the remains to be seen degrees, i'll do 0. i'll be job though, of flips of the walls. 3rd largest diamond to be bind has been left in botswana, the $1098.00 current stone is more than 7 centimeters long and 5 centimeters wide. it will be values in a couple of weeks time. the gym is fairly lighter than the 2nd biggest. i'm in discovered in 2015 also in about one of the largest remains the colony and found in south africa in 19. 05. ah, don't you know, just bear with me. it's a whole rom, the reminder of all the top stories. japan is that to ease quote, virus restrictions a month out from the start of the olympic games. a state of emergency will be lifted in tokyo, but the opening of bars and restaurants will still be restricted for they sell. irma is all correspondence reports to you. we are almost just over one months from

on being though it index and the whole holding this international event under state of emergency situation wasn't the best condition at all. many people were criticizing actually the prime minister for justice on holding that was in big. so now he has some good news for people and could at least try to convince them that this, the, this big event, the international big event can be held in that safe, unsecured way. as he promised hong kong, please arrested. 5 executives of the ample daily newspaper under the national security. lauren posed by beijing. now they are accused of colluding with what the government calls foreign enemies to hom, china on the 1st grew to be sent to china. the space station has just dumped the sions to 12 mission blasted off from mission one launch center. really 7 hours earlier years president joe biden and russian need of land to me. a patient of hounds, what they call a positive and constructive meeting. they've agreed to resume talks on arms control and cybersecurity,

but both disagree on human rights. the former president of ivory coast is leaving brussels 10 years after he was arrested for crimes against humanity or a bank that is returning home after eventually being acquitted of the charges by the international criminal court. it refused to step down after losing the presidential election in 2010, sparking months of violence in your hopes to show the world that it can successfully hold a peaceful election. that's what a prime minister arm had told his supporters and his 1st and last campaign rally. creative iris restrictions are being tightened in south africa following a rising cases. a nighttime care if you will be extended on the sale of alcohol. limited new daily infections have doubled over the past 2 weeks. those were the headlines that clark will be here with the algebra. news are in just under 30 minutes time. next it's fault lines. the texas blackout do stay with us. tune into our desert english and h t for the best experience to english

h. d. 's available across europe on satellites, usually 13 sci astro long and astra to g. starting fast to july 2021 altitude english. se across europe will only be available on full 5124182800078. for further information, visit our website. me the temperature drops in a very low and out of power in the city to begin shut down. right. i mean, cold february, the lights went out for millions of people in texas as a crippling winter storm to down the state's power grid. more than 4000000 people were plunged into darkness and left without heat or water. okay, i can imagine that she froze more than

150 people die to freeze. according to specials. the news tell us about the data, much harder is projected to be the most expensive disaster in texas history. all of this instruction wasn't just from the lack of power, but also from choices made by state leaders. texas is the only state in the u. s, where the power grid is not under federal oversight. instead, there are more than a 100 companies selling electricity. the system, the collapse than, or the way to the store. but the market in work. they didn't stop 4000000 texans from losing power. those market signals didn't stop 14000000 texans from losing water. didn't stop 200 texans from dying. the market just didn't work. in this episode of foliage, we report on the aftermath of the priest and ask if years a deregulation and prioritizing profits to the state power grid daily.

2 months after texas went dark the spring, he could make it hard to remember just how superior that winter storm was but its impact and loss are still being felt. she's good. megan lane. yeah, that's a great picture. is a life? oh, actually she was the one nice so broken shan lot of people in mid february, as temperatures began to drop. rachel asked mary, her 84 year old step mother to come, stay with them but the worst in the storm. and we was trying to get her to come and stay with me. and then i remember saying you're allowed to been through worse. they may be ok. so we may share that if she had everything, she need water, food, or whatever. she wanted the night of february 14th and into the morning

temperatures plummeted to sub reason. hitting lows not seen in decades of snow and ice accumulated that's when the power began to go out throughout houston. when did you guys know that this wasn't just going to be a normal storm like that something different was happening. was like the day before because the way that they did it on the news it was like maybe a little bit. yeah. they down played a lot. they did not say that the thing was going to be a big is it was when the kid called her grandmother that february 15th mary still have power in her home by 715 and i, we called again. i was like know where she okay with our lighting on to my lights and stuff was off already and she saw yeah, my lights and stuff is on my heater, you know my e to say i'm good but overnight kill us as the power and he went out where her grandmother lived. the next morning, rachel received a call from mary's neighbor. and she said, miss rachel,

