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POSSIBLE TOPICS: Houston Mayor John Whitmire vows he’s holding CenterPoint accountable after 2.2M Beryl outages; All eyes on CenterPoint as Houston enters third day of widespread power outages; ‘It makes it harder to breathe’ | Family members worried about loved ones at Sugar Land senior living facility stuck without power; Seniors left to swelter as wild weather tests Houston’s independent senior living facilities; Too much solar? How California found itself with an unexpected energy challenge; Futuristic nuclear energy tech is here, but the risks of bombs and another Chernobyl remain; We have too many prisoners, says new PM Starmer; With South Korean Rockets, Ukraine Could Wipe Out Russian Warplanes At Their Bases; Israeli military takes foreign journalists into Rafah to make a case for success in its war with Hamas; ‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history;

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. 

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2. Houston Mayor John Whitmire vows he’s holding CenterPoint accountable after 2.2M Beryl outages; By Karen Araiza, Digital Content Lead | CLICK2HOUSTON.COM | Published: July 9, 2024 at 4:26 PM / Updated: July 9, 2024 at 6:41 PM. Tags: Hurricane Beryl, Houston, Last-Mile Electrical, Above-Ground Power Lines, Underground Power Lines, Carbon Monoxide Poisoning, Emergency Generators,
   2. Houston Mayor John Whitmire vowed he is holding CenterPoint accountable to get power restored after 2.2M customers in the city and surrounding areas lost power when Hurricane Beryl hit Monday.
   3. “We’re doing everything we possibly can to see that your electricity is restored. It affects everything we’re talking about today,” Whitmire said in a briefing with other emergency management leaders.
   4. The impact of power outages is now affecting local hospitals that can’t discharge patients because they can’t send them to a home without power, especially in the heat. That’s caused an overload for hospitals because it means they can’t clear their beds to admit new patients.
   5. To help, 25 ambulances are being sent to Houston to help and Acting Governor Dan Patrick said NRG Stadium will be set up with 250 beds to help with the patient overload.
   6. “So that we can move these people from the hospital so that there are rooms open for the new patients that come in,” Patrick said.
   7. “Life safety remains our primary concern,” said Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena, adding call volume for emergencies was up 50 percent.
   8. “What we’re seeing is issues with broken gas lines, downed power lines, medical issues and we’re starting to see the increase in carbon monoxide poisoning-type calls. We’ve seen about a hundred in the last couple of days. With the heat and humidity rising, we’re also seeing an increase in heat emergencies,” Pena said.
   9. Additional strike teams are being brought in to help Houston’s first responders and Pena said they’ll stay here as long as needed.
   10. 16-thousand calls came into 911 Monday, according to Patrick, who urged people not to call 911 for power outages. Here’s the number he urged people to call about power outages: 713-207-2222.
   11. Acting Police Chief Larry Satterwhite said HPD and first responders had 56 high-water rescues Monday and the department went to full mobilization Tuesday morning.
   12. “Our officers did a fantastic job,” Satterwhite said. “Of course what we did not anticipate was the level of power that we would lose, the magnitude of the power outages. . .Once we had the power outages, we realized this was going to be a much more extended event. We went to mobilization,” which means all hands on deck and more officers on the street. Monday they worked 16-hour shifts. Now they’re working 12-hour shifts with no days off until things ease up.
   13. Local and state leaders have reached out to President Biden and asked for an emergency declaration. Acting Governor Dan Patrick said he’s confident that will happen.
   14. Chief Nim Kidd with the Texas Division of Emergency Management urged Houstonians to file damage reports with the state, just as he did after May’s derecho damage. The state has to show $54 million in uninsured damage to meet the federal threshold for disaster assistance.
   15. “I’ve never seen such a joint effort of public servants serving the public,” Whitmire said.
3. There’s also a story from Community Impact that, while it replicates much information from the Click2 story, has a couple of other useful bits of information — All eyes on CenterPoint as Houston enters third day of widespread power outages; By Shawn Arrajj | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 6:34 PM Jul 9, 2024 CDT / Updated 6:34 PM Jul 9, 2024 CDT. TAGS:
   1. … Brad Tutunjian, CenterPoint’s vice president of distribution operations and service delivery, said CenterPoint secured mutual assistance arrangements with 10,000 workers prior to the storm and added an additional 2,000 more after the fact. However, he said it takes additional time to have them ready to work in the field due to training and an assessment period that takes place after the storm hits. Around 7,500 workers were in the field as of the afternoon of July 9, with another 2,500 expected to be deployed before the end of the day July 9 and 2,000 more deployed July 10.
   2. One of the first steps once crews are in the field is a complete assessment of tens of thousands of circuit miles in Houston. About 1,300 circuits were out, Tutunjian said.
   3. “We can tell you exactly what circuits are out; we can tell you exactly how many customers are out. But we can’t tell you the extent of the damage of that particular circuit until we actually walk the ground,” he said. “We have hundreds of field assessors trying to get that information as quickly and effectively as possible.” …
   4. In a separate July 9 news conference, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said NRG Stadium took some damage during the storm, including having some parts of the roof blown off.
   5. [MIKE: I’m assuming that the news conferences were separate because Mayor Whitmire is still in a snit about Hidalgo supporting Sheila Jackson Lee for mayor. Move on and be an adult, Mayor Whitmire. Continuing …]
   6. In terms of debris, Patrick said the debris caused by Beryl exceeds the estimated 1.8 million cubic yards of debris generated by the May 16 derecho storm. U.S. President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration for Texas on July 9 that Patrick said will cover 75% of the cost for debris cleanup.
   7. [MIKE: I will note that Biden made this declaration in spite of Texas still being a strongly Republican-governed state. Would Trump and his Republican sycophants have done the same for a Blue state? I’ve linked to a story in the Independent that reminds us that Trump’s government colored disaster responses very much in Red and Blue. Continuing …]
   8. Mark Wilfalk, the director of Houston’s Solid Waste Management Department, said the city was not able to complete all of its scheduled routes July 9, but he still expects all scheduled routes to be completed before the end of the week. …
   9. [Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña said that ] State ambulance strike teams are being brought in [to supplement HFD’s operations] until call volumes recede …
   10. Whitmire expressed frustration at the July 9 news conference with the number of city facilities that lost power and did not have functioning generators, including at nine city fire stations.
