The Wisconsin Senate was poised to approve nearly $3 billion in cash payments for Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group on Tuesday, an unprecedented incentive package for the electronics company to locate a flat-screen factory in the state.

The proposed subsidy would be the largest ever from a U.S. state to a foreign company and 10 times bigger than anything Wisconsin has extended to a private business. It would take at least 25 years for Wisconsin to see a return on its investment, the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated.

Foxconn would receive $2.85 billion in cash payments over 15 years if it invests $10 billion in the state and employs 13,000 people. It could also qualify for $150 million in sales tax exemptions for construction equipment.

The Assembly, which like the Senate is firmly in GOP control, takes a final vote Thursday. The bill then goes to Gov. Scott Walker, who led negotiations on the deal and has a deadline to sign a bill by the end of the month.

Critics, including Democrats who don’t have the votes to stop it, say state taxpayers are giving up too much. They also question whether the state economic development agency, which has had trouble tracking much smaller projects, will be able to properly verify that the required investments are made and jobs created.

Walker and other supporters say Foxconn is giving the state a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a foothold in the world electronics market. Foxconn is the largest contract maker of electronics, best known for making iPhones, but with a long list of customers including Sony Corp., Dell Inc. and BlackBerry Ltd.

The Wisconsin plant would be the first outside of Asia to construct liquid crystal display panels for televisions, computers and other uses. Foxconn wants to open the factory by 2020 and initially employ 3,000 people.

Environmental groups and others concerned with the waiving of certain state regulations to speed construction of the plant have been threatening to file lawsuits. Foxconn would be allowed to build in wetland and waterways and construct its 20-million-square-foot (1.86-million -square-meter) campus without first doing an environmental impact statement.

Under the bill up for a vote Tuesday, Foxconn would enjoy a direct path to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on any legal challenges, skipping the state appeals court. The high court is controlled 5-2 by conservatives.

Foxconn is eyeing locations in Racine and Kenosha counties in southeastern Wisconsin, in between Milwaukee and Chicago, but has not yet announced where exactly it will build.
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Apple on Tuesday will unveil the new model of its popular iPhone, 10 years after then-CEO Steve Jobs showed the world the iPhone for the first time.

Leaks of the iPhone’s design suggest it will feature a higher resolution display, wireless charging and facial recognition technology, among other improvements.

The event Tuesday will take place at Apple’s “spaceship” office in California, though few actual details about the iPhone release are publicly available.

Predictions for the new high-end model, likely to be called the iPhone X, put the price around the $900 point, with some estimates reaching above $1,000. The previous iPhone 7 Plus sold for a top base price of $769.

Brian Blau, an Apple analyst at Gartner, told Reuters the steep price is driven by the need for more advanced parts, like 3D sensors and memory capacity.

“Some of these components are just darned expensive,” he said. “There is just no doubt about that.”

Apple has sold more than 1.2 billion iPhones since it first released the phone a decade ago, but the company took a huge hit to its revenue last year as many customers did not buy an iPhone 7 because they saw it as too similar to the iPhone 6.

With the release of its new phone, Apple hopes to recapture some of the early excitement surrounding its phones and convince critics the company is still on the cutting edge of tech innovation.

Apple is also expected to introduce a big upgrade to its Apple Watch and a higher-definition model of its Apple TV system, which allows users to stream online content.
…

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said at the end of a two-day visit to Algeria Monday that his country and the North African nation were working to achieve “equitable” oil prices.

Maduro said his talks with Algeria’s second-ranking official, Council of the Nation President Abdelkader Bensalah, had a “good climate.” The Council of the Nation operates like a Senate.

The Venezuelan leader apparently did not meet with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who rarely has been seen in public since he suffered a 2013 stroke.

Algeria and Venezuela both are members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The countries have struggled with low oil prices hitting their economies.

Maduro said he was visiting Algeria “to strengthen cooperation for the development of peace and economic prosperity,” according to Algeria’s official APS news agency.

OPEC and 11 non-OPEC oil producers agreed last year to reduce production until March 2018 to boost prices.

