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    Vitaliy_Kiselev
    USPS: Going back to horses
    • The nation’s mail service is preparing to implement core components of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan for the agency, a program designed to cut costs and raise new revenue to fix its many financial problems.

      Your mail may slow down because the Postal Service lengthened its “service standards,” or the amount of time it says it should take for a piece of mail to get delivered. And how much slower it will get depends on where you live.

      That’s because the Postal Service is changing the way it transports your mail. The Postal Service used to put about 20 percent of your mail on airplanes to move it across the country. This is the mail that was going from coast to coast, and to make the three-day service standard, the agency had to move it faster than was possible on a truck.

      Now it’s going to drive. The new service standard will cut air transportation to only 12 percent of first-class mail. Postal leadership says this will both cut costs — the agency spends a lot more flying mail than it does trucking it — and increase predictability. During the 2020 holiday season, the air-transport network was not reliable enough to keep the Postal Service’s processing centers running on schedule. So even if trucks take longer, the agency hopes they will be more predictable.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/01/usps-slowdown-prices-faq/

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    Vitaliy_Kiselev
    Energy: India rolling blackouts due to lack of coal
    • According to Delhi's Power Minister Satyendra Jain, more than half of India's 135 coal-fired power plants, which supply around 70% of the country's electricity, have seen their stocks depleted to such low levels that they only have enough to guarantee power for three days before the capital city is hit with blackouts. Typically, they're supposed to keep a buffer supply of at least one month. But these aren't normal times.

      "If coal supply doesn't improve, there will be a blackout in Delhi in two days," the national capital's Power Minister Satyendra Jain said today. "The coal-fired power plants that supply electricity to Delhi have to keep a minimum coal stock of one month, but now it has come down to one day," Mr Jain said.

      Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party is pleading with the government to send emergency supplies of coal by rail: "our request to the center is that railway wagons should be arranged and coal should be transported to the plants soonest. All the plants are already running in only 55 per cent capacity," according to NDTV.

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    Vitaliy_Kiselev
    Energy: Lebanon Goes Dark
    • On Saturday the entirety of Lebanon was plunged into darkness, with the electricity grid shut down completely after the small Mediterranean country's two main power stations reportedly ran out of fuel. "The al Zahrani and the Deir Ammar power stations stopped working after supplies of diesel were apparently exhausted, and energy production dropped to below 200 megawatts," Sky News reports.

      A Lebanese official has confirmed to Reuters that the blackout is expected to last multiple days. "The Lebanese power network completely stopped working at noon today, and it is unlikely that it will work until next Monday, or for several days," the official said.

      previously:

      Lebanon's state electricity company, Electricite du Liban (EDL), warned in September that the country could plunge into a total blackout in October, amid dwindling fuel reserves, as the company is unable to generate the minimum 600 megawatts needed daily for the network to function properly.

      On 3 October, EDL once again raised the alarm as the electrical grid shut down across the country - meaning residents of Lebanon are now entirely dependent on costly private generators for power, if they can even afford it.

    1 comment 2 comments Vitaliy_KiselevOctober 2021Last reply - October 2021 by Vitaliy_Kiselev Subscribe to this blog
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    Vitaliy_Kiselev
    War: Brazil expects food shortages and huge price rise on food
    • The rising cost of fertilizers and a shortage of these products in global markets could lead to a food crisis and food shortages in Brazil in 2022. This forecast was made on Thursday by President Jair Bolsonaro, saying that his government is taking the necessary measures. The speech of the head of state was broadcast on the channel of his administration on YouTube.

      "Due to the energy crisis, China has reduced the production of fertilizers. The price has increased and will continue to grow, and there will be a shortage. We will have problems with food shortages next year," he said, recalling that the largest Latin American state produces about 20% of the world's food ... "We have been working on this since March and will present an emergency fertilizer plan next month," he added.

      Bolsonaro also pointed out that the rise in the cost of food is observed everywhere around the world, and a number of countries have already faced food shortages.

      According to the statistics of the National Association of Fertilizer Distributors, Brazil imports about 85% of the fertilizers needed for agriculture.

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    Vitaliy_Kiselev
    Energy: Energy cuts due to coal shortage started in India
    • In the states of Northern India, electricity was cut and there were new outages due to a shortage of coal. Analysis of government data and interviews with residents showed that this contradicted government assurances that electricity was sufficient.

      The shortage in India - the world's largest consumer of coal after China - followed massive blackouts in neighboring China, which closed factories and schools to cope with the crisis.

      More than half of India's 135 coal-fired power plants, which together generate about 70% of India's electricity, have fuel reserves of less than three days, according to the federal grid operator.

      India's Ministry of Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

      On Wednesday, the Indian Express newspaper quoted Energy Minister R.K. Singha: "Nowhere would we be able to provide the required amount of electricity."

      Reuters analysis of daily load sharing data from federal grid regulator POSOCO found that India's power shortages in the first seven days of October accounted for 11.2% of the country's total power shortages for the year.

      image

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    Vitaliy_Kiselev
    War: Firefox turns into trash that will force to you see ads
    • Mozilla now displays ads directly in the Firefox address bar as contextual suggestions. This innovation has already been noticed by US users. Mozilla says the feature was introduced in Firefox 92 in September and is allowing the company to raise funds for browser development.

      According to Mozilla, “Starting with Firefox 92, users will receive new, relevant offers from trusted partners based on what they are looking for. No user data will be collected, stored or passed on to third parties to make new recommendations. "

      Although the company's blog posts introducing a new feature called Firefox Suggest were published in September, it was first mentioned in the Firefox 93 changelog two days ago and presented as "a faster way to navigate the web." Mozilla says it will only work with partners that comply with Firefox's privacy standards, with adMarketplace being the company's preferred partner for the time being.

      Nice.

    2 comments 3 comments Vitaliy_KiselevOctober 2021Last reply - October 2021 by Vitaliy_Kiselev Subscribe to this blog
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