Month: August 2017

With the animals sent to safety before Harvey hit, the owners of CityVet in Houston kept watch on their empty practice by security camera, hoping not to see floodwaters rush in.

But they lost the video stream Monday morning, apparently when power to the building near Houston’s Galleria failed. So, it was impossible to assess if any damage was occurring, said Paul Kline, a veterinarian based in and watching from Dallas. To his relief, the video came back Tuesday and “we could see cars going by on the street outside — a good sign,” Kline said. By Wednesday, with the rains gone, he could see the practice had escaped the flooding in the area.

Plenty of small-business owners spent a long five days, waiting to see if the rainfall that totaled more than 50 inches in some places would flood their businesses. Harvey’s winds and rains damaged or destroyed many small businesses in the storm’s path along the Gulf Coast.

It was a tornado spawned by Harvey that destroyed the office of Kenneth Bryant’s used-car dealership in Katy, Texas, just west of Houston. The winds Saturday morning picked up the office and slammed it into the building next door.

“I lost everything in there: titles to vehicles, keys, paperwork, computers,” said Bryant, whose business was not insured. Two of the 10 cars in his inventory were destroyed.

There was more bad news Wednesday: The remaining cars had been flooded. Bryant won’t know how severely they were damaged until he is able to unlock them.

“Where do we go from here? I don’t know. It’s going to be such a long road ahead,” Bryant said.

Lost sales, revenue, profits

For many companies, damage to their premises was just the start. Some lost inventory that would cost them future sales. Workers were stranded or dealing with the devastation of their homes. Companies that couldn’t operate were losing revenue and profits every day.

Fiyyaz Pirani estimates that his Houston-based company, Medology, lost $100,000 in new business. It’s been operating with six staffers instead of its usual 60 since the storm began, and accommodating only existing customers.

“We had a couple of employees who sustained a lot of damage to their homes, and some people are in shelters,” he said.

The company, which helps patients get low-cost lab tests and other services, moved back to its regular location Tuesday from temporary quarters, with generator power but no air conditioning. Staffers were working around some puddles of water at their top-floor office.

Eleanor Rem had several inches of water in her Houston home, which also houses her business. Rem, who helps children with dyslexia learn to read, opted not to try what might have been a difficult evacuation with an 88-year-old relative.

The rains that flooded her street, backyard and driveway on Monday began creeping into her home. She and her husband got their first-floor furniture upstairs, but the carpet was soaked. Rem said she was constantly checking to see how bad the damage was.

“We’re pretty exhausted. You’re kind of nervous to go to sleep,” she said Wednesday. She expects she won’t be able to work for several weeks, in part because her students may not be able to get to her home.

‘Cross your fingers and hope for the best’

Other business owners who tried to keep an eye on their companies by watching the video from surveillance cameras ran into the same problems as the veterinary practice.

With all three of Clint Hall’s Beef Jerky Outlet stores near Houston in danger of flooding, he watched from his home in Cypress. The Galveston Island store got a foot of water as the rains continued Monday and Tuesday, but he could see the Tomball location was safe. The League City shop lost power and its cameras Saturday, so Hall had to rely on the owner of a nearby pizzeria for periodic updates. When the rains finally stopped, it had suffered one minor leak.

It was a hard five days. As Hall watched his cameras, he said, “we’re doing as well as we can.” He planned to open at least two of the stores Wednesday.

Lindsey Rose King spent five days not knowing whether the inventory for Mostess, her home decor gift box company, was safe. The warehouse where it’s all stored — cloth napkins and tablecloths, bottles of spices and cocktail mixes and other items — is in the Galleria section. The warehouse owners had to evacuate their home and couldn’t monitor the situation.

“It’s nerve-wracking. If that inventory gets wet, that’s my whole business,” King said. But Wednesday morning, the email came: Although the building did get some water, King’s merchandise was safe and dry.

Merin Guthrie worried about the possibility that water had seeped into the old loft building near downtown Houston that houses Kit, her clothing design business. Her studio is on the second floor, but friends in similar buildings said they had water coming in through their windows. Even if her fabric, samples and sewing equipment were dry, there was a threat of mold.

She got into the building Wednesday morning, found that water had indeed gotten in, but that her supplies and equipment were OK.

“You have to cross your fingers and hope for the best,” Guthrie said.
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Tureibil, Iraq’s main international border crossing with Jordan and a key trade route, officially reopened Wednesday after being officially closed for three years. Privately-owned U.S. security firms, along with Iraqi ground and air forces, will be responsible for safety along the 500-kilometer route from Baghdad to Amman, which goes through Iraq’s Anbar province.

