At least one person has been killed by a major earthquake off the coast of Michoacán state in Mexico.
The earthquake, measured at a magnitude of 7.6, stuck on exactly the same day that two previous earthquakes caused enormous damage and killed hundreds or thousands of people in 1985 and 2017.
The Federal Reserve is unlikely to pivot and cut its benchmark interest rate until 2024 at the soonest as it tries to crush the hottest inflation in four decades, according to Goldman Sachs strategists.
The bank's economists — led by Jan Hatzius — predicted in an analyst note on Monday that the U.S. central bank will raise interest rates four more times between now and the end of 2023, eventually holding them at a range between 4.25% to 4.50% until 2024.
The analyst note comes ahead of the Fed's two-day meeting this week, during which Hatzius now sees policymakers approving a third consecutive 75-basis-point interest rate increase — triple the usual size.
Jerome Powell, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, speaks during a news conference following a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, May 4, 2022. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Ms McKinnon said the council would like an alternate route considered that did not go through the centre of the city.
"We do know in other areas where the EIS has been done for other sections," she said.
"Other parts have been able to get a bypass or a different route to what was originally put forward."
Data discrepancies
Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving monarch in British history, died on September 8 at Balmoral, her Scottish retreat in rural Aberdeenshire, at the age of 96.
Hundreds of foreign royals and leaders attended the queen's funeral in London on September 19, making it one of the biggest diplomatic gatherings in decades, AFP reported.
Russia and Belarus were among a small group of nations to be excluded from the funeral following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, a British government source told AFP.
Military-run Myanmar, a former British colony, and long-time pariah North Korea were also snubbed, the British source said on condition of anonymity.
The claim that China was also not invited to the ceremony in London was shared hundreds of times in other posts on Twitter and Gettr.
Some social media users appeared to believe the claim.
"It seems like they can't even be bothered to mention that name... because it could easily lead to humiliating China," one commented.
Another wrote: "Haha so my China doesn't even deserve a name?"
However, the claim is false.
Beijing's foreign ministry confirmed that Vice President Wang Qishan would attend the funeral on behalf of President Xi Jinping, as reported by AFP.
"At the invitation of the UK government, President Xi Jinping's Special Representative Vice President Wang Qishan will attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II to be held in London on September 19," the statement on September 17 read.
A photo of Wang attending the ceremony at Westminster Abbey was published here and here by AFP on September 19. He can be seen walking in front of Liu Xiaoming, the former Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
The council's submission says within the EIS Traffic and Transport Technical Paper it is stated that a 1,800-metre-long train, travelling at 80 kilometres an hour, would result in local level crossings — including one near Wagga Wagga Base Hospital — being closed for two minutes.
But the council found closure times of up to four minutes at the crossing at Bourke/Docker streets in the city, for a train under 1,000m long.
"Our staff actually went and did train counts, also speed counts of the freight trains to pass through those level crossings and we found our data was very, very different," Ms McKinnon said.
The council also raised concerns about the ARTC's data when it came to noise and vibrations.
"The numbers used for [the] level-crossing impact assessment are lower than the noise and vibration study," it said.
"This brings into question the effectiveness of the EIS as a holistic document."
The ARTC said the group had been consulting stakeholders since 2017.
It said the EIS study had been undertaken professionally.
"We believe the data and impact assessments in the EIS are both accurate and justifiable based on the document evidence," a spokesperson said.
Neighbouring council praises consultation
Junee Shire Council, which shares a border with WWCC, is more positive about the consultation process relating to the project so far.
"From the level of consultation that we've been receiving from the ARTC, it's been very good," said general manager James Davis.
"It's been open and come back to council many times and most issues have been resolved. [But] there are still some outstanding items."
Goldman Sachs then predicted that the Fed will deliver back-to-back half-percentage point increases in November and December, followed by one quarter-percentage point hike in 2023 and one rate cut in 2024.
"We see several reasons for the change in plan," Hatzius wrote. "The equity market threatened to undo some of the tightening in financial conditions that the Fed had engineered, labor market strength reduced fears of overtightening at this stage, Fed officials now appear to want somewhat quicker and more consistent progress toward reversing overheating, and some might have reevaluated the short-term neutral rate."
