Football fans are watching the World Cup on multiple screens in bars, on their phones while they should be working, on TVs at home with their friends. One day, they could be following the action in 3D. Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a way to watch soccer games and other sporting matches as if you were in the stadium, by using augmented reality devices. Faiza Elmasry takes a look at the new technology in this report, narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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Month: July 2018
Temperatures around the world are rising as humans burn coal, oil and other fossil fuels for energy. Burning those fuels releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But it does more than that. CO2 is vital for plant growth. While having more of it sounds like a good thing, scientists are finding it is not always that simple. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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Jeff Bezos’ rocket company plans to charge passengers about $200,000 to $300,000 for its first trips into space next year, two people familiar with its plans told Reuters.
Potential customers and the aerospace industry have been eager to learn the cost of a ticket on Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle, to find out if it is affordable and whether the company can generate enough demand to make a profit on space tourism.
Executives at the company, started by Amazon.com Inc founder Bezos in 2000, told a business conference last month they planned test flights with passengers on the New Shepard soon, and to start selling tickets next year.
The company, based about 20 miles (32 km) south of Seattle, has made public the general design of the vehicle — comprising a launch rocket and detachable passenger capsule — but has been tight-lipped on production status and ticket prices.
Blue Origin representatives did not respond to requests for comment on its programs and pricing strategy. Bezos said in May ticket prices had not yet been decided.
One Blue Origin employee with first-hand knowledge of the pricing plan said the company will start selling tickets in the range of about $200,000 to $300,000. A second employee said tickets would cost a minimum of $200,000. They both spoke on condition of anonymity as the pricing strategy is confidential.
The New Shepard is designed to autonomously fly six passengers more than 62 miles (100 km) above Earth into suborbital space, high enough to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet before the pressurized capsule returns to Earth under parachutes.
The capsule features six observation windows Blue Origin says are nearly three times as tall as those on a Boeing Co 747 jetliner.
Blue Origin has completed eight test flights of the vertical takeoff and landing of New Shepard from its launch pad in Texas, but none with passengers aboard. Two flights have included a test dummy the company calls “Mannequin Skywalker.”
The company will do the first test in space of its capsule escape system, which propels the crew to safety should the booster explode, “within weeks,” one of the employees said.
Small step for a man
Blue Origin, whose Latin motto means “step by step, ferociously,” is working toward making civilian space flight an important niche in the global space economy, alongside satellite services and government exploration projects, already worth over $300 billion a year.
Bezos, the world’s richest person with a fortune of about $112 billion, has competition from fellow billionaires Richard Branson and Elon Musk, Tesla Inc’s chief executive.
Branson’s Virgin Galactic says it has sold about 650 tickets aboard its own planned space voyages, but has not set out a date for flights to start. The company is charging $250,000 per ticket, in line with Blue Origin’s proposed pricing.
SpaceX, founded by Musk in 2002, says its ultimate goal is to enable people to live on other planets.
All three are looking to slash the cost of spaceflight by developing reusable spacecraft, meaning prices for passengers and payloads should drop as launch frequency increases.
While Blue Origin has not disclosed its per-flight operating costs, Teal Group aerospace analyst Marco Caceres estimated each flight could cost the firm about $10 million. With six passengers per trip, that would mean losing millions of dollars per launch, at least initially.
Three sources said Blue’s first passengers are likely to include its own employees, though the company has not selected them yet.
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President Donald Trump’s criticism of Germany’s involvement in a natural gas pipeline deal with Russia launched a tense two days of NATO meetings in Brussels — but it also may have set the tone for the U.S. leader’s highly anticipated summit with his Russian counterpart Monday in Helsinki.
In a taut exchange with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday, Trump said Nord Stream 2 — an offshore pipeline that would deliver gas to Germany directly from Russia via the Baltic Sea — leaves the Western military alliance’s largest and wealthiest European member “totally controlled” by and “captive to” Russia.
“We’re supposed to protect you against Russia but [Germany is] paying billions of dollars to Russia, and I think that’s very inappropriate,” Trump told Stoltenberg.
