President Donald Trump is expected to announce a new federal rule to speed up the environmental review process for proposed highways, gas pipelines and other major infrastructure, a move that critics are describing as the dismantling of a 50-year-old environmental protection law.
Trump will travel to Atlanta on Wednesday to announce the federal rule as he seeks to make it easier to meet some of the country’s infrastructure needs. When he first announced the effort in January, the administration set a two-year deadline for completing full environmental impact reviews while less comprehensive assessments would have to be completed within one year. The White House said the final rule will promote the rebuilding of America.
Critics call the Republican president’s efforts a cynical attempt to limit the public’s ability to review, comment on and influence proposed projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, one of the country’s bedrock environmental protection laws.
“This may be the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that works to save endangered species.
Trump has made slashing government regulation a hallmark of his presidency and held it out as a way to boost jobs. But environmental groups say the regulatory rollbacks threaten public health and make it harder to curb global warming. With Congress and the administration divided over how to boost infrastructure investment, the president is relying on his deregulation push to demonstrate progress.
“The United States can’t compete and prosper if a bureaucratic system holds us back from building what we need,” Trump said when first announcing the sweeping rollback of National Environmental Policy Act rules.
Georgia is emerging as a key swing state in the general election. Trump won the Republican-leaning state by 5 percentage points in 2016, but some polls show him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. This will be Trump’s ninth trip to Georgia and his sixth visit to Atlanta during his presidency.
The president’s trip also comes as the state has seen coronavirus cases surge and now has tallied more than 12,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,000 deaths.
Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is running against incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue, said Trump’s decision to come to Georgia to discuss infrastructure as the state’s coronavirus crisis worsens demonstrates that the president is “in denial and out of control.”
“Coming here for a routine photo-op is, frankly, bizarre, surreal against this unprecedented health and economic crisis,” Ossoff said.
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said that if Ossoff views a major policy announcement to expedite critical infrastructure projects as anything other than about job growth and economic expansion, then it might explain why he lost an election two years ago.
The White House said the administration’s efforts will expedite the expansion of Interstate 75 near Atlanta, an important freight route where traffic can often slow to a crawl. The state will create two interstate lanes designed solely for commercial trucks. The state announced last fall, before the White House unveiled its proposed rule, that it was moving up the deadline for substantially completing the project to 2028.
Thousands of Americans on both sides of the new federal rule wrote to the Council on Environmental Quality to voice their opinions.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce cited a North Carolina bridge in its letter as an example of unreasonable delays, saying the bridge that connected Hatteras Island to Bodie Island took 25 years to complete, but only three years to build. “The failure to secure timely approval for projects and land management decisions is also hampering economic growth,” the business group wrote.
The Natural Resources Defense Council said that when Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act 50 years ago, it did so with the understanding that environmental well-being is compatible with economic well-being. The proposed rule, it said, would lead federal agencies to make decisions with significant environmental impacts without ever considering those impacts in advance.
“At the end of the day, it would lead to poor decision, increased litigation and less transparency,” said Sharon Buccino, a senior director at the environmental group.
Trump’s trip to Georgia comes one day after Biden announced an infrastructure plan that places a heavy emphasis on improving energy efficiency in buildings and housing as well as promoting conservation efforts in the agriculture industry. In the plan, Biden pledges to spend $2 trillion over four years to promote his energy proposals.
Trump’s push to use regulatory changes to boost infrastructure development also comes as the House and Senate pursue starkly different efforts. The Democratic-controlled House passed a $1.5 trillion plan that goes beyond roads and bridges and would fund improvements to schools, housing, water and sewer, and broadband. A GOP-controlled Senate panel passed a bill last year setting aside $287 billion for roads and bridges, but other committees are still working on the measure, including how to pay for it.