   11. “As we do an assessment after this storm, generation will be a major topic,” he said. “I cannot imagine in Houston, Texas … to try to operate a fire station without a backup generator. That will not be allowed going forward. It’s just outrageous.”
   12. REFERENCES: Trump likes to ‘punish’ blue states, according to insiders. Even when they’re burning; One former Trump administration official told me the President made ‘a very clear political statement… saying that if the people of California don’t like me politically… do not provide money, don’t provide disaster relief’. Andrew Feinberg, Washington DC | INDEPENDENT.CO.UK | Tuesday 15 September 2020 16:50 BST
   13. MIKE: I’ll talk about the emergency and infrastructure parts of this story, but first I want to discuss the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.
   14. MIKE: Every open flame — in fact, any kind of combustion — produces carbon monoxide (or CO).
   15. MIKE: CO is odorless and colorless, and CO has a higher affinity for your red blood cells than oxygen. In other words, in the presence of CO and oxygen, your blood prefers the CO. This is what makes it particularly dangerous.
   16. MIKE: In the case of a power outage, the most common source of carbon monoxide discussed is emergency generators; the types that you haul out in emergencies and fill with gasoline or propane.
   17. MIKE: I won’t discuss here the dangers of storing a lot of gasoline or propane on your property, but know that it’s real.
   18. MIKE: It should go without saying that emergency generators should always be placed outside of the house and outside of any connected garage. These machines should never be placed near a window or doorway, even if they are closed. I think that the minimum distance is 6 feet from any window or door.
   19. MIKE: If there is rain outside, you should still not move an operating generator inside to get it under cover. Either use a temporary wet weather cover that can usually be purchased from the manufacturer for your specific model, or turn it off and move it inside until the rain stops. Alternatively, if possible, build a permanent shelter for it on your property. Using the search term “emergency generator covers”, many sources pop up.
   20. MIKE: Another source of carbon monoxide that isn’t mentioned much is your gas stove or oven. In power outage during winter, folks with gas appliances might think to use them as limited sources of heat, but without an over-the-range externally vented hood, that also generates carbon monoxide inside the house, and can present a hazard if there is no external exhaust or ventilation.
   21. MIKE: During a summer outage like this one, if you have a gas stove or oven with pilotless ignition, you might think to use them for cooking, but the same carbon monoxide dangers and caveats apply.
   22. MIKE: On the topic of infrastructure improvements to prevent these kinds of outages caused predominantly by downed power lines or blown transformers, the most common solution mentioned is to move power lines underground, but this is not a solution without its own problems.
   23. MIKE: The first problem is cost. To relocate all of CenterPoint’s power lines underground would cost many billions of dollars. These costs would inevitably be passed on to customers, which would create its own public outrage. There would also be massive disruption of roads and property if this were made a major project, comparable to extensive highway construction.
   24. MIKE: A transitional solution might be to require all new construction and development to include underground power lines in their initial infrastructure, the same as water and sewer lines, and other utilities. Over time, this would make a big difference in electrical infrastructure robustness in the event of storms.
   25. MIKE: But nothing is without its tradeoffs. A downside to underground electrical lines is that they are harder and more expensive to access for repair, and repairs are likely to take much longer because of the manpower, equipment, and access issues involved. Underground power lines are also — not exactly prone, but susceptible — to damage from water, corrosion, and even damage from insects and animals. Such damage would not only be harder to repair, but also harder to locate for repair.
   26. MIKE: I’m not an engineer, so advanced technical solutions are beyond my pay grade, but maybe the folks who are engineers need to examine historically assumed above-ground power transmission standards in order to find new and better methods for constructing and repairing above-ground power lines.
   27. MIKE: One possibility … Maybe changing standards to place above-ground utility poles closer together using current technology is a step in the right direction. That would reduce the weight and strain placed on any one pair of line connectors.
   28. MIKE: Like I said, I’m not an engineer.
   29. MIKE: As a postscript, I looked for any sources online describing better ways of building so-called “last mile” electrical distribution, which is what we’re talking about in a city. There were lots of discussions about above-ground versus underground, but nothing I could find about better and more resilient ways of building last-mile above-ground electrical lines that are more resilient to climate events. That may be a strong indicator that not nearly enough thought has been given to this topic at engineering and government levels.
   30. MIKE: There are many sources of information and discussion of these topics online. I’ve added just a couple of references after this story on my blog.
   31. REFERENCE: Use a wet weather cover — JOHNCFLOOD.COM (Plumbing & Electrical, VA and MD)
   32. REFERENCE: Underground vs. Overhead Power Lines – Lane Electric Cooperative
4. ‘It makes it harder to breathe’ | Family members worried about loved ones at Sugar Land senior living facility stuck without power; Author: Anayeli Ruiz (KHOU) | KHOU.COM | Published: 10:20 PM CDT July 9, 2024 / Updated: 10:20 PM CDT July 9, 2024
   1. On Tuesday, KHOU 11 News learned that [the Landon Ridge Sugar Land Independent Living Facility,] a local senior [independent] living facility, was among those dealing with that exact problem.
   2. Family members reached out to KHOU 11 News because they were worried that their loved ones wouldn’t survive in the heat.
   3. Now, they’re working to get their loved ones out and to safer locations. …
   4. [Kay Carlton] was worried about her 91-year-old mother with limited mobility who recently was released from the hospital. She said the heat inside the facility was dangerous.
   5. “It’s hot air. No breeze. It makes it harder to breathe,” she said. So, she picked her mom up Tuesday afternoon and rolled her out. …
   6. The facility manager said it’s an independent living facility, meaning it’s like an apartment complex with amenities. It’s not a senior assisted living facility.
   7. They only provide two meals and weekly housekeeping — no medical assistance. It’s something residents understand.
   8. “They are not responsible for us,” resident Pat Jacob said.
   9. What’s happening right now still left many wondering why the facilities that are full of seniors aren’t required to have generators.
   10. “I think it’d be nice if they had generators,” Jacob said. “This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s life-threatening, actually.”
