Signalfire

Two years after the food crisis, when soaring prices raised the spectre of mass hunger and starvation, food inflation has made a comeback.

For Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. POT-T , the world’s biggest fertilizer maker, the price surge could not come at better time as it fights a $39-billion (U.S.) takeover bid from BHP Billiton Ltd. But in the developing world, the strain of higher food costs is beginning to show.

Last week’s riots in Mozambique, which left at least 10 dead, were the first food riots since the crisis of 2007 and 2008, when violent unrest swept through Haiti, Egypt, Western Africa and several other poor regions. The Mozambique riots followed the government’s decision to raise bread prices by 30 per cent, though rising water and electricity costs also helped to spark the uprising.

International food prices were up 5 per cent in August, the biggest one-month increase since last November, said the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, which has called a one-day meeting on Sept. 24 to examine the global markets for grains and rice. European wheat prices hit more than €231 ($308 Canadian) a tonne last week, which was close to the two-year high of €236 set in August, largely because drought has hammered the crop in Russia. Corn prices are at their highest level since mid-2009. Sugar and oilseed prices are also climbing.

The FAO, however, is being careful not to describe the galloping prices as a “crisis” or an “emergency,” noting that its Food Price Index, while up substantially in recent months, is still 38 per cent below its peak in June, 2008. The organization’s approach underscores how policy makers are trying not to set off the alarm, partly out of fear that the expectation of higher prices will drive hedge funds and other financial players into food futures, causing prices to rise even more, as happened in 2007-08

“The worst is behind us already,” Abdolreza Abbassian, the FAO’s senior grains economist, said in an interview Monday, noting that last week’s extension of a wheat export ban in Russia caused barely a ripple in the markets.

“This is not a food crisis. If you say food ‘crisis,’ you get a food ‘crisis’ because the speculators pile in.”

The global food markets are “overreacting,” he said, to the Russian export ban because almost none of the conditions that were in place two or three years ago exist today. World wheat stockpiles, at 175 million tonnes for the 2010-11 season, may be down somewhat from their peak but are still 40 per cent higher than in 2007-08, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture; oil prices are about half of their 2008 peak of $147 (U.S.) a barrel; and economic growth is weak in Europe and North America, which means the demand for animal feed is barely rising.

Still, Mr. Abbassian said the recent sharp rise in food prices is not welcome and that extreme weather conditions, which seem more common, will ensure that food markets become more volatile than usual. Volatility, he notes, attracts speculators, whose trades can only increase the frequency of wild price swings. “Liquidity can come from any direction at any time,” he said.

Those swings, and the way they impact farmers’ use of fertilizer, are a key factor in the takeover drama between Potash Corp. and BHP, the world’s largest mining company. Potash Corp. dismissed BHP’s unsolicited $130-per-share bid as “grossly inadequate,” partly because it believes rising food demand and prices will translate into robust fertilizer prices.

Potash Corp. is exceedingly bullish on potash prices as food prices and demand pick up momentum. In its directors circular, amended on Friday, it said it could generate $10-billion in EBITDA – earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization – by 2015, assuming full operational capacity (which is said it cannot guarantee) and a potash price of $800 a tonne.

Analysts suggested extremely high utilization rates are a dream, given that potash supplies should increase by half by 2020, outpacing demand. UBS said utilization rates “above 82 per cent are required to shift up pricing significantly. … Utilization rates will peak at 75 per cent in 2020, but will be insufficient to catalyze a significant shift in pricing.”

The UBS price estimate for potash between 2013 and 2015 is $400 a tonne, up from this year’s estimate of $340. This suggests the recent food price surge will have to be long lasting if it is to have a dramatic effect on potash prices.

Potash rebounds

Potash is used almost exclusively for fertilizers and has no substitute. Fertilizer use is one of the most cost effective ways to boost crop yields, though many poor farmers in developing countries cannot afford it.

Last month, analysts at UBS predicted a sharp rebound in global potash consumption this year, to 27.5 million tonnes, up 42 per cent from 2009, when food prices slumped. UBS forecasts consumption of 32.4 million tonnes next year, following by several years of steady, if unspectacular, growth.

(AFP)
BEIJING — At least four Tibetans may have been killed and 30 others hurt when Chinese police fired on crowds protesting the expansion of mine operations blamed for environmental damage, a report said Saturday.

The shooting occurred August 17 in a remote region of southwestern China’s Sichuan province with a history of seething unrest involving the area’s Tibetan community, US-based Radio Free Asia said.

Quoting exiled Tibetans with sources in the region, the report said the confrontation began on or around August 13 when a group of Tibetans went to the Palyul county government headquarters to protest.

They complained that stepped-up Chinese gold-mining operations had brought large numbers of people and heavy machinery to the area, damaging farmland and the local grassland habitat, it said.

County officials rejected the accusations and had the demonstrators detained, touching off a steadily escalating confrontation that lead to the August 17 shootings.

Some of those injured were severely hurt, it said. Two police officers also were reportedly injured that day.

It quoted a county government official saying negotiations were under way to settle the dispute.

Local police denied knowledge of any confrontation when reached by AFP via phone. Calls to the county government went unanswered.

Palyul is in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous prefecture, one of many areas of the Tibetan plateau hit by widespread anti-Chinese rioting in March 2008 that was met with a massive security clampdown.

August 26

At his inauguration at the pre-Inca ruins of Tiwanaku five years ago, Evo Morales donned a poncho, it was a moment of high symbolism: Bolivia’s first president of Indian descent has championed their rights ever since.

Five landslide elections have made Mr Morales, a leftwing former llama herder and coca farmer, one of Latin America’s most popular leaders and left the opposition fragmented.

Mr Morales and his Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) have a comfortable majority in Congress, enjoy the loyalty of the military and hold sway over the judiciary. The government expects 4.5 per cent gross domestic product growth this year.

But divisions among his traditional Indian supporters are surfacing. In the mining region of Potosi, traditionally one of Mr Morales’ bastions, residents, miners and peasants have been on strike and engaged in anti-government protests since late July.

They are demanding greater investment in their region and want a solution to a boundary dispute with neighbouring Oruro. In one of Latin America’s key mining areas, these protests and blockades have ground mining production to a halt.

That disenchantment is increasingly visible around Bolivia. “Evo traitor” reads graffiti near the presidential palace, in La Paz.

“Evo has betrayed some large sectors of the indigenous population”, says Pedro Nuni, a disenchanted MAS congressman. “He and many others in the government love the label ‘indigenous government’, but the reality is that he is turning his back on some of the indigenous brothers – especially us lowlanders – on behalf of indigenous highlanders”, says Mr Nuni, whose lowland seat in gas-rich Santa Cruz lies in what was traditionally the heartland of the rightwing opposition.

“The situation is complicated,” says Senator Eugenio Rojas, one of Mr Morales’ closest allies. For the first time we the peasants, the indigenous, have the right to run this country. But now we are seeing problems between indigenous people over power, territories and ancient disputes,” he acknowledges. “This is provoking some clashes inside the MAS structure.”

Divisions within the MAS between leftist, indigenous, union and civic groups are growing, says Carlos Toranzo, a political economist with the Latin American Institute of Social Research. “They all fight for control of government spending and opportunities for patronage. These are classic power fights inside the structure of all-powerful political apparatuses that are based on clientelism.”

One problem is that Mr Morales has raised expectations in terms of the decentralisation of power, indigenous rights and land rights. Recent protests and strikes by Indians and trade unionists expose the government’s vulnerability to unrest from previously stalwart supporters. “Everybody seems to be taking advantage of the dissatisfaction with inefficiencies, corruption and MAS intimidation,” Mr Toranzo adds.

Part of the anger felt by some indigenous lowlanders is due to what some call “Evo’s oil lust” as the government explores for resources in protected areas of the Amazon.

“Evo’s environmentalist and industrialist rhetorical facade that helped secure a second term has fallen away. Everything shows that this is a government desperate to get money and is returning the country to what it said it was against: a model of pure extraction of natural resources at any cost,” says Mr Toranzo.

The energy sector needs investment urgently and fluctuations in the volumes and price of gas exports, Bolivia’s main source of revenue, have had an impact on the economy.

Some even fear Bolivia may lose a share of its main market for gas exports, neighbouring Brazil, if José Serra wins October’s presidential election. The centre-right candidate is likely to cool ties with some of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leftwing allies, among them Mr Morales.

Bolivia’s finance minister, Luis Arce, forecasts 4.5 per cent growth for Bolivia and a $1bn trade surplus by the end of the year. “We are advancing and delivering results into the hands of the people,” he said. “The change is now irreversible.”

By Angelique Carson

Smart grids are the future of power, but what does that mean for the future of privacy?

The transmission networks spanning nations to provide light, heat and electricity will soon undergo a radical transformation. Most of the world’s developed countries have invested in or plan to invest huge sums to implement smart energy infrastructures within the next two decades. The “smart grid” will revolutionize the way utilities and consumers measure and monitor electricity usage. It is expected to save money and aid energy conservation. But the grid will also result in massive amounts of new data, data that can reveal intimate details about households and the people who live in them. The risk of exposure or misuse of such data creates a new set of concerns for consumers and privacy professionals.

The smart grid will rely on “smart” meters, which will record household energy consumption and communicate it back to power providers. These new smart meters will replace the electromechanical meters that are attached to most households across the world today.

Smart appliances, which are being developed and sold by some of the world’s largest manufacturers, will enhance the intelligent grid, feeding smart meters with real-time information about electrical use down to the appliance level-smoothie at seven, treadmill at eight, for example. (According to a recent Zpryme report, the global market for household smart appliances is projected to reach $15.12 billion in 2015.) This precision will allow utility companies to analyze peak power usage times and set electric rates accordingly. In turn, households will gain a tool for more efficient management of their energy consumption, which they could use to lower costs and conserve energy. For example, customers will have the ability to time their laundry chores for off-peak energy hours.

When the grid, the meter, and the appliances are implemented and integrated, consumers will be able to fine-tune their energy consumption to get the best rates and utilities will be able to more effectively manage power distribution and identify and resolve problems remotely.

The savings potential is expected to be massive. The grid is also expected to help power suppliers prevent blackouts and brownouts by allowing for power distribution to be delivered more evenly and on a need-based schedule.

Nations and utilities are investing in the development of the smart grid, and many companies have already deployed smart meters. But while those involved throw millions, even billions, toward the grid, cautioning voices are calling for privacy protections.

“We are talking about implementing a very new type of network…a network that people are always attached to,” says Rebecca Herold, CIPP, founder of Rebecca Herold and Associates, LLC. Herold has led the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Smart Grid privacy subgroup since June 2009 and co-authored the NIST report on smart grid privacy, which is under review by NIST and expected to be published soon.

The information collected on a smart grid will form a library of personal information, the mishandling of which could be highly invasive of consumer privacy,” said Christopher Wolf, co-author with Jules Polonetsky of a whitepaper published by the Future of Privacy Forum and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. “There will be major concerns if consumer-focused principles of transparency and control are not treated as essential design principles, from beginning to end.”

Utilities are aware of the privacy concerns, according to Rick Thompson, the president of Greentech Media (GTM), which publishes market research on smart grids. “It’s absolutely on their radar,” he says, adding, “That doesn’t mean they have a full understanding or solution to solve that problem, but I think it’s an area that they are investigating heavily.”

It’s an area worthy of investigation, according to many. Some say the smart grid will be “bigger than the Internet,” which will result in an exponential increase of coveted, valuable and potentially identifiable data.

“You come into new types of privacy issues because you are now revealing personal activities in ways that are not historically, or have not been considered to date as being personally identifiable information,” Herold says.

