Month: April 2019

Mexico’s foreign minister on Wednesday criticized hold-ups in the flow of goods and people at the U.S-Mexico border, and said he planned to discuss the matter with U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials later in the day. After days of traffic delays at sections of the border that have alarmed businesses, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the disruptions were raising costs for supply chains in both countries. “Slowing down the flow of people and goods at the northern border is a very bad idea,” Ebrard said in a post on Twitter, using unusually frank language on an issue that has caused constant friction between Mexico and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Ebrard said his ministry would get in contact on Wednesday with the new leaders of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department’s former secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who had overseen Trump’s bitterly contested immigration policies during her tenure, stepped down at the weekend. The border slowdowns have occurred after Trump late last month threatened to close the frontier if Mexico did not halt a surge in undocumented migrants reaching the United States. On Monday, a judge in San Francisco said the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum seekers to Mexico while their claims worked through a backlogged immigration court system was not authorized by U.S. law. The White House said on Tuesday it would appeal the ruling and that its policy was part of a “cooperative program extensively negotiated with the government of Mexico.” However, in …

Cloaked in black and carrying white buckets filled with artificial blood, the group filed in silence to the entrance of London’s Downing Street, behind a troupe of child and teen activists. Ringing a bell as they walked, the 45 adults — all participants in Extinction Rebellion, a protest movement seeking rapid action to curb global warming — formed an arc facing the British prime minister’s residence and poured out their buckets, turning the surrounding road into a sea of red. The liquid, they said, symbolized “the blood of our children,” on the hands of politicians who have failed to act on climate change and stem its impacts, from worsening floods and droughts to growing poverty and water and food shortages. Among those at the protest in March were three members of Christian Climate Action, a small group of retirees and students who say their religious faith is compelling them to take an increasingly active role in trying to stop climate change. Climate change “is leading to a social collapse. We need to respond in more caring and collective ways,” said Phil Kingston, 83, a Catholic church member from Bristol who took a train to London to participate in the Downing Street demonstration. As climate change protests pick up in London and around the world, they are drawing an increasingly broad range of protesters, from students following in the footsteps of 16-year-old Swedish “school strike” leader Greta Thunberg to grandparents concerned about the growing risks their grandchildren face. Religious groups — …

After generations of trawling the same waters, the fishermen on the coast of Tamil Nadu in southeastern India know where to cast a net or park a boat without resorting to signs or GPS maps. But their customary rights over this common space – a right won by families who have fished it for centuries – are under threat as the demands of modern life threaten age-old livelihoods and their once fertile habitat. First, families’ land and precious sea access was usurped by factories and ports. Now, their rights are under fresh attack by a newly amended Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) law. “Governments have treated the coastline as an empty space that economic actors can take over, forgetting that it is common property of coastal villages, towns and cities,” said Kanchi Kohli, a researcher at think tank Center for Policy Research. “The changes to the law negate the socio-ecological uniqueness of this space and opens it up to mindless real estate development, mass-scale tourism and industry,” she said. R.L. Srinivasan, who lives in Kaatukuppam – one of half a dozen villages by Ennore Creek near the city of Chennai – is typical of the fishermen under threat. The Ennore Creek is drained by two seasonal rivers that empty into the Bay of Bengal through a network of canals, wetlands, salt marshes and mangroves, where villagers once harvested salt, caught crabs and filled their nets with fish. Home to about 300,000 people, the area was protected by state and federal coastal …

U.S. federal agents have smashed a worldwide medical care scheme that defrauded U.S. taxpayers of more than $1 billion. The Justice Department said Tuesday 24 people have been charged, including doctors, telemarketers and the heads of companies that provide back, wrist and knee braces. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate medical professionals and executives who look to line their pockets by cheating our health care programs,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said Tuesday. The extensive and complex scheme stretched from the U.S. to call centers in the Philippines and across Latin America. Telemarketers would phone patients offering them free medical braces. When call centers verified that the patients were covered by Medicare, they were transferred to telemedicine companies, where doctors — who never examined the patients — would prescribe the braces even if there was no medical reason to have one. The medical equipment companies would bill the government and kickback a portion of the funds to the others in the scam. The fraud was detected last year when a number of Medicare beneficiaries smelled what sounded like a scam and called a government hotline. The FBI, Health and Human Services, and Internal Revenue Service investigated. “The breadth of this nationwide conspiracy should be frightening to all who rely on some form of health care,” IRS investigations chief Don Fort said. “The conspiracy … details broad corruption, massive amounts of greed and systemic flaws in our health care system that were exploited by the defendants.” …

