Month: November 2017

When it comes to cars, generally there are three options, there is gas, a gas-battery hybrid, or a full electric car. But for a fourth option, some car companies are banking on hydrogen as the fuel of the future. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Negotiators at high stakes talks to update NAFTA have so far kept their tempers but are not making much progress on tough U.S. demands that could sink the 1994 trade pact, a well-placed source said Saturday. Officials from the United States, Canada and Mexico are meeting in Mexico City for the fifth of seven planned rounds to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, which U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw from. Time is running short to seal a deal by the deadline of end-March 2018. Officials say next year’s Mexican presidential election means talks after that date will not be possible. US demands The U.S. administration has made a series of demands that the other members say are unacceptable, such as a five-year sunset clause and tightening so-called rules of origin to boost the North American content of autos to 85 percent from the current 62.5 percent. “It is very slow moving but there are no fireworks,” said a Canadian source with knowledge of the talks, adding there had “not been much conversation at all” on the more contentious U.S. proposals. Officials have so far discussed other issues such as labor, gender, intellectual property, energy and telecommunications but it is too soon to say whether there will be any breakthroughs during this round, added the source. The talks are due to end next Tuesday. Though the mood in the fifth round has been calmer than the tense scenes seen last month during the fourth round in Arlington, …

When the heaviest rain of tropical storm Harvey had passed, Kathryn Clark’s west Houston neighborhood had escaped the worst. Then the dams were opened — a decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to prevent upstream flooding and potential dam failures by releasing water into Buffalo Bayou, just a few hundred feet from the end of Clark’s street. When she and her husband returned to survey the damage later that week, they entered their two-story home by kayak in roughly three feet of water. In the kitchen, a snake slithered past. Nothing like that had happened in the nearly 11 years the Clarks have lived there; it got Kathryn thinking about their long-term plans, including whether to rebuild. “What if they decide to open the dams again?” she asked. “But if you don’t rebuild, you just walk away, and that is a big loss.” The Clarks ultimately opted to reconstruct, a process that will take another half-year before they can move back in. Elsewhere in the city, the waiting will be longer. ​A sprawling concrete jungle In early November, Texas Governor Greg Abbott told reporters that Texas will need more than $61 billion in federal aid, to help fund a reconstruction plan that he said would curtail damage from future coastal storms. However, he added, there will be more requests: “This is not a closed book.” Hurricane Harvey, the costliest storm in U.S. history, will affect Houston for months, and years. Apart from tens of thousands of ongoing home …

Pro-trade Republicans in the U.S. Congress are growing worried that U.S. President Donald Trump may try to quit the NAFTA free trade deal entirely rather than negotiate a compromise that preserves its core benefits. As a fifth round of talks to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement kicked off in Mexico on Friday, several Republicans interviewed by Reuters expressed concerns that tough U.S. demands, including a five-year sunset clause and a U.S.-specific content rule, will sink the talks and lead to the deal’s collapse. Business groups have warned of dire economic consequences, including millions of jobs lost as Mexican and Canadian tariffs snap back to their early 1990s levels. “I think the administration is playing a pretty dangerous game with this sunset provision,” said Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from eastern Pennsylvania. He said putting NAFTA under threat of extinction every five years would make it difficult for companies in his district, ranging from chocolate giant Hershey Co to small family owned manufacturing firms, to invest in supply chains and manage global operations. Hershey operates candy plants in Monterrey and Guadalajara, Mexico. Lawmakers’ letter Nearly 75 House of Representatives members signed a letter this week opposing U.S. proposals on automotive rules of origin, which would require 50 percent U.S. content in NAFTA-built vehicles and 85 percent regional content. They warned that this would “eliminate the competitive advantages” that NAFTA brings to U.S. automakers or lead to a collapse of the trade pact. Representative Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican …

The head of Canada’s biggest private-sector union headed to Mexico’s Senate on Friday, promising to fight at the NAFTA trade pact talks for improved Mexican wages and free collective bargaining as a way of benefiting workers across North America. The issue of tougher labor standards has emerged as a key sticking point in the talks to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, and has brought disparate groups of workers from across the region closer to U.S. populists. “There will not be an agreement” until the Mexican team agrees to free collective bargaining, the elimination of so-called yellow unions that are dominated by employers, and fair wages for Mexican workers, Unifor President Jerry Dias said. The event held in a side chamber of the Senate was organized by the umbrella organization Better Without Free Trade Agreements, which represents dozens of social organizations and unions. Dias argued that low wages have not only hurt Mexican workers but have also prompted manufacturing jobs in Canada and the United States to leave for Mexico. By including much tougher labor standards in an updated NAFTA, the issue could be dealt with head on, he said. “When you start talking about low wages, we can deal with that under the dispute mechanism as an unfair subsidy.” The fifth round of talks NAFTA is being held in the upscale Camino Real hotel in Mexico City. “What Mexico offers in this negotiation and to the rest of the world is cheap labor. That’s what Mexico puts on …

