The axing of the energy price guarantee from April next year could lead to almost 11m UK households falling into fuel poverty, campaigners have warned, which is about 26m people.
It means more than one in three British households face the grim prospect of hardship: there are an estimated 28.1m households in the UK. The average household in Britain has 2.36 people.
The End Fuel Poverty Coalition described the outlook as “frankly terrifying” and urged the Government to focus on a new package of support and energy market reforms, alongside investment in home insulation and renewables.
The predicted increase from the current seven million households in fuel poverty to 10.7 million after the Government lifts its guarantee limiting the average household energy bill to £2,500 from April will then fall slightly – but will still leave 10.1 million households in fuel poverty in the winter of 2023/24, the group said.
Protest in London
The figures come as protesters gather in London to ask MPs to back plans for a universal basic energy allowance to meet heating, cooking and lighting needs, part of the ‘Energy For All’ petition which will be handed to Downing Street on Wednesday with more than 600,000 signatures.
The Warm This Winter campaign called for the immediate suspension of all forced transfers of households onto more expensive pre-payment meters, whether by court warrant or remotely via smart meters.
Ruth London, from Fuel Poverty Action, said: “The outlook is frankly terrifying. It is now all the more essential – and more possible – to win a totally new pricing framework like Energy For All. Finally there is now support for this inside Parliament.”
Simon Francis, co-ordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said:
“The Government may have brought some stability to the markets, but it has come at the cost of huge instability in households’ finances.
“The new Chancellor must work quickly, and with consumer groups and charities, to design a new package of support and energy market reforms that will help those in fuel poverty now and post-April.
“But while the political focus on energy bills may now have shifted to next April, millions of the most vulnerable will be living in cold and damp homes this winter and will need further financial and non-financial support.”
Firms urged to prepay customers
Meanwhile, consumer site MoneySavingExpert (MSE) urged some of the biggest energy firms to allow prepay customers with smart meters to use their £400 Government support payment on both electricity and gas, to ensure they can maintain heating this winter.
Prepayment customers with traditional meters can decide where best to use the payments, which come in six monthly instalments between now and March 2023, as they are sent as a voucher they can use to top up their electricity or gas meter. However for those with smart meters, the payment is usually applied to their electricity meter by default, so they have less choice.
Gary Caffell, head of energy at MSE, said: “We appreciate that suppliers have acted fast to deliver the first of these crucial support payments.
“But combined with the wider cost of living crisis – affecting all other areas of people’s finances – not allowing customers flexibility to transfer some or all of these payments to gas meters puts these people, many of whom are vulnerable, at a much higher risk of reaching a crisis point in the coming months.
“Some may simply not be able to afford to heat their homes.”
Elon Musk Predicts U.S. In Recession Until “Spring Of 2024”
If Elon Musk is any type of financial prognosticator, the market and economy could be in trouble for more than a year to come.
When prompted in a Twitter thread early on Friday morning, the Tesla CEO said that he thought the current recession would last “probably until spring of ’24”.
“It sure would be nice to have one year without a horrible global event,” Musk said earlier in the thread.
He was then asked how much worse he thought the recession would get.
Musk answered: “Varies a lot. Tesla & SpaceX are in good positions, but many other companies are not.” Channeling his inner Milton Friedman, he continued: “Recessions do have a silver lining in that companies that shouldn’t exist stop existing.”
Its a timeline that Musk didn’t bring up during the most recent Tesla earnings call. Recall, on the call earlier this week, Musk said the company is pushing forward with its production plans despite the current state of the global economy.
Musk said: “To be frank, we’re very pedal to the metal come rain or shine. We are not reducing our production in any meaningful way, recession or not recession.”
Musk continued: “The U.S. actually is in – North America’s in pretty good health. A little bit of that is raising interest rates more than they should, but I think they’ll eventually realize that and bring back down, I think.”
