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FILE PHOTO: U.S. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is pictured EPA headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S. April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Timothy Gardner/File Photo
April 11, 2019
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday the agency would revise its proposed freeze of vehicle fuel economy standards before unveiling its final regulation in the coming months.
In August, the EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed freezing requirements for new cars and trucks at 2020 levels through 2026 but EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview at the agency’s headquarters “our final regulation is not going to be the same as our proposal.”
“We’ve taken constructive comments, criticisms, concerns from a whole host of different interest groups,” Wheeler said. “I hope our final regulation is something that everybody can get behind and support.”
Two U.S. officials briefed on the matter said they expected the EPA to wind up requiring a small increase in the yearly fuel efficiency gains, likely around mid-June, but said the precise figure had not been finalized. It is also not clear what flexibilities will remain in the final rule.
Obama-era rules adopted in 2012 called for a fleetwide fuel efficiency average of 46.7 miles per gallon by 2026, with average annual increases of nearly 5 percent, compared with 37 mpg by 2026 under the Trump administration’s preferred option.
The administration’s proposed changes would also strip California of the ability to impose its own state emissions standards or require a rising number of electric vehicles.
The proposed fuel efficiency freeze would hike U.S. oil consumption by about 500,000 barrels per day by the 2030s, according to administration officials. Wheeler denied the rules were written at the behest of oil industry lobbyists.
“This has nothing to do with the oil industry. We’re not doing this for the oil industry. I’m not doing this for the oil industry,” Wheeler said.
The Trump administration said in August that the freeze would save automakers more than $300 billion in regulatory costs and reduce the projected cost of a new vehicle by $1,850.
It also said the measure would save lives because Americans would more quickly buy newer safer vehicles, a claim disputed by California and environmental groups.
Automakers like General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Toyota Motor Corp oppose a freeze but want requirements reduced to account for changes in oil prices and consumer demand. All have pushed for a compromise deal to head off years of legal uncertainty.
The White House in February ended talks with California to try to reach a deal. Reuters reported in March the White House had held meetings with automakers to push them to back it in its fight with California.
California last week sued the EPA over its failure to provide data used to justify easing vehicle efficiency standards.. California and 16 other states had previously vowed to challenge any emissions rollback.
Wheeler heaped scorn on California. “This is so much more about politics for the state of California than it is protecting the environment,” Wheeler said.
California’s top air regulator Mary Nichols said in February the proposal flies “in the face of science, logic and any effort to protect public health.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Tim Gardner, mValerie olcovici and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Tom Brown)
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Tiger Woods of the U.S. walks on the 16th green during first round play of the 2019 Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S., April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
April 11, 2019
By Andrew Both
AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) – Tiger Woods missed a couple of short putts early in the first round before charging up the leaderboard at the Masters on Thursday, at times reminding everyone of his former glories.
Fourteen years since his last Masters triumph, 14 times major winner Woods birdied the 13th and 14th holes to tie for the lead at Augusta National.
Yet a couple of poor drives down the stretch, along with a judgment error, left the four-times Masters champion to card a slightly disappointing two-under-par 70.
He was one stroke off the clubhouse lead, held by Australian Adam Scott, Spaniard Jon Rahm and South African Justin Harding.
“Played well today, hit a lot of good shots,” Woods said.
“If I missed, I missed in the correct spot. I had simpler up-and-downs because of that.
“I missed a few (putts) for sure, misread a couple and hit a bad one at six. Other than that it was a good solid day.”
After a two-putt birdie at the par-five 13th, Woods picked up another shot at the 14th with a typically Tigeresque effort.
He threaded his 150-yard approach shot through the Augusta pines and then sank a sharply-breaking 25-foot putt, giving an understated little fist pump as the patrons roared their approval.
When he drove down the middle at the par-five 15th, leaving less than 200 yards to the pin, it seemed likely Woods would take the outright lead.
Yet one poorly-judged shot pricked his balloon.
“Get down, down, down,” he barked at his ball while it was in the air, before adding “oh my god” when he saw it overshoot the green.
The ball landed on a downslope and bounded 40 yards beyond the hole, leaving a devilishly difficult pitch shot.
The 43-year-old struck a heavy wedge shot which never had a chance of making it up the slope, prompting a wry smile.
He hit the next one close and saved par.
Later, Woods carved his drive into the trees at the par-four 17th, and though he found a nice gap for his second shot, he came up short of the green and bogeyed the hole.
Earlier, Woods missed a five-foot putt at the fifth and an even shorter one at the next. He also missed a great birdie chance at the par-five eighth.
