A strong early spring storm system will bring the chance of strong to severe storms and gusty winds on Saturday to Central Iowa.
There have been several waves of thunderstorms so far Saturday morning with an additional cluster lifting north through the mid morning hours. Behind this cluster of storms, things look to calm down temporarily, but the main “show” for severe weather looks most likely between 2-8 p.m. across our viewing area. The severity of these storms will depend on how much clearing and how warm and moist we get Saturday afternoon. All modes of severe weather will be possible.
Beyond this, the long range weather pattern will transition back into seasonably colder weather for Sunday into early next week with a chance of snow Sunday night into Monday morning as our active weather pattern continues.
Latest Forecast:
Today: Thunderstorms. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 61F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Tonight: Decreasing cloudiness and windy. Low 28F. Winds W at 20 to 30 mph.
Tomorrow: Mostly sunny skies during the morning hours will become overcast in the afternoon. High 42F. Winds NW at 10 to 20 mph.
Tomorrow Night: Snow in the evening will give way to lingering snow showers overnight. Low 23F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 70%. Snowfall around one inch.
A cease-fire was planned in the strategic Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and in Volnovakha on Saturday morning to allow for humanitarian evacuations. But the life-saving effort stalled amid reports that Russian shelling continued.
“The Russian side is not holding to the cease-fire and has continued firing on Mariupol itself and on its surrounding area,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office. “Talks with the Russian Federation are ongoing regarding setting up a cease-fire and ensuring a safe humanitarian corridor.”
Meanwhile, Russian media outlet RIA Novosti carried a claim from Russia’s defense ministry that the firing came from inside both communities against Russian positions.
Heavy fighting has raged for days in Mariupol. At a hospital, one father was seen sobbing over the body of his 16-year-old son — deaths that could have been prevented, Ukraine insists, if NATO enforced a no-fly zone over Ukraine. It decided against that on Friday, lest it risk a direct altercation with Russia, CBS News’ Chris Livesay reports.
Ukrainian President Zelensky said blood was on their hands. “From this day, all the people who die will die because of you,” he said.
Russia claims they’re not hitting civilians, releasing videos of missiles launching at precision targets. But on the ground the evidence tells a different story.
Now, front-line fighting is closing in on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. And Russian tactics are becoming more and more diabolical. NATO’s secretary general accused them of using banned weapons.
“We have seen the use of cluster bombs, which will be in violation of international law,” said Jens Stoltenberg.
Even nuclear power plants are in the crosshairs. U.S. officials said the world narrowly avoided a catastrophe during Russia’s siege of Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, one that Ukraine said could have been 10 times worse than the Chernobyl disaster.
ROME, March 5 (Reuters) – Italian police have seized villas and yachts worth 143 million euros ($156 million) from five high-profile Russians who were placed on sanctions lists following Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, the government said on Saturday. read more
The luxury properties were sequestered in some of Italy’s most prestigious retail estate locations – the island of Sardinia, by Lake Como and in Tuscany – while two superyachts were grabbed at their moorings in northern ports.
The police operations were part of a coordinated drive by Western states to penalise wealthy Russians and try to force President Vladimir Putin to withdraw his troops from Ukraine.
A list issued by Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s office showed the most valuable asset now in police hands is a 65 metre (215 ft) yacht, the “Lady M”, which has a price tag of 65 million euros and belonged to Russia’s richest man, Alexey Mordashov.
It was impounded in the port of Imperia.
A second luxury vessel, the Lena, was seized in the nearby port of Sanremo. It was worth some 50 million euros and was owned by Gennady Timchenko, whom Putin has described as one of his closet associates.
Billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov had a villa worth 17 million euros seized on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, while Oleg Savchenko, a member of the Russian parliament, had his 17th century house near the Tuscan city of Lucca, worth some 3 million euros, taken from him.
An undisclosed number of properties valued at 8 million euros were confiscated in Como from state TV host Vladimir Soloviev, who reportedly complained on Russian television when he found out last month he risked losing his Italian villas.
