Nikola recalls all battery-electric trucks, halts sales after fire probe

Mrinmay Dey
Fri, August 11, 2023 

 Logo of U.S. truckmaker Nikola in Hanover

(Reuters) -Nikola said on Friday it was recalling all the battery-powered electric trucks that it has delivered till date and is suspending sales after an investigation into recent fires found a coolant leak inside a battery pack as the cause.

There are a total of 209 battery-powered electric trucks in the marketplace between dealers and customers and the company is recalling those vehicles and is in the process of contacting all parties, a spokesperson for Nikola told Reuters.

The preliminary findings of the probe by a third-party investigator were corroborated on Thursday by a "minor thermal incident" on one pack on a parked engineering-validation truck, the company said, adding that no one was injured.

"Foul play or other external factors were unlikely to have caused the incident," Nikola said in a statement, adding efforts were underway to provide a remedy.

The company had said it suspected foul play when it started an investigation in June after trucks at its Phoenix, Arizona, headquarters caught fire. One damaged truck, kept at the Phoenix site for monitoring, re-ignited last month.

Internal investigations from Nikola's safety and engineering teams indicate a single supplier component within the battery pack as the likely source of the coolant leak that caused the vehicles to catch fire, the company said.

Struggling with supply chain bottlenecks and weaker demand, Nikola decided to make battery electric trucks only to order and focus on hydrogen fuel cell trucks.

Nikola on Aug. 4 appointed Chairman Stephen Girsky, a former General Motors executive, as its chief executive, its fourth in four years.

The company flagged "substantial doubts" about its ability to continue as a going concern for the next 12 months, reiterating its warning for the third time since February, as it awaits "critical" additional capital.

On Friday, Nikola asked customers and dealers of its Tre battery electric trucks to take certain immediate safety measures, including considering parking them outside.

Nikola's shares fell as much as 5.6% after the close.

(Reporting by Shubhendu Deshmukh and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru and Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Sandra Maler, William Mallard and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Flying taxi maker Archer settles Boeing Wisk lawsuits, shares jump


David Shepardson
Thu, August 10, 2023 

Flying taxi company Archer Aviation unveils all-electric aircraft in Los Angeles


(Reuters) -Air taxi maker Archer Aviation has reached an agreement with Boeing and its Wisk air taxi unit to settle litigation and collaborate on autonomous technology, the companies said on Thursday.

Archer's shares jumped 30% in after-hours trading to $7.60.

Separately, Archer said it completed a $215 million equity investment round that includes Stellantis, Boeing, United Airlines, and ARK Investment Management, increasing Archer’s total funding to date to over $1.1 billion as it works to win Federal Aviation Administration certification and begin commercial operations in 2025.

In a joint statement with Boeing and Wisk, Archer said it "has agreed to make Wisk its exclusive provider of autonomy technology for future variants of Archer’s aircraft."

Boeing said it is making an investment in Archer "that will support the integration of Wisk’s autonomous technology in future variants of Archer’s aircraft."

Boeing added its team members are "focused on supporting Wisk and are excited by their continued progress toward certifying and bringing to market the first all-electric, self-flying air taxi in the U.S."

The agreement settles several lawsuits.

Wisk was formed through a joint venture between Boeing and Google co-founder Larry Page's Kitty Hawk Corp, which is now wholly owned by Boeing. Wisk sued rival Archer in 2021 accusing it of stealing trade secrets and infringing on its patents. Archer counter sued Wisk in 2021 "for its false and malicious extra-judicial smear campaign" and Boeing in 2022.

Archer will issue warrants to Wisk for up to 13.2 million shares as part of the settlement and autonomy agreement.

Electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) have been touted as the future of urban air mobility. Low-altitude urban air mobility aircraft has drawn intense global interest.

The $215 million funding includes an acceleration of $70 million from Chrysler-parent Stellantis under a 2023 strategic funding agreement.

In January, carmaker Stellantis said it would help build Archer Aviation's electric aircraft and increase its stake in the U.S. company.

Airlines and other companies are looking at developing transport services using battery-powered aircraft that can take off and land vertically to ferry travelers to airports or for short city trips, allowing them to beat traffic.

(Reporting by David Shepardson in WashingtonEditing by Matthew Lewis and Lisa Shumaker)

OMG WOKE ESG
Blackstone-Backed Solar Company Esdec Seeks US IPO at $5 Billion Value

WE DON'T CALL IT ESG (BLACKSTONE)

Aaron Kirchfeld and Swetha Gopinath
Thu, August 10, 2023

(Bloomberg) -- Esdec Solar Group is seeking an initial public offering in New York that would value the Blackstone Inc.-backed solar firm at more than $5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Netherlands-based company has appointed JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley to the top line and is in the process of adding further banks to the IPO syndicate, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

The company is attempting to tap growing investor demand for green assets, the people said. It would add to a growing list of European companies pursuing US listings.