(Reporting by Andrew Both; Editing by Toby Davis)
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Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin endorsed GOP Sen. Susan Collins for reelection on Thursday, an increasingly rare instance of abandoing partisan politics as an election approaches.
Manchin, a moderate West Virginia senator, even said he would campaign for the vulnerable Maine incumbent.
That was a huge gift to Collins, who Democrats likely need to beat if they hope to take the Senate majority in 2020.
Manchin made his comments in an interview with C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program that will air beginning on Friday night, Politico first reported.
Collins has out-raised a liberal crowdfunding effort to unseat her, thanks to out-of-state donors, according to campaign finance reports recently filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Collins’ federal campaign finance reports filed Friday show she’s raised $4 million for her 2020 re-election campaign. She’s raised more than her three last re-election races combined and reports a $3.8 million war chest through March.
Collins has raised less than 1% of her funds this year from donors who say they’re from Maine.
Much of her donors are based in New York, Virginia, Florida, Texas, Washington, D.C. and California, according to her reports.
Collins’ biggest reported donors include political action committees tied to congressional Republicans, insurance company UNUM and consulting firm Deloitte. Her biggest individual donors include conservative billionaires Robert and Diana Mercer, who are also among President Trump’s biggest backers.
The AP analysis of her campaign finance report shows about a third of Collins’ donors gave $250 or less this year.
Such donors gave about 6% of Collins’ $1.5 million haul from January through March.
No Democrats have formally announced they’re running against Collins, who typically wins re-election by wide margins.
Progressives have raised over $3.5 million for a candidate to unseat Collins after she cast a key vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh was confirmed following contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearings over claims from Christine Blasey Ford that he had sexually assaulted her while they were teenagers. Kavanaugh denied the allegations.
In the wake of the vote, a Burlington, Maine woman is facing federal charges of mailing a threatening letter to Collins’ home in October. It was unsigned and accused Collins of having “betrayed the people of Maine.”
Suzanne Muscara mailed starch to the Republican senator’s husband, Thomas Daffron, with a letter that claimed to have been coated with “ricin residue,” according to the affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Bangor.
Muscara, who was arrested Friday, faces up to 10 years in prison. It’s unclear whether she has an attorney to comment on her behalf.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.
Source: NewsMax America
FILE PHOTO: Trucks wait in a long queue for border customs control to cross into U.S., at the Cordova-Americas border crossing bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo
April 11, 2019
By Julio-Cesar Chavez
EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will send about 100 agents to the Mexico border to speed up crossing times, a U.S. congresswoman said on Thursday, as businesses grapple with trade delays after officers were redeployed to immigration duties.
The slowdowns began late last month after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to close the border if Mexico did not halt a surge of people seeking asylum in the United States.
The administration moved several hundred border agents to handle the influx of migrants, triggering long delays for cross-border traffic because of the staffing shortage.
As soon as Monday, CBP plans to send officers from the Canadian border and other parts of the country to El Paso, Texas, said Democratic U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, noting she had been informed by CBP Deputy Commissioner Robert Perez.
CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Rio Grande Valley, on the eastern edge of the border, was being considered as another point to deploy extra officers, Escobar added.
Wait times totaling hours have hit industrial trade hard.
Losses have amounted to $800,000 a day for transportation businesses in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, said the head of Mexican trucking association CANACAR, Manuel Sotelo.
In El Paso, several truckers said they usually did four crossings a day and were now managing only one.
Some manufacturing plants, including automotive factories that depend on constant cross-border shipments, have turned to expensive air freight to stay on schedule.
Passenger vehicles that would normally wait up to an hour and a half to cross are now facing four-hour waits.
(Reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez in El Paso, Texas; Additional reporting by Sharay Angulo in Mexico City; Editing by Daina Beth Solomon and Peter Cooney)
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FILE PHOTO: Dennis Muilenburg, CEO, Boeing speaks during a roundtable discussion on defense issues with U.S. President Donald Trump at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, U.S., October 19, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
April 11, 2019
DALLAS (Reuters) – Boeing Co Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said on Thursday that 67 percent of its more than 50 737 MAX customers have tested the manufacturer’s software fix in simulator sessions, with additional tests expected in the coming weeks.
Speaking at a leadership forum in Dallas, Muilenburg said the Boeing team had made 96 flights totaling a little over 159 hours of air time with the updated software, which is under scrutiny following two fatal crashes.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson; Writing by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Caroline Stauffer)
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Moderates in the Democratic Party are starting to propose alternatives to the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-all out of concern that those policies could prove too far-left for voters in the 2020 election, The Washington Post reports.