“But you told us that Europe has sacred property rights,” he was quoted saying by The Daily Beast.
Russian oligarchs have bought numerous villas in choice Italian settings over the past 20 years and sources have said more assets are expected to be seized in coming days.
Uzbekistan-born metals and telecoms tycoon Usmanov is well known in Italy for owning multiple properties on Sardinia, while Italian media say Mordashov owned a villa worth some 66 million euros ($72 million) on the same island.
Taking into account the assets of his whole family, Forbes magazine estimates that Mordashov had an estimated net worth of $29.1 billion before sanctions hit.
Mirko Idili, a coordinator of the CISL union in Sardinia, has warned that the sanctions and a reduced presence of rich Russians this summer could negatively affect the island’s economy and put more than 1,000 jobs at risk.
Italian banks were instructed by the Bank of Italy’s financial intelligence division on Friday to urgently let it know of all measures taken to freeze the assets of people and entities placed on the EU list. read more
Maps: Russia’s assault on Ukraine has been extensive with strikes and attacks across the entire country. Much of the Russian onslaught has focused on Kyiv, but the eastern city of Kharkiv — with 1.5 million residents — is also crucial.
A tanker full of gasoline was in the right lane when it slammed into the passenger side of a Massachusetts State Police trooper’s cruiser late Thursday, killing the trooper, 5 Investigates has learned.
According to sources, the cruiser driven by Bucci was changing lanes sharply toward the right shoulder when the tanker slammed into the passenger side of the cruiser just before midnight on the northbound side of Interstate 93 in Stoneham. The blue lights were activated on Bucci’s cruiser at the time.
The force of the impact pushed the cruiser off the roadway.
Massachusetts State Police Department Col. Christopher Mason said Bucci was trying to pull over to help a motorist in a disabled vehicle.
The driver of the tanker, which is owned by P.J. Murphy Transportation Co., was not injured and is cooperating with police, Mason said.
Sources connected to the investigation said this appears to be a tragic crash and the driver of the tanker is devastated.
“The company is working with investigators and are deeply saddened about the loss of the Trooper. Our hearts go out to her family,” said the founder of PJ Murphy Transportation.
Two good Samaritans pulled Bucci from the heavily-damaged cruiser, and a Stoneham Police officer who was in the area performed CPR before Bucci was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Investigators are waiting on toxicology results which are required by law but said the driver of the tanker did not appear to be impaired.
Bucci was assigned to the Medford barracks of the Massachusetts State Police Department. Prior to that, she was assigned to the Brookfield barracks after she graduated as a member of the 85th training troop in 2020.
In President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, racial justice issues were not a focus.
Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool/Getty Images
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Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool/Getty Images
In President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, racial justice issues were not a focus.
Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool/Getty Images
In President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress, in 2021, he pledged to root out systemic racism and to advance efforts to create a more equitable country. He said that the United States had “seen the knee of injustice on the neck of Black Americans” and declared that “now is our opportunity to make some real progress.”
Roughly one year later, Biden returned to Capitol Hill to again address Congress. This time, those issues were not the focus.
“From a president who said that he would make race equity a linchpin of his administration, he didn’t mention it,” Cliff Albright, a cofounder of the group Black Voters Matter, said on a panel with other progressives who were responding to Biden’s State of the Union address.
“I don’t think he said ‘race’ or even the word ‘Black’ once, even when he was talking about the first Black woman potential Supreme Court justice who he nominated. If you look at the transcript of the speech, he doesn’t use the word anywhere in the speech,” Albright added.
Black voters were key in sending Biden to the White House and giving Democrats majorities in both the House and the Senate. Now, some activists who worked to mobilize their communities amid the racial justice protests of 2020 and a global pandemic say Biden’s urgency and forceful language has been replaced by silence, as the president signals an election-year shift to the middle.
“You can’t say that it’s time for America to come together on race by ignoring race,” said Rashad Robinson, president of the racial justice group Color of Change.
During the speech, Biden made only passing mention of voting rights, an issue that energized the party in a yearlong push for federal legislation that ended in January. He made no mention of the fact that, if confirmed, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would be the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court in its 233-year history.
