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Berkshire Hathaway BRK earnings Q2 2021

Berkshire Hathaway BRK earnings Q2 2021

Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in Los Angeles, California. May 1, 2021.

Gerard Miller | CNBC

Berkshire Hathaway’s operating income continued to rebound as its myriad of businesses from energy to railroads benefited from the economic reopening.

The conglomerate reported operating earnings of $6.69 billion in the second quarter, up 21% from $5.51 billion in the same period a year ago, according to its earnings report released on Saturday.

Overall earnings, which reflect Berkshire’s fluctuating equity investments, increased 6.8% year over year to $28 billion in the second quarter.

Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett kept buying back Berkshire shares aggressively instead of making sizable acquisitions. The company repurchased $6 billion of its own stock in the second quarter, bringing the six month total to $12.6 billion. Berkshire bought a record $24.7 billion of its own stock last year.

At the end of June, Berkshire’s cash pile stood at $144.1 billion, holding steady from last quarter’s level and still near a record despite the company’s massive buyback program.

The results came as the conglomerate’s stock wiped out all of its 2020 losses and hit a record high in the period. So far in third quarter, Berkshire’s B shares are up another 2%, bringing their year-to-date gain to over 23%.

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As economic activity continues to grind back to life from the pandemic with more commodities and goods being shipped around the country, Berkshire’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad stands to benefit. Earnings for railroads, utilities and energy jumped more than 27% from a year ago in the period to $2.26 billion, Berkshire said. The conglomerate’s other businesses, including homebuilders and a paint-maker, are also seeing a boost.

Though Berkshire acknowledged the quarterly results look stellar because they are bouncing back from a low base a year ago and the company is unsure of when results will truly return to normal.

“The COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected nearly all of our operations during 2020 and in particular during the second quarter, although the effects varied significantly,” Berkshire said in the earnings report Saturday. “The extent of the effects over longer terms cannot be reasonably estimated at this time.”

At the height of the Covid crisis, Berkshire experienced a drastic slowdown with its operating income falling 10% in the second quarter of 2020 year over year and tumbling 30% in the third quarter.

Berkshire said the risks from the pandemic still remain and could impact its results in the future.

“Risks and uncertainties resulting from the pandemic that may affect our future earnings, cash flows and financial condition include the ability to vaccinate a significant number of people in the U.S. and throughout the world as well as the long-term effect from the pandemic on the demand for certain of our products and services,” the conglomerate said.

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Taliban Take Second Afghan Metropolis in Two Days

Taliban Take Second Afghan City in Two Days

KABUL, Afghanistan – Another provincial capital, the second in two days, nearly fell in Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said, this one in the north of the country, where a Taliban offensive has encircled several cities since international forces began in May, to retire.

The capital Sheberghan in Jowzjan Province collapsed less than 24 hours after the Taliban took over a provincial capital in southwest Afghanistan.

“The whole city has collapsed,” said the deputy governor of Jowzjan, Abdul Qader Malia. “Nothing is left.” On Saturday afternoon, government troops were still controlling the airport and army headquarters outside Sheberghan.

However, much of the province bordering Turkmenistan is now under the control of the Taliban.

The Taliban’s victories – and the defeats of the Afghan government – come despite continued American air support and are the result of an insurgent strategy that has overwhelmed and exhausted the Afghan government forces.

Sheberghan’s fall comes after the Taliban captured around 200 of the 400 or so districts in Afghanistan in the past few months – often without firing a shot. They penetrate deep into the north of the country, even though the region has a reputation for being an anti-Taliban stronghold and relatively safe.

The insurgent offensive has turned into a brutal urban struggle as Taliban fighters advanced into cities like Sheberghan and Kunduz in the north, Kandahar and Lashkar Gah in the south, and Herat in the west, and tens of thousands of civilians amid a desperate struggle for control. Hundreds were killed or wounded and many more were displaced.

On Friday, government forces in Sheberghan reportedly repelled the Taliban incursion after insurgents entered the city and attempted to raid government buildings such as the police headquarters and the prison. The number of civilian victims is unclear.

“The situation in the city is so scary,” said Matin Raufi, a Sheberghan resident. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The Taliban returned on Saturday and penetrated deep into the city, despite desperate attempts by security forces to defend what was still theirs.