Beyond knowing how often the refrigerator opens or what time the garage door activates each morning, grid data may be a way of discerning when a household is empty or full, when family members go to bed at night or what time the kids come home from school.  Marketers might want to tap into the data to find out when a household might be due for a new refrigerator or washing machine. Law enforcement might be interested in corroborating a story. An insurance company might want to know if a homeowner’s alarm was turned on when a burglary occurred.  A divorce attorney might want to subpoena energy-use records to aid a case.

Who owns the data?

In a recent newspaper article, Simon McKenzie, the chief executive of a New Zealand electricity supplier, said in that country, where hundreds of thousands of smart meters are currently being installed, “…we’re starting to see the retailers and network companies say: ‘Hey, there’s a number of different ways that we haven’t even considered that we could utilize this data…to provide better service or solutions to customers.” The full potential of smart grids has yet to be realized, McKenzie told The New Zealand Herald.

But should retailers and other entities have access to the data? That is a question being examined on a global scale.

In response to the McKenzie’s comments, New Zealand Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff said that companies need to be transparent about what information is being tracked and collected. “People need to be able to make fully informed decisions before agreeing to the new technology,” Shroff said.

Others call for limited use of data gleaned from smart grids.

“The risk with a rich new data source is the temptation to use the information for more than originally intended,” Australian Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis told those attending a smart infrastructure conference earlier this year.

That’s why it will be crucial to answer the question of who owns and has access to consumers’ energy usage data, which could reveal existing and emerging types of personally identifable information, Herold says.

It’s a familiar question for privacy pros, who have grappled with it in other areas of practice, but perhaps less familiar for utilities. In a recent study, GTM asked utility companies who owns the granular data collected by smart meters-the utility company, the consumer, or a third party. The results showed a decided lack of consensus.

“The interesting thing is that it was pretty well split evenly between those three options,” said GTM’s Thompson. Of the companies surveyed, 39 percent said the data belonged to the consumer, 29 percent said the utility, itself, owned it, and 32 percent were unsure.

[Chart from Greentech Media's 2010 North American Utility Smart Grid Deployment Survey]

The president of an advocacy group for the smart grid industry is more decided on the topic. “The consumer should always have access to that data,” says Kathleen Hamilton, president of the GridWise Alliance, which counts more than 100 companies and organizations as members. “I think the consumer is going to be the owner of that data,” Hamilton said. “But I think what consumers don’t understand is that when they give their data to others, if there aren’t privacy provisions in place, they can use the data in ways that either the consumer may not agree with or think is appropriate.”

That’s a worry many can relate to and a debate that must play itself out soon, as 70 percent of North American utility companies polled for the aforementioned GTM survey indicated that smart grid projects were either a “strong” or “highest” business priority between now and 2015. Governments keen to the potential have invested heavily in smart grid infrastructures. In the U.S., President Obama allocated $3.4 billion in national stimulus monies to utility companies last year to incent development of smart grid technologies. The European Parliament’s passage of the 3rd Energy Package last year will outfit 80 percent of EU electricity customers with smart meters by 2020. In Sweden, smart meters are now mandated by the government. The UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Asia, Denmark, and the Netherlands have all reported plans to build intelligent grids. And the Chinese government has allocated $7.3 billion to grid projects in 2010.

It is clear that the potential privacy pitfalls loom large. Less clear is the best solution to prevent them.

“I think there are still a lot of questions out there about what the correct solution might be,” says GTM’s Thompson, predicting that solutions will vary based on the regulations of various regions.

Like other areas of data privacy, regulation is a word that could divide the debate in the months and years to come.

Some predict smart grid privacy issues to be bigger in Europe than other places due to the strength of the bloc’s Data Protection Directive.

So far in the U.S., regulation has focused primarily on securing the grid infrastructure from cyber attack. For example, the Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense (GRID) Act, introduced in April, charges the FERC with safeguarding the transmission grid from cyber threats. The bill also tasks FERC with enforcing privacy measures, stating “the commission shall protect from disclosure only the minimum amount of information necessary to protect the reliability of the bulk power system and defense critical electric infrastructure.” The House passed the bill in June but the Senate has yet to vote.

Other bills focus on ensuring consumers have access to the data their homes’ meters produce.  In March, Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, introduced The Electric Consumer Right to Know Act (e-KNOW), legislation to ensure consumers have access to free, timely and secure data about their energy usage. It also calls for the FERC to develop national standards for consumer energy data accessibility, to help utilities and state regulatory agencies formulate their policies, according to Markey’s Web site.

State lawmakers have begun drafting their own legislation. In Colorado, a state where smart meter implementation is already widespread, Senate Bill 10-180 calls for the creation of a task force to recommend measures to “encourage the orderly implementation of smart grid technology” in that state. The bill says that one of the issues the task force must determine is the potential impacts on consumer protection and privacy.

A call for standards

Privacy experts say the lack of legal protection surrounding the smart grid is concerning. They are calling for standards.

“In the absence of clear rules, this potentially beneficial smart grid technology could mean yet another intrusion on private life,” Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) said in a March filing to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which held a three-day hearing that month to explore smart grid policies.

“The PUC should act now, before our privacy is eroded,” Dempsey wrote.

The CDT teamed with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on the filing, urging the CPUC to adopt “comprehensive privacy standards for the collection, retention, use and disclosure of the data” gleaned from the smart grid.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology smart grid privacy subgroup, which Herold leads, has released two drafts of the privacy chapter “Smart Grid Cyber Security Strategy and Requirements.” The document includes a privacy impact assessment and addresses possible risks the smart grid presents-including cyber attacks, data breaches and the vulnerability of interconnected networks’ increased exposure to potential hackers.

The draft says that while most states have laws in place regarding privacy protection, those laws do not necessarily relate to the types of data that will be within the smart grid, and many existing laws are specific to industries other than utilities. The group recommends that provisions be included within privacy laws to protect the consumer data held by utility companies. The final NISTIR 7628 Version 1 is expected soon, after which it will be submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Minimize, destroy, build privacy in

As with other privacy debates, those pushing for smart infrastructure privacy protections espouse mantras often heard in data protection circles-data minimization, data destruction and privacy by design.

Utilities should minimize the amount of household data collected and should keep it for the shortest amount of time possible, advocates say, in order to minimize the risk associated with storing such data.

Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian agrees. In her whitepaper, she also cautions that privacy concerns must be considered early in the planning stages in order to mitigate the risks surrounding the revealing data meters collect.

By designing privacy into the grid, “we can have both privacy and a fully functioning smart grid,” Cavoukian wrote in a Toronto Star Op-Ed.

The government of Ontario has committed to the installation of smart meters in every home and business by the end of 2010 and Cavoukian has partnered with major utilities to develop “gold standards” for building privacy into grid projects.

Some privacy advocates point to Ontario’s Hydro One as a utility company setting the standard for baking privacy provisions into its policy before deploying smart meters. Rick Stevens, director of distribution development at Hydro One says the protection of consumer’s information was built into smart meters’ designs based on Ontario’s privacy regulations.

“The regulations certainly set the context for the project,” Stevens said. “We’re just really ensuring that we bake those protections into the product that we put out there. Given that this is new technology, we’re going to be very careful to protect consumer interest as we roll these out. I know we, as an industry, take it very seriously.”

Hydro One has 1.1 million meters already deployed, and at least 700,000 of them are currently reporting data back to the utility on an hourly basis. Stevens says that, as a rule, the utility does not sell customers’ data to third parties and would only share data after obtaining written authorization customers.

The president of LinkGard Systems, an Armenian software maker, says his company’s Energy Management System, which is currently being tested in the U.S., was built with privacy in mind. “It is our strong belief that the utility company has no need to control individual appliances in a residence or a commercial location,” said Hovanes Manucharyan. “The same effect can be achieved by using solutions that don’t require the customer to expose their private energy usage information…We feel that this model is friendlier towards privacy since the utility doesn’t need to acquire, store and manage potentially private data from a customer.”

Hovanes said the stronger regulatory framework of the EU could result in slightly different implementations of smart grid technologies in that market.

Beyond PII

We haven’t yet heard a debate on whether our garage door-opening habits qualify as personal data, but it’s a question that privacy experts say should be answered.

“People have to realize it’s a new type of network,” says Herold. “It’s ‘always on,’ passively collecting information about people in their homes. It’s more than just PII, it’s personal activities,” she adds.

This is what concerns a California man who staged a dramatic protest recently when Pacific Gas & Electric attempted to install a smart meter at his home. Calling it an “unconstitutional invasion of his privacy” he locked his existing meter, saying, “PG&E needs to be stopped in their tracks here.”

Education needed

But smart meters are being rolled out in many places and typically without protest. Indeed, though smart grids are certainly on the radar of utilities and governments, most consumers are in the dark. According to a recent Harris Interactive poll, 68 percent have never heard of the smart grid and 63 percent “draw a blank” about smart meters. Experts say that will change.

“You are going to see a lot more awareness over the next 24 months,” says Greentech Media’s Rick Thompson, “but in terms of becoming a true household name, I’d say that’s still three to five years out.” Thompson says utility companies are just starting to understand the importance of launching educational campaigns aimed at consumer awareness.

A newly formed coalition of companies and organizations-the nonprofit Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative-hopes to increase consumer awareness in the area. “The grid is not really smart unless the consumers are able to be active participants,” said Katherine Hamilton of the GridWise Alliance, one of the founding members of SGCC.

Hydro One’s Stevens says building consumer awareness by communicating the cost-savings potential and environmental benefits is what helped make his company’s transition to smart meters successful in Ontario.

“For the most part it’s been positive,” Stevens said. “I think the reason for that is the type of information we’ve been able to provide to customers.”

Stevens said, however, given his company’s success with smart meters, that the only reason to have increasing regulations in the future would be if issues arise that require them.

When asked whether utility companies’ self-regulatory efforts will be sufficient to stave off regulations, Herold said it’s important to consider just how many different players will be involved in the smart grid, including non-energy sector companies creating applications and appliances.

“Self-regulation is a good goal, but when you start looking realistically, how do you ensure entities consistently provide protections throughout the entire smart grid if you don’t establish requirements they must all follow?” Herold asks.

She points to the healthcare and financial industries as evidence that regulations are often necessary.

“It’s always important, in dealing with privacy, to not only take what we know from past experiences, but also have our minds open to possible impacts going forward.”

Some say that having the right people on board will help companies avoid issues. “One of the key things utilities should be doing today is training and hiring privacy professionals,” says Future of Privacy Forum Director Jules Polonetsky, CIPP. “Data enables the grid, but could also be its Achilles heel, if companies don’t have the experts in place to help shape decisions as the grid is being built.”

Stevens agrees, saying that it’s in the utility industry’s best interest to maintain consumer privacy protections moving forward.

“It’s a necessity,” he says. “Otherwise, it’ll backfire on us.”

This article was originally published in the July 2010 edition of the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ member newsletter, The Privacy Advisor, and is reprinted here with permission.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/smart-grids-and-the-future-of-privacy

2010-08-20 13:20
Lagos – A group of Nigerian women in the country’s oil-rich south said on Friday they had blocked access to a Chevron natural gas pipeline to protest poor living conditions in their community.

Women from the Ugborodo community in Delta State want Chevron to provide access to electricity and address damage to the environment, community leader Thomas Ereyitomi said.

“They are not allowing access to the plant and to allow any form of operation to go on,” he said of the protesters.

“It is immoral for Chevron not to provide basic amenities in a community in which they operate and generate money.”

Chevron officials declined to comment, saying they would issue a statement later.

Ereyitomi did not provide the number of people taking part in the protest, but claimed that it involved all women from the community.

A similar protest last month was abandoned following a promise from the Delta State government to look into the community’s grievances.

“That meeting with the government failed and so the protest resumed on Monday,” Ereyitomi said.

