More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. Under this largest war scenario, more than 75% of the planet would be starving within two years.

 Even a localized India-Pakistan war would also reverberate worldwide, resulting in possibly two billion deaths from lack of food.

“The data tell us one thing: We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening,” said Alan Robock, a Distinguished Professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University and co-author of the study. “If nuclear weapons exist, they can be used, and the world has come close to nuclear war several times.” 

Nuclear war would cause a global famine and kill billions, study finds (phys.org)

 Aramco reaped a half-year income of $48.4 billion in profits between April and June this year, compared with $25.5 billion last year. The company enjoyed a similar surge in profits for the first three months. Half-year-earnings reached nearly $88 billion.

Aramco President Amin Nasser said the results reflected “an increasing demand for our products,” and predicted that the trend would continue. “In fact, we expect oil demand to continue to grow for the rest of the decade…”

Saudi oil firm Aramco profits skyrocket amid global instability | News | DW | 14.08.2022

Eight of the 14 areas of England are now classified as being in drought, with hosepipe bans being implemented across increasing areas of the country.

The Environment Agency recently called for water company bosses to be jailed for serious pollution, after finding the water firms’ performance on pollution had declined to the worst seen in years.

 The bosses of England’s water companies have been criticised for banking £58m in pay and benefits over the last five years. Since privatisation, shareholders have been paid £72bn in dividends. The cash came from big debts, with companies borrowing £56bn, and big bills, with prices rising 40%.

Stuart Singleton-White, head of campaigns at the Angling Trust, said: “The profits being made by water companies, who are in effect private monopolies, the dividend payments to shareholders, the inflated salaries and bonuses to the CEOs, and the debts that have been run up by these companies, mostly to support dividends and inflated salaries, rather than finance investment, is a clear sign this is a broken market.”

He pointed out that no new reservoirs have been built in England since water companies were privatised, and that years of underinvestment had led to “unacceptable levels of leaks”. Water companies currently leak around a quarter of their supply through old pipes, with 2,954m litres a day seeping away last year.

“When the crisis hit, our water system was not ready”, Singleton-White said, blaming “the greed of the water companies, the weakness of the regulators and the complacency of the government”.

Former Conservative environment minister Rebecca Pow said, “These salaries are unacceptable if they can’t with a clear conscience provide clean, plentiful and sustainable water.”

Thames Water

Area: Greater London, parts of Kent, Essex and Gloucestershire

Chief executive: Sarah Bentley

Pay: £2m

Tenure: September 2020-present

Bentley landed £2m in pay and bonuses last year. She held senior roles at the telecoms giant BT, the consultancy Accenture and Severn Trent Waterbefore joining Thames Water with a £3.1m “golden hello”, including two £727,000 one-off payments. Last year, the firm was fined £4m for discharging raw sewage in two Oxford streams.

Anglian Water

Area: East of England including Norfolk and Cambridgeshire

Chief executive: Peter Simpson

Pay: £1.3m

Tenure: 2013-present

Last month he had landed a £337,651 bonus despite the company notching up one of the worst pollution records in the industry.

Severn Trent

Area: Stretches from the Bristol Channel to the Humber, and from mid-Wales to the east Midlands

Chief executive: Liv Garfield

Pay: £3.9m

Tenure: 2014-present

 The firm was fined £1.5m for dumping sewage in Worcestershire last year.

Pennon

Area: South-west England

Chief executive: Susan Davy

Pay: £1.6m

Tenure: 2020-present

 South West Water has faced criticism over pollution levels affecting the Cornwall and Devon beaches.

Wessex Water

Area: Parts of south-west England including Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire

Chief executive: Colin Skellet

Pay: £975,000 last year

Tenure: 1988-present

Wessex Water has issued a warning about “non-essential” water use and he has a 40ft swimming pool at his home in a village outside Bath, thought to be worth more than £3m. Wessex Water paid out £975,000 over raw sewage spills in Dorset in 2018.

