MAHENTO

Trump Promises $1T Infrastructure Project; Older Cities Badly Need It

America’s infrastructure is crumbling. A report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the country’s roads, bridges and public works a D+, with a large portion of the structures showing significant deterioration. Tuesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his promise to spend one trillion dollars to overhaul the infrastructure. For local communities, that money can’t come fast enough. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports from Pittsburgh.
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Born on Bayou: NYC Ferry Fleet Builds for Summer Launch

The future of public transportation in New York City is taking shape on the bayous of Louisiana and Alabama.

Shipyard workers in the two states are scrambling to finish the city’s new ferry fleet in time for a launch this summer, just a little more than a year after it was first proposed.

The city is making a $335 million bet that the service will attract millions of passengers traveling between Manhattan and waterfront neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that are now a distant walk from overcrowded subways.

Transportation infrastructure in the city has a tendency to take many years, if not decades, to get built, but in this case workers are under pressure to get the new ferries and docks built in a New York minute.

Horizon Shipbuilding, in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, has 100 employees – including 80 hired last summer – working to fill its order of 10 ferries for the 20-boat fleet. The rest are being built at the Metal Shark shipyard in Franklin, Louisiana, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Baton Rouge.

Inside Metal Shark’s huge boat-building shed last week, several of the $4 million catamaran vessels were in various stages of completion. Sparks and smoke flew around workers’ protected heads as they welded one lightweight aluminum ferry frame. Other workers stood between the catamarans’ two pontoons, sanding the rough metal. Electricians were busy wiring the navigation system. Cranes carried pieces of tubing to the ferry-to-be.

“A project like this is unique,” said Junior Volpe, director of special projects for Hornblower Inc., the San Francisco-based company that will operate the ferry system in partnership with New York City.

More than a year ago, when they were still negotiating the construction of the ferries in such a short time period, “a lot of people were, like, ‘Wow, I don’t think this is ever going to happen.’ And to prove that things are possible, here we are. We’re sitting on the first ferry that’s going to be delivered here at Metal Shark – and it’s amazing,” Volpe said.

City transportation officials say the new ferry fleet will speed up travel time in this city of islands by as much as two-thirds and come at a competitive price – $2.75 – the same as a subway fare. That compares to the limited ferry service that currently takes commuters and tourists across the Hudson and East Rivers at $4 to $6 per ride. New York’s fifth borough, Staten Island, is served by its famed free ferry service that offers about 23 million rides a year.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he hoped the new ferry service, along with a new streetcar line he also has proposed, would help lighten the transportation load for a city of 8.5 million that is expected to grow by another half a million people in the coming years.

While de Blasio acknowledged the new ferry service’s initial goal of 4.6 million annual rides per year is modest (the subway system handles 5.7 million rides on weekdays), he was hopeful the growth in ridership would be greater.

“If you build it,” he said, “they will come.”

Travel by water in New York harks back to the city’s maritime glory days in the late 1800s, when there were no subways and the East River, the harbor and the Hudson River were abuzz with industrial production and business activities relying on water-borne modes of transportation.

“But ferries don’t solve New York’s overall transportation problem,” said Nicole Gelinas, a transportation analyst at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

She noted that with commercial activity no longer concentrated on the waterfront and most people living elsewhere, ferries handle only a fraction of the ridership of subways. “That doesn’t mean ferries are not a good idea, because they get at least some people off the trains that are crowded beyond capacity.”

In addition, she said, the financial structure of the new ferry service, in which the city plans to spend $180 million over six years subsidizing fares, could be difficult to sustain.

“The mayor hasn’t addressed these issues at all,” Gelinas said. “But the new ferries are good for him in that he’ll be inaugurating them a few months before the election.”

All that doesn’t ruin the anticipation for longtime Astoria resident Claudia Coger.

After years of spending three, even four, hours a day commuting to work as a train inspector, with long walks to subways and buses, she vows to be among the first on the ferry, boarding at a dock just steps from her apartment.

