Europe's largest nuclear power plant on fire after Russian attack, says local mayor

BORODYANKA/LVIV, Ukraine—The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the largest of its kind in Europe, was on fire early on Friday after an attack by Russian troops, the mayor of the nearby town of Energodar said.

There has been fierce fighting between local forces and Russian troops, Dmytro Orlov said in an online post, adding that there had been casualties without giving details.

Earlier, Ukrainian authorities reported Russian troops were stepping up efforts to seize the plant and had entered the town with tanks.

"As a result of continuous enemy shelling of buildings and units of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is on fire," Orlov said on his Telegram channel, citing what he called a threat to world security. He did not give details.

Reuters could not immediately verify the information, including the potential seriousness of any fire.

The invasion of Ukraine is entering its ninth day. Thousands are thought to have died or been wounded as the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two unfolds, creating 1 million refugees, hits to Russia's economy, and fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.

Russia has already captured the defunct Chernobyl plant, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.

On Thursday, the United States and Britain announced sanctions on more oligarchs, following on from EU measures, as they ratcheted up the pressure on the Kremlin.

Included was Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov, the founder of mining company Metalloinvest.

Visa restrictions will be imposed on 19 Russian oligarchs, their family members and associates, the White House said.

Sanctions have "had a profound impact already," said US President Joe Biden.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation" that is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its neighbor's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists. It denies targeting civilians.

-reuters-

Brazil reports 3,650 dead from COVID-19 in one day

Brazil set a new daily COVID-19 death toll record of 3,650 on Saturday, the health ministry said, as the pandemic spins out of control in Latin America's largest economy.

Since February, Brazil has seen record after record in fatalities and new cases of infection as the country second hardest hit anywhere in the world, after the United States, with more than 307,000 dead from the pandemic.

It broke through the threshold of 3,000 fatalities in one day on Tuesday.

The average daily toll over the past week is 2,400 -- more than triple what it was in early January.

The toll has risen steadily due to factors including people's abandoning social distancing norms and a new virus variant that emerged here and is believed to be more contagious than the original strain.

Another big problem is that the country's vaccination drive is moving slowly. So far only 5.9 percent of the population of 212 million has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine.

President Jair Bolsonaro announced this week he was launching a crisis committee to deal with the pandemic, a change of course amid mounting pressure over a situation he has repeatedly minimized.

The announcements appeared to do little to tame criticism of Bolsonaro, who has flouted expert advice on lockdowns and face masks, pushed a drug regimen that scientists say does not work, and spoken out against vaccines.

Agence France-Presse

Australian Prime Minister jeered by angry bushfire victims

MELBOURNE - Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison faced enraged hecklers and an angry firefighter in a town ravaged by bushfires, piling pressure on the leader amid an unprecedented crisis that has killed at least 18 people.

A firefighter refused to shake Morrison's hand when he visited the town of Cobargo in New South Wales state on Thursday.

Video footage showed Morrison tried to grab the man's hand, who then got up and walked away, sparking an apology from the prime minister. A local fire official explained that the man had lost his house while defending others' homes.

Another man blasted Morrison for watching fireworks over Sydney Harbor from his official waterfront mansion, Kirribilli House, while fires raged further south on New Year's Eve.

"You won't be getting any votes down here, buddy. You're an idiot," the man shouted.

"I don't see Kirribilli burning after the fireworks," he screamed.

Morrison said on Friday he didn't take the attacks personally.

"I understand the hurt, the anger and the frustration," he said in an interview on 3AW radio.

"Whether they're angry with me or they're angry about their situation, all I know is that they're hurting and it's my job to be there to try and offer some comfort and support," he said.

Morrison had walked away from a Cobargo woman who urged him to provide more funding to the town and state firefighters.

"This is not fair. We're totally forgotten about down here. Every single time this area has a flood or a fire, we get nothing," another woman shouted as Morrison drove away.

Even a state politician from his own Liberal party whose seat is in the region took a swipe at the prime minister.

"To be honest, the locals probably gave him the welcome he probably deserved," said New South Wales transport minister Andrew Constance.

The prime minister, who won a surprise election victory last May, ended 2019 on a sour note with fires raging across 5 states while he took off on a family holiday to Hawaii. Facing criticism, he cut the holiday short and apologized for making a mistake.

He urged locals and holidaymakers, who on Thursday were forced to evacuate fire ravaged areas, to be patient, but he is facing criticism for not doing enough to fight the underlying causes of the bushfires or combating the crisis.

"The challenge now is the scale of what we're seeing across several states now. Those resources are being stretched," he said on local radio.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

UN agencies: 45-M people in southern Africa facing food crisis

CAPE TOWN - A record 45 million people across southern Africa face severe food shortages in the next six months, with around a quarter of them currently enduring drought-induced "crisis" food insecurity, three United Nations agencies warned on Thursday.

