their presence at the site is “a game changer.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian troops launched another attempt to seize the plant late Friday, despite the presence of the IAEA monitors, sending 42 boats with 250 special forces personnel and foreign “mercenaries” to attempt a landing on the bank of the nearby Kakhovka reservoir.

The ministry said that four Russian fighter jets and two helicopter gunships destroyed about 20 boats and the others turned back. It added that the Russian artillery struck the Ukrainian-controlled right bank of the Dnieper River to target the retreating landing party.

The ministry claimed that the Russian military killed 47 troops, including 10 “mercenaries” and wounded 23. The Russian claims couldn’t be independently verified.

The plant has repeatedly suffered complete disconnection from Ukraine’s power grid since last week, with the country’s nuclear energy operator Enerhoatom blaming mortar shelling and fires near the site.

Local Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of pounding two cities that overlook the plant across the Dnieper river with rockets, also an accusation they have made repeatedly over the past weeks.

In Zorya, a small village about 12 miles from the Zaporizhzhia plant, residents on Friday could hear the sound of explosions in the area.

It’s not the shelling that scared them the most, but the risk of a radioactive leak in the plant.

“The power plant, yes, this is the scariest,” said Natalia Stokoz, a mother of three. “Because the kids and adults will be affected, and it’s scary if the nuclear power plant is blown up.”

Oleksandr Pasko, a 31-year-old farmer, said “there is anxiety because we are quite close.” Pasko said that the Russian shelling has intensified in recent weeks.

During the first weeks of the war, authorities gave iodine tablets and masks to people living near the plant in case of radiation exposure.

Recently, they’ve also distributed iodine pills in Zaporizhzhia city, about 31 miles from the plant.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to take the role of “facilitator” on the issue of the Zaporizhzhia plant, in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, according to a statement from the Turkish presidency.

The Ukrainian military on Saturday morning reported that Russian forces overnight pressed their stalled advance in the country’s industrial east, while also trying to hold on to areas captured in Ukraine’s northeast and south, including in the Kherson region cited as the target of Kyiv’s recent counteroffensive.

It added that Ukrainian forces repelled around a half-dozen Russian attacks across the Donetsk region, including near two cities singled out as key targets of Moscow’s grinding effort to capture the rest of the province. The Donetsk region is one of two that make up Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas, alongside Luhansk, which was overrun by Russian troops in early July.

Separately, the British military confirmed in its regular update Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces were conducting “renewed offensive operations” in the south of Ukraine, advancing along a broad front west of the Dnieper and focusing on three axes within the Russian-occupied Kherson region.

“The operation has limited immediate objectives, but Ukraine’s forces have likely achieved a degree of tactical surprise; exploiting poor logistics, administration and leadership in the Russian armed forces,” the U.K. defense ministry tweeted.

Russian shelling killed an 8-year-old child and wounded at least four others in a southern Ukrainian town close to the Kherson region, Ukrainian officials said.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Live Updates: Russia Claims Ukraine Killed Daria Dugina

Credit…Signmyrocket.com

Artem Poliukhovych, a 32-year-old Ukrainian, had been thinking for a year about how to propose to his girlfriend. He considered kneeling on a beach on a tropical island or asking her to marry him on a hot-air balloon ride. In the end, he decided to have the proposal written on a Soviet-era shell targeting the Russian military.

“It can be considered in some way an aggressive proposal,” he said.

She said “yes.” Her enthusiasm is matched by other people around the world. Several hundred have paid thousands of dollars to have their words written on shells used by the Ukrainian Army.

War is often pervaded with gallows humor, and soldiers have long scrawled graffiti on munitions meant for the enemy. Selling such messages marks an inventive, if macabre, twist on the practice, another way Ukrainians have found to raise money for their underdog resistance to Russia’s invasion.

One shell bore the tag “This one’s a gay bomb.” Another read, “Fighting fascism is a full-time job.” And another was signed: “From Silicon Valley with love.”

These latest tags were ordered from Signmyrocket.com, the most prominent of several fund-raising initiatives in Ukraine’s burgeoning personalized shells sector.

The fund-raiser, which calls itself “artillery mailing,” was created by Anton Sokolenko, a 21-year-old information technology student, to compensate for a drop in donations to the Center for Assistance to the Army, Veterans and Their Families, the charity for which he had started volunteering in March.

He initially ran it on a Telegram channel, and then moved to a website to allow international costumers to gain access to it. Now, he said, requests come from all over the world, with more than 95 percent of the writing in English. The website says it has raised more than $200,000 dollars in donations in less than three months for the charity.

Buyers get pictures of their message on a shell. For a higher price, the charity also provides videos as the shell is launched — “to show their friends or post on social media,” Mr. Sokolenko said.

On the site, users can pick a weapon, type in a message and then proceed to check out. Prices range from $150 for a message on a Howitzer shell to $3,000 for one written on the side of a tank’s turret.