The Trump administration on Friday revised its negotiating objectives for revamping the North American Free Trade Agreement, largely to reflect the demands it has made in NAFTA talks on agriculture, intellectual property and investment. The revised objectives are now in line with U.S. proposals to eliminate Canada’s import tariffs on dairy, poultry and egg products and to allow more protections for seasonal U.S. produce that is sensitive to imports from Mexico. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said it is keeping in place most of its NAFTA objectives, first published in July, including a first-ever goal of reducing U.S. trade deficits. USTR Robert Lighthizer said that the revisions are aimed at keeping Americans informed about what the Trump administration is seeking in a revised NAFTA. “If we are able to achieve these objectives, we will both modernize and rebalance NAFTA to better serve the interests of our workers, farmers, ranchers and businesses,” Lighthizer said in a statement. The new objectives on investment and intellectual property rights add considerable detail, partly aimed at reflecting existing demands and partly aimed at setting precedents for future trade agreements. On investment, the objectives now seek to provide “meaningful procedures for resolving investment disputes, while ensuring the protection of U.S. sovereignty and the maintenance of strong U.S. domestic industries.” U.S. negotiators are seeking to allow countries to “opt in” to an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism and to eliminate panels that arbitrate anti-dumping disputes between NAFTA countries. But the new objectives for NAFTA investment rules also seek …

From $7 for a Rohingya refugee to $750 for a North Korean “slave wife,” human rights activists have voiced concerns that it is becoming increasingly easy to enslave another human being as the cost plummets. The average modern-day slave is sold for $90-100 compared to the equivalent of $40,000 some 200 years ago, said Kevin Bales, Professor of Contemporary Slavery at Britain’s University of Nottingham. “There has been a collapse in the price of slaves over the last 50 years,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference in London, which focuses on women’s empowerment and modern slavery. ‘Beasts of burden’ Pointing to a photo of boys hauling rocks in Nepal “like beasts of burden,” he said their parents would have sold them for $5-$10. Children are so cheap that if they get injured or fall in a ravine their slave master abandons them, Bales said. “They understand it’s less expensive to acquire a new child than to call a doctor,” he added. Bales attributed the fall in price to the population explosion which had “glutted the world with potentially enslavable people.” 40 million people trapped Worldwide, about 40 million people were estimated to be trapped as slaves in 2016, mostly women and girls, in forced labor, sexual exploitation and forced marriages, with global trafficking estimated to raise $150 billion in profits a year. North Korean defector Jihyun Park told how she was trafficked to China where she was sold for 5000 yuan ($750) to an alcoholic, violent farmer. …

Puerto Rico could face more than a decade of further economic stagnation and a steep drop in population as a result of Hurricane Maria, experts say. The stark estimates were presented this wee to members of a federal control board overseeing finances of a U.S. territory that is already in the 11th year of a recession. “The situation is dire to say the least, with destroyed infrastructure, lack of power and water, and an accelerated pace of migration,” economist Heidie Calero said. She estimated that the hurricane caused $115 billion in damage, even without counting business losses. “We believe that is very conservative,” she said. The administration of Governor Ricardo Rossello said earlier in the week that it was seeking $94 billion in federal aid for an island where power generation remains at 40 percent and where nearly 10 percent of people are still without water almost two months after the storm. More than 20 of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities remain completely without power. So far, Congress has approved nearly $5 billion in aid for Puerto Rico. Twin shocks Economist Juan Lara told board members that the local economy could contract anywhere between 8 percent and 15 percent in fiscal 2018, depending on the restoration of power, with overall revenues falling by 30 percent. “We are undergoing both a demand and supply shock,” he said, saying that 5,000 businesses could close permanently, representing 10 percent of membership of the island’s National Retail Federation. Businesses that have reopened have been forced …

