AFP

A lack of rainfall in the central United States has brought the mighty Mississippi River to its lowest depth in years, causing headaches for shippers and squeezing farmers who rely on the busy waterway to take their product to the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the river’s depth at shipping hub Memphis, Tennessee, is at its lowest level since 2011.

“Normally at this time of year we would see 40-plus barges moving in a tow configuration pushed by (a) towboat,” said Deb Calhoun, senior vice president of Waterways Council, a US river infrastructure advocacy group.

“Now you you’re only seeing about 24, 25… moving at one time, sometimes less, depending on how shallow the river is at any point.”

This year’s low water level is largely due to a lack of rain in the upper plains states of Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota, through which the Mississippi’s major tributary, the Missouri River, flows.

In some areas, the US Army Corps of Engineers has been forced to do emergency dredging so that barges can pass through.

“It’s a very difficult time with harvest occurring now — really the worst possible time for this severe low water situation to occur,” Calhoun said.

Though the winter wheat season was largely wrapped up by early August, corn and soy harvests are in full swing, increasing as usual demand as usual cargo space.

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) figures show that about two-thirds of US sea-based grain exports last year departed from the Gulf of Mexico, most often after being shipped by barge down the Mississippi River.

One barge can carry the equivalent volume of 15 rail cars and 60 semi-trucks, according to industry representatives American Waterways Operators.

“We’re seeing a lot of inefficiencies,” said Calhoun, explaining that barges are having to be filled with less grain so they float higher.

“At this point, we are just very hopeful that rain will come.”

Meteorologists predict some rain will fall over the weekend in the southern states of Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi.

– Producers squeezed –

The decreased barge capacity has translated into higher shipping costs, with the USDA recording a fourfold increase in barge prices since late August.

At those levels, “we are pricing ourselves out of the export market,” said Michael Zuzolo, of Global Commodity Analytics and Consulting.

He noted that corn has been particularly hard hit, with barge traffic cut in half.

The squeeze on agricultural shipping also comes as wheat, corn and soybean yields are expected to be lower than anticipated, according to the USDA.

“It is already starting to impact the up-river prices by weakening them for the farmers,” said Zuzolo.

And as commercial storage begins to get tighter and tighter, “it’s going to start spreading into the middle part of the country that is not right near a river,” he adds.

The low-water headaches are similar to those experienced in 2012, and for some evoke memories of a historic crisis in 1988.

In 2012, Calhoun says, rocks sticking up out of the water had to be blown up by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

“We’re not there yet,” she said, but in a worst case scenario, authorities would “look at the possibility of releasing water from the Missouri River or upstate reservoirs.”

Leaks from a shadowy group of hackers targeting secret files held by the armed forces of several Latin American nations have fueled controversy in Mexico about the military’s growing power.

A trove of sensitive information was stolen from the Mexican defense ministry by the collective called Guacamaya, which has also claimed cyberattacks in Chile, Colombia and Peru.

“Their objectives are more political than economic,” said Diego Macor, a cyber-security expert at US technology giant IBM in Chile, who describes members of the network as “hacker-activists.”

The leaks revealed that the Mexican army continued to use Pegasus spyware developed by Israeli firm NSO Group after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in 2018, according to an investigation by the Network in Defense of Digital Rights and its partners.

The targets included journalists and a human rights activist, according to the probe, which was assisted by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

The army insisted that it had only used spyware to fight organized crime.

The hack also left Mexico’s military facing allegations that some of its members have links to drug cartels, and that it engineered a contentious security reform giving it control of the National Guard, which was previously under civilian command.

Two soldiers sold grenades, other weapons and tactical equipment to drug cartel members, according to analysis of the files by the civil society group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity.

The Mexican and Peruvian militaries also allegedly monitored civil society organizations such as Amnesty International, which condemned their actions as “unacceptable.”

“The undue monitoring of civil society organizations identified in the Guacamaya collective leaks is an example of the hostile context in which we work as organizations defending human rights in the Americas,” said Amnesty regional director Erika Guevara-Rosas.

“Instead of monitoring the activities of civil society organizations, the military and other authorities in the region should be ensuring a favorable environment for the defense of rights and acknowledging the important role played by human rights defenders,” she added.

Mexican legislators on Wednesday summoned Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval to explain himself, but he refused, telling them to visit him in his office instead.