Iraqi forces have cleared areas near the highway of Islamic State militants in recent months, and parts of the route, including a number of bridges and overpasses, were rebuilt or repaired.

The Iraqi parliament agreed to allow U.S. security firms to oversee the highway, after a long and heated debate.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi indicated in a tweet Wednesday that he was “pleased by the reopening of the Iraq-Jordan border crossing,” adding that it will “increase bilateral relations considerably.”

The deputy head of the Anbar provincial council, Falah al-Aissawi, told al-Hurra TV recently that the provincial government was doing its utmost to reopen the key highway.

He says that Anbar province is using part of its budget to reopen the highway and the crossing with Jordan, which is a lifeline for both Anbar and the country, and that its reopening to traffic will give a boost to the economy.

Iraqi Interior Minister Qassem al-Araji inspected the highway and the border crossing several days ago, noting that the security situation appeared to be good.

The interior minister says he has inspected all the key infrastructure along the route and that Iraq was intent on reopening all its border crossings. He says the Tureibil crossing is vital to Iraq’s economy.

Hilal Khashan, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut, tells VOA that the reopening of the Iraqi border with Jordan was yet another step in the ongoing collapse of the Islamic State group.

“It’s clear that IS is being defeated and it is in full retreat on all fronts. This move points in the direction of increasing security in both Iraq and Jordan,” said Khashan.

Khashan also thinks that Jordan agreed to reopen its border crossing with Iraq “in conjunction with both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia,” and that the move “marks a significant improvement of ties between Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and [possibly] Iran.”

Iraq and Saudi Arabia recently reopened their land border, which had been closed since 1990.
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Energy companies, homeowners, and others are calculating the cost of Hurricane Harvey, which has already boosted gasoline prices and may slow the growth of the huge U.S. economy.

Gasoline prices surged to a two-year high recently as record floods forced refineries and other oil industry operations to close in Texas and elsewhere.

Oil industry analysts say nearly one-quarter of the U.S. refining capacity is shut, which prompted worries about future supplies and rising prices. Crude oil prices sagged because closed refineries mean lower demand for this raw material. Some analysts predicted the price hikes would be temporary, but cautioned it is not yet clear how much damage has been done to some of the world’s largest refineries.

The total cost of the disaster is unclear because floodwaters are still rising and officials have been focused on rescuing people not assessing damage to facilities. Preliminary estimates vary widely, and run into the tens of billions of dollars.

Some of that cost comes from closed airports that normally handle 1,600 or more flights per day. Other losses come from the closed shipping facilities that normally see thousands of containers and considerable oil that normally moves through Houston and nearby areas each day.

Data analysis expert Josh Green of Pajjiva said there is likely to be a major impact on the local community, but shippers will find alternate ports for cargos, which will limit the damage to the national economy.

Billionaire Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most astute and successful investors, told CNBC, a financial news channel, the storm has caused serious destruction, but the toll is probably less than one percent of the U.S. GDP.

Wednesday, the Commerce Department said U.S. economic growth had sped up to a three percent annual rate in the second quarter (April, May and June) which is faster than first estimated.

Analysts at Macroeconomic Advisers say Harvey could cut anywhere from three-tenths of a percent to more than one percent from growth in the third quarter (July, August, September).

IHS Markit Chief Economist Nariman Behravesh said previous storms have hurt short-term growth, which has eventually been offset by an economic boost from reconstruction activity. He said the many uncertainties about the extent of damage will make economic estimates “volatile” for the last six months of this year.

Cornell University business professor Steven Kyle told VOA some economic tools do a poor job of measuring the impact of disasters because they count the reconstruction work as an economic gain, but do not have an accurate way to measure the cost of lost bridges, homes and workplaces.

Kyle also said the impact of the storm is not going to show up in unemployment data till the end of September.

The newest U.S. jobless rate will be published by government experts this Friday, but that information was gathered before the storm hit. Economists predict the jobless rate for August will be a very low, at 4.3 percent.
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The Peruvian attorney general’s office has opened a criminal probe into opposition leader Keiko Fujimori for allegedly laundering money for scandal-plagued Brazilian builder Odebrecht, Fujimori’s attorney said on Tuesday.

The twice-defeated right-wing presidential candidate and eldest daughter of Peru’s imprisoned former leader Alberto Fujimori denied that she or her political party ever took money from Odebrecht.

“I’m certain the investigation will confirm that Odebrecht did not give us any money,” Fujimori said on Twitter. “I’ve always collaborated with all investigations and this will not be an exception.”

