Oil is the main revenue source in Alaska. This year, the trans-Alaska pipeline celebrated 40 years of service. From Alaska, VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya looks at the history of North America’s largest oil field.
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Congressional Republicans, seeking to address the complaints of small businesses, are floating changes to their controversial proposal to eliminate business tax deductions for debt interest payments, business lobbyists said Tuesday.
A top U.S. Republican on tax policy acknowledged that modifications are in the works but did not provide details.
The debt interest proposal, long seen by Republican policymakers as necessary to help drive economic growth, is backed by large companies with ready access to equity financing that they could substitute for debt if eliminating the interest deduction made issuing debt too costly. Debt-dependent small-business owners, farmers and ranchers don’t have that luxury.
As Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration slog ahead with a push to overhaul the U.S. tax code, a key task is figuring out how to resolve conflicting groups’ priorities, with business debt interest a clear example.
The tax code has not been overhauled since 1986, partly because reconciling these conflicts can be so difficult.
“We’ve asked businesses large and small to look at that, test-drive it and give us back their feedback,” House of Representatives tax committee Chairman Kevin Brady said in remarks at an event in Louisville, Kentucky, on Tuesday, without offering specifics about the modified proposal.
His staff at the committee had no comment.
Businesses lobbyists said the panel’s lawmakers have quietly agreed to focus on exemptions for small businesses, including farmers and ranchers, and an exemption for land.
Interest deduction
Lawmakers have also discussed a possible partial elimination of the interest deduction, with an exemption for existing debt, or eliminating the deduction only for businesses deemed to have an excessive amount of debt, according to lobbyists.
Brady is one of the “Big Six” negotiators from Congress and the Trump administration who are guiding the tax reform debate.
At the Louisville event, he described rolling back the business interest deduction as a “trade-off” for another proposal to accelerate expensing, which would allow businesses to write off investments in plants and equipment more quickly.
He said net interest deduction is one of a number of tax breaks that lawmakers are looking to eliminate to help pay for lower business tax rates. Republicans say tax cuts will help drive annual U.S. economic growth above the 3 percent mark.
Independent analysts say that eliminating the interest deduction would raise more than $1 trillion in federal revenues.
Republicans want to cut the corporate income tax rate to 20-25 percent from 35 percent. But they have been hard-pressed to pay for such a cut since jettisoning a border-adjusted import tax that would have raised more than $1 trillion.
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Engineers at a lab in Florida have been working quietly for 2½ years on building one of the most powerful magnets in the world.
And on Monday, they succeeded. The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory — whose main location is housed at Florida State University — met its goal and reclaimed its status as home to the world’s strongest resistive magnet.
They called it “Project 11,” a nod to the comedy film “This is Spinal Tap,” about a fictional heavy metal band whose guitarist boasts an amplifier whose volume goes up to 11, not just 10.
Lab officials said they tested a 41.4-tesla magnet, which is roughly 20 times the strength of a magnet used in medical imaging machines and vastly stronger than the ones that get stuck to the door of a household refrigerator. The Earth’s magnetic field, by comparison, is one-twenty thousandth (.00005) of a tesla. A tesla is a measure of magnetic field strength.
The new magnet, which cost $3.5 million to build, beat the old mark for resistive magnets, which was held by a 38.5-tesla magnet in China. The National MagLab had previously held the record for 19 years.
Greg Boebinger, the lab’s director, said the loss of the record prompted officials to tell engineers, “Go ahead and make the thing bigger, go ahead and use more power, just go full volume to 11 and see what you can do.”
Continuous operation
Resistive magnets are a type of electromagnet used for research. They differ from pulsed magnets, which can reach a higher Tesla but can sustain that power for only a fraction of a second. Resistive magnets can run continuously. Superconducting magnets use less power but tap out at a lower field strength. Hybrid magnets combine superconducting and resistive elements and can reach even higher fields. The National MagLab has the world’s strongest hybrid magnet, which reaches 45 tesla.
Researchers say they can use these powerful magnets to answer many questions, such as: What kinds of materials will work best in quantum computers? How does a potential Alzheimer’s drug change the brain? What molecules make up a sample of crude oil — and will it be worth drilling for?
The new record-setting magnet is powerful enough that lab officials use non-magnetic tools, but it’s not as powerful as some imagine.
“Local people think we change the weather,” said Boebinger, who said he gets asked about Magneto all the time. “We don’t even change the magnetic field outside our building.”
Instead, the magnetic field created by the new magnet will be used by researchers and scientists from around the world as a way to look at and study various types of materials and perhaps make breakthroughs in medicine, engineering and energy.
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Indigenous people living on Peru’s largest oil field concession have seized some facilities operated by Frontera Energy demanding that the government apply an indigenous rights law before signing a new contract with the Canadian company, a tribal chieftain said on Tuesday.
The so-called prior consultation law, passed in 2011, requires the government to seek input from indigenous people before approving any development plans that might affect them.
Tribal chiefs in Frontera’s Block 192 said the government has refused to carry out the consultation process even though it is negotiating a new contract with Frontera, whose 2-year contract is due to expire this month.
“If the government says it’ll carry out prior consultation, we’ll automatically end the protest,” Wilmer Chavez, chief of the community of Los Jardines, said in a telephone interview.