“Yes, for sure, because I fish over here anyway!”
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Curbed by China, Philippine Fishing Town Turns Toward Eco-Tourism

A Philippine city on the front lines of the wide-reaching South China Sea dispute is developing marine protection and eco-tourism to help the sea and regenerate stocks for an embattled local fishing industry.

Masinloc, a city of 49,000 people on the South China Sea coast of Luzon Island, is stepping up protection of fish and coral covering 7,560 hectares in its bay, municipal coastal resources management officer Olive Ebido-Gregorio said.

The health of coral in the bay affects fish that migrate across the whole 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea and 40 percent of the sea’s species can be traced back to Masinloc, she said. Brunei, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam claim all or parts of the sea largely to fish.

Coral reef is key to fishing

“We have a very big contribution to the coral reef, not only in the Philippines, but we have a big contribution to the coral triangle countries, like Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines,” Ebido-Gregorio said. “Maybe it contributes to the biodiversity of all other nearby countries.”

The sea gives trawlers 16.6 million tons of fish every year, according to a National Geographic report in mid-2016, but stocks are declining due to overuse.

Declining catches

In Masinloc, catches have declined 50 percent since 2010, the local coast guard unit estimates.

Overfishing, overpopulation and climate change have hurt the marine environment, the city officer said. Some of the 3,000 locals registered in the fishing trade use sodium cyanide and air compressors to fish, both illegal off the coast of Masinloc, she said. 

Foreign vessels near the city use illegal means to take fish as well, a coast guard commander said.

Continued disputes about claims to South China Sea

China also stops Philippine vessels from entering Scarborough Shoal, which is 198 kilometers away from Masinloc. China and the Philippines dispute sovereignty of the shoal along with much of the sea off the archipelago’s west coasts.

Masinloc fishermen say lack of access to the shoal has pushed them closer to the Philippine coastline, where catches are smaller due to overfishing. The shoal is prized for the abundance of large fish.

“Very angry now because fish (are) now very far,” Raul Canumuy, a 44-year-old fisherman, said Tuesday as he helped gut a catch on a Masinloc beach. “Before around there,” he said, pointing to the waters near the beach. “Now 40 miles.”

Masinloc turns to tourism

Tourism, for a few, has supplanted fishing in Masinloc. About 500 people per month visit two of the bay’s protected areas, a 7.5-hectare mangrove island and the San Salvador Marine Sanctuary, a city tourism official said. 

Tourists board small boats for city-organized boat rides lasting more than half a day. They come from around the Philippines, elsewhere in Southeast Asia and the United States.

Efforts to protech the sea

The city’s moves to ensure the health of the sea began in 1989 with the declaration of its first protected area in the bay along the Luzon Island coast where Masinloc is located. Now four spots are protected to save coral, sea grass and mangroves, which are fish habitats.

From 2005 to 2008 the city took part in a U.N. Environment Program-funded effort to reverse degradation in the South China Sea. Over the past three years it has worked with 11 other coastal cities and a Philippine environmental non-profit group to regulate or ban fishing. 

Still, in June the city discovered a mysterious bleaching of coral at three spots in the protected bay, which could threaten fish catches as well as species sought by snorkeling tourists.

More protection work is slated for next year.

Fishing moratoriums to replenish stocks

Chins has sought to regulate stocks through annual fishing moratoriums since 1995. From May through August this year it will declare a moratorium for the whole sea north of the 12th parallel. 

That area touches the claims of Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines. The ban will take effect from May through August.

But other countries see the moratorium as an assertion of Chinese power, said Fabrizio Bozzato, an associate researcher specializing in international affairs at Tamkang University in Taiwan. Masinloc fisherman say they do not plan to observe it.

Beijing has built a series of disputed islets in the South China Sea for military use, including radar systems that can learn what other countries are doing at sea and stop any perceived violators.

“A periodical fishing moratorium would be advisable in order to avoid depletion of the South China Sea fisheries,” Bozzato said. “The problem is that the fishing ban is unilateral. It is not agreed [upon] with the other fishing entities in the South China Sea.”
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Tanzania Struggles to End Child Labor

Three years ago, 14-year-old Julius left his family near the lakeside city of Mwanza, Tanzania, to try his luck mining gold.

