Day: October 10, 2018

Canada Prepares for Legalized Marijuana

Mat Beren and his friends used to drive by the vast greenhouses of southern British Columbia and joke about how much weed they could grow there.

Years later, it’s no joke. The tomato and pepper plants that once filled some of those greenhouses have been replaced with a new cash crop: marijuana. Beren and other formerly illicit growers are helping cultivate it. The buyers no longer are unlawful dealers or dubious medical dispensaries; it’s the Canadian government.

On Oct. 17, Canada becomes the second and largest country with a legal national marijuana marketplace. Uruguay launched legal sales last year, after several years of planning.

It’s a profound social shift promised by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and fueled by a desire to bring the black market into a regulated, taxed system after nearly a century of prohibition.

It also stands in contrast to the United States, where the federal government outlaws marijuana while most states allow medical or recreational use for people 21 and older. Canada’s national approach has allowed for unfettered industry banking, inter-province shipments of cannabis, online ordering, postal delivery and billions of dollars in investment; national prohibition in the U.S. has stifled greater industry expansion there.

Hannah Hetzer, who tracks international marijuana policy for the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, called Canada’s move “extremely significant,” given that about 25 countries have already legalized the medical use of marijuana or decriminalized possession of small amounts of pot. A few, including Mexico, have expressed an interest in regulating recreational use.

“It’s going to change the global debate on drug policy,” she said. “There’s no other country immediately considering legalizing the nonmedical use of cannabis, but I think Canada will provide almost the permission for other countries to move forward.”

At least 109 legal pot shops are expected to open across the nation of 37 million people next Wednesday, with many more to come, according to an Associated Press survey of the provinces. For now, they’ll offer dried flower, capsules, tinctures and seeds, with sales of marijuana-infused foods and concentrates expected to begin next year.

Overseeing distribution

The provinces are tasked with overseeing marijuana distribution. For some, including British Columbia and Alberta, that means buying cannabis from licensed producers, storing it in warehouses and then shipping it to retail shops and online customers. Others, like Newfoundland, are having growers ship directly to stores or through the mail.

Federal taxes will total $1 per gram or 10 percent, whichever is more. The feds will keep one-fourth of that and return the rest to the provinces, which can add their own markups. Consumers also will pay local sales taxes.

Some provinces have chosen to operate their own stores, like state-run liquor stores in the U.S., while others have OK’d private outlets. Most are letting residents grow up to four plants at home.

Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, won’t have any stores open until next April, after the new conservative government scrapped a plan for state-owned stores in favor of privately run shops. Until then, the only legal option for Ontario residents will be mail delivery — a prospect that didn’t sit well with longtime pot fan Ryan Bose, 48, a Lyft driver.

“Potheads are notoriously very impatient. When they want their weed, they want their weed,” he said after buying a half-ounce at an illicit medical marijuana dispensary in Toronto. “Waiting one or two three days for it by mail, I’m not sure how many will want to do that.”

British Columbia, home of the “B.C. Bud” long cherished by American pot connoisseurs, has had a prevalent marijuana culture since the 1970s, after U.S. draft-dodgers from the Vietnam War settled on Vancouver Island and in the province’s southeastern mountains. But a change in government last year slowed cannabis distribution plans there, too, and it will have just one store ready next Wednesday: a state-run shop in Kamloops, a few hours’ drive northeast of Vancouver. By contrast, Alberta expects to open 17 next week and 250 within a year.

Unlawful operations

No immediate crackdown is expected for the dozens of illicit-but-tolerated medical marijuana dispensaries operating in British Columbia, though officials eventually plan to close any without a license. Many are expected to apply for private retail licenses, and some have sued, saying they have a right to remain open.

British Columbia’s ministry of public safety is forming a team of 44 inspectors to root out unlawful operations, seize product and issue fines. They’ll have responsibility for a province of 4.7 million people and an area twice as large as California, where the black market still dwarfs the legal market that arrived in January.

Chris Clay, a longtime Canadian medical marijuana activist, runs Warmland Centre dispensary in an old shopping mall in Mill Bay, on Vancouver Island. He is closing the store Monday until he gets a license; he feared continuing to operate post-legalization would jeopardize his chances. Some of his eight staff members will likely have to file for unemployment benefits in the meantime.

“That will be frustrating, but overall I’m thrilled,” Clay said. “I’ve been waiting decades for this.”

Licensed growers

The federal government has licensed 120 growers, some of them enormous. Canopy Growth, which recently received an investment of $4 billion from Constellation Brands, whose holdings include Corona beer, Robert Mondavi wines and Black Velvet whiskey, is approved for 5.6 million square feet (520,000 square meters) of production space across Canada. Its two biggest greenhouses are near the U.S. border in British Columbia.

Beren, a 23-year cannabis grower, is a Canopy consultant.

“We used to joke around all the time when we’d go to Vancouver and drive by the big greenhouses on the highway,” he said. “Like, ‘Oh man, someday. It’d be so awesome if we could grow cannabis in one of these greenhouses.’ We drive by now, and we’re like, ‘Oh, we’re here.”‘

Next to Canopy’s greenhouse in Delta is another huge facility, Pure Sunfarms, a joint venture between a longtime tomato grower, Village Farms International, and a licensed medical marijuana producer, Emerald Health Therapeutics. Workers pulled out the remaining tomato plants last winter and got to work renovating the greenhouse as a marijuana farm, installing equipment that includes lights and accordion-shaped charcoal vents to control the plant’s odor. By 2020, the venture expects to move more than 165,000 pounds (75,000 kg) of bud per year.

Some longtime illegal growers who operate on a much smaller scale worry they won’t get licensed or will get steamrolled by much larger producers. Provinces can issue “micro-producer” licenses. But in British Columbia, where small-time pot growers helped sustain rural economies as the mining and forestry industries cratered, the application period hasn’t opened yet.