He continued: “The public at large realizes that world’s moving towards electric vehicles, and it’s foolish to buy a new gasoline car at this point because the residual value of that gasoline car is going to be very low. So, we’re in a very good spot.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s recession-proof but it’s recession-resilient, because basically the people of Earth have made the decision in large part to move away from gasoline cars,” he added.
Musk, like his biggest fan Cathie Wood, was also critical of the Federal Reserve. He stated: “The Fed’s decisions make sense if you’re looking in the rear-view mirror not if you’re looking out the windshield.”
Iran’s military is conducting large-scale military drills on its border with Azerbaijan, including practicing crossings of the Aras River, which defines a large part of the border between the two states.
The exercises, called “Mighty Iran,” began on October 17. The exact location has not been specified, but Iranian media placed them in between Iran’s provinces of Ardabil and East Azerbaijan, the part of Iran across the Aras from Azerbaijan’s Fuzuli region. One expert on open-source intelligence, however, analyzed photos of the pontoon crossing and placed it across from Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan.
Recently Iran started unprecedented drills aimed against Azerbaijan’s policy of getting a land corridor to Nakhcivan as a part of peace treaty with Armenia.
The drills come as Iran has been stepping up its diplomatic warnings to Baku about Azerbaijan’s intentions for a new transport link connecting Azerbaijan’s exclave of Nakhchivan with the Azerbaijani mainland, a route that Baku calls the “Zangezur corridor.” The route would pass along Armenia’s border with Iran, with uncertain consequences for Armenia-Iran commerce.
“Iran will not permit the blockage of its connection route with Armenia, and in order to secure that objective the Islamic Republic of Iran also launched a wargame in that region,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an October 19 interview with the IRNA news agency.
Amir-Abdollahian was planning to visit Armenia on October 20 to officially open Iran’s new consulate in Kapan, in the flashpoint province of Syunik, which borders Azerbaijan and Iran, Armenia’s foreign ministry reported.
Iranian media have described the exercises as “massive.”
Photos have depicted lengthy rows of tanks and multiple-launch rocket systems. Military officials say the forces in the drills have practiced simulations of airborne landings, as well as the use of suicide drones of the type that Russia recently debuted in Ukraine.
The most noteworthy element of the exercise so far has been the practice of crossing the Aras River using pontoon bridges, which Iranian media said was the first time the forces have drilled on that technique. The Aras River forms a large part of the Iran-Azerbaijan border, though presumably they chose a rare section in which the northern bank is Iranian, not Azerbaijani, territory. October 19 video from the exercise showed tanks and supply trucks driving over a pontoon bridge.
The exercise indicates that “the armed forces’ determination to confront any regime that wants to cut Iran’s land connection with Armenia is serious,” tweeted Iranian military analyst Hossein Daliran.
It comes as tensions in the region are growing on several fronts. In August, apparently in response to Iran’s regular warnings about the Zangezur corridor, Azerbaijani pro-government media began attacking Iran on a deeply sensitive issue, encouraging the large ethnic Azerbaijani minority in the country to secede.
In September, Azerbaijan launched an attack against a broad section of the Armenian border, raising fears of a larger invasion. Tension has continued to fester, with a recent increase in ceasefire violations. Iran, meanwhile, has been beset by countrywide anti-government protests while strengthening its alliance with Russia through the drone supplies.
After its infowar threats stoking separatism two months earlier, Baku has been noticeably quieter in the days since this exercise began. There has been no official comment, and pro-government media have been downplaying the story. Some outlets presented the exercises as taking place on the Armenian border, others speculated that the real target was likely Armenia because of the disastrous consequences an attack on Azerbaijan would entail. (One piece, in the pro-government Musavat, was an exception and did not minimize the issue, calling it “a very serious provocation and threat. With this, the Iranian side is demonstrating that it is ready to encroach on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan.”)
But Azerbaijan could be merely biding its time: the last time Iran held massive military drills on its border with Azerbaijan, last year, Baku responded in a similarly low-key manner for several days before President Ilham Aliyev fired back, if only rhetorically.