Founded in 2004, Esdec, which is also backed by European private equity investor Rivean Capital, develops and distributes rooftop solar racking and mounting systems.

No final decision has been made on the timing and size of the listing, the people said. Representatives for Blackstone, Morgan Stanley and Esdec declined to comment, while Rivean Capital and JPMorgan couldn’t be immediately reached.

The US market for IPOs is finally warming after 18 months in the doldrums, boosted by the recent success of restaurant chain Cava Group Inc.’s debut. Among a growing pipeline of listings is the iconic footwear maker Birkenstock, which is said to be ready to launch an IPO as soon as September.

UK-based Arm Ltd., owned by SoftBank Group Corp., is gearing up for what promises to be the biggest IPO of the year. The chipmaker plans to raise as much as $10 billion in an offering in September, Bloomberg News has reported.

US trade union fights TSMC plan to use Taiwanese workers on Arizona semiconductor factory build

South China Morning Post
Fri, August 11, 2023


A US workers' union has started an online petition against chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, whose US$40 billion Phoenix plant faces setbacks.

Among other issues, workers in Arizona want American lawmakers to deny visas for Taiwanese workers the company wants to import to speed up construction of the plant, once hailed as a symbol of President Joe Biden's agenda to compete with China.

"TSMC announced they plan to bring more than 800 foreign workers to Arizona to operate on the North Phoenix facility," Arizona Pipe Trades 469 said on its Votervoice.net page, a digital platform used for advocacy and organising. The trade union is based in Phoenix and represents pipe fitters and plumbers.

"Protect your union brothers and sisters, protect your pay cheque and protect American jobs!"

The petition titled "Block TSMC Worker Visas" accuses the company of showing "a lack of respect for American workers, placing profit above worker safety and deliberately misrepresenting the quality, skills and experience of Arizona's workforce" despite the Taiwanese chip maker receiving "large financial breaks" under the Chips and Science Act.

Plans to build the TSMC Phoenix plant were announced in 2020 under former US president Donald Trump's administration.

It is among the beneficiaries of Biden's signature Chips and Science Act, which offers more than US$50 billion in subsidies to support US semiconductor research and development.

Since the beginning of the Biden administration, companies have announced more than US$231 billion in commitments to semiconductor and electronics investments in the US, according to a White House fact sheet published on Wednesday to mark the first anniversary of the bill.

In December Biden visited TSMC's factory in Phoenix, where he declared "American manufacturing is back ".

But a shortage of skilled workers to install advanced machinery required to manufacture high-end semiconductors has forced TSMC to postpone its production plans in the city. It had been expected to start making 5-nanometer chips in 2024 but the company has pushed that goal to 2025.

TSMC chairman Mark Liu told analysts on an earnings call last month that the company was working to send skilled technicians from Taiwan to train local workers in the US.

If allowed, these workers would work on EB-2 visas, which permit foreign professionals with "advanced degrees or exceptional abilities" to work and live in the US permanently, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website.

But labour groups in the US oppose TSMC's plan to bring in Taiwanese workers.

While demanding that elected officials "use their influence to halt the EB-2 worker visas", the union's petition said that "replacing Arizona's construction workers with foreign construction workers directly contradicts the very purpose for which the Chips Act was enacted".

The website protectazworkers.org, which is also purportedly funded by Arizona Pipe Trades 469, urges Arizona lawmakers to "stand with labour and block TSMC from replacing more than 500 American workers", calling the labour-import plans "a slap in the face".

A Facebook page called IBEW 640 Brotherhood, a Phoenix-based labour group representing electrical workers, has been flooded with screenshots of "disrespectful" posts about America and American workers allegedly made on PTT, a Taiwanese online public forum.

The posts on the Facebook page - which is not run by the brotherhood - claim the social media screenshots support suggestions that TSMC wants to bring in cheap labour from Taiwan to cut costs.


Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Assassination in Ecuador Spurs Investor Rethink of Elections


Ecuador Presidential Candidate Killed
Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio speaks during a campaign event at a school minutes before he was shot to death outside the same school in Quito, Ecuador, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023

 (API via AP)

2/4

Investors Brace for Fallout From Ecuador Candidate’s Killing







Maria Elena Vizcaino, Zijia Song and Ezra Fieser
Thu, August 10, 2023

(Bloomberg) -- As Ecuador grapples with the fallout from the shocking assassination of a top presidential contender, investors are weighing how the tragedy will influence the outcome of the upcoming election.