“We are continuing our efforts to obtain equitable oil prices for our industry,” APS quoted Maduro as saying. There was no elaboration.

Maduro also discussed bilateral relations with Algeria, which like Venezuela is a non-aligned nation, and the possibility of establishing an air route between Algiers and Caracas.

Bouteflika’s office had said in a statement that Maduro’s visit would look at “ways and means to consolidate” bilateral relations. It said talks were to address international issues of “common interest,” including the hydrocarbons market.

The United States has escalated its pressure on Venezuela as Maduro has consolidated power in recent months amid deadly protests.
…

International watchdog group Global Witness says powerful political elites and security forces have controlled and secretly exploited Zimbabwe’s diamond sector for a decade.

Zimbabwe’s dreaded Central Intelligence Organization and the military are among the state actors accused of holding stakes in private diamond enterprises, trading the country’s precious stones on the international market.

Global Witness says it examined the workings of five of the major diamond companies in Zimbabwe, and found they have actively worked to conceal their finances and beneficiaries.

“Lots and lots of diamonds’ revenue have clearly not ended up in the national budgets,” said Global Witness researcher Michael Gibb. “These resources have, unfortunately, ended up inside the security forces and institutions that have long been implicated in undermining Zimbabwe’s democracy and [committing] serious human rights abuses.”

Government officials declined comment when reached by VOA. Junior Mining Minister Fred Moyo said he could not comment on what he called the “historical part of Zimbabwe’s diamond mining.”

Zimbabwe discovered the diamond fields in 2006 in the eastern part of the country, Marange, and began mining operations three years later.

Meanwhile, the country’s economy has declined. Zimbabwe has no national currency, faces a severe cash shortage and is struggling to pay civil servants.

President Robert Mugabe announced in March 2016 that he was bringing the diamond industry under state control. The president blamed $13 billion in missing diamond revenue on private companies he accused of robbing the nation.

Global Witness said it is a “myth” to blame losses solely on private investors.

“The Marange [diamond] discovery was met with such hope and expectation that it would help the country charge away from [its] difficult economic situation. It is clear that such hope has been dashed,” Gibb said. “Reforms should focus less on how [many] companies are operating in Marange, whether one, five or 10. The people of Zimbabwe deserve to know how much companies are making from their diamonds, and where that money is going and how it is being spent.”

Spokesman Obert Gutu of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, welcomed the Global Witness report. 

“If those diamonds had been properly accounted for, the eastern border of Mutare would be our own Las Vegas of Zimbabwe,” he said. “But if you go to Mutare today, it is a ghost town just like any other city in Zimbabwe. Derelict infrastructure. You then ask yourself: Where has all the money gone?  Obviously, the money has been externalized and a few people have benefited at the expense of the nation of Zimbabwe.”

Mugabe’s nationalization of the diamond sector has not gone unchallenged. Court cases by the private companies ordered to stop work in March 2016 are ongoing. 

Global Witness says the diamond sector under the control of the new government-backed mining company remains shrouded in secrecy.
…

Apple is expected to sell its fanciest iPhone yet for $1,000, crossing into a new financial frontier that will test how much consumers are willing to pay for a device that’s become an indispensable part of modern life.

The unveiling of a dramatically redesigned iPhone will likely be the marquee moment Tuesday when Apple hosts its first product event at its new spaceship-like headquarters in Cupertino, California. True to its secretive ways, Apple won’t confirm that it will be introducing a new iPhone, though a financial forecast issued last month telegraphed something significant is in the pipeline.

In addition to several new features, a souped-up “anniversary” iPhone – coming a decade after Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the first version – could also debut at an attention-getting $999 price tag, twice what the original iPhone cost. It would set a new price threshold for any smartphone intended to appeal to a mass market.

What $1,000 bucks will buy

Various leaks have indicated the new phone will feature a sharper display, a so-called OLED screen that will extend from edge to edge of the device, thus eliminating the exterior gap, or “bezel,” that currently surrounds most phone screens.

It may also boast facial recognition technology for unlocking the phone and wireless charging. A better camera is a safe bet, too.