He did not renew calls for police reform legislation, an issue on which bipartisan talks broke down last fall. Instead, he directly rebutted persistent Republican attacks that Democrats want to “defund the police.”
Robinson said that the White House was making a political miscalculation by deemphasizing issues of equity and justice in such a high-profile moment.
He and some other activists and strategists say they worry that some core Democratic voters, including voters of color and young voters, might not be as energized this year because of failures to make good on Biden’s campaign promises on police reform, voting rights and other issues.
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted ahead of the State of the Union found that 54% of respondents said the president is not fulfilling his campaign promises.
“Racial justice is not charity. It’s not the thing that a president should do to be nice to Black and brown folks. Racial justice is strategy,” Robinson said. “The quicker the White House and other folks recognize the strategic power of engaging on racial justice to motivate, engage and deliver for the communities most impacted, the better off they will be and the better off the country will be.”
The “defund” rebuttal
Biden’s decision in his address to emphasize the need for more law enforcement funding — and to rebut calls for defunding the police — particularly stood out to some activists.
“We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities,” Biden said in a line that received a standing ovation from members of a deeply divided Congress.
Amara Enyia, the policy and research coordinator for the Movement for Black Lives, said that in the speech, Biden was addressing white moderates and conservatives, in a “betrayal” of the party’s base.
“Calling for funding the police is simply a political play to appease Republicans and to appease those who are afraid that their political futures may be on the line,” she said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters this week that Biden has never supported efforts to defund police departments, despite “attempts to mischaracterize his position and the position of, frankly, a number of his Democratic colleagues.”
Psaki also said that the president supports ensuring “police departments have the funding they need … but that there also needs to be steps that are taken to ensure there are accountability measures put in place. “
Democratic strategist Joel Payne said Biden’s speech was a “pretty clear course correction,” and that he was charting a middle-of-the-road course in an election year.
“It feels like the president has decided to kind of revert back into what some people might think of as the original Biden, the Biden that we saw in the Senate for three decades and the Biden who for most of his public, political career was thought as a scion of the middle,” Payne said.
He said that Biden’s comments on police funding were a “very purposeful thing that needed to be said out loud so not only the president, but the president’s allies could use that as a political chum.”
But Payne also said the White House omitted some big issues that could have excited Black voters who turned out in 2020 and who Democrats need to turn out again this year.
Enyia, of the Movement for Black Lives, warned that Biden and Democrats “have to care more about your base than you care about wooing Republicans.”
“If people don’t feel that their material conditions, their lives have improved over the last year, it’s going to be very hard to get them out to vote in the midterms. And that’s even more dangerous for the Democratic Party,” she said.
Fresh demands from Russia threatened to derail talks to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as Moscow said it wanted written guarantees that Ukraine-related sanctions won’t prevent it from trading broadly with Tehran under a revived pact.
The demands, made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday, came as Western and Iranian officials said they were near to reaching a deal to restore the nuclear pact, which lifted most international sanctions on Iran in exchange for tight but temporary restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programs.
“We ask the Russian side to stop the shelling, return to the cease-fire and allow us to create humanitarian columns so that children, women and the elderly can leave,” she said. She also asked Russia to allow humanitarian aid such as food and critical medication like insulin to reach these cities.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday asserted once again that Moscow, despite ample evidence to the contrary, wasn’t targeting Ukraine’s civilian population and said that Kyiv was deliberately obstructing the evacuation to keep civilians hostage, according to Tass news agency. He added that Kyiv hasn’t yet indicated when Ukrainian representatives would meet the Russian delegation for the third round of cease-fire talks.
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Underlining the severity of the emergency, at least 1.25 million civilians have left Ukraine since Russia invaded 10 days ago, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, sparking what the agency called the largest humanitarian crisis Europe has seen since World War II. The majority have fled west to the European Union. Poland, which borders western Ukraine, had received 787,300 since Feb. 24, including more than 100,000 on Friday, Polish border guards said.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which U.S. officials had forecast would lead to the capture of capital Kyiv within three days, has run into fierce Ukrainian resistance that caused large Russian losses in troops and equipment. Ukraine’s General Staff said Saturday it was holding the line on most fronts and was beginning a counteroffensive. To make up for these setbacks, Russia has increasingly resorted to indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas, particularly in Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol.