Iran’s embassy in Baku has been giving mixed messages about the exercises. It issued a statement insisting that the drills were pre-planned and that Azerbaijan was notified in advance, “taking into consideration the friendly and brotherly relations” between the two countries.
The ambassador himself, though, gave a more pointed statement, tweeting a video of the exercises set to martial music and writing that they were a demonstration of Iran’s “readiness to defend the security of the country’s borders and a decisive response to any threats and interventions by countries and regimes in the region.”
🇮🇷 پیام روشن #رزمایش_اقتدار سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی #ایران برای کشورهای همسایه صلح، دوستی و تحکیم امنیت پایدار و برای دشمنان، اعلام آمادگی برای دفاع از امنیت مرزهای کشور و پاسخ قاطعانه به هرگونه تهدید و مداخلات کشورها و رژیم های فرامنطقه ای است.#ایران_قویpic.twitter.com/PSFOsz4tk5
While Tehran has for some time been warning Azerbaijan about its threats to Armenia, in recent days its talking points have incorporated a new perceived threat in the Caucasus: the “European military presence.”
Iran President Ibrahim Raisi met with Aliyev in Astana on October 13 and a senior Raisi adviser wrote after the meeting that the Iranian leader “rejected any change in the historical borders, the geopolitics of the region, and the Iran-Armenia transit route” and that that would “elicit a decisive response from Iran.” But he added that Raisi “also rejected European military presence in the region under any cover. He said internal issues won’t distract us from the Iranian nation’s strategic interests.”
The “European military presence” would seem to be a reference to a new European Union monitoring mission that began deploying to Armenia this week. That mission will be modest – 40 members, with a two-month mandate – but it seems to have spooked Iran. More Europeans could be coming: the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe announced that it would be sending an “assessment mission” to Armenia between October 21 and 27.
The goal of the European mission(s) appears to be the same as that of the Iranian military exercises: reduce fears of an Azerbaijani attack on Armenia.
(One Azerbaijani analyst, improbably, suggested the two sides may be in cahoots.)
How the European presence in Armenia may change Iran’s strategic calculations remains to be seen. But Armenia continues to count on support from Tehran. A delegation of members of Armenia’s parliament visited Tehran on October 13 and met with several senior Iranian government officials, including Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian.
“Iran’s principled position regarding the inevitable need to protect Armenia’s internationally recognized borders and territorial integrity and to condemn the recent military aggression undertaken by Azerbaijan was emphasized,” wrote the leader of the group, MP Gevorg Papoyan.
In fact, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, inflation is predicted to be worse in developing economies, where price increases are projected to reach 9.9 percent on average over the course of this year. In developed nations, this number was put at 7.2 percent by the IMF.
After the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February, the organization revised their inflation projections upwards – by 3.3 percent for developed countries and 4 percent for developing nations.
This shows that even before the war in Ukraine disrupted global energy and food supplies, inflation projections had already been quite high as supply chains overstretched by restocking needs after the end of major Covid-19 lockdowns had already caused inflation to rise to levels not seen since the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Worse still, global growth expectations are faltering fast, prompting fears of global stagflation…
Because many developing nations are experiencing economic growth, inflation is generally higher on average in this group of countries. But this doesn’t mean that inflation cannot hit non-industrialized countries hard if it happens at a time when their economies are struggling…
Countries experiencing conflict, upheaval or major economic problems in 2022 are expected to see inflation rates far above the global average of 8.8 percent. Among them are Venezuela, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Turkey and Argentina.
95 countries – from the developed and the developing world – are projected to see inflation above 5 percent but below 10 percent.
This is more than the around 80 which are expected to keep inflation at or below the 5-percent mark.
The war between states and banks over environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and similar practices has reached the doorstep of the U.N. A total of 19 state attorneys general have launched investigations of major financial institutions’ commitment to the U.N.-convened Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
The alliance’s website states that its members control roughly 40 percent of the world’s banking assets and are “committed to aligning their lending and investment portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050.”