The killing of Fernando Villavicencio, an anti-graft crusader who was seen as one of the candidates with the best odds of advancing in the presidential race, stands to boost the chances of one of the more conservative challengers against socialist Luisa Gonzalez in the Aug. 20 vote. The possibility led to a jump in the price of Ecuador bonds, which have traded for over a year now at levels that indicate investors believe there’s a high probability of default. The Thursday gains were the biggest since May, and the best in emerging markets on the day.

“This potentially makes a market-friendly candidate more competitive against Gonzalez in the runoff,” said Carlos de Sousa, emerging-markets money manager at Vontobel Asset Management AG in Zurich.

Gonzalez’s center-right competitor Otto Sonnenholzner or Jan Topic, known for his hard-line approach to growing security issues, could pick up votes in the wake of Villavicencio’s murder, de Sousa said. That would in turn increase the chances that there will have to be a run-off vote to decide the winner, an outcome that could work against Gonzalez, a candidate backed by former President Rafael Correa who unnerves investors with her talk of boosting spending on welfare and public works.

Villavicencio, a former reporter, was murdered while leaving a political rally at a school in the capital city of Quito late on Wednesday. Warring cocaine cartels have turned the once-peaceful country into one of the most violent places in the world, making law and order central in the campaigns.

The killing adds to the pressures on a country already reeling from months of political uncertainty after voters rejected referendum proposals and opponents mounted an impeachment campaign against President Guillermo Lasso, prompting him to close congress and trigger a snap vote.

The government’s dollar bonds are among the worst performers in emerging markets this year, losing more than 25%, even after Thursday’s gains.

“Undoubtedly it’s set back for the country, set back for democracy, set back for the institutions in Ecuador,” said Paul Greer, a money manager at Fidelity Investment Management in London.

Ecuador has a checkered financial history. Since its independence, it has defaulted on its external debt 11 times, most recently at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. While the investment scenario improved under Lasso, with international reserves near record highs, minimal debt service payments and a narrowing fiscal deficit, the return of a hard left administration could upend the outlook for markets.

Gonzalez, who has been leading in polls, is an ex-lawmaker who represents the party of former leftist President Correa, who stopped paying overseas debt in 2008 and called creditors “true monsters.”

Correismo — as the former president’s political philosophy is known — may be weakened in the wake of the killing, giving a boost to the bonds in the short term, said Siobhan Morden, managing director Latin America fixed income strategy at Santander US.

As of 3:30 p.m. in New York, notes due in 2035 rose 1.5 cent to 35.7 cents on the dollar, while debt maturing in 2040 rose 1.4 cents to 32.5 cents on the dollar — the biggest advances since early May — according to indicative pricing compiled by Bloomberg.e

“This is a stark reminder of the sustained degradation in governance, justice, and security in the country, which will take front seat in the policy agenda going forward,” EMFI Group analysts Gerónimo Mansutti Silva, Valeria Garcés Padilla and Guillermo Guerrero wrote in a Thursday note.

The killing could also diminish the chances for Indigenous leader Yaku Perez, since his campaign focused on water, hydrocarbon and mining issues as opposed to security and corruption, according to Nathalie Marshik, a managing director for fixed income at BNP Paribas.

Investors are now mulling which candidate is likely to challenge Gonzalez, but uncertainty is still high, said Fernando Losada, managing director at Oppenheimer & Co.

“Some investors may be interpreting that the more moderate candidates have a better chance of performing well in the upcoming elections,” he said. “As the political climate is very rarefied, it is premature to reach such a conclusion. We maintain a cautious view of the credit.”

--With assistance from Netty Ismail and Philip Sanders.

(Updates market moves in 12th paragraph, adds investor comments starting in 13th paragraph)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Wildfire smoke is warming the planet more than previously thought, scientists say

Sharmila Kuthunur
Thu, August 10, 2023 

The wing of an airplane hangs over the right side of the image, a dimmed sun shines behind brown smoke above a dark, mountainous landscape.

Among the complex mix of particles that make up wildfire smoke, an abundant but thus far unknown kind has been shown to trap a surprising amount of heat, according to new research.

These results indicate that wildfires, which are expected to become harsher and more frequent in the coming years due to human-induced climate change, are heating Earth to a greater extent than previously thought.

Using NASA's Douglas DC-8 aircraft, which is a 54-year-old quadjet (a jet powered by four engines) that was turned into a flying science lab, scientists performed smoke analysis of three specific lightning-caused fires. All three had burnt large swaths of land in the western United States in 2019 — the Shady Creek in Idaho, Castle and Ikes in Arizona and the 204 Cow of Oregon.

Their findings showed that a new kind of particle associated with these fires, dubbed organic "dark brown carbon," strongly absorbs heat — so much so that they account for more than half of the total heat absorbed by the collected wildfire smoke.

"It's likely that they form similarly to soot in the high-temperature flames along the leading edges of wildfires," Rohan Mishra, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and a co-author of the new study, said in a statement.