Today, Julius is in no hurry to leave, despite having one of the riskiest jobs on a chaotic mine site — handling mercury each day with his bare hands.

“It’s good work. I’m paid well,” Julius, who wanted to use only his first name, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, wearing an orange T-shirt and skinny jeans coated with red dirt.

Julius, now 17, said he has been working with mercury for three years, but no one had ever told him it was dangerous.

There are more than 4 million child laborers in Tanzania aged between 5 and 17, according to a government survey released last year in conjunction with the International Labor Organization. That’s roughly a third of the country’s children.

More than 3 million are doing hazardous jobs, including at illegal mines like the one near Nyaligongo in northern Tanzania, where they are exposed to mercury, heavy dust and work long shifts without safety gear.

Many unaware of laws

The Tanzanian government is aware of the problem but has struggled to keep children out of small, unlicensed mines. Its laws do not allow children under 14 to work, and hazardous work is not permitted for children over 14. Tanzania has signed all major international conventions on child labor and introduced its own laws to prevent the worst child labor.

But not everyone knows of the child labor laws, including families and local officials.

Government workers tasked with enforcing the laws lack the staff and funds for inspections, let alone prosecutions.

“In Tanzania we have a good law and strategy to eliminate all kinds of child labor, but the problem here is who is going to implement this at the local level,” said Gerald Ng’ong’a, executive director of Rafiki Social Development Organization (SDO), an NGO that works on child labor in northern Tanzania.

“Local officials don’t have enough information about the law and how to protect children.”

Lure of gold

The problem is especially hard to tackle in the informal sector, said Emma Gordon, senior Africa analyst at global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, which ranks Tanzania as the 55th-most “at risk” country in its 2017 Child Labor Index, due to be published Wednesday.

“The government’s focus is very much centered around large industrial projects, particularly foreign-owned businesses that would be able to pay fines if violations were discovered,” Gordon wrote in an email to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In Lake Victoria’s gold belt, where gold has been extracted since the 1890s, licensed and unlicensed small mines operate with major mining firms close by. The scrappy “artisanal” mines provide a crucial source of income to people outside Tanzania’s cities, but like the mining site at Nyaligongo, many operate without government licences.

The majority of children working in gold mines are employed by individuals running these unlicensed mines, observers say. They are among the worst exploited of the mines’ workers, typically earning the equivalent of about 1 euro ($1) a day.

“Pit owners employ children because they’re cheap labor,” said Ng’ong’a.

Legal or not, the lure of the mines — and the harsh poverty of the farming communities around them — keep children coming.

Brothers Petromos and Mayalamos, 12 and 16, left their village outside Mwanza because they heard there was good money to be made at this mine.

“The work is difficult,” said Mayalamos. “But I can only leave this place once I’ve earned enough.”

Nyaligongo village relies on gold to survive.

On the village’s main street, cramped shops sell vegetables, SIM cards and lunch to off-duty miners. Middlemen purchase gold from miners to sell in the closest town, Kahama, where it is resold in bigger cities like Mwanza and Dar es Salaam.

Students leave to work

More than 8,000 people live in Nyaligongo, says Faustine Masasila, the village’s secretary and a mine site owner, and more are still arriving.

“There are people here who used to have very miserable lives,” Masasila said, walking through the buzzing market. “If you work hard, you are guaranteed prosperity.”

At the primary school down the road, teachers are less impressed with mining’s promise of a good future.

A poster on the school office wall is a testament to the number of children who leave to work when they are old enough.

This year, in Class 1, there are 236 students aged 6 and 7, while in Class 7 there are only 40 students aged 13 and 14.

“I feel very frustrated when children leave and go to the mines instead of going on to secondary school,” said Mabula Kafuku, the education officer for the ward. “They don’t even have enough knowledge to mine safely.”