“The Net-Zero Banking Alliance is a massive worldwide agreement by major banking institutions, overseen by the U.N., to starve companies engaged in fossil fuel-related activities of credit on national and international markets,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a statement regarding the investigations.
A May statement from the alliance states that it “does not support the financing of fossil fuel expansion” but notes that it “believes that immediate divestment from existing fossil fuel positions will not necessarily bring about the required real economy decarbonization that the world needs.”
“We are leading a coalition investigating banks for ceding authority to the U.N., which will only result in the killing of American companies that don’t subscribe to the woke climate agenda. These banks are accountable to American laws–we don’t let international bodies set the standards for our businesses,” Schmitt said.
Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia are among the states now investigating the banks through a powerful tool known as a civil investigative demand.
One demand encompasses the following requests: “Describe Your involvement in each Global Climate Initiative in which You participate, including the date You first began participating; any promises, pledges, or other commitments You made to the Global Climate Initiative; or any actions You made or took pursuant to, or consistent with, such commitments, or Your initial or on-going participation, and the employee(s) responsible for managing Your relationship with each Global Climate Initiative.”
Schmitt’s announcement is the latest salvo in a long-running conflict between major financial institutions and individual U.S. states regarding ESG.
State treasurers, such as West Virginia’s Riley Moore, have sought to move their state’s money from financial institutions that follow ESG principles.
Beijing’s highly secretive Ministry of State Security (MSS) leveraged and manipulated leading Western political and business elites to deepen the Chinese Communist Party’s influence around the world, according to a new book by Alex Joske, an expert on Chinese foreign interference.
The early pages of “Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World” detail how billionaire George Soros, inspired by his work establishing the Open Society Foundation in post-communist Hungary, carried out similar work for China during Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform era.
The vehicle devised by Soros, and partner Liang Heng, was to establish the Fund for the Reform and Opening of China (the China Fund) to support cultural, business, and scientific research to assist with the country’s opening up, according to Joske, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Yet amid political manoeuvring between factions in the 1980s, the China Fund was forced to partner with the China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC), an organisation claiming to be under the control of the Ministry of Culture.
George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, arrives for a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on April 27, 2017. (Olivier Hoslet/AFP/Getty Images)
Joske alleges that Soros and Liang soon discovered, however, that CICEC had its own motives for the China Fund, and that was to support political initiatives rather than activities associated with liberalising China.
Soros later closed the China Fund with CICEC co-chair Yu Enguang, revealed to be a “high-ranking official in the external police” or the MSS.
“The MSS seizure of the China Fund was an impressive display of the agency’s confidence in engaging with one of America’s best-connected and wealthiest men. What it learnt could be applied to future operations as the agency grew more aggressive and internationally focused over the following decade,” Joske wrote.
CICEC itself would continue to be a “custom-made organ” for meeting and secretly influencing recruits from around the world.
“Politically sensitive missions like engaging directly with George Soros or posing as liberals with the Party in order to gain the trust of foreigners are home turf for these officers,” he said.
Exploiting Ambition
Joske also notes that the MSS was very adept at exploiting the ambition of Western elites and cites the example of the former co-president of Goldman Sachs, John Thornton.
After quitting the banking giant, Thornton held several prominent positions with major Chinese institutions, including a directorship at the well-known Tsinghua University.
Journalist Josh Rogin alleged Thornton developed one of the “most reliable and high-level networks with the families that run the CCP,” which shaped Thornton’s views on how to manage China relations.
John L. Thornton, guest professor and director of Global Leadership Program at Tsinghua SEM and chairman of the board of the Brookings Institution, speaks during the 2011 Tsinghua Management Global Forum at Tsinghua SEM Auditorium in Beijing on Oct. 25, 2011. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
“Thornton’s beliefs about China’s future have been characterised by the same false narratives the MSS Social Investigation Bureau pushed on foreign scholars, diplomats, and elites. In 2008, he argued in an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine that the Party was actively considering moving towards democracy,” Joske wrote.