“The government troops have withdrawn to the army brigade and the airport, the two places that are still under their control, to regroup and plan counter-attacks against the Taliban,” said Mohammad Karim Jawzjani, member of parliament from Jowzjan.

Sheberghan is the hometown of Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum, a notorious warlord and former Afghan vice president who survived the last 40 years of war by cutting back and changing sides. It was long expected that Marshal Dostum would muster the same Uzbek militias that fought in the country’s civil war in the 1990s and helped overthrow the Taliban after the 2001 US invasion to serve as a bulwark against the group’s recent boom .

The Sheberghan case is evidence that, despite the resurgence of these militias – which the Afghan government advocates as a complement to its troops – these militias are currently unreliable when it comes to fighting the Taliban.

Marshal Dostum returned to Afghanistan in the past few days after weeks in Turkey – where he is resident and has close ties – to recover from health problems. The aging warlord has left much of his frontline duties to his son Yar Mohammad Dostum, who leads the fight against the Taliban on social media.

On Saturday, Marshal Dostum met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in the capital, Kabul, where Marshal Dostum pledged his continued support to the government’s security forces, according to a palace statement.

The warlord’s militias are only part of a kaleidoscope of armed groups that are regaining importance as American forces aim to complete their retreat by the end of August and the Afghan government tries to hold onto territory. The return of the militia is a terrifying throwback to the 1990s, when an ethnically charged civil war helped create the Taliban after the same armed groups brutalized civilians.

The fall of Sheberghan means the Taliban can now move their troops elsewhere, most likely to other besieged cities in the north. The same situation is playing out in southwest Afghanistan, where the insurgents captured Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz province, on Friday.

“Sheberghan and Zaranj can hardly be called cities given their small size, and although these are propaganda victories, the Taliban are still fighting to take the larger cities like Herat and Kandahar,” said Ibraheem Bahiss, an adviser to the International Crisis Group and a independent research analyst. “In these places they encounter considerable resistance and make sacrifices.”

Zaranj, known for its poor governance, lawlessness and illegal economy, will no doubt serve as the starting point for future Taliban operations in the west and south. This is especially true of the capital of neighboring Helmand Province, Lashkar Gah, which is dangerously close to collapse. Fierce fighting in recent days has left parts of the city to rubble and civilians killed.

This leaves the Afghan government few options in both provinces: counterattack and try to recapture the lost territory or relocate troops to another location to defend other besieged cities.

American air support, which is slated to last until the end of the month – or longer if the Pentagon gets permission to continue – is being launched from outside the country, meaning there are insufficient resources to defend every Afghan city attacked .

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9/11 households, survivors ask Biden to not attend memorial occasions over Saudi docs

9/11 families, survivors ask Biden not to attend memorial events over Saudi docs

Nearly 1,800 9/11 survivors, victims’ family members and first responders are telling President Joe Biden that he should skip memorial events this year unless he declassifies U.S. documents detailing Saudi Arabia’s role in the deadly attacks. 

Next month will mark 20 years since the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

The group argued that Biden has failed to fulfill his campaign promise to release as much information as possible on the attacks and has ignored their numerous letters and requests that called on him to do so. 

“Twenty years later, there is simply no reason — unmerited claims of ‘national security’ or otherwise — to keep this information secret,” the group said in their statement. 

“But if President Biden reneges on his commitment and sides with the Saudi government, we would be compelled to publicly stand in objection to any participation by his administration in any memorial ceremony of 9/11,” the group said.

A White House spokesperson said in a statement that its Office of Public Engagement and National Security Council staff have met with 9/11 victims’ family members to discuss their requests for documents and “hear their thoughts on policy priorities,” NBC News reported Friday.

In his campaign promise, Biden pledged to direct his Department of Justice to examine cases where the disclosure of FBI information related to the 9/11 attacks is recommended. He said that releasing such information would be “narrowly tailored” to protect against the risk of harm to national security. 

“I intend to be a President for all Americans, and will hear all of their voices,” Biden said. “The 9/11 Families are right to seek full truth and accountability.”

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The group said they had “great hopes” that Biden would diverge from previous administrations and said they were disappointed that he did not live up to his words after his inauguration.

