Mexico proudly controls its energy but could find it hard to reach its climate goals



Pemex oil workers set the drill on the Centenario deep-water drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Veracruz, Mexico. The 1938 nationalization of Mexico’s oil sector from U.S. and British companies is a point of pride for millions of Mexicans.

(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills, File)

BY FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ
April 30, 2024


MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s taking control of its oil sector from U.S. and British companies is taught in schools and celebrated every year. The 1938 nationalization is a point of pride for millions of Mexicans including President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The popular president hails from the Mexican oil industry’s heartland, and 16 years ago he led a fight against energy reforms that were aimed at drawing private investment to the massive state-run oil company, Pemex. This year, the front-runner in the race to replace López Obrador chose the anniversary of Mexico’s oil expropriation to announce her energy proposals, which include maintaining large-scale petroleum production by Pemex.

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, right, and Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, greet supporters at a rally in Mexico City’s main square, the Zocalo, July 1, 2019. Obrador led a fight against energy reforms that were aimed at drawing private investment to the massive state-run oil company, Pemex, and in 2024, the frontrunner in the race to replace him, Sheinbaum, chose the anniversary of Mexico’s oil expropriation to announce her energy proposals. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)

Front-runner Claudia Sheinbaum also wants to make sure that the government-run Federal Electricity Commission, CFE, generates the majority of the power Mexico supplies to homes and businesses. Like the other two candidates to replace López Obrador, she only wants limited private energy involvement, but continuing to favor state-owned companies will make it harder for Mexico to meet its climate change commitments, experts say.

Despite Pemex’s struggles, Mexico continues to be one of the world’s biggest oil producers. None of the candidates are talking about reducing that. The Federal Electricity Commission has held the monopoly on electricity transmission and distribution since it was established by presidential decree in 1937.

Mexico is committed to having 43% of the energy it generates come from non-contaminating sources by 2030. Today about 22% of Mexico’s electricity production comes from clean sources, according to estimates from the Mexican Institute for Competitivity think tank, or IMCO.

A mural of Mexico’s former President Lazaro Cardenas covers a wall alongside the words in Spanish “Pemex is not for sale,” right, from the PRD political party in Mexico City, Friday, Aug. 16, 2013. Cardenas’ oil expropriation was the single most popular decision by a Mexican president in the 20th century, and the nationalization remains immensely popular. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

The room for change in Mexico’s contribution to global warming appears to be in where the government monopoly gets its electricity and no participant in Mexico’s presidential debate Sunday discussed reducing Pemex production.

Gálvez did say she wants Mexico to produce half its energy from renewable sources within six years and that Mexico once again become known for cheap energy “thanks to private sector participation.”

Sheinbaum mentioned her climate science background and spoke vaguely of a need to reduce the emissions that cause climate change, advancing the energy transition and adapting to climate change. She also said a huge new refinery that López Obrador had built would help reduce Mexico’s gasoline imports.

The Olmeca oil refinery stands at the Dos Bocas port in Paraiso, Tabasco state, Mexico,  (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Sheinbaum has pledged to continue to increase refining capacity at Pemex, hardly a recipe for a concerted move away from fossil fuels from a climate scientist-turned-politician. The 61-year-old former Mexico City mayor has also said she wants CFE to keep generating the majority of Mexico’s electricity, complicating the country’s stated desire to contribute less to global warming.

López Obrador pushed laws to give CFE plants preference over private renewable and natural-gas generating plants, even though many of the state-owned plants burn dirtier fuels like fuel oil, coal or diesel. The courts blocked the changes, so last year López Obrador bought 13 power plants — most running on natural gas — from Spain’s Iberdrola for nearly $6 billion, calling it the “new nationalization,” ensuring that CFE generates the majority of Mexicans’ electricity


“It would be costly for her to move away from that official line,” said Oscar Ocampo, energy and environment coordinator for IMCO.

Pemex security employees inspect an illegal tap into a state-owned pipeline in a cornfield in San Bartolome Hueyapan, Tepeaca, Mexico,

(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

Opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez is the candidate for a coalition of ideologically different opposition parties. When she was a senator, she caucused with the conservative National Action Party, which had earlier pushed the energy sector reforms that forced a greater opening to the private sector.

In 2008, leftist lawmakers allied with López Obrador — the PRD’s 2006 presidential candidate — took control of both chambers of congress in an attempt to prevent votes on reforms. Those reforms opened the industry to private contracting in the service sector, but Pemex kept its monopoly over exploration, pipelines and gasoline distribution.

Gálvez has said says she wants to improve Pemex’s efficiency and profit and proposed closing two money-losing refineries. Longshot candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the small Citizen Movement has also proposed closing two refineries.

 Presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez campaigns in Irapuato, Mexico, March 1, 2024. 

(AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)

Julia González Romero, a lawyer specializing in energy sector regulations with the law firm González Calvillo, recalled that she was taught in elementary school about the oil expropriation and said it’s understandable that the debate over public versus private in the energy sector is heated.

“It’s in the DNA of our politics to argue about how much the private part should participate in the sector,” González Romero said

Sheinbaum wants the state-owned energy sector to expand into lithium production and geothermal electricity generation. CFE developed geothermal power generation years ago. In 2022, Mexico nationalized lithium mining and extraction, with a state-run company having exclusive rights to mine the metal used in electric car batteries and other devices.

Supporters of former presidential candidate Manuel Lopez Obrador attend a demonstration organized by Obrador to mark the 70th anniversary of the nationalization of the oil industry in the Zocalo of Mexico City

 (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

She had said she wants an energy transition to be one of the “hallmarks” of her administration and spoken of leaving the door open to private energy companies. But Ocampo said there is “a fundamental difference in the magnitude of (the private sector’s) participation” in the candidates’ proposals.