“Thornton’s writings reflect the same optimism about China that Party leaders and the MSS learnt to capitalise on decades earlier.”
The former Goldman Sachs executive went on to encourage the Trump administration to befriend Chinese leader Xi Jinping directly. Yet these efforts at diplomatic engagement with the Chinese leadership would eventually give way to tough sanctions on China to correct years of intellectual property theft and unbalanced trade.
Thornton, along with several major Wall Street figures, also allegedly attempted to sway the Biden administration on its China policy, but these efforts have also fallen to the wayside as scrutiny of the Chinese Communist Party becomes more widespread.
Exploiting a Love of China
Joske also draws attention to the Chinese regime’s use of people’s love for China outlining the example involving former Australian Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke.
Hawke was distraught in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 and famously responded by granting 42,000 Chinese nationals’ asylum.
Joske says four years after the massacre, Hawke received a message from the Chinese consul in Sydney inviting him to visit China.
Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke in Brisbane, Australia, on Aug. 16, 2010. (William West/AFP/Getty Images)
Hawke felt it was important that Australia-China relations grew, so agreed to do so. There he was received and welcomed by then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and then-Premier Li Peng.
“The special bromance between Chinese and Australian leaders was back on track. Hawke thought the fate of [former Premier] Zhao Ziyang, who eventually died in house arrest, was ‘extremely sad,’ but the importance of building ties to the Party leadership came first,” Joske wrote.
He further added that the issue of Tiananmen was eventually “swept under the rug,” and Hawke would go on to play a valuable role in selling China to the rest of the world.
Visualizing 20 Years Of Top Trending Google Searches
For decades, Google search has been a go-to source for many when looking up directions, keeping up with the news, or seeking information on new and unfamiliar topics.
Today, Google processes about 3.5 billion searches per day. Because of its dominant market share, Google holds a vast archive of keyword searches that, when analyzed, provide an interesting glimpse into the key themes that have captured the world’s attention over the years.
Visual Capitalist’s editorial team dug through hundreds of top trending search terms from global and U.S. data and hand-selected their top picks, which are featured in the graphic above.
Trending vs. Volume
Before diving in, it’s worth emphasizing how top trending searches differ from popular searches, which are measured by sheer volume.
Trending searches are terms that have recently spiked in popularity. They focus on growth rather than total volume, and in this dataset, trending terms gauge year-over-year growth.
A good example is Donald Trump, who popped up in the news cycle during the 2016 presidential campaign. After the election, interest in Trump remained high. But his name doesn’t pop up on the Google trends list after 2017, since by that point, search volume for Trump had plateaued.
What are the most popular Google search terms, by volume? To be honest, they’re slightly less interesting than the top trending searches — YouTube is number one, followed by Facebook, then WhatsApp web.
The Globalization of Search Trends
The people and topics featured in Google’s top trends lists evolves as time goes on, reflecting broader adoption of the internet (and Google Search) around the world over time. Early themes are tied to mainstream U.S. pop culture and tech trends.
As time goes on, social media and smartphone adoption increase the granularity and volume of searches, resulting in top trends that are more participatory, diverse, and global in nature.
One final variable to keep in mind is that Google itself began to share more detailed search highlights with each passing year.
Two Decades of Google Searches: Macro Insights
Now that we’ve explained what trending searches actually measure, let’s dig into some of the key themes that have emerged over the last two decades of Google searches.
① People Love Sports
Over the last 20 years, sports have remained a continuous trend.
Every four years, the World Cup shows up as a top trending keyword across the globe. The Olympics also makes a regular appearance, along with Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps and McKayla Maroney.
Although the U.S. dominates the list, particularly when it comes to athletes, there’s still a good variety of international sports that go viral, especially as time goes on. In the last two years, cricket, rugby, and soccer have all made the top five trending lists.
② The Emergence of Celebrity 2.0
Over time, you can also see a transition from the conventional celebrity to celebrity 2.0, also known as the social media celebrity.
