YCLOAK

At the Terranova Ranch near Fresno, California, general manager Don Cameron examines grapes in a vineyard that workers flooded last spring.

Winter rains had ended a severe drought and he was engaged in “groundwater recharge,” returning unused water from the North Fork of the Kings River to an underground aquifer, the source of irrigation for this region. Some were skeptical because he was flooding a working vineyard and not a special basin designed for the purpose.

“We’ve been through a five-year drought,” Cameron explained. “Our groundwater has been depleted during that period, and long term, we want to rebuild what we’ve lost.”

Recharging groundwater on fields that are in production was a test, and the vines were closely monitored. They held up well to the thousands of cubic meters of water that flooded the fields and percolated down to nature’s underground storage system.

A research team led by hydrologist Helen Dahlke at the University of California, Davis, wants to test this concept throughout the Central Valley.

California produce

The 50,000-square-kilometer swath of California farmland produces one-quarter of the food for Americans, and 40 percent of their fruits, nuts and vegetables.

The Terranova Farm grows 25 crops, from tomatoes to onions, and Cameron wants to see how other crops respond to the winter flooding. He is expanding the farm’s recharge project with help from a $5 million grant from the California state government, and envisions recharge efforts at farms around the state.

Aquifers are like a banking system, says Graham Fogg, a UC Davis geologist and water expert who says depleted aquifers have three times the available storage capacity of surface reservoirs. “If you’re looking for places to store water, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.

The idea of groundwater banking took root in the 1990s, when water authorities such as the Semitropic Water Storage District near Bakersfield, California, created exchange systems to credit farmers for surplus water returned to canals and reservoirs when it is not needed.

Farmers later use that water instead of pumping water from the ground. The district also floods recharge basins to let the water seep down to replenish the aquifer.

Surface and groundwater are parts of the same system, says district general manager Jason Gianquinto, “so we can take advantage of the wet years and put a lot of water in storage and then fall back on the groundwater in the dry years.”

Groundwater measures

In 2014, California legislators imposed restrictions on pumping groundwater and gave local authorities until 2020 to implement measurements and controls.

The law aims to stop aquifer depletion within two decades and create a record of groundwater use, something already seen in many other Western states.  

Hydrologist Fogg says intervention was needed because Central Valley aquifers have been dramatically lowered in places, which has led to subsidence or sinking of the ground that could potentially lead to the collapse of some aquifers. He notes that aquifer depletion is also a problem in many developing nations, including China and India.

Issues surrounding water in California are politically charged and pit residents of the north against those of the south, cities against farmers, and environmentalists against agricultural interests.

Regulations to regulate the pumping of groundwater are being drawn up by local agencies, and it needs to be done right, says farm manager Cameron, or “you’re going to have fewer jobs. It’s a ripple effect through the economy.”

He says that farmers could face a stark choice of pumping less groundwater or growing fewer crops.

Whatever happens, Cameron says, “it’s going to be a real game-changer for this area when we get to 2020,” when the groundwater management system is in place.
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More Americans applied for jobless aid last week, though the number of people seeking benefits remains near historic lows pointing to a healthy job market.

THE NUMBERS: Weekly unemployment applications rose by 10,000 to 244,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the largest weekly increase since late May. The less volatile four-week average was unchanged at 244,000. The number of people collecting unemployment benefits has fallen 8.3 percent over the past 12 months to 2 million.

THE TAKEAWAY: The job market appears solid as the U.S. enters its ninth year of recovery from the Great Recession. Employers are holding onto workers with the expectation that business will continue to improve. Jobless claims – a close indication of layoffs – have come in below 300,000 for 125 weeks in a row. That’s the longest such stretch since 1970, when the U.S. population was much smaller.

KEY DRIVERS: After a weak start this year, the economy is expected to grow at roughly 2 percent. That would be roughly in line with annual gains during the recovery. Consistent hiring has helped sustain the gradual recovery, although the expansion is starting to show its age as the pace of job gains has slowed this year.

The unemployment rate has fallen to a healthy 4.4 percent. The Labor Department’s report for June showed that U.S. employers added a robust 222,000 jobs, the most in four months and a reassuring sign that businesses may be confident enough to keep hiring despite a slow-growing economy.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it is keeping its key interest rate unchanged at a time when inflation remains undesirably low despite the job market continuing to strengthen.
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China plans to raise the speed of its bullet trains back up to 350 kph (217 mph), state media reported on Thursday, six years after a deadly high-speed rail crash prompted authorities to slow trains across the country.

Trains on China’s high-speed rail network are designed to travel up to 350 kph, but Beijing ordered speeds to be cut to between 250-300 kph in 2011 after over 30 people were killed in a train crash in eastern Zhejiang province.

