Monday, March 02, 2020

It's OK to feed wild birds: Here are some tips for doing it the right way

Millions of Americans enjoy feeding and watching backyard birds. Many people make a point of putting food out in winter, when birds needs extra energy, and spring, when many species build nests and raise young.

As a wildlife ecologist and a birder, I know it's important to understand how humans influence bird populations, whether feeding poses risks to wild birds, and how to engage with birds in sustainable ways.

There is still much to learn about the risks and benefits of feeding birds, particularly through large integrated national citizen science networks like Project FeederWatch. But we now have enough information to promote healthy interactions that can inspire future generations to care about conservation.

A long-term relationship

Birds have been taking advantage of human civilization for thousands of years, congregating where grains and waste are abundant. This means that people have been influencing the abundance and distribution of species for a very long time.

Studies show that providing food has myriad effects on birds' decisions, behaviors and reproduction. One significant finding is that winter bird feeding increases individual survival rates, can encourage birds to lay eggs earlier in the year, and can also improve nestling survival.

All of these factors alter species' future reproductive performance and can increase total bird abundance in later years. It's not always clear how increased abundance of feeder birds impacts other species through competition, but rarer and smaller species can be excluded.

Supplemental food has also led to reduced reproductive success in a few species. This may happen because it improves survival odds for less healthy birds that otherwise would be unlikely to survive and reproduce, or because it leads birds to eat fewer types of natural foods, making their diets less nourishing.

Changing bird behavior

Research also shows that birds are extremely promiscuous. One review examined 342 species and found that in approximately 75%, birds had one or more side partners in addition to their nest mate.

It's not always clear why birds cheat, but several studies have found that supplemental feeding can reduce the amount of infidelity in certain species, including house sparrows. This hints that feeding birds might alter their behavior and have an effect on genetic variation in urban populations.

For birds that provide pollinating services, like hummingbirds and lorikeets, there is some evidence that providing them with sugar water—which mimics the nectar they collect from plants—can reduce their visits to native plants. This means they will transfer less pollen. Since much bird feeding happens in densely populated urban areas, it's unclear how much impact this might have.

Some bird populations depend completely on feeding and would collapse over the winter without it. For example, Anna's hummingbirds in British Columbia rely on heated feeders. Other species, such as hummingbirds in the southwest U.S., have become more locally abundant. Northern cardinals and American goldfinches have shifted and expanded their ranges northward with the availability of food.

In one incredible instance, garden feeders seem to have played a role in establishing a new wintering population of migratory blackcaps in the United Kingdom. This group is now genetically distinct from the rest of the population, which migrates further south to Mediterranean wintering grounds.

Don't feed the predators

Scientists still know little about how bird feeding affects transmission of pathogens and parasites among birds. It is not uncommon for birds at feeders to carry more pathogens than populations away from feeders. Some well-documented outbreaks in the U.S. and U.K. have shown that feeding birds can increase problems associated with disease—evidence that was collected through feeder watch citizen science projects.

Because we still have a poor understanding of pathogen transmission and prevalence in urban areas, it is extremely important to follow hygiene guidelines for feeding and be alert for new recommendations.

Feeding can also attract predators. Domestic cats kill an estimated 1.3 to 4 billion birds in the U.S. every year. Feeders should not be placed in settings where cats are present, and pet cats should be kept indoors.

Feeders can also support both native and introduced birds that outcompete local species. One study found that feeders attracted high numbers of crows, which prey on other birds' chicks, with the result that less than 1% of nearby American robin nests fledged young. In New Zealand, bird feeding largely benefits seed-eating introduced species at the expense of native birds.

Clean feeders and diverse diets

The good news is that studies do not show birds becoming dependent on supplemental food. Once started, though, it is important to maintain a steady food supply during harsh weather.

Birds also need access to native plants, which provide them with habitat, food and insect prey that can both supplement diets and support species that don't eat seeds at feeders. Diverse food resources can counteract some of the negative findings I've mentioned related to competition between species and impacts on bird diets.

Good maintenance, placement and cleaning can help minimize the likelihood of promoting pathogens at feeders. Initiatives like Project FeederWatch have recommendations about feeder design and practices to avoid. For example, platform feeders, where birds wade through the food, are associated with higher mortality, possibly through mixing of waste and food.

It's also important to manage the area around feeders. Be sure to place feeders in ways that minimize the likelihood that birds will fly into windows. For instance, avoid providing a sight line through a house, which birds may perceive as a corridor, and break up window reflections with decals.

There are lots of great reasons to bring birds into your life. Evidence is growing that interacting with nature is good for our mental health and builds public support for conserving plants and wildlife. In my view, these benefits outweigh many of the potential negatives of bird feeding. And if you get involved in a citizen science project, you can help scientists track the health and behavior of your wild guests.

When managing birdfeeders, think bird health and safety

Provided by The Conversation

Intelligently recovering and recycling balsa wood

by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft MARCH 2, 2020

Around 20 percent of electricity in Germany was generated by wind turbines in 2018. Credit: Hans-Peter Merten/MATOfoto

There are 30,000 wind turbines in operation in Germany, many of which are starting to age. In 2019, 2000 rotor blades had to be discarded; in 2024, this figure will shoot up to 15,000. But where to put these up to 90-meter-long, 15-metric-ton behemoths? Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research, Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut, WKI have a solution: they used a new recycling technique to recover and process the balsa wood contained in the rotor blades into, for instance, insulation mats for buildings.