Gálvez has said she prefers to rely on the private sector to drive renewable energy investments. The tech entrepreneur has also proposed Pemex pivot toward geothermal, but touts a proposal to make it easier for people to install solar panels on their properties across the country to access more affordable electricity.

She also wants to bring back the energy auctions that had opened the electric generation market to more private renewables companies, but which López Obrador suspended.

Climate-related policies went backwards under López Obrador, said Climate Action Tracker, which tracks countries’ pledges to limit warming.

Members of the marine wildlife conservation organization Sea Shepherd monitor the fuel tanker Burgos, as it continues to burn a day after it erupted in flames off the coast of the port city of Boca del Rio, Mexico, Sept. 25, 2016. Mexico is committed to having 43% of the energy it generates come from non-contaminating sources by 2030.

 AP Photo/Felix Marquez

AP WAS THERE: Mexico’s 1938 seizure of the oil sector from US companies


This image shows the front page of the March 19, 1938, edition of The El Paso Times with an AP story, “Mexico Seizes U.S., British Oil Interests.” Mexico took control of its most precious natural resource by seizing the oil sector from U.S. companies in 1938, in a move that’s taught starting in first grade today and celebrated each year as a great patriotic victory. 

(The El Paso Times via AP)

 April 30, 2024


MEXICO CITY (AP) — EDITOR’S NOTE:

Mexico took control of its most precious natural resource by seizing the oil sector from U.S. companies in a move that’s taught starting in first grade today and celebrated each year as a great patriotic victory.

The woman holding a double-digit lead in the June 2 election to replace President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is an environmental engineer who helped produce the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Claudia Sheinbaum has also been a faithful protege of López Obrador, who hails from the oil industry’s Gulf of Mexico heartland and led a 2008 fight against energy reform.

The AP is making available its story from March 18, 1938, reporting the expropriation of foreign oil companies.

___
MEXICO SEIZES U.S., BRITISH OIL INTERESTS

President Lazaro Cardenas tonight announced expropriation by the government of foreign oil companies operating in Mexico.
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The President announced by radio that the government was taking over the properties of the 17 British and American oil companies, representing investments of $400,000,000.

The announcements was made less than two hours before the time set by the Mexican Oil Workers’ Syndicate for a nation-wide “folded arms strike” as the outcome of months of labor dispute.

The President’s office, immediately following Cardenas’ unannounced and unexpected broadcast, said the government would proceed to issue a decree, setting forth the terms for nationalization of the industry and new bases for its operation.

INDEMNITIES UNSTATED

No announcement was made as to the amount the companies would be paid as indemnification for their properties. Under Mexican law, such indemnification must be made within years.

Cardenas’ decision was made after a three-hour meeting of the hastily summoned cabinet.

A two-year conflict between the foreign companies and heir workers had apparently reached a stalemate

The 18,000 members of the syndicate, following a decision of the labor board dissolving existing contracts, decided to “suspend operations.”

The bone of contention was a federal arbitration board ruling that the companies should pay higher wages, which the operators said would cost them $12,000,000 a year — more than expected profits — and would force them out of business.

FIRMS OFFERED TO PAY

After the workers’ syndicate announced that the strike would start at midnight tonight the companies, in statements to newspapers, said they had offered to pay the amount (stipulated by the government to equal $7,200,000 annually) stipulated in the award ...

Cardenas was said to have replied: “It is too late now.”

The top UN court rejects Nicaragua’s request for Germany to halt aid to Israel


 Judge Nawaf Salam, third right, speaks at the start of a two days hearing at the World Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, April 8, 2024, in a case brought by Nicaragua accusing Germany of breaching the genocide convention by providing arms and support to Israel. The United Nations’ top court is set to rule on a request by Nicaragua for judges to order Germany to halt military aid to Israel. (AP Photo/Patrick Post, File)Videos

BY MIKE CORDER
April 30, 2024

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The top U.N. court rejected on Tuesday a request by Nicaragua to order Germany to halt military and other aid to Israel and renew funding to the U.N. aid agency in Gaza.

The International Court of Justice said that legal conditions for making such an order weren’t met and ruled against the request in a 15-1 vote, effectively siding with Germany, which told judges that it’s barely exporting any arms to Israel.

“Based on the factual information and legal arguments presented by the parties, the court concludes that, as present, the circumstances are not such as to require the exercise of its power ... to indicate provisional measures,” said Nawaf Salam, the court’s president.

However, the 16-judge panel declined to throw out the case altogether, as Germany had requested. The court will still hear arguments from both sides on the merits of Nicaragua’s case, which alleges that, by giving support to Israel, Germany failed to prevent genocide in Gaza. The case will likely take months or years.
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Salam said that the court, which earlier this year ordered Israel to allow more humanitarian supplies into Gaza, “remains deeply concerned about the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in particular in view of the prolonged and widespread deprivation of food and other basic necessities to which they have been subjected.”


ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR


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He added that the court “considers it particularly important to remind all states of their international obligations relating to the transfer of arms to parties to an armed conflict, in order to avoid the risk that such arms might be used” to violate international law.

The reading of the decision lasted less than 20 minutes.

The German Foreign Office welcomed the ruling in a post on X.

“Germany is not a party to the conflict in the Middle East — on the contrary: we are working day and night for a two-state solution,” the ministry said. “We are the largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. We are working to ensure that aid reaches the people in Gaza.”

But it added that Israel has the right to defend itself and said more than 100 hostages are still being held by Hamas, “which is abusing the people of Gaza as shields.”

The court noted that Germany had granted only four export licenses to Israel for weapons of war since the start of the conflict, two for training ammunition and one for test purposes, as well as one consignment of “3,000 portable anti-tank weapons.”

Nicaragua, a longstanding ally of the Palestinians, alleges that Germany is enabling genocide by sending arms and other support to Israel. The head of Nicaragua’s legal team, Carlos Jose Argüello Gómez, told reporters at court that his country would press ahead with its legal arguments.