Chavez said that protesters from the indigenous community had taken control of oil drums and other facilities to curb output in Block 192.
Government offices tasked with oil drilling and indigenous rights did not respond to requests for comment.
Frontera, which produced some 7,500 barrels a day from Block 192 in July, said in a statement that it values community consent and that only the government could legally carry out prior consultation.
“Since our arrival to the area of Block 192, Frontera Energy has been working to gain the community’s trust and act as a mediator to ease potential tensions between the government, the industry and the community,” the company said in the statement.
Amazonian tribes in Block 192 want the government to sign new commitments for the clean-up of oil pollution and for access to health care and education in the remote region before awarding Frontera a new contract, said Chavez.
Four other chiefs, speaking to foreign media in Lima where they had traveled to meet with government officials, described similar demands in the 16 out of 20 villages they represent in Block 192 and vowed to stage their own protests unless prior consultation was applied.
Carlos Sandi, chief of the Corrientes River basin, told reporters that the government must fulfill its promises to clean up oil pollution that is sickening local residents.
U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp operated Block 192 for about 40 years before Argentine energy company Pluspetrol took over in 2001.
Frontera said negotiations with Peru on a new deal for Block192 were ongoing and that in coming weeks it should have a better idea of whether it will continue to operate there.
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A federal research vessel will launch on a cruise this week to study how Beaufort Sea wind affects plant and animal life in a changing Arctic Ocean.
The Sikuliaq, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, will depart Friday from Nome for the trip through the Bering Strait to waters on and off the continental shelf in the Beaufort.
Climate warming in recent decades has resulted in far less summer seasonal ice in the Beaufort, which stretches from the northeast coast of Alaska across Canada. East winds that formerly blew over sea ice now blow over open water, said Steve Okkonen, a physical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Wind drives water at the surface of the shallow continental shelf, at depths of about 300 feet (91 meters), north to water off the shelf, which drops to depths of more than 10,000 feet (3,050 meters).
The result is a phenomenon called “upwelling.” Deep, cold water rises toward the surface carrying large concentrations of plankton, which scientists hypothesize will attract fish, especially Arctic cod. Large numbers of cod in turn attract beluga whale and seabirds that prey on cod.
Aerial surveys have shown belugas congregating on the shelf break, said Carin Ashjian, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who will serve as chief scientist on the cruise.
“What we hope to do, and what we’re planning to do, is to basically document and describe how the physical forcing of the wind produces this favorable feeding environment for the beluga whales,” she said Tuesday. “It’s one thing to say, `Oh, they can find food along this shelf break.’ But we want to find out why they find their food along the shelf break, with numbers.”
Upwelling events in the Beaufort are projected to increase as sea ice continues to trend downward, Okkonen said. Last year the minimum sea ice for 2016 was recorded Sept. 10, when ice covered 1.6 million square miles (4.14 square kilometers), tied with Sept. 18, 2007, for the second-lowest minimum on records since satellite measurements began in 1978. The lowest year on record was Sept. 17, 2012, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, when sea ice fell to 1.31 million square miles (3.39 million square kilometers).
Wind covering a greater distance over open water becomes a greater force on the ocean.
“We have a much bigger fetch,” Okkonen said.
Researchers on board the 261-foot (80-meter) Sikuliaq will record oceanographic conditions, sample for plankton levels and cod numbers, and survey marine mammals and seabirds.
The ship will sail transects in a box roughly 37 by 62 miles (60 by 100 kilometers) starting 20 to 30 miles (32 to 48 kilometers) offshore.
The scientists want to share the research story with the public, particularly with Alaskans, and will offer a Facebook page, with reports from the vessel, titled, “Arctic Winds, Fish, Fins and Feathers.”
Researchers from the University of Washington, the University of Rhode Island and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be on board. Researchers are scheduled to return to Nome on Sept. 18.
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Researchers who warned half a dozen robot manufacturers in January about nearly 50 vulnerabilities in their home, business and industrial robots, say only a few of the problems have been addressed.
The researchers, Cesar Cerrudo and Lucas Apa of cybersecurity firm IOActive, said the vulnerabilities would allow hackers to spy on users, disable safety features and make robots lurch and move violently, putting users and bystanders in danger.
While they say there are no signs that hackers have exploited the vulnerabilities, they say the fact that the robots were hacked so easily and the manufacturers’ lack of response raise questions about allowing robots in homes, offices and factories.
“Our research shows proof that even non-military robots could be weaponized to cause harm,” Apa said in an interview. “These robots don’t use bullets or explosives, but microphones, cameras, arms and legs. The difference is that they will be soon around us and we need to secure them now before it’s too late.”
His comments come in the wake of a letter signed by more than 100 leading robotic experts urging the United Nations to ban the development of killer military robots, or autonomous weapons.
Apa, a senior security consultant, said that of the six manufacturers contacted, only one, Rethink Robotics, said some of the problems had been fixed. He said he had not been able to confirm that as his team does not have access to that particular robot.
A spokesman for Rethink Robotics, which makes the Baxter and Sawyer assembly-line robots, said all but two issues — in the education and research versions of its robots — had been fixed.