Old wind power generators have to be disposed of—whether due to material fatigue or simply because they are being replaced by larger and more efficient systems. A study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT predicts that the 15,000 rotor blades that will have to be discarded in 2024 will be joined by another 72,000 in the subsequent three years. We already have environmentally friendly methods for disposing of the steel and concrete in the wind power generators, but recycling the rotor blades remains problematic.

Firmly bonded and nearly impossible to separate

Rotor blades are not made of steel. "That would be too heavy and inflexible. They are made largely of glass-fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP) and balsa wood bonded with epoxy or polyester resin," says Peter Meinlschmidt, project manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research, Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut, WKI in Braunschweig. This bond is extremely strong. It has to be: the rotor blades reach top speeds of more than 250 kilometers per hour, subjecting them to an enormous force. For single-origin recycling, however, this is precisely the problem, as it is very difficult to separate the individual components of the composite material.

A rotor blade contains around 15 cubic meters of balsa wood, which is not only one of the world's lightest woods, but also extremely resistant to pressure. "That's the key advantage of balsa over most plastic foams," explains Meinlschmidt. Previously, there was no possibility to recover it when disposing of the old rotor blades. "Although it has hardly any energy content, it is burned as a composite material, usually in cement factories. The cement raw materials have to be heated up to about 1500 degrees Celsius before they coalesce and form cement clinker, so these factories require a great deal of energy. In addition, the melted glass fibers and the ash can later be added to the cement and replace portions of the quartz sand that would otherwise have to be input into the process." But the number of cement plants in Germany is limited (there are 53 in total), and so is their need for rotor blades as combustion material.

Disassembling rotor blades with a water jet lance

But there is still hope for getting the impending flood of rotor blades under control: Meinlschmidt and his team—Fraunhofer ICT colleagues and industry partners—have developed a new recycling technology. To recover and recycle the balsa from the rotor blades, the detached blades are disassembled on the spot. "The conventional approach is to use a band saw to cut the rotor blades into thirds or quarters, but this is a relatively complex process. That's why we came up with the idea to try it with a water jet lance instead. And what do you know: it was much faster and better," says an enthusiastic Meinlschmidt. The lance can be mounted on a special vehicle and controlled from there. "The tremendous thrust would make it extremely difficult to guide the lance by hand." Then, while still on site, the 10- to 20-meter-long rotor blade segments are fed into a mobile shredder that breaks them into pieces about the size of the palm of a hand.

Finally, the research team uses an impact mill to separate these pieces into their individual components. To this end, they are set in rotation and hurled against metal at high speed. As Meinlschmidt explains, "The composite material then breaks apart because the wood is viscoplastic, while glass fibers and resin are very hard."

Insulating with rotor blades

At Fraunhofer WKI, the balsa pieces are processed to make, for instance, ultra-light-weight wood-fiber insulation mats. "Currently around 10 percent of building insulation materials are made from renewable resources—there's room for improvement here." With a density of less than 20 kilograms per cubic meter, these mats are so far unique on the market and provide similarly good insulation to common polystyrene-based materials.

The recycled balsa can also be used to produce a novel, elastic wood foam. For this, it is ground to a very fine powder and combined with a foaming agent. The foam's stability is created by the wood's own cohesive forces, which render synthetic adhesives superfluous. The foam is suitable for use as an environmentally friendly insulating material, but also as a packaging material that can simply be disposed of in the paper recycling container.

Explore furtherLightweight rotor blades made from plastic foams for offshore wind turbines

Provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Weaving insect wildlife back into the tapestry of life

by Michael Samways, The Conversation

Insects are fundamental to the functioning of land and freshwater ecosystems. They permeate all aspects of these ecosystems, chewing and pooing, pollinating, seed spreading and affecting each other's population levels through predation and parasitism. They also provide ecological processes of vital importance for frogs, lizards, birds and mammals, especially as food items for these vertebrates.

Insects also supply ecosystem services of great benefit in support of human activity, especially food and fibre production, through actions such as pollination, nutrient cycling and control of pest insects. This means that the fate of insects is entwined with that of people and of many other vertebrates.

Yet all is not well with this entomological fabric. Insects are declining in abundance in many parts of the world, and species are being lost at a rapid rate, especially through the felling of tropical trees.

Scientists warn that these declines and losses are undermining the ecosystems on which many lives depend. One of the known root causes is habitat loss. This occurs especially through insect population decline and extinctions arising from the carving up of the landscape and planting extensive fields of single crops which causes landscape degradation and eventually leads to loss of their natural habitat.

Other factors are the uncontrolled use of polluting compounds, especially nitrogen-based fertilisers, overuse of pesticides, the spread of invasive alien species and loss because other species on which they depend are also being lost.

Overarching all of these impacts is global climate change, which is complex in its manifestation on insect populations and interacts with the other impacts. Climate change is associated with more extreme weather events and with more intense and frequent fires reducing insect populations. It also changes pest prevalence, making their control more difficult.