In July and August of 2019, scientists used instruments onboard NASA's flying science lab to collect smoke samples at about 6.2 miles (10 km) above ground. On ground, they used a mobile laboratory to collect samples of wildfire smoke about 1.8 miles (3 km) from selected fire management areas.

Related: Satellites watch as wildfires rage across Greece (photos)

The new particles are fewer in number when compared to another wildfire smoke particle known as black carbon or soot, which absorbs sunlight, then turns that sunlight into heat. Black carbon is the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide — however, these newly studied dark brown carbon particles appear to be four times more abundant in smoke than black carbon. That ultimately spikes the potential for wildfires to warm our planet far beyond what has been accounted for.

The results of this latest research, which was a collaboration between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), add a strong urgency to better understand the warming effects of brown carbon. These particles are technically included in existing climate models, but their warming effects remain a huge uncertainty, and it's also worth noting that they're released into the atmosphere during the burning of fossil fuels as well.

"Typically, climate models ignore or dismiss organic carbon as insignificant compared to black carbon when it comes to warming, but that is not what field observations reveal," Rajan Chakrabarty, an associate professor of energy, environment and chemical engineering at the Washington University in St. Louis and the new study's lead author, said in the statement.

The newly found particles seem to absorb light across the visible spectrum, from ultraviolet wavelengths to near-infrared. They are also capable of resisting light-induced bleaching, which is a naturally occurring process that's expected to strip brown carbon particles of their capacity to absorb heat, usually within a day after they're released into the atmosphere.

Related Stories:

— Smoke from Canadian wildfires chokes US Midwest, reaches Europe (satellite photos)

— Climate change: Causes and effects

— NASA searches for climate solutions as global temperatures reach record highs

However, lab experiments showed that the dark brown carbon particles indicated no change in heat absorption for at least three days.

Previous research has shown that such bleaching is "heavily dependent" on the height of the smoke and local atmospheric conditions. Closer to the ground, where there are higher chances of warm and humid climates, brown carbon loses its color or bleaches in as quickly as a day.

The higher the wildfire smoke is from the ground, the cooler the air gets, so brown carbon in the smoke loses its water content, making chemical reactions that much harder. At high altitudes, it wafts in the atmosphere for as long as a year.

In the past, wildfire smoke has drifted to polar regions, and brown carbon was cited as the leading contributor to the accelerated melting of glaciers and sea ice in the Arctic, which is now warming faster than the rest of the planet.

The new paper was published on Monday (Aug. 07) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Signs of Chinese business life return to Afghanistan 2 years after the Taliban's takeover

South China Morning Post
Sat, August 12, 2023 

Duan Yi, a Chinese gemstone trader who moved to Afghanistan about 18 months ago, has noticed clear changes on the streets of Kabul in recent months.

Foreign tourists - mostly from Europe and the United States, and now an increasing number of Chinese - are back to the once deserted capital city.

Li Xijing has seen the same trend.

As a director of Kabul's Chinatown, Li has greeted dozens of Chinese businessmen making tentative steps back into the city. Journalists, from Britain to Japan, have also knocked on his door since spring.

"[Chinatown] is getting crowded," he said.

Since the Taliban took control of the war-torn country in 2021, Afghanistan's economy and security has not collapsed as some had expected. Instead, the central Asian country has begun to slowly pick up the pieces.

But for Chinese businessmen who have chosen to return and stay, they know to take the good news with a grain of salt, and to be patient. While the Taliban regime has brought security since coming to power, terrorist attacks have not stopped.

Moreover, the international community, including China, is yet to recognise the regime, with human rights - particularly while severe restrictions are imposed on women and girls - among concerns cited.

In April, China's then-foreign minister Qin Gang said Beijing hoped the Afghan Taliban would heed the concerns of the international community and resolve issues relating to women's rights.

However, he said that while the issue of women's rights and interests was very important, "it is not the whole of the Afghan issue and nor is it the core or root cause of the Afghan issue", according to a ministry statement.

While most businesses on the street are back to normal as the Taliban promised, the country's economy still suffers as a result of foreign sanctions.

"Afghanistan is not as scary as it was portrayed in the media, but you are always on edge," Duan said.

Li, as an executive in Kabul's Chinatown, said his growing contact with businessmen in recent weeks was a sign of recovery.

Located in Kabul's city centre, the Chinatown community is the first stop for most Chinese people who are new to the country.

But when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan two years ago, only about a dozen Chinese chose to stay. Li said that in the whole of Afghanistan, fewer than 20 Chinese people remained.

"In the past two years, when it comes to Afghanistan, the Chinese people always think that there are wars and terrorist attacks, but more are coming back now," he said.

As Chinese people began to look to do business and invest in the country again, Li said they "need to choose the right way or method".