– President’s health –

The leaks revealed previously undisclosed information — subsequently confirmed by Lopez Obrador — that the 68-year-old president was taken by air ambulance in January from his ranch in southern Mexico to a hospital in the capital with heart problems. Lopez Obrador had already suffered a heart attack in 2013.

Before coming to power in 2018, Lopez Obrador had vowed to send the military back to the barracks.

But under his presidency, the armed forces have kept their role in tackling cartel-related violence and even gained more responsibility, including control of ports and customs and major infrastructure projects.

This week lawmakers approved an extension of the Mexican armed forces’ public security role until 2028.

In Colombia, Guacamaya claimed to have obtained more than 300,000 private emails from the military forces and the state prosecutor’s office, although the hack has yet to generate the same level of controversy there as in Mexico.

The Colombian army said it was “aware of the possible extraction of information from the general command.”

Guacamaya also released tens of thousands of emails from the National Hydrocarbons Agency and a private company, New Granada Energy Corp.

The records revealed 62 oil and chemical spills between 2015 and 2020.

Most of these “environmental incidents” were not reported to authorities, according to internal communications from New Granada Energy, which could not be reached for comment.

In Chile, hackers exploited flaws in the computer systems of the Joint Armed Forces Command. 

The vulnerability of the Chilean army’s servers had been known since August 2021, said Nicolas Boettcher, an expert at Diego Portales University in Santiago.

Even so, “there have been no calls for tenders for the review and repair of the servers,” he said.

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British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Friday fired her finance minister after prolonged market turmoil, but some Conservatives were plotting their new leader’s own demise as her right-wing economic agenda imploded.

Kwasi Kwarteng became the second shortest-lived chancellor of the exchequer in UK political history, paying the price after Truss’s crash programme of unfunded tax cuts terrified the financial markets.

Truss did little to reassure investors and the UK electorate at a brief news conference — her first since succeeding Boris Johnson on September 6. 

She insisted she had acted “decisively” to bring about “economic stability” — but the pound resumed its slide on currency markets, falling under $1.12.

“We will get through this storm,” she said, taking only four questions, looking nervously around the room and delivering terse replies.

“I want to deliver a low-tax, high-wage, high-growth economy,” Truss added. “That mission remains.”

Kwarteng, who had rushed back early from international meetings in Washington, was replaced by the centrist former foreign secretary and former Tory leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt as Britain’s fourth chancellor this year.

Financial upheaval sparked by the new government’s September 23 plan to slash taxes — financed via billions in more borrowing — had subsided somewhat since the Bank of England (BoE) intervened in bond markets.

But the central bank was adamant it would end its bond-buying spree on Friday, and market analysts said only a bigger climbdown by Truss following Kwarteng’s disastrous budget announcement last month would avert fresh panic.

She duly delivered the U-turn by announcing she would retain the Johnson government’s plan to raise profits tax on companies — having already changed her mind about cutting income tax for the highest earners.

– Collapsing polls –

The promised tax reforms were the centrepiece of Truss’s successful pitch to Tory party members that she, rather than moderate rival Rishi Sunak, was the best candidate to replace Johnson. 

Almost two-thirds of the 2,000 voters polled by “Find Out Now” after Friday’s press conference believe she should now resign.

More than 60 percent also said there should be a general election, while only 8 percent said she should stay as leader.

Other polls show a mammoth lead up opening up for the main opposition Labour party, threatening electoral meltdown for the Tories. 

Labour leader Keir Starmer said that ditching Kwarteng would not “undo the damage made in Downing Street”.

“Liz Truss’ reckless approach has crashed the economy, causing mortgages to skyrocket and has undermined Britain’s standing on the world stage,” he said.

Tony Travers, from the London School of Economics, told AFP that Kwarteng had been made “the fall guy for the government’s mistakes” — but that the sacking had not taken the pressure off Truss or calmed the Tories.

“It’s very hard to see them coming back from this” by the next election, he added.

– ‘Rash talk’ –

Kwarteng had been due to stay in Washington this weekend to conclude annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

He had already earned a rebuke from IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, who had stressed the need for “coherent and consistent” policies.

Commenting on the tax U-turn, senior IMF official Alfred Kammer paid credit to the UK’s “strong institutions”, such as the BoE and the Office for Budget Responsibility — both of which were undermined by Truss and Kwarteng.

Also speaking in Washington, European Union economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said the upheaval in Britain showed “how prudent we should be also with our fiscal and monetary mix”.