In addition to this, landscape fragmentation and habitat loss mean that insects cannot move so easily across the terrain to find the conditions that suit them best, as they once did. And these optimal habitats are becoming further apart and smaller. Yet the future is not at all hopeless. Strategies are being put in place in various parts of the world that when scaled up, will benefit insects globally.

Unequal effect

Not all insects are being affected equally. Individual species responses depend on genetic disposition, crafted by past events, often long before human impact on the landscape.

Some species survive well in human-modified circumstances, whether agro-forestry or in cities. Others have the capability of surviving well in certain agro-ecosystems or even city parks. But many are specialists that require particular circumstances or particular host species in order to live.

These specialists are the ones being lost at an alarming rate, especially in tropical forests undergoing rampant deforestation. Their home space is being greatly reduced, lessening their opportunity for survival. When this shrinking space reaches a critically low level, they have nowhere else to go.

In contrast, some genetic modifications enable certain insects to adapt to the changing human environment. The Small ermine moth (Yponomeuta cagnagella), for example, is becoming less responsive to artificial light, improving its chances of survival in the urban environment.

Others can benefit enormously from some artificial environments. This is best seen in the case of artificial ponds. Our research found that these provide many more opportunities for survival, as more options are available, especially when natural ponds are under drought stress.

What needs to be done

International scientists have proposed a roadmap to deal with many of the problems that insects are facing. These are strategies for a way forward not only for long-term insect survival but for ensuring that insect populations continue to provide ecosystem services beneficial to humans. These include the pollination of crops, control of pests using natural predatory and parasitic insects and maintenance of healthy soil.

Recently though, much more detailed strategies have emerged. These focus on specific ecosystems, whether forest, grassland, freshwater, caves or cities. In short, various research activities around the world, in concert with effective implementation, have illustrated that there are positive ways forward.

These strategies involve much more investment in the future, rather than on destructive short-term economic gains. Different parts of the world can benefit from these findings and tailor them to local conditions.

Among the strategies available are implementation of functional corridor networks of natural vegetation among crops and plantations that enable insects to move across the landscape. Planting particular vegetation between crop rows and around field margins can also be beneficial, as can the careful planting of roadsides.

Rivers can be rehabilitated by ensuring no run-off of pollutants and pesticides, and restoring the river banks with natural vegetation. Reduced insecticide input is essential, as pollinating bees in particular are suffering greatly.

Biological alternatives to pest control, such as parasitic wasps and predatory beetles, are available. These often go hand in hand with re-establishment of natural vegetation.

Cities, towns and abandoned land can also make a great contribution by increasing the amount of green space relative to the hard grey of the man-made structures. Vegetated green roofs and walls can also help create habitats for insects.

If this generation doesn't put these strategies in place, the future for future generations will be bleak because options for resilient landscapes are diminishing

Scientists warn humanity about worldwide insect decline

Provided by The Conversation

Fish school by randomly copying each other, rather than following the group

by University of New South Wales

Fish school by copying each other and changing directions randomly, rather than calculating and adapting to an average direction of the group, a group of scientists co-led by UNSW has shown.

In a study published today in Nature Physics, an international team from Australia, India and UK has shed light on the behavioural dynamics that govern alignment, or collective motion, of cichlid fish—offering new insights into the dynamics of schooling, and potentially the coordinated behaviour of other animals.

"In the fish that we have studied, schooling turns out to be noise-induced. It's not what anyone traditionally thought it was," says Dr. Richard Morris from UNSW Science, co-leader of the study and EMBL Australia group leader in UNSW's Single Molecule Science.

"Noise, in this setting, is simply the randomness arising from interactions between individual fish."

In the study, the researchers present the first experimental evidence of noise-induced ordering, which previously only existed as a theoretical possibility. The interdisciplinary team of ecologists, physicists and mathematicians achieved this by combining the capabilities of their scientific disciplines to integrate experiments with computer simulations and analysis.

"Everyone's been aware of noise-induced phenomena, theoretically, but it's quite rare to find in practice. You can only observe it when the individuals in a study can actually make decisions. For example, you wouldn't find this type of noise-induced behaviour studying electrons or particles," says Dr. Morris.

This new model proposed contradicts the standard 'moving average' theories for schooling and herding behaviour, which assume that the animals are capable of estimating the overall direction of the group.

"Every fish only interacts with one other fish at any given time. They either spontaneously change direction, or copy the direction of a different fish. Calculating an average direction of the group—which was the popular theory until now—is likely too complicated for a fish to compute," explains Dr. Morris.

To study the behavioural dynamics, the researchers filmed schools of 15, 30 and 60 cichlid fish, tracking their trajectories to analyse the mechanism behind mutual alignment, or schooling.

"Smaller groups of fish schooled more coherently than large groups. This is counterintuitive, since the randomness, or noise, from individual interactions plays a bigger role in smaller groups than larger ones," Dr. Morris says.

When researchers interpret data, noise is usually an unrelated factor that obscures and distracts from the information, like glare from the sun that you would try to eliminate to get a clearer photo.

In this case, Dr. Morris explains that the random copying between pairs of fish gives rise to a different class of noise, and is actually what drives their highly coordinated behaviour. This new insight highlights the importance of noise, showing that noise may encode some important information about behavioural dynamics of fish and other animals.