Children dropping out of school is a nationwide problem in Tanzania and a major impediment to the government’s aspiration to become a middle-income nation by 2025. A recent Human Rights Watch report found that in 2016, more than 5 million children aged between 7 and 17 were out of school across the country.

For government workers tasked with inspecting mines for health, safety and labor violations, enforcing the law at the far-flung informal mines sprinkled around the Lake Victoria region is an onerous task.

Masasila, the village secretary, cannot recall ever seeing inspectors at the mining site near Nyaligongo.

“If you have children working in remote areas, you need a budget to visit. We don’t have such things,” said Hadija Hersi, a regional labor officer in Mwanza. “That’s why you have NGOs stepping in to intervene.”

Some success

Several nongovernmental organizations, including Terre des Hommes Netherlands, have been trying to get child workers back in school and help families develop alternate income sources to wean them off their wages.

Since 2014, Terre des Hommes Netherlands, working with Rafiki SDO, has managed to help more than 725 children leave the mines. In Geita, another nearby gold-mining area, U.K.-based Plan International has helped 12,000 children withdraw from small-scale mining work and is trying to reach another 11,600.

But as long as people are struggling to find work outside Tanzania’s cities, there is only so much NGOs can do.

At the mine, Nyanjige Mwendesha looks on as her three children, ages 10, 12, and 15, sit on the red, dusty ground, smashing up rocks with small metal hammers in the midday sun.

Mwendesha brought her family to work here after there wasn’t enough rain on her farm this year. The family needed the money.

“When it starts to rain, I’ll go back to the farm,” she said.
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US Coal Companies Ask Trump to Stick With Paris Climate Deal

Some big American coal companies have advised President Donald Trump’s administration to break his promise to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement — arguing that the accord could provide their best forum for protecting their global interests.

Remaining in the global deal to combat climate change will give U.S. negotiators a chance to advocate for coal in the future of the global energy mix, coal companies like Cloud Peak Energy and Peabody Energy told White House officials over the past few weeks, according to executives and a U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

“The future is foreign markets, so the last thing you want to do if you are a coal company is to give up a U.S. seat in the international climate discussions and let the Europeans control the agenda,” said the official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

“They can’t afford for the most powerful advocate for fossil fuels to be away from the table,” the official said.

Cloud Peak and Peabody officials confirmed the discussions.

‘Path forward’

In Cloud Peak’s view, staying in the agreement and trying to encourage “a more balanced, reasonable and appropriate path forward” on fossil fuel technologies among signatories to the accord seems like a reasonable stance, said Richard Reavey, Cloud Peak’s vice president of government affairs.

The coal industry was interested in ensuring that the Paris deal provides a role for low-emission coal-fired power plants and financial support for carbon capture and storage technology, the officials said. They also want the pact to protect multilateral funding for international coal projects through bodies like the World Bank.

The Paris accord, agreed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, would seek to limit global warming by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from burning fossil fuels. As part of the deal, the United States committed to reducing its emissions by between 26 percent and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to pull the United States out of the pact, tapping into a well of concern among his fellow Republicans that the United States’ energy habits would be policed by the United Nations.

Seeking companies’ advice

But since being elected, he has been mostly quiet on the issue, and administration officials have recently been asking energy companies for advice.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last week that the administration expected to make a decision on whether to remain a party to the deal by the time leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations meet in late May.

The prospect of the United States remaining in the Paris deal has irritated some smaller miners, including Murray Energy Corp, whose chief executive, Robert Murray helped fund Trump’s presidential bid.

Staying in the Paris accord could also face resistance from within Trump’s party. Republican Congressman Kevin Cramer of North Dakota has been circulating a letter among Republican lawmakers calling on the president to stay in the deal but has gathered only seven signatures so far.
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Trump Tells CEOs He’ll Only Back Shovel-ready Infrastructure

With legislation overhauling taxes and health care on an uncertain path, President Donald Trump returned to the familiar. Trump brought 52 business leaders from New York City to the White House Tuesday to talk about another favorite campaign issue — infrastructure and economic growth.