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Month: July 2020
Britain announced a ban Tuesday on equipment from the firm Huawei in the rollout of its 5G super-fast mobile networks – reversing a decision made just six months ago. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the move appears to have been forced by U.S. sanctions on Huawei – and China is warning of possible consequences in future trade relations with Britain
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A European Union court on Wednesday delivered a hammer blow to the bloc’s attempts to rein in sweetheart tax deals between multinationals and individual member countries when it ruled that technology giant Apple does not have to pay 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in back taxes to Ireland.
The EU Commission had claimed in 2016 that Apple had an illegal tax deal with Irish authorities that allowed it to pay extremely low rates. But the EU’s General Court said Wednesday that “the Commission did not succeed in showing to the requisite legal standard that there was an advantage.”
“The Commission was wrong to declare” that Apple “had been granted a selective economic advantage and, by extension, state aid,” said the Luxembourg-based court, which is the second-highest in the EU. The ruling can only be appealed on points of law.
The EU Commission had ordered Apple to pay for gross underpayment of tax on profits across the European bloc from 2003 to 2014. The commission said Apple used two shell companies in Ireland to report its Europe-wide profits at effective rates well under 1%.
In many cases, multinationals can pay taxes on the bulk of their revenue across the EU’s 27 countries in the one EU country where they have their regional headquarters. For Apple and many other big tech companies, that is Ireland. For small EU countries like Ireland, that helps attract international business and even a small amount of tax revenue is helpful for them. The net result, however, is that the companies often end up paying very low tax.
The Irish government welcomed the ruling. “Ireland has always been clear that there was no special treatment provided” to the U.S. company, it said in a statement. “Ireland appealed the Commission Decision on the basis that Ireland granted no state aid and the decision today from the Court supports that view.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook has called the EU demand for back taxes “total political crap.”
The defeat is especially stinging for EU Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, who has campaigned for years to root out special tax deals. Trump has referred to her as the “tax lady” who “really hates the U.S.”
The Eurodad network of 49 civil society organisations said that the ruling showed how tough any tax policy remains. “”If we had a proper corporate tax system, we wouldn’t need long court cases to find out whether it is legal for multinational corporations to pay less than 1% in taxes,” said Tove Maria Ryding of Eurodad.
Even though taxation remains under the authority of its member countries, the EU is seeking to create a level playing field among the 27 nations by making sure special deals including ultra-low tax rates with multinationals are weeded out.
The ruling comes at a time when tax income for EU nations is especially welcome because of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. At a time when cash-strapped households are suffering, the EU wants to make sure multinationals making profits on the continent pay their fair share, too.
Meanwhile, the EU Commission was to unveil new plans to combat tax fraud only hours after the ruling in Luxembourg.
“In times like these when we are passing multibillion-euro economic stimulus packages, we cannot afford to waste a single cent in tax revenue”, said EU legislator Markus Ferber of the Christian Democrat EPP Group.
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Researchers have taken a scientific look at why people love the music they do and how it connects to important times in their lives. The study, published last week in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, sought to look at music people hear in their teenage years and how that music becomes intrinsically linked to a person’s “sense of themself.” Researchers with the University of Westminster School of Social Sciences in London analyzed 80 guests on the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) show Desert Island Discs in which celebrities select eight pieces of music that they would take with them to a desert island. The researchers found half of the songs participants chose were selected because they were linked to important memories from when they were either between the ages of 10 and 19 or between 20 and 29. They theorize it is during those years that people are forming the essential sense of themselves. Researchers found the songs on Desert Island Discs were all tied to key transitions in participants’ lives such as meeting a partner, attending college or some other life-altering event. Lead researcher University of Westminster neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday said those songs tend to influence a person’s taste in music for years to come. She said the memories people form in their teenage and early adult years are what she and her fellow researchers call “the self-defining period” in which the brain is “taking snapshots” of episodes more than any other time in a person’s life.