"Here the signal is the noise. If you ignored the fluctuations completely, you couldn't explain schooling at all."

Beyond fish behaviour, the discovery has the power to reshape the understanding of collective motion in animals, and calls for a revision of how noise is treated in studies of behaviour dynamics.

Noise pollution found to be disruptive for schooling fish

More information: Noise-induced schooling of fish, Nature Physics (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-0787-y , https://nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0787-y

Sinking sea mountains make and muffle earthquakes

by University of Texas at Austin

Subduction zones—places where one tectonic plate dives beneath another—are where the world's largest and most damaging earthquakes occur. A new study has found that when underwater mountains—also known as seamounts—are pulled into subduction zones, not only do they set the stage for these powerful quakes, but also create conditions that end up dampening them.

The findings mean that scientists should more carefully monitor particular areas around a subducting seamount, researchers said. The practice could help scientists better understand and predict where future earthquakes are most likely to occur.

"The Earth ahead of the subducting seamount becomes brittle, favoring powerful earthquakes while the material behind it remains soft and weak, allowing stress to be released more gently," said co-author Demian Saffer, director of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG), a research unit of The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences.

The study was published on March 2 in Nature Geoscience and was led by Tian Sun, who is currently a research scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada. Other co-authors include Susan Ellis, a scientist at the New Zealand research institute GNS Science. Saffer supervised the project and was Sun's postdoctoral advisor at Penn State when they began the study.

The researchers used a computer model to simulate what happens when seamounts enter ocean trenches created by subduction zones. According to the model, when a seamount sinks into a trench, the ground ahead of it becomes brittle, as its slow advance squeezes out water and compacts the Earth. But in its wake, the seamount leaves a trail of softer wet sediment. The hard, brittle rock can be a source for powerful earthquakes, as forces generated by the subducting plate build up in it—but the weakened, wet material behind the seamount creates an opposite, dampening effect on these quakes and tremors.

Although seamounts are found all over the ocean floor, the extraordinary depths at which subduction occurs means that studying or imaging a subducting seamount is extremely difficult. This is why until now, scientists were not sure whether seamounts could affect the style and magnitude of subduction zone earthquakes.

The current research tackled the problem by creating a realistic computer simulation of a subducting seamount and measuring the effects on the surrounding rock and sediment, including the complex interactions between stresses in the Earth and fluid pressure in the surrounding material. Getting realistic data for the model involved conducting experiments on rock samples collected from subduction zones by scientific ocean drilling offshore Japan.

The scientists said the model's results took them completely by surprise. They had expected water pressure and stress to break up material at the head of the seamount and thus weaken the rocks, not strengthen them.

"The seamount creates a feedback loop in the way fluids get squeezed out and the mechanical response of the rock to changes fluid pressure," said Ellis, who co-developed the numerical code at the heart of the study.

The scientists are satisfied their model is robust because the earthquake behavior it predicts consistently matches the behavior of real earthquakes.

While the weakened rock left in the wake of seamounts may dampen large earthquakes, the researchers believe that it could be an important factor in a type of earthquake known as a slow slip event. These slow-motion quakes are unique because they can take days, weeks and even months to unfold.

Laura Wallace, a research scientist at UTIG and GNS Science, who was the first to document New Zealand slow slip events, said that the research was a demonstration of how geological structures in the Earth's crust, such as seamounts, could influence a whole spectrum of seismic activity.

"The predictions from the model agree very nicely with what we are seeing in New Zealand in terms of where small earthquakes and tremors are happening relative to the seamount," said Wallace, who was not part of the current study.

Sun believes that their investigations have helped address a knowledge gap about seamounts, but that research will benefit from more measurements.

"We still need high resolution geophysical imaging and offshore earthquake monitoring to better understand patterns of seismic activity," said Sun.

Earthquake triggers 'slow motion' quakes in New Zealand

More information: Mechanical and hydrological effects of seamount subduction on megathrust stress and slip, Nature Geoscience (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0542-0 , https://nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0542-0

Journal information: Nature Geoscience

Early Earth may have been a 'waterworld'

by University of Colorado at Boulder

Kevin Costner, eat your heart out. New research shows that the early Earth, home to some of our planet's first lifeforms, may have been a real-life "waterworld"— without a continent in sight.

The study, which appears March 2 in Nature Geoscience, takes advantage of a quirk of hydrothermal chemistry to suggest that the surface of Earth was likely covered by a global ocean 3.2 billion years ago. It may even have looked a bit like the post-apocalyptic, and land-free, future imagined in Costner's infamous film Waterworld.

The group's findings could help scientists to better understand how and where single-cell organisms first emerged on Earth, said Boswell Wing, a coauthor of the research.

"The history of life on Earth tracks available niches," said Wing, an associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. "If you've got a waterworld, a world covered by ocean, then dry niches are just not going to be available."

The study also feeds into an ongoing debate over what ancient Earth may have looked like: Was the planet much hotter than it is today?

"There was seemingly no way forward on that debate," said lead author Benjamin Johnson, who conducted the research during a postdoctoral position in Wing's lab at CU Boulder. "We thought that trying something different might be a good idea."

A crazy place

For him and Wing, that something different centered around a geologic site called the Panorama district located deep in Northwestern Australia's outback.