Demanding jobs

He said government officials have invited representatives of the protesters to a meeting on Tuesday in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

“The outcome of that meeting will determine whether the protest will be indefinite or not,” he said.

In 2009, Chevron’s total daily production in Nigeria averaged 480 000 barrels of crude, 111 million cubic feet of natural gas and 3 000 barrels of liquefied petroleum gas.

Oil and gas operations in Nigeria are often disrupted by communities demanding jobs and a fairer distribution of industry revenue, as well as protests against environmental degradation.

Militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta have carried out dozens of attacks on petroleum installations, but an amnesty deal last year has led to a sharp decline in the unrest.

Nigeria is the world’s eighth largest oil exporter and a member of OPEC.

August 20
GEORGE TOWN, Aug 20 (Bernama) — Some 600 residents of Krystal Villa have protested against the erection of telecommunication transmitters near their apartments as they are harmful to the health.

Krystal Villa Residents Association chairman Joseph Yap claimed that many residents had suffered severe headaches as the transmitters were only 50 metres away from their homes.

“Over 15 antennas and microwave dishes have sprung up since two years ago,” he told reporters after leading residents in a protest here Friday.

Yap said residents would be sending a petition urging the Penang Municipal Council (MPPP) to check whether the transmitters were illegal and erected according to procedure.

“We want MPPP to remove all the telecommunication transmitters from the rooftop for the sake of residents health,” he added.

– BERNAMA

About 2,000 police officers clash with protesters trying to break through police lines

2010-08-18
Clashes between police and protesters against the Formosa Plastics Group naphtha cracker complex in Yunlin County led to several arrests Tuesday.

Residents of Mailiao and Taihsi called for a blockade of the plant after the company refused to pay a NT$1.7 billion (US$53 million) compensation package for a fire on July 25, the second blaze within a month during negotiations Monday. Instead, the company offered a maximum of NT$500 million (US$15.6 million).

An estimated 3,000 people turned up on three major roads leading to the plant early Tuesday morning. They prevented trucks from reaching the petrochemical complex but allowed cars to pass.

About 2,000 police officers clashed with protesters trying to break through police lines and arrested four protest leaders. They were later released after police took down their details, reports said, while both sides retreated some distance. Yunlin County Magistrate Su Chih-fen and protest leaders visited the men, reports said.

The protesters dispersed by noon but threatened to return later in the day.

The company said the impact of the blockade was limited because essential transportation had been completed on Monday evening and employees had been asked to show up for work early.

In talks with FPG top managers Monday, the Yunlin County Government wanted the company to pay an overall package of NT$32 billion (US$1 billion) to finance local development and to close the factory 20 years after it started operating, meaning in 2016. The company turned down the county requests and stood by its original maximum limits.

Farmers and fishermen working in the area have accused the FPG complex of being responsible for heavy pollution as well as elevated cancer levels. They want the company to suspend local operations until a thorough health risk review has been completed.

The naphtha cracker dispute is one of several conflicts between existing and planned industrial zones backed by the government and local residents, often farmers threatened with losing their land.

Similar disputes surround a planned petrochemical complex in Changhua County and the expansion of science parks in the counties of Miaoli, Taichung and Changhua.

Aug 11, 2010

LONDON: Rising grain prices from Russia’s drought and fires will pressure populations already hit by the financial crisis and could stoke unrest — particularly in the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe.

Wheat prices have risen by nearly 70 percent since June after Russia suffered its worst drought in 130 years and are at their highest since 2008, when the last major food price rally sparked protests and riots in a string of emerging nations.

Analysts warn that if prices stay high then the threat of street violence will increase — at least up to a point.

“We could see some street riots but I wouldn’t expect any governments to fall,” said Jonathan Wood, global issues analyst for consultancy Control Risks.

“On one level, we have much less of a problem than in 2008 because we have better food stocks. On the other hand, because of the financial crisis many countries are not in such a good position financially to deal with it.”

Particularly in emerging markets where food makes up a higher proportion of household purchases, the price rise could filter through in inflation, rate hikes and wider deficits.

The Middle East and North Africa, particularly Egypt, are regarded as particularly vulnerable, as are emerging and southern European countries where discontent has already been fueled by harsh cuts in public spending, benefits and pay .

“Grain imports are particularly sensitive in the Middle East and North Africa — bread is such a crucial staple of the diet,” said Metsa Rahimi, analyst at security consultant Janusian. “Eastern Europe is also an obvious area of risk.”

Europe has seen less social unrest than many expected from the financial crisis — although riots in Greece in May unsettled global markets — but risks are expected to rise in the autumn as unions call strikes and spending cuts bite.

Central and Eastern Europe have pushed through tough measures to qualify for IMF and European Union aid, but analysts see patience running thin, particularly in Romania. Spain, Italy, France and the Baltic states are also being closely watched.

Political weapon?

Much will depend on how long the price increase lasts and to what extent it filters through other commodities and foodstuffs.

That could swiftly bring angry mobs on the streets particularly in relatively poor authoritarian countries where maintaining food supply is seen as key to government legitimacy, they analysts said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was swift to impose an export ban, with the Kremlin likely to be keen to keep its silos full especially in the event of more damage to its winter crop.

“Adequate grain supplies have long been associated with social stability in Russia,” wrote security consultancy Stratfor. ”

Stratfor believes Russia may use the crisis to pull together nearby producers Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to form a regional grain cartel.

“Moscow very publicly has used energy supplies as a political weapon, either by raising prices or cutting supplies,” it said in a note. “Grain exports fall very easily into Moscow’s box of economic tools.”

Several key importers of Russian wheat including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan have been swift to say they have enough stocks and there will be no immediate impact on ordinary people. But they are nervous.

“The risks are always greatest where there are large numbers of urban poor and where food makes up more than 60 percent of the consumer purchase index basket,” said Alastair Newton, political analyst at Nomura.

“My top pick for potential trouble would be Egypt where tensions are already high with elections coming up and concerns about succession. Egypt has a long history of food price riots — but my guess is the main impact will be on the deficit as the cost of subsidies go up.”

Food prices and subsidies have always been notoriously political in Egypt, which faces elections next year with little clarity on whether 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak — in power for almost three decades — will stand again.

Political risk premiums

There have been occasional scuffles at Ramadan food handouts in recent weeks and grumbling over raised pre-Ramadan prices but no repeat of the widespread protests seen in 2008.

The government met those first with a security clampdown then with the promise of higher wages.

Other countries being particularly closely watched for signs of unrest include Algeria, drought-hit Syria and already unstable Yemen.

In contrast, there is seen less immediate impact on Africa, in part because of stronger other staple crops particularly maize in the continent’s south. Nigerian food price rises have also slowed because of good local crops.

Even in West Africa’s Sahel — scene of a pre-existing food crisis — aid agencies say the Russian grain crisis and global price surge has had little local impact as yet.

But rising global prices could still put pressure on some recent land deals for food production in which Middle Eastern and Asian nations have bought up tracts of land in Africa and elsewhere including Ukraine and Pakistan for food. Hungry local populations might not like seeing food being trucked abroad.

The only major change of government linked to the last food spike was the 2009 coup in Madagascar, in which popular desire to overturn a South Korean land purchase was seen as a key factor.

Insurer Zurich believes food-related unrest worries will prompt more investors to seek protection against political violence damage and expropriation. That could push up premiums and the cost of foreign direct investment in affected markets.

“We would expect to see increased demand for our political risk products as a result of this,” said Dan Riordan, Zurich president for specialty products.

August 8, 2010

Korean organic farmers have held a “Mass for life and peace” to urge the government not to evict them from their lands to make way for a controversial river project.

The farmers’ lands are to be compulsorily purchased to make way for the Four Rivers Project. Authorities have already deposited the purchase price for the lands in a local court as the final step in the process.

The government must heed the cry of the farmers as a voice from heaven, said Father Joseph Cho Hae-bung, president of the Catholic Solidarity for Deterrence of the Four Rivers Project, at the Aug. 5 Mass.

Following the Mass, the farmers staged a protest rally in front of the Seoul Regional Construction Management Administration.

In a statement released there, the farmers “strongly urged” the government to seek an alternative solution through dialogue rather than through imposed administrative measures.

They also revealed that the government is threatening that evictions could begin within a month.

The farmers warned that the Four Rivers Project “would cause unimaginable damage.”

Authorities claim it is needed to prevent flooding and pollution, but its many opponents – ranging from Churches to local environmentalists – say it will have the opposite effect.

After the country’s ruling party was defeated at the recent June 2 nationwide local elections, the Catholic Church has called for an immediate halt to the project.

Analysis – Food squeeze next worry for emerging markets
Aug 5, 2010

LONDON (Reuters) – A food price crisis may be the next stumbling block for emerging economies, even as their bonds and stock markets rally in relief at an easing of the euro zone’s debt crisis.

Wheat prices have jumped by more than 50 percent since June and are likely to rise further due to expectations of tighter supplies, triggering concerns about a repeat of the food crisis in 2007/08 that forced interest rates higher in many economies and led to emergency controls in others.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) cut its 2010 global wheat forecast by about 4 percent this week and said world wheat supplies may shrink next year if severe drought continues in Russia, Europe’s leading wheat producer.

Russia imposed a temporary export ban on Thursday in response to a record-breaking heatwave and the extent of the damage to crops and its economy is only beginning to become clear.

Spiralling wheat prices could translate into higher inflation and possibly higher interest rates in emerging market economies, which tend to hold a large proportion of their consumer price baskets in food.

The FAO said healthy world stock levels should prevent a repeat of the crisis of 2007/08 but past squeezes on food have led some central banks to hike aggressively in a bid to head off a second round of price rises in their economies.

Analysts and investors are already preparing for tighter monetary policy in emerging economies, even as they look to the possibility of further quantitative easing in the United States.

“It is a big deal for emerging markets, though maybe not as big a deal as it was in 2006/7/8, as food prices make up 20-50 percent of emerging CPI baskets,” said Charles Robertson, EEMEA chief economist at ING.

“Food prices never move in the U.S. as a result of changes in global harvests, because so much of the price of food is taken up by packaging, suppliers. In the EU, food prices move a little bit but in emerging markets, food price rises can add a few percentage points to the inflation rate.”

RUSSIAN RATES

Countries likely to be particularly at risk from high wheat prices include Nigeria, which has 25 percent of its CPI basket in bread and cereals, Robertson said.

Western economies typically have less than 20 percent of their CPI basket in food, compared with 30 percent on average in emerging markets, according to U.S. bank Morgan Stanley.

In Russia, higher wheat prices are contributing to speculation that the central bank will raise interest rates as early this year, after cutting 14 times since April 2009 to a record low refinancing rate of 7.75 percent.

Annual inflation in Russia is 5.5 percent.

“We see more upside risks…even a 15 percent inflation rate next summer does not seem unthinkable,” said analysts at Danske in a client note.

Some central banks have already responded.

In India, a year-long spell of double-digit inflation, largely on rising food prices, sparked massive street protests.

One of a small but growing number of economies to have started raising interest rates, India has lifted its main lending rate four times by a total of 100 basis points since March, to 5.75 percent. Analysts say there is more to come.

However, an end to the El Nino weather pattern which led to the food price spike in India may actually reduce food price inflation in India, analysts say.

CURRENCY BOOST

Higher inflation and higher interest rates tend to depress bond prices and can also affect corporate lending, eroding stock market gains.

Investors have flocked into emerging market debt this year, keeping spreads below the key 300 basis point level over U.S. Treasuries, in their search for higher yield without exposure to even riskier emerging equities. Any whiff of inflation is likely to turn those debt investors more cautious.

But currencies find an upside in higher rates, due to the relative appeal of holding deposits in higher-yielding markets.