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It is commonly accepted that the human senses are limited — what can be seen through the eyes, heard through the ears. Sound is created when things vibrate. We hear it through our ears. Researchers have developed a wearable device that augments the reality of users by allowing them to “hear” through their skin in the form of vibrations. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Camera: Elizabeth Lee Produced by: Elizabeth Lee
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Pakistan said Tuesday it would relaunch door to door vaccinations of children against polio next week after a four-month suspension due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The announcement comes amid a substantial decline in daily COVID-19 infections across Pakistan, one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with its war-torn neighbor Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials have so far recorded 58 new polio cases this year from across the country amid warnings by the World Health Organization that “transmission continues to be widespread.”
The anti-polio drive, starting July 20, initially aims to vaccinate about 800,000 children under the age of five in high-risk Pakistani districts, including Karachi and Quetta, to protect them against the crippling disease.
The special assistant to the prime minister on health, Zafar Mirza, acknowledged the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic and ensuing lockdowns to prevent its spread have had a significant impact on Pakistan’s already under-resourced and deteriorating public health care systems.
“With the disruption of essential immunization services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, children are continuously at a higher risk of contracting polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases,” an official statement quoted Mirza as saying. FILE – Health workers arrive to collect at a drive-through testing and screening facility for the coronavirus, in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 6, 2020.The coronavirus reached Pakistan in late February, prompting the government to redirect all health program strengths and capacities to support COVID-19 surveillance and response efforts. Mirza announced last week he had tested positive for the virus.
The national tally of coronavirus infections has hit at least 254,000, including more than 5,300 deaths. Officials reported less than 2,000 new cases on Tuesday, showing a consistent and substantial decrease in daily infections.
“The door to door campaigns will also be utilized to raise awareness on COVID preventive measures and referring mothers and children for other essential vaccinations as well as the antenatal care services,” said Rana Mohammad Safdar, who oversees Pakistan’s polio eradication program.
Pakistan’s efforts to rid the country of polio have lately suffered setbacks due to attacks on vaccinators and police personnel guarding them. The deadly violence is also cited a factor for the upsurge in new cases that had dropped to only 12 cases in 2018.
In traditionally conservative parts of majority-Muslim Pakistan, religious fanatics see the vaccine as a Western-led conspiracy to sterilize children. Militant groups operating in these areas also condemn the drive against polio as an effort to collect intelligence on their activities.
FILE – Pakistani police officers attend the funeral for their colleagues in Lower Dir, Dec. 18, 2019. Gunmen shot and killed the two policemen who were part of an anti-polio drive in the volatile northwest.Officials say attacks on polio teams have particularly increased since 2011 when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency organized a fake vaccination campaign with the help of a local doctor, enabling U.S. forces to locate and kill fugitive al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
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Growing threats imperil life in the world’s oceans and seas. Scientists say warming waters endanger young and unborn fish more than previously thought while a newly discovered species of seaweed suffocates life in Pacific waters. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports on threats to waters both local and global.Produced by: Arash Arabasadi
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In Ghana and West Africa, organic food is growing in popularity as people try to stay healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. But organic produce is not easily regulated, and some consumers are paying extra for unverified claims. Farmers across the region are creating their own system, with support from international bodies, to certify organic produce. Stacey Knott reports from Accra.Camera: Stacey Knott Produced by: Stacey Knott
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The British government has banned China’s Huawei telecommunications equipment company from playing a limited role in Britain’s new high-speed mobile phone network.Britain’s Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, said the country’s telecommunications operators have until 2027 to remove Huawei’s equipment that is currently used in Britain’s 5G network.Britain’s decision could have wide-ranging implications for relations between the two countries and signals that Huawei may be losing support in the West. Dowden said the ban was imposed after the U.S. threatened to cancel an information-sharing deal due to concerns Huawei’s equipment could allow the Chinese government to penetrate British networks.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed in January to give Huawei a limited role in Britain’s high-speed network, but the decision sparked a diplomatic disagreement with the U.S.
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Скільки відсотків від зеленого карлика перебіжать до зрадника медведчука? Нам починати хвилюватися?