   11. City of Houston officials said they’re aware of the situation and [are monitoring it.]
   12. The facility said it’s working to set up a generator so they can have a cooling room for residents.
   13. MIKE: From the outcry after the recent derecho about power failures at assisted living facilities, I’m surprised by how few local stories I could find on this topic after Hurricane Beryl. I found this KHOU News story, but I suspect that it’s just a snapshot of what such facilities are experiencing across the region. Maybe it’s an editorial discretion issue of, “Been there, reported that.”
5. Here’s one from Houston Public Media that adds some more information to this question — Seniors left to swelter as wild weather tests Houston’s independent senior living facilities; By Colleen DeGuzman | HOUSTONPUBLICMEDIA.ORG | | Posted on July 8, 2024, 7:30 AM (Last Updated: July 9, 2024, 12:12 PM). TAGS: Senior Living Community, Independent Living Facility, Assisted Living Facility, Nursing Homes, Houston, inDepth, Weather, air conditioning, derecho in Houston, senior living, senior living facility,
   1. Rosie Powell is 71 and she hasn’t had AC in her apartment for nearly a month. …
   2. [MIKE: Note that the derecho was on May 16^th, so this is a different maintenance issue altogether. The story implies that management is responsible for maintaining the HVAC in this complex. There’s more on that a bit later in the story. Continuing …]
   3. Powell moved to Palisades of Inwood, a senior living complex in North Houston, a decade ago because she decided living in a senior living community is much cheaper and easier than maintaining her own property. She also enjoys the camaraderie of other elderly people.
   4. But she said the tradeoff has come with a cost: the type of facility she lives in comes with little oversight.
   5. Although Powell is in a senior complex, there’s a stark contrast in how the different types of senior living facilities are regulated — and that leaves some of the most vulnerable seniors in gaps in care. “Nobody come over here and see about us,” Powell said.
   6. Centers that offer medical care, such as nursing homes and assisted living centers, are required to be storm ready. Texas Health and Human Services outlines strict guidelines for how these kinds of facilities should be prepared for emergencies.
   7. But those regulations don’t extend to independent living communities, which is what Palisades of Inwood is.
   8. Complexes categorized as independent are typically not required to provide special care to seniors even though they’re marketed to people older than 55. “It’s just like a regular apartment complex,” Houston City Council Member Amy Peck Residents at independent complexes can be low income, on medication, and unable to walk on their own.
   9. [MIKE: Full disclosure, Alison Peck is my ex-niece. Continuing …]
   10. Peck worries that many aren’t as independent as those living in specialized care facilities, and with an active hurricane season ahead, the risks are high.
   11. “A lot of times there are a bunch of senior citizens living in an apartment complex with no kind of accountability for what could happen in a disaster situation or any other kind of situation,” Peck added.
   12. Powell said her AC went out on June 7, along with nearly a dozen of her neighbors. She worries about them because some have more serious health conditions. Their landlord gave them portable AC units, but it’s not enough to cool their place down during Houston’s triple-digit summer heat.
   13. “I’m sitting here in the living room now with my little portable fan that I have bought from Walmart,” Powell said. “I just try to brace myself and try to have enough food or water around here to take care of me… It’s just not what we were told it was going to be.”
   14. Latasha Washington, manager of Palisades of Inwood, the complex where Powell lives, declined to comment.
   15. Seniors, even those living independently, often live with chronic health problems and rely on power to keep life saving devices charged and medications at the right temperature, making extended periods of power outages all more dangerous for them.
   16. State Senator Molly Cook holds a Master’s in Public Health. She said as people age, they’re more at risk of dehydration. “Especially if it’s humid, that could be lethal to them,” Cook said.
   17. Storms in May, especially the derecho, caught Houstonians by surprise, leaving many without power or AC for days, including senior care communities. It became a test of who is prepared for hurricane season.
   18. “What we saw out there was that folks were falling between the gaps,” Cook said.
   19. Centers that offer medical care are required by the state to have things such as a generator, enough food and water for each resident for at least three days, and an evacuation plan. …
   20. But these centers can also cost as much as $7,000 a month, which few seniors can afford. Independent living communities are much cheaper. At Houston Heights Tower, an independent living community in central Houston, rent for a one-bedroom apartment is around $750 a month.
   21. Linda Holder is the executive director of The Housing Corporation, a nonprofit with eight independent living communities in Houston, including Houston Heights Tower.
   22. She said although they cater to the elderly, it’s all in the name: independent living.
   23. “We really can’t … take care of people’s medical needs,” Holder said. “There’s always 911, we are very high profile with the fire department.”
   24. Despite that, she said they do stock extra food and water and provide a cooling center when power goes out.
   25. Power at Houston Heights Tower was out for four days after the derecho on May 16 and Hope Aguirre, the building’s property manager said she brings residents living in the building’s top floors down to lower levels.
   26. “I bring them down and they can either be [in] the hallways or in the community room here because I don’t want no one on the top, just so they won’t get scared or anything,” Aguirre said.
   27. [Council Member Peck] said she is looking into drafting local policies to regulate independent living communities.
   28. “There needs to be some changes to our city ordinances and possibly the state law as well that says, you know, that there has to at least be some kind of minimum standard of care at these apartment complexes,” she said.
   29. MIKE: It’s certainly not reasonable to expect that there were massive changes in preparedness at these facilities so soon after the May derecho, but one might expect that management might have had their risk awareness raised so that some minimum steps might have been taken, such as stocking up on bottled water, perhaps stocking some non-perishable food items, and taking steps to provide a cooling area for elderly residents.
   30. MIKE: As Council Member Peck suggests, maybe the city and the state need to look into these issues with a wider-angle lens, and maybe that could also include regular apartment complexes. This could take some burden off the city in emergencies, and make emergency resources more readily available to residents.
6. This next story is interesting in that it might indirectly touch on the problems with centrally operated power, and the consequences of massive power failures due to weather and other events. —Too much solar? How California found itself with an unexpected energy challenge; The state is, at times, producing more energy than it can use. That has led it to explore storage options and trim financial incentives. By Liz Kreutz and Steven Louie | NBCNEWS.COM | July 7, 2024, 12:45 PM UTC. TAGS: Solar Energy, Surplus Energy, California, California’s Independent System Operator, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Independent Electrical Island, Electrical Hubs,
   1. … [A]s California works toward its ambitious clean energy vision, an almost counterintuitive challenge has emerged: The state is, at times, generating more solar energy than it can handle. It’s to the point where loads of clean energy are going to waste.