"Today, there are these really scrubby and rolling hills that are cut through by dry river beds," said Johnson, now an assistant professor at Iowa State University in Ames. "It's a crazy place."

It's also the resting spot for a 3.2 billion-year-old chunk of ocean crust that's been turned on its side.

In the span of a day at Panorama, you can walk across what used to be the hard, outer shell of the planet—all the way from the base of that crust to the spots where water once bubbled up through the seafloor via hydrothermal vents.

The researchers saw it as one-of-a-kind opportunity to pick up clues about the chemistry of ocean water from billions of years ago.

"There are no samples of really ancient ocean water lying around, but we do have rocks that interacted with that seawater and remembered that interaction," Johnson said.

The process, he explained, is like analyzing coffee grounds to gather information about the water that poured through it. To do that, the researchers analyzed data from more than 100 rock samples from across the dry terrain.

They were looking, in particular, for two different flavors—or "isotopes"—of oxygen trapped in stone: a slightly heavier atom called Oxygen-18 and a lighter one called Oxygen-16.

The duo discovered that the ratio of those two isotopes of oxygen may have been a bit off in seawater 3.2 billion years ago—with just a smidge more Oxygen-18 atoms than you'd see today.

"Though these mass differences seem small, they are super sensitive," Wing said.

Lost at sea

Sensitive, it turns out, to the presence of continents. Wing explained that today's land masses are covered by clay-rich soils that disproportionately take up heavier oxygen isotopes from the water—like mineral vacuums for Oxygen-18.

The team theorized that the most likely explanation for that excess Oxygen-18 in the ancient oceans was that there simply weren't any soil-rich continents around to suck the isotopes up. That doesn't mean, however, that there weren't any spots of dry land around.

"There's nothing in what we've done that says you can't have teeny, micro-continents sticking out of the oceans," Wing said. "We just don't think that there were global-scale formation of continental soils like we have today."

Which leaves a big question: When did plate tectonics push up the chunks of rock that would eventually become the continents we know and love?

Wing and Johnson aren't sure. But they're planning to scour other, younger rock formations at sites from Arizona to South Africa to see if they can spot when land masses first roared onto the scene.

"Trying to fill that gap is really important," Johnson said.

For now, Costner may want to start planning the prequel

Lost continents found deep underground as old as Earth shed light on planet's formation

More information: Limited Archaean continental emergence reflected in an early Archaean 18O-enriched ocean, Nature Geoscience (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0538-9 , https://nature.com/articles/s41561-020-0538-9

RACIST JINGOISM

Trump administration to cap number of employees at Chinese media outlets in U.S

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Monday said it was slashing the number of Chinese employees permitted to work at the U.S. offices of major Chinese state-owned media outlets to retaliate against Beijing over its “long-standing intimidation and harassment of journalists.”

Citing a “deepening crackdown” on all forms of independent reporting inside China, administration officials said Beijing’s attack on free speech was worse than it was a decade ago, comparing it to that of the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

China last month revoked the visas of three Wall Street Journal reporters in Beijing after the newspaper declined to apologize for a column with a headline calling China the “real sick man of Asia”. Another reporter with the paper had to leave last year after China declined to renew his visa.

“For years, the government of the People’s Republic of China has imposed increasingly harsh surveillance, harassment, and intimidation against American and other foreign journalists operating in China,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

Effective March 13, Washington will be capping the number of U.S. based employees of Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily Distribution Corp to a total of 100, from 160.

Monday’s decision was not particularly linked to the Wall Street Journal case, senior state Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told reporters.

“We’ve been imploring the Chinese for years and years now to improve their treatment of journalists in China. So, this is not linked to any one particular incident,” one U.S. official said, but added that the expulsion of Journal reporters was a “fairly egregious” example.

The four outlets were among five designated by the United States as foreign embassies earlier this month, as a first step of this move.

Tensions between the two superpowers have escalated since President Donald Trump came to office three years ago, with disputes over issues ranging from trade to accusations of Chinese spying in the United States and to U.S. support for Taiwan.

On Monday, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China said in a report that the Chinese government has “weaponized” visas as part of a stepped-up campaign of pressure on foreign journalists.

“It is our hope that this action will spur Beijing to adopt a more fair and reciprocal approach to U.S. and other foreign press in China,” Pompeo said, while State Department officials said Washington was ready to take further action if Beijing retaliated.

“If in fact they decide to take this in a further negative direction however of course..all options would be on the table. I can’t tell you what in particular we would do, but we’d sit down review the circumstances and then consider all of our options,” the official said.

The personnel caps would be placed on the entities as opposed to people hence it would be up to the media outlets to decide the necessary staffing cuts, the officials said.

While the United States will not be sending anyone back, the officials acknowledged that the Chinese individuals whose visas are contingent on their ability to work in the United States may be forced to leave the country.

The United States would also be announcing in near future limits on duration of stay for Chinese citizens, administration officials said.

Chevron offering U.S. workers buyouts to trim staffing: sources

Shariq Khan

(Reuters) - Chevron Corp (CVX.N) is offering buyouts to reduce its U.S. oil exploration and production workforce, three sources told Reuters, as the oil major moves to cut costs in the face of sharply lower oil and gas prices. The No. 2 U.S. oil producer decided to reduce staff after reviewing operations late last year as energy prices fell, the sources said. Chevron confirmed that it was offering buyouts to workers in its shale gas business in the eastern United States but did not comment on any other U.S. job cuts.