All those features have been available on other smartphones that sold for less than $1,000, but Apple’s sense of design and marketing flair has a way of making them seem irresistible – and worth the extra expense.

“Apple always seems to take what others have done and do it even better,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies.

Why phones cost more, not less

Apple isn’t the only company driving up smartphone prices. Market leader Samsung Electronics just rolled out its Galaxy Note 8 with a starting price of $930.

The trend reflects the increasing sophistication of smartphones, which have been evolving into status symbols akin to automobiles. In both cases, many consumers appear willing to pay a premium price for luxury models that take them where they want to go in style.

“Calling it a smartphone doesn’t come close to how people use it, view it and embrace it in their lives,” said Debby Ruth, senior vice president of the consumer research firm Magid. “It’s an extension of themselves, it’s their entry into the world, it’s their connection to their friends.”

From that perspective, it’s easy to understand why some smartphones now cost more than many kinds of laptop computers, said technology analyst Patrick Moorhead.

“People now value their phones more than any other device and, in some cases, even more than food and sex,” Moorhead said.

The luxury-good challenge

Longtime Apple expert Gene Munster, now managing partner at research and venture capital firm Loup Ventures, predicts 20 percent of the iPhones sold during the next year will be the new $1,000 model.

Wireless carriers eager to connect with Apple’s generally affluent clientele are likely to either sell the iPhone at a discount or offer appealing subsidies that spread the cost of the device over two to three years to minimize the sticker shock, said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research.

Even Munster’s sales forecast holds true, it still shows most people either can’t afford or aren’t interested in paying that much for a smartphone.

That’s one reason Apple also is expected to announce minor upgrades to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. That will make it easier for Apple to create several different pricing tiers, with the oldest model possibly becoming available for free with a wireless contract.

But the deluxe model virtually assures that the average price of the iPhone – now at $606 versus $561 three years ago – will keep climbing. That runs counter to the usual tech trajectory in which the price of electronics, whether televisions or computers, falls over time.

“The iPhone has always had a way of defying the law of physics,” Munster said, “and I think it will do it in spades with this higher priced one.”

WATCH: Related video report by tech reporter George Putic
…

Hurricane Irma’s path of destruction up Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sunday threatens to disrupt a thriving state tourism industry worth more than $100 billion annually just months ahead of the busy winter travel season.

Some of the state’s biggest attractions have announced temporary closures, including amusement park giants Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios, Legoland and Sea World, which all planned to close through Monday.

About 20 cruise lines have Miami as a home port or a port of call, according to the PortMiami website, and many have had to move ships out of the area and revise schedules.

Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean have canceled and revised several sailings as a result of the storm and have offered credits and waivers on trips where passengers are unable to travel.

A Carnival spokesman said the situation in Florida on Sunday was still not clear enough to fully assess how widespread the effects will be.

“We will know more in the hours ahead since the hurricane is active in Florida right now,” spokesman Roger Frizzell said.

Irma made a second Florida landfall on Sunday on southwestern Marco Island as a Category 3 storm bringing winds of 115 miles per hour (185 kph) and life-threatening sea surge.

Disney canceled the Monday sailing of one of its cruise ships and said it is assessing future sailings, which stop throughout the Caribbean and in the Bahamas.

Florida is one of the world’s top tourism destinations. Last year nearly 113 million people visited the state, a new record, and spent $109 billion, state officials said earlier this year.

The first half of 2017 was on track to beat that record pace, officials said.

The damage Irma’s winds and storm surge do to Florida’s 660 miles (1,060 km) of beaches and the structures built along them during more than 30 years of explosive population growth will be critical to how quickly the state’s ‘s No. 1 industry recovers.

The Gulf beaches west of St. Petersburg and Clearwater,  are squarely in the storm’s path.

In 2016, more than 6.3 million people visited Pinellas County, which encompasses those cities, and generated more $9.7 billion in economic activity.

Up and down the wide, sandy beaches of Pinellas County are traditional “old Florida” waterfront hotels such as the Don Cesar, a coral pink 1920s hotel on St. Pete Beach, which was closed by the storm. There are also modern high-rises and resorts that are part of the nation’s biggest chains and brands including Hyatt Hotels, Marriott International, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Hilton Hotels & Resorts and Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

The low-lying barrier islands would be inundated if Irma’s storm surge reaches forecast heights of as high as 15 feet (4.6 meters).

