Month: July 2019

Coal tycoon Chris Cline, who worked his way out of West Virginia’s underground mines to amass a fortune and become a major Republican donor, has died in a helicopter crash outside a string of islands he owned in the Bahamas.  
  
Cline and his daughter Kameron, 22, were on board the aircraft with five others when it went down Thursday, a spokesman for his attorney Brian Glasser said Friday.  
  
The death of the 60-year-old magnate led to eulogies from industry leaders, government officials and academics, who described Cline as a visionary who was generous with his $1.8 billion fortune. 
 
“He was a very farsighted entrepreneur,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. “Chris was just one of those folks who had the Midas touch.”  
  
Raney said Cline began toiling in the mines of southern West Virginia at a young age, rising through the ranks of his father’s company quickly with a reserved demeanor and savvy business moves.  
  
He formed his own energy development business, the Cline Group, which grew into one of the country’s top coal producers.  

Investment switch
  
When he thought mining in the Appalachian region was drying up, he started buying reserves in the Illinois Basin in what turned out to be a smart investment in high-sulfur coal, according to the website of Missouri-based Foresight Energy, a company he formed. 
  
Cline sold most of his interest in Foresight for $1.4 billion and then dropped $150 million into a metallurgical coal mine in Nova Scotia, according to a 2017 Forbes article titled “Chris Cline Could Be The Last Coal Tycoon Standing.”  
  
The piece captured his opulence: A mansion in West Virginia with a man-made lake big enough to ski on and a pasture that included a while stallion stud name Fabio. A gun collection so deep that federal officials would take stock once a month. A 200-foot (61-meter) yacht called Mine Games. 
 
His deep pockets eventually opened to politics: He donated heavily to President Donald Trump and other Republicans. Cline gave the president’s inaugural committee $1 million in 2017 and shared thousands more with conservative groups as well as committees representing GOP figures such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, according to federal records. 
 
He also gave to academia, bestowing at least $8.5 million on Marshall University in West Virginia. 
 
“Our hearts are heavy,” said Marshall University President Jerome A. Gilbert. “Chris’s generosity to our research and athletics programs has made a mark on Marshall University and our students for many years to come.” 
 

Authorities began searching for the helicopter after police received a report from Florida that Cline’s aircraft failed to arrive in Fort Lauderdale as expected on Thursday, Bahamas Police Supt. Shanta Knowles told The Associated Press. 
  
The bodies of the four women and three men were recovered Thursday and taken to the Bahamian capital of Nassau to be officially identified, said Delvin Major, chief investigator for the Bahamas’ Air Accident Investigation Department. The Augusta AW139 helicopter was still in the water on Friday, and based on preliminary information, she did not believe there had been a distress call before the helicopter went down. The cause of the crash is still undetermined, officials said.  
  
A Royal Bahamas Police Force statement said authorities and locals found the site 2 miles (3 kilometers) off Big Grand Cay, a group of private islands Cline bought in 2014 for less than the $11.5 million asking price.  
  
Bahamas real estate agent John Christie, who sold the land, said Big Grand Cay was developed by the late Robert Abplanalp, inventor of the modern aerosol spray valve and a friend of President Richard Nixon. The property became known as an escape for Nixon in the 1970s.  
  
Big Grand Cay comprises about 213 acres (86 hectares) distributed over about half a dozen narrow islands. At the time of its sale, the property’s mansion sat on a bluff overlooking the ocean and had five bedrooms and four bathrooms.  

Governor mourns
  
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice mourned Cline’s loss, first in a tweet he sent out Thursday in which he noted that his and Cline’s families had been very close for years.  
  
“Today we lost a WV superstar and I lost a very close friend,” Justice wrote in the tweet. “Chris Cline built an empire and on every occasion was always there to give. What a wonderful, loving, and giving man.”  
  
Cline, in his Forbes profile, defended coal and waved off some of the scientific evidence of climate change when he wasn’t posing for photos in front of tall pyramids of the black stuff.  
  
“People deserve the cheapest energy they can get,” he said. “Tell the poor in India and China that they don’t deserve to have reliable, affordable electricity.”  
  
And to that effect, he also spoke about solar panels, wind turbines and Tesla batteries on Big Grand Cay, saying “Where it makes sense, I’m absolutely for it.” 

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America’s annual Independence Day is celebrated a bit differently in Washington, D.C., this year, with a display of military might and a speech about patriotism by U.S. President Donald Trump. The event draws Trump supporters, as well as protesters who accuse the president of politicizing a nonpartisan holiday and wasting taxpayer money. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.

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A single cigarette may have started the April fire that destroyed much of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  Flames tore through the global tourist destination as firefighters struggled to find and extinguish their source.  German authorities want to make sure what happened in France, doesn’t happen there.  Arash Arabasadi has more.