Other oil and gas producers and service companies have begun cutting workers as prices have dived on soaring production and tepid demand, which has been made worse by the coronavirus outbreak.

One of the sources said some employees who accept Chevron’s buyout offer could remain until October. Another source said the company hopes to open spots for people who currently work for its shale gas operation in the Appalachian region of the United States, which is on the auction block.

Chevron notified Pennsylvania state officials last month that it planned to cut up to 320 jobs in the state, which includes the shale gas business.

The company said in a statement it could not yet say how many employees in that business would be affected. “We are taking active steps to reduce job loss,” including moving employees to other operations, a spokeswoman said.

Employees who ultimately lose their jobs will be offered severance pay and outplacement services, the spokeswoman said. The restructuring is part of a business review “toward capturing efficiencies and directing resources where they will generate the most value,” she said.

Chevron overall employed 48,200 workers globally at the end of last year, down 7,000 from three years ago. About 53% of its workers, or 25,400 employees, are in the United States.

Chevron’s results swung to a loss last quarter on a $10.4 billion impairment charge, mostly from writing down the value of natural gas fields and projects.

The U.S. shale boom has led to a glut of crude oil and natural gas in world markets, especially since the coronavirus outbreak has slashed energy demand, with experts forecasting growth this year to be the lowest in a decade.

U.S. oil futures CLc1 have fallen 24% since the year began to $46.69 a barrel and natural gas futures have collapsed 40% since hitting an eight-month high in November. [O/R]

This week, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will consider a further output cut to prevent prices from falling further. About 16% of U.S. natural gas production comes as a byproduct of oil output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Shale gas has so overwhelmed demand that producers in West Texas are paying customers to take the fuel and some are burning it as waste.

Chevron’s rivals, including Occidental Petroleum Corp (OXY.N), Apache Corp (APA.N) and Gulfport Energy Corp (GPOR.O), have already cut workers in response to the gas glut. Oilfield service providers Halliburton [HAL.N] and Schlumberger also have been furiously cutting as shale producers cut drilling to reduce the glut.

Brazil's cracked city leaves corporate heavyweights on the hook

MACEIO, Brazil (Reuters) - A sudden, violent tremor knocked José Rinaldo Januario to the floor of his kitchen one Saturday afternoon two years ago - a mystery given the Brazilian city of Maceio had little history of seismic activity.

A man hangs laundry near a mining equipment used by the petrochemical company Braskem in Maceio, Brazil January 28, 2020. Picture taken January 28, 2020. REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli

After seven seconds or so, when the shaking stopped, the bar owner and his 21-year-old son Arthur raced out onto the street, fearing the house might collapse.

“It was like a volcano exploded,” said Januario, 47.

Cracks in his home, which he had long assumed to be construction defects, widened in the months after the tremor in March 2018. His family was forced to abandon the house last year, part of an exodus of thousands of people being evacuated from the sweltering seaside city to keep them safe.

Last May, federal authorities identified a culprit: petrochemical giant Braskem. The authorities said nearby salt mines operated by the company threatened the structural integrity of more than 9,000 homes.

The saga, little known outside northeastern Brazil, has enraged many residents and officials in the state of Alagoas, the nation’s second-poorest. It represents a serious financial risk for Braskem and its two largest investors, bankrupt construction group Odebrecht and state-run oil firm Petrobras, Latin America’s biggest company.

Braskem believes the federal study that determined the reasons for the cracks in Maceio is methodologically flawed and inconclusive, and has commissioned studies of its own.

Nonetheless, in January the company announced a deal with prosecutors to provide 1.7 billion reais ($387.4 million) over two years to relocate and compensate 17,000 residents, though it did not admit blame for the damage. Its Brazil-listed shares shot up on investor hopes the accord would draw a line under a multi-billion-dollar question mark.

However seven state and federal prosecutors involved in the case told Reuters that the 1.7 billion reais - a cost estimate by Braskem - was a minimum initial payment and that the company may have to pay more out.

“That’s a floor, not a ceiling,” said Ricardo Melro, head of the Alagoas public defender’s office, the most explicit public indication from officials that Braskem’s compensation and relocation costs could exceed the figure flagged in January.

Melro said he believed the company would end up paying about 2.3 billion reais, about a third more.

In response to Reuters queries, Braskem representatives said they were confident in their estimate. The company has an extra 2 billion reais available in the unlikely event costs run over, they added.

Federal prosecutor Niedja Kaspary, however, said Braskem would also likely be required to compensate 23,000 other residents in adjacent neighborhoods as a result of a 6.7 billion reais federal lawsuit launched against the company last year.

Unlike the 17,000 people, those residents are not deemed in imminent danger, but authorities warn their homes could be vulnerable in coming years.

(Graphic: Braskem Disaster - here)

“They’re suffering losses because their homes are worth less, they’re scared (of a collapse),” Kaspary told Reuters. “That gives them a right to compensation.”

All the prosecutors said Braskem would likely have to pay out a significant amount in that case, with Melro estimating close to 2 billion reais. A decision or potential settlement is not expected for at least several months, prosecutors say, while any appeal could take years.