Apa said a review of updates from the other five manufacturers — Universal Robots of Denmark, SoftBank Robotics and Asratec Corp. of Japan, Ubtech of China, and Robotis Inc. of South Korea — led him to believe none of the issues he had raised had been fixed.
Asratec said that software released for its robots so far was limited to “hobby use sample programs,” and it believed IOActive was pointing to security vulnerabilities in those.
Software it planned to release for commercial use would be different, it said.
Robotis declined to comment. The three other manufacturers did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.
The slow reaction by the robot industry was not surprising, said Joshua Ziering, founder of drone manufacturer Kittyhawk.io.
“A new technology bursts on to the market and people fail to secure it,” he said.
Alarming threat
Cybersecurity experts said the robot vulnerabilities were alarming, and cybercriminals could use them to disrupt factories by ransomware attacks, or with robots slowed down or forced to embed flaws in the products they are programmed to build.
“The potential impact to companies, and even countries, could be massive,” said Nathan Wenzler, chief security strategist at AsTech, a San Francisco-based security consulting company, “should an attacker exploit the vulnerability within the applications that control these robots.”
Even in the home, danger lurks, said Apa, demonstrating how a 17-inch- (43.18-cm) tall Alpha 2 robot from Ubtech could be programmed to violently jab a screwdriver.
“Maybe it’s small and it’s not really going to hurt right now, but the trend is that the robots are going to be more powerful,” he said. “We tested industrial ones which are really heavy and powerful, and some of the attacks work with them.”
Apa and Cerrudo released their initial findings in January.
This week, they released details about the specific vulnerabilities they found, including one case where they mix several of those vulnerabilities together to hijack a Universal Robot factory robot, making it lurch about and be a potential threat.
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Jordan has opened its first job center inside a refugee camp, unlocking work opportunities across the country for thousands living in the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, the U.N. labor agency said Tuesday.
So far, more than 800 refugees in the Zaatari camp in Jordan, which borders Syria and is home to nearly 80,000 people, have registered for work permits at the job center, the International Labor Organization said.
“Refugee workers now have a clear address to resort to when searching for jobs and applying for work permits, where they can receive all necessary information and benefit from expert support,” Maha Kattaa, ILO response coordinator in Jordan, said in a statement.
The Jordanian government says the country is home to 1.4 million Syrians, of whom more than 660,000 are registered with the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.
Allowing refugees to work in host countries relieves pressure on social services, boosts the local economy and gives refugees the financial security to re-establish their lives, said UNHCR, which manages work permits and the flows in and out of the Zaatari camp.
“I am confident that having an increased number of Syrians entering the labor market will positively impact the local economy and bring stability to refugee families,” said Stefano Severe, a UNHCR spokesman in Jordan.
Earlier this month, Jordan became the first Arab country to issue Syrian refugees with a new type of work permit that opens up the growing construction sector.
The center, launched by the Jordanian government, will run job fairs and employment matching services with businesses across the country.
There are also plans to open a second center in a nearby camp in Azraq, ILO said.
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Argentina’s main labor unions took to the streets of the capital on Tuesday demanding more jobs and protesting center-right President Mauricio Macri’s economic policies.
Tens of thousands of workers gathered in the historic Plaza de Mayo criticizing Macri, who is trying to lower labor costs to attract investment and jump-start an economy that emerged from recession in the second half of last year.
“If some retrograde [in the government] thinks that lowering wages, precarious living conditions and destroying trade unions is going to line up investments … we say that is very wrong,” said Juan Carlos Schmid, a leader of Argentina’s largest umbrella union, the CGT.
Standing on a podium at the protest, he said the CGT would meet in late September to discuss a potential strike.
Macri told Reuters in an interview this month his government was negotiating labor agreements sector by sector rather than trying to pass a comprehensive labor reform like the one approved in neighboring Brazil.
Unions fear more drastic changes could be coming after mid-term legislative elections in October, however, especially after a primary vote on Aug. 13 pointed to strong support for Macri’s coalition.
Macri is trying to open Argentina’s long protected economy and focus on competitive industries like oil and agriculture, but has seen some manufacturing jobs lost in the meantime.
The most recent employment data showed the jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent in the first quarter of the year from 7.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
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When diving in the Gulf of Maine a few years back, Jennifer Dijkstra expected to be swimming through a flowing kelp forest that had long served as a nursery and food for juvenile fish and lobster.
But Dijkstra, a University of New Hampshire marine biologist, saw only a patchy seafloor before her. The sugar kelp had declined dramatically and been replaced by invasive, shrub-like seaweed that looked like a giant shag rug.
“I remember going to some dive sites and honestly being shocked at how few kelp blades we saw,” she said.
Warming oceans probable culprit
The Gulf of Maine, stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, is the latest in a growing list of global hotspots losing their kelp, including hundreds of miles in the Mediterranean Sea, off southern Japan and Australia, and parts of the California coast.
Among the world’s most diverse marine ecosystems, kelp forests are found on all continental coastlines except for Antarctica and provide critical food and shelter to myriad fish and other creatures. Kelp also is critical to coastal economies, providing billions of dollars in tourism and fishing.
The likely culprit, according to several scientific studies, is warming oceans from climate change, coupled with the arrival of invasive species. In Maine, the invaders are other seaweeds. In Australia, the Mediterranean and Japan, tropical fish are feasting on the kelp.