Sarah Campbell of the Craft Cannabis Association of BC said many small operators envision a day when they can host visitors who can tour their operations and sample the product, as wineries do.

Officials say they intend to accommodate craft growers but first need to ensure there is enough cannabis to meet demand when legalization arrives. Hiccups are inevitable, they say, and tweaks will be needed.

“Leaving it to each province to decide what’s best for their communities and their citizens is something that’s good,” said Gene Makowsky, the Saskatchewan minister who oversees the province’s Liquor and Gaming Authority. “We’ll be able to see if each law is successful or where we can do better in certain areas.”

British Columbia safety minister Mike Farnworth said he learned two primary lessons by visiting Oregon and Washington, U.S. states with recreational marijuana. One was not to look at the industry as an immediate cash cow, as it will take time to displace the black market. The other was to start with relatively strict regulations and then loosen them as needed, because it’s much harder to tighten them after the fact.

Legalization will be a process more than a date, Farnworth said.

“Oct. 17th is actually not going to look much different than it does today,” he said.

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Dow Drops 800-Plus Points as US Stocks Dip Sharply

U.S. stocks posted their worst loss since February on Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average finishing the day down more than 800 points.

The losses were widespread as bond yields remained high after steep increases last week. Companies that have been the biggest winners on the market the last few years, including technology companies and retailers, suffered steep declines.

The Dow gave up nearly 828 points, or 3.15 percent, to 25,600. The Nasdaq composite, which has a high concentration of technology stocks, tumbled 316 points, or 4.1 percent, to 7,422.

The S&P 500 index sank 95 points, or 3.3 percent, to 2,786, its fifth straight drop. That hasn’t happened since right before the 2016 presidential election. Every one of the 11 S&P 500 sectors finished down for the day.

Microsoft dropped 5.4 percent to $106.16. Amazon skidded 6.2 percent to $1,755.25. Industrial and internet companies also fell hard. Boeing lost 4.7 percent to $367.47 and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, gave up 5 percent to $1,081.22.

After a long stretch of relative calm, the stock market has suffered sharp losses over the last week as bond yields surged.

Squeezed margins

Gina Martin Adams, the chief equity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, said investors are concerned about the big increase in yields, which makes it more expensive to borrow money. She said they also fear that company profit margins will be squeezed by rising costs, including the price of oil.

Paint and coatings maker PPG gave a weak third-quarter forecast Monday, while earlier, Pepsi and Conagra’s quarterly reports reflected increased expenses.

“Both companies highlighted rising costs, not only input costs but increasing operating expenses [and] marketing expenses,” she said.

Insurance companies dropped as Hurricane Michael continued to gather strength and came ashore in Florida bringing winds of up to 155 mph. Berkshire Hathaway dipped 4.8 percent to $213.10 and reinsurer Everest Re slid 5.1 percent to $217.73.

Luxury retailers tumbled. Tiffany plunged 10.2 percent to $110.38 and Ralph Lauren fell 8.4 percent to $116.96.

The biggest driver for the market over the last week has been interest rates, which began spurting higher following several encouraging reports on the economy. Higher rates can slow economic growth, erode corporate profits and make investors less willing to pay high prices for stocks. 

The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 3.22 percent from 3.20 percent late Tuesday after earlier touching 3.24 percent. It was at just 3.05 percent early last week.

Technology and internet-based companies are known for their high profit margins, and many have reported explosive growth in recent years, with corresponding gains in their stock prices. Adams, of Bloomberg Intelligence, said investors have concerns about their future profitability, too.

That’s helped make technology stocks more volatile in the last few months.

“As stocks go up, tech goes up more than the stock market. As stocks go down, tech goes down more than the stock market,” she said.

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Australia to Stick with Coal Despite Dire UN Climate Warning

Australia is rejecting the latest U.N. report on climate change, insisting coal remains critical to energy security and lowering household power bills.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its report released Monday that global greenhouse gas emissions must reach zero by the middle of the century to stop global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The authors warned that if warming was allowed to reach two degrees, the world would be on course toward uncontrollable temperatures.

They made special mention of coal, insisting that its use for power generation would have to fall to between zero and two percent of current usage.

The report has received a lukewarm response by Australia’s center-right government. It has said it has no intention of scaling back fossil fuel production because without coal, household power bills would soar.

Canberra also insists it is on target to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement, which attempts to unite every nation under a single accord to tackle climate change for the first time ever.

Australia earns billions of dollars exporting coal to China and other parts of Asia, while it generates more than 60 percent of domestic electricity.

Australia’s Environment Minister Melissa Price believes the IPCC report exaggerates the threat posed by fossil fuel.

“Coal does form a very important part of the Australian energy mixer and we make no apology for the fact that our focus at the moment is on getting electricity prices down,” Price said. “Every year, there is new technology with respect to coal and what its contribution is to emissions. So, you know, to say that it has got to be phased out by 2050 is drawing a very long bow.”

Australia has some of the world’s highest per capita rates of greenhouse gas pollution. A recent government report showed a failure to reduce levels of greenhouse gas pollution. The survey said that between January and March this year, Australia had its most elevated levels of carbon pollution since 2011.

Conservationists argue Australia is doing too little to protect itself from the predicted ravages of a shifting climate.

Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent. Scientists warn that droughts, floods, heat waves, brush fires and storms will become more intense as temperatures rise, with potentially disastrous consequences for human health and the environment, including the Great Barrier Reef.

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Google’s Waze Expands Carpooling Service Throughout US

Google will begin offering its pay-to-carpool service throughout the U.S., an effort to reduce the commute-time congestion that its popular Waze navigation app is designed to avoid.