President Donald Trump will issue two executive orders in the heart of the Texas energy hub on Wednesday seeking to speed gas, coal and oil projects delayed by coastal states as he looks to build support ahead of next year’s election. Trump’s orders will direct his Environmental Protection Agency to change a part of the U.S. clean water law that has allowed states, on the basis of environmental reasons, to delay projects such as pipelines to carry natural gas to New England and coal export terminals on the West Coast. Trump will issue the orders at a training center for union members in the petroleum industry in Houston, an event sandwiched between fundraising events in Texas for the 2020 campaign. “Outdated federal guidance and regulations issued by the EPA have caused confusion and uncertainty leading to project delays, lost jobs and reduced economic performance,” a senior administration official told reporters in a conference call. “We are not trying to take away power from the states, but we are trying to make sure that state actions comply with the statutory intent of the law.” An environmentalist decried the planned orders. “Trump can try to rewrite regulations in favor of Big Oil, but he can’t stop people power and our movement,” said May Boeve, the head of 350.org. The orders will direct the EPA to review and update guidance issued during the administration of President Barack Obama on the so-called 401 provision of the Clean Water Act. The measure required companies to …

Rob Garver contributed to this report The top Senate Democrat says President Donald Trump’s picks to fill two vacant seats on the Federal Reserve Board are unqualified for the job. Trump has nominated former pizza chain boss Herman Cain and conservative economic commentator Stephen Moore for the Fed — posts that need Senate confirmation. Both are strong Trump supporters. “I don’t see the qualifications of Cain or Moore fitting in with the mission of the Fed, which is to conduct monetary policy and not be political,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. Cain is best known as the former CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain and a failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate. He had several top positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. But local Fed boards do not set monetary policy and do not have the global impact that the main Federal Reserve has. Stephen Moore was a Trump campaign economic adviser and is a TV commentator and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. Opponents to their nominations say they could compromise the Fed’s credibility as an independent policymaking body that responds only to economic trends, not politics. Chief White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNN television that Cain and Moore are both “very smart people” and said Trump has “every right to put people on the Federal Reserve board … who share his philosophy.” But Cain has faced charges of sexual harassment, which he denies, and Moore owes more than $75,000 in back taxes. He was once found in …

China and the European Union agreed Tuesday to strengthen their trade relationship, pledging to work toward making it easier for foreign investors to get access to China, the world’s second biggest economy. In a joint statement, the two sides said they committed to widening market access and eliminating discriminatory requirements for foreign companies and agreed that businesses should not be forced to transfer their technology — issues that foreign investors in China have long complained about.   EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang discussed the issues at their summit before claiming a breakthrough in their trade relationship. “Negotiations have been difficult but ultimately fruitful,” Tusk said.” We managed to agree a joint statement which sets the direction for our partnership based on reciprocity.” The stakes at the annual summit were high, with two-way trade between the EU and China worth around 575 billion euros ($648 billion) annually. The EU is China’s biggest trading partner, while for the EU, only the United States is bigger. The EU and China also said they reaffirmed the “rules based multilateral trading system” with the World Trade Organization at its core and plan to intensify discussions aimed at beefing up international rules on industrial subsidies.   China wants a bigger role in the WTO and other international organizations like the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. But China’s ample financial support for state-owned companies has been the target of Western trade officials. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom has …