Braskem has not formally provisioned for any potential costs related to that case as its outcome remains “very uncertain,” a representative said.

Petrobras, which owns 36.1% of Braskem, and Odebrecht, with a 38.3% stake, declined to comment.
EARTH HOLLOWED OUT

On the ground, the frustration among residents is palpable. Some said financial compensation was beside the point.

“So many people have had their homes here for so long. They’ve lived here for so long, and they have stories to tell,” said Silvania Carmo Machado, 67, who moved 35 years ago into her hilltop house, which overlooks surrounding countryside.

While authorities want her to leave, and Braskem is set to offer 81,500 reais for her home, she has pledged to stay put.

Since the 1970s Braskem, Latin America’s largest petrochemical producer and a household name in Brazil, has dug more than 30 salt wells in Maceio, many next to the Mundau lagoon, a scenic estuary popular with boaters.

The salt is pumped to a nearby Braskem plant, where it is transformed into chlorine-based products that eventually become PVC piping and other consumer goods.

Above ground, the mining operations are inconspicuous, with little more than a large metal tube above each well.

Yet slowly, authorities say, the mines have hollowed out a layer of the earth about 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) below the surface. As the ground has settled, they say cracks have emerged in homes in four neighborhoods that harbor everything from expensive apartment blocks to hillside shanty towns.

Januario, the bar owner, was among the many residents whose walls and ceilings had been cracking for several years. But the fissures were initially small and easily fixed. That changed with the 2018 tremor, which followed a heavy rainstorm a month before, residents told Reuters. The cracks began to expand, prompting local and federal authorities to investigate.

In May 2019, Brazil’s federal geological survey issued a report, saying Braskem was to blame.

Ana Laura Sivieri, Braskem’s marketing and communications chief, told Reuters there could potentially be other causes for the tremor and cracking, however, including water damage, the type of soil in the region or a geological fault.

“Outside those other causes, Braskem is singled out by the geological service as one of the principal causes. Braskem has raised doubts about this,” she said.

‘WE WANTED TO STAY’

Braskem, which has closed all its salt mines in Maceio, said it had not laid anyone off at its chlorine plant, where it has halted production. Its operations employ hundreds of people and account for 3% of the state’s economic output.

During a Reuters visit to the plant, dozens of workers could be seen performing maintenance tasks such as raking leaves and cleaning the premises. Braskem is considering importing salt to allow it to restart production.

With billions of reais on the line, major shareholders are watching the situation in Maceio closely. In December, the then-CEO of Braskem was dismissed, partly because Petrobras was dissatisfied with how the company was dealing with the case, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Braskem and Petrobras (Petroleo Brasileiro SA) declined to comment about the circumstances of the former CEO’s dismissal. The former CEO, Fernando Musa, could not be reached for comment.

Braskem said it would execute the January deal with speed and compassion. It has hired dozens of professionals, from real estate agents to psychologists, to help those displaced.

For displaced residents like Januario, the wrench of leaving their homes is tough to overcome. Januario’s family now lives 22 miles away in a nondescript district next to an airport.

He had to abandon his bar, and is now helping out at a transportation firm. His children have switched schools. His mother and wife have both been diagnosed with clinical anxiety and depression.

“We wanted to stay in our neighborhood,” he said. “That doesn’t have a price.”

Exclusive: Newly obtained documents show Huawei role in shipping prohibited U.S. gear to Iran

LONDON (Reuters) - China’s Huawei Technologies, which for years has denied violating American trade sanctions on Iran, produced internal company records in 2010 that show it was directly involved in sending prohibited U.S. computer equipment to Iran’s largest mobile-phone operator.

Two Huawei packing lists, dated December 2010, included computer equipment made by Hewlett-Packard Co and destined for the Iranian carrier, internal Huawei documents reviewed by Reuters show.

Another Huawei document, dated two months later, stated: “Currently the equipment is delivered to Tehran, and waiting for the custom clearance.”

The packing lists and other internal documents, reported here for the first time, provide the strongest documentary evidence to date of Huawei’s involvement in alleged trade sanctions violations. They could bolster Washington’s multifaceted campaign to check the power of Huawei, the world’s leading telecommunications-equipment maker.

The United States is trying to persuade allies to avoid using Huawei equipment in their next-generation mobile telecommunications systems, known as 5G. Separately, U.S. authorities are battling Huawei on a legal front.

The newly obtained documents involve a multi-million dollar telecommunications project in Iran that figures prominently in an ongoing criminal case Washington has brought against the Chinese company and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. The daughter of Huawei’s founder, Meng has been fighting extradition from Canada to the United States since her arrest in Vancouver in December 2018. Huawei and Meng have denied the charges, which involve bank fraud, wire fraud and other allegations.

The documents, which aren’t cited in the criminal case, provide new details about Huawei’s role in providing an Iranian telecom carrier with numerous computer servers, switches and other equipment made by HP, as well as software made by other American companies at the time, including Microsoft Corp, Symantec Corp and Novell Inc.

A U.S. indictment alleges that Huawei and Meng participated in a fraudulent scheme to obtain prohibited U.S. goods and technology for Huawei’s Iran-based business, and move money out of Iran by deceiving Western banks. The indictment accuses Huawei and Meng of surreptitiously using an “unofficial subsidiary” in Iran called Skycom Tech Co Ltd to obtain the prohibited goods.