Fujimori’s lawyer, Edward Garcia, told Reuters the preliminary probe was opened in connection with notes that mention Fujimori by name that were taken by Odebrecht’s jailed former chief executive, Marcelo Odebrecht.

The attorney general’s office, which declined to comment, said on Monday it had received the contents of notes made on the cellphone of Odebrecht, but did not detail them.

Fujimori is already the subject of a money-laundering investigation related to 2016 campaign donations, but a probe in connection with Odebrecht might do more to hurt support for her and her Popular Force party, which controls a majority of seats in Congress.

Odebrecht is at the center of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal and is reviled by many in Peru since admitting late last year to having bribed local officials over a decade-long period.

News website IDL Reporteros has published what it says are  notes taken by Odebrecht and confiscated by Brazilian authorities that include the phrase: “Raise Keiko to 500 and pay her a visit.”

Prosecutor German Juarez will lead the investigation into Fujimori, Garcia said.

Juarez recently persuaded local courts to jail former President Ollanta Humala for up to 18 months before trial while he is investigated for accusations of taking undeclared campaign donations from Odebrecht.

Humala narrowly defeated Fujimori during her first presidential bid in 2011. He is now sharing a prison with her father, who is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations and graft.
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South Texas ranchers are scrambling to relocate cattle from massive flooding spawned by Tropical Storm Harvey, with many hauling livestock up to the north of the state while others rush to move the animals to higher ground nearby.

About 1.2 million cattle are located in a 54-county disaster area drenched by Harvey, which made landfall as a hurricane last weekend. With more torrential rain in the forecast, ranchers are expressing worry that some animals could perish despite efforts to save them.

State is top producer of cattle, cotton   

Texas leads U.S. states in cattle and cotton production. An estimated $150 million worth of cotton has been lost as the storms ripped the bolls off plants and left white fiber strewn across fields.

Texas Gulf Coast export terminals that handle about a quarter of U.S. wheat exports also remained shuttered.

Of immediate concern to ranchers were cattle stranded by high water infested with venomous snakes, fire ants and alligators, said Hollis “Peanut” Gilfillian, a cattle rancher in Winnie, Texas, about 60 miles (96 km) east of hard-hit Houston.

“We’re in gator country … period,” said Gilfillian, adding that nearly every pond on the ranches in his area contain alligators.

“It’s not unusual to see an alligator in my backyard or road ditch,” he said, but added, “There’s plenty other animals that they (alligators) would much rather eat, such as fish, as opposed to trying to go after cattle.”

Ranchers had tried to prepare for the storm last week by moving cattle to the nearest hills or trucking them to safety in the north of the state, cattle industry groups said.

Chuck Kiker, who raises cattle on his farm near Beaumont, about 60 miles (96 km) northeast of Houston, opted to leave his animals in place but was caught off guard by the storm’s severity.

“You can’t move animals at this point, so you’re kind of stuck because of high water everywhere. There’s really no place to move them,” he said.

Disaster area declared

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared 54 counties a disaster area. About 27 percent of the state’s 4.46 million-head beef cow herd is in those 54 counties, according to Texas A&M University livestock economist David Anderson.

“Given that it’s August, I’m not sure that we would’ve seen a lot of the calves already sold. So you’ve a lot of young calves out there too that are in that disaster area,” Anderson said.

Grain terminals closed

Longer-term concerns for the cattle include foot rot from standing in water or muddy fields for long periods and the risk of disease from mosquitoes.

Heavy rains and flooding closed bulk grain terminals along the Texas Gulf Coast owned by major exporters including Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, although the companies say the facilities were not severely damaged.

BNSF Railway and Union Pacific suspended service to the flood-ravaged region, depriving exporters of a fresh supply of grain. The U.S. Coast Guard closed Texas Gulf ports including Houston, Galveston and Corpus Christi.

“With additional flooding likely during the next few days, normal train flows in the area may not resume for an extended period,” BNSF said in a customer service advisory.

Cotton blown away

On cotton farms, more than 300,000 bales have likely been lost, between cotton yet to be harvested and bales sitting on fields awaiting ginning, according to John Robinson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University.

The loss, though a small part of the total U.S. cotton crop of about 20 million bales a year, was devastating for individual farmers.

“The cotton that was where the hurricane hit was affected by the winds, it was blown right off the plant. Some of those fields are obliterated,” Robinson said.

“Some of the cotton will still be on the plant but strung out like someone papered your field with toilet paper,” he said.

Record crop lost

South Texas and Coastal Bend cotton farmers were expecting a record crop this year. Thirteen of the counties in the disaster area are major cotton producers.

“The South Texas Cotton and Grain Association has preliminary crop losses projected at $150 million. That’s just devastating to all of farmers down there,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement.

