Day: August 28, 2017

The price of a pack of cigarettes has skyrocketed in New York City, while the number of places they are available for sale is set to fall.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday signed a sweeping series of anti-smoking bills, part of a comprehensive effort to help reduce the number of smokers in the city by nearly 200,000 over the next few years.

“We are sending a loud and clear message that we will not let their greed kill any more New Yorkers without a fight,” de Blasio said at a bill-signing ceremony at a Brooklyn hospital. “These new laws will not only help reduce the number of smokers in our city, but also save lives.”

The minimum price for a pack of cigarettes will jump from $10.50 to $13, the highest base price for cigarettes in the nation, de Blasio said.

New York health officials hope that with brands forced to charge at least $13 for the cheapest pack, premium brands will also raise their prices to maintain separation from lower-tier smokes.

The planned price hike is one of seven bills aimed at pressuring the city’s 900,000 estimated smokers to quit.

Another new rule will reduce by half the number of retailers licensed to sell tobacco products. About 8,300 businesses now have a license. The numbers will be reduced through attrition, officials said.

Philadelphia and San Francisco have similar licensing restrictions.

Other laws will ban the sale of all tobacco products in pharmacies, require licensing of e-cigarette retailers, and require all residential buildings to have smoking policies that are given to all current and prospective tenants. Some residential buildings will be required to ban smoking in common areas such as hallways.

Opponents of the price increase say it may push many smokers into buying untaxed, unregulated cigarettes on the black market.
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Kenya has become the latest African country to ban the use of polythene plastic bags, imposing stiff fines and even jail time for anyone found using, importing or manufacturing the bags.

In one of the biggest garbage dumping sites in Nairobi, it was business as usual Monday. Loads of plastic bags full of garbage were brought in, a testament to their widespread use in the capital.

But no more, says the government.

A new law went into effect Monday making the manufacture, sale and use of polythene plastic bags illegal. Offenders can get slapped with penalties up to a four-year jail term and a $40,000 fine.

The National Environment Management Authority, with the help security agencies, has been going around Nairobi to urge retailers and manufacturers to heed the new ban.

Geoffrey Wahungu is the director general of NEMA. He is promoting the “take-bag scheme,” basically calling on consumers to bring their own cloth bags or baskets from home.

“I hope soon we’ll start seeing people who are carrying out these recycling materials, or alternative bags, which are eco-friendly. All this is creating much more employment than is being lost,” he said.

Economic impact

Two plastic bag importers unsuccessfully challenged the ban before the High Court Friday. Kenya produces plastic bags for local use and export in the region. The National Association of Manufacturers has argued that the ban will cost more than 60,000 jobs and hurt more than 170 companies.

NEMA gave six months’ notice of the new ban, but it still appears to have taken many in Kenya by surprise.

Some large retailers have already switched to paper, but small traders are feeling the pinch.

Simon Njenga runs a grocery kiosk. He says he lost customers Monday.

He says “the ban pains me a lot because a customer wants to purchase vegetables, but he doesn’t have a bag and I can’t give him one, so they leave my kiosk without buying. The government has to bring back the plastic bags. My livelihood depends on it.”

Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Cameroon have announced similar bans on plastic bags, although the bans aren’t widely enforced. Rwanda is the only African country so far to both declare a ban and push people to follow the law.

Kenyan Environment Minister Judy Wakhungu told Reuters news agency that manufacturers and importers will be the ones initially targeted for enforcement of the ban.

Experts argue that polythene bags are bad for the environment and public health. The thin plastic bags have been blamed for polluting cities and shorelines and killing animals who eat them.

NEMA says the single-use polythene bags “never fully biodegrade, remaining in the environment as small or even microscopic particles, essentially forever.”

 
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Fall armyworm has spread to Cameroon.  The pest has attacked crops in at least 24 African countries.  In Cameroon, the Ministry of Agriculture says it is particularly concerned about the impact of the fall armyworm infestation in the north and the east of the country. 

