Major cities around the world have ramped up security, increasing police presence and even using drones to monitor crowds expected at May Day rallies.

International Workers’ Day, which is commonly known as May Day, celebrates the international labor movement on the first day of May every year. It’s a national holiday in more than 80 countries around the world.

France, which has been recently rankled by violent anti-government yellow vest protests, plans to deploy more than 7,400 police and dozens of drones in Paris. 

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said there was a risk that “radical activists” could join anti-government yellow vest protesters and union workers Wednesday in the streets of Paris and across the country. He said the goal was to protect demonstrators with “legitimate aspirations” and defend Paris from calls on social media to make it “the capital of rioting.”

He said other cities around France were also on alert.

In Germany, more than 5,500 officers will be deployed in Berlin where protesters, led by the “1 May Revolutionaries,” have been for weeks calling on people to demonstrate. As many as 20,000 activists are expected to protest against gentrification in the eastern district of Friedrichshain.

Across the world in Jakarta, police spokesman Commander Argo Yuwono said there will be 1,500 personnel deployed for a protest in the Istora Senayan area and 25,000 for a protest near the State Palace. He said more than 40,000 protesters are expected to take to the streets of Indonesia’s capital.

Turkish police have barricaded Istanbul’s Taksim Square, where May Day demonstrations have been held for years. The square was blocked off even though city authorities denied permits for rallies there this year. Taksim Square gained notoriety on May Day in 1977, when 34 demonstrators were killed when shots were fired from a nearby building. Hundreds of others were injured, but no one has been brought to justice for the shooting. 

In Iran, 12 members of the Free Workers Trade Union of Iran have been arrested as they met to plan International Workers’ Day celebrations, local media reported. Iran does not recognize labor unions independent of government-sanctioned groups. 
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France has set more ambitious targets to cut carbon emissions by 2050 but few measures will take effect on President Emmanuel Macron’s watch as the “yellow vest” protest movement limits his scope for environmental protection.

A draft new “energy transition law,” presented to cabinet on Tuesday and seen by Reuters, pledges to reduce carbon emissions by a factor of more than six by 2050 compared to 1990. That increases the emissions’ reduction target from a factor of four stipulated in a 2015 energy law introduced by Macron’s predecessor Francois Hollande.

Months after coming to power in 2017, Macron dropped that law’s key provision — despite a pledge to respect it — to reduce nuclear energy’s share in French electricity production to 50 percent by 2025, from 75 percent currently.

The new law will delay the 50 percent nuclear target to 2035, transfer the European Union’s 2018 “Winter Package” energy targets into French law and will also form the framework for a detailed “PPE” 2019-2028 energy strategy.

However, it includes no landmark measures to reduce CO2 emissions now, and replaces an election promise to close coal-fired power stations with a CO2 emission cap that would not take effect before Jan. 2022, just before the end of Macron’s term.

“This government systematically makes vague and very long-term commitments, but never any concrete, short-term policies that would be implemented during this president’s term,”  Greenpeace energy campaigner Alix Mazounie said.

Macron was breaking his promise to close coal-fired plants by 2022, she said, adding that under the new system their life spans could be extended forever.

A senior environment ministry official denied the president was backtracking on environment pledges but acknowledged that no major new measures would be implemented on Macron’s watch.

“Energy policy must balance constraint with encouragement, and as we saw with the carbon contribution, going too fast and too hard is not necessarily the road to success,” she said, without wishing to be identified.

Late last year, Macron’s centrist government dropped planned fuel tax increases after protests by irate motorists turned into a nationwide movement by so-called “yellow vests” against his reforms.

Asked why Macron was setting targets for more than three decades away while he had undone the key element of his own predecessor’s energy law, the official said that was a normal process. 

“Anything one government decides, another government can change, that is the principle of democracy,” she said.

Climate Action Network campaigner Anne Bringault said France has fallen behind on eight of nine key climate targets.

“The state is not respecting its own climate objectives, and since the energy law states that the PPE must respect these objectives, they are now changing the law,” she said.

Environment lawyer Arnaud Gossement said the new law was necessary after Macron had extended the lifespan of state-controlled utility EDF’s nuclear reactors by a decade.

“Once you reserve a huge place for nuclear for another 10 years, that changes everything for the place you leave for other forms of energy,” he said.