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The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has plunged from a record high to a record low in just three years, according to a new report released this week by the U.S. space agency NASA. Faith Lapidus reports scientists are not sure why.

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India said on Thursday it needs $330 billion in investments over the next decade to power its renewable energy dream, but coal would remain central to its electricity generation.

The energy guzzling country wants to raise its renewable energy capacity to 500 Gigawatts (GW), or 40% of total capacity, by 2030. Renewables currently account for 22% of India’s total installed capacity of about 357 GW.

“Additional investments in renewable plants up to year 2022 would be about $80 billion at today’s prices and an investment of around $250 billion would be required for the period 2023-2030,” according to the government’s economic survey presented to parliament on Thursday.

India wants to have 175 GW of renewable-based installed power capacity by 2022.

 The investment estimate reflects the magnitude of financial challenges facing one of the world’s most important growth markets for renewable energy, with government data indicating a growth slowdown in private and capital investments in the year ended March 2019.

India, which receives twice as much sunshine as European countries, wants to make solar a cornerstone of its renewable expansion, but also wants to make use of its cheap and abundant coal reserves, the fifth-largest in the world.

  The annual economic survey warned India against abruptly halting coal-based utilities, citing risks to its banking sector and the stability of the electricity grid.

“It may not be advisable to effect a sudden abandonment of coal based power plants without complete utilization of their useful lifetimes as it would lead to stranding of assets that can have further adverse impact on the banking sector,” the survey said.

Thermal power plants account for 80% of all industrial emissions of particulate matter, sulfur and nitrous oxides in India. India, one of the world’s largest coal producers and greenhouse gas emitters, estimates coal to be its energy mainstay for at least the next three decades. The country’s coal use rose 9.1% to nearly a billion tons in 2018-19.

The survey said it would be difficult for a growing economy like India to migrate to renewable power supply unless “sufficient technological breakthrough in energy storage happens in the near future”.

Environmentalists worry that India’s rising use of coal at a time when many Western nations are rejecting the dirty fossil fuel will hamper the global fight against climate change, despite the country’s commitment to renewable energy.

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Thirty-seven Cambodian deported by the United States arrived in Phnom Penh on Thursday, 32 of them refugees who fled during the rule of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1970s or war that followed their ouster, an aid group said.

Thousands of Cambodian refugees started new lives in the United States after fleeing the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-1979 reign of terror, in which up to 2 million people are believed to have been killed or died of overwork and starvation, and subsequent chaos.

Some of them, after spending most of their lives in the United States, are sent back to a homeland they hardly know after running afoul of U.S. law.

“They — their families, actually — fled the terrors of the Khmer Rouge era and post — Khmer Rouge chaos. Many were born in Thai refugee camps,” said Bill Herod, spokesman for the Khmer Vulnerability Aid Organization (KVAO), a group that helps Cambodian deportees adjust after being sent back from the United States.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has in the past criticized the United States over the deportations and accused it of breaking up the families of those forced to leave.

Thirty-five of the 37 deportees were convicted criminals who were sent back to Cambodia via a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flight from Dallas, ICE said in a statement on
its website.

ICE said it had increased the number of Cambodian immigrants it had deported from 2017 to 2018 by 279%. There are still about 1,900 Cambodians in the United States who are subject to deportation, of which 1,400 are convicted criminals, according to ICE.

“All of them have served time in prison for felony convictions. Some come directly from prison, but most completed their sentences long ago and were living freely at the time they were detained for deportation,” Herod said of the deportees who arrived on Thursday.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has already deported thousands of people from Vietnam and Cambodia with criminal records as part of broader attempts to limit immigration to the United States.

The United States has been seeking to send thousands of immigrants from Vietnam back to the communist-ruled country despite a bilateral agreement that should protect most from deportation.

Trump has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his administration and is highlighting the issue as he aims for re-election in 2020.

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The Indian government on Thursday warned in a study that its population is going to start to age and it needs to be prepared to merge schools and raise the retirement age.

While India should be set to benefit from the so-called “demographic dividend” over the next decade as its working population is set to increase by about 9.7 million a year between 2021-31, that  will quickly fade as the nation’s fertility rate plunges below replacement level.

The conclusions in the study, “India’s Demography at 2040: Planning Public Good Provision for the 21st Century,” will have major implications for many companies, particularly those that have been eyeing consumer demand from India’s young population.

It said the number of children in the 5-14 age bracket will decline significantly, leading to the need for school mergers and less focus on building new ones.

Already states such as Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have fewer than 50 students enrolled in more than 40 percent of their elementary schools, according to the study, which was included in the government’s annual Economic Survey.

It also said that policymakers need to prepare for an increasing number of elderly people, estimating there will be 239.4 million Indians over the age of 60 in 2041 against 104.2 million in 2011.