They said that since the 9/11 Commission investigation concluded, in 2004, there has been investigative evidence found “implicating Saudi government officials” in supporting the attacks. 

The 9/11 Commission found it likely that Saudi government-funded charities supported the attacks but did not find any evidence of direct funding from the government, according to NBC News. 

The group particularly called for the release of FBI documents from a 2016 investigation of Saudi Arabia. They said they believe the documents would reveal whether any individuals associated with al Qaeda, the group that carried out the terrorist attacks, received assistance or financing from the Saudi Arabian government. 

Fifteen of the 19 attackers in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens, and mastermind Osama Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, but the country’s government has denied allegations that it was involved.

Multiple presidential administrations have cited “security concerns” in their reasoning for withholding documents related to the terrorist attacks, the group’s statement said. 

Most recently, the Trump administration invoked the state secrets privilege in 2019 to justify keeping documents classified, according to NBC News.

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Russia Doesn’t Ship U.S. Investor to Jail however Nonetheless Sends a Warning

Russia Doesn’t Send U.S. Investor to Jail but Still Sends a Warning

MOSCOW – A Russian court on Friday sentenced an American businessman, who is one of the country’s most prominent foreign investors, to five and a half years suspended sentence in a penal colony for embezzlement conviction, undermining Russia’s ability to attract foreign investment.

The suspended sentence for businessman Michael Calvey, founder of Baring Vostok, a private equity firm with $ 3.7 billion in assets under management, means he has no time in Russia’s notoriously harsh penal colony system, the successor to the Gulag Camp, unless he is in breach of probation.

However, the risk of jail time that Mr Calvey and his six co-defendants still face in the case was expected to dampen foreign interest in doing business in Russia, where FDI is already hampered by weak property rights and Western sanctions.

The ruling became all the more worrying for business leaders when, despite deteriorating ties with the West, Calvey had consistently advocated investment in Russia despite many companies pulling out of the country.

Mr. Calvey, 53, founded Baring Vostok in the 1990s, shortly after the collapse of communism, with the aim of bringing investors into Russia’s newly capitalist economy. In its 27 years in business, the company has attracted billions of dollars in private equity capital for Russian companies like Yandex, a search engine that competes locally with Google, and Ozon, an online retailer.

The co-defendants, including Philippe Delpal, a French national and senior executive at Baring Vostok, received similar suspended sentences in the Russian prison system.

The case arose out of a business dispute with shareholders in a Siberian bank.

Prosecutors said Mr. Calvey and other executives of his fund embezzled 2.5 billion rubles (about $ 34 million) by persuading the bank’s shareholders, Vostochny Bank, to inflate a stake in another company Accept price.

In his defense, Mr. Calvey argued that the bank’s shareholders had full access to information about the value of the shares when they accepted them in lieu of repaying a loan and that the case should also have been resolved through commercial arbitration.

“I came to Russia and stayed here because I loved this country from the start and believed that Russia had the potential to become one of the world’s leading investment markets,” Calvey said in a closing statement at his trial last month .

“I convinced investors to share my confidence in Russia’s future,” he said. “Even after 2014, when the geopolitical climate deteriorated and sanctions were imposed on Russia, I continued to defend Russia’s image as an attractive country to work and invest in.”

Calvey’s investment drive continued despite two decades of corporate government takeovers, ruble devaluations, and politically tinged arrests, including Sergei L. Magnitsky, who died on custody and worked as an attorney for another prominent foreign investor, William F. Browser.

Russia’s once richest man, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the founder of an oil company, was convicted twice and sentenced to long prison terms in the penal colonies.

The conditions there are tough. In a prison, Mr. Khodorkovsky was stabbed in the face with a homemade knife. The guard said another detainee was blocking unwanted sexual advances, which Mr. Khodorkovsky denied.

Mr. Calvey’s investment firm had focused on internet and retail start-ups that benefited from the riches of the petroleum industry and successfully served the country’s emerging middle class.

The arrest and detention of Mr Calvey and his colleagues in 2019 raised fears that executives at other American companies might be similarly arrested in a climate of strained relations with the United States. The seven executives were convicted by a Russian court on Thursday and sentenced on Friday.