The Beijing News said the government planned to implement the increased speeds between Beijing and Shanghai in September, which would cut travel time to 4.5 hours from up to 6 hours currently.

China’s newest “Fuxing” bullet trains, which were unveiled in June and are capable of top speeds of 400 kph, will be used for that journey, it said.

China is home to the world’s longest high-speed rail network which competes heavily with domestic airlines. Of China’s 31 provinces and regions, 29 are served by high-speed rail with only the regions of Tibet and Ningxia in the northwest yet to be connected.
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Intel’s more than two decade-long reign as the king of the silicon-based semiconductor is poised to end Thursday when South Korea’s Samsung Electronics elbows the U.S. manufacturer aside to become the leading maker of computer chips.

Samsung reported record-high quarterly profit and sales Thursday. Analysts say it likely nudged aside Intel in the April-June quarter as the leading maker of semiconductors, the computer chips that are as much a staple of the 21st century wired world as crude oil was for the 20th century.

Samsung said its semiconductor business recorded 8 trillion ($7.2 billion) in operating income on revenue of 17.6 trillion won ($15.8 billion) during the April-June period.

Intel, which reports its quarterly earnings later Thursday, is expected to report $14.4 billion in quarterly revenue.

On an annual basis, Samsung’s semiconductor division is widely expected to overtake Intel’s sales this year, analysts at brokerages and market research firms say.

Mobile devices and data are the keys to understanding Samsung’s ascent as the new industry leader, even as its de facto chief is jailed, battling corruption charges, and it recovers from a fiasco over Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that had to be axed last year because they were prone to catch fire.

Manufacturers are packing more and more memory storage capacity into ever smaller mobile gadgets, as increased use of mobile applications, connected devices and cloud computing services drive up demand and consequently prices for memory chips, an area dominated by Samsung.

Just as Saudi Arabia dominates in oil output, Samsung leads in manufacturing the high-tech commodity of memory chips, which enable the world to store the data that fuels the digital economy.

“Data is the new crude oil,” said Marcello Ahn, a Seoul, South Korea-based fund manager at Quad Investment Management.

For over a decade, Samsung and Intel each ruled the market in its own category of semiconductor.

Intel, the dominant supplier of the processors that serve as brains for personal computers, has been the world’s largest semiconductor company by revenue since 1992 when it overtook Japan’s NEC.

Samsung is reaping the rewards of dominating in the memory chip market which is growing much faster than the market for computers that rely on processing units dominated by Intel, said Chung Chang Won, a senior analyst at Nomura Securities.

“Greater use of smartphones and tablet PCs instead of computers is driving the rise of companies like Samsung,” Chung said.

Since 2002, Samsung Electronics has been the largest supplier of memory chips, called DRAMs and NANDs. But for years demand for memory chips was vulnerable to boom and bust cycles depending on output and on demand from the consumer electronics industry. At times, competition was brutal as supply gluts arose.

That changed in 2012 when Japan’s Elpida filed for bankruptcy and was sold to Micron Technology, leaving only three major suppliers of DRAM, a type of memory chip used in servers, computers and handsets: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron.

Tight supplies coupled with rock solid demand have pushed prices of memory chips higher, with average selling prices of DRAMs and flash memory chips doubling over the past year, bringing South Korea’s memory chip makers record wide profit margins. Both Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to report all-time high profits this year.

Amid this boom that analysts call a memory chip “super cycle,” global semiconductor revenue is forecast to jump 52 percent this year, reaching $400 billion for the first time, according to market research firm Gartner.

For the full year, Intel is expected to post $60 billion in annual sales, according to a market consensus polled by FactSet, a financial data provider. Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business is expected to report 71.9 trillion won ($62.6 billion) in full-year revenues.

Looking ahead, Samsung and SK Hynix, which control more than three quarters of the global DRAM sales, are raising their spending on semiconductor capacity and development in anticipation of robust future demand. SK Hynix raised its capital spending to 9.6 trillion won ($8.6 billion) this year, up more than 50 percent from last year. Samsung has said it plans to spend $18 billion in the next four years to expand memory chip production capacity at its South Korean plants.

Not just tech companies but also transport, retail, tourism, food and other industries are seeking ways to better use or manage data, to gain insights on trends or customer preferences and otherwise make money from “big data.” The rising use of vehicle connectivity and the “internet of things” is expected to drive still further demand for the chips that have helped Samsung move ahead, at least for now.
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Amazon is introducing express delivery to Singapore in its first direct effort to tap into surging online shopping in fast-growing Southeast Asia.

The American e-commerce company announced Thursday it will begin operating a distribution facility bigger than a football field in the wealthy island nation. It promises to deliver tens of thousands of types of items within two hours for free, if customers spend at least 40 Singapore dollars ($29.52).

That’s a step up from past international shipping options offered by Amazon, where items sometimes took weeks to arrive.