Russia’s army “has shown its true nature of a terrorist and coward, which is able to attack only the civilian population,” Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said.
In Kherson, the only Ukrainian regional capital occupied by Russia during the conflict, large protests against occupation forces erupted Saturday on the city’s central square. The regional government building was draped in a huge Ukrainian flag, and flag-waving protesters chanted “shame” at Russian troops, some of whom opened fire in the air, trying to disperse the rally.
At some point, according to footage from the city broadcast on Ukrainian TV, a man climbed atop a Russian armored vehicle, triumphantly waving Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow banner as the vehicle tried to move through the city’s streets.
Kherson is a largely Russian-speaking city. One of the reasons that Russian President Vladimir Putin cited as his justification for the war on Ukraine was the alleged discrimination of Ukraine’s Russian speakers. Most of the Russian shelling that destroyed residential blocks has targeted civilians in the country’s Russian-speaking areas. ́
Ukrainian and Russian delegations would meet for the third round of cease-fire talks only if there is progress in implementing the humanitarian corridors and other agreements reached in prior sessions, a Ukrainian negotiator said. He didn’t expect a quick cease-fire, saying that Mr. Putin believes he is winning—a posture that he said wouldn’t change until the West bans the imports of Russian oil and gas. “We have no illusions here, we are sitting across the table from people who want to exterminate us,” the negotiator said.
Mariupol is a major industrial city and port on the Azov sea, home to some 400,000 people. Volnovakha is a much smaller town to the north. Both belong to Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which Russia no longer acknowledges as part of Ukraine after recognizing the independence of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, a statelet Moscow created in one-third of that region in 2014.
The body of a teenager, fatally wounded by shelling, at a maternity hospital converted into a medical ward in Mariupol, Ukraine, this week.
Photo:
Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press
A building damaged by shelling this week in Mariupol, Ukraine.
Photo:
Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press
“Our main task has always been to protect our people. At a time when our hometown is under merciless fire by the occupiers, there is no choice but to allow its residents to leave Mariupol in safety,” the city’s mayor, Vadim Boychenko, said in a message to his constituents Saturday. He also thanked the city’s defenders for repelling nine days of Russian attacks.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s decision on Friday not to interfere in Russia’s air operations over Ukraine was a sign of weakness and division in the Western alliance that had “hypnotized itself” with fear of Moscow, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised address. He spoke after NATO Secretary-General
Jens Stoltenberg
ruled out involving the alliance in combat operations in Ukraine because such a move could spark a full-scale war between NATO’s members and Russia, which possesses a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons.
“All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you,” Mr. Zelensky said, adding that NATO’s refusal to act had given Moscow a “green light” to bomb Ukrainian cities and villages.
Ukrainian forces patrolling this week in Odessa, Ukraine’s biggest port.
Photo:
UKRAINIAN ARMED FORCES/REUTERS
A Ukrainian serviceman taking a break while patrolling on the outskirts of Kyiv on Friday.
Photo:
Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
Russia continued pounding residential areas in Kharkiv, Sumy and other Ukrainian cities on Saturday. A Russian shell hit railway cars in the town of Irpin west of Kyiv, making it impossible to evacuate local civilians by rail, local officials said. Heavy battles continued in the area.
One of the Ukrainian cease-fire negotiators, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, said at a news conference Friday in Lviv that Russia was seeking a diplomatic solution because it badly miscalculated the mood of the Ukrainian people. Moscow went to war thinking that only some 20% of Ukrainians are hostile to Russia, and the remaining 80% will welcome their Russian brothers with flowers, he said. In reality, he added, some 98% of Ukrainians are determined to fight the invasion.