While some newer structures in the area are built on elevated pilings, many older homes and businesses are not.
…

The White House’s decision this week to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries: The undocumented young people who were brought to the United States as children.

But the cost, which is difficult to quantify for a workforce faced with the real possibility of losing their job and forced to leave the country, is evident to employers, who largely view both the moral and economic implications of ending the program as intertwined.

“Losing [the economic contributions of DACA recipients] is a direct cost,” said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of Partnership for New York City, which represents the city’s business leadership. She said the state’s DACA workforce contributes several billion dollars a year to the local economy.

WATCH: DACA Repeal to Cost U.S. Businesses, Economy Billions

“It’s also a signal to the rest of the world that somehow America is no longer a place that is embracing talent and hard work and the energy of immigrants,” Wylde told VOA. “That message has a ripple effect in terms of hurting recruitment efforts by our major companies, because they need talent — multilingual talent — from all over the world.”

Employers bear the brunt

To date, more than 400 U.S. entrepreneur and business leaders have signed an open letter that calls on U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress to preserve DACA and provide a permanent solution that ensures recipients’ ability to continue working legally in the country without risk of deportation.

“Our economy would lose $460.3 billion from the national GDP and $24.6 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions,” the letter reads, referencing research conducted by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, over a 10-year period.

The conservative-leaning CATO Institute places that figure at $280 billion.

​Lose-lose

Following the announcement of DACA’s repeal, the White House suggested unemployed American workers might somehow benefit, based solely on the age of the workforce.

“There are over 4 million unemployed Americans in the same age group as those that are DACA recipients,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

“Over 950,000 of those are African-Americans in the same age group; over 870,000 unemployed Hispanics in the same age group. Those are large groups of people that are unemployed that could possibly have those jobs,” Sanders said.

But economists and immigration analysts find fault with Sanders’ argument: The native-born unemployed population is not a perfect substitute for the DACA workforce, and the displacement of one worker for another does not increase productivity.

Under the repeal of DACA, CATO estimated employers would incur $6.3 billion in turnover costs, a figure that includes the recruiting, hiring and training of 720,000 new employees in often highly skilled positions. Thirty-six percent of DACA recipients 25 and older hold a bachelor’s or advanced degree.

Many DACA recipients “are highly educated and working in positions such as health care and education, where they are more highly paid and therefore more productive,” said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at CATO Institute. “[Those are] the industries where you’re going to see a greater impact as a result of this forced turnover caused by the DACA repeal.”

“Contracting the labor force, kicking people out of the country, will not create jobs. It will just shrink the overall size of the economy,” Bier said.

Over the long term, Wylde said, failing to find a permanent solution for DACA workers would inhibit U.S. businesses’ ability to compete.

“We want to be at the forefront of the attraction and support of our talent,” she said. “We don’t want to be deporting them.”
…

The White House’s decision to repeal DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries who arrived in the U.S. as children. Over the next two years, more than 700,000 employed recipients will find themselves without a job. And for their employers, laying off a qualified workforce carries not only moral implications, but billions in lost revenue and an overall reduction in U.S. economic growth. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports.
…

Two back-to-back storms will have a significant impact on U.S. growth and productivity, according to economists tracking the impact of Hurricanes Harvey in Texas, and Irma — expected to make landfall in Florida this weekend. Despite the potential catastrophic loss in lives and capital, economists who spoke with VOA say the damage to the U.S. economy is likely to be short-lived. Mil Arcega has more.
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The U.S. credit monitoring company Equifax is facing a storm of criticism, lawsuits and investigations after a data breach that may have compromised personal data for about 143 million Americans.

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Friday that his office would formally investigate the data breach, saying that more than 8 million New Yorkers had been affected by the hack.

“The Equifax breach has potentially exposed sensitive personal information of nearly everyone with a credit report, and my office intends to get to the bottom of how and why this massive hack occurred,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

Illinois’ attorney general also opened an investigation into the data breach, and more states are likely to follow suit.