Although Goldman economists, like many other experts, initially thought the Fed would reduce the size of rate increases after July, that changed after the August inflation data released last week came in hotter than expected. The consumer price index unexpectedly rose 0.1% in August from the previous month, dashing hopes for a slowdown. On an annual basis, prices are up 8.3% — near the highest level since 1981.
Stocks fell sharply after the surprisingly hot report on fears of an even more aggressive Fed, with the Dow sliding 1,276 points — the worst day since June 2020.
Law enforcement experts are raising their eyebrows over New York City’s "gun free zone" law, which established a perimeter lined with laminated signs prohibiting the public from carrying firearms within, as one longtime police executive said the new legislation doesn’t "make sense" and is "extremely confusing."
"I didn’t like the idea of setting up special zones where permitted gun carrier holders could not go," said Terence Monahan, formerly the highest-ranking uniformed member of the New York Police Department.
"The people who are doing the crime in the city, the people who are killing each other, are not the guys with licenses."
Liz Truss is going from the solemnity of a royal funeral to the maelstrom of international politics, and a crucial meeting with President Joe Biden.
Britain’s prime minister flew to New York on Monday for the United Nations General Assembly, coming straight from the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, whose death and commemoration have dominated the start of the new leader’s term.
Truss won a Conservative Party leadership contest early this month and was appointed prime minister by the queen on Sept. 6, just two days before the monarch died.
Monahan spent just months shy of 40 years with the NYPD before he retired as Chief of Department in 2021. He said when he first heard the news of the "gun-free zones," it "didn’t make sense."
"It’s going to make things very confusing for police officers on the street dealing with it," he told Fox News Digital. "If someone is law enforcement, retired law enforcement, they’re allowed to have firearms in these zones. But other permit holders have to stop at a certain street and turn around if they have their firearms, can’t go into certain stores or locations."
HOUSING REPORT: Investors are eagerly awaiting a Tuesday morning housing report to gauge another factor how inflation is affecting the economy.
At 8:30 a.m. ET, the Commerce Department is expected to say the number of new homes under construction in August dipped 0.1% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.445 million.
That would mark the second straight monthly decline to the lowest in a year-and-a half (since February 2021).
Housing starts have tumbled 20% in the three months since hitting a near 16-year high of 1.810 million in April (the highest since June 2006) as increased borrowing costs and rising prices slammed affordability.
Yet as of Monday evening, the tremor appeared to have passed without that level of tragedy, despite heightened nerves from a nationwide annual earthquake drill that occurred less than an hour beforehand.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that one person died in the western state of Colima due to a falling fence at a shopping centre.
US and Mexican authorities issued a tsunami alert, while videos showed rattling rooms, wildly swinging light fixtures, and wobbling pickup trucks throughout western Mexico
In speeches and remarks leading up to the start of the leaders' meeting Tuesday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cited the “immense” task not only of saving the planet, “which is literally on fire,” but of dealing with the persisting COVID-19 pandemic. He also pointed to “a lack of access to finance for developing countries to recover -- a crisis not seen in a generation” that has seen ground lost for education, health and women’s rights.
Guterres will deliver his “state of the world” speech at Tuesday’s opening of the annual high-level global gathering. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said it would be "a sober, substantive and solutions-focused report card” for a world “where geopolitical divides are putting all of us at risk.”
“There will be no sugar-coating in his remarks, but he will outline reasons for hope,” Dujarric told reporters Monday.
Twenty hospitals damaged in Michoacán
The 77th General Assembly meeting of world leaders convenes under the shadow of Europe’s first major war since World War II — the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has unleashed a global food crisis and opened fissures among major powers in a way not seen since the Cold War.
Yet nearly 150 heads of state and government are on the latest speakers' list. That's a sign that despite the fragmented state of the planet, the United Nations remains the key gathering place for presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and ministers to not only deliver their views but to meet privately to discuss the challenges on the global agenda -- and hopefully make some progress.
At the top of that agenda for many: Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which not only threatens the sovereignty of its smaller neighbor but has raised fears of a nuclear catastrophe at Europe’s largest nuclear plant in the country’s now Russia-occupied southeast.
Leaders in many countries are trying to prevent a wider war and restore peace in Europe. Diplomats, though, aren't expecting any breakthroughs this week.