According to the U.S. leader, Germany “got rid of their coal plants, got rid of their nuclear, they’re getting so much of the oil and gas from Russia. I think it’s something NATO has to look at.”
As Europe’s biggest natural gas consumer, Germany relies on Russia for roughly half of its gas imports, which account for 20 percent of its current energy mix, according to London-based Marex Spectron group. The International Energy Association projects German natural gas demand to increase by 1 percent in the next five years, as Berlin continues phasing out its nuclear power plants by 2022.
Expanding upon the existing Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which has been transporting gas from Russia to Germany along the same Baltic Sea route since 2011, Nord Stream 2, currently slated for completion by 2019, would roughly double Russia’s export volume.
Trump says the $11 billion, 800-mile pipeline expansion linking Russia and Germany would give Moscow greater geopolitical leverage over Europe at a time of heightened international tensions, an opinion in keeping with that of his his immediate predecessor, former President Barack Obama, and former President George W. Bush, who opposed Nord Stream 1.
The administrations have long pushed for Germany, Europe’s largest energy consumer, to buy American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in an attempt to overtake a sector of the market long dominated by Russian distribution routes that run through Ukraine.
Poland and Lithuania, who are among Nord Stream 2’s most vociferous European critics, have built LNG terminals that would stand to profit from an American takeover of the market. But other former Soviet satellite nations — such as Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia — have long warned that a growing reliance on Russian energy not only compromises European security, but rewards Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and other campaigns to destabilize the European Union.
There have been numerous price disputes between Moscow and Kyiv over natural gas deliveries to Ukraine, whose pipelines serve other European nations. In 2009, a disagreement between the two nations cut natural gas supplies to Western Europe in the middle of winter, leaving many without heat.
Nord Stream 2, they argue, will not only deprive land-transit countries such as Poland and Ukraine of billions in annual transit fees, it will also give Russia a way to penalize Eastern European foes without sacrificing lucrative deals further to the west.
According to Atlantic Council energy expert Agnia Grigas, Nord Stream 2 contradicts the EU’s official energy security strategy, which calls on EU nations to diversify energy sources, distributors and routes.
“If Nord Stream 2 is built, Germany would be the EU country most exposed to dubious Russian influence,” Grigas recently reported. “Moscow already has a track record of relying on German businesses and lawmakers to advance its own strategic goals. For instance, following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, large German companies with considerable business ties with Russia were among the harshest critics of Western sanctions against Moscow.”
As a private project backed by energy giants such as Shell — a British-Dutch multinational — Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper, along with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, Nord Stream 2 is also being financed by private firms from Austria, France and Britain, but not by German tax funds.
In responding to Trump’s Wednesday tirade against Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she knew all too well from her childhood in the East what it is like to live under Soviet control. But she said energy deals with Russia do not make 21st-century Berlin beholden to Moscow.
“I am very happy that today we are united in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of that, we can say that we can make our independent policies and make independent decisions,” she said.
Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, a longtime friend of Putin, has championed the Nord Stream enterprise since just before being voted out of office in 2005. He soon went on to lead the shareholder committee of Nord Stream AG, a consortium for construction and operation of the submarine pipeline, eventually going on to become chairman of the Kremlin-controlled Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company.
In March, European politicians increased calls for sanctions against the ex-chancellor for representing Russian interests, though his name has yet to appear on any lists of individuals targeted for sanctions.
Despite repeated U.S. warnings that companies involved in the deal also risk being slapped with sanctions, Nord Stream 2 is scheduled for completion next year.
This story originated in VOA’s Russian service.
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Scientists have announced a new finding about the source of a high-energy neutrino, a subatomic particle detected at an observatory at the Earth’s South Pole.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, details the work of more than 1,000 scientists who pooled their research on the tiny particles, which are able to pass through matter in a straight line — like a ghost.
The neutrino’s ability to travel without deviation from its course means its source can be accurately tracked, unlike other types of subatomic particles that can be dragged off course by a magnetic field like the Earth’s.
“[Neutrinos are] very clean, they have simple interactions, and that means every single neutrino interaction tells you something,” said Heidi Schellman, a particle physicist at Oregon State University.