Israel, which isn’t a party to the case between Nicaragua and Germany, strongly denies that its assault on Gaza amounts to acts of genocide.

Nicaragua’s case is the latest legal bid by a country with historic ties to the Palestinian people to stop Israel’s offensive.

Late last year, South Africa accused Israel of genocide at the court. The cases come as Israel’s allies face growing calls to stop supplying it with weapons, and as some, including Germany, have grown more critical of the war.

The court also rejected Nicaragua’s request for Germany to be ordered to reinstate direct funding to the U.N. aid agency in Gaza.

Israel says it is acting in self-defense after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people.

Since Israel launched its offensive, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Its toll doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, but it has said women and children make up the majority of the dead.

Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because the militants fight in dense, residential areas. The military says it has killed more than 12,000 militants, without providing evidence.

Germany has been a staunch supporter of Israel for decades. Berlin, however, has gradually shifted its tone as civilian casualties in Gaza have soared, becoming increasingly critical of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and speaking out against a ground offensive in Rafah.

In the case brought by South Africa, the ICJ ordered Israel in January to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and acts of genocide in Gaza. In March, the court issued new provisional measures ordering Israel to take measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where experts say a famine is imminent.

Meanwhile, a separate investigation by another international court — the International Criminal Court — is also worrying Israeli officials.

The ICC inquiry was launched in 2021 into possible war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian militants going back to the 2014 Israel-Hamas war. The investigation is also looking at Israel’s construction of settlements in occupied territory that the Palestinians want for a future state. Israeli officials in recent days have expressed concern about possible arrest warrants upcoming in that case.

ZIONIST HUBRIS 
Netanyahu vows to invade Rafah ‘with or without a deal’ as cease-fire talks with Hamas continue

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Tuesday to launch an incursion into a Gaza city sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

BY TIA GOLDENBERG
 April 30, 2024Share


TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Tuesday to launch an incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering from the almost 7-month-long war, just as cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas appear to be gaining steam.

Netanyahu’s comments came hours before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Israel to advance the truce talks — which appear to be one of the most serious rounds of negotiations between Israel and Hamas since the war began. The deal is meant to free hostages, bring some relief to the population and avert an Israeli offensive into Rafah and the potential harm to civilians there.

Netanyahu said Israel would enter Rafah to destroy Hamas’ battalions there regardless of whether a truce-for-hostages deal is struck. His comments appeared to be meant to appease his nationalist governing partners but it was not clear whether they would have any bearing on any emerging deal with Hamas.

“The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his office. “We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate Hamas’ battalions there — with or without a deal, to achieve the total victory.”

Netanyahu vows to launch an offensive in Rafah

Netanyahu has faced pressure from his governing partners not to proceed with a deal that might prevent Israel from invading Rafah, which it says is Hamas’ last major stronghold. His government could be threatened if he agrees to a deal because hard-line Cabinet members have demanded an attack on Rafah.

Netanyahu met on Tuesday with one of those partners, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, according to the minister’s office, who said Netanyahu promised him that “Israel will enter Rafah, promised that we are not stopping the war and promised that there won’t be a reckless deal.”

With more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people sheltering in Rafah, the international community, including Israel’s top ally, the United States, has warned Israel against any offensive that puts civilians at risk.

Netanyahu on Tuesday was addressing the Tikva Forum, a small group of families of hostages that’s distinct from the main group representing the families of captive Israelis. The forum has indicated that it prefers to see Hamas crushed over the freedom of their loved ones. Most families and their supporters have demonstrated in the thousands every week for a deal that would bring the hostages home, saying it should take precedence over military action.

Netanyahu’s coalition is made up of ultranationalist and conservative religious parties, and critics of the Israeli leader say his decision-making during the war has been driven by political considerations rather than national interests, a charge Netanyahu denies. His government could collapse if one of the parties opposed to a deal pulls out, a scenario Netanyahu would try to avoid considering his support has plummeted in opinion polls since the war began, although it has seen a slight gradual uptick.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the ultranationalist Religious Zionist party, said Monday that he was seeking “total annihilation” of Israel’s enemies, appearing to refer to Hamas, in a recorded portion of his remarks at an event marking the end of the Passover holiday which were aired in Israeli media.

“You can’t do half a job,” he said.

The current deal being discussed, brokered by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar, would see the release of dozens of hostages in exchange for a six-week halt in fighting as part of an initial phase, according to an Egyptian official and Israeli media. Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel would also be released, including some serving long sentences.

Blinken, who was meeting with regional leaders in Saudi Arabia and Jordan before landing in Tel Aviv later Tuesday, urged Hamas on Monday to accept the latest proposal, calling it “extraordinarily generous” on Israel’s part.

But a sticking point remains over what happens next. Hamas has demanded assurances that an eventual release of all hostages will bring a complete end to Israel’s nearly seven-month assault in Gaza and a withdrawal of its troops from the devastated territory. Israel has offered only an extended pause, vowing to resume its offensive once the first phase of the deal is over. The issue has repeatedly obstructed efforts by the mediators during months of talks

The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says the militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. The war has driven around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes, caused vast destruction in several towns and cities and pushed northern Gaza to the brink of famine.

Chinese scientist who first published COVID sequence stages protest after being locked out of lab


Virologist Zhang Yongzhen speaks at a coffeeshop in Shanghai, China on Dec. 13, 2020. Zhang, the first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China was staging a sit-in protest after authorities locked him out of his lab. Zhang wrote in an online post on Monday, April 29, 2024, that he and his team were suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since he first published the sequence in early January 2020. (AP Photo/Dake Kang)Read More

Virologist Zhang Yongzhen, the first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus, walks down a street in Shanghai, China on Dec. 13, 2020. Zhang was staging a sit-in protest after authorities locked him out of his lab. Zhang wrote in an online post on Monday, April 29, 2024, that he and his team were suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since he first published the sequence in early January 2020.(AP Photo/Dake Kang)

Zhang Yongzhen, the first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus, looks at a presentation on his laptop in a coffeeshop in Shanghai, China on Dec. 13, 2020. Zhang was staging a sit-in protest after authorities locked him out of his lab. Zhang wrote in an online post on Monday, April 29, 2024, that he and his team were suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since he first published the sequence in early January 2020.(AP Photo/Dake Kang)

BY DAKE KANG
 April 30, 2024

SHANGHAI (AP) — The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China staged a sit-in protest outside his lab after authorities locked him out of the facility — a sign of the Beijing’s continuing pressure on scientists conducting research on the coronavirus.

Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post Monday that he and his team had been suddenly notified they were being evicted from their lab, the latest in a series of setbacks, demotions and ousters since the virologist published the sequence in January 2020 without state approval.

When Zhang tried to go to the lab over the weekend, guards barred him from entering. In protest, he sat outside on flattened cardboard in drizzling rain, pictures from the scene posted online show. News of the protest spread widely on Chinese social media and Zhang told a colleague he slept outside the lab — but it was not clear Tuesday if he remained there.

“I won’t leave, I won’t quit, I am pursuing science and the truth!” he wrote in a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo that was later deleted.

In an online statement, the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center said that Zhang’s lab was being renovated and was closed for “safety reasons.” It added that it had provided Zhang’s team an alternative laboratory space.

But Zhang wrote online that his team wasn’t offered an alternative until after they were notified of their eviction, and that the lab offered didn’t meet safety standards for conducting their research, leaving his team in limbo.

Zhang’s latest difficulty reflects how China has sought to control information related to the virus: An Associated Press investigation found that the government froze meaningful domestic and international efforts to trace it from the first weeks of the outbreak. That pattern continues to this day, with labs closed, collaborations shattered, foreign scientists forced out and Chinese researchers barred from leaving the country.

When reached by phone on Tuesday, Zhang said it was “inconvenient” for him to speak, saying there were other people listening in. In an email Monday to collaborator Edward Holmes seen by AP, Zhang confirmed he was sleeping outside his lab after guards barred him from entering.

An AP reporter was blocked by a guard at an entrance to the compound housing Zhang’s lab. A staff member at the National Health Commission, China’s top health authority, said by phone that it was not the main department in charge and referred questions to the Shanghai government. The Shanghai government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zhang’s ordeal started when he and his team decoded the virus on Jan. 5, 2020, and wrote an internal notice warning Chinese authorities of its potential to spread — but did not make the sequence public. The next day, Zhang’s lab was ordered temporarily shut by China’s top health official, and Zhang came under pressure by Chinese authorities.

Around the time, China had reported several dozen people were being treated for a respiratory illness in the central city of Wuhan. Possible cases of the same illness had been reported in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan involving recent travelers to the city.

Foreign scientists soon learned that Zhang and other Chinese scientists had deciphered the virus and called on China to release the sequence. Zhang published it on Jan. 11, 2020, despite a lack of government permission.

Sequencing a virus is key to the development of test kits, disease control measures and vaccinations. The virus eventually spread to every corner of the world, triggering a pandemic that disrupted lives and commerce, prompted widespread lockdowns and killed millions of people.

Zhang was later awarded prizes in recognition for his work.

But Zhang’s publication of the sequence also prompted additional scrutiny of his lab, according to Holmes, Zhang’s collaborator and a virologist at the University of Sydney. Zhang was removed from a post at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and barred from collaborating with some of his former partners, crippling his research.

“Ever since he defied the authorities by releasing the genome sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19 there has been a campaign against him,” Holmes said. “He’s been broken by this process and I’m amazed he has been able to work at all.”

NHTSA opens investigation into Ford's hands-free driving tech after multiple deaths

 A view of a lighted Ford Motor Company sign on display during the 2023 SEMA Show, at the Las Vegas Convention center, Nov. 2023. On Monday, Ford said the car company is “working with NHTSA to support its investigation.” File photo by James Atoa/UPI | License Photo

April 29 (UPI) -- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday said it was opening an investigation into Ford Motor Company's BlueCruise driver-assisted technology after multiple fatalities had been linked to the software's use.

In a report dated April 25, the NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation said they had "opened this Preliminary Evaluation to investigate the Ford BlueCruise system equipped on the subject vehicles."

"This investigation will evaluate the system's performance of the dynamic driving task and driver monitoring," it read.

On Monday morning, Ford told TechCrunch that the car company is "working with NHTSA to support its investigation."

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Two fatal crashes so far in 2024 -- one in San Antonio, Texas, and the other in Philadelphia, Penn., -- are under investigation by the NHTSB.

The driverless technology was first introduced by Ford in 2021 and enables a hands-free driving experience on pre-mapped highways and other roads. It's also available in some Lincoln-made vehicles.

The NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation pointed to the Ford Mustang Mach-E's equipped with the Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 software that were made in cars from 2021-2024, which were involved in the fatal crashes.

The report said that vehicles had managed to hit stationary objects including stopped vehicles.

"Both collisions occurred during nighttime lighting conditions, and each incident resulted in at least one fatality," it said.

In February, Ford CEO Jim Farley indicated that BlueCruise is still a very profitable venture for the company, calling it "some awesome tech."

"BlueCruise just passed 150 million miles of hand-free use, but more importantly, the growth is up 25 percent quarter-over-quarter, and the gross margins for BlueCruise are at 70-plus percent," Farley told Ford Authority.

Last July, Farley had announced on social media the BlueCruise 1.3 rollout which started that summer in Mustang Mach-E's.

"Our ADAS team is making the hands-free highway driving experience even better!" he put on X.

The NHTSA has been busy in recent weeks and months.

Just days ago, the agency had closed an investigation into the Autopilot feature on certain Tesla models, while at the same time opening a new probe into the car maker's fix of the problem.