In a sign of how Ukrainians are uniting against the Russian invaders, more than 66,000 Ukrainian men living abroad returned to the country to pick up arms since the war began, Mr. Reznikov, the defense minister, said.
Despite setbacks in the north, Russian forces made significant advances in southern Ukraine, fanning from the Crimean Peninsula to take Kherson, as well as the city of Enerhodar that houses Europe’s largest nuclear power station, and the Azov sea coastal cities of Berdyansk and Melitopol. Heavy combat continued overnight on the outskirts of Mykolayiv, a Black Sea city that is on the path to Odessa, Ukraine’s biggest port. Russian officials say their military operation is proceeding as planned and achieving the desired results.
Russia drew widespread condemnation after its forces caused a fire at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Enerhodar before taking control of the area, according to local authorities and international observers. That sparked fears that Moscow’s increasingly indiscriminate war could cause a global environmental disaster. Another nuclear power plant is located near Mykolayiv.
Mr. Podolyak said Kyiv had offered Russia to mutually agree not to conduct combat operations in zones within 30 kilometers of nuclear reactors. Russia didn’t accept that proposal, he said.
Kyiv residents building fortifications on Friday in the capital.
Photo:
Christopher Occhicone for The Wall Street Journal
People waiting to board a train to the Polish border on Friday in Lviv, Ukraine.
Photo:
Justyna Mielnikiewicz/MAPS for The Wall Street Journal
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in an interview with three European newspapers, called for the establishment of a system to ensure the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear-power plants and monitor radiation levels, adding that the Russian attack on the plant put the entire continent at risk.
The fire, extinguished Friday morning, erupted at the Zaporizhzhia power plant’s training facility, Ukraine’s emergency service said. None of the plant’s six reactors were affected and no radiation leaked, officials said. Both sides said Russian troops at the complex weren’t interfering with the plant’s Ukrainian staff.
The skirmish fanned fears of a repeat of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, which sent a vast plume of radioactive steam encircling the world and rendered the region surrounding the plant uninhabitable. Russian forces seized the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, which sits near the Belarus border, on the first day of the war and have since then been holding the staff hostage, preventing shift rotations, Ukrainian authorities said.
The U.S. is rushing shipments of Javelin antitank and Stinger antiaircraft missiles to Ukraine via neighboring countries, including via an airfield in southeastern Poland, according to Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr. McCaul is visiting Rzeszow, Poland, with seven other lawmakers in a delegation led by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.), the committee’s chairman.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was also visiting Rzeszow on Saturday, a week ago announced that the U.S. would provide up to $350 million in additional military aid to Ukraine, including “lethal defensive assistance” to help Kyiv resist Russian armored and airborne forces.
NATO countries are trying to replenish Ukraine’s stock of weapons in advance of what some officials fear is an effort by Moscow to overrun all of Ukraine and seal its borders.
“Eventually Russia is going to take over the whole country,” Mr. McCaul said, citing one possible scenario for the war.
A senior U.S. defense official said Friday that since Feb. 26, the U.S. had delivered to Ukraine $240 million in weaponry taken from U.S. military stocks.
The administration is asking Congress to provide additional military support to Ukraine. The U.S. has been working closely with Britain, Canada, Lithuania and Poland to coordinate security assistance to Ukraine, the defense official added. All told, 14 countries are providing such security assistance to Ukraine.
In December, the United States Congress approved a budget of $768 billion for the American military. But salaries and equipment manufacturing costs are far higher in the United States, which has prompted some analysts to suggest that China’s military budget is rapidly catching up in actual purchasing power.
The plan Mr. Li outlined suggests that China values economic growth more than trying to make potentially painful adjustments to shift the economy toward greater reliance on domestic consumer spending. Beijing has been trying, with limited success, to move the economy away from dependence on debt-fueled infrastructure and housing construction.
China had managed to reduce slightly last year its debt relative to economic output. It needed to do so because this ratio had climbed, during the first year of the pandemic, to a level that economists regarded as unsustainable.