"In the absence of normal diplomatic relations between countries, businesses are cautious about investing," he said.

China may not have formally recognised the Taliban regime, but senior Chinese officials have held high-level meetings with their Afghanistan counterparts.

Food aid from China is stored in a warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan. 

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, founding director at the University of Pittsburgh's Centre for Governance and Markets, said China was hesitant to establish formal ties with the regime because of concerns about its stability.

"Neighbours [of Afghanistan] are most familiar with Afghanistan's history and governance dynamics, and they recognise that without a more inclusive government, Afghanistan will be unstable for years to come."

Zhu Yongbiao, a professor in Lanzhou University's school of politics and international relations, said security remained China's biggest concern.

"At this stage, the essential problem [for China] is to urge Afghanistan to draw a line with terrorism," he said.

In April, China issued its most comprehensive position paper on Afghanistan since the Taliban took power, listing 11 points on the regime.

"China's Position on the Afghan Issue" appealed to the Taliban government to "adopt moderate and prudent domestic and foreign policies", and three of the 11 points in the paper referred directly to the Taliban's counterterrorism activities.

The paper highlighted the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a Uygur separatist group that Beijing has blamed in part for ethnic tensions in its far western Xinjiang region.

Murtazashvili said Uygur separatist groups remained China's key worry in its counterterrorism ambitions.

"China wants Afghanistan to be able to eliminate the terrorist groups, especially the small Uygur groups that have remained in the country. These groups are the biggest threats to China from a strategic perspective," she said.

Beyond the separatist groups of concern to Beijing, Chinese people in Afghanistan also felt threatened by Isis-K, or Islamic State Khorasan, an Isis affiliate in Afghanistan.

Five Chinese nationals were seriously wounded in an attack by Isis-K by Kabul's Longan Hotel in December.

In January, the militants reportedly targeted members of the Chinese delegation in another suicide bomb attack outside the foreign ministry in Kabul that officials said killed at least five people.

Isis-K was also known to be responsible for other attacks at the Russian and Pakistan missions in the capital city last year.

Sun Fei, a 37-year-old trader who lives in Kandahar, said Chinese still lived under the shadow of attacks despite an overall improvement in security.

"Security has got better, but [the terrorists] have started to pick on the Chinese and Russians more," he said.

According to Sun, there were widespread rumours about terrorist attacks from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar a month before the Longan Hotel attack.

"The discrimination [directed at Chinese] is so obvious," he said.

Nishank Motwani, a fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School's Edward S. Mason programme, said that by carrying out the attacks, the militants wanted to undermine the Taliban's legitimacy and sow doubts about security among foreign investors, diplomats and governments.

"Isis-K is likely to execute more attacks against soft targets, which include Chinese nationals, because it amplifies their propaganda, humiliates the Taliban and undermines the security environment that helps them grow."

However, Murtazashvili said she believed that attacks against Chinese people would continue, even as security in Afghanistan improved.

"After two years of Taliban rule, Afghanistan does not have as much widespread fighting ... A big reason for this is that the Taliban now controls the government," she said. "The Taliban itself was the source of most of the insurgent violence we saw in the country."

In January, after the deadly attack, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen promised Chinese nationals would be safe.

"The current government reiterates its obligation to maintain the safety of Chinese nationals and all other nationals who are coming to Afghanistan, either for investment, business or tourism," he said.

Chinese gem trader Duan, who has also lived in Pakistan, is cautiously optimistic about safety in Kabul.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stands next to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, acting deputy prime minister of the Afghan Taliban's caretaker government, in Kabul, Afghanistan, in March 2022. Photo: Xinhua via AP alt=Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stands next to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, acting deputy prime minister of the Afghan Taliban's caretaker government, in Kabul, Afghanistan, in March 2022. 

Photo: Xinhua via AP>

"To be honest, terrorist attacks targeting Chinese were even more dangerous in Pakistan [than in Afghanistan] but it doesn't mean that we are not worried," he said.

Sun cited the cheaper airfares between Kandahar and Kabul and more road traffic in the past year as signs that security in the country had improved.

"The reason more people are driving is because there are no bomb attacks or terrorist groups roaming the highways now," he said.

But without international recognition and a stable security environment, Afghanistan's economic recovery will remain difficult and take years, if not decades.

The country's economy appears to have benefited from the reopening. According to the World Bank, Afghanistan's government revenue collection for the first quarter of this year increased 8 per cent year on year.

But Zhu said that while the data showed signs of stability or even improvement, it was largely achieved because of international aid.

"There is still a huge hole in the entire budget of the Taliban, which is partly supported by foreign aid, and the country's own economic programmes are largely undeveloped," he said.

"Due to the risk of sanctions and security, Chinese companies are still reluctant to invest in Afghanistan.

"Most companies - after they come and have a real look - will become less interested in investing. And that's actually normal following the rules of economics."