That came after December's Tesla recall of over 2 million vehicles possibly over risk of Autosteer crashes. In early April, they were investigating a Ford recall of 42,000 SUVs for fuel injector leak that were known to possibly cause fire.

FCC levies nearly $200M in fines on top wireless carriers for sharing location info

Agency says AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon sold access to customer info to third-party vendors

Wireless carriers AT&T, Sprint/T-Mobile and Verizon face a total of nearly $200 million in fines Monday after the Federal Communications Commission ruled they had illegally shared customers' location information with third parties. 

File Photo by niekverlaan/Pixabay


April 29 (UPI) -- Four of the nation's largest wireless carriers have each been fined tens of millions of dollars for illegally sharing information about their customers' locations, the Biden administration announced Monday.

The fines against AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, in total amounting to nearly $200 million, were levied after an investigation found they had sold access to their customers' location information to third-party aggregators and location-based service providers, the Federal Communications Commission said in a statement.

Under the penalties, Sprint and T-Mobile -- which have merged since the investigation began -- face fines of more than $12 million and $80 million, respectively, while AT&T was penalized more than $57 million and Verizon slapped with a fine of nearly $47 million.

"Our communications providers have access to some of the most sensitive information about us. These carriers failed to protect the information entrusted to them," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

"Here, we are talking about some of the most sensitive data in their possession: customers' real-time location information, revealing where they go and who they are. As we resolve these cases -- which were first proposed by the last administration -- the Commission remains committed to holding all carriers accountable and making sure they fulfill their obligations to their customers as stewards of this most private data," she said.

The agency asserted the carriers sold access to their customers' location information to "aggregators," who in turn re-sold that access to third-party, location-based service providers, thus allegedly attempting to "offload" their legal obligations requiring consent onto "downstream recipients."

The FCC said the probe began when members of the public reported that their location information was being disclosed without consent to a Missouri sheriff through a location-finding service operated by Securus, a provider of communications services to correctional facilities.

Despite warnings that the practice was illegal under Section 222 of the Communications Act requiring carriers to take "reasonable measures" to protect customers' location information, "all four carriers continued to operate their programs without putting in place reasonable safeguards to ensure that the dozens of location-based service providers with access to their customers' location information were actually obtaining customer consent," the FCC said.

The wireless providers disputed the fines in statements issued Monday.

The decision "is wrong and the fine is excessive. We intend to challenge it," T-Mobile said in a statement issued to media outlets, adding that the "industry-wide, third-party aggregator, location-based services program was discontinued more than five years ago."

"The FCC order lacks both legal and factual merit," an AT&T spokesperson said in a statement to CNN, saying it "unfairly holds us responsible for another company's violation of our contractual requirements to obtain consent and ignores the immediate steps we took to address that company's failures."

"When one bad actor gained unauthorized access to information relating to a very small number of customers, we quickly and proactively cut off the fraudster, shut down the program, and worked to ensure this couldn't happen again," Verizon spokesman Rich Young told USA Today. "Unfortunately, the FCC's order gets it wrong on both the facts and the law."

The two Republican members of the five-member commission also disagreed with the decision to institute the fines.

"There is no valid basis for the arbitrary and capricious finding," FCC member Nathan Simington wrote in a dissenting opinion, contending the methodology used to arrive at the hefty fines was flawed and against FCC precedent.
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Proxy fight could change leadership of Norfolk Southern railroad

By Chris Benson

 A Norfolk Southern train passes through the center of the village of East Palestine, Ohio in Feb. 2023. On Monday, Norfolk Southern Alan Shaw defended his leadership of the company and the recent report critical of his management.

 File photo by Aaron Josefczyk/UPI | License Photo

April 29 (UPI) -- An unusual proxy fight is about to take place for control of Norfolk Southern railroad amid a report critical of company leadership that calls for a change in management.

The Ohio-based Ancora Holdings Group on Monday said yes to Glass, Lewis and Company's call for Norfolk Southern Corporation shareholders to vote to elect six new Ancora-backed board members at Norfolk's upcoming May 9 shareholders meeting.

"We believe Ancora has presented a compelling case for supporting a substantial overhaul of the Company's current leadership," Glass Lewis' report noted regarding the need for a change in leadership at Norfolk Southern.

The San Francisco, Calif.-based Glass Lewis is a leading independent proxy advisory firm, and Ancora owns a large equity stake in the Atlanta, Ga.-based Norfolk Southern Corporation.

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Glass Lewis had recommended to shareholders Ancora nominees Betsy Atkins, James Barber Jr., William Clyburn Jr., Sameh Fahmy, Gilbert Lamphere and Allison Landry.

They also called for current board Chair Amy Miles, board director Claude Mongeau and Norfolk Southern's CEO Alan Shaw to "be immediately replaced due to their apparent responsibility for sustained underperformance" in their current job roles.

It is considered fairly unusual but not uncommon for a proxy firm to get involved in the way Glass Lewis has.

On Monday, Norfolk Southern's CEO was on CNBC "to discuss how he and the current leadership team are creating 'A Better Way' for our customers, employees and shareholders," the company posted on X.

"We vigorously disagree with that report," Shaw said Monday on CNBC's "Closing Bell Overtime" show about Lewis Glass report.

The Glass Lewis report states that it is "not readily evident" to them how Norfolk Southern under Shaw and his team's leadership "had built up a sufficiently positive track record such that investors might reasonably have the patience to allow management to implement a relatively novel operating strategy."

Monday afternoon, Shaw defended his management of Norfolk Southern and was critical of the report.

"What it fails to do is take into account the meaningful progress and change that our board has deliberately put forth that is making us a safer and more profitable railroad," said Shaw.

It was noted how multiple labor unions "have now taken the relatively extraordinary step of publicly supporting" the "activist hedge fund in Ancora" in their effort to oust Shaw and replace other Norfolk Southern board members, which the report says "raises further questions" about the company's current management.