But meeting this year’s growth target would require more borrowing, undoing most or all of the progress made last year in reducing the debt burden, said Michael Pettis, an economist with Peking University. He said that it was hard to see how China could break its dependence on achieving high growth targets at least partly through heavy borrowing.
Mr. Li acknowledged that the Chinese economy would face challenges this year, pointing to the sluggish recovery of consumption and investment, flagging growth in exports and a shortage of resources and raw materials. By the last three months of last year, the economy was growing only 4 percent.
Part of that economic slowdown reflected a series of government policy shifts aimed at reining in unsustainable expansion in some sectors. Housing speculation was discouraged. Stringent limits were imposed on the after-school tutoring industry. And national security agencies imposed tighter scrutiny on the tech sector.
When you turn on the heating in your home, you may not think much about where your energy comes from, let alone where the money you pay for it goes. For millions of people living in Europe, there’s a good chance that money is flowing to the Russian state — much of it into President Vladimir Putin’s war chest.
Russia has been building a network of natural gas pipelines throughout Europe since the 1960s. Washington has been warning its Western allies ever since that more Russian gas will only make Europeans more vulnerable to Moscow.
There are fears now that the Kremlin may turn off the supply of natural gas to the European Union, in retaliation for its support for Ukraine — Europe, among other allies, has been sending weapons and aid to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
It’s only been just over a week, but so far, Russia has let the gas flow. But that presents another problem.
Russia is earning hundreds of millions of dollars a day from its oil and gas exports, undermining the financial sanctions Western powers have introduced to choke off financing for Putin’s war effort. The European Union, Russia’s biggest gas customer, is now grappling with the reality that its energy spending has helped empower Putin to carry out a bloody war on its borders.
According to the European think thank Bruegel, with prices at record highs, the value of Russian natural gas exports to the European Union has soared to about €500 million ($545 million) every day. That’s up from about €200 million ($220 million) in February. Before the invasion, Russia was also exporting oil worth hundreds of millions a day to Europe.
EU leaders have been talking about reducing reliance on Russian gas for years. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki put it plainly last week. “We are buying, as [the] European Union, lots of Russian gas, lots of Russian oil. And President Putin is taking the money from us, from the Europeans. And he is turning this into aggression, invasion,” he told an EU summit, according to reports.
For gas alone, the 27-country bloc relies on Russia for 40% of its needs. By country, Germany is Russia’s biggest customer, relying on the nation for more than half of its gas, according to Bruegel.
In turn, Russia needs Europe’s money. Russian oil and gas revenues in 2021 were worth 9.1 trillion rubles, which in January this year converted to $119 billion, Reuters reports. That made up 36% of the country’s budget.
Moscow’s international reserves now stand at $630 billion, its highest ever, making for a huge war fund. But its financial firepower has been severely constrained by Western sanctions that analysts estimate have frozen about half of those assets.
Those sanctions are battering the Russian economy, but they haven’t yet targeted fossil fuel exports directly, so concerned are Western governments about soaring energy prices and the cost of living. Ultimately, they want Russian gas, at least, to keep flowing.
Oil is another story. While the price of benchmark Brent crude soared this week, trading at around $115 a barrel on Friday, Russia’s flagship Urals crude was offered at a discount of $18 a barrel, a sign that some buyers are shunning it.
Banks and traders fear getting caught up in financial sanctions, and shipping companies and insurers are worried about the risk to tankers in the Black Sea.
Besides, Europe can buy oil from elsewhere. Replacing Russia natural gas is more difficult.
Turning the heat down can save huge amounts of gas
Proponents of climate action have for years pushed for a plan to wean the world off natural gas, which is a potent planet-warming fossil fuel. It has taken an energy crisis and bloodshed in Ukraine to finally kick EU institutions into gear.
EU energy chief Kadri Simson said Thursday that the bloc will release its plan next week for reducing its reliance on Russian gas, and for speeding up the adoption of more renewable energy.
“Beyond the short term, ultimately … the only lasting solution is the Green Deal, boosting renewables and energy efficiency as fast as technically possible. So we are still far too dependent on fossil fuel imports,” she said at a press conference with the International Energy Agency.