Monday’s Intercontinental Commodity Exchange benchmark cotton price spiked 2.5 percent as a portion of the unharvested crop in Texas was destroyed or damaged by rain and high winds, traders said.

“The cooperative’s growers still have a lot of cotton in the field, maybe like 50 percent still out there. A lot of that will be lost because of the wind and rain,” said Jimmy Roppolo, general manager of United Agricultural Cooperative Inc in El Campo, Texas.

“It was the best cotton crop we ever raised. We really needed it this year to make up for other years,” Roppolo said.

 
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Food and beverage companies face the risk of forced labor in countries where they obtain sugarcane but most fall short in efforts to tackle the problem that threatens millions of workers, according to a study released on Tuesday.

Most of 10 companies studied offered only limited details of how they assess and monitor risks of forced labor in specific countries, and most of grievance procedures for workers are weak, said KnowTheChain (KTC), a partnership founded by U.S.-based Humanity United.

Sugarcane, a major agricultural commodity, can be found in a list of household foods and beverages from cereals to sauces and is often harvested by rural migrant workers with machetes who work long hours for low wages in hazardous conditions.

KTC said there is often little law enforcement and those workers are vulnerable to becoming victims of forced labor, especially by recruiters who deceive them about work and wages in other regions or countries.

“It is possible that the sugar in the cereal you ate for breakfast or the soda you drank at lunch was produced with forced labor,” said Kilian Moote, KnowTheChain project director, in a statement.

“Agricultural workers, particularly migrants, are at most risk of abuse.”

Sugarcane produced by forced labor has been found in Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Myanmar and Pakistan, according to a list published in 2016 by the U.S. government.

Risk Assessment?

Verite, a KTC partner, also found reports of debt bondage of sugarcane workers in India and found sugarcane workers in Guatemala at a high risk of trafficking.

Globally, about 21 million people are victims of forced labor, made to work for free after falling into debt or forced to work due to deception, coercion or threat of violence, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).

In Brazil, the world’s largest producer of sugarcane, roughly a half million people work cutting the crop, according to industry statistics.

The companies studied were Coca-Cola, Fomento Economico Mexicano S.A.B (FEMSA), Monster Beverage, PepsiCo, The Hershey Co., Mondelēz International, Nestlé, Archer Daniels Midland, Associated British Foods (ABF) and Wilmar International.

PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and ABF were the only four companies to undertake forced labor risk assessments of sugarcane supply chains in specific countries, the study said.

Coca-Cola has committed to conduct 28 country-level studies on child labor, forced labor, and land rights for its sugar supply chains by 2020, it said.

Most companies were lacking in revealing details of their risk assessment, monitoring and grievance procedures, it said.

“Few companies disclose information explaining how they address forced labor risks in specific countries, and, where they do, the information is typically focused on understanding and assessing risks, with limited information on concrete follow-up steps,” the researchers said.

Asked for a response, a Coca-Cola spokesman said the company provided detailed information to KTC.

“We believe the report speaks for itself,” a spokesman said, citing Coca-Cola’s policies on human and workplace rights posted on its website.

Contacted by email, none of other nine companies responded immediately to requests for comment.

The study compared policies and practices and used a questionnaire, to which eight of the 10 companies responded. ADM supplied only limited answers and Monster Beverage, a U.S. maker of energy drinks, did not respond, it said.

Coco-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé listed the countries they sourced from most, while Hershey, Mondelēz and Monster Beverage disclosed just one of their sugarcane-sourcing countries, it said.

ADM and Monster Beverage disclosed nothing about if or how they monitor working conditions in their sugarcane supply chains, it said.
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Oil traders were scrambling Tuesday to move crude and fuel supplies through ports in Louisiana as Tropical Storm Harvey barreled toward the state, threatening to close the last major oil terminals still operating on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Harvey pummeled the heart of the U.S. energy industry in Texas, dumping a record amount of rain and triggering catastrophic flooding in Houston. Harvey was the strongest storm to hit the state in more than 50 years, forcing operators to shut refineries, pipelines and ports.

Harvey was forecast to come ashore in western Louisiana near the Texas border on Wednesday. The region includes the St. James trading hub, with more than 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of refining capacity. It is also home of the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), the largest privately owned U.S. crude storage terminal.

Louisiana had become the last exit and entry point into refinery row on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Its ports import and export millions of bpd of crude and fuel. Texas and Louisiana are home to 45 percent of total U.S. refining capacity.

“Louisiana is open and being used as much as possible to discharge fuel and load exports,” a trader at a refinery said.