   2. The phenomenon, which other states are likely to run into as they ramp up their own solar production, has been dubbed the “duck curve.” The belly of the duck is the time of day when solar production can exceed demand. Because solar energy relies on the sun, the curve is often most pronounced on sunny days during the spring, when not as many people are using power and running their air conditioning.
   3. “We get into certain times of the year, in the springtime particularly, when the demand for electricity isn’t that high yet, and we have quite a bit of solar production where, under certain conditions, we actually have more than California can actually use,” said Elliot Mainzer, the CEO of California’s Independent System Operator, which manages 80% of the state’s electricity flow. 
   4. “Under those conditions, we take advantage of the significant amount of transmission connectivity that we have to other parts of the West, and we export a lot of that energy for other utilities around the Western United States,” he said.  
   5. “And under certain extreme conditions, we actually have to curtail [solar production] and turn it off,” he added. 
   6. According to Independent System Operator data, in recent years, the amount of renewable energy curtailed, or wasted, has skyrocketed from both oversupply and so-called congestion, when there’s more electricity than the transmission lines in some areas can handle. So far this year, the state has lost out on nearly 2.6 million megawatt-hours of renewable energy — most of it solar — more than enough to power all the homes in San Francisco for a year.  
   7. Mainzer said adding transmission lines would help increase the flow of electricity throughout the state and is advocating for permitting reform to make that happen 
   8. “When you build a new solar project or you build a new battery or a new wind project or a new geothermal resource, if you don’t have transmission lines available to access that and deliver it to customers, that generation is basically an island. It’s stranded,” he said. 
   9. [MIKE: On this point, I think that building codes for solar and wind farms need to be amended. A land developer doing buildout for a new subdivision must preinstall the infrastructure, such as roads, water, sewer, electric hookups, drainage, etc. If a solar or wind farm is being built, part of the development plan should include the necessary infrastructure to get the maximum power generated to the main grid. Local and/or state governments can offer incentives or fast-track permitting that they feel is necessary and appropriate, but it should be looked at as a package. To continue …]
   10. Gavin Newsom’s administration has also been pushing to add more batteries to store that excess energy for use during peak-demand times. And state regulators with the California Public Utilities Commission have taken a more controversial approach: drastically cutting financial incentives for homeowners looking to install solar.
   11. The move has outraged many in the rooftop solar industry, like Ed Murray, the president of the California Solar and Storage Association, who operates Aztec Solar outside Sacramento. The changes, he said, have been devastating for his business. He said he has laid off 10 employees over the last year.  
   12. “Sales went flat, because nobody wanted it anymore,” Murray said. “It was not productive or cost-effective to do solar, and we were left figuring out what do we do now.” 
   13. According to the California Solar and Storage Association, residential solar installations have dropped by 66% in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same period in 2022. The trade group estimates that since the state changed the incentive structure, known as net metering, 17,000 green jobs have been lost statewide. 
   14. To make it cost-effective with the state’s new incentives, homeowners now need to install batteries in addition to solar panels, but that can cost an additional $10,000 to $20,000 or more.  
   15. “It’s an easy fix, but it’s an expensive fix,” Murray said. “Because people don’t want to or they can’t afford batteries, unfortunately.” 
   16. In a statement, Newsom defended the state’s policies, saying that already this year the state has had nearly 100 days when clean energy has exceeded 100% of demand for some part of the day. 
   17. “No other state in America comes close to California’s solar production,” he said. “We’re generating nearly twentyfold the amount of solar as we were a decade ago, powering millions of homes with clean energy. And now we’re adding more batteries faster than ever to help capture that energy to use at night.”
   18. Supporters of the state’s change to the incentives also point to equity concerns, arguing that a shift to solar can raise the cost of energy for those who don’t have it or can’t afford it.  
   19. In making the announcement in 2022, Public Utilities Commission member John Reynolds said net metering “has left an incredible legacy and brought solar to hundreds of thousands of Californians, but it is also profoundly expensive for non-solar customers and was overdue for reform.” …
   20. Given California’s role as a leader in solar energy, Murray believes other states are watching and may follow suit. 
   21. “I’m hearing from Florida, Arizona, Minnesota, Massachusetts that they’re looking at copying the rules, that they’re going to change the rules of the game,” he said. “They’re upset because it’s going to hurt across the board.” …
   22. It’s an example that as California goes all in on its historic clean energy transition — with a goal of achieving 100% clean energy by 2045 — new challenges are casting a shadow on the path to a renewable future.  
   23. “No way we’re going to get there without rooftop solar,” Murray said. “Electric vehicles, heat pumps, electric range tops — this is not going to happen without solar. Period.”
   24. MIKE: There’s a lot to unpack in this story.
   25. MIKE: First, in relation to the local stories of mass power failures here in metro Houston that we talked about earlier in the show, there’s the question of having independent sources of renewable energy owned and controlled by homeowners, apartment complexes, and even neighborhoods. More independent islands of solar power backed by batteries would reduce and perhaps even avoid the crisis level of mass power outages.
   26. MIKE: Perhaps this should be a public safety policy addressed by local and state governments. Maybe this “independent island” solution is superior to the binary question of whether power lines should be above ground or below ground. A sort of “third way” to address electrical infrastructure failures.
   27. MIKE: Maybe we need to talk more about creating a policy of independent Electrical Hubs. And there’s no reason why power utilities need to be cut out of this policy discussion, as they could provide some of these dispersed island hubs. This reduce power failures to smaller, localized problems that are more easily addressed.
   28. MIKE: These suggestions contain a lot of “could’, “perhaps”, and “maybe”, but that’s how “outside-the-box” policy ideas begin.
   29. MIKE: But addressing the California story directly, it’s been known for a while that the national power grid is in desperate need of updating and upgrading, and California is no exception. And neither is Texas, for that matter. We’ve talked about this on the show a number of times.
   30. MIKE: I think that when solar incentive legislation was originally written, the technology for home battery storage was less capable and more expensive, so it wasn’t figured in. So-called “net metering” seemed like a reasonable answer to incentivize solar adoption at the time.