United Utilities

Area: North-west England

Chief executive: Steve Mogford

Pay: £3.2m

Tenure: 2011-present

Northumbrian Water

Area: North-east England, Essex, Suffolk

Chief executive: Heidi Mottram

Pay: £648,000

Tenure: 2010-present

Southern Water

Area: Hampshire, West Sussex, Isle of Wight, parts of Kent

Chief executive: Lawrence Gosden

Pay: Undisclosed

Tenure: 1 July-present

Last year Southern was fined a record £90m for deliberately pouring sewage into the sea.

Yorkshire Water

Area: Yorkshire, north Lincolnshire, Derbyshire

Chief executive: Nicola Shaw

Pay: Undisclosed

Tenure: 9 May-present

The former National Grid UK executive director, who was also boss of High Speed 1, is likely to receive similar pay to her predecessor, who received £1.4m.

Scottish WaterArea: Scotland

Chief executive: Douglas Millican

Pay: £558,000

Tenure: 2013-present

 The Kent Miners’ Festival is back on Saturday and Sunday 27th to 28th August (from 10am), and Kent & Sussex branch has booked a pitch in the heritage and community exhibitors marquee.

 Not often that this blog has very much positive to say about the UK military but this is an exception.

Gen Sir John McColl, who served in Afghanistan as the first head of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan told BBC Radio 4’s World at One that the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and other ministers should “hang their heads in shame” in regard to the treatment of Afghan refugees.

Two RAF flights carrying as many as 500 Afghans who worked with British forces and their relatives are landing in the UK each month from Pakistan but there is deep frustration within the Ministry of Defence about how the rest of government is struggling to accommodate arrivals. The MoD sources accused other parts of Whitehall of “struggling” to know what to do, and failing to put adequate plans in place.

Britain’s original evacuation of Afghans was “random” and at times dogs had been prioritised over people, he said, adding: “The system was broken when we withdrew from Kabul last year and it remains broken. It was a source of shame then and it continues to be a source of shame.”

Sources at the MoD said that about 1,050 people who were brought out of Afghanistan under Arap were currently in hotels in Pakistan, awaiting processing and transportation to the UK or another destination.

About 6,200 people – including some 1,200 “principals” who worked for the UK, and typically four to five members of their families – are currently understood to be eligible for relocation under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap), one of two government programmes. The figure includes some who are still in Afghanistan and others who have made it out, more often than not to Pakistan, though Afghans have also attempted to cross the border into Iran, where the strained relationship between Britain and the regime in Tehran complicates the ability to help people. The Arap scheme has brought more than 10,100 eligible Afghans to the UK while another, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme (ACRS), will allow up to 20,000 to settle in Britain.

However, there has been strong criticism that the UK has effectively abandoned many Afghans to persecution and execution under the Taliban for the crime of having worked with British forces and officials.

Nine expert groups on Afghanistan criticised the British government’s resettlement schemes as “unjustifiably restrictive”. They said it was deeply concerning that the government was currently not offering a safe route for many Afghan women and girls or to oppressed minority groups.

UK treatment of Afghan refugees ‘continues to be source of shame’ | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

  The pay of the top 1% of earners across the UK – those already on more than £170,000 a year – is rising at an average annualised rate of 9.1%.

At the same time, those in the lowest 10% – those earning below £8,000 a year – have seen their pay rise by just 1.3%. 

the rate of inflation, currently at a 40-year high of 9.4% and forecast by the Bank of England to hit 13% in the coming months. 

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, says such stories are familiar up and down the country. “Working people are at breaking point, having been left at the mercy of soaring bills after a decade of standstill wages and universal credit cuts. But for the wealthiest, it’s business as usual. It’s not just pay at the top that is soaring. Bonuses in the City are at a record high and dividend payouts to shareholders are booming. Without urgent action, the cost of living crisis will deepen the class divide in this country even further.”

‘Some people must be earning millions’: inequality in the UK’s highest-earning constituency | Inequality | The Guardian

 Vast swaths of the continental US will be experiencing prolonged and dangerous heatwaves by the middle of the century, with the heat index in some areas above 100F (38C) for weeks on end, according to a new study .