The scientists used a large observatory known as IceCube, in use since 2010, to hunt for neutrinos and try to track the source. A group of neutrinos coming from the same location over the past couple of years was determined to have emanated from a blazar, or black hole that aims a jet of radiation at Earth. The black hole is estimated to have been in a distant galaxy that destructed four billion years ago.
The blazar that is considered the source of the neutrino was named TXS 0506+056 and is believed to be the first known source of a high-energy neutrino.
The discovery could be a breakthrough for multimessenger astronomy, where scientists look at the entire electromagnetic spectrum and pool their findings, using known relationships between types of electromagnetic particles to put together a larger picture.
“It is an entirely new means for us to learn about the cosmos,” Roopesh Ojha of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center told The Washington Post.
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The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday that it would appeal a federal judge’s approval of AT&T Inc.’s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner.
The Justice Department opted in June not to seek an immediate stay of the court’s approval of the merger, allowing the merger to close on June 14. The department still had 60 days to appeal the decision.
The government’s court filing did not disclose on what ground it intended to challenge the approval.
AT&T and the Justice Department did not immediately comment.
AT&T shares fell 1 percent after the bell.
The merger, announced in October 2016, was opposed by President Donald Trump. AT&T was sued by the Justice Department but won approval from a judge to move forward with the deal in June following a six-week trial.
Judge Richard Leon of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the tie-up between AT&T’s wireless and satellite businesses and Time Warner’s movies and television shows was legal under antitrust law.
The Justice Department had argued the deal would harm consumers.
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Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who was detained for three months in an anti-corruption campaign under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pledged support on Thursday for the young leader’s program of sweeping reforms.
“I was honored to meet with my brother HRH the Crown Prince and to discuss economic matters and the private sector’s future &; role in #Vision2030 success,” he tweeted with a photograph of the royal cousins embracing in front of a desk.
It is the first publicly disclosed meeting between the two men since the anti-corruption crackdown was launched in November.
“I shall be one of the biggest supporters of the Vision through @Kingdom_KHC &; all its affiliates,” Prince Alwaleed added, referring to his international investment company.
Vision 2030 is Prince Mohammed’s scheme to wean the world’s top crude exporter off oil revenues and open up Saudis’ cloistered lifestyles. The corruption sweep alarmed the Saudi business community as well as international investors the kingdom is courting to support the reforms.
Prince Alwaleed, the kingdom’s most recognised business figure, was freed in January after being held at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel along with scores of royals, senior officials and businessmen, most of whom reached financial settlements with the authorities.
He said in March he had cut a deal but declined to disclose the details. He said he was in discussions with the Public Fund, the sovereign wealth fund chaired by the crown prince, about making joint investments inside the kingdom. He previously told Reuters that he was innocent and expected to keep full control of his firm.
In the absence of more information, speculation has run rampant about whether Prince Alwaleed secured his freedom by forfeiting part of his fortune — once estimated by Forbes magazine at $17 billion — or stood up to authorities and won.
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Britain’s government is nearing a decision to buy four to six surveillance planes built by U.S. aerospace giant Boeing, sources familiar with the plans said Thursday — a move that could stir a growing debate over U.K. and European defense jobs.
The contract to replace its six aging E-3D Sentry airborne early warning (AWACS) planes with a fleet of Boeing E-7 Wedgetail jets would, if confirmed, be worth over $1 billion.
But the decision, which could be announced in coming weeks, is likely to anger some U.K. lawmakers who have called for a full competition, and may also spark formal protests by European defense companies keen for the business.
Airbus, which is said to be teaming up with Sweden’s Saab to offer an alternative, is anxious to try to prevent the deal being awarded without a competition and does not rule out mounting a legal challenge, a person close to the matter said.
A spokesman for Britain’s defense ministry said, “We tender contracts competitively wherever appropriate. It is too early to comment further at this time.” Boeing and Airbus had no immediate comment.
The decision over whether to order the equipment from the United States or to look to continental Europe reflects broader divisions over Britain’s external relations after it leaves the European Union, with thousands of high-tech jobs at stake.