   31. MIKE: Another miscalculation through no one’s fault at the time was the speed with which solar in California ended up being adopted by consumers. It was also impossible to foresee how fast solar panel pricing per kilowatt would decline. The increase in the federal tax credit and the extension of the period of eligibility were also unknowable factors. All of the above further incentivized adoption
   32. MIKE: California led the nation in its ambition to convert to renewable solar energy, but it is now a victim of both its own success and unexpectedly rapid advances in solar technology. This is not an insoluble problem, however.
   33. MIKE: First, provide an incentive for existing owners of solar panels to retrofit backup batteries to store excess energy for their homes. This can be done through state and possibly federal tax credits and, if necessary, subsidized interest for loans. Possibly, the State could be the lender of last resort.
   34. MIKE: Second, new solar installations should mandate the inclusion of batteries. Federal tax credits for solar installations are 30% of the installed cost, and this incentive remains the same until 2032, after which it is scheduled to decline until it expires in 2035.
   35. MIKE: The federal tax credit doesn’t mandate the inclusion of batteries with a solar installation, but this is a one-time credit, so it’s vitally important to include the batteries with the original installation for maximum advantage. In the future, with the encouragement of the California delegation to Congress and possibly with those of other States, it might be possible for the federal tax credit legislation to be amended to include retrofitting batteries to existing solar installations.
   36. MIKE: Also, because this is a tax credit, solar adopters are eligible for this credit even if they don’t earn enough to pay income tax. This helps to include low-income households in the program.
   37. MIKE: In California’s case, there is a State income tax and the State has these records for reference. To aid in social and income equity, California could offer subsidized low- or zero-interest loans to those households that qualify.
   38. MIKE: If the California State government can respond quickly enough, damage to their solar business sector can be limited, there can be new opportunities for economic growth and energy independence, and social equities can be addressed.
   39. REFERENCE: Homeowner’s Guide to the Federal Tax Credit for Solar Photovoltaics — ENERGY.GOV
7. There are other proposed energy solutions, and this story is about another one. This is written in “first person”, so “I” and “me” refer to the author. This was a long article from which I’ll be reading substantial excerpts— Futuristic nuclear energy tech is here, but the risks of bombs and another Chernobyl remain; Microreactors promise climate resilience and military-tech might — but proliferation and pollution concerns linger. By Rae Hodge, Staff Reporter | SALON.COM | Published June 2, 2024 @ 5:15AM (EDT). TAGS: Microreactors, Nuclear Energy, Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), Fissionable Materials, Highly-Enriched Weapons-Grade Yellowcake, Low-Enrichment Yellowcake, Nuclear Reactor Fuel, Uranium, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima,
   1. James Walker thinks it’s time to change the story we tell ourselves about nuclear energy in the United States.
   2. “It’s got the worst public relations history of any form of energy really,” Walker tells me in a video call from his office. “If you take all methods of generating energy — whether it’s wind, solar, gas, coal, everything — and if you want to look at deaths per gigawatt hour, nuclear beats out everything. It is the safest form of energy already. So that’s a good way to start.”
   3. Walker is the CEO and head of reactor development at NANO Nuclear Energy. And he may have gotten his wish on [May 26^th] when President Joe Biden rolled out his administration’s multi-billion-dollar funding plan for U.S. nuclear energy projects, all aimed at meeting the country’s 2035 goal of a carbon-free power sector. The plan includes large plant development, like Georgia’s $36.8 billion Plant Vogtle expansion, as well as a fleet of cutting edge small-nuclear tech. 
   4. NANO makes small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors. Basically, these are advanced nuclear power plants that can produce an astonishing 7.2 million kilowatt hours per day depending on the model, but can still fit inside the trailer of an 18-wheeler. While most microreactors can output up to 20 megawatts in order to reach that number, NANO’s models emphasize the micro — with output capped at about 5 megawatts of thermal energy for conversion to electric. 
   5. For context, you can power between 400 and 900 homes per day on just 1 megawatt (MW.) Even at its lightest, an average military base has a hefty critical power load of about 20 MW Data centers have even greater range, using between 10 and 200 MW to keep servers running for the apps we tirelessly doomscroll. Meanwhile, U.S. mining operations — like those digging 20,000 metric tons of zinc out of the Arctic each day — use up to 450 MW. Biden, along with industry barons and military-minded Republican allies in Congress, is banking on SMRs and microreactors to satisfy the colossal energy appetite of all four.  …
   6. Biden’s COP28 proposals have already faced criticism earlier this year from college Democrats and other climate-focused groups over the Willow Project, an Alaskan oil and gas drilling project. In his latest bid to “reestablish U.S. leadership” in nuclear energy, the president also included a hefty tax credit for it.
   7. Recent industry research from The Rhodium Group estimates that by 2035, these credits could result in a 29% to 46% cut in greenhouse gas emissions — or roughly 300 to 400 million tons — compared to no tax credits.
   8. Biden’s playbook on climate change includes less risky green energy like wind and solar, seeming to position small-nuclear as a transitionary energy source in some areas. But if regulations are slipshod, a plutonium-producing gamble in a warhead-hungry world could lead to incalculable losses — at a speed far faster than that of our melting glaciers.
   9. At the heart of the controversy around retrofitting America for nuclear energy is a decades-old global bulwark against nuclear weapons proliferation: We manage spent nuclear reactor fuel with extreme surveillance and we don’t want everyone to commercially reprocess it because that’s how you get atomic bombs. 
   10. As the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists put it in 2023, “effective nonproliferation must begin much earlier, not only by suppressing demand for nuclear weapons but also by restricting supplies of the fissionable materials necessary to build them in the first place.” 
   11. When making fuel for nuclear reactors, the first step is to dig up a bunch of uranium ore and haul it to a processing outfit like the White Mesa Mill in Utah — our only such facility. There, the ore gets turned into uranium oxide or what is commonly known as “yellowcake” because of its bright lemony color.
   12. The yellowcake is then converted for enrichment. Here, two roads diverge: you can either create highly-enriched weapons-grade yellowcake, or low-enrichment yellowcake for nuclear reactor fuel. Now that Biden has banned enriched uranium imports from Russia, his nuclear revival could mean a lot more mining of the stuff. …
   13. [E]ven when you take the low-enrichment road, the risk isn’t over. About a fifth of U.S. energy is already being generated by 93 commercial nuclear plants. And those are adding 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel each year to the 88,000 metric tons of waste already being stored at 79 sites across 35 states. That’s not counting the additional load of low-level and intermediately radioactive waste the plants produce. 