"It's clear Ancora is making backroom deals," Shaw claimed Monday on "Closing Bell Overtime."

"We remain really engaged with our union workforce," he said, noting how his management team still has the support of 11 of their 13 railroad unions.

Norfolk Southern has been through a series of legal challenges since its highly publicized Ohio train derailment in February last year, and the ensuing environmental ramifications which came as a result, in addition to a multi-million dollar earnings loss.

In early April, it was announced that Norfolk Southern had reached a tentative $600 million settlement in the East Palestine derailment.

In March, three Norfolk Southern trains were involved in a collision in eastern Pennsylvania when two engines ending up in the Lehigh River near Allentown.

Plant-based diet may reduce risk of emphysema among smokers

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News

People with a history of smoking who adopted a plant-based diet had a 56% lower risk of developing emphysema, compared to those who ate more meat, researchers report. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

Current and former smokers might lower their risk for emphysema if they adopt a highly nutritional plant-based diet, a new study shows.

People with a history of smoking who adopted a plant-based diet had a 56% lower risk of developing emphysema, compared to those who ate more meat, researchers report.

Further, the more veggies and fruits people included in their diet, the lower their risk of emphysema.

"Identifying these modifiable factors, such as diet, is vital for helping reduce the risk of developing chronic lung disease in those with a history of smoking," said lead researcher Mariah Jackson, a registered dietitian nutritionist and assistant professor with the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

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These findings jibe with earlier studies that "show an association between an individual's dietary choices and lung health, including reducing wheezing in children and lowering asthma occurrence in children and adults," Jackson added.

For the study, researchers followed more than 1,700 participants in a long-term heart health study, all of whom were recruited between the ages of 18 and 30 and followed for three decades.

They all were current or former smokers by year 20 of the study, and had filled out questionnaires tracking their diet history and quality.

More than 1,300 of those participants had a CT scan at year 25 of the study to see whether they'd developed emphysema, among other health problems.

Emphysema, a type of COPD, occurs due to irreversible damage to the air sacs in the lungs, which limits the amount of oxygen that these sacs can transfer to the bloodstream. People are left feeling constantly short of breath.

Results show risk of emphysema dropped 34% for each one-unit increase in participants plant-based diet score. In other words, the risk declined as they ate more plant-based foods.

The findings, published recently in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases: Journal of the COPD Foundation, shows that a healthy diet can help smokers, even those who struggle to quit, Jackson said.

"We know long-term smoking cessation adherence can be challenging, requiring complementary treatments, like a nutrient-rich, plant-centered diet, to help preserve lung health," Jackson said in a journal news release.

"More research is needed on when dietary choices have the most potential to impact lung health, which can then inform public health guidelines and dietary recommendations, especially in children and young adults," Jackson added.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on emphysema.

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Drought and Unequal Water Rights Threaten Family Farms in Chile

By Orlando Milesi

For the rural farmers in Chile, a combination of climate change-induced mega droughts, water policies that make access unaffordable and a State that either doesn’t want to or dares not intervene in the water market means family enterprises are dying out.

Rosa Guzmán harvests tomatoes on her family farm in San Pedro, in the municipality of Quillota, 126 kilometers north of Santiago, the Chilean capital, where she is unable to extend her crops due to lack of funds, which prevents her from drilling deeper wells to obtain water and combat the drought. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

QUILLOTA, Chile , Apr 30 2024 (IPS) - Lack of water threatens the very existence of family farming in Chile, forcing farmers to adopt new techniques or to leave their land.

The shortage is caused by a 15-year drought and exacerbated by the unequal distribution arising from the Water Code decreed in 1981 by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, which turned water into a tradable commodity and gave its owners rights in perpetuity.

In addition, there are problems such as the accumulation of water rights in the hands of large agro-export companies and real estate speculation with the land of small farmers who are forced to sell.

“We have no water for human consumption,” Julieta Cortés, 52, president of the Rural Women’s Association of the municipality of Canela, told IPS. “In Canela, more than 80 percent of the population depends on the water truck that delivers 50 liters of water per person per day. It’s hard to get by with that amount.”

Located in the Coquimbo region, 400 kilometers north of Santiago, Canela, with a population of just over 11,000, was known for its goat herds, now reduced by half. Local farmers also used to grow wheat and barley. Today, the fruit trees are drying up and the livestock are dying of thirst.

In contrast, the extensive plantations of avocados for export are irrigated and green on the slopes of the dry valleys.

Chile’s agro-exports are one of its major sources of income, together with mining. In 2023, the agro-export sector accounted for 3.54 percent of GDP, or 10.09 billion dollars.

Water problems are concentrated in isolated rural areas that lack technical, economic, and infrastructure capacities.

“Family and small farmers do not have access to water rights controlled by those who have money and can buy and transfer them,” Cortés said in a telephone interview.

“The lower part of the Choapa River flows through my municipality and none of us who live here have access to the water that is used upstream in the Los Pelambres mine and the large agro-industries along the way,” she said.

 

Hills stand out for their greenery in Quillota, north of Santiago, Chile, with avocado plantations that reach to the top, covering many hectares. They are able to avoid water shortages thanks to water use rights held by large agro-exporters, which allow them to evade the effects of the drought and send their abundant production abroad. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

The Issue Is Not Lack of Water, but Inequality

In the publication Guardianas del Agua (Guardians of the Water), published by the German Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation, Macarena Salinas and Isaura Becker reported that 47.2 percent of the rural Chilean population had no formal drinking water supply or irrigation.

In this South American country, some 950 communities are not part of the Rural Drinking Water Program (RWP) and obtain water from informal sources such as wells, springs and water trucks.

“We have a privatized water model where the focus and priority has always been to maintain the right to property over the human right of access to water.” -- Evelyn Vicioso

The publication reported that between 2016 and 2021, the State invested 150 million dollars to use water trucks to supply the areas suffering from scarcity.