U.S. President Donald Trump, whose support is vital as Britain seeks to forge new trade deals outside the European Union, extolled the benefits of buying from U.S. arms firms including Boeing after a NATO summit on Thursday.
But Airbus, which recently clashed with the U.K. government over delays in negotiating Brexit, is expected to defend a European solution based on its A330 jetliner and Saab’s Erieye radar and will argue Boeing trade actions put U.K. jobs at risk.
“It would mean the U.K. is no longer a trustworthy place to do business,” a person close to the company said.
The chairman of the British parliament’s defense committee this month posted a letter dated June 26 to the procurement minister, arguing that open competition would save money.
Boeing’s supporters say the E-7A planes — based on the 737 jetliner and already in use by Australia, South Korea and Turkey — would speed delivery to the UK military, which had deferred purchases to devote resources to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Boeing is willing to offer U.K. firms a significant share of work on the program, one of the sources said. It would fly 737 jetliners to the U.K. and allow firms there to do work needed to turn them into airborne surveillance and command assets.
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Is your dorm room stifling hot? That might impact your memory.
New research shows that heat can affect even healthy young adults intellectually, with worse cognitive performance observed in students who slept in a non-air-conditioned room during a heat wave.
Researchers from Harvard University recruited 24 students who slept with air-conditioning and 20 who slept in rooms without AC before, during and after a Boston-area heat wave.
They recorded temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide and noise in each bedroom throughout the study.
The indoor temperature of the non-air-conditioned dorm averaged 26.3 C (79.3 F) compared with 21.4 C (70.5 F) in the dorm with air-conditioning.
Each participant wore an activity monitor to measure heart rate, perspiration and sleep quality. When the students woke up each morning, they were tested for how quickly and accurately they completed two cognitive tests that measured memory and reaction.
Researchers also noted how much water and caffeine the students consumed, and how long they spent outdoors each day.
After 12 days, researchers were surprised by the data.
“We found very significant effect of detrimental cognitive function among those students that didn’t have air-conditioning during this heat wave period,” said lead author Jose Guillermo Cedeno Laurent of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The students who didn’t have air-conditioning performed significantly worse on the basic cognitive tests. In particular, going without AC during a heat wave hurt their reaction time when they had to make quick judgments.
“Their study really demonstrated that exposure to heat can have all these potential effects on people’s daily activities,” said Daisy Chang, an organizational psychologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
“A whole host of reasons could potentially explain this exposure effect,” Chang noted. “It’s not necessarily directly exposure to heat. [The heat] could have affected their sleep quality so they’re less rested, they have less energy, or mental resources, or ability to focus.”
The dorms without AC were louder at night because of fan and street noise, which could have disrupted sleep.
And while air-conditioned rooms can hold higher levels of carbon dioxide, which can have a negative impact on cognition, the students slept better in a cooler room.
“We find that heatwaves are impacting us all,” Cedeno said. “These … extend to those like the young and healthy university students. And that we find significant effects on the way they think – their cognitive functions.”
Extreme heat exposure is the biggest killer of all climate phenomena in the United States, killing 7,000 people between 1999 and 2010. Previous research focused on how hot weather affects at-risk populations like the elderly and the very young. And 2016 was the hottest year on record for the past 200 years.
The Turkish lira recovered some losses Thursday hours after it hit record lows. New Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law, sought to reassure nervous markets that the central bank’s independence was not in question.
The wild currency gyrations following Albayrak’s appointment underscore concerns over what economic policy Erdogan will adhere to now that he has consolidated power following his June re-election.
The lira approached five to the dollar late Wednesday in a nearly 30 percent depreciation since the beginning of the year.
The heavy decline is a result of worries over Erdogan’s economic expansion policy.
Although growth has soared more than 7 percent, inflation has surpassed 15 percent — a 15-year high — while the current deficit has widened to more than 6 percent of national income.
Analysts say after the June election, key ministers led investors to believe Erdogan would adopt austerity measures to rein in inflation. They are concerned the president, with the appointment of his son-in-law, may be seeking more control over monetary issues while excluding two prominent government figures from any say on policy.