Most kelp are replaced by small, tightly packed, bushy seaweeds that collect sediment and prevent kelp from growing back, said the University of Western Australia’s Thomas Wernberg.
“Collectively these changes are part of a recent and increasing global trend of flattening of the world’s kelp forests,” said Wernberg, co-author of a 2016 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found that 38 percent of kelp forest declined over the past 50 years in regions that had data.
Great Southern Reef threatened
Kelp losses on Australia’s Great Southern Reef threaten tourism and fishing industries worth $10 billion. Die-offs contributed to a 60 percent drop in species richness in the Mediterranean and were blamed for the collapse of the abalone fishery in Japan.
“You are losing habitat. You are losing food. You are losing shoreline protection,” said University of Massachusetts Boston’s Jarrett Byrnes, who leads a working group on kelp and climate change. “They provide real value to humans.”
The Pacific Coast from northern California to the Oregon border is one place that suffered dramatic kelp loss, according to Cynthia Catton, a research associate at the Bodega Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Davis. Since 2014, aerial surveys have shown that bull kelp declined by over 90 percent, something Catton blamed on a marine heat wave along with a rapid increase in kelp-eating sea urchins.
Without the kelp to eat, Northern California’s abalone fishery has been harmed.
“It’s pretty devastating to the ecosystem as a whole,” Catton said. “It’s like a redwood forest that has been completely clear-cut. If you lose the trees, you don’t have a forest.”
Kelp hasn’t recovered
Kelp is incredibly resilient and has been known to bounce back from storms and heat waves.
But in Maine, it has struggled to recover following an explosion of voracious sea urchins in the 1980s that wiped out many kelp beds. Now, it must survive in waters that are warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans — most likely forcing kelp to migrate northward or into deeper waters.
“What the future holds is more complicated,” Byrnes said. “If the Gulf of Maine warms sufficiently, we know kelp will have a hard time holding on.”
On their dives around Maine’s Appledore Island, a craggy island off New Hampshire that’s home to nesting seagulls, Dijkstra and colleague Larry Harris have witnessed dramatic changes.
30-year-old drive logs
Their study, published by the Journal of Ecology in April, examined photos of seaweed populations and dive logs going back 30 years in the Gulf of Maine. They found introduced species from as far away as Asia, such as the filamentous red seaweed, had increased by as much 90 percent and were covering 50 to 90 percent of the gulf’s seafloor.
They are seeing far fewer ocean pout, wolf eel and pollock that once were commonplace in these kelp beds. But they also are finding that the half-dozen invasive seaweeds replacing kelp are harboring up to three times more tiny shrimp, snails and other invertebrates.
“We’re not really sure how this new seascape will affect higher species in the food web, especially commercially important ones like fish, crabs and lobster,” said Dijkstra, following a dive in which bags of invasive seaweed were collected and the invertebrates painstakingly counted. “What we do think is that fish are using these seascapes differently.”
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered a halt to research on the potential health hazards of people who live near mountaintop coal mining operations.
The U.S. Interior Department ordered the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to end a study of surface coal mining sites in the Appalachian Mountains, pending a review of projects that cost more than $100,000.
Last year the Interior Department, under then President Barack Obama, commissioned research into possible health risks among those who live near current or former mining sites in Appalachia.
The agency allocated $1 million in 2015 for a two-year study at the request of officials from West Virginia, located in the heart of Appalachia.
But the Interior Department ordered an immediate halt to the research, defending it as necessary to ensure the responsible expenditure of taxpayer money.
Trump proposed a $1.6 billion cut to Interior’s budget in 2018, including 4,000 jobs.
The decision, which took effect Monday, comes as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers collaborate to eliminate policies they believe restrict the mining and use of coal.
Trump promised during his presidential campaign to create jobs by reviving the coal industry, and signed an executive order in March that lifted a ban on leases for mining coal on federal land.
Environmentalists maintain the removal of coal from mountaintops releases pollutants into water and air, causing numerous health problems such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and birth defects.
Indiana University health science professor Michael Hendryx told House lawmakers in 2015 that his studies have connected mountaintop removal to higher rates of lung cancer, heart and kidney disease and other illnesses.
The Sierra Club’s Appalachia organizer, Bill Price, described the decision as “infuriating.” “Trump has once again shown the people of Appalachia that we mean nothing to him,” he said in a statement.
Ford Motor Co. and a Chinese automaker said Tuesday they are looking into setting up a joint venture to develop and manufacture electric cars in China.
Ford’s potential venture with Anhui Zotye Automobile Co. adds to the global auto industry’s rising activity in electric vehicles for China, which passed the United States last year as the biggest market for them.
Chinese planners who see electrics as a promising industry and a way to clean up smog-choked cities are pushing automakers to speed up development.
Ford previously said it plans to offer electric versions of 70 percent of its models in China by 2025.
Privately owned Zotye Auto, headquartered in the eastern city of Huangshan, produces its own electric vehicles and said sales in the first seven months of this year rose 56 percent over the same period of 2016 to 16,000.
“This presents us with an exciting opportunity to leverage each other’s strengths,” Zotye chairman Jin Zheyong said in a joint statement.