The expansion announced Wednesday builds upon a carpooling system that Waze began testing two years ago in northern California and Israel before gradually extending it into Brazil and parts of 12 other states.

Now it will be available to anyone in the U.S.

Drivers willing to give someone a ride for a small fee to cover some of their costs for gas and other expenses need only Waze’s app on their phone. Anyone willing to pay a few bucks to hitch a ride will need to install a different Waze app focused on carpooling.

About 1.3 million drivers and passengers have signed up for Waze’s carpooling service, the company says. About 30 million people in the U.S. currently rely on the Waze app for directions; it has 110 million users worldwide.

Waze’s carpooling effort has been viewed as a potential first step for Google to mount a challenge to the two top ride-hailing services, Uber and Lyft.

But Waze founder and CEO Noam Bardin rejected that notion in an interview with The Associated Press, insisting that the carpooling service is purely an attempt to ease traffic congestion.

“We don’t want to be a professional driving network,” Bardin said. “We see ride sharing as something that needs to become part of the daily commute. If we can’t get people out of their cars, it won’t be solving anything.”

Gartner analyst Mike Ramsey also sees Waze’s service as a bigger threat to other carpooling apps such as Scoop and Carpool Buddy than to Uber and Lyft. “Carpooling is a much different animal,” he said.

It’s a form of transportation that Bardin said Waze had difficulty figuring out. Early on, Waze tried to get more drivers to sign up by emphasizing the economic benefits of having someone help cover gas costs for a trip that they were going to make anyway.

But earlier this year, Waze realized it needed a better formula for connecting strangers willing to ride together in a car. Many women, for instance, only want to ride with other women, Bardin said, while other people enjoy commuting with others who work for the same employer or live in the same neighborhood.

“Carpooling is a more social experience,” Bardin said. “A lot of time those of us working in the digital world forget that social connections are often the most important thing in the real world.”

Waze’s app still sets a price for each carpooling trip and transfers payments without charging a commission. That’s something Waze can afford to do because Google makes so much money from selling digital ads on Waze and its many other services.

The carpooling fees are supposed to be similar to what it would cost to take a train or type of public transportation to work, Bardin said. Drivers and riders can agree to adjust the price upward or downward, but the fees can never exceed the rate the Internal Revenue Service allows for business-related mileage — currently 54.5 cents per mile.

Even though Waze’s carpooling service doesn’t appear to be driven by profit motive, Ramsey isn’t convinced that will always be the case. “I do think Google is realizing that it can’t just keep making all its money from selling ads,” he said.

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Cardi B, Post Malone Won’t Compete For New Artist Grammy

Cardi B and Post Malone marked major breakthroughs in the last year, but the rap stars won’t compete for best new artist at the 2019 Grammy Awards.

Cardi B, who earned two nominations at this year’s Grammys held in February, was not eligible for nomination because of her previous nominations. The Grammys, which has adjusted the rules of best new artist over the years to keep up with the changing musical landscape, state that “any artist with a previous Grammy nomination as a performer” would not qualify. If Cardi B had not released an album around the time she earned her first pair of nominations for “Bodak Yellow,” she could have qualified. But because she had enough music to be eligible for best new artist at the 2018 show and earned prior nominations, she was not qualified to enter the category.

A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to publicly discuss the topic, said Cardi B was submitted for best new artist at this year’s show, though she didn’t earn a nomination. The award went to Alessia Cara, while nominees included SZA, Khalid, Lil Uzi Vert and Julia Michaels.

Post Malone was also submitted for best new artist at this year’s show but didn’t garner a nomination. Because he had never earned a Grammy nomination, he met the criteria to be a best new artist contender for the upcoming awards show, but at a Grammy nominations meeting held this month his inclusion in the category was met with debate, the person said. Malone lost in a vote by music industry players — ranging from executives to producers to publicists — and will not compete for the coveted honor. Some felt because the hitmaker had success with his 2016 debut, “Stoney,” as well as the hit songs “Congratulations” and “White Iverson” — released in 2015 — he had already past new artist status.

A representative for Post Malone declined comment Wednesday. A representative for Cardi B did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The first round of voting for the 2019 Grammy nominations begins Oct. 17. Nominees will be announced Dec. 5 and best new artist will include eight contenders instead of five for the first time. The show airs live on Feb. 10.

The best new artist rules state that an artist can be submitted three times and is eligible so long as they have only released three albums or 30 tracks. Some artists, for example, earned nominations with second and third albums since those records marked their major breakthroughs as rising acts on the music scene.

Malone was also a hot topic at the Grammys meeting for his recent album, “Beerbongs & Bentleys,” which was kicked out of the rap category and pushed into the pop genre, the source said. Best rap album nominees must contain 51 percent or more of rap music, and the Grammys rap committee felt “Beerbongs” leaned more toward the pop genre with its the production, sound and melodies. The diverse album also includes singing, elements of R&B and rock and veers outside of rap with songs like the guitar-tinged “Stay.” The person said the larger Grammys committee listened to the entire 18-track album — which includes the No. 1 hits “Rockstar” and “Psycho” as well as “Better Now,” currently No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart — and voted that it would compete in pop instead of rap.

The best rap album category is expected to feature stiff competition since the genre has heavily dominated the pop charts in the last year, with albums by Drake, Eminem, XXXTentacion, Cardi B, Travis Scott, Lil Wayne, J. Cole and Migos being proposed as possible nominees.

It was not clear where Malone’s singles would land — they could appear in rap or pop, or both. Over the years more and more musicians have had songs from a single album appear in different genre categories. Beyonce’s “Lemonade” album had tracks compete in rock, pop, R&B and rap categories, while Justin Timberlake and Rihanna’s nominations have ranged over the years from dance to pop to R&B to rap.