Minister-delegate Ananga Messina says fall armyworm has infested six of the central African state’s 10 regions.

She says the armyworms have been a serious threat to food security in Cameroon because cereals like maize, sorghum, rice and legume plants like cow-pea, peanuts and beans are increasingly being attacked every day.  She says the situation is particularly worrisome on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria where the population and 100,000 Nigerian refugees are already suffering from food scarcity due to the Boko Haram conflict.

The Ministry of Agriculture says nearly two million people are currently in need of food assistance in northern Cameroon.

Messina told VOA about half of Cameroon’s 23 million inhabitants and millions of livestock risk hunger in the months ahead.  She said the armyworms have extended to Cameroon’s eastern border, putting neighboring Central African Republic at risk, a country gripped by a severe humanitarian crisis after years of conflict.  

Cameroon has launched a task force to manage the infestation.

Some farmers have been using chemicals to kill the pests, but agriculture technician Anicet Mvondo says that is not the best approach.

“The problem is that the insecticide is not good for the health of the farmer,” said Mvondo. “It is not good for the environment.  It kills other organisms in the environment.  Using insecticides is not a good way.  We should try to look for other solutions because these insects on the field are also eaten by other organisms.”

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports fall armyworm was first detected in four countries in West Africa in early 2016.  It has since spread to at least 20 other countries. 

Experts say the fall armyworms can reproduce rapidly and can fly long distances in moth form, though it remains unknown how the pest spread to West Africa from South America.

The FAO is leading the regional response efforts in Africa, and it says it is drawing from lessons learned in the America’s on sustainable fall armyworm management.  FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa, David Phiri says methods like regular monitoring and hand-picking of worm larvae can be effective.

“Fall armyworm has a lot of natural enemies and we should enhance their use to control the fall armyworm … So the message is that fall armyworm has come here to stay and also that use of chemical pesticides should be reduced to a minimum,” said Phiri.

Staple crops like maize, sorghum, rice and sugarcane have been hit hard in Africa, though the fall armyworm can ravage more than 80 other plant species.  Losses for Africa are estimated at at least $13 billion.
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Gasoline prices have been rising and oil costs have been changing as Hurricane Harvey’s winds and rising floodwaters slam into a part of Texas that has a significant portion of the nation’s oil industry, particularly oil refineries, shipping, and production.

By Monday, gasoline futures rose by as much as seven percent, hitting two-year highs as investors calculated that shutting down numerous refineries and other facilities could create shortages. At one point, crude oil future prices fell because refinery closures were expected to hurt demand for crude.

One report (on CNBC) says about one million barrels a day of refining capacity is off line.

About one fifth of the offshore crude oil production is also shut off as companies evacuated crews and closed production before the dangerous storm. Some shipping facilities have also been closed.

Harvey’s winds sometimes exceeded 200 kilometers per hour, and the storm brought an entire year’s worth of rain in just a few days, adding record floods to the wind damage. Severe rains are expected to continue for days, and it is not clear how long it will take for the water to recede and allow facilities to reopen and for staff to return.

It is also unclear how much damage has been done to critical energy infrastructure and how long it will take to return to full capacity.

More than six million people live in or near Houston, the biggest city in the storm’s path. Many fled before the storm, thousands have since been rescued, and tens of thousands are leaving flooded homes for emergency shelters.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says 450,000 people are expected to seek government financial assistance because of the disaster.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, which supervises banks, says banks should try to work out accommodations with businesses and others that are having difficulty repaying loans because of the storm. The Fed says efforts to work with “borrowers under stress” can be consistent with “safe-and-sound” banking practices, and the public interest.

 
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Massive flooding caused by Tropical Storm Harvey along Texas’ refinery-rich coast could have long-standing and far-reaching consequences for the state’s oil and gas industry and the larger U.S. economy. The storm’s remnants left much of Houston underwater on Sunday, and the National Weather Service says it’s not over yet: Some parts of Houston and its suburbs could end up with as much as 50 inches (1.3 meters) of rain.