i'm calling you because there's something wrong with your mom. she say, well, i don't was over nancy, that she just turn around and say, oh, she's dead. and i i just went ran and got my brother. i told him i was there and we needed to get over there. and it was just greenly screening call. they said we couldn't touch your phone. they said we could get my brother had already turned in his oh my god, no. she froze the most. i don't say the whole time i've ever gone up. when she talks about this, the 1st thing she says, she always prays for god to take her while she's asleep. jeff, die of death. freezing to death. i can't imagine just what she might have went

through. right? she was asleep. i pray that god took her why she was late because that that is a bothers me. it bothers me. i wouldn't want nobody to go to know bag the winter storm was one of the coldest texas as seen in years as people blasted their heaters trying to stay warm. the need for power searched the power grid, couldn't meet the demand. so operators began to manage the problem with rolling or short term blackouts. but as equipment froze at both power plants and fuel suppliers, the grid was too stressed. and blackouts lasted for days, from millions of texans. for most of the people who died for the storm, including mary, the cause of death was hypothermia. emergency workers had an upsurge and calls for carbon monoxide poisoning. as people tried to stay warm in

their cars, by using their stove for the carbon monoxide cause, i'd never seen apartments full of people getting transport to the hospital who had barbecue pits and charcoal burning inside their apartment. on a normal day, houston's firefighters response roughly a 1000 cars, like the small house fire. but during the winter storm, there cause trouble, as residents tried to find any way to stay warm. so even as houston froze, the city was on fire. and this is at night what transpired, the fire started or by started using whatever means they could stay warm and then here's where the freeze comes in at night. and you can see all the fires that are coming in. 2100 runs. 3300 runs 2800 runs. now it's starting to drop down to $1714.00. and now we're getting back to 1100, which is pretty typical. your 3 times your capacity right in here. oh,

absolutely. we were really stretching ourself then. is it common on cold nights that you have more house fires? oh, yeah, because there's always people seeking a trying to seek heat and whatever they can do to find the houston's emergency. workers are used to disasters, since hurricanes are common here, but fisher's winter story, and the power outage is it over to the city and state. were different, as long as the electricity is working and they could heat their homes to a somewhat comfortable agree that everything reason everything was good. but when that kicked in, it was a game changer throughout the city. when we lost power, the black out started rolling. that's when i knew it was going to get really bad. immediately you lose power, use water. the hospitals have the same problems. there's no where to take people. what was it like for you guys to have to respond to these calls for a little tax and smell great around the fire station? no showers, no, nothing for us either. same wet clothes can imagine. no,

hopeless your time. you put it back on. they got to the point at the fire scene when the fire out, when you stand still, it just freezes up. it's a blanket, see actually take it off like a sweater and late in here. and hopefully it's going to be a little warmer in here. but when you lost all the heat, they were just a blanket device, but you have to put it back on that's. that's our protection. do you remember the moment you realize the blackouts weren't going to be rolling? i kinda suspected that when all of a sudden it felt like someone just flip the switch and it was very quiet and everything just kind of went dead and it didn't come back for about 12 hours 1st time. and i said, you know, i think, i don't know if this was a natural and then it seems like something happens. how long have you been in the car for 39 years and how long have you been in 17 years and you guys ever seen anything like this? nothing. nothing like this. with this it was non stop for 4 days. the

recruit operator would later admit that the grid a come within minutes of a complete collapse since the local and state officials have raise questions about who was responsible for blackouts and in suing damage. we've been hit hard by nature this week, but we can't deny that some of this is a man made disaster as well. we were the depth of the crisis, kept the story in the national news. we were told by the state and the power grid that we would experience rolling blackouts of 30 minutes to an hour while the rolling blackouts turn to a complete catastrophic failure. as far as we're concerned, the heart of the issue is the power grid and how it's control. there are 3 power grids in the us, one covering the eastern part of the country, another the western both under federal oversight. and then there's texas. the only state in the us to have its own power grid,

90 percent of the state, as part of it with the restaurant, the boarders still part of the 2 national grids. traveling east from houston, just one county over in liberty county, texas. you're off the texas power grad, you're on the national eastern grade year. they experience rolling blackouts if that but back there during the winter storm power in water for day 2 decades ago, the texas legislature deregulated the energy market here and went from a state controlled system to a lightly regulated open market. so before that, it used to be just a few entities that you would sale, fell the power, and that was your regulated utilities. but after that, in majority of the market there where hundreds at some point a 3 day or so, those other retail elected, he provided the change, the energy market here was supposed to provide lower prices to consumers. but as