Germany, which had aimed to transition to 100% renewables by 2040, has already brought its target forward by five years, since Russia invaded Ukraine last week.
The Ukraine crisis has also injected new urgency into conversations about whether the world can go on using as much energy as it does. Europe should be able to replace some of Russia’s gas supply, but cutting it out altogether simply isn’t an option for this heating season, experts told CNN previously. Even down the line, replacing Russian gas in full will be difficult.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol suggested that Europeans could turn down their thermostats as part of the solution.
“But who knows? It’s an unprecedented situation. I could imagine a kind of political campaign, a real push by European leaders saying, look, if you can help us by turning down 1 degree on your thermostat, it’s going to help. And you can see people uniting behind this, against Russian gas,” he told CNN. “But ultimately, you’ll need much more than this in response.”
One approach would be to replace around half the gas from other sources, McWilliams said. The United States is already shipping Iiquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe, and EU officials are also looking to countries like Azerbaijan and Qatar.
The other half will need to come from cutting demand, McWilliams said, especially as Europe prepares for next winter.
Heavy industries, like steelmaking and chemical production, will need to reduce their operations. Homeowners investing in solar panels and heat pumps could help take some pressure off heating systems.
Tara Connolly, a campaigner with the international NGO Global Witness who specializes in gas, says that Europe must launch an emergency program to insulate homes, replace gas boilers with heat pumps and accelerate the transition to renewable energy.
“It is abundantly clear that Europe’s gas dependence has provided Putin with the resources to engage in his bloody venture in Ukraine, whilst hampering Europe’s response,” she said. “This moment has shown that not only are fossil fuels wrecking the climate, they are contributing to a more volatile and dangerous world.”
CNN’s Charles Riley and Julia Horowitz contributed to this report.
South Carolina Republican defends his comments against Vladimir Putin on ‘Hannity.’
Sen. Lindsey Graham joined ‘Hannity’ to defend his comments against Vladimir Putin and discuss a resolution to declare him a war criminal.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: I’ve been a military prosecutor, defense attorney, judge for 30 something years. I’m going to introduce a resolution next week—I’ll give it to you on your show —declaring that Putin is a war criminal. It’s clear to me the world would be better off if the Russian people took Putin out tonight. The war in Ukraine would end and Russia would have freedom they don’t enjoy today. A steel curtain has descended upon the Russian people. What does that tell me? That Putin is afraid of his own people. Martial law has been virtually declared by Putin. I think Russian people are not buying what Putin is selling when it comes to the Ukraine and if the Ukrainian people continue to fight, as brave as they are, I think eventually the dam will break in Russia, but I want to say this crystal clear without apology, without equivocation. The world would be better off if Putin were gone tonight and the best way to end this war is not American boots on the ground, but for the Russian people to rise up, reclaim the honor of their country and take this guy out, Putin, by any means necessary and if you don’t understand that, you don’t understand this war and you don’t understand the world in which we live.
Both cities have been under heavy bombardment. The mayor of Mariupol had been pleading on Friday for humanitarian corridors to allow people to flee and bring in food and medical supplies. Mariupol has had no water, heat or electricity and is running out of food after coming under attack by Russian forces for the past five days, the mayor said. In Volnovakha, the attack has been so intense that dead bodies lie uncollected, those trapped in shelters are running out of supplies, and 90% of buildings are damaged or destroyed, local MP Dmytro Lubinets said.
March 4 (Reuters) – The United States and its allies heavily criticized Russia on Friday at the United Nations over its shelling and seizure overnight in Ukraine of Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, and some demanded that Moscow not let such an attack happen again.
Many of the Security Council’s 15 envoys expressed “grave concern” and shock, warning against the possibility of a repeat of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – a nuclear accident in Ukraine when it was part of then Soviet Union considered to be the worst in history.
They said the attack was against international humanitarian law and urged Moscow to refrain from any military operations targeting the nuclear facilities and allow Ukrainian personnel to be allowed onto the plant to carry out their work.