In the early 2000s, pop culture icons like Britney Spears, Eminem, and Jennifer Lopez flooded the trending searches, and traditional media forms like TV shows and Movies dominated the mass media categories.
But by 2011, YouTube stars like Rebecca Black started to make their way on the trending search lists. And in 2014, Meme emerged as a top trending category.
This transition nods to a larger shift in media, as digital has gradually overtaken traditional media as the dominant form of entertainment.
③ Natural Disasters are Top of Mind
Natural Disasters are a key trend throughout this data set as well.
Hurricanes are a particularly trendy word, showing up almost half the time—in eight of the 20 years. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina ranked second in the most searched category across the globe.
It continued to gain global attention—by 2006, Hurricane Katrina was still in the top five trending news searches.
Dig Deeper into Trending Google Searches
Our team enjoyed sifting through 20 years of Google data, and we hope you enjoyed this blast from the past too. If you’d like to dive deeper, you can explore Google’s full dataset here.
However, dealing with bears is a chore and just part of life for locals.
On a good day, that means constant vigilance and being conscious about little things—like where you stash your fishing gear and old take-out containers.
On a bad day, dealing with bears can be dangerous and very expensive.
Nestled in the winding waterways of Southeastern Alaska is the town of Haines. Touted as the “adventure capital” of the state, it has the spirit of a true frontier outpost.
It’s the kind of place where you can buy hunting rifles and liquor directly across the street from the cruise ship dock.
It’s also the location of a record-high number of bear killings out of self-defense in 2020.
That year, police received an astonishing 452 phone calls requesting help with bears breaking into homes, restaurants, and cars in search of food.
Haines police chief Heath Scott indicated the number of calls was eight times higher than in 2019.
The outcome was grim.
Official counts stated a total of 46 bears—an unprecedented number—were culled out of necessity to protect human life and property. Some Haines locals say the unofficial number was closer to 60 bears.
Last year, Haines police received more than 50 bear-related calls. That’s still above the average, which is around 35-50 calls per year.
Quick to sound the alarm, some climate alarmists cite lower fish populations resulting from rising water temperatures as the cause for higher numbers of bear rampages over the past two years.
But some Haines residents aren’t so quick to sweep marauding bears under the rug of climate change.
Locals say fluctuating fish populations are not unusual.
Compounding this is irresponsible trash management and nearby fish farms. The latter is something many Alaskans assert has quietly fueled this problem for years.
Bear Necessities
“This isn’t anything new. It’s an ongoing thing,” Shori Long told The Epoch Times.
Long has had more than her fair share of encounters with intrepid bears in the past 36 years. She grew up fishing in Alaska’s vast wildlands around the Aleutian Islands and Haines.
“I remember playing on the beach as a kid and never really worried about bears,” she said, adding there was no electricity where she grew up until 2009.
Long described sunny days as a young girl spent catching salmon barefoot with her dog. But since then, she’s noticed increasingly bold behavior among the local bear population.
She attributes this to a shift in perception where bears now associate humans directly with food.
Much of this derives from negligent behavior with trash and fish scraps.
Uneducated fishermen—many of whom are visitors—will often feed bears directly or leave scraps nearby. After years of this dangerous practice, bears now see humans as walking food trucks.
“They would throw their fish to the bears or leave the chum on the beach. Bears have learned from this and now they think, ‘Oh hey, there’s another human with a pole. That means food,” Long said.
She also noted there were two key elements behind the historic 2020 bear rampage. They’re the same factors that underscore any year with a higher than average amount of bear damage.
“That was a really bad year for fish and berries combined. The berries weren’t there, and the fish just weren’t there,” she said.
Other than fish, wild berries provide another important food source for Alaska’s ursid population. A combined scarcity can force hungry bears to shift from regular hunting and foraging to full-blown ransacking.
“It’s the availability of natural foods. In 2020, it was a very low fish year and there weren’t many berries around,” Roy Churchwell, told The Epoch Times.
Churchwell is a biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He said the fish and berry supply was a little better in 2021 but “still not great.”