The Ukrainian hryvnia, which has already shown some appreciation in recent months due to an improving economy, is singled out by analysts as likely to rise further.

The rouble may also be allowed to rise if Russia has to import grain, although Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday imposed a temporary grain export ban.

“Countries that import food could be more open to allowing their currencies to appreciate in order to cope with higher food prices,” said Elisabeth Gruie, emerging market strategist at BNP Paribas. “Eastern European countries such as Poland will be sensitive to the impact on higher food prices on inflation and could react by adjusting monetary policy.”

Fuel and food prices took inflation to multi-year highs in central Europe in 2008, prompting rate rises, and there were also protests against rising food prices in many emerging market countries.

To grapple spiking food price inflation, several emerging food exporters, including Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, introduced export duties in early 2008. Russia had already imposed price controls on basic foodstuffs in Oct 2007.

Wheat prices can also lead to higher prices of other food, as consumers switch to buying more rice, for example, putting upward pressure on currencies in the Middle East and Asia.

“Places like Egypt, India, Indonesia and the Philippines are pretty big importers of food,” said Philip Poole, head of macro and investment strategy at HSBC Global Asset Management.

“Consumers are moving up the food chain in emerging markets, literally, that’s putting the pressure on.”

Russia Will Tighten Security Over State’s Grain Stockpiles During Drought
By Maria Kolesnikova -

Russia is boosting security over the state’s 9.5 million metric tons of grain stockpiles as the worst drought in at least half a century erodes yields, said the government agent overseeing the reserves.

“United Grain Co. has introduced additional security measures for grain in the state intervention fund,” the agent said in an e-mailed statement today. “The role of state stockpiles in the domestic market is increasing as the situation in the Russian grain market becomes more acute because of wildfires and drought in more than 25 regions.”

Russia yesterday set a ban on grain and flour exports from Aug. 15 to Dec. 31 and published the order in the state’s newspaper of record today. Russia forecasts this year’s grain crop at between 70 million and 75 million tons, while domestic consumption stands at 75 million tons. The country has 21.5 million tons in reserves, including the state’s stockpiles.

India clamps down on Maoists to woo mining investors
3 Aug 2010
NEW DELHI: India’s growing Maoist violence is worrying investors, forcing authorities to fight back aggressively in hopes of luring up to $7 billion in funds needed to boost coal and iron ore output vital for growth.

Maoist violence killed 426 people in the period from January to July, up nearly three times from a year ago, the South Asia Terrorism Portal shows, spotlighting the danger of mining in India’s mineral-rich eastern and central states and the challenge to the country’s ability to maintain law and order.

The Maoist rebels say they are fighting for the rights of India’s poor and disenfranchised, and find support among millions of tribal and lower caste people who accuse the state and big firms of neglect and exploitation in regions rich in minerals.

“If this issue is resolved, first of all logistics will improve significantly because trying to transport material has become a big problem,” said Prasad Baji, senior vice-president at Edelweiss Securities in Mumbai, the financial capital.

“Mining operations and production will also improve.” Analysts say India must attract $7 billion in funds by 2013 to develop an additional 100 million tonnes of coal and 50 million tonnes of iron ore to meet estimated demand and maintain economic growth of more than 6 percent over the last two years.

India has reserves of 267 billion tonnes of coal and about 25 billion tonnes of iron ore.

But investors can only be won over by a concerted effort to crush the Maoist threat and speed reform, the government’s twin aims in overhauling a law more than 50 years old that regulates the mining industry.

The changes would affect domestic metal and mining firms such as Sesa Goa, Sterlite Industries, Tata Steel and the Steel Authority of India, and global giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton

STAKES OF 26 PCT FOR LOCALS

Several federal ministries are weighing the new bill’s proposals for companies to share more than a quarter of their profit or equity with locals, for foreign investor participation in joint ventures and wide federal powers to tackle lawlessness.

The legal overhaul is part of government moves to expand social programmes for the poor, simultaneously pleasing its core supporters among voters, blocking flows of new recruits to the Maoists and balancing modern lifestyles against traditional ways.

Several government panels will debate the bill, revising it, and perhaps watering down the 26 percent profit-sharing figure, before it goes to parliament early next year prior to becoming law, analysts say.

Containing the Maoists, who were spawned by a peasant revolt in eastern India in 1967, is one of the biggest challenges the government faces and there is no guarantee fresh investments in mining will pay off, many analysts and industry figures agree.

“The eradication of Maoists may take at least two years,” said Edelweiss’s Baji, adding that the well-armed groups were entrenched in forested and hilly terrain, enjoyed the support of locals, and had gained strength over many years.

India’s security forces fanned out against the rebels in March in their biggest deployment in post-independence history, but the army is not being used for fear of alienating locals, leaving ill-trained police forces to fight a guerrilla war.

The government also plans to set up a unified command to coordinate the security offensive against the Maoists and spend more than 9.5 billion rupees to build roads and bridges in strife-torn areas.

SLOW PROJECTS

But the payoff for the government could be a while in coming.

“Who will go to these areas to work? There is no development, no law and order,” said S. B. S. Chauhan, an advisor at the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI) in New Delhi, which groups 400 metal and mining firms.

Slow development of new mines could see India’s coal imports swell nearly 47 percent over the next two years and iron ore supplies fall short of big steel capacities on the drawing board.

India imported about 68 million tones of coal in the year to March 2010, on top of output of 531 million tonnes. Analysts expect coal imports to exceed 100 million by March 2012.

Iron ore production of 226 million tonnes in the year to March 2010 sufficed for domestic use and exports, but more high-grade ores are needed for major steel capacity growth, to the tune of 120 million tonnes, by March 2012.

Annual output at India’s largest iron ore miner, NMDC Ltd fell nearly 16 percent in the year to March 2010 after Maoists cut a slurry pipeline in India’s central state of Chhattisgarh, the worst hit by the revolt.

Market sources said pipeline owner Essar Steel had decided not to repair the link between its plants and NMDC’s mines until the surrounding area was made safe.

NMDC chairman Rana Som said the company planned to build its own slurry pipeline traversing safer areas.

A. K. Sarkar, marketing director of Coal India, said strikes cost 80 days during the year to March 2009 in subsidiary Central Coalfields Ltd, several of them attributable to disruption by the Maoists.

“If the law and order situation is improved, coal production can rise by at least 25 percent,” Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said in June.

Delays suffered by domestic firms Tata Steel and Essar Steel and leading global steelmakers POSCO and Arcelor Mittal show how tough it is to complete projects in the central and eastern regions, analysts say.

Securing mining leases and negotiating farmers’ protests against land buys have caused POSCO and Arcelor Mittal delays of more than two years in building a total of 37 million tonnes of capacity in eastern India.

“People are scared to come here,” said Ashok Surana, president of the Chhattisgarh Mini Steel Plant Association in Raipur, which has 135 members.

“Such big projects are planned, but the local businessmen don’t know if they can invest in building new hotels because of the Maoists.”

Maoist strike hits road, rail services
August 03, 2010
Road and rail services were badly affected in Jharkhand due to a 48-hour strike called by Maoists that began on Tuesday, officials said. The national highways wore a deserted look and no long-route buses plied in many parts of the state. Life came to standstill in many districts like Gumla,
Latehar, Khuti, Chatra, Palamau and Giridih, among others.

As a precautionary measure, railway authorities cancelled five train services and diverted the routes of six others. Trucks were stranded at many places due to the strike and buses didn’t ply either in many areas.

“We stopped the movement of buses as a precautionary step. There are recent examples of Maoists attacking passengers travelling in buses during a strike period,” said Ramdev Yadav, a travel agent at a Ranchi bus stand.

The pro-Maoist Peoples’ Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) and its militant wing have called for the 48-hour shutdown in five states, including Jharkhand, to mourn the recent killing of their supreme commander Sidhu Soren in a shootout in West Bengal.

India offers Maoist rebels cash for weapons

August 02. 2010

NEW DELHI // In an attempt to tackle growing Maoist violence, two state governments revealed details yesterday of a weapons-buyback and job-traing program that offers rebels substantial money for their surrender and weapons.

For example, the plan provides a one-time payment of 150,000 rupees (Dh11,920), a monthly stipend of 2,000 rupees for three years and additional future payments to rebels who surrender their bullets, guns, missiles and explosives. They also will receive training as special police officers.

Under the plan, 25,000 rupees is offered for a surrendered machine gun, sniper rifle or rocket-propelled grenade. A surface-to-air missile would fetch an extra 20,000 rupees, an AK-series assault rifle 15,000 rupees, a landmine, improvised explosive device or pistol revolver 3,000 rupees and each kilogram of explosive 1,000 rupees, a West Bengal police statement said.

Zulfiquar Hassan, inspector general of Maoist-infested western range of West Bengal, said that the surrendered guerrillas would be placed in a special camp and provided extra security, so they are not targeted by fellow rebels who might want to punish them.

“We can train and employ the surrendered rebels as [short-term] special police officers. We can also arrange permanent government jobs for some if their performance is that satisfying. We shall also give them vocational training which can help them secure jobs in future… we are even open to negotiations with more attractive offers if some rebels really want to surrender, but do not find our package interesting.”

Manoj Verma, police chief of Maoist-infested West Midnapur district in West Bengal, said that as the Maoists are losing their support in many villages it was the “right time” to introduce the scheme.

Mr Verma said the goverment has received feelers from at least 10 Maoist cadres who are willing to surrender since a broad outline of the plan was revealed last week. “We believe some more rebels will be ready to return to normal life after they know the details of our scheme for surrender on offer,” he said.

“Many Maoists cadres are hiding in forests and remote villages. To distribute our leaflets which are carrying the details of our scheme in different languages, we may use helicopter.”

Neyaz Ahmed, police chief of Maoist-troubled neighbouring Jharkhand state, said yesterday that two Maoists, impressed with the government-offered rehabilitation package, had surrendered.

Rajdeo Yadav, a Maoist commander who surrendered in Jharkhand, told police that he left his group because he did not agree with the Maoists’ way of solving problems of the society, Mr Ahmed said.

“Another girl cadre said she left her group because she was disenchanted with the Maoists’ violent lifestyle and many other young cadres too were planning to surrender,” said Mr Ahmed, referring to 18-year-old Lalmuni who ran away from a Maoist women’s armed guerilla squad in Jharkhand last week.

“Many Maoists cadres are disillusioned with their movement. They want to leave the path of violence and want to join their democratic mainstream,” he said.

Communist Party of India [Maoist] West Bengal State Committee member Akash, who uses one name, said yesterday in a statement that the government would not be able to “buy-out oppressed and protesting masses” and would not be able to solve the crisis in the region.

“The government is trying to lure away our comrades with money. But our party workers are driven by a high level of dedication. They will all reject such surrender and rehab offers outright. No true Maoist can fall prey to such mean temptations,” said Akash.

Landmines recovered in Orissa, 6 Maoists held
Bhubaneswar, Aug 3: Two unexploded landmines were found in Sundergarh district of Orissa.

According to the police, the landmines were found fitted under two separate culverts during a combing operation by the police on Tuesday, Aug 3.

Six Maoist guerrillas were also arrested and they would be produced in a local court on Tuesday, Aug 3, Superintendent of Police Diptesh Patnaik said.

The rebels were held from Kalta area of the Maoist-infested Bonai sub-division, about 450 km from Bhubaneswar.

“Maoists planted landmines under two separate culverts to trigger blasts, thankfully we recovered the landmines,” Diptesh Patnaik said.

“They were involved in several crimes, including the murder of trade union leader Thomas Munda in Jan 2010,” Patnaik added.

Five hundred Russian anti- government activists attacked the office of a Moscow suburb’s mayor to protest the construction of a highway through a forest, Kommersant reported.