Radioactive waste continues to pour from Exelon’s Illinois nuclear power plants more than a decade after the discovery of chronic leaks led to national outrage, a $1.2 million government settlement and a company vow to guard against future accidents, an investigation by a government watchdog group found. Since 2007, there have been at least 35 reported leaks, spills or other accidental releases in Illinois of water contaminated with radioactive tritium, a byproduct of nuclear power production and a carcinogen at high levels, a Better Government Association review of federal and state records shows. No fines were issued for the accidents, all of which were self-reported by the company. The most recent leak of 35,000 gallons (132,000 liters) occurred over two weeks in May and June at Exelon’s Braidwood plant, southwest of Chicago. The same facility was the focus of a community panic in the mid-2000s after a series of accidents stirred debate over the safety of aging nuclear plants. A 2014 incident at Exelon’s Dresden facility in Grundy County involved the release of about 500,000 gallons (1,900,000 liters) of highly radioactive water. Contamination was later found in the plant’s sewer lines and miles away in the Morris, Illinois, sewage treatment plant. Another leak was discovered in 2007 at the Quad Cities plant in Cordova. It took eight months to plug and led to groundwater radiation readings up to 375 times of that allowed under federal safe drinking water standards. Exelon had threatened to close the Quad Cities plant, but relented …

It’s been more than two months since Hurricane Harvey destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes across Houston and east Texas, and cleanup is expected to last 20 months, overtaking Hurricane Katrina as the most expensive rebuilding effort in U.S. history. Undocumented workers are part of the daunting task of reconstructing America’s fourth-largest city. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports they are doing so despite multiple risks. …

After more than a decade of making cars and SUVs — and, more recently, solar panels — Tesla Inc. wants to electrify a new type of vehicle: big trucks. The company unveiled its new electric semitractor-trailer Thursday night near its design center in Hawthorne, California. CEO Elon Musk said the semi is capable of traveling 500 miles on an electric charge and will cost less than a diesel semi considering fuel savings, lower maintenance and other factors. Musk said customers can put down a $5,000 deposit for the semi now and production will begin in 2019. “We’re confident that this is a product that’s better in every way from a feature standpoint,” Musk told a crowd of Tesla fans gathered for the unveiling. ​One-fourth of transit emissions The move fits with Musk’s stated goal for the company of accelerating the shift to sustainable transportation. Trucks account for nearly a quarter of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to government statistics. Musk said Tesla plans a worldwide network of solar-powered “megachargers” that could get the trucks back up to 400 miles of range after 30 minutes. Tesla, Musk stretched But the semi also piles on the chaos at Palo Alto, California-based company. Tesla is way behind on production of the Model 3, a new lower-cost sedan. It’s also ramping up production of solar panels after buying Solar City Corp. last year. Musk has said Tesla is also working on a pickup and a lower-cost SUV and negotiating a new …

The Venezuelan government and its state-owned oil company PDVSA have officially defaulted on billions of dollars’ worth of bonds, the latest chapter of the country’s deep financial collapse.  The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, a group of banks and brokers that determines whether an entity like Venezuela has failed to make on-time payments on its debts, voted Thursday to say that Venezuela had defaulted.   The vote will trigger what is known as a “credit event” on securities like credit default swaps, which investors buy as a type of insurance against a potential default. The 15-member group must now decide how it will settle the swaps. Two rating agencies — Fitch and Standard & Poor’s — already determined this week that Venezuela’s government was in default. PDVSA bonds were trading at 26.5 cents on the dollar, compared with roughly 30 cents back in September, according to FactSet.     Venezuela’s debt skyrocketed to over $120 billion under the late President Hugo Chavez as the government spent heavily on social programs while oil prices were high. About half its debt is in the form of dollar-denominated bonds.   A drop in oil prices and mismanagement crushed the economy, leading to widespread shortages of food and other basics amid triple-digit inflation. At a meeting with investors Monday, Vice President Tareck El Aissami tried to assure creditors that the country’s debts will continue to be paid. But those in attendance said they learned of no concrete plans for reorganizing the debt.   …

Megacities of the future will boast high-speed rail, superfast broadband, and green energy systems — but experts Thursday said they were failing to leave space for one thing: girls. Proposed by leaders worldwide, so-called Smart Cities are being built to cater for a growing global middle class but risk leaving girls without safe areas to learn and play, according to a panel of experts. “I looked at all the traditional reports on inclusive cities, resilient cities, smart cities, sustainable cities. Please go through them in detail — there is no room for girls,” said Manoj Kumar, head of Indian charity the Naandi Foundation. “It’s about: ‘Will we have the subways, will we have the metros, will it run on biofuel.’ … But for whom? There is no discussion of what will be the habitat for girls,” Kumar said at the Reuters’ annual two-day Trust Conference, which focuses on slavery and women’s rights issues. In 2014, 54 percent of the population lived in cities but by 2050, this is expected to rise to 66 percent, according to the United Nations. The number of megacities — which are home to more than 10 million people — has tripled since 1990 to 31, and U.N. Habitat predicts this will rise to 41 by 2030. Experts from Egypt, India and Britain said the pace of urbanization could leave behind vulnerable girls and women. Sheela Patel, director of The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers, a charity that works with marginalized people living …