During his detention, Mr. Calvey continued to speak out in favor of the investment case for Russia and read statements about it at hearings from the aquarium in which defendants are being held in Russian courts.

Russian entrepreneurs are often the target of market shakes and shadowy plans to steal assets, said Russia’s own corporate ombudsman. Arrests are common. Today, around one in ten prisoners in Russia’s penal colonies are white-collar criminals.

Government revenues from commodity exports such as oil and natural gas, which flow regardless of what Russian courts do in the country, have left the country’s investment climate largely unconcerned, economists noted. And an independent judicial system that would help investors could also weaken control over the political opposition.

“Russia is in what could be described as an investment pause,” said Natalia Akindinova, a researcher at the Higher School of Economics, in an interview.

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Tidal energy undertaking in Canada secures assist of Japanese companies

Tidal power project in Canada secures support of Japanese firms

Laszlo Podor | Moment | Getty Images

Two Japanese companies have entered into a joint development agreement with Ireland-based DP Energy to work on the initial stages of a tidal energy project in Canada.

In statements released earlier this week, Chubu Electric Power and Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, or “K” Line, said the agreement related to the Uisce Tapa Tidal Energy project. The development is located at the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy in the Bay of Fundy, a bay between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Both Chubu Electric Power and “K” Line called it “the first tidal power project that a Japanese company will participate in overseas”.

According to DP Energy, the first phase of Uisce Tapa – Irish for “fast water” – revolves around three 1.5 megawatt turbines. The second aims to increase the capacity of the project to 9 MW.

Uisce Tapa is backed by a 15-year power purchase agreement with Nova Scotia Power Incorporated, which amounts to Canadian dollars 530 (approximately $ 422) per megawatt hour. It also benefits from a grant of approximately $ 30 million Canadian dollars from Natural Resources Canada.

In its announcement on Wednesday, DP Energy described the Bay of Fundy as “home to some of the highest tides in the world”. At the highest surface speed, the tidal currents are “capable of exceeding 10 knots” or 5 meters per second, he added.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada said the project is being considered for approval by Chubu Electric Power and “K” Line. If everything goes according to plan, the first turbine would go into operation in 2023, followed by two more in 2026.

The news comes the same week that tidal energy company Nova Innovation said it was able to move ahead with a project focused on increasing the production of tidal turbines after receiving funding from the Scottish government.

The £ 2 million ($ 2.77 million) funding increase announced on Thursday will be used to support the Volume Manufacturing and Logistics for Tidal Energy project, also known as VOLT.

According to Nova, VOLT will “develop the first European assembly line for the mass production of tidal turbines” and also “test innovative techniques and tools to ship, deploy and monitor turbines around the world”.

Last week, another company, Orbital Marine Power, announced that its O2 turbine had started producing electricity on-grid at the European Marine Energy Center in Orkney, an archipelago north of mainland Scotland.

The 2 megawatt O2 is known as the “strongest tidal turbine in the world”, weighs 680 tons and is 74 meters long.

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Reimagining Our Relationship With Nature By means of Artwork

Reimagining Our Relationship With Nature Through Art

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The creature has the pointed beak and fin of a dolphin but the sagging jowls and stomach of someone getting on in years. Straggly blonde hair trails out of its blowhole and down to its dorsal fin. Its fleshy body is mottled like it’s been in the cold a bit too long.

It’s grotesque. I can’t decide if the doleful and all-too-human expression on its face makes it more or less bearable.

But there’s something loving in the way its hands are curled protectively around the young girl in its lap, webbed fingers delicate and careful against her back and knees. The girl, meanwhile, looks like she’s having a nice nap.

The upstairs rooms of Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, open to the public for the first time in 25 years, are filled with sculptures like this, hybrid creatures both familiar and alien, created by the Australian artist Patricia Piccinini.

“It’s asking us to make that journey from feeling averse and uncomfortable around something we’re unsure about, to warmth and connection,” Piccinini said of the exhibition, called “A Miracle Constantly Repeated.” “That’s a hard thing to do, to make that journey. We’re not used to doing that.”

The exhibition was designed as part of Rising, the new Melbourne arts festival, and is one of the few events to survive the lockdowns that forced the cancellation of much of the festival.