The protesters gathered in central Moscow yesterday and took a commuter train to the northern suburb of Khimki, armed with air guns and baseball bats, the newspaper reported. Police fled after being pelted with rocks and bottles and nobody was arrested, Kommersant said.

The anarchist youths set off flares and tried to chop down the main door of the mayor’s office with an ax, according to Kommersant. They spray-painted “Save the Russian Forest” on the walls of the building in the five-minute flash protest, the newspaper reported.

An environmentalist camp in the Khimki forest was attacked by a group of masked men over the weekend, Kommersant said. Mikhail Beketov, the editor of a local newspaper, was almost beaten to death in 2008 after campaigning to stop construction of a highway through the Khimki forest.

Russian police on Friday detained two journalists and 15 protesters at a suburban Moscow forest where they have been living to try to protect the woods from destruction.

The activists and the journalists were taken to the city of Khimki, where a court will decide if they should be arrested or freed, Yaroslav Nikitenko, an activist for the Environmental Defense of Moscow Region organization, said in a telephone interview.

Moscow Region police spokesman Alexei Nikitin was unable to provide a precise number of those detained, citing the lack of records, but said “up to 15 people” were taken to the precinct.

The forest in Khimki has been the focus of controversy for years over plans to chop down much of it for highway construction. Khimki lies on the increasingly jammed route from Moscow to Sheremetyevo International Airport and St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city.

A local newspaper editor who reported extensively on the issue was severely beaten in 2008 and left wheelchair-bound and brain-damaged.

Nikitenko and a dozen other activists have been living in tents in the Khimki forest since last week when a construction company started to fell trees for the new road. The group got the work blocked Tuesday but stayed on spot to prevent further tree felling.

The group says the construction company is not authorized to cut trees in that area.

The activists called the police at the break of dawn on Friday when a group of some 100 young men who had covered their faces blocked the campsite, thus allowing the work to resume, Moscow Regional police said in a statement.

After a regular police squad did not manage to restore order, riot police arrived and grabbed the protesters, Nikitenko said.

Leading environmental groups condemned the crackdown.

Greenpeace said the police actions “show that they have sided with the corrupt officials and their hired bandits.”

The organization called on prosecutors to halt the work in the area to investigate the legality of it and to probe Friday’s detention of activists.

The Russian Union on Journalists called for charges to be brought against the police for unlawful detentions.

Environmental protesters have become increasingly vocal in Russia in the recent years.

Thousands of people took to the streets earlier this year after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed an order to reopen a paper mill on the Baikal, the world’s deepest lake, which is believed to threaten the lake’s estimated 1,500 unique species of plants and animals.

07/22/2010
MANILA, Philippines—The government is deploying soldiers and civilian personnel to restore order and avert any riot in at least 177 barangays in Metro Manila now grappling with a water shortage, officials said Thursday.

The “warm bodies” from the National Disaster Coordinating Council will man water stations and maintain order in water rationing in these areas, Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson said.

Arresting residents illegally tapping water by puncturing water lines is also part of their job, he added.

“We have asked the help of the secretary of the national defense as chair of the NDCC (National Disaster Coordinating Council) to provide warm bodies so that there is more order in the distribution of this water tankering,” he said.

Reports of residents muscling their way through long queues at water pumps or scrambling to get to water tankers have become a source of concern for government officials.

“I don’t think [there will be riots]. That’s why we have anticipated and asked for warm bodies to put order,” Singson told reporters at a Malacañang news briefing.

Some 1,120,000 residents in those 177 barangays either have no water or have a water only for six hours or less a day owing to the low water level at the Angat Dam in Bulacan, the main source of water for the metropolis.

The affected areas are Caloocan, Quezon City, Manila, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Malabon, Valenzuela and Navotas.

But thanks to Wednesday night’s rain, the water level in Angat has slightly risen by 70 cm to 158.88 meters as of Thursday morning, according to Singson.

“There has been a good rainfall in Angat and in the Ipo area but not as much in the La Mesa Dam area. So that’s the bit of good news,” he said.

This, however, is still way off the 180 meter level, where the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System and the National Irrigation Administration can implement their normal allocation of water for domestic use and irrigation.

With more rain in the coming weeks, the water shortage in some parts of the metropolis populated by 12 million people would ease, according to the public works secretary.

“As I’ve pointed out, the water level has not deteriorated. It has in fact increased. So we hope that this will continue. And hopefully, the worst is over,” he said.

In July 1992, the water level in Angat rose by 15 meters in 15 days after heavy rains, according to Singson.

“The heavy rainfall in that area could significantly increase the water level,” he said.

Another positive fact is that Maynilad Water Services Inc., the concessionaire servicing the severely affected western zone of the metropolis, is producing 1,884 million liters a day, higher than its lowest production level of 1,686 MLD on July 17. Its normal production is 2,400 MLD, Singson said.

“That’s my basis for saying that we think the worst situation is over,” he said.

On Thursday, officials ruled out anew the declaration of a state of calamity, the creation of a water crisis committee, or the designation of President Aquino as the country’s “water czar.”

“It’s isolated in certain parts of Metro Manila. I feel that a state of calamity might mobilize some additional funds, and this is already being addressed by the two concessionaires and other branches of government. If the state of calamity can give us more water in Angat, I would go for it. But obviously they can’t do much in increasing supply in Angat,” Singson said.

Secretary Edwin Lacierda, presidential spokesperson, agreed. “To declare a state of calamity will not change the situation.”

Lacierda said that Singson was on top of the situation, and creating a water crisis committee or designating Mr. Aquino as water czar was unnecessary.

Instead of such a committee, the government has asked the MWSS to activate “action centers.”

Pending the arrival of rainfall that would normalize the level of water in Angat, Malacañang appealed to the private sector to donate bottled mineral water, or even sponsor the delivery of water tankers to affected barangays “in the spirit of volunteerism.”

“We’re also calling on the public to conserve water especially in areas not affected by the water shortage,” Lacierda added.

Meanwhile, the government continued to mobilize more than 100 water trucks to the severely affected barangays, and to mount cloud-seeding operations to induce rain.

Maynilad and the other water concessionaire, Manila Water Co., were contributing P3.1 million for the operations, which “is good for about 70 flying hours,” according to Singson.

The two concessionaires had also worked out a “cross-border arrangement” whereby Manila Water would augment Maynilad’s water supply by 40 million liters a day, benefiting 100,000 residents.

The two concessionaires were also working out ways with local health officials to prevent the outbreak of any ailment in the water-less areas, he said.

“Aside from that starting tonight, Maynilad –- and we expect that Manila Water will also do the same during the off-peak hours – will provide water trucks to be able to clean public facilities, school buildings, toilets of school buildings, hospitals… public markets and the other facilities that will need cleaning,” he added.

Singson stressed the need for the government to study “with due diligence” proposals to tap Wawa Dam and Laiban Dam, among others, as a source of water for the metropolis, and to draw up a water supply and sanitation roadmap to “avoid water shortage.”

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Thousands of ethnic Zhuang villagers in Jingxi County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, took to the street to protest over an aluminium plant that they say released sewage that poisoned drinking water in dozens of villages.

On Sunday, several thousand angry Zhuang burst into the plant, smashing equipment at the aluminium plant. On Tuesday, they blocked roads and a railway line, surrounded the county government’s headquarters where they faced off about a thousand riot police.

“The road leading to the County government building, which is several kilometres long, was packed with villagers holding slogans, and armed policemen fired into the air to warn the furious protesters,” said Huang An, a Zhuang from Lingwan village.

The protesters even painted slogans on their clothes.

More than 100 people were injured in the riot and at least 10 vehicles, including a police car and an armoured vehicle, were set on fire by angry villagers in the protest.

The riot continued yesterday morning, with more protesters injured.

“The water is red and heavily polluted by untreated industrial sewage discharged from the plant. We don’t dare drink water from it,” one villager said.

An exceptional drought in the region has further complicated the situation, affecting more than 2.2 million people and 1.1 million head of livestock short of water and 740,000 hectares of farmland too dry to plant.

Jinxi authorities and state news agency Xinhua have a different spin of events. They claim that residents simply opposed the construction of a new road going to the aluminium plant, but did not mention the pollution problem.

A County official confirmed that clashes first broke out when plant workers tried to rebuild a road running close to Lingwan village, which sparked local opposition. This was followed by protests.

However, peaceful demonstrations outside the plant turned into violent clashes when company’s security guards began beating villagers outside the plan.

Making matters worse, homes near plant were suddenly flooded, causing millions of yuan in damages.

The authorities blamed flooding on a minor earthquake, but residents believe the plant sealed off the underground river by mistake after it had tried to flatten a mountain during a construction project.

According to official figures, there were about 87,000 episodes of social unrest in 2008 across China, due to economic factors, pollution, forced seizure of land and houses, unpaid salaries and much more.

Police have often come down on the part of the authorities and business interest, sometimes provoking violent clashes.

More than 96 per cent of people in Jingxi County are Zhuang, one of China’s largest ethnic minorities. Social unrest in this region can easily take on ethnic connotations, as it does in Xinjiang and Tibet.

The distinctive green sunflower logos on petrol pumps are becoming a liability. Franchisees at BP fuel stations across the US are anxious to distance themselves from the British oil multinational as the Deepwater Horizon spill sparks vandalism, a drop in trade and occasional “hate” from customers.

Although the situation is highly variable, anecdotal reports from the 12,000 BP-branded service stations on American highways are of patchy falls in business of 10% to 20% since oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s ruptured Macondo oil well a mile beneath the ocean off Louisiana.

A consumer group, Public Citizen, is calling for a three-month consumer boycott. BP logos have been smeared with mud in New York. One BP petrol station in Mississippi has even had gunshots fired through its windows in the middle of the night, in an apparent protest without any attempt at a robbery.

In the gritty New York neighbourhood of Bushwick, Raja Bindra, a petrol station manager, said he had had his fair share of abuse since oiled birds and tarballs began washing up on US beaches: “People come in and say ‘what the fuck are you doing working here?’ They are the ones that have no knowledge. The ones who understand what’s going on, they don’t speak of it.”

Bindra tries to explain to customers that his petrol station is a local business that simply has a contract to buy petrol from BP, and that he is not an employee of the British company: “We try to tell them that BP is not us. We are a franchisee.”

More than 90% of BP service stations in the US are independently owned but tied to a long-term deal requiring them to sell BP fuel. The oil company built up its extensive US retail network when it bought Standard Oil of Ohio in 1987, then merged with Amoco in 1998.

Alert to the difficulties faced by retailers since the spill erupted two months ago, BP has offered them forecourt signs declaring that they are “locally owned and operated”. A BP spokesman said the company was working on a package of financial measures including cuts to credit card fees levied on retailers by BP and an increase in bonus awards for meeting sales targets.

Some are loyal to the company. Mark Sapozhnikov, the owner of a New York petrol station that had brown paint daubed all over its BP sign, said: “I feel bad for that guy Tony Hayward.”

Sapozhnikov said he had always had “excellent” service from BP. He added: “I’ve got a customer base that understands I’m not the one who caused the spill.”

Industry experts point out that fuel purchased at BP service stations does not necessarily contain oil from BP wells. The crude extracted by oil corporations is intermingled at refineries and by the time it reaches the pump, it is indistinguishable by origin. The only variable factor between BP, Exxon, Shell or Chevron petrol is a detergent package, unique to each brand, that is added at distribution terminals to inhibit corrosion and ensure chemical stability.

“There’s really no way anybody who sells gas can say with any assurance where that gas is coming from,” said Jeff Lennard, a spokesman for the US National Association of Convenience Stores, which represents fuel retailers.