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На выходных Хабаровск на Дальнем Востоке путляндии пережил крупнейшую демонстрацию в истории города. Для граждан речь идет о большем, чем о судьбе их арестованного губернатора
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Катастрофа за катастрофой: после обнуления путляндия превращается в место непригодное для жизни
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Хабаровск не утихает, за 2 дня там прошло три митинги. И все произошло стихийно, абсолютно нормальная реакция в обществе на беспредел. И ведь выходят тысячи, десятки тысяч с лозунгами как в поддержку Фургала, так и против пукина, а нам говорят, что у него поддержка 80%. А тем временем на предприятии «Норникеля» вновь произошел разлив топлива
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“Glee” star Naya Rivera ‘s 4-year-old son told investigators that his mother, whose body was found in a Southern California lake Monday, boosted him back on to the deck of their rented boat before he looked back and saw her disappearing under the water, authorities said. “She must have mustered enough energy to get her son back on the boat, but not enough to save herself,” Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub said at a news conference. The boy, Josey Hollis Dorsey, was found asleep and alone in a life vest on the drifting pontoon boat about three hours after they launched on Lake Piru northwest of Los Angeles, setting off a five-day search that ended with the discovery of the body of the 33-year-old floating near the surface early Monday, authorities said. The mother and son had gone swimming, which was permitted in that part of the lake, Ayub said. She was not wearing a life vest. Authorities believe that Rivera drowned accidentally, and that her body was most likely trapped in the vegetation under the lake for several days before floating to the top, Ayub said. Divers had already thoroughly searched the area where she was eventually found, but shrubbery that had grown wildly in the area, which was recently dry, must have kept her hidden in the murky water. Family members chatted with Rivera via FaceTime when she was on the boat, and search crews watched those videos for clues to where she might have gone down, Ayub said. “It has been an extremely difficult time for her family throughout this ordeal,” Ayub said “We share in their grief.” FILE – Actress Naya Rivera participates in the “Step Up: High Water” panel during the YouTube Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, California, Jan. 13, 2018.Rivera played singing cheerleader Santana Lopez for six seasons from 2009 to 2015 on the Fox musical-comedy “Glee.” She is the third major cast member from the show to die in their 30s. The announcement of her death comes seven years to the day after co-star Cory Monteith died at 31 from a toxic mix of alcohol and heroin, with the series losing one of its leads while it was still on the air. Another co-star, Mark Salling, who Rivera dated at one point, killed himself in 2018 at age 35 after pleading guilty to child pornography charges. Rivera’s body was flown by helicopter 40 miles (64 kilometers) to the coroner’s office in Ventura, where an autopsy would be conducted and an official identification made, authorities said. Ayub said the circumstances from the location of the body to the fact that no one else has been reported missing in the lake makes the department “confident that the body we found is Naya Rivera.” Rivera had experience boating on the lake in Los Padres National Forest an hour’s drive from Los Angeles. It was closed down and searched by dozens of divers with help from sonar and robotic devices combing the bottom and helicopters and drones searching above. Surveillance video showed the mother and son parking and renting the boat at about 1 p.m. on July 8. The vendor who rented it to them went looking for them when they failed to return on time, and found the boat drifting in the northern end of the lake with the boy aboard. The boy, Rivera’s son from her marriage to actor Ryan Dorsey, was safe and healthy and quickly reunited with family members after he was found, authorities said. His parents divorced in 2018 after nearly four years of marriage. The day before her death, Rivera tweeted a photo of herself and Josey that read, “just the two of us.”