Amazon is late to capitalize on the region’s rising middle class. The biggest local competitor is Lazada, which is backed by Chinese giant Alibaba and launched in the region in 2012. It operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore.

Henry Low, the Asia Pacific director of Amazon Prime Now, said the company is keen to expand elsewhere in Southeast Asia, a market of more than 600 million people.

“I’m super excited about future possibilities,” Low said.

The number of internet users in Southeast Asia is expected to rise from 260 million now to 480 million by 2020, according to research by Google and state-owned investor Temasek Holdings. It forecasts that the value of e-commerce in the region will soar to 88 billion by 2025 from 5.5 billion in 2015.

“The offline-to-online shift will continue and we strongly believe in the great success of e-commerce [with] the rising middle class in many Southeast Asian markets,” said Hanno Stegmann, chief executive of the Asia Pacific Internet Group, the Asian arm of Rocket Internet, which founded Lazada.

As Amazon gears up in Singapore, Rocket Internet already is looking at other emerging markets. Its current focus is on Daraz, an e-commerce platform aimed at the 400 million people living in Myanmar, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Still, there’s plenty of room for growth in Southeast Asia, where e-commerce accounts for only 2.6 percent of the retail market, said Sebastien Lamy, a partner at management consultancy Bain & Company.

That’s compared with 15 percent to 25 percent seen in the U.S. and China.

Even if online commerce is just getting started, it’s already having an impact in Singapore, whose glitzy malls are the backbone of the local economy and tourism.

Mall vacancies along Orchard Road and in other areas are rising, abandoned by shoppers like Rahil Bhagat, a content producer.

Rahil started buying video games and accessories online from the U.S. in 2009. Now, he makes 75 percent of his purchases, from car parts to quinoa, online.

“Physical shopping has lost its appeal,” he told the AP. “Even if I visited a brick-and-mortar store, I would be checking online to see if it’s cheaper. It usually is.”

 
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Leaders of the U.S. central bank said Wednesday that they were holding their benchmark lending rate at a low level — in a range between 1 and 1.25 percent — for the time being.  

Federal Reserve officials said in a report issued after their two-day policy meeting that the world’s largest economy was growing at a “moderate” pace and the job market was improving, but that inflation remained a bit low.

The chief economist of Stifel Fixed Income, Lindsey Piegza, said the Fed appeared eager to raise interest rates back to a more “normal” level and might well approve an increase at its next meeting in September. Sara Johnson of IHS Markit said the next rate hike likely would be in December.

Fed officials cut short-term interest rates to nearly zero during the 2007-09 financial crisis to boost investment and growth. They said the recovering economy no longer needed so much help, so they have been gradually raising interest rates and are expected to boost them further in the future.

In a VOA interview, Piegza said keeping rates too low for too long might prompt investors to seek better returns by putting money into excessively risky areas.

During the recession, the Fed also tried to boost growth by cutting long-term interest rates, with a complex program that involved purchasing huge amounts of securities.  

Fed officials said they would keep these assets for the time being but indicated they would begin selling them off “relatively soon.” Fed officials have said they will take care to reduce these assets in a gradual way that will not disrupt markets.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday urged federal lawmakers to raise the federal debt limit before they leave Washington for their August recess to avoid increased interest costs to taxpayers and market uncertainty about a potential default.

Mnuchin told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that maintaining U.S. creditworthiness was of “utmost importance” and that the United States must pay its bills on time.

“As I’ve suggested in the past, based upon our best estimate at the time, we do have funding through September, but I have urged Congress to take this up before they leave for the recess,” Mnuchin said.
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Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer and major supplier to Apple Inc., has announced plans to build a $10 billion plant in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, to make LCD display screens.

The company, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry and which supplies Apple with screens for the iPhone, made the announcement Wednesday as company executives paid a visit to U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House.

Trump said at the meeting that the Foxconn commitment was a result of his election win. And, in fact, just two days after Trump was inaugurated, Foxconn Chief Executive Terry Gou told reporters his company plans to invest $7 billion in a U.S. factory to make computer displays.

 “If I didn’t get elected, he definitely would not be spending $10 billion,” Trump said on Wednesday. “We are going to have some very, very magnificent decades.”

In addition to Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who said the project will be the largest economic development project in Wisconsin history, were at the White House event.

Foxconn has pledged to invest $10 billion over the next four years to build a factory that will create a projected 3,000 jobs with a potential to add 10,000 more, the company said in a statement.

But Foxconn made a similar pledge for a factory in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 2013, promising it would invest $30 million and hire 500 workers for a plant to be built there. The deal was widely praised by state and local officials, but the factory was never built.

The Washington Post reported that Gou made similar announcements about planned projects in Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Brazil. In some cases, projects have begun, but fallen far short of the expansive results Gou promised.