A boycott at the pump is unlikely to hurt BP’s finances significantly – only a small part of BP’s $246bn (£164bn) in annual revenue is from US petrol stations. There is no lack of demand and oil can be rerouted, if necessary, to industry or other parts of the world.

Still, the activist group Public Citizen said it was disingenuous for petrol stations to downplay their ties with BP. Its president, Robert Weissman, said the company needed to be punished for “reckless and egregious conduct” alleged to have caused April’s explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig.

“BP’s franchisees enter into agreements with BP because they want to benefit from an attachment to the BP brand,” said Weissman. “If consumers are told they can’t take action against wrongdoers like BP, that’s an immunity for large corporations from the consequences of their actions.”

On Facebook, more than 733,000 people have signed up to a “boycott BP” page. But at BP petrol stations in New York, many motorists were sanguine about their choice of petrol station.

“Gas is gas, to be honest,” said Hector Gonzalez, a sailor in the US navy, who said he did not condone BP’s conduct. “They should have had a system in place where they could see this coming. In the military, we’ve got to plan, plan, plan – we’ve got to have a plan for a plan.”

Nancy Lopez, a prison officer about to fill up her tank at a BP petrol station in Williamsburg, admitted she had “reservations” about choosing BP and after being interviewed by the Guardian, she chose to go elsewhere to buy petrol.

“A lot is not being done as it should be in the Gulf,” said Lopez. “I don’t think I should be buying gas from here.”

The Penan tribe of Borneo are facing a fight for survival. Logging, dam construction and deforestation is threatening the forest on which they depend.

Although only around 300 of the tribe of hunter-gatherers remain nomadic, even those who have settled remain dependent on the forest. Since the 1970s, the Malaysian government has been exploiting the forest of the Sarawak region, logging being a particularly devastating example.

The tribe have been trying to prevent logging on their territory since the mid to late 80s. They’ve been blockading roads to stop loggers from entering their land, with some success, but many communities have seen their forests devastated – forests they rely on for food, medicine and the materials they use to build their homes.

The first community I visited lived in an area where they had managed to keep the loggers out, though officially a company had rights to their land. I had to travel there via the logging roads and was shocked to see truck after truck carrying the timber out. I left the road, transferred to a small boat and took it up river, pushing it over the rapids until, eventually, I arrived at the settlement. It was beautiful there.

The Penan were very welcoming. They were gentle and softly spoken, and cooked me meals of wild boar that they had hunted. There was a lot of food – they pointed out an abundance of fresh boar tracks. Wild boar is what the Penan most like to eat, as well as deer and fresh fish from the river. They catch smaller animals with blow pipes: long carved-out pieces of wood through which they blow poison darts.

Another community I met had made their home at the bottom of a valley where there was old forest. While I was there, we heard bulldozers at the top of the ridge on one side of the valley. A logging company was trying to come over into their territory. The tribe told me they had gone up to the ridge to ask the loggers not to come over but were told to stop harassing the workers. The loggers said that the government had given them permission to be there and the indigenous people would be killed if they didn’t stop protesting.

People would ask for my help in every community that I visited. The tribe are very aware of the odds stacked against them – big powerful companies like Samling, who harvest the timber, and Shin Yang, who harvest palm oil, are on their land with the backing of the Sarawak government. It has also been reported that some of members of the state government are involved with the logging and palm oil companies.

In many of these cases there’s a failure among those in power to appreciate the Penan’s way of life as valid. Most of the indigenous people of Sarawak are ‘shifting cultivators’ tribal, government, who practise agriculture. This is at odds with the Penan’s nomadic hunter-gathering tradition.

I went on to visit a community whose land had been heavily logged. The contrast between them and the Penan I had been with previously was shocking. People here had very little to eat. They told me they went for months without finding a single wild boar and were a little thin. But they were determined to cling to their way of life, despite the odds. The fight for survival has come upon the Penan quickly – 15 years ago life had been relatively straightforward for them.

Some of the tribe have moved into towns, but they’re in a minority. The Penan prefer to hang on to the small patches of forest that remain. They can eke out a living in cleared areas where oil palms are yet to be planted. When companies leave these areas the forest begins to regenerate slightly, although it never totally recovers. When the palm oil companies return to plant their crops the land becomes useless to the Penan. Driving through areas of Sarawak, you can see the rows of neat little trees, stretching over miles of indigenous land.

Sadly, some of the Penan end up working for the companies who moved them off their tribal land. They have no choice: they can no longer find food in the forest so have to earn money to buy it, although the companies do not pay them well.

As well as deforestation, the Penan’s land is threatened by plans to build a series of hydroelectric dams in Sarawak. The first dam is already under construction, and the communities who live on that land have been ordered to leave. But the state of Sarawak already has the capacity to produce more electricity than it needs. The surplus electricity will be sold and exported to other parts of Malaysia.

I went to several of the communities who were being told to make way for these dams. They were worried about what to do and didn’t want to move. They would be given only a small area of land, per family, to farm in government resettlement areas. They would have to grow food in these plots, which is a far cry lifestyle they are used to. They should have the right to choose if they want to grow crops or be hunters, or a mixture of the two, which is what many of them now do.

In many other countries indigenous land rights are at least recognised on paper, but the Malaysian and Sarawak governments do not recognise the Penan’s rights. But the Penan are not giving up. They government are out of step. I think if there is enough international pressure on the Malaysian government, hopefully the Penan can see their rights recognised and their land protected.

A new study shows that deforestation in the Amazon helps spread disease by creating an optimal environment for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The study, published in the online issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, found that clearing forests in the Brazilian Amazon raised incidences of malaria by almost 50 percent.

“It appears that deforestation is one of the initial ecological factors that can trigger a malaria epidemic,” says Sarah Olson, the lead author of the new report and a postdoctoral fellow at the Nelson Institute, Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Researchers combined information on malaria occurrences in 54 Brazilian health districts with satellite imagery of Amazon deforestation.

“The deforested landscape, with more open spaces and partially sunlit pools of water, appears to provide ideal habitat for this mosquito,” Olson says of Anopheles darlingi, the primary carrier of malaria in the Amazon. In deforested areas Anopheles darlingi displaces other less-malaria prone mosquitoes that favor forest landscapes.

“A 4 percent change in forest cover was associated with a 48 percent increase in malaria incidence in these 54 health districts,” explains Olson. “The health data used in the study is of the highest quality and spatial resolution. Unlike previous studies, our data allowed us to zoom in on areas where people are being exposed to malaria and to exclude areas where they are not being exposed.”

The study adjusted for human population, access to healthcare, and additional factors, yet still found malaria outbreaks closely aligned with deforestation.

Rising temperatures are adding to the perils of cleanup efforts on the Gulf oil disaster, and workers’ heat-related illnesses are now the primary worry for local doctors and nurses.

“Our big issue with the health is the heat-related stuff,” said Dr. Robert Chugden, director of emergency medicine at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana. “Initially we had issues with fumes and dispersants being sprayed, but that seems to have faded away.”

Heat indices in the area ranged from 100 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, according to CNN meteorologist Reynolds Wolf, who said the extreme heat is expected in the Gulf through the weekend.

West Jefferson Medical Center’s first-aid tent for oil leak workers in Grand Isle, Louisiana, has treated 66 workers who had some heat-related problem since it opened May 31; only one other patient has been seen who did not have heat-related symptoms, said Taslin Alfonzo, spokeswoman for the hospital.

Reported heat-related symptoms have included dizziness, headache, nausea, muscle cramping and shortness of breath, Chugden said. The tent, staffed by a nurse and paramedics, offers fluids and a cool place to rest to these patients.

A clinic offering more complete medical services and staffed with physicians is planned on Grand Isle. Currently, patients who have more than mild symptoms must be transferred about 50 miles inland to the main hospital, Chugden said.

“Fortunately they are working in teams, so it’s unlikely anyone is going to suffer from an actual heatstroke — basically they’d become unconscious,” he said.

Heatstroke is generally marked by a body temperature higher than 104 F with mental status ranging from personality changes to coma, according to the Mayo Clinic. Symptoms can include fainting, lack of sweating, rapid and shallow breathing.

Some workers also received oxygen for shortness of breath at the tent, Chugden said. Pre-existing conditions such as asthma make some people more susceptible to these symptoms.

In addition to heat problems, workers have also complained of headaches, sunburn and insect bites, she said. The 67 patients at the tent were released after treatment.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals does not keep track of cases of heat exhaustion because it is difficult to separate out as a symptom, said spokeswoman Olivia Watkins.

Occasionally patients do come in complaining of symptoms that may relate to fumes, Chugden said.

Many of the cleanup workers are wearing Tyvek suits, disposable protective coverings that protect them from the chemicals, said Dr. Jimmy Guidry, state health officer for Louisiana. These suits are necessary because oil can cause skin irritations, but can make the workers very warm, he said.

The suits trap heat near the body, don’t allow the air to cool the skin, and probably hinder the evaporation of sweat, Chugden said.

Some patients have speculated that work conditions are a lot hotter around the oil, he said.

Health experts recommend that workers keep themselves hydrated and take in salt, in the form of something like potato chips, Chugden said. They should sit down and unzip their suits during breaks.

“They’re going to have to make sure that their activity is in spurts, short spurts, and drink plenty of fluids, otherwise they’re going to get dehydrated and get in trouble,” Guidry said.

Medical professionals should take into account whether a patient with heat-related symptoms has been taking medicines, such as those for blood pressure, that would throw off salt balance, said Dr. Doug Swift, associate clinical professor in the department of medicine at Tulane University, who is not involved in caring for oil spill workers. Allergies medications may also make a person more susceptible to heat stress, he said.

In Orange Beach, Alabama, workers cleaning up the beach area wear long pants and hard-soled shoes, Joint Information Center spokesman Brian Sibley told CNN.

They work in shifts of 15 to 20 minutes, then get out of the sun and rehydrate, he said.

BP spokesman John Pack said the company has about 20,000 people working on the oil leak cleanup, and is taking precautions against the heat. The company gets both water and vitamin-rich beverages such as Gatorade, and make sure they take regular breaks when they’re working.

“We obviously monitor in advance what the likely temperature is going to be so we can give advance warning of when the heat’s going to be even more of a problem,” he said.

LANCASTER, Pa. — With simplicity as their credo, Amish farmers consume so little that some might consider them model environmental citizens.

“We are supposed to be stewards of the land,” said Matthew Stoltzfus, a 34-year-old dairy farmer and father of seven whose family, like many other Amish, shuns cars in favor of horse and buggy and lives without electricity. “It is our Christian duty.”

But farmers like Mr. Stoltzfus are facing growing scrutiny for agricultural practices that the federal government sees as environmentally destructive. Their cows generate heaps of manure that easily washes into streams and flows onward into the Chesapeake Bay.

And the Environmental Protection Agency, charged by President Obama with restoring the bay to health, is determined to crack down. The farmers have a choice: change the way they farm or face stiff penalties.

“There’s much, much work that needs to be done, and I don’t think the full community understands,” said David McGuigan, the E.P.A. official leading an effort by the agency to change farming practices here in Lancaster County.

Runoff from manure and synthetic fertilizers has polluted the Chesapeake Bay for years, reducing oxygen rates, killing fish and creating a dead zone that has persisted since the 1970s despite off-and-on cleanup efforts. But of the dozens of counties that contribute to the deadly runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus, Lancaster ranks at the top. According to E.P.A. data from 2007, the most recent available, the county generates more than 61 million pounds of manure a year. That is 20 million pounds more than the next highest county on the list of bay polluters, and more than six times that of most other counties.

The challenge for the environmental agency is to steer the farmers toward new practices without stirring resentment that might cause a backlash. The so-called plain-sect families — Amish and Old Order Mennonites, descended from persecuted Anabaptists who fled Germany and Switzerland in the 1700s — are notoriously wary of outsiders and of the government in particular.