Also Friday, U.S. Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he would call for congressional hearings on the Equifax breach.

Two proposed class-action lawsuits, one filed in Portland, Oregon, and another in Atlanta, Georgia, alleged that Equifax had been negligent in protecting consumer data.

Stock price slides

Investors were also showing their displeasure about the hack by dropping their stock in the company. Equifax’s share price fell more than 13 percent in trading Friday, to $123.32. The decline equates to more than $2 billion in lost market value.

The Atlanta company said Thursday that the hackers had obtained names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses of more than 40 percent of the U.S. population.

“Based on the company’s investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017,” the company said in a statement.

The company said credit card numbers were also compromised for 209,000 U.S. consumers, as were credit dispute accounts for 182,000 people.

Equifax discovered the hack July 29 but waited until Thursday to warn consumers.

Although other cyberattacks have been bigger than this one, such as a data breach at Yahoo last year that affected more than 500 million accounts, this one could be the most damaging because of the type of data collected.

Equifax is one the largest credit-reporting companies in the United States.
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The combined damage from Hurricanes Irma and Harvey could cut U.S. economic growth by one-third for a few months, according to business analytics firm IHS Markit.

Bankrate.com’s Mark Hamrick said, however, that analysts wouldn’t know for sure until Irma passed. He said Harvey alone might cut growth by half of a percent in the third quarter.

As far as the impact from Irma, “No doubt it is a substantial negative,” said Hamrick.   

Florida accounts for about 5 percent of the the U.S. gross domestic product and 6 percent of U.S. jobs. PNC Bank Chief Economist Gus Faucher said U.S. economic growth might briefly slow in the third quarter because of Harvey and Irma, but that he thought it would bounce back late this year and early next year.

“Obviously, there is destruction in the near term, there are people who lose their jobs in the near term, but then there’s a lot of activity following that, so we have more jobs as reconstruction funds flow in from insurance payments and federal aid. So there’s a lot of rebuilding to expect,” said Faucher.

Jim Baird of the Plante Moran financial firm told VOA that storm damage to the national economy could be significant but temporary. He said post-storm rebuilding with more modern facilities might increase productivity, which could reduce the “sting” of economic loss a bit.

Commonwealth Financial Network’s Brad McMillan said previous major stiorms like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy caused huge local problems, though they did not change the national economy in a “fundamental” way. He noted that the recovery in this case might take “longer than usual.”

Real estate experts said Hurricane Irma’s winds threatened 8.5 million homes and businesses in Florida. The data analysis firm CoreLogic said storm surges — floodwaters driven by high winds and low pressure — also might endanger 3.5 million commercial and residential buildings.

Standard & Poor’s analysts said they were still adding up the costs of Hurricane Harvey, but that Irma seemed likely to cost even more. Researchers at Barclays Bank said hurricane claims costs might rise high enough to wipe out a year of earnings for certain insurance companies.  

Hurricane Irma also is hurting airlines, which have canceled 4,600 flights to and from airports in the Caribbean and Florida, according to FlightAware.com. Bad weather was forcing Miami to stop operating Friday and Orlando to end flights on Saturday. Together, these major airports handle about 2,000 flights on normal days.

Online Hotel adviser Kelsey Blodget said airport closures would hurt the tourism and hospitality trades.
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In Rwanda, less than 15 percent of the population has access to electricity. In rural areas, it can be as low as one percent.

In order to increase Rwanda’s energy capacity, a 17-hectare solar field with 28,000 panels was constructed in six months in 2014 by private power companies.

It is East Africa’s first large-scale commercial solar field, bringing in 8.5 megawatts of power at its peak — four percent of the country’s total power capacity. The project has brought power to more than 15,000 homes.

“We are living in the world and we have to contribute or to eradicate or eliminate polluting the atmosphere,” said Twaha Twagirimana, plant supervisor for Scatec Solar, which operates the project. “We need energy, and we need clean energy.”

Twagirimana said this investment in solar power is a step toward reducing global warming. Rwanda’s power grid relies heavily on diesel fuel, which is expensive and bad for the environment.