Several moderate Democrats seeking the nomination in 2020, such as former Vice President Joe Biden and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, have promised to avoid a dramatic expansion of the government’s influence on the economy. They’ve also pushed back on Medicare-for-all, saying they would rather focus on making small expansions or finding solutions in the market.
“I think that’s one of the ways to ensure that we get to guaranteed, high-quality health care for every single American,” O’Rourke said recently, when asked about Medicare-for-all. “I’m no longer sure that that’s the fastest way to get there.”
“Show me the really left-left-left-left-wingers who beat a Republican,” in the midterms, Biden said to reporters last week. “The fact of the matter is the vast majority of the members of the Democratic Party are still basically liberal-moderate Democrats in the traditional sense.”
“There is a bit in the air that is worryingly reminiscent of 1972, when Democrats were rightly enraged with a corrupt and malign president were disillusioned by their previous unsuccessful establishment presidential candidate, gravitated to radical redistribution economic policy, focused on turning out their activists and failed to focus on the middle,” said Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary and economic advisor to former President Barack Obama. “The result was the political catastrophe of Richard Nixon’s reelection.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
FILE PHOTO: A Qatar Airways Boeing 7878 Dreamliner airplane is pictured at Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy, March 30, 2019. REUTERS/Alberto Lingria/File Photo
April 11, 2019
DUBAI (Reuters) – Qatar Airways said on Thursday its investment in Air Italy was fully compliant with the Open Skies agreement between Qatar and the United States.
The airline issued the statement after the U.S. said it was scrutinizing the Qatar state-owned carrier’s 49 percent stake in the Air Italy.
(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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Women stand in the back of a truck in Hasaka, Syria, April 1, 2019. Picture taken April 1, 2019. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
April 11, 2019
By John Davison
AL-HOL CAMP, Syria (Reuters) – Even when U.S. coalition air strikes and artillery paused for people to evacuate during lulls in fighting, the killing did not stop in Islamic State’s final enclave.
Snipers in areas controlled by Syria’s government near the village of Baghouz picked off women and children fetching water from the river or climbing the small hill to seek medical help in Kurdish-controlled territory, survivors said.
People died from their wounds and children starved.
“There were lines of bodies, men, women and children. I didn’t count them,” said Katrin Aleksandr, a Ukrainian woman who left Baghouz in eastern Syria in the last days of the fighting.
She lay in a hospital bed with her head stitched up, two black eyes and shrapnel wounds to her limbs. Her husband, a militant, was killed in the air strike that wounded her.
“Everything was on fire, including tents people lived in,” she said.
Those who lived through the final days of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate said many people had stayed or were trapped in trenches, tunnels and tents in Baghouz.
Aleksandr and several other people interviewed by Reuters in camps and hospitals, including supporters and critics of Islamic State, gave separate but similar accounts.
They say bombardment by U.S.-backed forces and sniper fire from Syrian government areas killed scores, if not hundreds, as fighters and families scrabbled over food.
U.S.-backed forces declared last month the full territorial defeat of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Asked about events in Baghouz, the U.S.-led coalition said it uses “stringent methods to … allow halts to strikes if any civilians would be put in danger,” and investigates all reports of civilian casualties.
The Syrian government and Shi’ite Muslim militias deny targeting civilians in fighting.
Islamic State deployed car bombs and suicide belts during weeks of fighting for Baghouz. The Sunni Islamist group left a trail of destruction, killed thousands of people in the name of its narrow interpretation of Islam and helped cause many more deaths by trapping civilians in battles to drive it out.
But its adversaries have often used intense bombardment to end those battles in which civilians were killed, fuelling a humanitarian crisis and resentment among those who once lived in the areas it controlled.
In Mosul, the group’s Iraqi stronghold from 2014 to 2017, aerial and ground bombardment destroyed its center and killed thousands of civilians, according to rights groups.
Raqqa in northern Syria, where IS planned attacks in European capitals, was largely destroyed in 2017 before some militants were allowed to evacuate. Many of them are thought to have ended up in Baghouz.
IS supporters, those who tolerated the group and even some critics say its defeat has come at too high a cost in lives and destruction, creating anger the militants are likely to try to exploit as they wage a growing insurgency.
“There’s no shelter in Baghouz, just trenches and tents. Shells landed every 20 minutes. I left after an explosion killed my husband and two of my children,” said Salma Ibrahim, a 20-year-old Moroccan IS supporter at al-Hol camp where many displaced by violence now live.