 

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Grand Ole Opry Gives Rare Salute to Soul Genius Ray Charles

As an impoverished blind child in Florida, Ray Charles grew up listening to the country and western stars on the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts. That music of his childhood stayed close to his heart for the rest of his career, and it was his landmark two-volume set, “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” that changed country music in the ’60s.

Charles, who died in 2004, will be the subject of a new public television special airing in February. During a special taping Monday at the Grand Ole Opry, a diverse cast of singers, including Darius Rucker, Ronnie Milsap, Charlie Wilson, Boyz II Men, LeAnn Rimes, Cam and more, honored the soul genius.

 

The rare tribute from the country music institution was in partnership with the Ray Charles Foundation, whose president Valerie Ervin said getting the recognition from the Opry was a priority for her.

 

“The Opry meant everything to him. He loved everybody at the Opry,” Ervin said. “`He loved country music, so to have it here, it just seals it for me. I felt what he felt back in 1962 when he really wanted to be a part of the country world and there was no better place to do it than the Opry.”

 

Charles’ decision to record a collection of country songs from artists like Hank Williams and Eddy Arnold was good timing for the genre, said Diane Pecknold, professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Louisville.

 

“He came along at a time when the Country Music Association was aggressively working to recast the image of its audience,” Pecknold said. “The industry and the popular culture at large tended to view the country music audience as backward hicks, racists, retrograde people generally.”

 

Recorded in New York with lush strings and backing choir, Charles doesn’t just reinvent the songs, he left his unique mark on them, fusing soul and jazz, country lyrics and orchestral pop. Fifty years later, the album still holds up as one of the greatest of the genre.

 

The record spent 14 weeks on the top of the Billboard albums chart. “I Can’t Stop Loving You” spent five weeks at No. 1 on the pop charts and 16 weeks at No. 1 on the R&B charts and won the 1962 Grammy Award for best rhythm and blues recording. The first volume sold more than 1 million records, so a second volume came out shortly after. Country publishing suddenly became in high demand as other artists sought to replicate Charles’ success.

 

“He was more successful than anyone in taking country music to pop audiences,” said Pecknold.

 

Rucker, who hosted the TV special, said that artists like Charles and Charley Pride were instrumental in his own path to country music.

 

“Ray went out on a limb and took a chance and nobody wanted him to do it,” Rucker said. “He did it anyway. It still stands the test of time. And now for some place like the Opry to pay tribute to Ray is huge.”

 

Later in the 1980s, Charles would hit the country charts with another album of country songs, “Friendship,” including a No. 1 country hit duet with Willie Nelson on “Seven Spanish Angels.”

 

The TV special includes a riveting performance of that song by Nelson’s son, Lukas Nelson, who shared photos of his dad and Charles from his last birthday. From Travis Tritt’s energetic performance of “I’m Movin’ On,” to Chris Young’s version of “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” the country performers let out their best soulful renditions for the special.

 

Boyz II Men had the daunting task of taking on “Georgia On My Mind,” arguably one of Charles’ best recordings, and the trio of singers with their harmonic vocal runs did justice to the classic.

 

“One of Ray’s greatest characteristics is how he is able to take his time and for you to ingest everything that he said,” said Shawn Stockman, of the R&B group. “He did exactly what he needed as opposed to trying to do too much.”

 

The tribute, 14 years after his death, raises questions about why he has been left out of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Most of the performers on the special believe he deserves a spot among the country legends for exposing the genre to a much broader world.

 

“I would never tell the Country Music Hall of Fame who to put in, but I think all the artists, if they let Ray in, they would understand and believe that Ray should be there,” Rucker said.

 

Ervin said that Charles did say that he wanted to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but he was proud of his work in the genre no matter what.

 

“His attitude was, ‘I know what I did for the country music world, so if I am never in there, I am OK,'” Ervin said.

 

 

 

 

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US Treasury Issues New Rules on Foreign Investments

The Treasury Department has issued new rules on foreign investments into American companies that will give the government more power to block foreign transactions on national security grounds.

The rules represent the latest escalation in an intensifying economic conflict between the United States and China. It will implement a program for tougher reviews of foreign acquisitions that Congress approved this summer.

The new regulations will require foreign investors to alert a Treasury-led interagency committee to all deals that would give the foreign investors access to critical technology covering 27 industries, including semiconductors, telecommunications and defense.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the new rules will “address specific risks to U.S. critical technology.”

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Market Forces Put America’s Recycling Industry in the Dumps

America’s recycling industry is in the dumps.

A crash in the global market for recyclables is forcing communities to make hard choices about whether they can afford to keep recycling or should simply send all those bottles, cans and plastic containers to the landfill.

 

Mountains of paper have piled up at sorting centers, worthless. Cities and towns that once made money on recyclables are instead paying high fees to processing plants to take them. Some financially strapped recycling processors have shut down entirely, leaving municipalities with no choice but to dump or incinerate their recyclables.

 

“There’s no market. We’re paying to get rid of it,” says Ben Harvey, president of EL Harvey & Sons, which handles recyclables from about 30 communities at its sorting facility in Westborough, Massachusetts. “Seventy-five percent of what goes through our plant is worth nothing to negative numbers now.”

 

It all stems from a policy shift by China, long the world’s leading recyclables buyer. At the beginning of the year it enacted an anti-pollution program that closed its doors to loads of waste paper, metals or plastic unless they’re 99.5 percent pure. That’s an unattainable standard at U.S. single-stream recycling processing plants designed to churn out bales of paper or plastic that are, at best, 97 percent free of contaminants such as foam cups and food waste.

 

The resulting glut of recyclables has caused prices to plummet from levels already depressed by other economic forces, including lower prices for oil, a key ingredient in plastics.