Almost two-thirds of Americans, who live in mostly southern and central states, will be at risk from the critical temperature increases, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the non-profit First Street Foundation, which used current trends to predict the number of extreme heat days 30 years into the future.

“A changing environment means higher temperatures and changing humidity, creating conditions which exacerbate the effects of extreme heat,” the study reports.

“We’re talking about taking summer, which is already hot, and expanding it for months,” the director of the Houston Healthy Cities program for the Nature Conservancy in Texas, Jaime González, told the Post. “That’s going to cause all sorts of disruptions to everyday life.”

It means as many as 100 million Americans will be living in an “extreme” heat zone that the foundation believes will see the heat index exceed 125F on at least one day of each year, and most probably more.

“While the experience of heat may vary from community to community, there are certain health effects from heat that cannot be ignored.”

Weeks of heat above 100F will be the norm in much of US by 2053, study finds | US news | The Guardian

 A 60-year-old woman in England’s poorest areas typically has the same level of illness as a woman 16 years older in the richest areas, a study into health inequalities has found.

Women in England’s poorest places are diagnosed with a long-term illness at the age of 40 on average, whereas that does not happen to those in the most prosperous places until 48.

Impoverished women spend 43.6 years, or 52% of their lifespan, beset by diagnosed illness, while for their best-off peers it is 41 years, or 46% of their life cycle.

In addition, women from the most deprived backgrounds die on average at 83.6 years old, more than five years sooner than the 88.8-year life expectancy of well-off women.

“In human terms, these stark disparities show that at the age of 40, the average woman living in the poorest areas in England is already being treated for her first long-term illness. This condition means discomfort, a worse quality of life and additional visits to the GP, medication or hospital, depending on what it is. At the other end of the spectrum, the average 40-year-old woman will live a further eight years – about 10% of her life – without diminished quality of life through illness,” Researcher Toby Watt said. “Throughout the rest of her life the impoverished 40-year-old is more likely to have breathing difficulties from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, experience alcohol problems, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and suffer a heart attack or stroke at younger ages. If she makes it to 80, which is less likely, she will still be receiving treatment for and living with more severe illness than her wealthier counterparts.”

At 60 a man living in the most deprived 10% of the country typically has the burden of ill-health experienced by a counterpart in the wealthiest 10% at the age of 70.

The poorest men are expected to spend 42.7 years free of disease, whereas it is much longer among the best-off 10% of the population – 49.2 years. And their life expectancy is 78.3 years, compared with 87.1 for the richest.

He and his team found that inequalities in the burden of disease start in childhood and persist and change in nature through adulthood into older age. However, they are largely explicable over the life cycle by just a handful of illnesses: chronic pain, diabetes, severe breathing problems, anxiety, depression, strokes, heart attacks and drink-related problems.

Poorest women in England have same ill health at 60 as richest at 76 – study | Health | The Guardian

 £60m of food has been wasted on farms because of a labour shortage, according to the National Farmers’ Union, which found at least £22m of fruit and vegetables had been wasted so far this year.

Tom Bradshaw, the union’s deputy president, said: “It’s nothing short of a travesty that quality, nutritious food is being wasted at a time when families across the country are already struggling to make ends meet because of soaring living costs.

Brexit has reduced access to temporary workers coming in from the EU. Up to 38,000 visas have been made available under this year’s seasonal workers scheme, which offers short-term visas to those helping with food production. However, the farming industry say it needs 70,000 alone. Less than 4% of seasonal workers come from the UK, as those permanently living here and seeking work often do not live close to farms and may find it difficult to move for seasonal work and live in temporary accommodation. More than two-thirds of farm workers come via the seasonal workers scheme.

The latest concerns over UK fruit and vegetables follows fears for the potato crop, with half of England’s expected to fail because it cannot be irrigated. Even crops that are usually drought-tolerant, such as maize, have been failing. Milk production is also down nationally because of a lack of food for cows.