The site says the charity has delivered more than 200 permanent markers to soldiers, who offered to write on the weapons and photograph the result in return for cars, drones or optical equipment that the charity has purchased across Europe with the profits. Mr. Sokolenko said that the charity had many contacts in the military, and that he had reached soldiers through word of mouth.

A spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

For some people, buying a message is a way to help the Ukrainian Army and to feel directly involved in the war effort. For others, it is a chance to express their anger at Russia.

Mr. Sokolenko described the process as an informal way for military platoons to support themselves.

“It’s not very official, and not very allowed,” Mr. Sokolenko said. “But they kind of need to do it because we can give them stuff that our government cannot give them right now.”

Cristina Repetti, 32, who lives in Chicago, said that she was shocked by the aggression of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and that she had commissioned several messages on shells for friends and family members.

She expressed some discomfort with the idea that the weapons could be used to kill soldiers who might be at war against their will, but her desire to help Ukraine was bigger. “I can’t just sit there and do nothing”

On one shell, she commissioned the message “I love you Vinny,” in the hopes of getting her boyfriend back.

Credit…Signmyrocket.com

“He is into dark romantic things,” she said. “And I thought that putting our love on a shell that is going to hit a Russian tank would really make an impression.”

— Emma Bubola

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Rent Prices Are Skyrocketing Nationwide

Many Americans are frustrated with inflation and having to shell out hundreds of extra dollars for rent as it increases across the country.

Rent prices continue to hit historic highs as inflation takes its toll on the economy.

“At night, I just lay there and pray that this is eventually going to start slowing down with this inflation,” said Anthony Erringer, a Tucson, Arizona resident.

It’s a nationwide nightmare.

“Three times the amount of rent these days. People aren’t even making the amount of the rent,” said Shaneika Cooper, a Las Vegas resident.

Some tenants are now shelling out hundreds more a month.

“I was completely astonished to see my rent going up from $2,895 to $3,500,” said Rosieangela Escamilla, a San Diego resident. From San Diego, California to Newport, Kentucky rent is increasing.

“It just feels like you have nowhere to go and nowhere to turn to,” said Catherine Chandler, a Newport, Kentucky resident.

According to a new survey from Freddie Mac, nearly 60% of renters said they were hit with rent increases this past year.

Those increases hit upwards of 10%.

And a majority reported that their wages did not increase at a suitable rate.

Soaring rent with historically high housing costs is a one-two punch for anyone looking for an affordable place to live, putting more Americans at risk for homelessness.

“For a person like myself, or someone who makes less than $30,000 a year, affordable is out of reach,” said Lewis Bass, a Detriot, Michigan resident.

The key factors are landlords passing on their rising costs to their tenants.

On top of that, some are capitalizing on the strong demand for housing, especially in new market hot spots where people migrated during the pandemic for remote work.

That demand hikes prices for everyone and changes the types of housing on offer.

Michael Hicks is a professor of Economics at Ball State University.

“The pressure for them to go up is now lower. So the landlord can no longer sell their property as easy, and they aren’t facing any growth in cost,” said Hicks.

A decrease in rent prices is likely a ways off.

But experts say they will become more affordable by stabilizing.

In the meantime, renters are doing what they can to stay afloat and keep their home sweet home.

“People like me that have been here for years and not necessarily want to buy, but have been part of the community. It’s like we’re feeling pushed out,” said Crystal Jones, a Carmel, Indiana resident.

Source: newsy.com

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Ukraine Live Updates: U.N. Chief Visits Lviv to Assess Progress in Grain Exports

Video player loading — Ukrainian officials said the strike had killed at least six civilians and had wounded 16 others in a residential neighborhood in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.CreditCredit…Reuters

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia unleashed a furious barrage of rocket attacks on the northeastern city of Kharkiv overnight Wednesday and Thursday morning, destroying a dormitory for the deaf, pulverizing scores of residential homes and killing at least 15 civilians, Ukrainian officials said.

The civilian death toll in the city over the course of the six-month war has now surpassed 1,000, according to local officials.

“Last night became one of the most tragic for Kharkiv Region during the entire war,” the head of the Kharkiv regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, said on Thursday morning. Rescue crews were still racing between multiple blast sites, he said, adding that the casualty count could grow.

The assaults began at around 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, when a Russian cruise missile slammed into a dormitory that was home to older people and people with hearing impairments, according to Ukrainian officials. At least 10 civilians were killed and another 17 wounded, including an 11-year-old child.

Because some of those living in the building were deaf, Ukrainian officials said, they might not have heard the wail of the alarm warning of the incoming missile, or the shouts of firefighters calling out for survivors.

Video of the rescue efforts showed relatives of people inside one destroyed building screaming, crying and calling out for loved ones. “My grandmother is there,” one man shouts. There was no reply.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said it had struck a target in Kharkiv housing foreign mercenaries, but offered no evidence to support the claim.