 

The three largest publicly traded residential waste-hauling and recycling companies in North America — Waste Management, Republic Services and Waste Connections — reported steep drops in recycling revenues in their second-quarter financial results. Houston-based Waste Management reported its average price for recyclables was down 43 percent from the previous year.

 

“A year ago, a bale of mixed paper was worth about $100 per ton; today we have to pay about $15 to get rid of it,” says Richard Coupland, vice president for municipal sales at Phoenix-based Republic, which handles 75 million tons of municipal solid waste and 8 million tons of recyclables nationwide annually. “Smaller recycling companies aren’t able to stay in business and are shutting down.”

 

Kirkwood, Missouri, announced plans this summer to end curbside recycling after a St. Louis-area processing facility shut down. Officials in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were surprised to learn that recyclables collected at curbside were being dumped because of a lack of markets. Lack of markets led officials to suspend recycling programs in Gouldsboro, Maine; DeBary, Florida; Franklin, New Hampshire; and Adrian Township, Michigan. Programs have been scaled back in Flagstaff, Arizona; La Crosse, Wisconsin; and Kankakee, Illinois.

 

Other communities are maintaining recycling programs but taking a financial hit as regional processors have raised rates to offset losses. Richland, Washington, is now paying $122 a ton for Waste Management to take its recycling; last year, the city was paid $16 a ton for the materials. Stamford, Connecticut, received $95,000 for recyclables last year; the city’s new contract requires it to pay $700,000.

 

A big part of the problem, besides lower commodity prices overall, is sloppy recycling.

 

In the early days of recycling, people had to wash bottles and cans, and sort paper, plastic, glass and metal into separate bins. Now there’s single-stream recycling, which allows all recyclables to be tossed into one bin. While single-stream has benefited efficiency, and customers like it, it’s been a challenge on the contamination side.

 

A tour of Republic’s facility in Beacon, about an hour’s drive north of New York City, makes the challenges clear. A third of the material dumped by collection trucks is non-recyclable “contaminants” such as garden hoses, picnic coolers and broken lawnmowers. Workers have to pull that out and truck it to a landfill, adding to overall costs. Plastic bags contaminate bales of other materials and tangle machinery. Spilled ketchup and greasy pizza boxes turn otherwise marketable material into garbage.

 

“The death of recycling was completely avoidable and incredibly easily fixed,” says Mitch Hedlund, executive director of Recycle Across America, which advocates standardized labeling on recycling bins so people understand what goes in and what doesn’t.

 

A range of initiatives have been launched to get people to recycle right. Chicago is putting “oops” tags on curbside recycling bins with improper contents and leaving them uncollected. Rhode Island is airing “Let’s Recycle Right” ads.

 

While some recyclables have been diverted to other Asian markets since China’s closure, there are also signs of market improvement in the U.S. to offset the lost business, said David Biderman, CEO and executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America. He noted Chinese paper manufacturers that had relied on recyclables imported into their country have recently purchased shuttered mills in Kentucky, Maine and Wisconsin.

 

Meanwhile, recyclable materials processors are re-negotiating contracts with municipalities to reflect the fact that prices paid for recyclables no longer offset the cost of collecting and sorting them.

 

“What we’re advocating is to step back and re-look at recycling,” Republic’s Coupland said. “This is the new normal. The model no longer funds itself.”

 

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UN: Economic Losses From Natural Disasters Soar

A new U.N. report finds a dramatic increase in the amount of economic loss incurred from natural disasters during the past 20 years, with climate-related disasters driving expensive property and infrastructure damage to new heights.

The report finds so-called geophysical disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis are deadliest, but climate-related disasters such as droughts, floods and heat waves cause economic losses to soar.   

Between 1998 and 2017, disaster-hit countries have reported $2.9 trillion in direct economic losses, with 77 percent resulting from climate change. Data show the United States has suffered the greatest economic losses, nearly $1 trillion, followed by China, Japan, India and Puerto Rico.

Rich countries bear the brunt of economic losses, while low and middle-income countries are disproportionately affected by disasters, said Ricardo Mena, a senior official with the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

“The report shows that because of much higher vulnerability, people in low and middle-income countries have seven times greater probabilities of being killed by a disaster than people in developed nations,” he said. 

Those who suffer most from climate change are people in poor countries who contribute least to greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, the report warns. It predicts heat waves will be the biggest problem in the future, and will be much harder to manage than storms and floods in rich and poor countries alike.

The report urges countries to invest in disaster risk reduction, calling that the most cost-effective way to reduce the growing risks from climate change.

The report was jointly produced by the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.

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Cambodia Faces Potential Economic Collapse

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is facing economic pressure to reverse a recent crackdown on opposition groups and basic freedoms in his country.

Cambodia faces an economic collapse from the slated withdrawal of crucial European Union trade preferences that will likely force its leader to walk back a prolonged political crackdown, observers and labor groups say.

The EU told Cambodia on Friday it will lose duty-free access to the world’s biggest market within 12 months for its “blatant disregard” of human and labor rights standards attached to trade preferences it is granted as a developing nation.

Unless the government takes significant actions to redress an autocratic backslide including reinstating the country’s banned opposition in the next six months, the “Everything But Arms” (EBA) preferences will be withdrawn.

“This could be disastrous. I mean, if I were an investor looking at certainly the garment sector I would be very concerned about now,” said political economist Sophal Ear, an associate professor of diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

“I would pause any expansion plans because it would be like wait, things could go completely haywire,” he said.

Moeun Tola, Executive Director of the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights, said a huge number of workers would be forced into unemployment and the ball is now in Hun Sen’s court.

“If the government really care about the nation and our people, they should reconsider the demands/recommendations from EU,” he said.