The first woman to head one of Bangladesh’s biggest garment associations said on Tuesday she would boost female leadership as most factory workers were women, amid scrutiny over safety. Rubana Huq, 55, is managing director of Mohammadi Group, which owns a string of factories supplying brands like H&M and Primark in Bangladesh, the world’s second largest garment exporter, employing 4 million people. “I believe that in an industry where more than 80 percent of the workers are women, they should be given a greater chance to voice their interests,” said Huq, the new president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. “Today, the workforce is largely women but people in the managerial levels are mostly men. That needs to change.” In Bangladesh’s 4,500 factories, women have traditionally had to negotiate with male managers over pay, workplace safety and respect on the job, a fact Huq wants to change. Her election comes at a time when Bangladesh’s Supreme Court is deciding whether to shut down a factory inspection mechanism which was set up by European fashion labels after the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in 2013, killing 1,100 people. Huq said that manufacturers needed to strengthen their own monitoring mechanisms to help the government take over from the Bangladesh Accord – signed by about 200 major brands. The textile magnate, who was elected unopposed, said her decision to represent manufacturers and exporters was a natural extension of her two-decade career in the industry, where she is one of a handful of …

The International Monetary Fund is downgrading its outlook for growth in the United States, Europe, Japan and the overall global economy and points to heightened trade tensions as a key reason. The IMF expects the world economy to grow 3.3 percent this year, down from 3.6 percent in 2018. That would match 2016 for the weakest year since 2009. In its previous forecast in January, the IMF had predicted that international growth would reach 3.5 percent this year.   For the United States, IMF economists downgraded their growth forecast for this year to 2.3 percent from 2.9 percent in 2018.   The IMF’s “World Economic Outlook” comes on the eve of meetings in Washington this week of the fund and its sister lending organization, the World Bank.   In Europe, the IMF expects the 19 countries that use the euro currency to expand 1.3 percent collectively in 2019, weaker than last year’s 1.8 percent growth or in any year since 2013.   Japan is expected to eke out 1 percent growth this year, up from 0.8% in 2018 but slightly down from the fund’s earlier forecast.   The IMF foresees the Chinese economy growing 6.3 percent this year, down from 6.6 percent in 2018. But the fund’s latest 2019 outlook was a slight upgrade from the 6.2 percent growth it had forecast for China in January.   China’s prospects brightened, the fund said, after President Donald Trump decided to suspend a planned increase in tariffs on $200 billion worth of …

President Donald Trump says the United States will impose new tariffs on more than $11 billion worth of exports from the European Union, after the World Trade Organization ruled last year the EU was illegally subsidizing aircraft maker Airbus. The WTO, in a decision last May, ruled the European countries had given $22 billion in state aid to Airbus to help build its A380 and A350 jets, damaging its U.S. rival, Boeing. Trump said Tuesday that since the WTO had ruled that the subsidies had “adversely impacted the United States,” it “will now put Tariffs on $11 Billion of EU products! The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop!” Trump’s declaration aside, the new list of tariffs would not take effect until after a WTO arbiter rules on the allowable size of the tariff package, a decision not expected for several months. The European Union and the United States have for years disputed each other’s reciprocal subsidies to Airbus and Boeing, long predating Trump’s 27-month presidency.  At various times, the WTO has ruled against both. In first announcing the proposed $11.2 billion in U.S. tariffs on European exports on Monday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said, “This case has been in litigation for 14 years, and the time has come for action.  Our ultimate goal is to reach an agreement with the EU to end all WTO-inconsistent subsidies to large civil aircraft.” He added, “When the EU ends these harmful subsidies, …

It’s minus eight degrees Celsius on a late winter morning in western Massachusetts. But electrician Ed Martell is on the job, helping build an 8,000-panel solar farm outside the town of Wales, 110 kilometers southwest of Boston.  Martell says solar installations have been going nonstop for the past several years.  “I thought it was going to be a flash in the pan a couple years ago,” he told VOA. “I’ve seen solar keep going and going and going.” Although sunshine is not the first image that comes to mind in connection with Massachusetts, policy decisions have propelled the state to third place nationwide in solar jobs, behind sunny California and Florida, which is known as the Sunshine State.  Martell says the industry has been growing at a time when there has not been much other work for electricians.  “If it wasn’t for solar, there would have been a two-year period when I wouldn’t have worked at all,” he added. “So, yes, it’s very good for us.” Greenhouse gases As the planet heats up, experts say the world needs to stop burning the fossil fuels that have powered civilization for centuries and switch to energy sources that do not release greenhouse gases that drive up the Earth’s temperature and produce weather extremes.  The transition will not be easy. There will be winners and losers, economists say.  The smokestack and the rusting remains of the 1960s-turquoise turbine are the last identifiable remains of the Mount Tom Station coal-fired power plant located 145 …