Macron is an ardent supporter of nuclear energy, which he sees as France’s answer to climate change, Gossement said.

The draft law is due to be submitted to parliament in late June and then head to the senate for final approval later in the summer.

WWF France’s Pierre Cannet said he hoped that lawmakers would force changes to the new law to make it more effective in fighting climate change.

“We hope that they will at least make sure coal plants are closed and that we do more to insulate buildings,” he said.
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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc committed $10 billion on Tuesday to Occidental Petroleum Corp’s $38 billion cash-and-stock bid for Anadarko Petroleum Corp, boosting its chances of snatching a deal from Chevron Corp.

Occidental and Chevron are locked in the biggest oil-industry takeover battle in years as they eye Anadarko’s prized assets in West Texas’ huge Permian shale oil field.

Anadarko on Monday agreed to start negotiations with Occidental, saying its bid could potentially be superior to Chevron’s existing deal to buy Anadarko for $33 billion in cash and stock.

Berkshire’s cash provides Occidental with flexibility to fund and even increase its proposal. Anadarko has previously expressed reservations about the risk of Occidental having to get any deal voted through by its own shareholders. Occidental could now use the majority of the Berkshire investment to add cash to its bid and remove the requirement for a vote, if it so chooses.

The Berkshire investment, contingent on Occidental completing its proposed acquisition of Anadarko, could also repay some of the debt being taken on to finance the deal’s cash portion, or cover the $10 billion to $15 billion of proceeds from asset sales which Occidental plans in the two years after closing the acquisition.

Analysts said Buffett’s endorsement supports Occidental’s push to get the deal done but comes at a high cost.

Berkshire Hathaway will get 100,000 preferred shares and a warrant to purchase up to 80 million shares of Occidental at $62.50 apiece in a private offering, a statement from Occidental said.

The preferred stock will accrue dividends at 8 percent per annum, compared with about 5 percent yield on common equity and 4 percent on term debt, Tudor Pickering Holt analyst Matthew Portillo said.

“For Occidental shareholders, our view is this is a fairly expensive cost of financing for the transaction even though it carries a kind of nice headline of having Berkshire Hathaway participate in the potential financing here.”

It is rare for Buffett to participate in a bidding war for a company. The last time he did this was in 2016, supporting a consortium including Quicken Loans Inc founder Dan Gilbert that tried unsuccessfully to buy Yahoo Inc’s internet assets.

Shares of Occidental were down 2.1 percent at $58.89 at midday Eastern time, while those in Anadarko were down about 0.3 percent at $72.69. Chevron shares were up 2.7 percent at $120.88.

A Chevron spokesman reiterated that the San Roman, California-based company believes its “signed agreement with Anadarko provides the best value and the most certainty to Anadarko’s shareholders.”

Occidental and Chevron, two of the largest oil and gas producers in the Permian by production volumes, argue they can best squeeze more oil from Anadarko’s 240,000 acres (97,120 hectares)in the area.

The two companies control land adjacent to Anadarko’s properties and expect a deal will add deposits that can produce supplies for decades using low-cost drilling techniques.
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The Trump administration is ready to provide more federal aid to farmers if required, a White House adviser said on Monday, after rolling out up to $12 billion since last year to offset agricultural losses from the trade dispute with China.

“We have allocated $12 billion, some such, to farm assistance. And we stand ready to do more if necessary,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture had previously ruled out a new round of aid for 2019. As of March, more than $8 billion was paid out as part of last year’s program. On Monday, the department said it had extended the deadline to apply to May 17.

A constituency that helped carry Republican President Donald Trump to victory in 2016, U.S. farmers have been among the hardest hit from his trade policies that led to tariffs with key trading partners such as China, Canada and Mexico.

While farmers have largely remained supportive of Trump, many have called for an imminent end to the trade dispute, which propelled farm debt to the highest levels in decades and worsened the credit conditions for the rural economy.

Beijing imposed tariffs last year on imports of U.S. agricultural goods, including soybeans, grain sorghum and pork as retribution for U.S. levies. Soybean exports to China have plummeted over 90 percent and sales of U.S. soybeans elsewhere failed to make up for the loss.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer were scheduled to travel to Beijing on Monday for the latest negotiations in what could be the trade talks’ endgame.