Garment manufacturing is Cambodia’s biggest industry, accounting for about 40 percent of the gross domestic product and some 800,000 jobs, while the EU is by far its largest export market, absorbing almost $6 billion worth of goods last year according to its own figures.

Preferential access to that market is seen by some of Hun Sen’s critics as one of the few meaningful negotiating chips to counter an autocratic leader increasingly emboldened by Chinese support.

Statements of concern and threats to review the EBA in the past have been brushed off by his government as empty and bemoaned by some of his critics frustrated with a lack of concrete punitive international intervention.

‘Defense of sovereignty’

The immediate reaction to the announcement from Hun Sen, who has ruled for more than 30 years, has been defiance.

“No matter what measures they want to take against Cambodia, in whatever way, Cambodia must be strong in its defense of its sovereignty,” he said in a post to his Facebook page Monday.

In the lead-up to Cambodia’s July election, Hun Sen claimed defense of the national sovereignty necessitated the banning of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party — which he said was made up of agents of malicious foreign governments — and the jailing of its leader Kem Sokha.

Most independent media were also crushed while members of civil society, journalists, activists and internet users who expressed dissent were jailed. Hun Sen’s party went on to win every seat in an election the EU deemed “not legitimate.”

Political analyst Ou Virak said Hun Sen’s public defiance of the EU was predictable, though privately discontent was brewing among the premier’s inner circle and vast network of rich benefactors.

“You have to understand Hun Sen. He wants to save face, he doesn’t want to appear that he’s a pushover and so he will try to do it in a way that it seems he didn’t give much or he didn’t cave in,” he said.

Increasing pressure

Conciliatory moves have come since the election, with Hun Sen facilitating pardons for jailed activists and Kem Sokha moving from jail into a somewhat loose form of house arrest.

Moeun said that pressure could stretch all the way to Beijing, stressing that as the biggest investors in the Cambodia’s garment factories, Chinese investors stood to lose heavily should the industry collapse.

A severe knock-on effect would be felt in Cambodia’s microfinance industry as well, because so many garment workers were indebted to such institutions, Tola warned.

“Both micro-finance and banks will be hard to grab their assets in order to pay off the loan as there will be protest or chaos to do that,” he wrote.

Ngeth Chou, a Senior Consultant at Emerging Markets Consulting, said more than two-thirds of Cambodian households had debt with microfinance institutions.

“So the household depends largely on their children who work in the garment sector so that becomes a high risk for the microfinance sector,” he said.

Ear said that while no one wanted to see the kind of economic hardship such a collapse would bring, the EU had created both a credible threat and a way out for the Cambodian government.

“The key is to cause the actions you desire in the next six months before sanctions actually begin and to have the same effect so that you don’t actually punish Cambodia or Cambodians in particular who don’t deserve to be punished for the actions of their leaders.

“Then you don’t have to tank the economy. But that would be the result of anything of the sort that is being proposed,” he said.

Representatives of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia could not be reached by VOA.

The U.S. has also initiated concrete punitive action against Hun Sen’s regime, sanctioning one of his top commanders in June.

Many more members of his inner circle could follow under the Cambodia Democracy Act of 2018 — a targeted sanctions bill which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in late July.

Moeun said if the EU did suspend the EBA, he was sure they would also impose such targeted sanctions, as would the U.S..

“Other allies will follow,” he wrote.

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Long After They Died, Military Sees Surge in Identifications

Nearly 77 years after repeated torpedo strikes tore into the USS Oklahoma, killing hundreds of sailors and Marines, Carrie Brown leaned over the remains of a serviceman laid out on a table in her lab and was surprised the bones still smelled of burning oil from that horrific day at Pearl Harbor.

It was a visceral reminder of the catastrophic attack that pulled the United States into World War II, and it added an intimacy to the painstaking work Brown and hundreds of others are now doing to greatly increase the number of lost American servicemen who have been identified.

 

It’s a monumental mission that combines science, history and intuition, and it’s one Brown and her colleagues have recently been completing at ramped-up speed, with identifications expected to reach 200 annually, more than triple the figures from recent years.

 

“There are families still carrying the torch,” said Brown, a forensic anthropologist with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s lab near Omaha, Nebraska. “It’s just as important now as it was 77 years ago.”

 

Officials believe remains of nearly half of the 83,000 unidentified service members killed in World War II and more recent wars could be identified and returned to relatives. The modern effort to identify remains started in 1973 and was primarily based in Hawaii until a second lab was opened in 2012 at Offutt Air Force Base in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue.

 

With an intensified push, the identifications climbed from 59 in 2013 to 183 last year and at least 200 and possibly a few more this year.

 

The increase has led to a surge of long-delayed memorial services and burials across the country as families and entire communities turn out to honor those killed.

 

Joani McGinnis, of Shenandoah, Iowa, said her family is planning a service Friday at the national cemetery in Omaha now that they have finally learned what happened to her uncle, Sgt. Melvin. C. Anderson.

 

Piecing together bits of history and DNA, the Omaha lab confirmed that remains found in 1946 in Germany were Anderson’s and that he died when his tank was hit in the rugged Hurtgen Forest during a battle that lasted for months and left tens of thousands of Americans killed and wounded.

 

Besides returning the remains, McGinnis said the agency gave her a thick file with details about how he died and how researchers unraveled the mystery.

 

“I wish my mom and my grandma were here to know all this information,” said McGinnis, who recalled a framed picture of Anderson that hung in her grandmother’s home in Omaha. “My grandmother was very sad about it. She just wanted to know what happened, and she never knew.”

 

In Kentucky, thousands of people lined roads for miles on a steamy August day to see a hearse carrying the remains of Army Pfc. Joe Stanton Elmore from the Nashville, Tennessee, airport to the small city of Albany.