Business talks between Chinese state-owned companies and the Taliban are continuing, but according to Zhu, nearly all negotiations face long delays.

In January, the privately run oil company Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co (CAPEIC) signed a contract to extract oil from the Amu Darya basin, the first major extraction deal the Taliban administration had signed with a foreign company since retaking power.

CAPEIC will invest US$150 million a year in Afghanistan under the contract, increasing to US$540 million in three years under the 25-year agreement.

"We are optimistic about the future of Afghanistan. After all, it is still a country after [being] at war for so many years," Li said.

He recalled a meeting with Taliban officials in Kabul after they returned to power two years ago.

"All the foreigners have run away, but only you Chinese - you have been here for 20 years - are still here," he quoted a Taliban official saying at the time.


Copyright (c) 2023. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial

Nikolai Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy 

Nikolai Bukharin. Imperialism and World Economy. Introduction by V.I. Lenin. Written: 1915 and 1917. Source: Nikolai Bukharin "Imperialism and World ...

Scientists Intrigued by Huge Structure Buried Under Australia


Frank Landymore
Sat, August 12, 2023 

Concealed History

The landmass of Australia could be harboring a massive, subterranean secret.

In a new essay for The Conversation, geologist Andrew Glikson explains his latest research that indicates that an epic asteroid crater could be buried underneath the continent — and all the evidence points to it being the largest known on the planet, by a huge margin.

Known as the Deniliquin structure, Glikson estimates in his study, published in the journal Tectonophysics, that it's over 320 miles in diameter. That would dwarf the largest confirmed impact structure, the approximately 100-mile-wide Vredefort Crater in South Africa, not to mention the similarly sized Chicxulub crater, believed to be from the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.


"The history of Earth's bombardment by asteroids is largely concealed," Gilkson wrote.

Uplifting Geology

The Deniliquin structure's existence was first proposed in the late 90s by Tony Yeates, who co-authored this latest study, based on magnetic patterns. A follow up analysis that wrapped up in 2020 confirmed that there was a large structure underneath a region in southern New South Wales, though without definitive proof it was caused by an impact.

You may ask: how does such a massive structure become buried beneath our feet, unnoticed?

As Glikson explains: "When an asteroid strikes, it creates a crater with an uplifted core. This is similar to how a drop of water splashes upward from a transient crater when you drop a pebble in a pool."

"This central uplifted dome," he adds, can erode over millions of years, becoming less prominent. If the crater isn't simply buried by sediment, a collision between the Earth's tectonic plates could also subsume the structure, as one colliding plate is forced beneath the other.

Along with the discovery of the dome, there are several other strong clues that identify the structure as an asteroid crater, such as symmetrical ripples in the crust that would be caused by the extreme temperatures of an impact, and "radial faults" commonly found in other impact structures.

Mass Extinction

Regrettably, most of the evidence gathered on the Deniliquin so far is only from the surface, and Glikson stresses the need for deep drilling to obtain "proof of impact."

Nevertheless, his latest research suggests that the asteroid impact that created it occurred roughly 445 million years ago, coinciding with what's known as the Late Ordovician mass extinction event that wiped out 85 percent of all life on Earth.

According to Glikson, it was more than double the scale of the dinosaurs' extinction at the hands of the Chicxulub impact. One shudders to imagine the scale of gargantuan space rock that forged the Deniliquin.

Buried object with ‘magnetic anomalies’ may be Utah-sized asteroid crater, study says

Brendan Rascius
Fri, August 11, 2023 

Photo from Joey Csunyo, UnSplash

Deep underneath the flat plains of the Australian outback, a massive object lies buried.

The hulking structure, which has “magnetic anomalies,” is likely a colossal asteroid crater, according to a study published in the journal Tectonophysics.

If it is indeed a crater, it would be the largest ever found on Earth.

Scientists determined the object, known as the Deniliquin Structure, was likely a fallen space rock by conducting an analysis of nearby geophysical evidence.

They used core samples from the ground and magnetic data from the air to help paint a clearer picture of the mysterious structure.

They found it “has all the features that would be expected from a large-scale impact structure,” Andrew Glikson, one of the study authors, wrote in The Conversation.

“For instance, magnetic readings of the area reveal a symmetrical rippling pattern in the crust around the structure’s core,” Glikson, a professor at the University of New South Wales, said. “This was likely produced during the impact as extremely high temperatures created intense magnetic forces.”

Using their geophysical data, they also determined the underground object has a minimum diameter of 273 miles, making it wider than the state of Utah.

That would mean it is far bigger than South Africa’s roughly 186-mile-wide Vredefort impact structure, considered to be the biggest in the world, Glikson said. He estimated the crater to be about 445 million years old and said the asteroid may have caused a mass extinction event.