Tens of thousands of Victorians have flocked to see one of Australia’s pre-eminent contemporary artists in one of Melbourne’s most mythological spaces. I visited it one afternoon earlier this week, driven by the desire to be out of my house as much as possible after two weeks of lockdown (and just before we got hit by another one).

The show reimagines our relationship with nature, a subject that feels particularly prescient now as wildfires burn in the United States and floods and fire ravage parts of Europe. Piccinini says she started planning for it during the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires, and concerns about the environment are threaded through her works.

The aforementioned aquatic creature, in “No Fear of Depths,” is based on the threatened Australian humpback dolphin, while other works imagine how animals might be modified to survive dangers like trash in the ocean and introduced predator species.

“The problem is that when we allow ourselves to be apart from nature, we can act on the rest of nature and think that it’s not going to affect us,” she said. “This dichotomous relationship just isn’t working anymore for us.”

Instead, her works portrays relationships of care and connection and invite the same from the viewer. “Sapling” depicts a man hoisting a tree-child hybrid on his shoulders, its fleshy roots curled playfully around his torso. In “While She Sleeps” a pair of naked leonine-faced creatures based on the extinct thylacine huddle together as if for warmth, liquid eyes gazing out at the viewer.

Piccinini’s creatures are unsettlingly realistic, from the fine dustings of hair on their skins to the tiny wrinkles where their fingers and toes bend. Within the cracked and peeling walls of the normally empty Flinders Street Station ballroom, where the sounds of the surrounding city are muffled and distant, it feels like the creatures could step right off their pedestals. You can’t help but recognize something familiar in all of them, no matter how strange they look.

“Much of my work is about making connections,” she said. “Connections between ideas, but also emotional connections between the works and the viewers. I really do hope that there is a space for everyone in this exhibition. The work springs from the basic assumption that all life, all bodies, all beings are beautiful and valuable.”

The exhibition runs until January 16.

Now for our stories of the week:

  • Megachurch Co-Founder Is Charged With Concealing Child Sexual Abuse. The Australian police alleged that Brian Houston, senior pastor at Hillsong, had failed to report assault by his father in the 1970s.

  • U.S. men’s basketball defeats Australia and heads to the gold medal game. The U.S. will play France in the final on Saturday.

  • World’s Coronavirus Infection Total Passes Staggering Figure: 200 Million. Vaccines have weakened the link between surging cases and serious illness, but in vaccine-deprived parts of the world, the deadly pattern remains.

  • As Hikers Vanish, These Mountains Hold Tight to Their Mysteries. The high country of southern Australia is “remote and beautiful and unpredictable,” a place where visitors can be swallowed up without a sound.

  • The Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix, Amazon and Stan in Australia in August. Our picks for August, including ‘The Chair,’ ‘The L Word’ and ‘Annette’

  • Will These Places Survive a Collapse? Don’t Bet on It, Skeptics Say. A pair of English researchers found that New Zealand is best poised to stay up and running as climate change continues to wreak global havoc. Other scientists found flaws in their model.

  • In Weight Lifting, a Historic Moment for Transgender Women. A sport that rarely makes headlines was at the center of the Olympics on Monday as the first openly transgender woman competed in the Games.

  • Payments App Square to Acquire Australian Company Afterpay. The deal, for $29 billion, would introduce Afterpay’s “buy now, pay later” service to U.S. consumers and the small businesses that process their credit card transactions on Square.

  • With seven medals at one Olympics, Emma McKeon ties a record. McKeon’s haul ties her for the record by any female Olympian, set in 1952 by gymnast Maria Gorokhovskaya of the Soviet Union.

  • In swimming’s finale, the U.S. men keep their unbeaten streak alive, and Emma McKeon gets her 7th medal. McKeon picked up two more golds, giving her a record-tying seven medals in Tokyo, and Caeleb Dressel swam away with his fourth and fifth golds.

  • Olympics’ First Openly Transgender Woman Stokes Debate on Fairness. Laurel Hubbard, a 43-year-old weight lifter from New Zealand, will compete on Monday, as some question her right to be at the Games.