 

Elmore was reported missing in action in December 1950 after an intense battle at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea and as deceased in 1953, but his great-niece April Speck said even decades later, her family would tell stories of “Joe going off to war and never coming home.” Speck said she knew her family would feel a sense of relief that his remains were finally returned, but she didn’t realize what it would mean to her community.

 

“There were people standing out with their signs and there were retired soldiers in their uniforms saluting, and then we get into Albany and it like was a sea of people with all the American flags,” she recalled. “The county did an awesome job of showing respect.”

 

The soaring number of identifications followed years of complaints about a cumbersome process, typically resulting in about 60 completed cases annually. Congress responded by setting a goal of 200 identifications annually, and it supported a reorganization and increased funding that saw spending climb from $80.8 million in the 2010 fiscal year to $143.9 million in 2018.

 

The effort now employs about 600 people.

 

Officials have streamlined the work of determining which remains should be disinterred. Historians focus on where clusters of servicemen died, and examine troop movements and conduct interviews with local residents.

 

“This work is very different from what most historians do,” said Ian Spurgeon, an agency historian in Washington. “This is detective history.”

 

Spurgeon’s focus is on battles in Europe and the Mediterranean, with a goal of disinterring 50 service members annually, up from fewer than five.

 

At Offutt, inside a lab built in a former World War II bomber factory, bones are arranged by type on black-topped tables. In another room, buttons, fabrics, coins and other items found alongside remains are studied for hints about a service member’s role or hometown.

 

DNA is key to identifications, but it can’t be extracted from all bones, and without a match from potential relatives, it has little value.

 

In some cases, lab workers refer to standard chest X-rays of World War II servicemen taken when they enlisted, focusing on the traits of the collarbones shown. An algorithm developed by the University of Nebraska-Omaha helps workers make comparisons of remains in minutes.

 

For Patricia Duran, the result has been finally learning what happened to her uncle, Army Air Forces Sgt. Alfonso O. Duran, who died in 1944 when his B-24H Liberator bomber was shot down. His remains were disinterred from a grave in Slovenia and identified this spring.

 

Duran had for years sought information about her uncle’s remains, and she said she clutched her cousin’s hand while watching him be buried Aug. 22 at Santa Fe National Cemetery, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his childhood home in the small mountain community of El Rito, New Mexico.

 

“We felt such a sense of closure about it because the whole family heard the stories” about him. “We felt we knew Alfonso,” she said. “We felt he’d come home.”

 

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Zimbabwe’s Dingy Trains Mirror Economic Decline

Dark, dirty and slow, Zimbabwe’s trains, like much else in the impoverished southern African country, have seen better days.

Once the preferred mode of transport for most Zimbabweans, the state-run rail service mirrors the decline in the country’s economic fortunes during the last two decades under the leadership of former President Robert Mugabe.

Gilbert Mthinzima Ndlovu, a veteran of Zimbabwe’s 1970s independence war and a security guard at the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) for 35 years, yearns for the old days when trains were full and arrived on time.

“Times are different now as we have few passengers,” the off-duty Ndlovu told Reuters as he rested in a badly lit first class cabin during the journey from the capital Harare to his home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city.

Now the 10-hour journey can take 16 hours, he said.

Not surprising, then, that many Zimbabweans prefer to make the 440 km (273 mile) journey by bus or public taxi in around five hours than have to endure a cold overnight train ride – even if at $10 the train ride costs only half as much.

The train carriages often lack lighting and water, and the toilets are filthy. The signalling and information systems are often vandalized and some tracks overgrown with grass and weeds because they have not been used in years.

NRZ is now trying to improve its fortunes.

Last year South African logistics group Transnet won a $400 million joint bid to recapitalize NRZ and fix some of the problems, including acquiring and refurbishing carriages.

But for now passengers have to make do with a broken train service.

“Today you can’t even buy food from the train and all the coaches are filthy, with no water and the lights are not working,” said one passenger who declined to give his name.

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Taylor Swift Wins Big at AMAs and Encourages Fans to Vote

Taylor Swift kicked off her week with a rare political post on social media, and at the American Music Awards she continued the conversation by encouraging fans to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.

Swift won artist of the year at the fan-voted show on Tuesday in Los Angeles, beating out Drake, Ed Sheeran, Imagine Dragons and Post Malone for the top prize.

“This award and every single award given out tonight were voted on by the people, and you know what else is voted on by the people,” she said, “the midterm elections on November 6.”

Swift announced on Sunday that she was voting for Tennessee’s Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, breaking her long-standing refusal to discuss anything politics.

Voting was a hot topic at the AMAs. Host and Golden Globe-winning “black-ish” actress Tracee Ellis Ross wore a shirt that said, “I am a voter,” and comedian-actor Billy Eichner told the audience, “The biggest election of our lifetime is happening.”

“Please grab your friends and tell them to vote. Now is the time. If you believe in equality for women, for people of color, for the LGBTQ community. If you believe that climate change is real and that we need to do something about it,” he said onstage before presenting an award.

“And you can go to Vote.org like Taylor Swift told you to,” he added.

Swift kicked off the AMAs with a performance of “I Did Something Bad,” while Cardi B picked up the night’s first award, favorite hip-hop/rap artist, which she dedicated to her daughter.

“I really want to thank my daughter,” said Cardi B, who gave birth to Kulture Kiari Cephus in July. “I gotta prove people wrong. They said I wasn’t going to make it after I had a baby.”

The rapper hit the stage to give a festive and colorful performance of her No. 1 hit, “I Like It,” where she was joined by J Balvin and Bad Bunny, who was wheeled onstage inside a shopping cart. Cardi B’s husband, Offset of the rap trio Migos, danced along in the audience with group member Quavo as Cardi B worked the stage with vibrant dance moves, including the salsa.