“The world narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe last night,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency meeting of the Security Council, convened following the seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine by Russian troops.
“Russia’s attack last night put Europe’s largest nuclear power plant at grave risk. It was incredibly reckless and dangerous. And it threatened the safety of civilians across Russia, Ukraine and Europe,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
As shells hit the area early on Friday, a blaze broke out in a training building – triggering a spasm of alarm around the world before the fire was extinguished and officials said the facility was safe. read more
Ukraine ambassador to the U.N. Sergiy Kyslytsya called for all Russian forces to be withdrawn from the plant and a no-fly zone over the country to protect the civilian population from air attacks.
A general view of the United Nations Security Council meeting after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S. February 28, 2022. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
Officials remained worried about the precarious circumstances, with Ukrainian staff operating under Russian control in battlefield conditions beyond the reach of administrators.
“France strongly condemns this attack on the integrity of a nuclear structure, which we need to guarantee,” Nicolas de Riviere said in his speech. “The results of the aggression of Russia against Ukraine are possibly devastating for human health and the environment,” he added.
United Kingdom ambassador to the United Nations Barbara Woodward said: “It must not happen again. Even in the midst of an illegal invasion of Ukraine, Russia must keep fighting away from and protect the safety and security of nuclear sites.”
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Raphael Grossi described the situation as “normal operations, but in fact there is nothing normal about this.”
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed or wounded and more than 1 million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russian began its invasion on Feb. 24. Western nations retaliated with sanctions that have plunged Russia into economic isolation.
Russia’s envoy to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia dismissed Western uproar over the nuclear power plant and called Friday’s Security Council meeting another attempt by Ukrainian authorities to create “artificial hysteria”.
“At present, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and adjacent territory are being guarded by Russian troops,” he said.
Separately, France and Mexico are working on a resolution to the U.N. Security Council next week that will address the humanitarian impact of Russia’s invasion, diplomats said.
A Lukoil gas station sign is seen Friday in New York City’s Brooklyn borough. Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, has called for an end to the war in Ukraine. The oil company is facing calls for boycotts.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
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Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
A Lukoil gas station sign is seen Friday in New York City’s Brooklyn borough. Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, has called for an end to the war in Ukraine. The oil company is facing calls for boycotts.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
The White House is considering a “range of options” when it comes to U.S. imports of Russian oil, including cutting imports, Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters on Friday.
“We are looking at options that we can take right now if we were to cut the U.S. consumption of Russian energy. But what’s really most important is that we maintain a steady supply of global energy,” Rouse said at a briefing. “We do not want to disrupt that market.”
Rouse addressed reporters amid calls to ban oil imports as Russia continues its war on Ukraine — and amid worries about gas prices.
Americans are already paying more for gas and could see additional increases as the bloody war for Ukraine’s sovereignty continues.
The current average price for a gallon of regular gas is $3.837, up from $2.745 a year ago, according to AAA.
On Thursday, San Francisco became the first major city in U.S. history to reach an average gas price of $5 a gallon, according to the website GasBuddy.
Russian oil currently accounts for about 10% of U.S. imports.
Some Democratic lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., want the U.S. to ban those imports altogether.
“I’m all for that,” Pelosi told reporters on Thursday when asked about Senate Democrats’ efforts to introduce legislation to prohibit Russian oil imports.
“Ban it. Ban the oil coming from Russia,” she said.
But the White House has said that restrictions on Russian oil would increase gasoline prices in the United States and abroad, hurting consumers and benefiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“There isn’t a strategic interest in reducing global oil supplies,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday. “We are looking at ways to reduce the import of Russian oil while also making sure that we are maintaining the global supply needs that are out there.”
Psaki said she wouldn’t predict exactly how the U.S. would accomplish reducing Russian oil imports, but that the White House remained engaged with Congress on the matter.
Madigan jokes and laughs, but at other times shows flashes of anger. He is, above all, focused. And more than 100 times, the legislative leader known for a long memory replies to questions with “I don’t remember,” “I don’t recall,” “I don’t know” or “I have no memory.”
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