2024-07-24 06:41

Record set despite absence of warming El Nino weather pattern Wildfires blaze in parts of Mediterranean, Siberia, Canada, US Excess ocean heat may be helping fuel typhoon nearing Taiwan LONDON, July 24 (Reuters) - The world again registered its hottest day on record on Monday, July 22, inching past Sunday which had just taken the title, according to preliminary data from a European Union monitoring agency. As heatwaves sizzled around the world and wildfires engulfed parts of the Mediterranean, Russia and Canada, the global average surface air temperature rose to 17.15 degrees Celsius (62.87 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday. That was 0.06 C (0.11 F) higher than Sunday's record according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, which has tracked such data , opens new tab since 1940. This includes temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere which is currently in winter, bringing down the worldwide average. Scientists said it was possible that Tuesday or Wednesday of this week could again surpass Monday's record, as temperature peaks generally happen in clusters. The last record hot day was in July 2023, when the daily peak was broken across four consecutive days from July 3 through 6. Before that, it was set in August 2016. What makes this year's record unusual is that unlike in 2023 and 2016, the world in April moved out of the El Nino climate pattern which generally amplifies global temperatures owing to warmer-than-usual waters in the Eastern Pacific. Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at Leipzig University in Germany, said it was remarkable that the record had been breached again now with the world well into the "neutral" phase of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. This points to the greater-than-ever influence of climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, in boosting global temperatures. "This past Monday might have set a new global record for warmest absolute global average temperature ever - by that I mean going back tens of thousands of years," Haustein said. ASIA BOILS China has issued a series of heat alerts this week, with dozens of weather stations in parts of central and northwestern China recording temperatures in excess of 40 C (104 F). The central Chinese city of Wuhan, which hosted an international climate change meeting this week, issued a heat red alert early on Wednesday after temperatures hit 42.2 C (108 F) a day earlier. Taiwan was also bracing for the impact of Typhoon Gaemi on Wednesday, with factories and financial markets shut down amid forecasts of torrential rain. Wind speeds at its centre were approaching their second highest ever recorded for the Western Pacific Ocean on Wednesday afternoon. China's state weather bureau also issued a typhoon red alert. Scientists say climate change is making typhoons - tropical cyclones which gain energy by feeding on ocean heat – more intense, capable of reaching greater wind speeds and dumping more rain. Japan too has experienced record-breaking heat throughout July. Heat stroke alerts were issued in 39 of the country's 47 prefectures on Monday, with temperatures exceeding 37C (99 F). BURNING DOWN More than 40 million Americans on Tuesday were facing dangerous temperatures, largely in the U.S. West where wind gusts and dry conditions stoked dozens of wildfires. Excessive heat will continue to blanket an area stretching from the U.S. Southwest north through Nevada and into Idaho and Montana over the next two days before milder temperatures arrive on Friday, the U.S. National Weather Service said. The province of Alberta in western Canada is also grappling with dozens of wildfires that have caused evacuations of thousands of people, including from Jasper National Park on Monday night. Even the Arctic is enduring a heatwave. Fairbanks, Alaska was set to hit 31 C (88 F) on Wednesday, approaching past records, while temperatures in parts of the Canadian, Russian and Norwegian Arctic were reaching temperatures more than 9 C (16.2 F) above the 1979 to 2000 baseline average for this time of year. Russia's state forest agency has been battling dozens of blazes in Siberia in recent days as the unusually hot summer fuels fires. COOLING OFF? In Europe, Spain endured blistering temperatures in its second heatwave of the summer, which arrived on Tuesday, just four days after the first one ended. The heat was expected to peak on Wednesday, with at least one wildfire burning out of control in the northeast of the country. Weather service AEMET put about half of Spain's territory on orange alert for heat and part of the eastern region of Extremadura on red alert, forecasting maximum temperatures of 44 C. Meanwhile, Greece's longest-ever heatwave ended officially on Wednesday after 16 days, beating the record set just last year. "It is noteworthy that the record was broken so quickly, in just the following year," said Kostas Lagouvardos, research director of the National Observatory of Athens. While temperatures during the latest heatwave - Greece's second this summer - were not extreme, nighttime temperatures did not fall below 30 C in certain regions, compounding the impact of heat stress on humans, Lagouvardos said. Although temperatures eased on Wednesday, higher-than-normal temperatures are forecast for the coming days. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/world-breaks-hottest-day-record-second-day-row-2024-07-24/