Up to £60m in UK crops left to rot owing to lack of workers, says NFU | Farming | The Guardian

 Afghans are struggling with many crises. There is the devastation brought about by decades of war. Climate change has led to droughts across large parts of the country for three years. Elsewhere, it has caused flooding or unseasonal snowfall in the middle of June. This year, the country suffered another major earthquake.

More than a million children are severely malnourished and half of Afghanistan’s population (20 million people) is going hungry. Since January, 13,000 newborns have died from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases, 95% of people lack enough to eat, and 3.5M children need nutritional support.

“Hell on Earth” is how David Beasley, the executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) described the situation in Afghanistan.

The  think tank International Crisis Group fears that “hunger and hardship following the Taliban takeover could kill more Afghan people than all the bombs and bullets of the last two decades.”

Nora Hassanien, acting country director in Afghanistan for the humanitarian organization Save the Children, told DW of “desperate families” who were having to resort to increasingly extreme and harmful coping strategies. “That includes selling their children”

The health sector is collapsing. 

Samira Sayed Rahman, who works for the aid organization International Rescue Committee (IRC), told DW what she saw when she visited a hospital in the eastern province of Paktia: There were not enough doctors, not enough nurses. “The doctors we spoke with have not been paid for the past six months,” she said. “The wards were full of women cradling malnourished children. In the neonatal unit, three babies had to share an incubator.”

 But the biggest challenge, according to Rahman from the IRC, is the suspension of payments from abroad.

For 20 years, the international community covered three-quarters of public expenditure. A plethora of development projects saw roads, schools and hospitals built and provided for their upkeep. But after the Taliban took power, the flow of money was cut off overnight.

“There were about 400,000 people employed in the public sector, plus about 200,000 in the security sector,” Rahman explained. “Many of these jobs have disappeared; unemployment is higher than ever and so is inflation.”

When it comes to hunger in Afghanistan, Rahman is convinced that: “This crisis is man-made; it was caused by the international community.” 

Nora Hassanien of Save the Children shares that assessment, adding: “No amount of humanitarian aid will really solve the problem here. It needs a bigger-picture solution.”

This is also the view of the International Crisis Group. The think tank’s Afghanistan specialist Graeme Smith wrote: “Pulling back from the precipice of a more profound disaster will require ending the country’s isolation, attracting development aid, and persuading Western and regional governments to help with economic recovery.”

The goal of these sanctions is the economic isolation of Afghanistan, according to Conrad Schetter from the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies (BICC). 

“The Afghans have been catapulted back into a subsistence economy.” 

Human Rights Watch Director Kenneth Roth writes that aid isn’t enough without a functioning banking system that is not hamstrung by sanctions. Without access to its foreign exchange reserves, the central bank is very limited in the extent to which it can perform its role in the Afghan economy. Sanctions and the lack of foreign currency make transferring money to Afghanistan nearly impossible.

In theory, special permits can be used for humanitarian purposes. In practice, however, they are very difficult to obtain.

A spokesman from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) described the “non-functioning banking sector, which makes it difficult to get money to Afghanistan at all,” as “a major challenge in implementing the plans.”

Humanitarian groups must therefore adopt unconventional methods. In an interview with DW, Elke Gottschalk, regional director for Asia for the German aid organization Welthungerhilfe, described how money transfers must be processed through alternative channels, called hawala networks. It works like this: Welthungerhilfe transfers money to the account of a hawala dealer, known as a hawaladar, in a third country. “This agent then makes sure that money arrives in Kabul — in cash. We count it, then it can be used.” The International Rescue Committee is also reliant on the hawala system, Samira Sayed Rahman confirmed. However, this is “not a reliable and sustainable method.” 

The administrator of the United Nations Development Program, Achim Steiner, made his position clear. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in May, he said, ‘We cannot abandon 40 million Afghans simply on the principle of moral outrage.”

Afghanistan is starving and the West is partly to blame | Asia | An in-depth look at news from across the continent | DW | 14.08.2022