timelets

In less than a decade, PG&E, which serves 16 million customers, saw the risk of catastrophic wildfires multiply greatly in its vast service area, which stretches from the Oregon border south to Bakersfield. Weather patterns that had been typical for Southern California—such as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that sweep across the region in autumn, stoking fires—were now appearing hundreds of miles to the north.

PG&E scrambled to reduce fire risks by shoring up power lines and trimming millions of trees. But the company’s equipment kept setting fires—about 1,550 between mid-2014 through 2017, or more than one a day, according to data it filed with the state.

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On Monday, PG&E said it planned to file for Chapter 11 protection by month’s end, citing an estimated $30 billion in liabilities and 750 lawsuits from wildfires potentially caused by its power lines.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-wildfires-and-the-first-climate-change-bankruptcy-11547820006

In 1933, company founder Alfredo Bialetti invented an octagonal coffee pot, known as a moka, which whistles on the stove like a teapot.


Germany’s economy has grown 31% since the euro’s creation, Italy’s 7%. Residents of Piedmont, the northern Italian region where Bialetti was founded, were until recently richer than their German counterparts in North-Rhine Westphalia, where Zwilling is based. Today, the opposite is true. Household incomes in North-Rhine Westphalia have risen by 18% since 2007, to €25,700 per inhabitant, while in Piedmont incomes have fallen by 5%, to €21,300 per inhabitant, according to the European Union’s statistics agency.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-companiesand-two-countries-11547994123