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Anthropologist Lawrence Kuznar isn’t a fan of Confederate statues, but he feels Americans have a lesson to learn from them. “I’m not necessarily against taking them down,” says the professor of anthropology at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, who is in the process of retiring.“It’s easy to get emotional and excited in a group and go tear down a monument. It absolutely does nothing to address a deep racial and political divide that really seems to be tearing this country apart. Even lawfully removing them, I think, should be done in a thoughtful way.” As the Black Lives Matter protests gained momentum nationwide in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in police custody, some demonstrators took it upon themselves to bring the statues down. Other monuments are being removed by local authorities. Overall, dozens of statues have been removed, and countless others vandalized nationwide. Isaiah Bowen, right, takes a shot as his dad, Garth Bowen, center, looks on at a basketball hoop in front of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, June 21, 2020.In addition to Confederate statues, other monuments that are viewed as symbols of oppression and systemic racism are also being targeted. On Independence Day, a crowd tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus and dumped it in the Baltimore Inner Harbor. There were 1,747 symbols honoring the Confederacy in public spaces, according to a 2019 report from the FILE – A carving in Stone Mountain, Georgia, depicting Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, is America’s largest Confederate memorial.The SPLC found construction of the monuments actually spiked in the early 1900s, and then again in the 1950s and ‘60s during times of civil rights tension. “The stated purpose was to honor men who symbolized such values as valor and honor, but the actual purpose was to affirm the power relationships between Black and white southerners,” James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told VOA in an email. “These monuments reminded everyone, in a very public way, that white people would maintain their monopoly on power. That, Kuznar says, is precisely the history Confederate monuments can tell. “They say something about the U.S. If more people understood the political forces behind why many, not all, but many of the Confederate statues were erected in the Jim Crow era … (it’s) a rather dark chapter of the nation’s history,” he says. “Taking the statues away makes it harder to bring that story out to people. Quite frankly, I think it makes it harder for us to tell and memorialize the full truth of the nation’s history.” Defaced bronze sculpture on the base of the statue of Confederate general, Albert Pike, after protestors toppled the Pike statue, June 20, 2020, in Washington.Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes enacted in the American South in the late 1800s and early 1900s to enforce racial segregation. While some might view removing statues as “whitewashing” history, others see taking them down as correcting a false narrative. “Whitewashing history is what the statues were doing in the first place by setting up as heroes men who committed treason in defense of the supposed right of some people to own other people. That’s the ‘whitewash,’” Grossman says. “That is the attempt to cleanse the reputations of men who deserve no honor for what they did or what they stood for.” Anthropologist Lawrence Kuznar at Cueva Quellaveco, Peru in 1989. (Photo courtesy Lawrence Kuznar)Kuznar points out that removing or destroying monuments isn’t new. Spanish conquerors destroyed Aztec and Inca monuments. Russia removed several Soviet-era statues after the fall of the USSR. The Taliban blew up a pair of ancient sandstone Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001. Kuznar, who has an archeological background, cautions against moving too quickly in the heat of passion or due to political expediency. “I think communities erected these things. I think the communities themselves need to have some very sober, very serious discussion about why is that statue there,” he says. “Do we want to memorialize this person anymore? Can we use the statue to tell a more complete story of the nation’s history? And for them to decide accordingly whether they want that there or not.”