   14. The compelling thing about spent fuel is it still has a lot of power that can be used. In some cases, a nuclear reactor uses only 10% of the potency in fuel, meaning some waste can still retain a tantalizing 90% of its original potency. Storing this waste is already a volatile and risky business. Transporting it for either storage or reprocessing — as one would need to for modular, moveable reactors — … is even riskier. 
   15. Like plutonium. You get plutonium by separating it from spent reactor fuel. Excluding France and Russia, the U.S. has been successfully clamping down on nuclear proliferation ever since India used Canadian-gotten plutonium for its 1974 atomic bomb test. In 1977, then-President Jimmy Carter joined with Canada’s former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau (yes, that’s Justin’s daddy) on a hard-won campaign to halt commercial spent-fuel processing across the globe. 
   16. Now, SMR companies like Oklo — the nuclear energy company backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — want to reprocess and recycle that used reactor fuel, deploying their commercial tech “on a global scale.” Biden’s nuclear renaissance, meanwhile, includes $87 million in funding for 30 projects in the Energy Department’s advanced nuclear research program “with the aims of lower capital costs, lower (operation and management) costs, and reducing spent fuel.”
   17. For all the climate concerns expressed by the administration, the push for nuclear microreactors is also undeniably about fueling the Defense Department’s staggeringly large energy consumption more cheaply as relations with America’s oil suppliers remain uncertain. The DOD eats more than 10 million gallons of fuel per day and burns through more than 30 terawatt hours of electricity per year. And, as reported by Business Insider, the department projects that number to grow significantly over the next few years.
   18. In January of this year, Republican lawmakers were already pushing the Pentagon’s U.S. Indo-Pacific Command admiral to ask for more nuclear microreactors in [its] 2025 budget request. 
   19. Here, nuclear science calls for pause. It takes less than 20 pounds of plutonium to make a simple nuclear weapon. It’s so dense that if you wanted to build a replica of the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki, you would only need a chunk of plutonium about the size of an arcade Skee-Ball. 
   20. And based on the science we’re currently working with, the entire cycle of nuclear power creation from start to finish is still a hyper-sensitive process with razor thin safety margins. It currently relies on a web of federal infrastructure … whose regulation has been eroded by decades of Congressional starve-the-beast funding cuts and multi-industry lobbying efforts which have paid off in self-policing regulatory policies.
   21. The nuclear reactor development of today is not taking place on freshly built New Deal highways and utility lines, but on a network of infrastructure worn threadbare in many places and currently teeming with an undiscoverable number of cyber-intruders. The science and safety have advanced, yes, but so has municipal deterioration and the surface area for new kinds of attacks. And plutonium is still plutonium.
   22. The problem with [Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)] and Biden’s nuclear plant renaissance is not just that radioactive nuclear waste can be weaponized into plutonium. It’s also that nuclear waste has effectively already been weaponized against poor communities in the U.S. through the death-some sprawl of federal superfund sites still poisoning both humans and ecosystems across the country. Another problem is that federal nuclear regulators have already been producing urgent reports about current spent-fuel safety risks — some of which even feature images of the Titanic sinking and the letters “SOS.” 
   23. Biden’s nuclear energy rebranding effort brushes past SMR waste safety concerns by pointing to “stringent federal regulation that keeps nuclear plants and neighboring communities safe” under the Energy Department’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 
   24. “Many advanced reactors plan to use advanced fuel designs that have the potential to further improve the safety and operation of nuclear plants,” the Office of Nuclear Safety said … in its new primer. The new fuels are “also expected to perform even better than current nuclear fuels and could extend the time between refueling, which would reduce the amount of spent fuel generated over the lifetime of a reactor.” 
   25. Advanced reactor types [vary], the office said, but “one thing they share in common is the ability to achieve enhanced efficiency, safety, and versatility over conventional reactor designs.”
   26. It’s true that some industry analysts claim [that] SMRs produce less waste than traditional reactors, but the full slate of SMR models in the Biden plan haven’t been completely tested. A May 2022 study from Stanford researchers debunked a number of industry analyst claims, proving most models’ spent-fuel risks and hidden waste-reprocessing costs often far exceed those found in popular estimates.
   27. [Said Stanford’s Lindsay Krall, the study’s lead author and a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow,] “Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30, for the reactors in our case study.” …
   28. On May 28, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Review Board echoed some of those concerns and pointed to risks still posed by older sites’ fuel management ahead of Biden’s newly planned slate of fuels. In an 11-page letter, Board Chair Nathan Siu cautioned the DOE that while current types of spent nuclear fuel can be transported and stored without compromising national safety standards, verifying safe storage for such a wide range of new spent-fuel types would require private companies to show their cards. …
   29. The same document points out that commercial plants have already been caught producing wastewater that fails safe-storage radiation standards by a significant margin. …
   30. Of greater concern is the DOE’s lack of technical data on dry waste storage conditions. They were most recently detailed in 2019 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a 60-page report, accompanied by a damning slideshow from 2021 that opens with an image of the letters “SOS.” …
   31. The president and the swarm of private companies angling for new reactor contracts — whether micro or massive — face another reality-check in cities like St. Louis, which played a critical role in the Manhattan Project war effort. In July of last year, it took a three-outlet consortium of journalists from the Mississippi Independent, the Associated Press, and MuckRock, scouring reams of public records to expose federal regulators’ 75-year history of intentionally concealing the lethality of a superfund site. …
   32. Even with these urgent risks exposed, and many unknowns lingering, nuclear energy proponents argue radioactive waste issues can’t be worse than fossil fuel hazards. Despite the whataboutism of the counter-accusation, they’ve got a point. Fossil fuel emissions in 2023 accounted for 8 billion metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, and are estimated to cause one in five deaths worldwide. 