According to Scatec Solar, the solar field reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 8,000 tons per year.

Orphanage land

Private homes aren’t the only ones to benefit from the project. The solar panels are on land owned by the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village.

The choice of the site, about 60 kilometers from the capital, Kigali, was no accident. The rent paid for the land helps vulnerable children and young adults who were orphaned during or after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

About 500 young Rwandans live, study and play on the 144-acre residential community.

Mediatilice Kaytitesi, the community’s art center and theater coordinator, says she uses art to help youth cope with their losses.

“It’s something that can help open the mind of the kids,” she said. “Some draw tears, which means they have the tears in their hearts, their wounds. You can see their expressions.”

Pascal Atismani Claudien lost his father in 2006 and his mother in 2010. He said he doesn’t exactly know why they died — just that they were sick.

“When I have a problem, I take a paper and a pencil and draw and that problem goes away. When I have stress, I draw or paint,” said Claudien, who is starting his final year of high school at the village. “And when I am painting or drawing, I feel very happy.”

The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village was modeled after similar ones built for orphans in Israel after the Holocaust. In the Rwandan language of Kinyarwanda, Agahozo means “tears are dried.” In Hebrew, Shalom means peace. 

“The mission was really to help bring back all the children who have lost parents and siblings and everything in their lives, to try to recreate the next best family that these children should have had, had their parents been alive,” explained Jean-Claude Nkulikiyimfura, the youth village’s executive director.

Claudien said he considers it more of a family than a school. “That’s why we call each other brothers and sisters,” he said.

Learning engineering

During his time at the school, Claudien visited the nearby solar panels and learned from the staff about how Rwanda’s largest solar field is positively impacting the country. He, himself, is from a small village with limited access to electricity.

About 50 students also received technical training at the solar field on engineering and solar technology to encourage them to work in green jobs in the future. 

The construction of the nearly $24 million solar field employed more than 350 Rwandan workers.

Gigawatt Global developed the project with early-stage funding from the U.S. government’s Power Africa initiative.

“Rwanda had the right leadership and the right conditions to be really the test case and the positive fruits of concept for the entire sub-Saharan Africa for commercial scale solar,” said Yosef Abramowitz, the CEO and founder of Gigawatt Global.

About 600 million Africans don’t have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.

Rwanda’s government aspires to nearly triple its power capacity by the end of 2018, through renewable power sources like methane, hydro, mini-hydro, peat, thermal and more solar fields. 

In 2016, Rwanda partnered with developer Ignite Power to provide rooftop solar to 250,000 houses by the end of next year. Users will pay about $5 per month for the solar power system in a rent-to-own model.

Efforts like this will go toward the Rwandan government’s goal of bringing power to 70 percent of households.

Abramowitz said he’s convinced “solar is the future of Africa.” His firm wants to replicate this model throughout sub-Saharan Africa, increasing energy capacity while also benefiting the social good.

“There’s every reason in the world — economic, social and political — that solar should be the main generation source of energy on the continent,” he said.
…

With Republicans in Congress under pressure to deliver on taxes, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday the GOP plan will aim to reduce the corporate tax rate to low- to mid-20 percent — a smaller cut than what President Donald Trump wants.

Ryan provided some specifics as the Republicans start to write legislation overhauling the tax system, with help for the middle class a main goal. He spoke as Congress was consumed with providing billions of dollars in relief for hurricane-ravaged Texas, and prospectively for Florida, and with addressing the plight of immigrants facing possible deportation as a result of Trump’s decision to end an Obama-era program for young immigrants.

Trump, who made overhauling taxes a pillar of his push for economic growth, has called for a 15 percent tax rate for corporations. The rate now ranges from 15 percent to 35 percent. The average tax rate paid by corporations is around 19 percent to 25 percent, according to the Treasury Department and congressional analysts.

Some experts say a 15 percent rate isn’t possible without blowing a hole in the deficit.

Ryan recognized that as he discussed a higher range during an appearance at a New York Times forum. “Numbers are hard to make that work,” he said.