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With the number of confirmed coronavirus infections around the world topping 13 million, including more than 570,000 deaths, the United States says it expects to start producing potential vaccine doses by the end of the summer, even as more and more governments are imposing, or re-imposing, strict quarantine and social distancing guidelines to blunt the spread of the disease. The U.S.-based cable financial news channel CNBC reported Monday that a senior Trump administration official told reporters the manufacturing process is already underway even though they aren’t sure which vaccine – if any – will work. The official is quoted as saying they are already buying equipment, securing manufacturing sites, and acquiring raw materials.CNBC says two companies involved in the development of a potential new vaccine, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, are expected to begin late-stage human trials for potential vaccines by the end of the month. Social distancing
A set of new social distancing measures that took effect Tuesday in Hong Kong includes mandatory face masks for people using public transportation, with violators subject to fines up to $645 ($5,000 in Hong Kong currency). Restaurants are banned from offering indoor dining after 6 p.m., and gyms, movie theaters and karaoke bars are once again ordered to shut down, in response to a new order announced by Chief Executive Carrie Lam that limits group gatherings from 50 people to four.The new guidelines have forced the closure of Hong Kong Disneyland, which had just reopened last month. The Asian financial hub reported 52 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Monday, including 41 that were locally transmitted, prompting authorities to issue a warning of a potential large-scale outbreak. The city has reported more than 1,500 total coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic.Women hold signs outside housing commission apartments under lockdown in Melbourne, Australia, July 6, 2020.New spikes
Over in Australia, the southern state of Victoria recorded 270 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, including two deaths, pushing the total number of cases nationwide to 10,251 and 110 deaths. Victoria’s capital city, Melbourne, is in the first week of a six-week lockdown imposed due to an alarming spike of new COVID-19 cases. Residents have been ordered to stay home unless going to work, school, medical appointments or shopping for food. The neighboring state of New South Wales has imposed a strict new set of restrictions on bars in response to a cluster of 21 new COVID-19 cases traced to a popular bar in Sydney. The new restrictions limit group bookings to just 10 people and cap the number of patrons in large venues to 300. Wearing face masks in supermarkets and stores in Britain will be mandatory starting next week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office announced Monday. Face coverings are already required on buses and subways in London and other English cities. Other European countries, including Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain already require face coverings in stores. Visitors crowd the beach July 12, 2020, in Santa Monica, Calif., amid the coronavirus pandemic.Surge in multiple US states
In the United States, which posted well over 60,000 new infections on Monday, more than three dozen states are seeing a dramatic rise in new coronavirus cases on a daily basis, forcing many of them to reverse plans to reopen their economies after shutting them down during the initial phase of the outbreak. California Governor Gavin Newsom extended Monday the closure of bars, restaurants, gyms, churches, and amusement centers from 19 counties to the entire state. The neighboring northwestern state of Oregon has banned gatherings of more than 10 people and mandated face masks for all Oregonians. Across the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii Governor David Ige announced Monday the state is postponing plans to relax its quarantine requirements for some tourists from the U.S. mainland. The popular tourist destination has subjected all visitors to a mandatory 14-day quarantine since the start of the outbreak. The government had planned to make an exception for anyone who tested negative for COVID-19 in the 72 hours leading up to their departure, beginning August 1.Gov. Ige delayed the revised rules until September 1 because of the dramatic uptick of new cases in many states, which he said has also caused serious delays in testing.
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A New York state judge lifted a stay on Monday that had temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s niece from publishing a book offering an unflattering look at the U.S. president and his family. Justice Hal Greenwald of the state Supreme Court in Poughkeepsie, New York, denied the request to stop publication and canceled the temporary restraining order he issued on June 30 against Mary Trump and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, at the request of Robert Trump, the brother of the president. Simon & Schuster was due to release the book on Tuesday. Robert Trump said previously that the release of “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man” would violate a confidentiality agreement tied to the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr., who died in 1999. Mary Trump, a trained psychologist, is Fred Trump’s granddaughter. “Notwithstanding that the Book has been published and distributed in great quantities, to enjoin Mary L. Trump at this juncture would be incorrect and serve no purpose,” Greenwald said in his decision. “It would be moot. … To quote United States v. Bolton, 2020, ‘By the looks of it the horse is not just out of the barn, it is out of the country,'” he wrote. Mary Trump’s attorney, Theodore Boutrous, said in a statement: “The court got it right in rejecting the Trump family’s effort to squelch Mary Trump’s core political speech on important issues of public concern.” Lawyers for Robert Trump could not immediately be reached for comment. The book’s publication comes as the Republican president seeks a second term in the Nov. 3 election. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has described it as a “book of falsehoods.” Mary Trump applies her training in psychology to conclude in the book that the president likely suffers from narcissism and other clinical disorders – and was boosted to success by a father who fueled those traits. She writes of a “malignantly dysfunctional family” dominated by a patriarch, Fred Trump, who showed little interest in his five children other than grooming an heir for his real-estate business. Ultimately, he settled on Donald, she wrote, deciding that his second son’s “arrogance and bullying” would come in handy at the office, and encouraged it.
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