   33. In fact, the heaps of fly ash waste produced by coal-processing power plants are often just as — if not more radioactive — than nuclear waste sites. And few are corralled by the immense regulatory framework of nuclear waste management. Class action lawsuits have begun emerging in recent years as the evidence of toxic ash exposure in children mounts higher.  …
   34. [James Walker says that, “Nuclear power] generates the least amount of waste. And it’s also a type of waste where it gets less dangerous over time, unlike other forms of waste that are generated by fossil fuels and hydrocarbon industry which are permanent — and permanently toxic. And the way of dealing with those things is relatively simple. It can go in concrete, it can sit there, and it just gets less dangerous over time. And there’s not very much generated.”
   35. Time, however, is relative. And waste that gets less dangerous over time will still be deadly for at least 10,000 years. In 1993, the Sandia National Laboratory compiled a series of messages and physical warning systems that might withstand the millennia to warn descendants away from the sites, preparing for all future outcomes, including one in which language is radically different from today. …
   36. MIKE: Full disclosure, I’m still opposed to nuclear power as I currently understand the available technological options.
   37. MIKE: Interestingly, even though I think this article presents the question of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) in a fairly balanced way, it doesn’t even mention Fukushima, which was much worse than Three Mile Island, on a par with Chernobyl, and will likely require remediation and containment efforts through the end of this century and beyond.
   38. MIKE: In any case, while there may be some necessary demand market for such reactors by the military, I can’t see allowing a mass market for them. And even for military uses, they would have to be carefully protected, and hopefully placed in locations with very low risk of attack or sabotage. Keep in mind that military base power sources would normally be considered legitimate military targets, unlike Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was built for civilian use.
   39. MIKE: Even so, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant became a military target of the Russians in the current war, and since March 12, 2022 has been occupied by the Russians. Control of the plant has been claimed by Russian nuclear power company, Rosatom. The Russians have left the plant with a precarious emergency electrical supply for the reactor safety protocols, and there have been unconfirmed reports that military assets and even explosives have been stored on it grounds.
   40. MIKE: So in addition to the regular worries I have of contamination by stolen or mis-stored nuclear waste, and nuclear accidents every 30-50 years on average, there’s the additional worry of plants becoming targets of warfare and possibly state- or non-state-sponsored attack or sabotage.
   41. MIKE: To me, there just isn’t enough benefit from nuclear to balance all these risks, dangers, and concerns. I’m still willing to be persuaded otherwise.
8. In international News, what a difference liberals make — We have too many prisoners, says new PM Starmer By Paul Seddon, Political reporter • Sam Francis, Political reporter | BBC.COM | 7 July 2024. TAGS: Keir Starmer, Prisons,
   1. Sir Keir Starmer has said he wants to reduce the number of people going to prison through renewed efforts to cut reoffending.
   2. In his first press conference as prime minister, Sir Keir said too many people found themselves back in jail “relatively quickly” after being sent there.
   3. He added that intervening to prevent young people committing knife crime would be an early priority for his new government.
   4. But he said there would be no “overnight solution” to prison overcrowding, adding: “We’ve got too many prisoners, not enough prisons.”
   5. It comes after he appointed a businessman as his prisons minister who has previously said only a third of prisoners should be there.
   6. James Timpson, boss of the shoe repair chain which has a policy of recruiting ex-offenders, said in an interview with Channel 4 earlier this year that “we’re addicted to punishment”.
   7. Labour, which won a landslide general election victory on Thursday, has promised to review sentencing after regaining office for the first time since 2010.
   8. It has also inherited a ballooning crisis in Britain’s jails, and has already committed to keeping the previous Conservative government’s early release scheme in place to ease current levels of overcrowding.
   9. Last week the Prison Governors’ Association, which represents 95% of prison governors in England and Wales, warned that jails were due to run out of space within days.
   10. Tory ex-justice secretary Alex Chalk first announced plans to release prisoners early in October 2023. …
   11. Details of Labour’s review are yet to be unveiled, but Mr Timpson’s appointment has offered an early signal that a change of approach may be on the cards in this area.
   12. Sir Keir has appointed him a member of the House of Lords, allowing him to take up a post as prisons minister at the Ministry of Justice.
   13. The businessman told a Channel 4 podcast in February that prison was a “disaster” for around a third of prisoners, and another third “probably shouldn’t be there”.
   14. He said too many people being in prison for “far too long” was an example of “evidence being ignored because there is this sentiment around punish and punish”.
   15. “We’re addicted to sentencing, we’re addicted to punishment,” he added.
   16. Asked about [Timpson’s] comments at a Downing Street press conference, Sir Keir did not offer a view on whether he agreed with those estimates.
   17. But he added: “We do need to be clear about the way in which we use prisons.
   18. “For so many people [who] come out of prison, they’re back in prison relatively quickly afterwards.
   19. “That is a massive problem that we have in this country, that we do need to break.”
   20. He said his party wanted to cut knife crime in particular, and cited his plan to set up a network of “youth hubs”.
   21. Sir Keir, a former lawyer, added: “I’ve sat in the back of I don’t know how many criminal courts and watched people processed through the system on an escalator to go into prison. …
   22. MIKE: There is more in the original story. Labour’s plan to reform their prison system should be interesting, and may offer the US some lessons. We’ll see.
   23. MIKE: But what a difference a day makes. In the UK, that’s literally true because a day after the election results were tallied, the UK had a new Prime Minister and a new government. I think this is possible because Labour always has a shadow “government-in-waiting”, as opposed to the 2-month transition period that we have after electing a new government in the US.
   24. MIKE: Is our transitional period better for some reason, or do the Brits have the right idea? Or is a better solution somewhere in between? Something to think about.
9. Now to the war in Ukraine — With South Korean Rockets, Ukraine Could Wipe Out Russian Warplanes At Their Bases; Closer ties between Russia and North Korea could mean closer ties between Ukraine and South Korea. David Axe, Forbes Staff | FORBES.COM | Jul 6, 2024, 12:00pm EDT. TAGS: North Korea, Russia, Ukraine, South Korea, Ukraine-Russia War,
   1. On June 19, Russian president Vladimir Putin flew to Pyongyang for the first time in 24 years and inked an agreement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
   2. The details of the pact are unclear, but Kim announced the two countries had a “fiery friendship.” It’s widely assumed the agreement will result in closer industrial and military ties between the authoritarian states—ties that could feed and prolong Russia’s costly wider war on Ukraine.
   3. The South Korean government responded swiftly. If Pyongyang supplies Moscow with more arms, then Seoul may supply Kyiv, South Korean National Security Advisor Chang Ho-jin told reporters on June 20.