“The two faces of market-friendly policies, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek and Finance Minister Naci Agbal, are being excluded from policymaking roles,” economist Inan Demir of Nomura International Securities said.
“Before the elections,” he continued, “Agbal and Simsek had been talking to investors before the election, promising a return to orthodoxy that would generate a cooldown in the economy. The appointment of his son-in-law [Berat Albayrak] as the economy czar, would lead many investors to believe Erdogan will take tighter control of the economy, which would essentially annul promises of Agbal and Simsek.”
Agbal and Simsek are credited with persuading Erdogan to agree to an emergency hike in interest rates in May to protect the lira after steep falls. The Turkish president subscribes to the unorthodox view that low interest rates curb inflation, describing high interest rates as “the mother and father of all evils.”
Erdogan unnerved markets Tuesday by declaring his belief that “we will see interest rates fall in the period ahead.” Investors say any interest rate reduction would result in the total collapse of the currency, and that further increases are needed to secure the lira.
In a move to calm investors, Albayrak Thursday pledged to cut inflation, saying structural reform and fiscal discipline would be enforced, and he guaranteed the central bank’s independence. His statement saw the lira bounce back slightly.
Words, though, might not be enough. “It depends on how Albayrak will act really,” economist Demir said. “It’s possible if he manages to reassure the markets by actions, then the sell-off can subside. Otherwise, we will see an ongoing fall in lira assets going forward.”
Analysts warn there is skepticism about whether Albayrak will follow through on his commitment to fiscal discipline. Erdogan’s re-election campaign centered on the promise to continue with massive public construction projects and opposition to interest rate increases.
Political considerations
Political analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source partners suggests that political considerations could outweigh economic concerns.
“Something needs to be done. And the traditional recipe is belt-tightening and structural reforms in the traditional sense, to curtail domestic demand,” he said. “The challenge there is not that Erdogan is incapable of signing off for such a recipe. He is facing local elections in March 2019, which are extremely important, and the voters need to be fed, and that is the opposite of what the traditional recipe requires.”
A critical test of the direction Erdogan might choose will come at a July 24 meeting of the central bank. “If the central bank cannot find an opportunity to hike, the markets will take it very badly,” Demir said.
The failure of the central bank to act likely would increase worries about the introduction of capital controls to restrict money from leaving Turkey in a bid to protect the lira.
Demir said such a move would be counterproductive as it would end much of the international investment. Turkey needs to borrow about $5 billion monthly to cover the difference between its imports and exports.
As speculation rises over the threat of capital controls, Demir acknowledged investors now are asking about the risk of such a move. Pressure for decisive action by the central bank at its meeting July 24 is seen as critical to stemming the risk of an investor stampede out of the Turkish market.
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Suspiciously cheap diamonds, jeans for a dollar and a pair of skis for next to nothing are all bargains that can be found at a store in a small Alabama town that sells are the contents of lost airline baggage. Every year airline companies lose about 20 million suitcases, and while most of them do find their way back to their owners, thousands of bags are never picked up. As Daria Dieguts found out, some of these lost items end up at the lost baggage store in Alabama.
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From mutton soup to caviar to veal tongue, Russian gastronomy is now being enjoyed by football fans from around the world who are in Russia for the World Cup. We get more from VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
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Pangolins are the world’s most illegally trafficked animal. Eight species of the elusive mammals are found in Africa and Southeast Asia, but as many as 300 are poached every day, destined for markets in Vietnam and China, where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales believed to have medicinal properties. Researchers in the UK are hoping to deter pangolin poaching with fingerprint technology that’s designed to identify poachers and bring them to justice. VOA’s Julie Taboh explains.
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Forty years ago this month, the first test-tube baby was born in what is now called in vitro fertilization. British baby Louise Brown was born July 25, 1978. She’s married now with two children who were born naturally. A new exhibition at the Science Museum in London is showcasing the anniversary and the technological advances achieved through in vitro fertilization. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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India has emerged as the most dangerous country in the world for women, according to a survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The survey is a repeat of one conducted by the foundation in 2011, which rated India as the fourth most dangerous country for women, after Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan. The survey is not well received by the Indian government or field experts who have raised questions about the survey’s methodology. Ritul Joshi has more from New Delhi.