Sales of pure-electric and gasoline-electric hybrids in China rose 50 percent last year over 2015 to 336,000 vehicles, or 40 percent of global demand. U.S. sales totaled 159,620.
Beijing has supported sales with subsidies and a planned quota system that would require automakers to produce electric cars or buy credits from companies that do.
Ford said it expects China’s market for all-electrics and hybrids to grow to annual sales of 6 million by 2025.
Volvo Cars announced plans this year to make electric cars in China for global sale starting in 2019. General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG, Nissan Motor Co. and others also have announced plans to make electric vehicles in China.
Authorities in Japan are trying to decide what to do with the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of contaminated water being stored at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which went into meltdown following a 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
It is estimated the huge water storage tanks surrounding the site contain more than 750,000 tons of water contaminated with tritium, considered one of the less harmful radioactive isotopes.
Watch: Japan Considers Release of Fukushima Tritium-Contaminated Water Into Pacific
Local media reported last month that plant owner TEPCO planned to release the water into the Pacific Ocean, prompting an outcry from environmental groups and local fishermen. The general manager of TEPCO’s nuclear division, Takahiro Kimoto, says the company has yet to make a decision.
“One option is to release the tritium-contaminated water into the ocean. However, there are other options such as vaporizing it, but we have not decided yet which option to take to dispose of the water. Since there may be an influence on the environment, and because there have been harmful rumors about what effects it may have on people and the environment, we are still consulting with various stakeholders before finally deciding on the solution,” Kimoto told VOA in an interview.
Tritium releases
TEPCO points out all nuclear power plants around the world release tritium into the environment.
Tritium is considered one of the less dangerous radioactive isotopes, said leading marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. He has been monitoring the effects of the Fukushima disaster on the Pacific Ocean.
“There are natural sources up in cosmic rays interacting in the atmosphere. And the biggest source by far was the weapons testing in the 1960s. So you’re talking about adding to what’s already there. If it’s all released on one day, that’s a very different scenario for the oceans than if it’s released sequentially over the course of several years.”
A purification system called ALPS is designed to remove other, more harmful isotopes from the contaminated water. Buesseler said more oversight is needed.
“Independently, I want to see for each tank, what are the levels not only of the tritium, which dominates by far the radioactivity, but all those minor elements, cesium, strontium, that are still there to some degree.”
Nuclear fuel removal
Longer-term, Japanese authorities face the task of trying to remove the nuclear fuel. Robots have recorded footage of what appear to be melted fuel rods inside reactor 3, but in other reactors soaring levels of radioactivity have crippled the robots within minutes.
“Around the fall of this year, we are hoping to reveal a big plan on our future policy, and the method we will use to remove this fuel,” said TEPCO’s Kimoto.
The Japanese government estimates the total cleanup cost, including compensation, decommissioning and decontamination, will reach $190 billion in a process likely to take at least 40 years.
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Authorities in Japan are trying to decide what to do with the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of contaminated water being stored at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which went into meltdown following a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Tokyo, plant operator TEPCO says it is safe to release the water into the Pacific Ocean, but scientists want a closer analysis of the water’s radioactivity levels.
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Heat from deep within the earth is an underused source of renewable energy. The United States is the world’s largest producer of geothermal energy, but it makes up less than 1 percent of the nation’s power generation. By contrast, geothermal plants in the Philippines and Iceland contribute around 30 percent of their electricity production. Now, geothermal power is heating up in Australia. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Ford Tuesday became the latest carmaker to launch a car scrappage scheme in Britain, joining the likes of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, after months of procrastination from the government over whether to begin a national program.
The U.S. automaker is offering customers a 2,000 pound ($2,580) discount off a range of Ford models when they trade in vehicles registered before the end of 2009.
BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Vauxhall, the British version of the Opel brand sold on the continent, have all launched similar schemes in recent weeks to incentivize motorists to reduce emissions by replacing their gas-guzzling models with greener cars.
The plans come after Britain delayed in July a decision over whether to introduce a nationwide or targeted vehicle scrappage scheme, with a consultation due to take place later this year, despite worries over emissions levels.
“Ford shares society’s concerns over air quality,” its managing director in Britain Andy Barratt said Tuesday.
“Removing generations of the most polluting vehicles will have the most immediate positive effect on air quality.”
Car sales slowing
Ford, BMW, Vauxhall and Mercedes sell around 1 million cars in Britain, more than a third of all new car registrations.
The scrappage schemes will help support sales at a time when demand for new cars is beginning to slide substantially for the first time in around six years.
In July, new car registrations fell for the fourth consecutive month, hit by a number of factors including uncertainty over Brexit and lack of clarity over future government plans around new levies on diesel models.
Britain’s last government-backed scrappage scheme came in the wake of the financial crisis and ran for nearly a year from mid-2009, helping to support the car sector, which had been hit by nose-diving sales.
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There is a saying that “lightning never strikes twice” in any location. The same could be said for a total solar eclipse over the United States, a rare event … except in a small patch of the United States that includes a small Missouri town, a place VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports is a prime location for current and future stargazers to study a rare phenomenon.