Credit…An Rong Xu for The New York Times

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Friday’s jobs report is a wild card, with economists’ estimates all around the map

Friday's jobs report is a wild card, with economists' estimates all over the map

A worker works on a screed tower connection at the Calder Brothers facility in Taylors, South Carolina, USA on July 19, 2021.

Brandon Granger | Calder Brothers Corporation | Reuters

According to the Dow Jones consensus estimate, the economy is projected to add around 845,000 workers in July as the American workforce gradually recovers from its heavy pandemic job losses.

But the uncertainty of Covid – which is spreading again at a rapid pace – has become a wild card for the job market, as well as for the entire economy. The number of new infections in the US is increasing to 100,000 per day, faster than last summer, when there were no generally available vaccines.

Wall Street’s predictions for the July Employment Report, due to be released Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, are sweeping. The Wilmington Trust economists, for example, expect only 350,000 payrolls, while the Jefferies economists forecast 1.2 million new jobs.

“The range is from 1.2 million to 350,000. That just says these numbers have very little confidence,” said Michael Schumacher, director of interest rate strategy at Wells Fargo.

Employment growth has not lived up to earlier expectations of economists, some of whom forecast several months of growth in excess of a million this spring and summer. Instead, employers are struggling with vacancies and the situation is not expected to improve significantly until schools reopen and extended unemployment benefits expire in September.

The fast-spreading delta variant of Covid may not have affected the July report. However, economists say that if individuals are afraid to move back into the economy, new restrictions are put in place, or schools should be closed again, it could slow the rate of economic growth and affect employment.

The employment data is also critical to the Fed’s decision on when to slow its bond purchases, the first step in rolling back its loose policy and a precursor to rate hikes. Fed chairman Jerome Powell said last week he would like some strong employment reports before the Fed begins slashing its $ 120 billion monthly government bond and mortgage purchases.

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“We won’t know much about the balance in the labor market until the job report comes out in October,” said Schumacher.

According to the Dow Jones, the unemployment rate is said to have fallen from 5.9% in June to 5.7%. Average hourly wages are expected to have increased 0.3% month-over-month or 3.9% year-over-year. 850,000 jobs were added in June.

“The reason I have such a high forecast for July is because we’ve lost additional unemployment benefits in 25 states and claims have fallen sharply in those states,” said Jefferies finance economist Aneta Markowska. She added that there is usually a large seasonal decline in July that may not show up this year.

More than 22.3 million Americans were laid off in March and April 2020 when the economy abruptly shut down. In June total employment was 7.13 million below the level of February 2020.

“I was looking for a pretty healthy number, around 850,000 to 900,000, and a drop in the unemployment rate to around 5.7%,” said Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist for Charles Schwab. “The main reason we expect a pretty large number is that we expect some of the education jobs to come back. July is a little early, but we’ll see some of those numbers. That could add about 400,000. The seasonal adjustment is likely to make that worse too. “

Jones said she expected the mindset to be strong for the next couple of months.

“We expected the July, August and September period between reopening, schools reopening … job restoration to be quite strong as a result of the American bailout. All of that should make for a pretty strong July, August, September series of numbers, “she said.” Of course the Delta variant is the wild card.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the US reports a seven-day average of nearly 94,000 new cases on Aug. 4, a 48% increase from a week.

Wilmington Trust chief economist Luke Tilley said his low forecast was based on signs of slower growth he is seeing in high-frequency data. “We believe the execution rate is around 500,000 right now. The last month seems a bit over cooked, ”said Tilley.

Other recently released data show a mixed picture for employment.

BMO bond strategist Ben Jeffery said the half-dozen actions he watches tend to be a strong number and the others suggest otherwise. For example, ADP’s monthly payroll report for June was weak with 330,000 jobs versus an expected 683,000. But employment in the ISM service sector rebounded from 49.3 to 53.8. Anything over 50 indicates expansion.

“That [nonfarm payrolls] was always one of the hardest numbers to predict before the pandemic, and you add up all the nuances of the current hiring landscape. That makes it even more difficult, “he said.

Jeffery said the government poll week for the July report, which covers July 12, may not reflect the impact of the Delta variant concerns. “Whatever the number, it is greatly constrained by the fact that concerns about the Delta option weren’t as high during survey week as they are now or during the August survey period,” he said.