A popular idea among lawmakers is to reduce tax rates for both individuals and corporations, and make up the lost revenue by eliminating special-interest loopholes. But even if Congress eliminated nearly every tax break enjoyed by corporations, it would raise only enough revenue to lower the corporate tax rate to 28.5 percent, according to an analysis by Scott Greenberg, a senior analyst at the conservative Tax Foundation.

Ryan expects tax legislation to pass Congress this year.

“This is our No. 1 priority this fall,” he said at a Capitol Hill news conference later Thursday. “It’s about growth. It’s about fairness. It’s about finally giving American families a tax break.”

Revising the nation’s tax system for the first time in three decades is a GOP priority in the wake of the collapse of efforts to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

But Hurricane Harvey and Trump’s decision to rescind a program protecting some 800,000 immigrants from deportation have saddled Congress with new challenges. When Trump blocked the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, created by Obama through administrative action in 2012, he gave Congress six months to act.

To ensure money for hurricane relief, Trump overruled congressional Republicans and his own treasury secretary Wednesday to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government operating and raise the U.S. debt limit.

The already compressed timetable for coming up with an overhaul of the tax system came under further pressure with Congress’ additional and urgent workload.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday he thinks “it’s still very viable to get it done this year.”

“We’ve made a lot of progress” in talks with GOP congressional leaders, Mnuchin said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria.” “Our objective is to get this done.”

Asked whether he was worried about a revolt by Republicans in Congress if a tax overhaul isn’t achieved, Mnuchin said, “I’m not worried about any GOP revolt at all. You know we’ve been meeting with them on the tax plan. We have an understanding on this tax plan.”

The head of the House tax-writing committee also rejected suggestions that the tax overhaul could get sidelined by Congress’ pressing new priorities. “I don’t think it changes the trajectory or the timing,” Rep. Kevin Brady, the Texas Republican who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, told reporters.

Brady declined to comment specifically on Ryan’s low- to mid-20 percent range for corporate taxes. “We’re trying to drive those rates as low as we can,” he said.

Not only will tax legislation pass by year end, but it will provide for retroactive tax cuts back to the start of 2017, predicted the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney.

“If you stop to think what the priorities are right now for the administration, No. 1 priority is Houston, No. 2 is Florida, and the No. 3 is the tax reform package,” Mulvaney said on Fox Business Network’s “Cavuto Coast to Coast.”

So “clearing the decks” first on hurricane aid with Trump’s debt limit deal was the right way to proceed, he said.
…

About 143 million Americans could be affected by a cyberattack on the credit monitoring company Equifax.

The Atlanta-based company said Thursday the hackers obtained names, social security numbers, birth dates, addresses of more than 40 percent of the U.S. population.

“Based on the company’s investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017,” the company said in a statement.

The company said credit card numbers were also compromised for some 209,000 U.S. consumers, as were credit dispute accounts for 182,000 people.

Additionally, limited personal information was also compromised for some in Britain and Canada.

Equifax said it doesn’t believe that any consumers from other countries were affected.

The company has established a website to enable consumers to determine if they are affected and will be offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to customers.

Equifax is one the largest credit-reporting companies in the U.S.
…

Germany’s BMW is gearing up to mass produce electric cars by 2020 and will to have 12 different models by 2025, it said on Thursday, as traditional manufacturers race to catch up with U.S. electric car pioneer Tesla.

Car buyers shunned electric vehicles because of their high cost and limited operating range until Tesla unveiled the Model S in 2012, a car that cracked the 200 mile (322 km) range barrier on a single charge.

Since then, big advances in battery technology and a global crackdown on pollution in the wake of Volkswagen’s diesel scandal have raised pressure on carmakers to speed up development of zero-emission alternatives.

BMW, which launched the i3 electric car in 2013, said it was now readying its factories to mass produce electric cars by 2020 if demand for battery driven vehicles takes off.

“By 2025, we will offer 25 electrified vehicles — 12 will be fully-electric,” Chief Executive Harald Krueger told journalists in Munich, adding the electric cars would have a range of up to 700 km (435 miles).