2024-07-24 06:40

July 24 (Reuters) - Swedish steelmaker SSAB (SSABa.ST) , opens new tab posted a bigger than expected drop in its second-quarter operating profit on Wednesday, citing lower U.S. heavy plate prices and a still weak European market, and warned of a steeper demand decline in the third quarter. "The seasonal downturn during the third quarter is assessed to be more pronounced than normal and will especially impact SSAB Special Steels and SSAB Europe," it said in a statement. Shipments at its Americas unit will be significantly lower in the third quarter than in the second, SSAB said, and it also expects lower shipments for the Special Steels and Europe units. The company added it would carry out planned maintenance at most of its production sites in the third quarter, which would impact output. The steel industry has suffered from reduced construction activity in Europe and a slowdown in the real estate sector in China, the world's top consumer and producer of the metal. In the U.S., interest rate hikes have dented demand. Its operating result plunged to 2.97 billion Swedish crowns ($275.30 million) in the second quarter, from 4.96 billion a year earlier. That missed analysts' average forecast of 3.02 billion crowns, according to LSEG poll. SSAB said, however, that the market for high-strength steel showed more resilience in the quarter, while cost reduction measures also had a positive effect on the results. As expected, its European unit took an additional hit of about 125 million crowns from political strikes in Finland, which had also impacted its first-quarter results. ($1 = 10.7884 Swedish crowns) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/swedish-steelmaker-ssab-misses-q2-profit-forecast-2024-07-24/

2024-07-24 06:40

Unofficial notes imported or printed locally, sources say Notes exchanged via black market or local banks, they say Money spent on public works in east after floods, Libyan sources say Cash may also fund Russian mercenaries, diplomatic source says July 24 (Reuters) - Unofficial Libyan banknotes have been exchanged for real dollars and contributed to the dinar's devaluing, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, adding that some notes were printed by Russia and exported to eastern Libya this year while others were printed illicitly within Libya. The new banknotes have been described as counterfeit by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) in Tripoli but are being changed into hard currency on the black market or through local banks, according to a source in Libya's eastern government, a Libyan banking source, and a diplomatic source. The money has been used to fund infrastructure projects in the east following last year's devastating floods, the eastern government source and the banking source said. The money may also be used to finance Russian mercenary activity in Libya and the Sahel, the diplomatic source said. Russia's role in the infusion of new banknotes into Libya was flagged to Reuters by The Sentry, an international investigative and policy group focused on corruption and war crimes. Neither the Tripoli-based Central Bank of Libya nor its branch in Benghazi responded to requests for comment from Reuters. There was no immediate response from the Libyan National Army, which holds all of eastern Libya, to a Reuters request for comment. Russia's state money printer, Goznak, did not respond to a written request for comment. Libya split in 2014 between warring eastern and western factions. Despite a 2020 truce and efforts to formally reunify institutions, a political solution has proven elusive with new bursts of conflict constantly on the horizon. The U.S. State Department in June sanctioned Goznak for printing more than $1 billion in counterfeit Libyan currency, without saying where or when the notes were printed or delivered. Russia had supplied eastern authorities with several billion dinars from 2016 until a 2020 ceasefire, helping allied eastern commander Khalifa Haftar and the government he backed in Benghazi. Its provision of new banknotes this year was not previously known. The dinars imported between 2016-20 were formally issued by CBL's eastern branch in Benghazi and bore the signature of its governor Ali al-Hibri. Their issuance aggravated economic splits inside Libya, with different exchange rates in different parts of the country. After the ceasefire and banking reunification efforts, the main CBL branch in Tripoli under governor Sadiq al-Kabir accepted the Russian-printed notes issued by Hibri as legal tender. 'SERIOUS THREAT' TO BANKING SYSTEM Hibri was replaced in 2022. Kabir then said the new notes should not be used, but authorities in eastern Libya have insisted that any institutions declining them would be punished. Eastern Libya, where the national parliament is based, is in effect under the control of Haftar, who deployed Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group during fighting in 2019-20, according to U.N. experts. The Russian fighters have remained, the United States military has said. "The Haftar family's hegemonic control over eastern Libya poses a serious threat to the country's entire banking system," said Charles Cater, head of investigations at The Sentry. Most of the unofficial currency is in 50-dinar notes. The CBL issued a statement earlier this year identifying four kinds of 50-dinar note: those officially printed for the central bank, those printed in the past by Goznak for the eastern CBL branch under Hibri, and two new issuances that it called counterfeit. The diplomatic source said one of those issuances was of higher quality and was printed in Russia and imported. The other less sophisticated notes appear to have been printed inside Libya, the source said. The Libyan banking source and the eastern government source both said an illicit dinar-printing operation was taking place in eastern Libya. Dinars are converted to hard currency either through black market money changers or via deposits made in eastern banks by shell companies that use import letters of credit to send U.S. dollars from the central bank to companies overseas, the three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. "The 'exporter' is in fact a shell company controlled by the same individuals behind the banknote-printing operation. No goods are shipped and the dollars are pocketed by the criminal network," said Cater. The CBL briefly stopped issuing letters of credit in the past, amid allegations that some importers were using them to obtain cheap dollars. To counter the impact of counterfeit notes, the CBL announced in April that it would withdraw all 50-dinar notes from circulation by the end of August. Libya's dinar began falling last year but slid more quickly during early 2024, a slump the diplomatic source and the banking source attributed to the infusion of new notes in the east. The diplomatic source said it was "a major concern" that the Russians were printing dinars that were being converted on the black market into hard currency, impacting the dinar and ultimately being used to pay for Wagner-related debts or for the Africa Corps – the name of the Russian military presence in Africa that has succeeded Wagner group since the death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/illicit-banknotes-east-libya-some-made-by-russia-hit-dinar-2024-07-24/