did prices for residents have gone up over time, well, industry from power companies to their fuel, some wires have profited with little regulation, texas. we're left with a less reliable grid. by the way, the texas market is set up means that power plants don't have to maintain a pack of supply of energy. it is what is known as an energy only market. right? so you are not, you don't have capacity sitting around that you're paying you, you be there and we'll call you when the need arises. the idea is consumers won't pay at it, costs for reserve energy, and the market will always be able to meet demand except that didn't work during the winter storm when power plants, as well as their fuel sources, froze and didn't reserve or back up to rely on this wasn't the 1st time texas grid. they severe weather challenges though and 2011. a severe winter storm lead to ruling outages and prompted state inquiries,

federal investigation into what could prevent this from happening again, you have to build in resiliency into us, into your system. if you don't want this to be repeated. houston's mayor, sylvester turner was a state representative at the time after that storm he proposed to bill requiring texas to maintain enough reserve power to prevent future blackouts. but the bill didn't even make it out of committee. that bill, unfortunately, was never given a hearing because the powers that be felt that there was no need to impose these type of mandates that they, they, they chose a market driven approach. and that means, but they did what the, what the, the policy makers made the decision that instead of mandating adequate supply to prevent blackouts, that they would allow the power generators to earn more, to charge more when the demand exceeded supply turn. it was also part of the

legislature when voted to regulate to energy market and something he supported and added now. so it's nice to have y'all grid, but if you're going to have young grid, then you have a greater responsibility to make sure that you have adequate supply power to meet the demand. and you need to make sure that you factor in effect, the climate change is real. so you need to build a resilient system. okay? all of those things need to be put in place. if you do that, you can have your own system and you've been responsible and accountable. if you're not willing to do that, then the consequences are going to be huge in the aftermath of the storm, texas is now faced with the question of if and how should prepare for another hard winter. recovering from the storms expected to cost more than $100000000.00. and once later residents are still dealing with the damage to their homes and their lives. here maddy,

thing happened like this before. never had been to hurricane i down i or army allison, but nothing with the water storm like this one. when the winter storm hit and temperatures dropped, water parts frozen burst throughout homes like 12 degrees is cold and pipes bus in the bath. and i didn't know that i to add it. i knew we had in the backyard, but i on attic and i wanted to start gushing and just coming down to the ceiling is coming down. how long would you without water? back onto march to 30 almost 50 days because i didn't have insurance to get the high fix. so i had to wait to someone to come help me

right now. okay. would no insurance and unable to afford the repair, mentally connected with volunteers working to help homeowners recover from storms damage. there's still thousands of families across just are just in houston that are waiting on insurance waiting on their application to be submitted for assistance or, or waiting for volunteers. yeah, going to do that let's, we'll finish this side here and the group became working in 2017 after hurricane harvey's and has continued through other disasters, including the winter storm. the fries caused a flood from the inside were used to floods from the outside. we've had 7 floods in the last 6 years, so you have a sense down here that that climate change is playing a part of this does. it just seemed like, well kind of weird weather or that this is driven by the larger forces. yeah, i think the climate change in constantly and there's

a lot of things that that are impacted between. just having more people living here . more people living on earth. we're going to have larger swings of disasters. i mean all the disasters are getting bigger. it will show back that even after that week that we still couldn't get water. they had to wait for the truck to bring water to the stores. it was one and out of water. and people fan. this is not like a 3rd world country. you know, jacob, to stuff like this, that's what we were going to, that we could not get water, not right. what they're doing. they, they need to get the right people in there to do what they need to do. so this don't ever happen again. you think the problem is the problem of resources or is it a problem of politics? politics, not resources. not resources,

politics. a need to be more concerned about the people. there are 3 west connected sister stores potentially fall into the officials that manage the grid for dark region has been able to operate as its own interconnection the organisation operation. the grid is called her and her car is regulated by the public utility commission, where the p u. c, who's officials are appointed by the governor, the ability to manage a wholesale electricity market that operates differently from most other parts of the country. it's proven very effective getting the top officials of both and the p u. c. reside, not long after the freeze generation, but any real change to make the grid more reliable and prevent another disaster will require action from the state legislature. after the winter storm in 2011, the rule officials warned that the texas crit would be susceptible to another cold

weather failure. and one of their main recommendations was winter riding power plants, or clipping them for cold weather, as well as fuel sources. specifically, natural gas, a deliciously cher, didn't expect that the legislature didn't require the energy and energy industry to make investments in the industry didn't make those investments. many of the companies that failed this year 2021 of the very same companies that failed. 2011. i think the failure was in basically taking the company's words forward in the industry's word for it. they didn't invest and as a result, all of us suffered because the texas legislature only meet once every 2 years. it was added pressure to address the grid failure before this session ended, we're told to leave it to market participants to solve and they keep failing us. right? so just so if i could, oh,