Foxconn also has a history of worker safety issues and labor unrest. The company got unwanted international attention in 2010 when, between March and May of that year, 10 workers at Foxconn’s Shenzhen committed suicide. Foxconn’s Shanxi site was the site of a four-hour worker riot in September 2012 that involved some 2,000 people. It was eventually quelled by security personnel.

Apple has defended its supplier, but an audit it requested by the Fair Labor Association found that Foxconn workers were subjected to forced overtime, frequent accidents and unrealistic production quotas.

VOA’s Jim Randle contributed to this report.
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The European Union warned on Wednesday that it was ready to act within days to counter proposed new U.S. sanctions on Russia, saying they would harm the bloc’s energy security.

Sanctions legislation overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday has angered EU officials: they see it as breaking transatlantic unity in the West’s response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Brussels also fears the new sanctions will harm European firms with connections to Russia, and oil and gas projects on which the EU is dependent.

“The U.S. bill could have unintended unilateral effects that impact the EU’s energy security interests,” EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement issued after a meeting at which European commissioners were united in their views, according to a senior EU official.

“If our concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days. ‘America First’ cannot mean that Europe’s interests come last,” he said, mentioning President Donald Trump’s guiding slogan.

A EU document prepared for the commissioners, seen by Reuters, laid out the EU’s plans to seek “demonstrable reassurances” that the White House would not use the bill to target EU interests.

The bloc, it says, will also prepare to use an EU regulation allowing it to defend companies against the application of extraterritorial measures by the United States.

If diplomacy fails, Brussels plans to file a complaint at the World Trade Organization. “In addition, the preparation of a substantive response that would deter the U.S. from taking measures against EU companies could be considered,” it says.

However, most measures taken by Brussels would require approval from all 28 EU member governments, which could expose potential differences in individual nations’ relations with Moscow and Washington.

Despite changes to the U.S. bill that took into account some EU concerns, Brussels said the legislation could still hinder upkeep of the gas pipeline network in Russia that feeds into Ukraine and supplies over a quarter of EU needs. The EU says it could also hamper projects crucial to its energy diversification goals, such as the Baltic Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project.

The new sanctions target the disputed Nord Stream 2 project for a new pipeline running from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. But the EU note says: “the impact would in reality be much wider.”

A list prepared by the EU executive, seen by Reuters, shows eight projects including those involving oil majors Anglo-Dutch Shell, BP and Italy’s Eni that risk falling foul of the U.S. measures.

Voicing frustration at the fraying in the joint Western approach to Moscow, Juncker said “close coordination among allies” was key to ensuring that curbs on business with the Russian energy, defense and financial sectors, imposed in July 2014, are effective.

EU sources said Juncker told Commissioners the risk to EU interests was collateral damage of a U.S. domestic fight between Trump and U.S. lawmakers.

It was unclear how quickly the U.S. bill would reach the White House for Trump to sign into law or veto. The bill amounts to a rebuke of Trump by requiring him to obtain lawmakers’ permission before easing any sanctions on Moscow.

Rejecting the legislation — which would potentially stymie his wish for improved relations with Moscow — would carry a risk that his veto could be overridden by lawmakers.

Industry concerns

European energy industry sources voiced alarm at the potentially wide-ranging damage of the new U.S. measures.

“This is pretty tough,” one industry source told Reuters.

“We are working with EU officials to see what safeguards can be anticipated to protect our investment and give us certainty.”

Five Western firms are partnered with Russia’s Gazprom in Nord Stream 2: German’s Wintershall and Uniper, Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, Austria’s OMV and France’s Engie.

But EU officials warn the U.S. measures would also hit plans for the LNG plant on the Gulf of Finland in which Shell is partnering with Gazprom.

The EU document shows they might jeopardize Eni’s 50 percent stake in the Blue Stream pipeline from Russia to Turkey as well as the CPC pipeline, carrying Kazakh oil to the Black Sea, involving European groups BG Overseas Holdings, Shell and Eni.

It further warns that BP would be forced to halt some activities with Russian energy major Rosneft.
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 Amazon has some job openings. Lots of them.

The company said Wednesday that it’s looking to fill more than 50,000 positions across the U.S.

It’s planning to make thousands of offers on the spot on Aug. 2, when it opens the doors to potential hires at 10 Amazon.com Inc. shipping sites.

There will be more than 10,000 part-time jobs available at sorting centers, and some supporting and managerial positions.

The labor market is growing tight with back-to-school and holiday shopping around the corner. Others will be competing for those same hires.

The unemployment rate is 4.4 percent, near a 16-year low, yet the average hourly pay rose just 2.5 percent in the past year. The last time unemployment was this low, wages were rising at roughly a 4 percent rate.

 
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