“They are very resistant to government interference, and they object to government subsidies,” said Donald Kraybill, a professor at Elizabethtown College who studies the Amish. “They feel they should take care of their own.”

But the focus on the plain-sect dairy farmers is unavoidable: they own more than 50 percent of Lancaster County’s 5,000-plus farms.

“It’s been an issue over the last 30 years,” Dr. Kraybill said. “We have too many animals here per square acre — too many cows for too few acres.”

For now, the environmental agency’s strategy is to approach each farmer individually in collaboration with state and local conservation officials and suggest improvements like fences to prevent livestock from drifting toward streams, buffers that reduce runoff and pits to keep manure stored safely.

“These are real people with their own histories and their own needs and their own culture,” said John Hanger, the secretary of environmental protection in Pennsylvania. “It’s about treating people right, and in order to treat people right, you’ve got to be able to start where they are at.”

But if that does not work, the government will have to resort to fines and penalties.

Last September, Mr. McGuigan and his colleagues visited 24 farms in a pocket of Lancaster County known as Watson’s Run to assess their practices. Twenty-three of the farms were plain sect; 17 were found to be managing their manure inadequately. The abundance of manure was also affecting water quality. Six of the 19 wells sampled contained E. coli bacteria, and 16 had nitrate levels exceeding those allowed by the E.P.A.

Persuading plain-sect farmers to install fences and buffers underwritten by federal grants has been challenging because of their tendency to shy from government programs, including subsidies. Members neither pay Social Security nor receive its benefits, for example.

Word of the E.P.A.’s farm visits last September traveled rapidly through Amish country, Mr. Stoltzfus said, even though most plain-sect farmers do not have their own phones.

The farmers whom the agency visited declined to be interviewed. But Mr. Stoltzfus, whose brother-in-law was among them, said that as the news circulated, some farmers decided on their own to make changes in anticipation of intervention by the agency.

“I had never heard of the E.P.A. coming out to do inspections,” he said. “I think these practices are going to be required more.”

With help from the Lancaster County Conservation District, Mr. Stoltzfus applied for a government grant to help finance construction of a heifer barn with a manure pit. He expects the grant to cover about 70 percent of the cost.

But some Amish farmers were angered by the agency’s intrusion and its requirements.

“It’s certainly generated controversy,” said Sam Riehl, a farmer in the area. “We wonder whether we are being told what to do, and whether the E.P.A. will make it so that we can’t even maintain our farms.”

Mr. Riehl said he had vowed never to accept a government grant. He does have a manure management plan and a manure pit, he said, although several of his neighbors do not.

Last year the federal Fish and Wildlife Service awarded $500,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to work with the farmers on switching to barnyard runoff controls, streamside forest buffers, no-till farming and cover crops. The money has been lucrative for local agricultural companies like Red Barn Consulting, which has used some of it to hold milk-and-doughnut sessions in barns for Amish farmers and drop off fliers door to door.

The firm’s owner, Peter Hughes, and his employees instruct the farmers on manure management and do free walkthroughs to offer suggestions. In the last six months, Mr. Hughes said, his plain-sect clientele has soared from several dozen farmers to about 200.

Working with the plain sect presents challenges, Mr. Hughes said. For one thing, the group is deeply averse to salesmanship. Then there is the technological communication problem: most of the farmers share a phone booth along a road with several neighbors.

“I had one client who would call me at 5:15 every morning,” he said. “That was his allotted time to use the phone, and that was the only way for us to talk.”

Most days Mr. Hughes is on the road in his pickup visiting farmers. As he drives, he said, he is often struck by the dichotomy between a would-be pastoral ideal and the environmental reality.

“You see those cows and the fields, and it’s beautiful,” he said. “But then there’s that big pile of manure sitting back there.”

Mr. Stoltzfus hopes he is ahead of the game. By adopting new practices and building the manure pit, he thinks he can both help the environment and steer clear of E.P.A. interference.

At midday, Mr. Stoltzfus was placing a bowl of cut fruit into a propane-powered cooler in his backyard, one of the family’s few concessions to technology. Hand-washed black pants and plain cotton dresses fluttered on a clothesline behind him. He offered a taciturn reflection on how quickly things had changed — his willingness to accept the grant, for example.

“A while back, Old Order Amish would not participate in programs like this,” he said, “but farming is getting expensive.”

And then he ended the conversation.

“Is that all?” he said politely but coolly. “I have work to do.”

It was milking time.

OIL from the Gulf of Mexico disaster has been found more than 100 miles from the leak, adding to fears of more pollution.

As slicks continued to wash ashore in the US, tests showed that plumes of oil were also lurking deep underwater.

Their presence carries implications for deep-sea life because tiny microbes eat them and consume oxygen, choking off the supply to other organisms.

The impact could cascade up the food chain, cutting off the food supply of larger predators.

The containment cap on the stricken BP wellhead is helping to limit the leak, collecting more than 620,000 gallons of oil.

But it is unclear how much oil is still escaping, and underwater video feeds continued to show a dark geyser.

The amount of oil kept from spilling into the Gulf “has climbed steadily,” Admiral Thad Allen said.

The initial clean-up could take months and the spill’s effects could linger for years. And as the oil patches dance unpredictably from coastline to coastline, residents who depend on tourism and fishing are wondering how to head off the damage or salvage a season that’s nearing its peak.

The random, scattered nature of the oil was evident this week near the Alabama- Florida state line. On the Alabama side, oil-laden seaweed littered beaches for miles, and huge orange globs stained the sands.

But at Perdido Key, on the Florida side, the sand was white and virtually crude-free.

“The daily images of the oil is obviously having an impact,” said Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, the state closest to the leak and the one where the oil is having its most insidious effects on wildlife. “It’s having a heavy, real, very negative impact on our economy.”

Some of the most enduring of those images are of pelicans and other wildlife drenched in oil.

As the sun rose on Barataria Bay, Louisiana, just west of the mouth of the Mississippi River, marsh islands teemed with oily brown pelicans and crude-stained white ibis.

Some struggled to fly, fluttered and fell, while others just sat and tried to clean themselves, squawking and flapping their wings.

Snakes may be declining across the world, according to a global study.

Researchers examined records for 17 snake populations covering eight species over the last few decades, and found most had declined markedly.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, some populations shrank in number abruptly around 1998.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers describe the findings as “alarming” but say much more work is needed to understand the causes.

“This is the first time that data has been analysed in this way, and what we’ve shown is that in different parts of the world we seem to have this steep decline in a short period,” said project leader Chris Reading.

“It surprised us when we realised what we were looking at,” he told BBC News.

“And we don’t have a clue what it was about that period of time (around 1998).”

Dr Reading’s team at the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology ran the study with institutions in Australia, France, Italy and Nigeria.

Data deficiencies

The main problem for anyone wanting to conduct a global survey such as this is simply lack of data.

Monitoring snake populations means marking the individuals in some way – typically by snipping a pattern into their scales, or implanting a microchip.

Field seasons can last for many months, and have to be repeated annually.

The researchers believe they amassed most, if not all, long-term datasets for this study – although “long-term” in this context means going back more than one decade, in some cases more than two.

Nevertheless, within this relatively short timeframe, eight of the 17 populations were seen to fall markedly in size – some by more than 90% – with only one showing any sign of a rise.

Species in decline include the asp and the smooth snake from Europe, the Gabon viper and rhinoceros viper of West Africa, and the royal python.

Populations shrank even in protected areas, suggesting that the progressive loss of habitat for wild animals being seen all over the world is not the only cause.

Similar steep declines observed in frogs and newts in an earlier period were eventually found to be caused by the fungal disease chytridiomycosis.

The year when many of the snake declines began – 1998 – raises the question of whether climatic factors might be involved, as very strong El Nino conditions contributed to making it the hottest year recorded in modern times.

Dr Reading’s research group suggests many causes might be involved, and is appealing to other researchers to come forward with any more long-term datasets that might broaden the picture.

“The purpose of this paper was to say ‘this is what we’ve found’, and to say to other herpetologists ‘now go and look at your own data’,” he said.

“But I think that with so many populations in different places showing decline, it’s more than co-incidence.”

Wed June 2

BEIJING (Reuters) – A rare burst of labor unrest in China has been resolved with hefty pay increases, illustrating how the balance of power in the country’s vast factories is slowly but surely tilting toward workers.

China

Rising wages in the workshop of the world might seem to pose unsettling implications for the global economy in the form of thinning profits for companies and cost inflation for consumers.

But this disregards more important, positive developments. By spreading the fruits of the China’s stunning growth more evenly, higher incomes will help to boost domestic consumption and rectify imbalances that have dogged the global economy.

“If China wants to build up a new growth model driven by consumption, you have to find a channel to redistribute GDP more to labor, especially to the low-income class,” Ting Lu, an economist with Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, said.

“Now this is being not just driven by politics, but by a natural changing balance in the demand and supply of labor.”

Honda Motor Co this week gave a 24 percent pay raise to striking workers at a car parts factory in southern China. The plant resumed full production on Wednesday.

Foxconn on Wednesday said its workers in a different part of southern China would get 30 percent raises after a spate of suicides cast a troubling light on conditions at its factory which churns out top-tier electronic products, including Apple’s iPhone.

The Honda and Foxconn stories have been sensational in a country that stamps out strikes and suppresses unflattering news, but they are just a small part of a much broader wave of wage increases in the Chinese manufacturing sector.

Pay for China’s 150 million or so migrant workers increased 19 percent in 2008 and 16 percent in 2009, even though exporters were hit hard by the global financial crisis, according to Cai Fang, head of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

TURNING POINT

“Overall Chinese income levels, especially for blue-collar workers, are expected to grow faster than before because fewer new workers will enter the labor force every year,” said Maggie Li, an analyst at Mercer, a human resource consultancy.

This trend will accelerate from about 2012, she said.

In economic terms, China has arrived at its Lewis turning point, a period in development when the economy shifts from a labor surplus to a labor shortage and wages start to increase more rapidly, especially for the unskilled.

Chinese workers have made big strides in recent years in absolute terms as their wages rose about 8 percent a year. The problem is that these increases have not kept up with the broader economy, which has boomed at a double-digit pace.

Labor’s share of national income declined to 39.7 percent in 2007 from 53.4 percent in 1996. During that same time, the corporate share rose to 31.3 percent from 21.2 percent, official statistics show.

“China’s wage level has stayed very low for a long time despite some increases in recent years and this has depressed domestic demand,” said Yang Yiyong, a research director of a think-tank under the National Development and Reform Commission, a powerful economic planning agency.

Beijing has declared the promotion of private consumption to be a priority as it seeks to re-orient the economy away from a model that has relied too heavily on investment and exports.

CONSUMPTION GROWTH

The central government has launched a flurry of incentive programs to encourage people to buy home appliances in the countryside and cars in cities. It is also building up the social safety net to stimulate more discretionary spending. And some cities have even started offering shopping vouchers.

But nothing will be as powerful as income growth.

“A 100 percent increase in wages of lower-income earners will generate about a 70 to 90 percent increase in consumption,” said Wang Han, an economist with research firm CEBM.

Huang Yiping, an economist at Peking University, cautioned that the government cannot sit back and wait for higher incomes alone to boost consumption. It will have to craft policies that promote the service and skilled-labor sectors to ensure the continued creation of jobs as wages increase.

For the world economy, the conclusion is more unambiguously positive.

Rising Chinese wages point to an inexorable, if gradual, reduction of its whopping trade surplus. Prices of manufactured goods may increase a touch globally, but other countries will step into the breach.

“Low-income countries should be able to grow more rapidly in labor-intensive industries. Almost all other countries should experience improvement in their current accounts,” Huang wrote in a recent research paper.