The Australian continent is home to 30 known craters, the oldest of which date back over 1 billion years, according to Australian Indigenous Astronomy.

As mass layoffs loom, GKN Aerospace battles with Boeing in court


An F-18 jet being built in St. Louis 

 (Dilip Vishwanat/The New York Times)

By James Drew – Reporter, St. Louis Business Journal
Aug 11, 2023

A United Kingdom-based investment firm and seven entities of GKN Aerospace have asked the Missouri Supreme Court to dismiss them from a lawsuit that The Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) filed, arguing they are not subject to state law because they aren’t incorporated nor have their principal place of business in Missouri.

If the high court sides with them, it would leave only one defendant, GKN Aerospace St. Louis LLC, in the lawsuit pending in St. Louis County Circuit Court. Boeing has said GKN Aerospace St. Louis was rendered insolvent by its parent company, Melrose Industries PLC, the U.K.-based investment firm.

The lawsuit filed by Boeing in December 2022 resulted from GKN Aerospace St. Louis announcing that it would shut down its Hazelwood plant that makes aircraft parts for Boeing, saying the plant “consistently struggled for profitability in recent years.” Boeing is seeking unspecified damages from Melrose and the eight GKN entities.

The July 19 petition filed with the state Supreme Court by attorneys representing Melrose and seven of the GKN entities comes at a pivotal time in the dispute between Boeing and GKN. The eighth GKN entity, GKN Aerospace St. Louis, one of the St. Louis region's largest manufacturers, is not part of the petition because it owns and operates the Hazelwood plant.

In a notice filed with the state in June, GKN said it expected about 715 employees at the plant at 142 James S. McDonnell Blvd. will be affected by layoffs expected Aug. 25 and Oct. 6 this year, with final layoffs on Dec. 31, 2024. Under the federal Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, employers with 100 or more full-time employees are required to give at least 60 days advance notice in writing of a worksite closing affecting 50 or more employees.

A GKN spokesperson said in an email Friday afternoon: "The wind-down is proceeding as we set out in the WARN Act notice, with around 45 employees leaving in August and 35 in October."

Boeing said it has relied for more than two decades on GKN Aerospace St. Louis to supply “essential, complex parts” to make the F-15 and F/A-18 fighter jets used by the U.S. Air Force and Navy, and foreign allies.

The lawsuit accuses Melrose of failing to adequately capitalize GKN Aerospace St. Louis, rendering it insolvent. Headquartered in London, England, Melrose Industries is an investment company that buys and sells industrial and manufacturing businesses. Boeing also alleged that Melrose tried to use that insolvency in an attempt to escape liability for GKN Aerospace St. Louis breaching contracts to supply Boeing – and to try to force Boeing to acquire the company on “unfavorable terms.”

“Liability for these harms does not fall on GKN Aerospace St. Louis alone,” Boeing said in its lawsuit. “The decision to close GKN Aerospace St. Louis, forcing current and ongoing breaches of its contracts, was a top-down decision made by Melrose, a U.K. investment firm that acquired the GKN corporate family in 2018 through a hostile takeover.

“Melrose operates the aerospace companies in the GKN corporate family as a single entity called 'GKN Aerospace, with decisions being made by a limited number of individuals across all companies and without regard to corporate formalities or the legal separateness of what appear to be, on paper, distinct entities. Melrose dominates and controls GKN Aerospace and GKN Aerospace St. Louis within it,” the lawsuit stated.

In its petition to the state Supreme Court, attorneys representing Melrose and the seven GKN entities said Boeing wrongly asserted that eight of the nine defendants are covered by state law. The exception is GKN Aerospace St. Louis, attorneys wrote. The others are two U.K. entities, five Delaware companies and one California entity, they wrote.


“(Boeing) did not come forward with evidence to prove each Out-of-State Defendant’s minimum contacts with Missouri or otherwise their responsibility for the subsidiary’s decision to close the Hazelwood plant, out of which all of (Boeing’s) legal claims and alleged damages singularly arise,” the attorneys wrote.

In a July 10 opinion, the state Court of Appeals for the Eastern District upheld the decision by Judge Richard Stewart of St. Louis County Circuit Court that Melrose and the eight GKN entities are covered by Missouri law.

Matthew Diehr, an attorney with Husch Blackwell in Clayton representing Melrose and the GKN entities, and James Bennett of Dowd Bennett LLP in Clayton who represents Boeing, didn’t return messages seeking comment on Friday.

Many workers facing a layoff would accept a 25% pay cut to keep their jobs—but 97% of bosses don’t even ask. 

Even the researchers are stumped why

Paolo Confino
Thu, August 10, 2023 

Companies almost never offer employees pay cuts in the lead-up to layoffs, despite a willingness of workers to accept even deep reductions in wages to avoid losing their jobs, a new study finds.