The loss of important grain and fertilizer exports from Ukraine and Russia has triggered a food crisis, especially in developing countries, and inflation and a rising cost of living in many others. Those issues are high on the agenda.
At a meeting Monday to promote U.N. goals for 2030 — including ending extreme poverty, ensuring quality education for all children and achieving gender equality — Guterres said the world's many pressing perils make it "tempting to put our long-term development priorities to one side.”
But the U.N. chief said some things can't wait — among them education, dignified jobs, full equality for women and girls, comprehensive health care and action to tackle the climate crisis. He called for public and private finance and investment, and above all for peace.
The death of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her funeral in London on Monday, which many world leaders attended, have created last-minute headaches for the high-level meeting. Diplomats and U.N. staff have scrambled to deal with changes in travel plans, the timing of events and the logistically intricate speaking schedule for world leaders.
The global gathering, known as the General Debate, was entirely virtual in 2020 because of the pandemic, and hybrid in 2021. This year, the 193-member General Assembly returns to only in-person speeches, with a single exception — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Over objections from Russia and a few allies, the assembly voted last Friday to allow the Ukrainian leader to prerecord his speech because of reasons beyond his control — the “ongoing foreign invasion” and military hostilities that require him to carry out his “national defense and security duties.”
By tradition, Brazil has spoken first for over seven decades because, at the early General Assembly sessions, it volunteered to start when no other country did.
The U.S. president, representing the host country for the United Nations, is traditionally the second speaker. But Joe Biden is attending the queen’s funeral, and his speech has been pushed to Wednesday morning. Senegalese President Macky Sall is expected to take Biden’s slot.
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Edith M. Lederer is chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press and has been covering international affairs for more than half a century. For more AP coverage of the U.N. General Assembly, visit https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations-general-assembly.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
At least 20 hospitals in the state of Michoacán have suffered structural damage from the earthquake, local authorities say.
According to Mexico AS, the state health ministry reported that medical facilities in Uruapan, Apatzingán, Pátzcuaro, and many other towns had been hit by the tremor, along with churches and a technical college in Coalcomán.
A video posted on Twitter showed products strewn across the floor in aisle after aisle of a Michoacán supermarket. Neighbouring Jalisco state also reported damage to religious buildings.
Death toll rises to two
07:02 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
Two people were killed in the Pacific port of Manzanillo in the aftermath of the powerful earthquake that jolted Mexico yesterday, authorities said.
One of the victims died after being crushed by the facade of a department store while another was found dead at a mall.
Videos on social media showed the roof of the mall collapsed into the top floor, a gym, as people yelled for help.
'I don't care what no one says,' he said, 'What [Merdy] did was monstrous, but she herself is not a monster.'
Small also said he wanted his daughter to be remembered for how she lived, and not how she died.
'I don't want her to be remembered or known as how she passed,' he said, 'I don't even want to hear about it anymore.
'Don't want to see it, read it, or nothing. I just want everyone to remember that Lily, for four years, was loved by all her family members.'
Lily was dressed in a pink dress before being laid out in a white casket, which was buried in Cypress, Queens. A Barbie doll was placed inside her coffin with her.
Merdy faces charges of three counts of second-degree murder, three counts of depraved indifference to human life, and three counts of murder with the victims under 11 years old, an NYPD spokesperson said. She has not yet appeared in court because she hasn't been medically cleared to do so.
Church in Michoacán damaged in powerful quake
06:40 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
The church of San Miguel Arcángel in Michoacán was damaged after a powerful earthquake struck Mexico on Monday.
A video captured by locals showed debris falling out of a hole from the church building that was caused by the jolt. Cracks were also spotted on one of the bell towers of the church.
Another eerie coincidence
06:00 , Io Dodds
This earthquake happened less than an hour after Mexico's annual nationwide earthquake drill, which was introduced in 1985 after the devastating quake in Mexico City.
Across the country, about 14,000 loudspeakers issued a fake warning in order to test people's responses, with millions of civilians evacuating their homes, schools, and workplaces.
Earthquake affects power supply to 1.2 million users
05:43 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
Nearly 1.2 million users were left without electricity after the powerful 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Mexico on Monday.