“Huawei could thus attempt to claim ignorance with respect to any illegal act committed by Skycom on behalf of Huawei, including violations of” U.S. sanctions laws, the indictment states. Skycom, which Huawei has described as a local business partner in Iran, is named as a defendant. Records in Hong Kong, where Skycom was registered, show the firm was liquidated in June 2017.

The newly obtained records reviewed by Reuters show that another Chinese company, Panda International Information Technology Co, which isn’t named in the U.S. indictment, was also involved in acquiring hardware and software for the Iranian project. Panda International has longstanding ties to Huawei and is controlled by a Chinese state-owned company.

“Due to ongoing legal proceedings, it is not appropriate for Huawei to comment at this time,” a Huawei spokesman said in response to questions about the newly obtained documents. “Huawei is committed to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate, including all export control and sanction laws and regulations of the UN, U.S., and EU.”

China’s foreign ministry said that “the United States, without presenting any evidence, has been over-generalizing the concept of national security and abusing its state power to unreasonably suppress specific Chinese firms.” It referred questions about the Huawei documents to the company.

PACKING LISTS

The U.S. indictment cites articles by Reuters in 2012 and 2013 which reported that Skycom had offered in late 2010 to sell at least 1.3 million euros worth of embargoed HP computer equipment to Mobile Telecommunication Co of Iran. The Iranian mobile provider is variously known as MCI and MCCI.

MCI’s parent company is Telecommunication Co of Iran. At the time, TCI was controlled by a consortium whose largest stakeholder was a company controlled by the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Another stakeholder was Setad, an organization controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The earlier Reuters reports were based on a partial price list included in a Huawei and Skycom proposal in October 2010 to expand MCI’s customer billing system. Huawei had provided MCI’s original billing system, which wasn’t keeping pace with MCI’s growing customer base. The price list was marked with Huawei’s logo and stamped “SKYCOM IRAN OFFICE.”

At the time, Huawei said it ultimately never delivered the HP goods to Iran. A Huawei spokesman told Reuters in 2012 that the price list was a “bidding document” submitted by Skycom and that “Huawei has never provided the equipment … nor done so through Skycom.”

But the newly obtained documents - more than 100 additional pages related to the project - show that Huawei was involved in sending at least some of that U.S. equipment to Iran. The documents are variously written in English, Chinese and Farsi.

One internal document showed that Huawei was deeply involved in the MCI expansion project. It states that on September 25, 2010, MCI asked Huawei to start the project. “The equipment contract was signed,” the document states, without providing details.

The documents also include a “Bill of Quantity Quotation,” a 2010 proposal that listed the equipment needed for the project. It was produced by Huawei and includes HP gear, as well as server software made then by Microsoft, Symantec and Novell.

The documents also include two packing lists that were dated December 7 and December 13, 2010, with Huawei’s logo at the top. The name Huawei also appears in the lists’ metadata – computer information about the documents’ creation.

The packing lists, which include some prohibited HP equipment, provided extensive details of 340 shipping cases, such as weights and sizes, with ultimate destinations in the major Iranian cities of Tehran, Shiraz and Mashhad.

The packing lists include numerous HP servers, switches and disk arrays, as well as Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 software.

SALE ‘PROHIBITED’

Reuters did not have access to other transport records, such as customs and delivery forms, specifying which equipment reached MCI. But a later Huawei document stated that equipment for the telecom expansion project had arrived in Iran.

MCI did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman for Hewlett Packard Enterprise said: “Our contract terms prohibited the sale of these products to Iran, and required that our partners comply with all applicable export laws and regulations. This remains true today.”

Microsoft did not answer questions about the legality of shipping its server software to Iran. Symantec, now called NortonLifeLock Inc, declined to comment. The current owner of the Novell software didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some of the newly obtained documents suggest Huawei may have used Panda International to purchase hardware and software.

The records include a signed equipment contract between MCI and Panda International that included more than $10 million worth of equipment for the billing system project, although it doesn’t specify all of the gear. According to the contract, which references an invoice from September 2010, MCI was to pay Panda International through China Construction Bank’s branch in the city of Shenzhen – the location of Huawei’s headquarters.

Panda International is controlled by China Electronics Corp, a Chinese state-owned tech company. According to Panda International’s website, Panda has a “long and deep history with Huawei” that began in 2007.

People familiar with the matter told Reuters that Huawei regularly used Panda International to ship equipment to customers in Iran and Syria.

Panda International, China Electronics and China Construction Bank did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Commerce added Panda International to its “Entity List” - a roster of companies effectively banned from doing business with U.S. firms. The department said Panda International may have attempted “to export items to destinations sanctioned by the United States.”

The documents reviewed by Reuters show that Huawei was involved in the equipment contract between Panda International and MCI.

A letter from MCI to Huawei with a handwritten date in July 2011 reported a series of problems with the installation of HP racks and other equipment in Shiraz related to the Panda International contract.

Two years later, a joint letter signed by officials from Huawei and MCI in October 2013 confirmed that “problems and shortcomings” under the equipment contract “were resolved by Huawei.”

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