The National Bureau of Economic Research survey of recently laid-off workers found that 60% would accept a pay cut of 5% to keep their jobs. Meanwhile, more than half would take a pay cut of 10% and nearly a third would accept a pay cut of 25% if it meant keeping their job, illustrating the lengths to which workers would go to avoid being unemployed.

Perhaps most shocking was the fact that virtually no employers even broached the subject with their employees facing a layoff. Fewer than 3% of respondents reported having been offered a salary reduction to save their job, even though they would have accepted one. The disconnect was so stark it even left the researchers stumped.

“Employer reluctance to offer wage cuts becomes more puzzling in the face of widespread worker willingness to accept them,” they write.

Previous scholarship on the topic, such as Truman Bewley’s book Why Wages Rise in a Recession, has always suggested pay cuts were an inefficient method to avoid layoffs because workers simply wouldn't accept them, the paper says. “Previous research leaves open the possibility that workers would simply refuse these pay cuts,” Pawel Krolikowski, a senior research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, who coauthored the study, tells Fortune. “I think our paper says that's often not the case. Workers would actually be quite willing to accept pay cuts.”

The willingness to accept lower pay in order to keep one's job held true across gender, education levels, and experience—with one exception: Black employees were roughly 12% more likely to accept the salary reduction in lieu of a layoff. Krolikowski and his research partner Steven J. Davis, an economics professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, believe this is a function of higher poverty rates among Black workers, making them more likely to “exhibit greater sensitivity” to a possible job loss that could affect their finances, they write in the paper.

Even more confounding is that workers, when faced with the possibility of being laid off, almost never initiate a conversation about keeping their job in exchange for a lower salary, even though many report being open to the idea. Only seven of 2,567 people in the survey—all of whom collected unemployment insurance benefits in Illinois between September 2018 and July 2019—said they brought up the topic.

When faced with this disconnect between the willingness of workers to accept a pay cut and the reticence of employers to offer them, Krolikowski and Davis set out to measure how many layoffs could be averted if bosses and employees were able to find a pay cut that worked for both parties. Based on their current research, 28% of layoffs could be avoided just by offering a willing employee a pay cut they deemed acceptable. They estimate the number could be as high as 35%, but proving that definitively would have required a better understanding of the exact circumstances of each respondent's layoff. Avoiding these layoffs would be in the “joint interest of worker and employer,” Krolikowski and Davis write, because the firm would still get to reduce cost, while the employee would keep their job—the benefits of which are obvious.

The hard evidence that almost 30% of layoffs could be avoided just by lowering an employee's salary makes the almost total absence of these conversations even more baffling. When asked why this might be the case, Krolikowski posits it's because employers are hesitant to cede control of personnel decisions to employees. “Employers can choose which workers to lay off; they can't do that in the case of a pay cut,” he says.

As part of the research, Krolikowski and Davis asked the laid-off workers they surveyed who would have agreed to a pay cut why they thought their employer didn’t raise it as an option. The top answer with 38.9% of responses was, “I don’t know.”

“This result suggests that many job losers don't understand the business considerations that led to their layoffs,” the paper states.

However, the second most common response, ”it would not have prevented my layoff,” which 36.3% of respondents selected as the reason they believed their employers didn’t offer wage reduction, illustrates the reality that not all layoffs are made for purely cost-cutting reasons. Some might occur because an organization has shifting priorities and wishes to replace workers from a division it no longer considers essential with headcount in another part of the firm. Krolikowski acknowledged this and called it an “important question” but declined to comment further because it was outside of the scope of the study.

The other reasons employees believed they weren’t offered pay cuts point to considerations about the firm's overall productivity. Eight percent of respondents cited two potential explanations: fears that the best workers would quit and that lower salaries would undermine morale. “Productivity suffers when workers feel insulted or wrongly treated by their pay,” the paper states.

In this scenario, the thinking goes, the firm would be worse off with a host of disgruntled employees rather than being perpetually short-staffed as a result of mass layoffs. The paper cites a case study of the tire manufacturer Firestone, which involved a recall of 14 million tires that coincided with the announcement of impending wage cuts in an upcoming union contract.

There’s also the practical matter of predicting who the unhappy and unproductive workers would be, Krolikowski adds. “If these workers can be identified in advance, then the best policy might be to lay them off and propose a pay cut for others,” he says. “But if they can't be identified in advance, or if it isn't feasible to selectively fire these workers, then broad layoffs may be the best action.”

Another reason why cutting pay in exchange for jobs is so rare is that it could set a precedent: Employees might ask for raises when performance is strong, and firms might ask for pay cuts whenever they please. “Could they always come and say, I want a pay cut, even when times weren't bad?” Krolikowski says. Those “firms seeking a pay cut might not be credible.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com