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A common complaint for busy, stressed out people is not being able to find the time and place to unwind. A new smartphone application promises to solve these problems by helping users practice an old Chinese form of healing meditation while on the go. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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The U.S. Air Force has awarded Boeing and Northrop Grumman separate contracts to continue work on the replacement of the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Though the award for the new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) comes amid rising tensions with North Korea, the Air Force had asked the defense industry last summer for proposals to replace the aging ICBM system and its nuclear cruise missiles as the military moved ahead with a costly modernization of its aging atomic weapons systems.
“The Minuteman III is 45 years old. It is time to upgrade,” Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein said in a statement on Monday.
Northrop Grumman was awarded $328 million, and Boeing $349 million over the three-year contract.
A milestone contract
The relatively small award is a milestone that would allow Boeing and Northrop to continue parallel detailed development and prototyping for the Minuteman replacement. The Pentagon’s office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) has said the total could cost the United States $85 billion. The Air Force has estimated $62 billion.
Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop and Boeing were all competing for the contract which is needed to perform the three-year technology maturation and risk reduction (TMRR) phase of Minuteman replacement.
A Lockheed representative said the company was “disappointed” and looked “forward to a debrief about the selection.”
Boeing’s Strategic Deterrence Systems Director, Frank McCall, said in a statement, “Since the first Minuteman launch in 1961, the U.S. Air Force has relied on our technologies for a safe, secure and reliable ICBM force.” Boeing provided the Minuteman III missile for the current ground-based nuclear ICBM system.
Northrop Grumman’s chief Wes Bush said in a statement, “We look forward to the opportunity to provide the nation with a modern strategic deterrent system that is secure, resilient and affordable.”
‘Moving forward’
Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said, “We are moving forward with modernization of the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.”
Modernization of the U.S. nuclear force was expected to cost more than $350 billion over the next decade. The United States plans to replace its aging systems, including bombs, nuclear bombers, missiles and submarines. Some analysts estimated the cost at $1 trillion over 30 years.
“Our missiles were built in the 1970s. Things just wear out, and it becomes more expensive to maintain them than to replace them,” Wilson said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says there is “zero chance” Congress will allow the country to default on its debts by voting to not increase the borrowing limit.
McConnell’s comments came Monday during a joint appearance in his home state of Kentucky with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. It was one of McConnell’s first public appearances since President Donald Trump publicly criticized him for failing to pass a repeal and replacement of former President Barack Obama’s health care law.
McConnell did not mention Trump in his remarks, and he did not take questions from reporters after the event. But in response to a question about where he gets his news, McConnell said he reads a variety of sources, including The New York Times.
“My view is most news is not fake,” McConnell said, which appeared to be a subtle rebuke of one of Trump’s favorite phrases. “I try not to fall in love with any particular source.”
The government has enough money to pay its bills until Sept. 29. After that, Congress would have to give permission for the government to borrow more money to meet its obligations, including Social Security and interest payments.
McConnell sought to calm a crowd of nervous business leaders by interjecting at the end of Mnuchin’s answer to a question about what would happen if lawmakers did not increase the borrowing limit.
“Let me just add, there is zero chance, no chance, we won’t raise the debt ceiling,” McConnell said. “America is not going to default.”
Addressing the country’s borrowing limit will be the most pressing issue when lawmakers return to Washington following their August recess. After that, Republicans will likely turn their attention to overhauling the nation’s tax code.
McConnell said Congress is unlikely to repeal a pair of Obama-era laws most hated by conservatives. While negotiations about health care are ongoing, McConnell said the path forward is “somewhat murky.” And he said it would be “challenging” to lift the restrictions placed on banks following the 2008 financial crisis, known as “Dodd-Frank.”
On tax reform, McConnell said the only thing lawmakers won’t consider eliminating are deductions on mortgage interest and charitable deductions.
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A rare total solar eclipse began in the Western state of Oregon Monday, as millions of people across the U.S. are watching the phenomenon from the Pacific to the Atlantic for the first time in 99 years.
The temperature in Oregon dropped significantly as the moon moved to cover the sun.
An estimated 200 million people live within a day’s drive of Monday’s path of totality, which starts from Oregon’s Pacific Coast, across the U.S. heartland, all the way to South Carolina’s Atlantic Coast.
WATCH: Washington, D.C. eclipse watchers on watching big event
Cities, towns and parks across the path have been prepared for an influx of people with telescopes, cameras and protective glasses to watch what NASA said it expects to be the most watched and documented eclipse in history.
More than 100,000 people gathered in Madras, a town in Oregon with a population of 7,000 and one of the first places that will witness the celestial event. According to the Los Angeles Times, the National Guard had to be called in to assist with traffic jams in Madras because so many people wanted to view the eclipse there.
The total eclipse will last longest near Carbondale, Illinois at 2 minutes and 44 seconds.
“It’s chilling, it’s cool, it’s a life experience,” Gregg Toland, who traveled from Palatine, Illinois to the airport in Perryville Missouri to see the eclipse in the path of totality through his telescope, told VOA.
“It’s something you’ll never forget,” he said.
The first city to enter totality will be Lincoln Beach, Oregon, at 10:16 a.m. Pacific time and the last to exit the totality will be Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:48 p.m. EDT.
A total solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun and completely blots out the sun’s light, except for the corona of its outer atmosphere.