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Plans to launch the first NASA astronauts since 2011 to the International Space Station from the United States look set to be delayed due to incomplete safety measures and accountability holes in the agency’s commercial crew program, according to a federal report released on Wednesday.
SpaceX and Boeing Co are the two main contractors selected under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s commercial crew program to send U.S. astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Dragon and Starliner spacecraft respectively.
But the report from the Government Accountability Office said the issues could cause delays in the launch of the first crewed mission from U.S. soil by a private company and could result in a nine-month gap in which no U.S. astronauts inhabit the ISS.
“Boeing and SpaceX continue to make progress developing their crew transportation systems, but both contractors have further delayed the certification milestone to early 2019,” the report said.
“Without a viable contingency option for ensuring uninterrupted access to the ISS in the event of further commercial crew delays, we concluded that NASA was at risk of not being able to maximize the return on its multibillion dollar investment in the space station,” it added.
Test flights set for this year
Boeing said it was aiming for test flights this year. “Boeing is working with NASA to ensure that the CST-100 Starliner flies at the earliest time it is safe to do so,”
Boeing senior spokesman Jerry Drelling told Reuters in an email. Officials with SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies, and NASA could not immediately be reached to comment.
In 2014, SpaceX and Boeing respectively received $2.6 billion and $4.2 billion contracts to build crew transportation systems under the commercial crew program, NASA’s flagship campaign to use the private sector for ISS missions.
In the report, NASA said it was working closely with its commercial partners to resolve the issues and was developing contingency plans in case of further delays.
Safety first
Before SpaceX and Boeing can launch the astronauts they must demonstrate their crew systems are safe for human spaceflight, according to NASA.
The GAO said it is tracking potential safety risks on the private companies’ crew capsules, including a Boeing Starliner abort system meant to eject the capsule from a hazardous rocket explosion, and a since-upgraded fuel valve on SpaceX’s Falcon rocket that triggered a costly 2016 launchpad explosion.
Since 2011, NASA has bought seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft months in advance to send U.S. astronauts to the space station from launchpads in Kazakhstan. U.S. launches before 2011 were handled by NASA.
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President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser H.R. McMaster has signed a book deal.
Battlegrounds will cover the retired lieutenant general’s 34-year military career and his time in the Trump administration.
The book is expected to be released in 2020, when Trump is expected to run for a second term in office.
McMaster had a tumultuous one year on Trump’s staff. He was picked to replace Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign after it was revealed that he’d lied about his dealings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
McMaster resigned in March and was replaced by John Bolton.
The book is expected to take a harsher view of the administration than books by former Trump staffers Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci.
Publisher Harper Collins released a statement by McMaster in which he said he was “looking forward to researching and writing about the greatest challenges to the free world and how we can work together with like-minded nations to seize opportunities, defeat threats to security and preserve our way of life.”
Battlegrounds will be the second book by McMaster, who in 1997 wrote Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.
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The acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency plans to keep cutting anti-pollution rules and regulations on industry.
Andrew Wheeler held his first meeting with EPA employees Wednesday after taking over the job for Scott Pruitt, who resigned last week amid allegations of ethics violations.
Wheeler, like Pruitt and President Donald Trump, believes the nation’s air and water can still be protected without what they say are job-killing regulations and pollution standards on industry.
Wheeler said the EPA would make cleaning up Superfund industrial waste sites and investing in water infrastructure priorities.
He promised to listen to all voices within the agency. “I value your input and your feedback, and you will find me and my team ready to listen,” Wheeler told staffers.
Wheeler also said he was proud of his work as a coal industry lobbyist — something that has attracted criticism from environmentalists and some Democrats. He said some people use the term “coal lobbyist” in a derogatory manner, but that he had nothing to be ashamed of.
Wheeler’s lobbying efforts primarily focused on better health care, pensions and benefits for retired coal miners.
Trump will nominate a new EPA chief in the coming months, and that person must meet Senate approval. Wheeler has said he is not interested in the job permanently.
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