2024-07-24 06:32

July 24 (Reuters) - Canadian miner Teck Resources (TECKb.TO) , opens new tab beat second-quarter profit estimates on Wednesday, on the back of higher production volume from its Quebrada Blanca copper mine in Chile and increase in prices of the red metal. Prices of copper used in power and construction remained high during the June quarter amid bets for interest rate cuts and supply worries, briefly hitting an all-time high in May. Teck said copper prices rose by 15% from a year earlier and averaged $4.42 per pound. Quarterly copper production saw a 71% jump from a year earlier, partly due to the ongoing ramp-up of operations at the QB mine. However, the company cut its full-year copper production guidance to 435,000 tonnes to 500,000 tonnes due to an expected fall in QB mine output amid "short-term access issues related to pit de-watering and a localized geotechnical issue". U.S.-listed shares were down 1.3% at $45.2 premarket. The company said it is working on a plan to have the QB mine operating at full capacity by the end of 2024. Earlier this month, Teck said it had completed the sale of its remaining 77% interest in the steelmaking coal business to Swiss miner Glencore Plc (GLEN.L) , opens new tab. The deal was announced last year, as Teck looks to build its copper business. The company said its board authorized up to a $2.75 billion share buyback using the proceeds from the sale of the steelmaking coal business. "Divestiture of the remaining steelmaking coal business has provided significant cash to bolster the balance sheet ahead of delivering the next leg of copper growth," NBCFM analyst Shane Nagle said. On a diluted basis, the company reported an adjusted profit of C$0.79 ($0.5729) per share for the quarter ended June 30, compared with analysts' average estimate of C$0.73 per share, according to LSEG data. ($1 = 1.3790 Canadian dollars) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/canadas-teck-resources-beats-second-quarter-profit-estimates-2024-07-24/

2024-07-24 06:27

LONDON, July 24 (Reuters) - Britain’s Crown Estate, which manages King Charles' public property, posted a record profit for 2023/24 of 1.1 billion pounds ($1.42 billion), boosted by income from offshore wind leases, its results showed on Wednesday. The Crown Estate, which comprises tracts of land and most of Britain’s sea bed, is an independently run, commercial business, whose profits go to the Treasury. They are also used as the benchmark for the level of public funding for the Royal Family. Crown Estate's net revenue profit reached 1.1 billion pounds for April 2023-March 31 2024, up from 442.6 million pounds for the same period in 2022/23 as it generated bumper revenue from an offshore wind farm lease tender held in 2021 called round 4. Under the lease, companies pay for the right to build offshore wind projects with option fees across six winning projects worth approximately 1 billion pounds per year, payable for a minimum of three years and up to 10 years. Dan Labbad chief executive of the Crown Estate said the high prices achieved in round 4 were unlikely to be sustained in future licensing rounds. “Round 4 was in a very different economic moment to today... inflation is up interest rates are up... and we have a responsibility to ensure we are supporting the market,” he said in a briefing with journalists. The new Labour government last week proposed changing rules to allow the Crown Estate to borrow money to invest. Labbad said this would give the organisation greater flexibility in the way it supports renewable projects and invests in its property portfolio in London to make sure it remains attractive. Britain’s monarchy receives a Sovereign Grant to cover the running costs of the royal households and travel expenses. It is set at 12% of the profits from the Crown Estate for 2024-25, down from 25% in 2023-24 largely due to the large increase in revenues from offshore wind. The overall amount of the Sovereign Grant for 2024-25 will remain at 86.3 million pounds for the third consecutive year, Britain’s Treasury said in July last year. ($1 = 0.7744 pounds) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britains-crown-estate-post-record-profits-offshore-wind-licenses-2024-07-24/

2024-07-24 06:25

MADRID, July 24 (Reuters) - Europe's largest utility Iberdrola (IBE.MC) , opens new tab on Wednesday raised its 2024 outlook for the second time this year, following a strong performance in the first half driven by its network business and new renewable capacity. The Spanish firm, the largest in Europe by market value, is reaping the benefits of shifting its focus towards upgrading and expanding grids in the United States and elsewhere while becoming more selective on renewable energy projects. The company now expects double-digit percentage growth in net profit, up from earlier guidance of high single-digit growth. The guidance excludes capital gains from the sale of assets. Its network division was boosted by higher tariffs granted by regulators in Britain, the U.S. and Brazil. "We are making good progress on delivering against the targets in our business plan to 2026," Executive Chairman Ignacio Sanchez Galan said. "On top of this, we also expect further medium-to-long-term growth opportunities to crystallize in the second half of the year, in our networks and storage business areas, as well as new opportunities to support the expansion of data centres,” he added. Net profit jumped 64% to 4.1 billion euros ($4.5 billion) in the first six months of the year. Core earnings - before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation - surged 27% to 9.6 billion euros. Excluding one-offs, like the sale of some of its assets in Mexico, core earnings were 9% higher. On renewables, the firm is adding onshore and offshore wind capacity. ($1 = 0.9216 euros) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/spains-iberdrola-raises-outlook-again-after-strong-second-quarter-2024-07-24/