“Of people who went to the river to get water, maybe half returned,” she said.
GRAPHIC – How Islamic State lost Syria: https://tmsnrt.rs/2O7l4mN
‘LIMBLESS CHILDREN’
Baghouz, now under the control of the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is separated by the Euphrates river from territory controlled by the Syrian army and its allies including Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim militias, who have been accused of revenge attacks against Sunnis.
With IS no longer holding any of eastern Syria, the Euphrates effectively demarcates rival areas of Kurdish control to its east and Syrian government control to the west.
Reporters have mostly been prevented from reaching Baghouz since the battle entered its final phase and ended in late March.
Some civilians said IS forced them to stay almost until the end.
“Fighters guarded women and children and wouldn’t let us go,” said Amal Susi, a 20-year-old Lebanese woman at al-Hol.
She said militants and families fought over bags of flour and scraps of meat.
“They would point their guns at each other and wrestle over flour. People starved,” she said. “When we finally left, we saw bodies of children missing limbs and heads.”
The U.S.-led coalition said it carried out 193 air and artillery strikes in Syria between March 10 and IS’s declared defeat on March 23, some resulting in secondary explosions. It said the SDF were “committed to enabling multiple opportunities to allow for civilians to escape harm.”
Militants kept civilians next to ammunition depots and hid in a network of tunnels, several people interviewed said.
An SDF fighter who participated in the battle said dozens of comrades were killed by mines planted by IS.
“The smell of burned bodies and explosives mixed when we entered Baghouz,” said the fighter, Chegovara Zerik. “Air strikes helped destroy tunnels. Without them we wouldn’t have been able to advance.”
“Most of the bodies were men and women fighters. Strikes only hit where gunfire was coming from. It was not a normal battle – women and boys also fought,” the fighter said.
Unverified videos posted on social media purported to show IS women fighting. Those interviewed said this might have happened but they did not witness it.
Many women described cowering in trenches.
“The reason most people did not leave is because everyone was scared,” said one British woman at al-Hol, who struggled to speak because of a mouth injury.
That included fear of revenge attacks, she said.
“One German girl, she got caught, then they (the SDF) were, like, “Why did you come?” and shot her in the head.”
The 22-year-old Londoner declined to give her name. Reuters could not verify her account.
The SDF said it was “impossible” any such incidents occurred among its ranks.
(Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Martin Zielke, CEO of Germany’s Commerzbank addresses the media during the bank’s annual news conference in Frankfurt, Germany, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo
April 11, 2019
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Commerzbank’s supervisory board chairman on Thursday dismissed reports of board dissatisfaction with its chief executive as irresponsible and unfounded.
Chairman Stefan Schmittmann was reacting to reports in recent days that some board members were pushing Commerzbank to end merger talks with rival Deutsche Bank and push CEO Martin Zielke from office.
“Rumors and speculation on personnel changes are made up out of thin air,” Schmittmann said in a statement emailed to Reuters. “Such allegations are irresponsible and unworthy of discussion.”
Germany’s Manager Magazin was one of the news organizations that reported on a rebellion, writing on Wednesday that the push was coming from board members who represent employees.
Schmittmann said that Commerzbank “must explore” the option to merge with Deutsche. “I think that’s right and it’s their duty,” he added.
Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing has told his counterpart at Commerzbank that he wants more time to consider a merger.
The two banks announced merger talks on March 17. If successful, they would create Europe’s third-largest bank from Germany’s top two lenders, which have struggled to recover since the financial crisis.
Government officials, led by Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, have pushed for a merger to create a national banking champion and end questions over the future of the two banks.
A tie-up between the lenders is an enormous undertaking because both are already in the midst of restructuring, some bankers and regulators have said, adding that a merger would not necessarily solve Deutsche’s core weakness, its sprawling global investment bank.
From the start, some major investors have expressed scepticism about a deal, while unions have warned of 30,000 potential job losses.
Days after the talks were announced, Zielke promised the bank’s employees a quick decision on whether to go forward with a merger, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
The Commerzbank workers’ council then sent a letter to board members to protest against the merger, saying the idea lacked support among workers, customers and society.
“We are of the opinion that you will fall into an uncontrollable adventure without a solid plan, without a vision and without support,” the letter said.
Zielke subsequently met seven employees on the 47th floor of the bank’s Frankfurt tower to quell concerns and explain his stance.
“The alternative of doing nothing is not an option,” he said, according to comments posted on the bank’s intranet and seen by Reuters.
(Reporting by Tom Sims and Hans Seidenstuecker; Editing by Keith Weir and David Goodman)
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