Both sides have cited progress on issues including intellectual property and forced technology transfer to help end a conflict marked by tit-for-tat tariffs that have cost the world’s two largest economies billions of dollars, disrupted supply chains and rattled financial markets.
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Palm oil plantations in Liberia are billed as bringing jobs and development but actually leave locals poorer, said a Liberian lawyer who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize on Monday.

The U.S.-based Goldman Environmental Foundation gives the prize — often known as the Green Nobel — to six grassroots activists each year for efforts to protect the environment, often at their own risk.

Alfred Brownell was awarded for his successful campaign to protect more than 500,000 acres of tropical forest from palm oil development in the West African country, after which he was forced to flee Liberia in fear for his life.

He now lives in the United States but hopes to return to continue his work, as palm oil development continues to displace farmers without giving them an alternative means to earn a living, he said.

“These forests mean a lot to Liberia. The communities that we supported who live in these areas … it is their home and their resources and their farms,” said Brownell, 53.

“Instead of trying to empower them, (palm oil) causes the impoverishment of those communities. So this is not development at all,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Sometimes palm oil companies offer jobs, but not enough for the number of people who lose their land, he said.

Liberians have protested land grabs by foreign palm oil companies for over a decade, since the former government gave out nearly half the nation’s territory in resource concessions.

The World Bank has credited these policies with transforming Liberia into a promising place for investors after a long civil war, but activists say local communities rarely benefit.

“We’re talking about lots of communities seeing their customary lands go away, lands they depend upon on a daily basis for their livelihoods,” said Patrick Kipalu, Africa Program coordinator for Rights and Resources Initiative, a global network that advocates for indigenous peoples’ land rights.

“It’s so negative compared to the economic opportunities that those companies can bring,” Kipalu said.

Liberian authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.

Brownell helped community members file a complaint in 2012 alleging environmental damage and human rights violations by Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL), a Southeast Asia-based agro-industrial company that had signed a deal with the state to lease 543,600 acres of land for palm oil production.

An industry body responded by halting GVL’s work on most of the land – a decision that was upheld last year after a legal battle.

Protests by community members led to violent clashes in 2015, and Brownell said that his home was attacked and family members arrested — leading him to flee.

GVL, still active in Liberia, said in an email that it acknowledged past mistakes and that it created a sustainability action plan in 2018 to resolve grievances with communities.
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Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Monday symbolically launched work on a new airport for Mexico City to replace the nearly half-built $13 billion project he cancelled upon taking office.

Lopez Obrador promised the new Felipe Angeles airport northeast of the capital won’t exceed its budget and will save the government money even with the cancellation of the partially built airport.

“It’s going to resolve the problem of saturation at the current Mexico City airport, but also be an example of how you can carry out a rational, austere policy based on honesty that needs to establish itself as the way to live and the way to govern in our country,” Lopez Obrador said.

The new airport — named for a general allied with revolutionary icon Pancho Villa — is at the Santa Lucia military air base and the army is in charge of getting it built for $4.1 billion.

It is supposed to begin operating in mid-2021, though construction has not yet begun.

Two new runways would be added to its existing one and the commercial airport would share the space with the military.

Critics have argued that the new airport will have difficulty operating simultaneously with the existing airport, but in a report by the military, consultant Navblue said they could operate simultaneously in terms of air space.

One of the early hitches pointed out in the military’s environmental impact statement is a small mountain named “Paula” that sits beside one of the runways. It would be too close for commercial airliners to use that runway, so the report says it would be dedicated exclusively to military use.

But the biggest concern raised in the report has to do with water. The airport would consume an estimated 6 million liters (1.6 million gallons) per day from an already severely overtaxed aquifer that the capital depends on, and that’s not including consumption from hotels and other businesses that will spring up around it, the report said.

Three existing wells on the air base should provide enough water, but that is expected to lower the water table in the aquifer, so some wells could go dry.

The report says that could be mitigated by creating recharge zones in the area to put water back into the aquifer. Another possibility would be bringing water from another, less-stressed aquifer.

On Monday, the Zeferino Ladrillero Human Rights Center called on the government to consult with the more than 20 communities around the airport. The group warned that the water consumption would directly impact livestock and agriculture, and with it the livelihoods of thousands of families.