they did say was. so i'd like for you to go and answer to those families who's who lost loved ones in the and say that they didn't during this year session, the legislature seem to be making steps to require power plants to winter rise. but that's still not the question of if they would make the same requirement for their energy supplier. namely, natural gas officials have tried to blame renewable energy like wind and solar, including the governor, john. this shows how the great new deal would be a deadly deal for the united states of america. who went on barclay's in the middle of the crisis to blame renewable energy, central gas, and oil. but the primary source of energy during the winter and the one that killed the most was natural gas. gas failed more from a total perspective, right? the, the total amount of failure, the majority of that came from natural gas energy generation. and so when supply

fell, because well heads were freezing, they weren't able to sell to the electricity generators, and those generators failed addressing that particular failure means questioning the oil and gas industry, which has a powerful and influential lobby in texas should be more regulated. that would require not only the legislature to take action, but also the texas railroad commission, which has nothing to do with what it sounds like. in fact, its in charge of regulating the state oil and gas industry. the commission itself is made up of 3 elected officials, all of whom come from oil and gas and have been resistant to any attempts to regulate the industry. there is a serious commingling of interests between the regulators and the industry actors. and the result is that we get what are sometimes referred to as captive agencies, right? administrative agencies that are run by the very businesses that they are intended to regulate in the wake of the winter storm and the power outages. the commission

has opposed any moves to winter rise, natural gas facilities saying the problem isn't them only power plants will fail simply cannot run without power making electricity the best. when a relation tool, they oppose any efforts to prohibit them from taking money from the very industry that they're regulating. i mean we've, we've had bills that have said no, you can't take money from the industry when they have pending cases before you never passes. and they resisted, well feel and here is a member of the texas house energy committee. he's trying to push for more transparent railroad commission. so when you look at the railroad commissions argument, it seems that they're saying as long as the supply side has electricity that they'll be able to provide. so they don't need to take steps to winter rise,

even though after 2011, the federal officials recommended to winters ation. does that, does that argument hold water? no, i mean it's just inaccurate. and it's, and the only independent parties that have looked at what happened in texas. they've said that we had a major failure at the well had and the gathering lines and the well operations like stuff froze, why? it's not magic. it's not this crazy rocket science because they pull up water in these well operations and they use water in a while. impressions guess what happens, a water, it freezes, not complicated. and, and for them to deny that there were 3000000000 cubic feet of gas that frozen those operations. it flies in the face of science and of all of the independent assessments that have been done on this, including by the federal government. federal economist have said the benefits of winters ation outweigh the cost. but the legislature following the leader,

the oil and gas industry has resisted the move. what in the world would it take for texas to actually mandate girl a gas industry? i've often times wondered the same question and sometimes we operate as a legislature or as regulators as a holy hon, subsidiary of oil and gas. and that's, i'm a 9 sessions into this. and i'm pretty cynical about our ability to move the needle and, and for oil and gas to kind of accept responsibility here. and if a, if they don't want to build a pass, it doesn't pass. so bottom line, the texas railroad commission declined our request for an interview with only days left in this year session to rep the legislature finally voted unable to address the winter storm. 342 eyes and 09. the conference committee report is adopted. the final bill required power plants to winter rise within 6 months,

but when it came to natural gas suppliers, the legislature made no firm requirements for winters ation, leaving any possible rules to be created and implemented by the texas railroad commission. we have the problem in texas that we are willing to privatize profits and subsidized losses. we are once again say, you know, i, the either tacitly or explicitly that we are okay with private companies making profits from energy production in texas. we are okay with them not providing us a service that is reliable enough to keep the lights on to keep the heat on that we're not requiring them to provide that service. and that is just a very disappointing position to be in. it's also a position that leaves texas to wonder the state will be ready when another disaster hits in who will pay the cost? if not. so what would you like to seat change from this?

they need to go back and they need to wait, arrive everything. we need to be, we need to be good with when you need to go with floods. i mean, they got a lot to do. we pay too much money in faxes for them not to do it. they're always saying what they will do and we don't, it doesn't get done, but then it takes all of this a whole winter storm, all winter disaster to now for them to try to clean up what they did. and she was a good person, a very brilliant old guy. she was awesome. awesome, awesome person. she was telling me, i lied to tell me what the people need to look at. it is who's subbed for losing a lot. was for sampling. you was negligent. know that that's one on me.

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