“While the RWP committees and cooperatives need drinking water and are supplied through emergency measures, there are individuals and companies that have surplus water and can profit from the sale of water using tanker trucks,” write Salinas and Becker.

Therefore, they point out, “rather than a lack of water, there is an unequal distribution of the resource.”

The drought in Canela has been repeated in other areas of this long, narrow country of 19.5 million people living between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

The shortage of rainfall has lasted for 15 years, with a brief respite in 2023. It is unclear what will happen in 2024.

In Canela, farmers survive by using recycled water from washing machines and bathrooms, water harvested from rooftops or with fog catchers, systems used to capture or trap microscopic water droplets from mist, which are widely used in Chile.

“We have been reinventing ourselves. We have even rescued water from the dew. Many of us have adopted new techniques; others have moved away,” Cortés said from her community, Carquindaña.

Rosa Guzmán, 57, and her three brothers own a 40-hectare property in San Pedro, a community of some 5,000 inhabitants in the municipality of Quillota, 126 kilometers north of Santiago in the Valparaíso region.

They only grow four hectares of vegetables and 2.5 hectares of avocados because they do not have the money to expand their crops.

“Sometimes we run out of water for the house because the wells are 10 meters deep. They are filled from two canals that rarely have water,” she said during a tour of the family’s farm with IPS.

Guzmán is director of the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (Anamuri) and president of her community’s environmental organization, San Pedro Digno.

Anamuri is an organization founded in 1998, composed solely of women, which organizes and promotes development among rural and indigenous women in this country. It also builds relationships of equality, regardless of gender, class, and ethnicity, on the basis of respect between people and nature.

“I used to collect medicinal herbs on the banks of the canal, but now there are none. The natural springs have dried up. This is a serious problem, and there are people who have no water to drink, which is a grave issue,” she said.

According to the rural activist, the State has abandoned small-scale agriculture.

“It would be very different if the State were to put more of a priority on small-scale agriculture and give us soft credits or subsidies. It has to pay attention to what is happening because, at this rate, it pains me to say it, family farming could disappear in Chile,” she said.

 

Water stored in a small reservoir allows the Guzmán siblings to maintain vegetable production on their 40-hectare plot of land, of which only 10 percent is planted due to a lack of resources. It is one of the few surviving family farms in the municipality. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

Agro-export Model in the Spotlight

Water scarcity directly affects farmers’ livelihoods and way of life and often leads to complex environmental problems.

“The lack of safe water impacts household and community economies, especially for families who depend on small-scale family farming for their food,” write Salinas and Becker.

Guzmán criticized the agro-export model and called for a return to planting wheat, lentils and chickpeas, products that form part of Chile’s food security. But, she stressed, in order to do so, soft loans or subsidies are needed.

“We need food sovereignty. But if small farmers suffer losses every year, many end up selling their land. We want to live well without losing our identity and our know-how,” she underlined.

Sociologist Evelyn Vicioso, executive director of Sustainable Chile, criticized the agro-export model because “it is super intensive in water use and is extremely irresponsible with regard to crops. But above all, because it does not solve a problem nationally: the availability of water for many communities,” she said.

“We particularly depend on small-scale family farming for food, and if it disappears, we have a problem of costs and distribution. The big farmers think about ensuring food sovereignty for any country except their own communities,” she told IPS in Santiago.

 

Hernán Guzmán, one of four siblings who own a plot of land in Quillota, inspects a small area dedicated to growing basil that is destined, along with other vegetables, for the market in the nearby port city of Valparaíso, in central Chile. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

Watershed Management Slow To Take Off

To advance climate justice in a scenario of water scarcity, many experts agree on the need to manage watersheds with representative councils.

“Our country has a gigantic mass of mountains, but today we do not have a management system that allows us to link what happens in the headwaters with what is happening further downstream,” said Vicioso.

She listed a string of failures to create watershed councils, as there have been 25 attempts since 1994 and only one is functioning.

There is no will to create them, especially among water rights owners.

“We have a privatized water model where the focus and priority have always been to maintain the right to property over the human right of access to water,” said Vicioso.

Salinas and Becker regret that the 2005 reforms to the Water Code are not retroactive.

“This generates the conditions for the holders of water use rights to exploit the water with a strictly economic focus, thus discouraging the development of uses not involving extractive industries, such as ancestral and ecological uses,” they argue.

The regulation hinders integrated management of the water cycle, as it does not consider the river basin as the minimum unit, does not establish mechanisms to jointly manage surface and groundwater, and allows rivers to be sectioned off.

 

Evelyn Vicioso, executive director of the non-governmental organization Sustainable Chile, sits in her office in Santiago, where she monitors the water situation among small farmers and coordinates actions to defend the human right to water. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

 

Land speculation

In Quillota there is a growing sale of agricultural land to real estate companies that resell it as non-productive family recreational plots.

Thus, native trees disappear and the hope of reviving family farming is waning.

“Land has become a business. It sells for 60 million pesos (60,000 dollars) per half a hectare that sometimes does not even have water. That value attracts people to sell,” Guzmán said.

These plots will increase the demand for water and deforestation because the government’s Agriculture and Livestock Service (SAG) has no oversight capacity.

“All the hills are being parceled out and water is brought to these people with water trucks,” said Guzmán.

Migration from the countryside has been driven by climate change.

In Canela, said Cortés, it used to be young people who moved away. But now it is entire families who go to nearby cities in search of access to water.

According to Guzmán, “young people do not want to stay in the countryside and women say that it is not even profitable to raise chickens.”

Cortés is grateful for the water from trucks, but stresses that the underlying problem is restoring watershed management.

“To rebuild this, resources must be allocated. And for that, we need forestation to make barriers to retain the scarce rainfall and restore the hydrological system,” she said.

Vicioso complained that “there is a lack of protection of the glaciers, which are the headwaters of the basins where the water comes from.”