Lopez Obrador, though, said consultations had already taken place.

“I can tell you now that the consultation with the communities around Santa Lucia happened and what do you think? The people approved the project,” he said. There was no description of when or how those consultations were performed.

When the time the airport it begins to operate in mid-2021, it could handle nearly 20 million passengers.

One of the looming questions is how flights will be divided between the capital’s main airport, Benito Juarez International, and the new one at Santa Lucia. The environmental impact statement for the project mentions that initially two airlines will be operating there, but it does not say which.

The new airport would connect to the existing one via a 28-mile (46 kilometer) route with dedicated bus lanes to speed passengers to their connecting flights. About 5 miles of that route would actually be along a perimeter road built for the now-cancelled airport at Texcoco.

In October, before Lopez Obrador had taken office, he held an unofficial referendum on cancelling the $13 billion Texcoco project, which was already nearly half completed. He proposed converting the Santa Lucia air base and making improvements at Benito Juarez, which had been targeted for closure. The plan received 70% approval, though critics complained that fewer than 2 percent of Mexico’s registered voters took part.

Lopez Obrador complained the Texcoco project backed by the previous administration was drenched in corruption and faced environmental problems because it was being built on a former lakebed. Auditors said in February that they had found some $167 million in questionable costs.

The government says it will build a third terminal at Benito Juarez. That airport, surrounded by residential neighborhoods and with no possibility of adding an additional runway, is beyond capacity. More and more flights are parked on the tarmac with passengers shuttled to the overcrowded terminals on buses.

Arriving flights are increasingly delayed because they can’t get a landing slot.

The government announced last week that the nearly 31,000-acre (12,500 hectare site of the scrapped airport would be converted into a park.

The survival of Santa Lucia, which also had been set for closure under the Texcoco plan, is another victory for Mexico’s military, which has been tasked with running the project. It also has been given the lead in combating the country’s rampant fuel theft problem and a soon-to-retire general will head the newly created militarized police force, the National Guard.

The general in charge of airport construction said Friday that its design would be “austere,” in contrast with the elaborate Norman Foster-designed terminal for the now cancelled airport. The government says even factoring in the lost investment in the cancelled airport and the cost of converting Santa Lucia, the total expense will be only slightly more than a quarter of what the Texcoco airport would have cost.
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The International Monetary Fund is forecasting Iran’s economy to shrink by 6% this year as it faces pressure from U.S. sanctions.

In a report released Monday, the IMF said its estimates for Iran, which include the potential for inflation to top 40%, predate a U.S. decision to end waivers that have allowed some Iranian oil buyers to continue making their purchases despite new sanctions that went into effect last year.

The Trump administration is due to formally end the waivers on Thursday for some of Iran’s top crude purchasers, including China, India, Japan, Turkey and South Korea.

The United States says it wants to deprive Iran of $50 billion in annual oil revenues to pressure it to end its nuclear and missile programs. The White House says it is working with top oil exporters Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to ensure an adequate world oil supply.

Turkey and China have attacked the U.S. action, but it is not clear whether they will continue to buy Iranian oil.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said an interview broadcast on the U.S. cable show Fox News Sunday accused the United States of trying to “bring Iran to its knees” and overthrow its government by seeking to thwart its international oil trade.

​He said U.S. officials are “wrong in their analysis. They are wrong in their hope and illusions.”

Zarif said the fact that Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 international agreement to curtail Iran’s nuclear program “would not put the U.S. in the good list of law-abiding nations.” Iran state media reported that Zarif told Iranian reporters in New York that Tehran’s withdrawal from the pact is one of “many options” it is considering in the wake of the U.S. end to the waivers on sanctions for countries buying oil from Iran.

Zarif said a team of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, and leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is trying to push U.S. President Donald Trump “into a confrontation he doesn’t want.”

“They have tried to bring the U.S. into a war,” Zarif said, with the goal, “at least,” of Iranian regime change.

Bolton, appearing on the same Fox News program, said the U.S. goal is not regime change, but a change in behavior, specifically an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile testing.

“The Iranian people deserve a better government,” Bolton said.

He called Zarif’s accusations “completely ridiculous, an effort to sow disinformation.”
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