Prices spike

Other traders also said they were hurrying to take advantage of the closing window to import fuel into the U.S. Gulf as prices skyrocket. Prices in the region have risen as supply falls because of refinery closures.

According to Eikon shipping data, the Ridgebury Julia, a tanker carrying oil products, was diverted earlier this week. It was originally going to Corpus Christi, Texas. As of Tuesday, it changed its destination to New Orleans.

Buyers for Latin America, where many countries are heavily reliant on U.S. supplies, are trying to buy cargoes. Asian refiners are also keen to buy U.S. cargoes and concerned about delays of those they have already bought, shipping sources said.

The window for shipping is closing as conditions deteriorate and Harvey moves east toward refineries and ports in the state.

The prices in spot markets for gasoline in the Gulf have soared above benchmark prices in New York Harbor, according to Reuters data.

U.S. crude prices have fallen because refiners are processing less oil. That has pushed U.S. crude prices below prices for crude elsewhere, making it cheap for international refiners if they can still get a cargo out.

U.S. crude’s discount to London’s Brent futures grew Tuesday, touching the contract’s widest level of $5.90 a barrel.

Ports

A spokeswoman for LOOP declined to comment when asked about the level of interest in using the port in recent days.

In Texas, Shell was assessing the impact of Harvey, but a spokesman did not respond to a question about the status of its Sugarland terminal in St. James, used for crude exports.

On Monday, the Port of Corpus Christi Authority said it had restored power to several facilities and was working to return to normal operations next week. Transfers from one ship to another near the port have also been delayed, sources said.

Vessels moving in and out of Energy Transfer Partners’ Nederland terminal in Texas have been delayed, sources said.

An ETP spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on the terminal.

The Houston Ship Channel was shut, and the Port of Houston will remain closed Wednesday.

The backlog in unexported refined products will be a challenge to Texas Gulf Coast refiners, according to Sandy Fielden, an analyst at Morningstar.

Damage to roads and fuel stations may delay some refinery restarts, he said, because they would quickly run out of storage for fuel produced.
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The Middle East and North Africa region loses about $21 billion each year because of an inadequate supply of water and sanitation, the World Bank said Tuesday, warning that urgent action is needed to prevent ripple effects on stability and growth.

Poor management of water resources and sanitation in the world’s most water-scarce region costs about 1 percent of its annual gross domestic product, with conflict-hit states losing as much as 2 to 4 percent each year, the bank said in a report issued at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

Deaths due to unsafe water and sanitation in some parts of the region, particularly countries affected by conflict, are higher than the global average, it added.

“As the current conflict and migration crisis unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa shows, failure to address water challenges can have severe impacts on people’s well-being and political stability,” the report said.

Peril in Yemen

In Yemen, which is reeling from more than two years of conflict, water supply networks serving its largest cities are at risk of collapse due to war-inflicted damage and disrepair, and about 15 million people have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation, the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF) said in a separate statement Tuesday.

In Syria, where the conflict is well into its seventh year, water has frequently been used as “a weapon of war,” with pumps deliberately destroyed and water sources contaminated, and about 15 million people are in need of safe water, including an estimated 6.4 million children, UNICEF said.

Overall, 183 million people lack access to basic drinking water in countries affected by conflict, violence and instability around the world, it added.

Better management

With the urban population in the Middle East and North Africa expected to double by 2050 to nearly 400 million, a combination of policy, technology and water management tools should be used to improve the water situation, the World Bank report said.

“Water productivity — in other words, how much return you get for every drop of water used — in the Middle East in general is the lowest on average in the world,” said Anders Jägerskog, a specialist in water resources management at the World Bank and one of the report’s authors.

Middle Eastern and North African countries are using far more water than can be replenished, said the report.

To reverse the trend, technology and innovation are “essential but not enough,” Jägerskog told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Water governance — in particular, water tariffs and subsidies — must also be addressed, he said.

The region has the world’s lowest water tariffs and spends the highest proportion of GDP on public water subsidies. Such policies lead to excessive use of already scarce water supplies and are not sustainable, said Jägerskog.

Untreated wastewater

Another challenge is that more than half of the wastewater collected in the region is fed back into the environment untreated.

“Along with better water management, there is room for increasing the supply through nonconventional methods such as desalination and recycling,” Guangzhe Chen, senior director of the World Bank’s global water practice, said in a statement.

Improved water management could bring considerable financial returns, the report noted.

Governments could gain $10 billion annually by improving the storage and delivery of irrigation water to users, while increasing agricultural production by up to 8 percent, the report said.

Egypt, Syria and Iran — which have the largest proportion of irrigated land in the region — are the countries that could benefit most.
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