According to the federal electricity commission, until 3.30pm local time the reinstallation of power supply was achieved for 68 per cent of the affected users.
Democrats are pumping an unprecedented amount of money into advertising related to abortion rights, underscoring how central the message is to the party in the final weeks before the November midterm elections.
With the most intense period of campaigning only just beginning, Democrats have already invested more than an estimated $124 million this year in television advertising referencing abortion. That’s more than twice as much money as the Democrats’ next top issue this year, “character,” and almost 20 times more than Democrats spent on abortion-related ads in the 2018 midterms.
The estimated spending figures, based on an Associated Press analysis of data provided by the nonpartisan research firm AdImpact, reveal the extent to which Democrats are betting their majorities in Congress and key governorships on one issue. That’s even as large majorities of Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction and the economy is in poor condition.
The advertising numbers also reveal just how sharply Republicans have shied away from abortion in their paid advertising in the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a decades-long goal of the GOP. (The AdImpact data captures every single time a campaign ad is aired on TV, and estimates a cost associated with those airings.)
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Since the high court’s decision in June to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion, roughly 1 in 3 television advertising dollars spent by Democrats and their allies have focused on abortion. Much of the spending is designed to attack Republicans on the ballot this fall who have long opposed abortion rights and are currently engaged in a state-by-state push to restrict abortion rights or outlaw the practice altogether.
The Democrats’ unprecedented investment in abortion messaging on TV this year through Sept. 18 is larger than the Republican Party’s combined national investment in ads relating to the economy, crime and immigration.
“With less than 60 days until the election, we refuse to stand by while out-of-step, anti-choice Republicans try to control our bodies and our futures and simultaneously lie about it to voters,” said Melissa Williams, executive director of Women Vote!, an outside group that has invested more than $4 million in abortion-related ads this year. “We are ensuring that each voter knows the candidates that stand with them and against them in protecting this right.”
The Democrats’ overwhelming focus on abortion may not be surprising given the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the wave of Republican-backed abortion bans in more than a dozen states that followed. But the strategy still marks a sharp departure from the party’s focus in recent years on former President Donald Trump and other issues like the economy, education and health care.
In the 2018 midterm elections, for example, Democrats spent less than $6 million on abortion-related television advertising. That’s compared to the $51 million that Democrats invested in Trump-related ads, $49 million on health care and $46 million on education, according to AdImpact.
Jessica Floyd, president of American Bridge, a Democrat-allied super PAC running abortion-related advertising in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, described abortion as “the ultimate health care issue” for women and families. The Supreme Court decision and the subsequent Republican push to ban abortion in some states, she said, represent “an actual rolling back of rights, which is unprecedented.”
Video shows hotel room ceiling fan shaking during earthquake
05:14 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
A video shared on Twitter showed a ceiling fan violently shaking in a hotel room in Puerto Vallarta when the 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Michoacán state in Mexico.
According to local reports, several hotels in the resort town suffered damage, with cracks emerging on ceilings and windows.
Tsunami threat has 'passed', say authorities
04:51 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
The tsunami warning which was issued immediately after the earthquake off the coast of Michoacán state has been revised.
According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, the tsunami threat has “largely passed”.
Earlier, waves reaching up to 3 metres were earlier predicted to hit Mexico and along the coast of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador and Guatemala among other countries, but recent readings have shown a relative decrease in wave heights.
“Minor sea level fluctuations of up to 0.3 metres above and below the normal tide may continue over the next few hours,” it said.
Nothing special about 19 September, say experts
04:49 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
The fact that three different earthquakes have all hit Mexico on 19 September is nothing more than random chance, according seismologists.
"This is a coincidence," Paul Earle of the US Geological Survey (USGS) told The Associated Press. "There's no physical reason or statistical bias toward earthquakes in any given month in Mexico...
"We knew we'd get this question as soon as it happened. Sometimes there are just coincidences."
José Luis Mateos, a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told AS Mexico that the probability of three quakes happening on the same day in the same nation is 1 in 133,225.
On a global scale, the USGS says there is no particular season for earthquakes and no such thing as "earthquake weather", although one study did find an association between earthquakes and monsoon season in Taiwan specifically.