The U.S. economy has so far proven to be a point of pride for a presidency that has otherwise gotten off to a rocky start. Trump inherited a stable economy from former President Barack Obama, an economic recovery that’s heading toward its eighth year. But Trump believes he can do more for business.

Trump and several of his top aides emphasized plans to cut red tape and jumpstart infrastructure projects at Tuesday’s meeting, while also previewing for the CEOs other priorities that include shortening flight times for airplanes, increasing the power grid’s efficiency and targeting programs to improve job training.

At one point the president had an aide come on stage to hold up a long scroll of the government’s approval process for building a highway. The president then pledged to eliminate more than 90 percent of the regulations involved and “still have safety.” He provided no details.

The administration has committed to directing as much as $1 trillion for infrastructure over the next decade, although it has yet to release policy specifics. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao recently said she expects a plan will be unveiled later this year.

But getting a measure through Congress could be difficult given the Republican majority in both chambers and their desire to reduce tax rates as much as possible. An infrastructure plan that relies on direct funding could possibly raise the budget deficit more than one that uses tax credits.

Trump touted the plan he says is in the works, telling the room, “We’re talking about a very major infrastructure bill of a trillion dollars, perhaps even more.”

Administration officials stressed that it can take more than 8 years between funding and the start of project construction, a timeline White House officials say is too slow given the commitment of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Trump wanted the CEOs gathered at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — many of them involved in real estate — to start building roadways, airports, railways, bridges and other infrastructure as quickly as possible.

“If you have a job that you can’t start within 90 days, we’re not going to give you money for it,” Trump said.

The president followed up his remarks at the town hall by giving an afternoon speech to the Building Trades Union, pledging to “rebuild our nation.”

At the CEO town hall, Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council, noted that infrastructure upgrades could help growth.

A new air traffic control system that relied on GPS instead of radar would shorten flights and save on jet fuel, helping consumers, he said. Cohn also suggested updates to the power grid to avoid the loss of 20 percent of electricity in transmission. Trump’s daughter Ivanka spoke to the CEOs about the value of job training.

The sales pitch with its technocratic angle seemed perfectly targeted for the assembled business leaders.

“It’s terrific in terms of the stuff you’re trying to do to modernize the government, educate and so forth,” said Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, an investment firm, and chairman of the president’s policy forum.

“The outside world doesn’t always get the message that that’s really what is going on,” he said.
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Gold Imports Surge as Turks Heed Erdogan’s Call and Vote Looms

Turkish gold imports rose 17-fold to 28.2 tons in March, as Turks looking to hedge currency risk ahead of a referendum in two weeks time followed President Tayyip Erdogan’s calls to buy gold instead of dollars.

After the sharpest falls in the Turkish lira since the 2008 financial crisis last November, Erdogan called on Turks to sell dollars and buy lira or gold to prop up the local currency. Gold imports have been rising year-on-year ever since.

“People have started opting for gold rather than foreign currencies,” said Mehmet Ali Yildirimturk, a gold specialist in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, adding that a moderate recovery in the lira had also made gold more affordable again.

Gold imports to Turkey rose almost eightfold to 36.7 tons in December after Erdogan’s calls, their highest monthly level in just over two years, according to data from the Precious Mines and Metals Markets of the Istanbul bourse.

Prices in Turkey surged from 132 lira ($36) for 24-carat gold in January to 153 lira in February. On Tuesday, gold prices were around 148 liras.

Gold is seen as a safe place to park assets during times of uncertainty. Turkey holds a referendum on April 16 on constitutional changes which would significantly boost Erdogan’s powers, with polls suggesting a tight race.

($1 = 3.6664 liras)
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First Deadline Passes for Companies to Build Border Wall

The first phase of what is expected to be a lengthy and costly process to build additional segments of wall along the southwestern U.S. border ended as the deadline expired Tuesday afternoon for companies to pitch their ideas to the government.

The bidding process was to build 3-by-3-meter (10-by-10-foot) prototypes — some made of concrete, some of any other type of material — in San Diego, that the government will now evaluate for potential use along parts of the border, which stretches from southeast Texas to southwest California.