   4. South Korea hasn’t yet announced closer ties with Ukraine—but if and when it does, it’s possible Ukrainian officials will ask South Korean officials for the same kinds of munitions Russia is already getting from North Korea.
   5. Specifically, short-range ballistic missiles, or SRBMs. Sometime late last year, Russian acquired from North Korea a batch of powerful KN-23 SRBMs—and used them to devastating effect.
   6. [MIKE: While not mentioned here, I would also speculate that Ukraine would request as many artillery shells as South Korea could spare. Continuing …]
   7. South Korea has developed an SRBM of its own … . “If North Korea can sell KN-23 SRBMs to Russia, South Korea can sell Hyunmoo-series SRBMs to Ukraine,” quipped Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
   8. The [North Korean] KN-23 ranges around 450 miles with an 1,100-pound warhead. The [South Korean] Hyunmoo-2B ranges 400 miles or so with its biggest one-ton warhead—but travels 500 miles with a smaller warhead. It’s a safe bet the South Korean missile is [the] more accurate … one.
   9. Whether Ukraine ever gets Hyunmoo-2B is one question. How it might use them is another. The United States has donated to Ukraine scores of Army Tactical Missile System rockets that range as far as 190 miles—but has insisted on limits on their usage.
   10. Washington allows Kyiv to aim the ATACMS at targets in Russian-occupied Ukraine, but not at targets in Russia itself. That means front-line Russian air bases, home to dozens of Sukhoi fighter-bombers armed with devastating glide bombs, are off-limits. …
   11. With a few well-aimed ATACMS or other ballistic missiles, “Ukraine could potentially incapacitate the entire operational fleet” of [Russian] fighter-bombers at Voronezh Malshevo, Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight explained. But only “if permitted to conduct such a strike.”
   12. Even without permission for strikes inside Russia, Ukraine could put South Korean rockets to good use. There are plenty of valuable Russian targets inside Ukraine’s borders that would almost certainly be fair game.
   13. To be clear, South Korea and Ukraine could forge an alliance similar to the North Korea-Russia alliance—but haven’t yet done so. …
   14. But every bullet, shell or rocket North Korea gives or sells to Russia makes a Hyunmoo-2B deal likelier. …
   15. MIKE: There’s a bit more detail in the original article which I’ve linked to. I can’t really offer any more analysis than what’s in the story except to say, stay tuned.
10. Israeli military takes foreign journalists into Rafah to make a case for success in its war with Hamas; By Holly Williams, Federico Pucci | CBSNEWS.COM | Updated on: July 7, 2024 / 7:03 PM EDT. Tags: War, Hamas , Israel, Gaza Strip, Rafah, Middle East, Benjamin Neta​nyahu
    1. A CBS News team was among the first group of foreign journalists allowed to visit the decimated southern Gaza city of Rafah since Israel launched its military ground assault there against Hamas in early May. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the operation despite warnings from the U.S. and other Israeli allies, which voiced serious concern about the risks to civilians who’d taken refuge in the city over the preceding seven months of war.
    2. By the end of May, at least two weeks into Israel’s ground operations in the city, the United Nations said about 1 million Palestinians had fled from Rafah — many of whom had already been displaced at least once previously.
    3. CBS News journalists in Gaza, led by producer Marwan al-Ghoul, have reported on the warsince it started … But the visit on Wednesday was the first look for foreign television news crews at the operation in Rafah, and its consequences. 
    4. CBS News was driven into southern Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces in a convoy of open-top IDF Humvees.
    5. The IDF wanted to show the foreign media what it had accomplished in Rafah, including the discovery of what it called a “terror ecosystem” — an underground labyrinth of tunnels it said had been constructed by the militants under the city. Military officials said some of the tunnels had connected Hamas militants’ territory in Gaza with Egypt, across the Palestinian enclave’s southern border.
    6. Smuggling via that route has long been pointed to by Israel as a vital survival line for Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the US, Israel, and the European Union for years.
    7. The IDF said it had found hundreds of houses in the city boobytrapped by the militants, and that during its operations, it had killed more than 900 militants in Rafah.
    8. The city was said to be the last major stronghold of Hamas, which ruled over Gaza for almost 20 years before it sparked the ongoing war by launching its unprecedented Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel. That attack saw the militants kill some 1,200 people and take about 240 more hostage, roughly 80 of whom are still believed to be alive, held hostage in Gaza.
    9. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry [I’ll add, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians] says Israel’s retaliatory war has killed almost 38,000 people, most of them women and children. It has also destroyed most of the infrastructure in the Palestinian territory, which, before the war, was believed to be home to about 2.3 million people. …
    10. MIKE: The rest of the story does the kind of reporting from Gaza that has become a TV news staple.
    11. MIKE: I feel that the headline for this story misleads us to thinking that it’s about the Israeli side of the story, about the progress of their mission and what they’ve found supporting their case against Hamas, and how Hamas has used civilian infrastructure to hide and shield themselves among the Gazan population.
    12. MIKE: Instead, the story again flips to being about Gazan civilians who have been endangered by the very strategy Hamas uses to hide itself among civilians, and that deliberately endangers Gazans. Hamas then uses their dead as propaganda tools.
    13. MIKE: Believe what you will of Israeli tactics in Gaza, but Hamas should also be publicly damned for deliberately inflicting this war and its military consequences on Gazans who are not fighters, and who may not even be sympathizers.
    14. MIKE: If you consider the Israelis, the bad guys, then you might consider that there are no good guys to be found in Gaza.
    15. MIKE: I’m going to play audio from a Wall Street Journal video (1:32) from July 3^rd titled, “On the Ground in Rafah: Israel Tightens Grip, Finds Hamas Tunnels”. I think it offers more information on the IDF side of the story than the CBS story does. It runs 90 seconds. The audio has some wind and background noise that can make parts hard to understand. I’ve linked to the video on my blog post.
11. That’s about all we have time for this week. There is an article I’d suggest reading from the Guradian called — ‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history; Some analysts believe Kyiv is buying the west time on the precipice of a world war. Is it being used wisely? By Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Sat 8 Jun 2024 00.00 EDT. TAGS: Ukraine, Russia, Nazism, Second World War, Europe, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskiy,

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