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FEMA’s administrator expects a long recovery from Ida which moves across the US this week, North Korea has restarted a key reactor coffee hits a 4-year high, civilian casualties on US drone strike on ISIS-K, and more news.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told NBC that the agency expects a long recovery from the destruction wrought by Ida, which struck Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane and has since weakened to a tropical storm on Monday with winds of 60 mph. The storm has knocked out power to more than one million homes and businesses in Louisiana and over 131,000 in Mississippi. The storm is expected to hover over the South for two days, then move into the Mid-South by Wednesday, the mid-Atlantic on Thursday, and Northeast by Friday.
The US made good on President Joe Biden’s threat to retaliate on ISIS-K terrorists (known as Islamic State Khorasan) following two attacks last week in Afghanistan.
On Saturday, the Pentagon announced that “two high-profile Islamic State group targets were killed and one was wounded when US military forces conducted a drone strike on Friday in Afghanistan.”
MSNBC reported: “In a public statement, Army Maj. Gen. William “Hank” Taylor added that there were zero known civilian casualties as part of the operation.”
However, on Monday the Washington Post reported that a family reported that 10 civilians were killed by the US drone strike. All the dead were from a single extended family.
Expect to see the price of coffee climbing soon, as futures for robusta coffee, which is often used to make espresso, recently jumped to its highest level in four years. Arabica futures also are up 3 percent this month, after climbing 18 percent in July. Folgers and Dunkin’ expect to see rising costs affect its business, as more expensive transportation and packaging have also played a role. Starbucks, however, buys massive quantities in advance and has some hedging strategies to lock in prices for a while.
Analysts point to pandemic restrictions in Vietnam and adverse weather in Brazil among the causes, as well as a bad drought followed by frost in South America. While other goods such as corn, soybeans, and lumber are coming back down to earth, coffee is skyrocketing, CNN reported.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is warning that North Korea has started a key nuclear reactor that is widely believed to have the capability of producing weapons-grade plutonium, the watchdog group said in a statement and report released on Sunday, NBC reported.
“Since early July 2021, there have been indications, including the discharge of cooling water, consistent with the operation,” according to a new annual report.
According to independent analysis and scientific reports, the 5-megawatt Yongbyon plant north of the capital, Pyongyang, is capable of producing multiple kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium in a single year.