He also says that bear rampages aren’t on the rise, per se. It completely depends on food availability, which varies from year to year.
“For example, if wild foods become available again, it’s very common for bears to go back to those wild resources,” Churchwell said.
When hungry bears can’t find enough to eat in the woods, they often wander into cities and towns.
Every year, they cause thousands of dollars in property and vehicle damage. They tear open doors to homes and cars, break through windows, and demolish storage sheds.
Churchwell noted that Haines has problems with both black and brown bears, which are the species normally encountered in Southeastern Alaska.
Confrontations with grizzlies are more common in the interior portion of the state.
Despite the fierce reputation of Alaskan grizzlies, black bears alone account for upwards of 40,000 damage complaints to agencies throughout North America every year.
Trash and Fish Farms
Preventing bear damage goes far beyond rookie stuff like leaving unsecured food out in the open. A black bear’s scent capacity is estimated to be seven times greater than that of a bloodhound.
That means leaving something as simple as a recently used fishing pole in your car will entice unwanted attention from bears. Moreover, things like empty fast food boxes and wrappers offer a nearly irresistible temptation.
Though sometimes even smelling “too fishy” after a day on the water is enough to prompt an attack, according to Long.
She recalled an episode in 2019 where a bear attempted to maul her after she returned from a pleasant day of beach fishing. Long said the prompt response of her dog, which launched a counterattack on the aggressive bear, proved to be enough of a deterrent to allow her to escape.
Long laughed while recalling the incident. “When I saw that bear reaching for me, I thought, ‘here we go.’”
Other locals in Long’s circle have had their own ugly run-ins with local bears.
“One of my best friends and her neighbor had their cars totally destroyed because a bear got in and just tore it apart,” she said.
In addition to cars, garages, mudrooms, and storage sheds, sunrooms are inviting targets for bears due to the prevalence of food storage in deep freezers along with hunting and fishing equipment.
“We’ve learned how to deter them,” Long explained. “You store your crab gear, your longline gear, outside in a shed. Then use plywood with screws sticking out that will injure the bear’s paws if they try to press on the door. It works as a fantastic deterrent.”
Gear storage aside, there’s still a trash problem to address.
Haines local Charlene Jones told The Epoch Times area bears near town have literally been “trained by the trash.”
Jones says that 2022 has been a better year for fish and berries, which allows residents to breathe a little easier.
This year, all she had to do was yell at the bears nosing around her property to make them leave.
Yet even with a more abundant food supply, vigilance must still be maintained. Jones said that, along with her neighbor, “We tame our trash like we’re on a mission from god.”
“Because all the bears taught their bear children to go and eat human trash. It’s a generational thing,” Jones said.
Churchwell agrees that appropriate waste management is critical. “It’s difficult to get people to secure their garbage … and other bear attractants. If we can do that, it goes a long way.”
Though looming in the backdrop of food supply and waste management is the impact of nearby farms on Alaska’s aquatic culture.
Research suggests farmed fish is linked to spawning issues, disease, and smaller subsequent generations. Finfish farming isn’t legal in Alaskan state waters, but only up to three miles offshore. Also, in neighboring Canada, fish farming is a booming industry.
That means fish farms may inadvertently contribute to the lower populations impacting bear behavior.
401(k) Contribution Limit Leaps By Record Amount As Inflation Rages
The IRS on Friday announced that contribution limits for 401(k) plans and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) are rising in 2023 in response to price inflation that’s running at the fastest pace in about 40 years.
The limits are linked to the headline Consumer Price Index, or CPI-U, and September’s reading saw an 8.2% year-over-year increase.
The boost to the 401(k) maximum is the biggest one ever in both dollar and percentage terms, as retirement investors will be able to contribute $2,000 more in 2023 than they can this year. The limit on so-called “catch-up contributions”– available to those age 50 and over — is rising by $1,000, to $7,500.