Cardi B returned the favor, screaming happily when Migos was named favorite pop/rock duo or group, beating out Maroon 5 and Imagine Dragons, later in the show.

“We did not know we was winning this at all,” said Quavo, also giving a shout-out to group member Takeoff, who didn’t attend the AMAs.

“I want to thank you sexy lady,” Offset said, pointing to Cardi B.

Like Cardi B’s performance, rising newcomer Ella Mai also won over the crowd when she sang the year’s biggest R&B hit, “Boo’d Up,” starting the performance as she walked down the aisle of the Microsoft Theater. Khalid, Quavo and Offset were some of the audience members dancing along, while others sang and some even filmed her with their phones.

Others who shined onstage included R&B singer Ciara, who showed off her skilled dance moves and was joined by a fierce Missy Elliott. Carrie Underwood was in perfect form vocally, and Camila Cabello – who won new artist of the year – gave a heartful, touching and vocally impressive performance of the ballad “Consequences,” earning her a standing ovation.

The three-hour show closed with a rousing tribute to Aretha Franklin, who died in August. Gladys Knight, Ledisi, Mary Mary, Donnie McClurkin and CeCe Winans were among the musicians who paid tribute to the Queen of Soul’s gospel roots and her iconic album, “Amazing Grace.”

Rapper-singer XXXTentacion, who was fatally shot in June, was also honored: He won favorite soul/R&B album for his 2017 debut, “17.” It was days after he was named best new artist at the BET Hip-Hop Awards.

His mother, Cleopatra Bernard, said she was honored to accept the award on behalf of her son. “I’m so nervous,” Bernard said as the audience cheered her on.

Post Malone, who wore a baby blue suit and performed, won favorite pop/rock male artist, Underwood was named favorite country female artist, Khalid picked up favorite soul/R&B male artist, and Kane Brown won favorite country male artist.

Other performers included Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Shawn Mendes and twenty one pilots. 

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Exhibit Looks at Key Traumatic Moments in Czechoslovakia

The voices of the witnesses are quiet. Their heads are projected on screens behind a chain-link fence in complete darkness at the site of a former monument to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Their topic: the most painful moments in the history of Czechoslovakia.

 

A multimedia exhibition is marking the 100th anniversary of the creation of Czechoslovakia by focusing on the nation’s experience with two totalitarian regimes in the turbulent 20th century: the Nazi occupation in World War II and Communist rule.

 

“The Memory of the Nation” has been created by the Post Bellum nonprofit organization, which has been recording oral histories of those who witnessed key historical moments. It starts in 1939, beginning with the Nazi invasion, and goes until the end of the communist regime in 1989.

 

“The 20th century is full of traumas,” said Jana Holcova, a Post Bellum spokeswoman.

 

Czechoslovakia was created as an independent state on Oct 28, 1918, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed at the end of World War I. It ceased to exist in 1993, after the region peacefully split into two nations, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

 

Here’s a look at the exhibit that runs through Dec 9.

 

A Fitting Place to Contemplate History

 

Visitors to the exhibit have a rare chance to see the huge, rarely-opened underground space just under the former Stalin monument site at Prague’s Letna Park.

The almost 16-meter (over 52-foot) granite statue of Stalin with other figures behind him, once considered the biggest representation of the brutal dictator outside the Soviet Union, was unveiled in 1955 after six years of work. Its creator, Otakar Svec, killed himself shortly before that, following the example of his wife.

After Stalin’s Soviet successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin’s personality cult, the monument that was visible from many parts of Prague became a political problem. It was demolished in 1962.

 

The space has been closed for decades. City Hall has proposed that the National Gallery turn it into a center for contemporary art while Post Bellum has suggested the current exhibition be expanded into a museum to totalitarianism. No final decision has been made.

 

Traumatic Moments in a Nation’s Past

 

In one section, a video map with sound allows visitors to glimpse a bit of what it was like to be a RAF pilot shooting down a Nazi plane in World War II during the Battle of Britain, in which many Czechs participated. Other sections illustrate Nazi cruelty, an interrogation by the feared Communist-era secret police or the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, which crushed the liberal reforms known as the Prague Spring. A moment from the country’s 1989 anti-Communist Velvet Revolution, which was led by Vaclav Havel, comes at the end as a relief.

Witnesses speaking on the screen include Holocaust survivors, political prisoners and a communist investigator. Subtitles are in Czech and English.

The Wall That Divides

The project includes a 5-meter (over 16-foot) high wall that runs for 50 meters (164 feet) and prevents people from seeing the elegant, cobblestoned city of Prague at a popular viewing spot.

 

Martin Hejl, art director of the exhibition, said the wall symbolizes the country’s totalitarian period, its suffocating censorship, the divisions of its people and “archetypical sites such as the Berlin Wall.”

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Black US Sports Trailblazer George Taliaferro Dies at 91

African-American sports pioneer George Taliaferro — the first black player to be drafted by the National Football League — has died at 91.

Taliaferro was a college football superstar for the University of Indiana when the Chicago Bears chose him in the 13th round of the 1949 NFL draft.

It was the first time any team picked a black player in the annual draft.

But Taliaferro had already signed to play for the Los Angeles Dons of the rival All-America Football Conference and never played for the Bears.

When the smaller league went out of business, Taliaferro joined the NFL. He played six seasons for teams in New York, Dallas, Baltimore and Philadelphia — playing seven different positions. 

When his sports career ended, Taliaferro earned a master’s degree at Howard University and held high-ranking positions at several top universities.

The first black player to break modern professional football’s color barrier was Kenny Washington, who was not drafted by but was signed directly by the Los Angeles Rams in 1946. 

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