The 16-member Southern African Development Community is in the grips of a severe drought, as climate change wreaks havoc in impoverished countries struggling to cope with extreme natural disasters, such as Cyclone Idai which devastated Mozambique earlier this year.

"We've had the worst drought in 35 years in central and western areas during the growing season," said Margaret Malu, acting regional director for southern Africa at the World Food Program (WFP).

"We must meet the pressing emergency food and nutrition needs of millions of people, but also invest in building the resilience of those threatened by ever more frequent and severe droughts, floods and storms," Malu said in a statement.

WFP, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) appealed jointly for urgent funding to help mitigate the effects of climate change in Africa.

Southern Africa's temperatures are rising at twice the global average, according to the International Panel on Climate Change, and the region includes six of the nine African countries set to be hardest-hit by adverse weather in coming years - DR Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

"With the region so prone to shocks and afflicted by high rates of chronic hunger, inequality and structural poverty, climate change is an existential emergency which must be tackled with the utmost urgency," said Robson Mutandi, IFAD Director for the Southern Africa hub said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

FOCUS: 'Lehman Weekend': the biggest bankruptcy in American history

WASHINGTON - It was "Lehman Weekend." The moment in September 2008 when the 150-year-old investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, precipitating the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s.

After failing to find buyers for the troubled financial giant, that was weighed down by risky debt holdings made up of at subprime mortgages, US authorities declined to offer a bailout and allowed the institution to fail.

Monday, September 15, 2008, at 1:45 am, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, taking the world by surprise leaving well over $600 billion in debt, as well as 25,000 employees in shock.

It was the biggest bankruptcy in American history. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones plunged 500 points, the largest drop since the attacks of September 11, 2001. Stunned traders streaming out of the building carrying boxes of their belongings became a symbol of the crisis.

Some were caught by surprise. But others, like Lawrence McDonald, a former trader and co-author of a 2009 book on the collapse -- "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Incredible Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers" -- said management had long been alerted to the excessive risks they took to increase short term profits.

The top Lehman leadership, housed on the bank's 31st floor, "drove us 162 miles (261 kilometers) an hour...right into the biggest subprime iceberg ever seen," he told AFP in 2009.

"It was 24,992 people making money and eight guys losing it," he said, lamenting that the management "bet the ranch" on toxic assets.

From 2005 to 2007, at the height of the real estate bubble, when mortgages were given to many homebuyers who could not afford them, and then packaged into securities and sold off, Lehman Brothers bought several mortgage brokerages and posted record profits.

But in mid-2007, the losses began to build. The knockout punch came nine months later, March 16, 2008, with the near bankruptcy of another investment bank, Bear Stearns.

- Between a rock and a hard place -

Bear Stearns was on the verge of bankruptcy also because of its massive bets on subprime mortgage securities, and was bought for a pittance by JPMorgan, in a sale brokered by the Federal Reserve. The deal shakes markets, which are now betting on Lehman's demise.

The Fed and Treasury tried to find a buyer, negotiating in vain with a South Korean bank, then with Bank of America and Barclays.

But while the government just a week earlier took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- government-sponsored private enterprises that guarantee more than $5 trillion in home loans -- in the end officials choose to abandon Lehman.

A few days later, Uncle Sam would rescue insurance giant AIG for $180 billion, before providing another $700 billion dollars in a controversial recapitalization plan to prop up banks: the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to try to shore up the teetering financial system.

Authorities found themselves between a rock and a hard place and have been widely criticized for sacrificing Lehman Brothers but saving other banks, such as Goldman Sachs.

"The thing we get the most criticism for is letting Lehman go down," said Henry Paulson, who served as Treasury secretary under then President George W. Bush and was at the helm at the start of the crisis.

"Many people say well they were able to save Bear Stearns, they were able to save AIG, why couldn't they save Lehman? We answer it and most people don't believe us," he complained to National Public Radio.

Officials concluded that Lehman was so weak, and had so little collateral, that a bailout would be simply unworkable.

Timothy Geithner, who lead the New York Fed during that time and late became Treasury secretary under President Barack Obama, said officials had very few options.

"Lehman was terribly weak even relative to the other weaker institutions in this context. The world was terrifically fragile," he told NPR.

"It was very hard to find someone strong enough in that moment of peril that was going to be capable of taking on the vast bulk of that risk."

But others, including Laurence Ball, head of the economics department at Johns Hopkins University, said in a 2016 report on Lehman that the reasons given do not add up and it was more likely there was political pressure on the Fed to allow the bank to fail.

"Another factor is that both Paulson and Fed officials, although worried about the effects of a Lehman failure, did not fully anticipate the damage that it would cause," Ball argued.

source: news.abs-cbn.com