That puts 2023’s annual 401(k) limit at $22,500 for workers under 50, and $30,000 for those 50 and older. The same new maximums apply to participants in 403(b) and most 457 plans, as well as the Thrift Savings Plan for federal government employees.
IRA investors will be able to put away an extra $500in 2023, as the limit rises to $6,500. Unlike most other contribution amounts, the IRA “catch-up” for the 50+ crowd isn’t indexed to inflation and will remain at $1,000.
The income ranges that drive eligibility for deductible contributions to Traditional IRAs and contributions to Roth IRAs are also rising. See the IRS announcement for those and other details.
Of course, higher limits are only useful to the extent Americans can actually find the extra money to put away — at the same time when rising prices for gasoline, energy and food are hammering their cash flow.
Hey! The IRS is raising the 401k contribution limit by a record amount! Just what the American people who are struggling to afford basics need.
It’s not as if Americans are even treading water against inflation — they’re already sinking: August saw revolving credit balances soar by 18%, as Americans continue to pay for inflation with credit cards. “Americans are burning up their plastic in order to make ends meet,” writes SchiffGold’s Michael Maharrey.
Meanwhile, a boost in workplace contribution limits is of limited use when salaries and wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation. In a recent Bankrate survey, only 39% of people who received a raise in the past year or moved to a higher-paying job said the boost had kept up with rising prices.
Only about 14% of 401(k) contributors maxed out in 2021, the Employee Benefits Research Institute’s Craig Copeland tells Bloomberg: “It’s really the people making $100,000 and especially those making $150,000 or more who save the maximum.”
All that said, if you’re among those with the capacity to put away more money for retirement, it could make a difference down the road.
Assuming a 5% return, a 40-year-old who boosts his 401(k) contribution by $2,000 a year ends up with roughly an extra $100,000 at age 65. At an 8% return, it’s an extra $159,000.
For a 50-year old who’s already maxing out and takes advantage of the new limits by increasing 401(k) contributions by $3,000, it yields roughly an extra $67,000 at age 65 at a 5% return, and $87,000 at 8%.
Of course, we realize the more fatalist readers of these pages will be more inclined to invest in food, brass and lead.
We’ve warned consistently that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s inaction on Illinois’ biggest fiscal problems – pensions, property taxes, unbalanced budgets – would eventually come back to bite the state. Sure, he’s used the near-$200 billion in federal Covid bailout money to cover the state’s financial cracks in the short-term, but the governor can’t hide from the reality of his failures on jobs and growth.
At 4.5 percent in September, no other state has a higher unemployment rate than Illinois, according to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics release.
Illinoisans have been suffering in one the worst five states for unemployment for several months, but now the state has jumped to the number one position. This is what comes from pursuing policies that drive out companies like Boeing, Citadel, Caterpillar and Tyson.
Gov. Pritzker’s administration is already attempting to spin the data. Below is a quote from today’s press release from IDES:
“Today’s data is a clear indicator that the Illinois labor market continues to remain strong and stable,” said Deputy Governor Andy Manar.
Nothing state officials say can change the fact that Illinois is an extreme laggard both regionally and nationally when it comes to creating jobs.
Nor does it change the fact that Illinoisans are now poised to suffer the most during the next economic downturn. Bloomberg says there’s a 100% probability of a recession within the next 12 months and Illinois’ jobs climate is now the worst-positioned to deal with the impact.
All of Illinois’ neighboring states are in far better shape. Their unemployment rates are significantly below those in Illinois, most notably in Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri, where unemployment is 1 to 2 percentage points lower.
That difference in jobless rates represent a big difference in Illinoisans’ lives. Catching up with states like Missouri would mean 130,000 residents back at work – equivalent to the entire population of Springfield and then some.
Illinois’ worst-in-nation jobs climate was never preordained. With its central location, abundant resources and hard-working residents, it should be leading the nation in jobs and growth.
Until those policy failures are finally addressed, expect both businesses and Illinoisans to continue to leave for better prospects. Which, as of September, means every other state in the nation.