From Earth, the moon will appear to be the same size as the sun. This is possible because while the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun in diameter, it is also 400 times closer to Earth than the sun. When the two line up exactly, the skies go dark.
VOA’s Kane Farabaugh and Carolyn Presutti contributed to this report.
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China has been an “incredible partner” in cracking down on synthetic opioids seen as fueling fast-rising overdose deaths in the United States, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Monday during a visit to the country considered the source of many of the deadly substances sought by addicts.
Price said China has been quick to respond when regulators identify a threat from a dangerous drug such as fentanyl, the powerful opioid blamed for thousands of fatal overdoses, including the death of entertainer Prince.
“When a particular drug is identified as being a problem, China has been an incredible partner in helping to stop the production of drugs like fentanyl in China,” Price told The Associated Press.
A bigger challenge comes from the “rapidly changing ability of individuals to formulate new chemical makeups that are a different drug and that aren’t in the controlled arena,” Price said. “The challenge is to get those taken care of much more rapidly. And so that’s the conversations that we need to be having.”
Last month, China banned a designer drug called U-47700 and three others following U.S. pressure to do more to control synthetic opioids.
In China, U-47700 had been a legal alternative to fentanyl and potent derivatives like carfentanil. Its usage has been growing among U.S. opioid addicts.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has long said that China is the top source country for synthetic opioids like fentanyl and its precursors, assertions Beijing has said lack firm evidence. Still, the two countries have deepened cooperation as the U.S. opioid epidemic intensifies.
Price also expressed support for continued funding of the World Health Organization amid questions about President Donald Trump’s commitment to the United Nations. The U.S. is currently the largest contributor to the WHO’s budget.
Those in Congress responsible for drawing up budget plans “appreciate the importance of WHO, appreciate the incredible importance of the United States’ support of WHO, not just rhetorically, but financially as well,” Price said.
Wisconsin Assembly Democratic Leader Peter Barca was branded as failing “on all accounts” by a fellow Democrat who was “incredibly frustrated and concerned” with his actions after Barca joined Republicans in voting for a $3 billion tax incentive package for Foxconn Technology Group.
Emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Democratic state Rep. Lisa Subeck of Madison spelled out her grievances to Barca on Friday, the day after the Assembly passed the incentive package backed by Republicans designed to attract Foxconn to build a massive display panel factory in the state.
Barca was one of three Democrats to vote for the measure Thursday, with 28 Democrats against. Barca, of Kenosha, and the other Democrats who voted for it represent southeast Wisconsin, near where Foxconn plans to build a factory that could employ thousands. Reps. Cory Mason of Racine and Tod Ohnstad of Kenosha joined Barca and 56 Republicans in voting for the bill; two Republicans joined all other Democrats in opposition.
Most Democrats were outspoken in their opposition to the measure, branding it as a corporate welfare giveaway that also puts Wisconsin’s environment in jeopardy because of requirements that would be waived to speed construction of the plant that could open as soon as 2020.
Barca tried to walk a line, criticizing the process of quickly acting on the bill and saying that more improvements could be made to protect taxpayers, Wisconsin businesses and the environment. But ultimately he said he supported the incentive package because of the backing it has from people in his district.
Subeck, in an email sent to all Assembly Democrats obtained by the AP, accused Barca of failing “on all accounts” to differentiate his views on Foxconn with that of the rest of Democrats who voted against the measure. She was particularly upset with Barca for holding an impromptu news conference in the Assembly parlor, right around the corner from his office, shortly after the evening vote Thursday.
“I am also concerned that the message you conveyed,” Subeck wrote. “It seems you were trying to justify your own vote rather than share the caucus perspective consistent with our agreed upon message.”
She said that Barca’s public comments “have not been consistent with the majority position of the caucus and have served counter to our interest.”
Barca wrote in response that he hadn’t planned to have a news conference but after the Thursday vote “we had one outlet in particular that was very aggressive and several others that wanted to talk.” Barca said his staff asked the reporters to move to the nearby parlor, where he and Assistant Majority Leader Dianne Hesselbein of Middleton and Rep. Mark Spreitzer of Beloit answered questions.
Barca did not address her concerns about what he actually said.
Barca spokeswoman Olivia Hwang said in an email that it was known Democrats had different opinions on the Foxconn bill and he supports efforts to oppose legislation they believe is wrong for their district or the state.
Barca does not plan to testify at a public hearing Tuesday in Racine on the bill, she said. Subeck raised concerns in her email about Barca testifying at the hearing scheduled for near where the plant may locate.
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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro says new measures will be rolled out this week to combat economic speculation in the crisis-ridden country.
In an interview distributed via state-run media Sunday, Maduro said he was working with a “special commission” of the new, pro-government Constituent Assembly to clamp down on price gouging.
The commission is “going to announce a set of actions so that the maximum price of the products is respected,” Maduro said, without providing details. He also warned that “very severe justice” would “shake the society.”
Venezuelans constantly complain of scarcity of food, medicine and personal hygiene products — and of outrageous prices amid soaring inflation.
The currency has shriveled in value, down from eight bolivars to the dollar in 2010 to more than 8,000 bolivars last month, as CNN Money recently pointed out. A single-serve bottle of water can cost about 1,200 bolivars.