As the cost of labor increases, China’s potential growth rate will inevitably slow to about 9 percent a year from 11 percent, said Lu of Merrill Lynch. But that is still very fast and nothing to fear, he added.

“If we want to seek sustainable growth and if we want to seek happiness, maybe in the next stage we will focus more on redistribution than growth,” Lu said.

FARMERS have threatened to blockade billions of dollars of coal seam gas development unless the State Government imposes a moratorium and delivers answers on environmental issues on the Western Downs and Surat Basin.

More than 200 farmers are expected to rally at Cecil Plains, west of Toowoomba, today to voice their anger and demand more science is done on the gas industry’s impact on some of the state’s best cropping land and the vital Great Artesian Basin.

Basin Sustainability Alliance chairman Ian Hallyor said if the Government did not impose a moratorium “we will do our own”. “We will blockade every site they want to go on,” Mr Hallyor said.

The coal seam gas development feeds not only domestic gas consumption but also planned liquefied natural gas export plants at Gladstone which could provide more than $55 billion worth of development and 18,000 jobs.

But it must access farmland, drill holes and build wells, roads, pipelines, dams and compression stations and some of it is on the best cropping land in Queensland west of Toowoomba.

Today’s rally will be held on one property that is expected to lose about 40ha of land for gas operations. The owners would receive compensation of about $50,000 a year but the economic loss was more like $500,000, Mr Hallyor said.

“No one will buy a farm with a gas well on it. The value is virtually zero,” he said. “It’s going to affect hundreds of properties.”

The blockade threat came as Natural Resources Minister Steven Robertson said that he could not rule out burying salt – which was a byproduct of the CSG production – in landfill even though he was adamant that no environmental damage would be done.

“Development cannot come at any cost,” Mr Robertson said. “The development of that industry … must be environmentally sustainable.”

(Reuters) – The United States has nearly doubled the no-fishing zone in the Gulf of Mexico because of the spread of oil leaking from the ruptured BP well, a federal official said on Tuesday.

The no-fishing zone now covers 19 percent of U.S. waters in the Gulf, up from 10 percent on Monday, said Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

She said the move was made in response to the possibility that leaking oil had entered the Loop Current that could carry it to the Florida Keys and then possibly up U.S. Atlantic Coast.

U.S. territorial waters in the Gulf of Mexico are technically referred to as the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from shore or 230 statute miles.

LONDON, May 13 (Reuters) – Forests have a growing value as a result of climate policies, but the complexity of carbon markets coupled with the effects of the financial crisis are deterring investment, investors and analysts said in London on Thursday.

In plantation forests, new demand for wood to generate low-carbon renewable power generation to replace fossil fuels is adding to traditional pulp and paper demand, potentially fuelling values.

For managers of natural and virgin forests, new carbon markets to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) are emerging to pay owners not to chop down trees.

But investors said they were deterred by the complexity of those new markets, and were wary of making investments in plantation forests for bio-energy.

“We see potential in the REDD process, but from an investor perspective it’s difficult to make a convincing case right now,” said Marko Katila, a partner at Finland-based timber fund Dasos Capital, which raises money from institutional investors.

“Our fund right now is not looking seriously at these types of investments,” he added, referring to payments for not chopping natural forests, speaking on the sidelines of an Environmental Finance forestry conference in London.

COMPLICATED

Discussions on REDD are part of stalled U.N. climate talks, and are complicated by issues of how to measure carbon savings from reduced deforestation.

“Frankly the discussions are not progressing at all,” said Pedro Costa, co-founder and former president at carbon offset company EcoSecurities, and now at Oxford-based E2 Advisors.

“I find it extremely unlikely that REDD will favour any individual investment at least in the short-term, if ever. It’s hellishly complicated.”

Costa was focused on projects in the Brazilian Amazon, where he said philanthropic capital may be drawn by returns to investments in sustainable forestry, including a combination of selective logging and conservation.

A draft U.S. climate bill unveiled on Wednesday may boost forest carbon markets, however, proposing to allow foresters and farmers to earn tradable carbon offsets from emissions cuts they make in the United States.

The American Power Act also recognised payments for avoided deforestation, or REDD, in developing countries, but experts said the draft bill had little chance of passing Congress this year.

Low-carbon energy targets in the Europe Union are fuelling demand for wood chips from plantation forests, or careful, selective thinning of natural forests.

Britain’s Helius Energy, for example, recently won planning consent for a power plant which it said, if built, would consume the equivalent of 8 percent of Britain’s total annual tree cut.

“It looks like there’ll be a massive demand for biomass products,” said Helius feedstock director Daniel Davidson.

Investors were still wary of funding new plantation forests, said Dasos Capital’s Marko Katila.

That reluctance reflected the long cycle of forest investments, which were largely up-front, making these rather illiquid and more difficult to justify against a backdrop of financial uncertainty.

“Since the financial crisis it has been difficult to sell something very illiquid,” Katila said.

The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday.

“If the various estimates we have received… come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish,” Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program’s green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected zones — ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.

The report, which was opened to preview Monday, also assesses how surging global demand in other key areas including energy and fresh water can be met while preventing ecological destruction around the planet.

UNEP director Achim Steiner said the world was “drawing down to the very capital” on which it relies.

Youths and women of Ibeno local government area of Akwa Ibom State, last week took to the streets in protest of oil spill from an off-shore pipeline belonging to Exxon Mobil.
According to what this publication gathered, the company, despite having knowledge of the spill was yet to take any corrective measure towards the damage done to the community, which resulted in the protest.
As part of their demands, from what this reporter was able to piece together, the community is demanding a compensation of $1bn for the damages.
Speaking to Journalists at Ibeno, a community leader and former Commissioner for Lands in the State, Mr. Abang O. Abang said the spill had negatively affected the community and regretted that Mobil was not taking urgent steps to curtail the spill since the incident occurred.
He informed newsmen that the company was also yet to clean up a dispersant chemical injected in to the water which had resulted in eye problems in the community before the spill occurred.
The former commissioner condemned the acts of security men at the Exxon Mobil who assaulted the protestants, saying, government officials, SSS and a representative of the community in NDDC, Chief Ette were duly informed.
On his part, Chairman of National Youths Council of Nigeria, Akwa Ibom Chapter, Mr. Edem Ebong said the community should exercise patience as the company’s Public Affairs Manager has informed him that the company was taking steps to stop the spill.
Reacting to the incident, Paramount Ruler of Ibeno community, HRH Obong Effiong Atiaha said the protest would continue despite assaults from security men until Mobil rise up to the demands of the community, which among other things, include $1bn as compensation.

SEOUL, April 27 (AFP) – South Korea was Tuesday to inaugurate the world’s longest seawall, the first step in a massive project aimed at reclaiming the ocean for industry, tourism and agriculture by 2020.

The 33 kilometre (21 mile) Saemangeum seawall encloses 401 square kilometres (160 square miles) of seawater, about two thirds of Seoul’s land area.

The government has already spent 2.9 trillion won (2.6 billion dollars) on what is billed as the country’s largest-ever development project, despite environmental concerns.

Another 21 trillion won in state and private spending is envisaged until 2020 to reclaim land, build infrastructure and create giant freshwater reservoirs.

The project was first mooted in the early 1970s and work on the west coast dike 280 kilometres south of Seoul began in 1991.

Originally, the government planned to use most of the reclaimed land for farming but the country’s rice production now outstrips demand.

The plan now is to build a new city focused on logistics, industry, tourism and leisure as well as floriculture.

The reclaimed area and the port city of Gunsan will jointly house an international business complex to be called the Saemangeum-Gunsan Free Economic Zone by 2020.

The project has been dogged by fears of environmental disaster, and was marked by protests and clashes with riot police.

Environmentalists say it will destroy huge mudflats providing habitats for wildlife and serving as natural water purification plants.

Opposition eased somewhat as authorities promised to invest more to address environmental concerns, including tighter control of pollution upstream on the two rivers that flow into the area.

“However, the overall development project must be reviewed in order to preserve the mudflats as much as possible,” Jee Woon-Geun, a director of the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement, told AFP.

“Mudflats enable sustainable development. They are also a great tourist attraction.”

Paris — Recent research by Greenpeace suggests that French state-owned company Areva’s public claims of decontamination of populated areas near uranium mines in Niger are false. High radio-activity persists in towns and rural areas near the mines, affecting some 80,000 people.

When uranium was discovered in the impoverished West African state in the 1960s, many thought that the radioactive mineral – indispensable as combustible for nuclear power plants and raw material for nuclear bombs – would be the panacea for all the social and economic afflictions haunting the former French colony.

Instead, as several recent reports by environmental organisations and independent researchers show, Niger’s uranium mines constitute a deadly gift for the country, both for its public health and its politics.

Today, Niger is considered the poorest country in the world. It ranks last in the Human Development Index, and it is confronting a political crisis caused by allegations of corruption and environmental conflicts — all linked to the uranium mines (see part two of this article).

According to a report that the global environmental organisation Greenpeace released on Mar 30, high radioactivity can still be detected on the ground near the Nigerien uranium mines, especially in the mining towns of Arlit and Akokan, some 850 km northeast of the capital Niamey.

Some 80,000 people live in these towns and in the nearby region. The mines are operated by the French state-owned company Areva, which describes itself as “rank(ing) first in the global nuclear power industry”. France, which has been exploiting uranium mines in Niger for 45 years, is the main foreign investor in Niger.

In an interview with IPS, Rianne Teule, nuclear energy campaigner for Greenpeace International, explained that the group’s research team visited Niger’s uranium mines last November to investigate whether Areva complies with basic health and labour standards.

“We found dangerous levels of radiation in the streets of Akokan,” Teule told IPS. “We also found high concentration of uranium in four of five samples of drinking water from Arlit, in doses beyond the limits established by the World Health Organisation,” Teule said.

“Areva had earlier claimed that such radiation had been identified and its sources addressed,” Teule said.

In some cases, the radioactivity measured by Greenpeace researchers in Akokan was 500 times higher than the normal levels.

“A person spending less than one hour per day in those places would be exposed to more than the maximum allowable annual radiation dose for the public recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection and enforced by legislation in most countries,” Teule said.

Greenpeace’s findings confirm earlier reports by other French environmental groups that have denounced Areva’s lack of responsibility in the operation of the uranium mines in Niger.

In 2007, an inspection by the independent investigative commission on radioactivity CRIIRAD (after its French name) and the Nigerien environmental organisation Aghir In’Man discovered high levels of radiation in the streets of Akokan.

In the immediate neighbourhood of the Akokan hospital, CRIIRAD measured levels of radiation up to 100 times higher than normal background values. CRIIRAD also identified the source of the radiation as the radioactive waste rock from the mines that had been used for road construction.

“We gave our findings to the Areva board of directors and the Nigerien local authorities and called for a comprehensive radiological survey and clean-up of the village,” Bruno Chareyron, an engineer in nuclear physics and director of research at CRIIRAD, told IPS.

CRIIRAD also found radioactive contamination in drinking water and radio-active scrap metal in the mining towns.

The public health consequences of the exploitation of uranium are only one of the many problems raised by the extractive industry in Niger.

Alain Joseph, a French hydro-geologist working in the West African country, told IPS that the “pasture economy is about to disappear in north-eastern Niger because of the dozens of mine projects installed there which over-exploit the scarce water resources of the area”.

In 2009 alone, Niger authorised 139 uranium research projects conducted by companies from Australia, Canada and China.

Joseph said that these projects are draining water from Agadez, the region’s only water source. “The uranium exploitation is not only decimating Niger’s environment and public health. It is also about to destroy the economic foundations of Tuareg, Fula, Kounta and other pastoral, nomadic people in the north of the country,” he said.