Because of this, he doesn’t expect big moves in the bond market unless the report is closer to one end of the forecast range or the other.

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In Photographs: Fires Ravage Southern Europe

In Photos: Fires Ravage Southern Europe

ATHENS – House and car shells burned out by flames. Forests reduced to ashes. Tourists evacuated by boat from once idyllic beaches where the sky is full of smoke. While southern Europe is grappling with one of the worst heat waves in decades, deadly forest fires have struck parts of the region, stalling a newly opened tourism industry and enforcing mass evacuations.

The raging fires drove residents in villages across mainland Greece and the islands, as well as neighboring Turkey, out of their homes, forcing tourists to abandon beach destinations across the region.

Fires tormented the southern coast of Turkey for a ninth day on Thursday, forcing thousands of people to evacuate overnight by land and sea. A video broadcast on Turkish television showed uncontrollable flames that suddenly changed direction in strong winds and trapped people.

Critics have attacked President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the government’s handling of the deadly disaster.

Hundreds of square kilometers of forest burned when more than 180 fires blazed across the country. At least eight people died, hundreds were injured and dozen lost their homes.

In Mugla, a Turkish province full of farmland popular with tourists, residents angry about the uncontrolled fires blocked roads and stopped cars they believed were suspicious.

“Maybe they burned the forest,” shouted Muharrem Duygu, a Mugla resident who stopped a car in a video posted on Twitter. “My forest is on fire right now.”

Firefighters were able to control a fire approaching a power plant in Milas after working the night to rescue the facility. Trees on the power plant site were burned, but the main site was not seriously damaged, officials said.

In ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games in southern Greece, local authorities and army personnel dug fire lines around the archaeological site to keep the flames at bay while firefighters fought the flames through the night.

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After visiting the site on Thursday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the country was facing “an unprecedented environmental crisis”.

“Unfortunately, despite the fact that we have more air support per capita than any other country, it is impossible for these aircraft to be available across the country at any one time,” he said. He added that he fully understood “the anger, anger and despair of people who saw their property destroyed”.

The Greek government stepped up its military engagement in fighting the fires on Thursday as dozens of flames continued to burn across the country, fueled by a record-breaking heat wave that struck the region.

A major fire that broke out north of Athens on Tuesday destroyed dozen of houses and thousands of acres of forest. It had been partially contained but flared up again later that day.

Tourists visiting the capital were faced with a thick curtain of smoke that hung over the city’s iconic landmarks. A short distance north, the residents were driven from their homes. Some tried unsuccessfully to use hoses to prevent the flames from engulfing their property when a fire flared up again north of Athens on Thursday afternoon and spread quickly, leading to further evacuations – including in Malakasa, a state camp the asylum seeker would be evacuated to other facilities on the instructions of the civil protection authorities, according to the Greek Ministry of Migration.

On Thursday, Vasilis Vathrakoyiannis, a fire department spokesman, said 120 fires were burning across the country, the largest and most worrying being in ancient Olympia and the island of Evia.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Greek coast guard evacuated dozens of people from the island’s coastal village of Rovies after a huge fire hit a nearby pine forest. Residents of several villages on the island were forced to leave their homes and local authorities and the army dug fire lines to protect a monastery. The local church in the village of Kechries rang its bells early Thursday morning to tell residents to flee.

In photos of the island, the sun was barely visible through the thick smoke that hung over the houses on the cliffs.

Greek TV channels switched between video recordings of the fires in northern Athens, Euboea and the Peloponnese peninsula, bringing back memories of the summer of 2007 when Greece fought several major fires across the country, killing large numbers of people.

While scientists have not yet had time to assess the relationship between the current wave of extreme temperatures and global warming, this fits in with a general trend that has seen climate change in extreme weather conditions in Europe. Research has shown that climate change has been a major worsening factor in major heat waves across Europe in recent summers.

Efthymis Lekkas, professor of natural disaster management at the University of Athens, warned of “an ongoing nightmare in August” and urged the authorities to be prepared for possible flooding after large areas of forest have been destroyed.

Greece’s General Secretariat for Civil Protection warned on Friday of an “extreme” fire hazard as strong winds are expected to make the situation worse.

Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens and Megan Specia from New York.

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Inventory futures rebound as buyers await extra jobs knowledge

Stock futures rebound as investors await more jobs data

Futures contracts tied to the major U.S. equity indexes were mildly higher Thursday morning as Wall Street looked to improve upon a mixed week.

Dow futures rose 49 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures also added about 0.2%.

The moves in the futures markets came after a mostly lower regular session on Wednesday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 323.73 points, or 0.9%, and closed near its session low at 34,792.67. The S&P 500 slipped about 0.5% to finish at 4,402.66, while the Nasdaq Composite ticked up 0.1% to 14,780.53.

On Thursday investors will receive yet another update on the U.S. employment situation with the Labor Department’s latest weekly update to initial jobless claims. Recent earnings and economic data have been strong overall, but some economists worry economic growth and employment gains will taper from here.

“Many factors are likely driving worker shortages; concerns about catching the virus, childcare responsibilities, skills mismatches, and generous unemployment insurance benefits,” PNC Senior Economist Abbey Omodunbi said in an email. In the second half of the year, “more competition for workers, particularly in the leisure and hospitality sector, will support acceleration in wage growth, boosting household incomes and consumer spending.”

The results of an ADP private payroll survey released Wednesday showed a gain of 330,000 jobs for July, well short of the consensus estimate of 653,000. The Labor Department’s official jobs report, which typically has more impact on investors, will be released on Friday. Economists expect the report will show the U.S. added 845,000 in non-farm payrolls in July, about even with the previous month, according to Dow Jones estimates.

The 10-year Treasury yield was trading flat near 1.18% on Thursday after briefly dipping below 1.13% on Wednesday.

Shares of Roku and Uber dropped after each issued quarterly earnings results. Etsy fell 12% in premarket trading after the company gave guidance for the current quarter that indicated the pandemic-fueled commerce boom may be coming to an end. Uber was off by 3% in premarket trading.

During regular trading Wednesday, shares of Robinhood surged 50%, continuing a volatile jump after last week’s soft initial public offering. Semiconductor stocks were another bright spot, with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices rising.

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Biden administration has plans to require most international guests to be vaccinated.

Biden administration has plans to require most foreign visitors to be vaccinated.

The Biden administration is developing plans to require all foreign travelers to the United States to be vaccinated against Covid-19, with limited exceptions, according to an administration official with knowledge of the developing policy.

The plan, first reported by Reuters, will be part of a new system to be put in place after the current restrictions on travel into the country are lifted, but officials have yet to determine when that might be done.

President Biden has been under pressure for months to ease restrictions on people wishing to travel to the United States, particularly as other countries, including England, Scotland and Canada, relax their own measures.

But White House officials have said in recent days that there is no plan to lift current restrictions anytime soon, in light of the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.

“Given where we are today,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week, “with the Delta variant, we will maintain existing travel restrictions at this point.”

That stance was reiterated on Wednesday evening by White House officials who said that there was no timetable yet for requiring foreign travelers to be inoculated.

“The interagency working groups are working to develop a plan for a consistent and safe international travel policy, in order to have a new system ready for when we can reopen travel,” the administration official, who was not authorized to publicly detail the plan, wrote in an email. “This includes a phased approach that over time will mean, with limited exceptions, that foreign nationals traveling to the United States (from all countries) need to be fully vaccinated.”

Travelers from Iran, China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, South Africa, India, the Republic of Ireland and Europe’s Schengen area — spanning 29 countries, city-states and micro-states — are currently barred from entering the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control, unless they are a U.S. citizen or they spend 14 days before arrival in a country that is not on that list.

The United States began restricting travel by foreigners in January 2020, when former President Donald Trump cut off some travel from China in the hope of preventing the spread of the virus. That effort largely failed.

But health officials pressed the Trump administration to expand travel bans to much of Europe during the first surge of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, and more countries have been added to the ban as the original virus and several variants have spread rapidly from country to country.

This week, the Biden administration said that it would keep in place Title 42, a public health rule that allows the government to turn back people attempting to enter the United States from its southern border.

The decision, confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday, amounted to a shift by the administration, which had been working on plans to begin lifting the rule this summer, more than a year after it was imposed by the Trump administration.