Maduro previously declared a war on speculation in 2013, according to the Washington Office on Latin America.
Carlos Larrazabal, president of Fedecamaras, a union representing Venezuela’s business sector, accused the socialist administration of trying to smother private enterprise.
“The government has a political agenda. Instead of correcting problems of supply and production,” the Constituent Assembly has “deepened” Venezuela’s crisis, Larrazabal said in an interview Sunday with Caracas television station Televen.
The assembly declared on Friday that it would wrest legislative power from the opposition-led National Assembly, a move denounced by many in Venezuela and beyond. The United States does not recognize the Constituent Assembly as valid.
Larrazabal said Venezuela is suffering “the consequences of bad economic policy, with an exchange mechanism that is not transparent, which does not allow raw materials” into the country. He also complained of price controls.
The archbishop of Caracas, Jorge Urosa Savino, recently reiterated his call to the Maduro government to ease Venezuelans’ suffering. He said the Roman Catholic Church has repeatedly urged the opposition “to defend the rights of the Venezuelan people.”
This article originated with VOA’s Spanish service.
Americans gazed in wonder through telescopes, cameras and protective glasses Monday as the moon began blotting out the midday sun in the first full-blown solar eclipse to sweep the U.S. from coast to coast in nearly a century.
“The show has just begun, people! What a gorgeous day! Isn’t this great people?” Jim Todd, a director at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, told a crowd of thousands at an amphitheater in Salem, Oregon, as the moon seemed to take an ever-bigger bite out of the sun.
The celestial show was expected to be the most observed and photographed eclipse in history, with millions staking out prime viewing spots and settling into lawn chairs to watch, especially along the path of totality — the projected line of shadow created when the sun is completely obscured. The path was 60 to 70 miles (96 to 113 kilometers) wide, running from Oregon to South Carolina.
With 200 million people within a day’s drive from the path of totality, towns and parks braced for monumental crowds. Clear skies beckoned along most of the route, to the relief of those who feared cloud cover would spoil this once-in-a-lifetime moment.
Astronomers were giddy with excitement. A solar eclipse is considered one of the grandest of cosmic spectacles.
The Earth, moon and sun line up perfectly every one to three years, briefly turning day into night for a sliver of the planet. But these sights normally are in no man’s land, like the vast Pacific or Earth’s poles. This is the first eclipse of the social media era to pass through such a heavily populated area.
The moon hasn’t thrown this much shade at the U.S. since 1918. That was the country’s last coast-to-coast total eclipse. In fact, the U.S. mainland hasn’t seen a total solar eclipse since 1979 — and even then, only five states in the Northwest experienced total darkness.
Scientists said Monday’s total eclipse would cast a shadow that would race 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) through 14 states, entering near Lincoln City, Oregon, at 1:16 p.m. EDT, moving diagonally across the heartland over Casper, Wyoming, Carbondale, Illinois, and Nashville, Tennessee, and then exiting near Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:47 p.m. EDT.
Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois was in line to see the longest stretch of darkness: 2 minutes and 44 seconds.
All of North America was on track to get at least a partial eclipse, along with Central America and the top of South America.
In the southern Illinois village of Makanda, population 560 and home of the Eclipse Kitchen, lawn chairs were out and excitement was building.
“More and more people are coming in all the time,” said Debbie Dunn, designated car parker for the day.
Joe Roth, an amateur photographer, traveled south from the Chicago area to Alto Pass, Illinois, to catch his first total solar eclipse — on his 62nd birthday, no less. He said the stars aligned for him — “a Kodak moment for me to cherish and experience.”
Kim Kniseley drove overnight from Roanoke, Virginia, arriving in Madisonville, Tennessee, before dawn to get a parking spot at Kefauver Park, where by sunrise dozens of folks had claimed benches and set up tents.
He said he could have stayed home in Roanoke and seen a partial eclipse of 90 percent, but that would have been like “going to a rock concert and you’re standing in the parking lot.”
NASA and other scientists were in position to watch and analyze from telescopes on the ground and in orbit, the International Space Station, airplanes and scores of high-altitude balloons beaming back live video.
From aboard the space station, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer tweeted out a photo showing about a dozen cameras ready for action.
“All hands (cameras) on deck for #SolarEclipse2017 today,” he wrote, adding: “Don’t forget to protect your eyeballs!”
Hundreds of amateur astronomers converged on Casper, Wyoming. Among them was Mike O’Leary, whose camera was outfitted with a homemade eclipse filter, its focus and aperture settings locked in with blue painter’s tape. He was there to log his ninth eclipse.
“It’s like nothing else you will ever see or ever do,” O’Leary said. “It can be religious. It makes you feel insignificant, like you’re just a speck in the whole scheme of things.”
Citizen scientists also planned to monitor animal and plant behavior as daylight turned into twilight and the temperature dropped. Thousands of people streamed into the Nashville Zoo just to watch the animals’ reaction.
Scientists warned people not to look into the sun without protection, except when the sun is 100 percent covered. Otherwise, to avoid eye damage, keep the solar specs on or use pinhole projectors that can cast an image of the eclipse into a box.
The next total solar eclipse in the U.S. will be in 2024. The next coast-to-coast one will not be until 2045.
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