The government said it will spend two weeks selecting up to 20 competitors for a second round of competition for each type of wall. More than 400 companies showed interest in bidding, and several may win the chance to build the prototypes.

Phase two

If the schedule outlined by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is not delayed, the second phase will begin in mid-April, with companies submitting cost analyses and more specific design plans.

Construction on the prototypes could begin in June, according to bid documents.

The specifications for the wall indicate new portions could be as low as 5 meters or as high as 9 meters (18 feet and 30 feet) — “physically imposing in height,” and resistant to people chipping away at it, CBP described in a notice to interested contractors.

The process began in mid-March, pushed by President Donald Trump, who campaigned regularly on the idea of building a wall along the border. Fencing, walls, surveillance towers and other barriers — including natural, rugged terrain — already exist.

The overall length of the wall segments to be added to the border remain unclear. But they must be resistant to climbing and take more than 30 minutes to bore through, according to bid documents — enough time for border agents to locate the attempted breach.

They should also be “aesthetically pleasing in color” on the north, U.S.-facing side, the document specifies.

Other solutions

In a Congressional hearing Tuesday, two former CBP officials and a Texas professor testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about border fencing in the Southwest; they agreed with several senators that a wall is not the only solution to illegal migration across the border.

“There is not a one-size-fits-all for the border,” said David Aguilar, former acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

He advocated for increased resources for CBP in the area, while Terence Garrett, a professor from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, advocated for improving conditions in the so-called northern “triangle countries” — Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — to curb the number of aspiring migrants traveling north.

The ongoing bid process focuses exclusively on the wall, but Ron Colburn, former deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol who also worked on the Arizona-Mexico border, told senators Tuesday that border security combines multiple techniques that change depending on what area is in question.

“Without tactical infrastructure, it’s too weak. Without the right amount of manpower, it’s too weak. And without the right mix of technology, it’s too weak,” Colburn said. “The links in the chain have to be equally strong. And it has to be the right mix.”

“It’s not going to be the same in San Diego as in Rio Grande Valley, South Texas,” he added.

Paying for the wall

Trump promised to make Mexico pay for the wall, a proposal that country rebutted. Instead, the administration has requested that Congress approve $1.5 billion this year to start building a wall.

Estimates for the overall cost of adding miles of wall to the border are as high as $21.6 billion, according to a Reuters estimate, and that funding will require congressional approval.

Additionally, the government faces continued legal wrangling along the border to secure the land, often from private owners, to build additional barriers.
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Chilean Finance Minister Casts Doubt on Pension Reform Plans

The Chilean government’s plans to reform the country’s pension system will be in doubt if governing coalition members are unable to reach agreement among themselves on the design of any new legislation, the finance minister said on Tuesday.

Chile’s privatized pension system was started in the 1980s during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The so-called ‘Chilean model’ has been much copied and adopted worldwide.

But opposition to it is rising in Chile, with regular noisy street protests demanding changes. Opponents claim it forces workers to give their earnings to for-profit funds, called AFPs, and that the payouts are meager.

Center-left President Michelle Bachelet, now entering the last year of her four-year term, has pledged reform and set up a commission to look into the current system.

But differences of opinion among her increasingly divided coalition may make a new law impossible, Finance Minister Rodrigo Valdes said.

“[Bachelet] has not yet decided on the contents, or even if the bill will go ahead, because that will depend on what kind of consensus we can get,” he said in an interview with Radio Cooperativa.

Possible changes could include raising the contribution minimum to 15 percent from the current 10 percent. But there has been disagreement on whether that extra should go direct to workers who pay it or to a shared “solidarity fund.”

Lawmakers are also in disagreement on whether the extra cash should be administrated by the AFPs or a new state-run fund.

As Bachelet’s popularity has slid and differences emerged over other reforms such as abortion and labor, she has increasingly struggled to keep her coalition, ranging from centrist Christian Democrats to Communists, on the same page.

“If in doing something we are going to fight between ourselves, there is not much point,” Valdes said.
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