With the heavy precipitation expected to last for days, it’s still unclear how bad the damage will be, but there is already evidence of widespread losses. Key oil and gas facilities along the Texas Gulf Coast have temporarily shut down, and flooding in the Houston and Beaumont areas could seriously pinch gasoline supplies. Companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico have evacuated drilling platforms and rigs, crimping the flow of oil and gas.

Experts believe gasoline prices could increase as much as 25 cents a gallon.

Harvey’s toll on air travel in the U.S. is set to extend into Monday, with the tracking service FlightAware.com reporting that more than 1,400 flights already have been canceled. That’s in addition to more than 2,000 canceled over the weekend.

Economy watchers were looking to oil futures markets Sunday night and stock trading in the U.S. Monday morning for further indications of fallout.

Here’s what was known as of Sunday night:

Refineries

Nearly a third of U.S. refining capacity sits in low-lying areas along the coast from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. Beyond the shutdown of refineries at risk of a direct strike from high winds, there’s the threat of flooding and potential power outages for gasoline supplies.

Refinery outages continued to spread Sunday, with about 2.2 million barrels per day of refining capacity down or being brought down, according to analysts at S&P Global.

Valero Energy Corp., whose two big Corpus Christi refineries escaped damage, said it was working with federal and Texas agencies and its business partners to determine what infrastructure was needed to resume refinery operations.

Even before Harvey hit, the prospect of supply disruptions sent gasoline futures to $1.74 a gallon, their highest level since April, before they retreated to around $1.67 by Friday afternoon. At the pump, experts see gasoline increasing 10 cents to 25 cents a gallon.

Given the strictures faced by the refineries, “This is the dominoes starting to fall,” Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for Gas Buddy, said Sunday. “This is sort of slowly turning out to be the worst-case scenario.”

Oil and gas

Companies have evacuated workers from oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Sunday that workers had been removed from 105 of the 737 manned platforms used to pump oil and gas from beneath the Gulf.

The agency estimated that platforms accounting for about 22 percent of oil production and 26 percent of natural gas output in the Gulf had been shut down.

“After the storm has passed, facilities will be inspected,” the agency said in a news release. “Once all standard checks have been completed, production from undamaged facilities will be brought back on line immediately. Facilities sustaining damage may take longer to bring back on line.”

Shipping

The shipping industry also is expected to be disrupted by the worst hurricane to hit the Texas coast in more than 50 years. Shipping terminals along the Texas coast shut down as the storm approached. Port operations in Corpus Christi and Galveston closed, and the port of Houston said container terminals and general cargo facilities closed around midday Friday. Rates increased for carrying freight between the Gulf and the U.S. East Coast.

Travel

More than 1,400 flight cancellations are reported for Monday, according to FlightAware.

Houston’s two airports were closed to all flights except those connected to relief efforts. Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport was not expected to reopen Monday until noon at the earliest. Houston International Airport was scheduled to remain closed until Wednesday morning.

Airlines were offering customers the chance to reschedule trips that would take them to Houston, San Antonio or Austin from Friday through the weekend.

Utilities

                   Researchers at Texas A&M University estimated that the storm would knock out power for at least 1.25 million people in Texas. They said the hardest-hit areas will include Corpus Christi, which is on the coast, and San Antonio, which is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) inland.

Insurance

A firm that does forecasts for insurance companies expects wind-damage claims in the low billions of dollars, and possibly reaching as high as $6 billion.

Risk Management Solutions Inc. said storm surges and inland flooding could be an even bigger source of losses. If the firm is correct, that would put homeowners and the government-backed National Flood Insurance Program at risk.

The flood program is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which owes the Treasury about $23 billion in funds borrowed to cover the cost of past disasters, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Homeowner policies offered by insurance companies typically don’t cover flood damage, yet a relatively small percentage of homeowners have flood insurance through the federal program.

Property data firm CoreLogic estimated that insured losses for home and commercial properties, as of Friday, would be $1 billion to $2 billion from wind and storm-surge damage.

 
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