The sociologist also urged a rethinking of the intensive use of water in productive activities.

“We have an underlying political problem with water that has a high market value and a State that does not dare, does not want, and does not seek the tools to intervene in this deregulated market, just like in drug trafficking,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

The God in the rubble

Germany’s struggle with morality is not only a concern of history but an animating factor in contemporary politics.

Dresden, Germany, in the aftermath of war (Deutsche Fotothek/Richard Peter jun via Getty Images)

MARCUS COLLA
Published 30 Apr 2024

Germany
Review

Book review: Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942–2022, by Frank Trentmann (Allen Lane, 2023)

On the eve of the First World War, the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch reflected on the terror of a world in which there no longer existed any “unchangeable code of conscience”. Troeltsch was, of course, neither the first nor last thinker to lament the fading hold of traditional values in the face of modernity’s destructive march. What set him apart was that he took as his target nothing less than history itself. If the effect of historical thinking was to reveal the flux and change of human societies, Troeltsch mused, then what would remain of timeless ethical truths, of universals, and of God? To give morality a history was to strip it of its essence, of its eternal validity. History and morality were antagonists.

The crises that engulfed Troeltsch’s homeland over the subsequent years recast the relationship anew. In the ashes of the Third Reich, history and morality became inseparable: the one inevitably informing the other. Even today, nearly 80 years after the end of the Second World War, there are few countries that charge their identity and their activities in the world with such a degree of moral self-reflexion as Germany does. There is not, I am sorry to say, an 80-letter German word to denote “the sense that one’s collective identity is bound up with a moral mission in the world that derives from a historic guilt”. But there is, at least, now an 800-page book that seeks to explain it.

Frank Trentmann’s monumental new volume Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942-2022 charts the evolution of German moral sentiments, in both East and West, since the Second World War. At first glance, one could well imagine that this is fundamentally a book about political morality: a kind of Wannsee-to-Willkommenskultur coming-of-age tale describing a society that, against all odds, summoned the courage to look itself in the eye and ask itself the most difficult questions of all. But that would not be an entirely accurate portrayal.


Instead, Trentmann presents us with a (sometimes terrifyingly) wide spectrum of domains of human life that became infused with moral meaning, moral purpose, and moral conflict: Third World humanitarianism, reproductive rights, care for the elderly, animal welfare, military service, nuclear energy, European integration, family structures, treatment of immigrants, and even that most stereotypical of German characteristics – frugality. None of these, of course, is a uniquely German phenomenon. But each was given a certain moral inflection in its German context.

“What is distinctive is not the particular concerns”, writes Trentmann, “it is the German habit of turning all social, economic and political problems into moral ones.”

Nevertheless, it is the painful reckoning with Nazism, war, and genocide that supplies the book’s spine. Its most critical chapters are dedicated to exploring the clashing sets of values and emotions that Germans collectively navigated when reconstituting their society after the collapse of the Third Reich. Moral reconstruction was a mammoth task.

For one, it was necessary to expunge from German minds the distinctive ethical code that had underlay the Nazi worldview. Trentmann interrogates in some detail the minds of the SS men whose chilling conviction that the survival of the Aryan race constituted the supreme ethical value rendered their genocidal actions, in their eyes, as a morally necessary undertaking.

Compounding the magnitude of the task, after 1945, there was a pervasive sense among Germans that they – their cities flattened, their borders diminished, their compatriots uprooted, and their country divided – had been the war’s victims rather than its culprits.

For the most part, those who really had been persecuted under Nazism struggled for recognition in the postwar world. So, when it came to the matter of moral regeneration, democratic institutions and reparation programs were hardly enough. What was needed was a thorough cleansing of the soul, what the writer Erich Wiechert in November 1945 termed digging “out God from underneath the rubble of the Antichrist”.
Germany’s interminable struggle over its support for Ukraine has ultimately turned not on the external question of what may be best for Ukraine or Europe, but rather on the internal matter of what Germany conceives its own moral responsibility to be.
It was therefore no small feat that (West) Germany managed to reconstitute itself, in a relatively brief span of time, as a stable, functional, and wealthy democracy. The transformation justly became a source of pride. But the thorough suffusion of German public life with moral rhetoric and moral reasoning has also, Trentmann shows, been a source of much hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

And in this respect, Out of the Darkness makes a persuasive case to understand morality as an animating factor in contemporary politics. In an especially critical section, Trentmann attacks the double-standards and seeming lack of self-awareness that drove the moral posture German politicians adopted towards the indebted southern European states (especially Greece) during the Eurozone crisis of the early 2010s. Under Angela Merkel’s leadership, a “global crisis of liquidity and debt became a morality play”, in which the German government’s tough stance towards “profligate southerners” stemmed from “the simple moral conviction that a nation’s economic success mirrored the virtues of its citizens”.

During the refugee influx of 2015, the self-satisfied boast that Germans were the “world champions” of “helping others” (as one leading politician put it) concealed the many years in which the country’s government had simply “outsourced the problem” to Europe’s outer borders. And for the past two years, Germany’s interminable struggle over its support for Ukraine has ultimately turned not on the external question of what may be best for Ukraine or Europe, but rather on the internal matter of what Germany conceives its own moral responsibility to be.

An undertaking of this character and scale presents some difficult conceptual questions. Above all is the thorny matter of how to prevent a moral history from descending into a moralising history. For the most part, it is a temptation that Trentmann skilfully avoids. Out of the Darkness does not follow a single narrative arc charting one long learning process in which Germans collectively stumble towards some kind of preordained ethical benchmark. Instead, it presents us with open futures, deep social conflicts, and the confronting reality that a simple “darkness to light” story cannot capture the true complexities of post-war German life. It is, in short, good history.

There are many books that address the tortuous tale of Germany’s reconstruction and moral regeneration after 1945. Out of the Darkness is one of the very best of them.