“This will need investments in health care as well as a plan for increasing the retirement age in a phased manner,” concluded the study, which was authored by India’s Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian and his team of economists.

The current retirement age for most government workers in India is 60.

Meanwhile, the number of Indians aged between 0-19 has already started to decline and the proportion of the population in that age group is projected to fall to 25 percent by 2041 from 41 percent in 2011.

The demographic dividend that is talked about in India refers to the current situation where the nation’s labor force is growing quicker than the rest of the population it supports.

If the newcomers to the labor market get well-paid jobs it boosts consumption and economic growth.

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Scientists, government officials and conservationists are calling for a swift response to protect North Atlantic right whales after a half-dozen died in the past month.

All six of the dead endangered species have been found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Canada. At least three appear to have died after being hit by ships.

There are only a little more than 400 of the endangered species left. 
 
The deaths have led scientists to sound the alarm about a potentially catastrophic loss to the population.

Some say the whales are traveling in different areas than usual because of food availability. That change has apparently brought whales outside of protected zones and left them vulnerable.
 

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President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday pushed back against mounting criticism of its migrant detention centers on the U.S.-Mexico border, even as the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog issued a report detailing serious overcrowding at some facilities in Texas.

Conditions at these detention centers have become a flashpoint since May when an internal DHS watchdog warned of dangerous overcrowding at a facility in El Paso, Texas.

In a follow-up report issued on Tuesday after visits to five U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency facilities and two ports of entry, the watchdog said “serious overcrowding” and “prolonged detention” of children, families and single adults had been observed.

Members of a visiting congressional group on Monday said the migrants, many coming from Central America, were being kept in deplorable conditions and, according to U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told to drink out of toilets.

“I don’t know what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is talking about,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in an interview with Fox Business Network, calling members of CPB “some of the bravest men and women on the planet.”

“They put their lives in danger every single day. They provided three meals a day to people who are here illegally and unlawfully, two snacks in between,” Gidley said.

The Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform announced that the panel has invited the acting heads of the Department of Homeland Security and CPB to testify on July 12 on the administration’s border policies including the conditions at detention centers.

“The Trump administration’s actions at the southern border are grotesque and dehumanizing,” Elijah Cummings said in a statement. “There seems to be open contempt for the rule of law and for basic human decency.”

Trump has made a crackdown on illegal immigration a centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda and 2020 re-election bid. But his efforts to build a wall on the southern border have been blocked in Congress, and he was forced last year to backtrack after his “zero tolerance” border policy of separating migrant children from their parents provoked widespread outrage.

The detention facilities have become an issue among Democratic candidates vying to face Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

U.S. Senator Cory Booker would “virtually eliminate immigration detention” if he wins the White House, his campaign said Tuesday, including ending the use of for-profit detention facilities and minimizing the time unaccompanied children were in custody.

Migrant rights protests

Dr. Lisa Ayoub-Rodriguez, a Texas pediatrician who has been providing health care to migrant families, said she recently saw a mother suffering from dehydration with a baby whose fingers and toes were still blue after time in a detention center.

“I asked her if in CBP custody she had been given water. She said no. I asked her if she asked. … She said no. She didn’t want to be a bother or a burden, she said,” Ayoub-Rodriguez told a news briefing in El Paso alongside other doctors who help migrants.

“I see this often in the population. This is a population that’s afraid to ask for help,” Ayoub-Rodriguez said.

Several hundred people gathered Tuesday in New York City to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants, part of a planned nationwide day of protests by rights groups targeting members of the U.S. Congress.

The demonstrations were fueled by fears that Trump’s administration is preparing to move forward with a round-up of illegal immigrants in U.S. cities. Last month, Trump delayed the raids by two weeks.

Criticism of the CPB intensified after a report Monday by the nonprofit news site ProPublica detailing offensive content posted on a private Facebook group for current and former CBP officers that included jokes about the deaths of migrants and sexually explicit references to Ocasio-Cortez.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a top Democratic presidential candidate, on Twitter called the report was “horrific” and said the dehumanization of immigrants must end.

Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term New York Democrat who was part of a Congressional Hispanic Caucus visit to the border Monday, suggested in a Twitter post Tuesday that the CBP was a “rogue agency.”

CBP condemned the Facebook group and acknowledged that the group may include a number of the agency’s employees.

Reuters did not independently confirm the report.

Migration levels

The migration flows from Central America have dropped sharply since hitting their highest level in more than a decade in May, as Mexico deployed thousands of militarized police as part of a June 7 deal with the United States to avoid U.S. tariffs on Mexican goods and other enforcement measures. 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday touted his country’s success in curbing the migrant crush, three days after Trump praised Mexican efforts.

“I am grateful that even President Trump is making it known that Mexico is fulfilling its commitment and that there are no threats of tariffs,” Lopez Obrador told reporters in Mexico City.
 

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