On Wednesday night, after the strike on the dormitory, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine denounced Russia for a “vile and cynical attack on civilians.” He said it was the latest evidence that Moscow, struggling on the battlefield, was targeting civilians to advance its ultimate goal of destroying the Ukrainian state.

A few hours after Mr. Zelensky spoke, a rocket slammed into the Krasnograd neighborhood of Kharkiv and more than 10 buildings were damaged, officials said. At least two civilians were killed and two others injured, including a 12-year-old child.

Around 4:30 a.m., eight more rockets were fired from the Russian city of Belgorod in the direction of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said, hitting buildings in at least two city districts. Two missiles hit a tram depot. At least three civilians were killed and 18 more wounded, including two children, in those strikes, officials said.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which lies 25 miles from the Russian border, has been bombarded by a nearly constant stream of artillery, rockets and missiles since Moscow launched its invasion in February. Early in the war, Russian forces tried to surround and capture the city but failed, and were eventually pushed back across the border by Ukrainian forces.

Still, Ukrainian and Western military analysts say, the Kremlin has never given up on its goal of capturing the city. Lacking the ground forces to mount a sustained offensive, it has sought to pummel the city into submission.

Earlier on Wednesday, the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said that the city’s ability to function despite the Russian attacks was one reason that Moscow continued to try to bring its residents to their knees.

“Russian troops shell Kharkiv with such hatred, with such aggressiveness. Such cynical destruction of the city occurs because Kharkiv does not give up,” he said. “Our task is to withstand.”

— Marc Santora

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Oil industry gears up to tap U.S. climate bill for carbon capture projects

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A Shell employee walks through the company’s new Quest Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) facility in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada, October 7, 2021. REUTERS/Todd Korol

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Aug 15 (Reuters) – Tax credits in the $430 billion U.S. climate and tax bill set to be signed into law this week will kickstart carbon sequestration projects, say oil and gas proponents, offsetting startup costs for some of the anti-pollution initiatives.

Carbon capture and storage hubs that take gases from chemical, power and gas producers and oil refineries have become the energy industry’s preferred way to combat climate warming. But large-scale development has snagged over costs and lack of guaranteed revenue.

The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which was approved by lawmakers last week, provides a tax credit of up to $85 per ton for burying carbon dioxide produced by industrial activity, and up to $180 per ton for pulling carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air.

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The bill also greenlit new leases of federal land for oil and gas development, without considerations of climate impacts. Importantly, it automatically approved high bids from a November 2021 offshore auction that included a drilling project intended for a carbon-burying scheme. read more

“It’s a pretty big deal,” said Tim Duncan, chief executive of Talos Energy Inc (TALO.N) , an offshore oil and gas producer that is building a business around carbon sequestration. Talos has launched four projects and signed up big backers including Freeport LNG and Chevron Corp (CVX.N) .

“This is going to unlock a significant amount of emissions that could become economic for capture,” added Chris Davis, a senior vice president at Milestone Carbon, which develop carbon projects for mid-sized companies.

CONTINUED STRUGGLES

Over the last two decades, companies have tentatively tried and largely struggled to make a business from using CO2 to boost oil production. More recently, big investors want firms to address global warming, and the oil industry aims to show it takes climate change seriously.

There are carbon sequestration hubs proposed around the world – in Alberta in Canada, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Huizhou, China. Another type of carbon capture, which directly catches the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere rather than industrial production, also are being considered. read more

A massive expansion of carbon capture is vital to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, according to energy consuming nations advocate, the International Energy Agency (IEA). The sector must go to storing 7.6 billion tonnes a year from around 40 million tonnes currently. read more

The new tax incentives mean “a number of small to mid-scale projects have a better chance of becoming economical,” said Frederik Majkut, a senior vice president for energy services company Schlumberger’s (SLB.N) Carbon Solutions business.

There are some 5 billion tons of carbon released in the United States annually that could be captured by these sequestration schemes. Previously, very little of that could be captured economically, said Milestone’s Davis said.

“With $85 a ton, I think you can get another billion tons,” he said. “It starts to look like an attractive investment.”

BIGGER PROJECTS

Larger projects, such as that advanced by Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) , which floated a $100 billion plan for a massive carbon hub serving refineries and chemical plants, will need carbon taxes and other initiatives, said analysts.

Widespread deployment of these industrial hubs will require additional policy support from the Biden administration, an Exxon spokesperson said of the bill’s climate provisions.

Smaller projects are more likely to advance but still face hurdles including underground pore rights and permits, said Tracy Evans, chief executive of CapturePoint, which struck a partnership with pipeline operator Energy Transfer(ET.N) for a Louisiana hub.

Currently, permitting for carbon injection wells can take years to secure. And while offshore auctions cover large blocks, aggregating smaller tracts of private land owners onshore can slow the process, he said.

“It will drive more investment in the space for sure,” Evans said.

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Reporting by Liz Hampton in Denver, additional reporting by Sabrina Valle in Houston
Editing by Marguerita Choy

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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CONTINUED STRUGGLES

BIGGER PROJECTS

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