In the US capital on Thursday, Kwarteng had insisted that his job was safe. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

But UK broadcasters showed live footage of Kwarteng’s British Airways plane landing at London’s Heathrow airport a day early, after Truss held hurried meetings with her own financial advisors in his absence.

Multiple reports said that senior Tory MPs were plotting to unseat Truss by installing a new leadership team under Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, who also ran to succeed Johnson.

Party grandees could move next week, senior BBC journalist Nick Watt tweeted.

“They said not tenable for PM to remain after sacking @KwasiKwarteng who was implementing the programme that won her the Tory leadership,” he wrote.

But Bernard Jenkin, a senior voice on the Tory right, called for “calm” after Hunt’s appointment.

“Rash talk of ditching the PM, or calls for a general election, will not calm the financial markets,” he tweeted.

Striking French refinery workers vowed Friday to pursue blockades after spurning a pay offer from industry leader TotalEnergies, prompting alarm over spreading fuel shortages ahead of broader protests in the coming days.

The hard-left CGT union, which launched the industrial action three weeks ago, walked out of talks with Total late Thursday, even as other unions representing a majority of workers accepted a deal.

“We’re not blind, we know this is impacting daily life for all the French,” CGT chief Philippe Martinez told Franceinfo radio, calling on the government to put pressure on the company to renegotiate.

His union has called a strike for Tuesday that could disrupt public transport nationwide, on the heels of anti-inflation marches called for Sunday by left-wing opponents of President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron’s government forced some strikers back to work this week to open fuel depots, a move that infuriated unions but was upheld by a court on Friday, a judicial source told AFP.

“There are signs of improvement at certain sites, where fuel shipments to service stations have resumed,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told regional officials in Agen, southwest France.

Her office late Friday said it hoped for the situation to normalise “in the coming week”.

But nationwide, 28.5 percent of stations are out of at least one type of fuel, only a slight decline from around 30 percent in recent days, Energy Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told reporters in Lille, northern France.

And even though striking workers voted to lift the blockades at two sites owned by US energy major Esso-ExxonMobil, four of the seven refineries in France remain shut.

Esso-ExxonMobil said it will take two to three weeks for the situation to return to normal in the two refineries. 

At the TotalEnergies refinery near Saint-Nazaire, which supplies fuel for much of western France, strikers voted to prolong the strike but said some shipments would be allowed over the weekend.

“We’re a responsible union, so we will deliver some fuel to ease tensions, but certainly not every day,” a CGT official at the site, Fabien Prive Saint-Lanne, told reporters.

– ‘We’re worried’ –

France’s wholesale suppliers’ association warned that goods deliveries would be “severely compromised” beginning Friday, as motorists again faced long queues hoping to fill up before the weekend.

Farmers are also worried about compromised harvests as well as seed plantings for next year, in particular wheat and other grains.

“We’re worried because we have to plant now, when conditions are ideal, not 10 days or a month from now,” said Joel Limouzin, vice president of the FNSEA agriculture union.

Officials in the southeastern Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region said it would make train and bus transport free until Sunday night because of the fuel shortages.

The standoff is putting new pressure on Macron as his left-wing opponents see a chance to spur a broader protest against his reform drive.

In their sights is a pensions overhaul that would push back the retirement age from 62, which Macron wants to get through parliament in the coming months.

“The time for a confrontation has arrived,” parliamentarian Clementine Autain from the France Unbowed party told France 2 television on Thursday.

– ‘In denial’ –

Until this week, the government had been reluctant to inflame the refineries dispute, prompting critics to say it was oblivious to the strike’s impact on everyday workers.

“For two weeks there was no management of this problem, they were in denial,” said Eric Ciotti of the right-wing Republicans party — whose support will be crucial for Macron after his centrist grouping lost its parliamentary majority this year.

The CGT is pushing for a 10 percent raise, citing TotalEnergies’ net profit of $5.7 billion in the April-June period as energy prices soared with the war in Ukraine, and its payout of billions of euros in dividends to shareholders. 

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told RTL radio Thursday that given its huge profits, the company had “the capacity… and therefore an obligation” to raise workers’ pay.

But the union risks stoking resentment in a country where three-fourths of workers rely on personal vehicles for their jobs, with public support for the strike at just 37 percent in a BVA poll released Friday.

“For the past four or five days, it has been catastrophic”, said Francoise Ernst, who works at a driving school in Paris. 

“And I think that if it goes on, we will have to stop working.”

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