It marks a significant foray by a major manufacturer into electrification. BMW, which includes the Mini and Rolls-Royce brands and sold 2.34 million cars last year, announced the move on the day smaller rival Jaguar said it would offer electric or hybrid variants of all its models by 2020.

On Wednesday, Nissan unveiled a new version of its Leaf electric vehicle in its latest move to take on Tesla, the U.S. firm co-founded by Elon Musk that sold 83,922 vehicles last year.

Rolls-Royce

Traditional carmakers have been slow to embrace the electric vehicle market because it remains unprofitable, largely due to the cost of batteries which make up between 30 percent and 50 percent of the cost of an electric vehicle.

A battery pack with 60 kWh capacity and 500 km range costs around $14,000 today, compared with a gasoline engine that costs around $5,000. Add to that the $2,000 for the electric motor and the inverter, and the gap is even wider.

But capacity investments into the battery sector may bring down costs of electric vehicles to a “tipping point” when they reach parity with combustion-engine equivalents some time between 2020 and 2030, according to analysts at Barclays.

With cities threatening to ban combustion-engine vehicles or to tax diesel cars more heavily, the total cost of ownership of electric cars could drop below their combustion-engine equivalents, and Europe could become a 100 percent pure battery electric vehicle market by 2035, according to analysts at ING.

The Frankfurt motor show, starting next week, will be used by BMW to unveil a new four-door electric car positioned between the i3 city car and the i8 hybrid sportscar, Krueger said.

“We will be increasing the share of electrified models across all brands and model series. And, yes, that also includes the Rolls-Royce brand and BMW M vehicles,” he said.

German rivals will also be showing electric cars, with Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz brand unveiling the EQA, a concept mass market electric car, Volkswagen taking the wraps off the ID Crozz.

Aside from vehicle cost, a key obstacle to making electric cars popular is the amount of time it takes to recharge, and a lack of charging stations.

London needs to spend 10 billion euros ($12 billion) to get charging infrastructure to a level where retail buyers can practically own an electric car, consultancy AlixPartners has said. Almost none of that spending has been earmarked so far.

($1 = 0.8331 euros)
…

A Belgium-based start-up is on its way to making the world a bit sunnier, by printing the first 3-D sunglasses out of recycled plastic.

The Antwerp-based company w.r.yuma – pronounced “We are Yuma” and named after one of the sunniest places on earth – began a month-long online crowd-sourcing campaign on Kickstarter on Wednesday.

After two years of prototyping and testing different materials, it promises to transform old car dashboards, soda bottles, fridges and other plastic waste into different colored shades.

“It’s the icon of cool, really, and when you wear, literally you are looking to the world through a different set of lenses, and that’s exactly the message that I want to bring,” Founder Sebastiaan de Neubourg said of the company, named after Yuma, Arizona.

“I want to inspire people to have, quite literally, another look at waste.”

The plastic waste is sourced from the Netherlands and Belgium’s Flemish region. The waste is fed into the 3-D printer, melted to form thin strands of plastic wire and layered together to construct the frames.

These are then assembled by hand and fitted with Italian made Mazzuchelli lenses.

Marketing schemes include setting up stands at music festivals to transform plastic drinking cups into sunglasses on the spot.

The company is also making a limited number of soda white sunglasses made from 90 percent recycled PET plastic from soda bottles.

It is also inviting would-be clients to return the glasses once they are done with them to be turned into a new pair of glasses.

“The idea … [is] also to make sure that the materials eventually come back to us in a closed loop system,” de Neubourg said.

With five unique designs and three colours of lenses to choose from, de Neubourg is trying to make sustainable recycling fashionable and useful. The sunglasses will be shipped to customers in January 2018.

“I think that sustainability should become mainstream,” said de Neubourg, a former mechanical engineer for a sustainability consultancy.

“We’re not going to solve the plastic waste problem by just taking this plastic and putting it in sunglasses, but it’s a first step. … I want to touch a lot of people with that message.”
…

With a new sanctions package under international consideration following North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test last week, analysts say China still appears reluctant to support an oil cutoff, a measure that could trigger destabilization of the Kim Jong Un regime.

Speaking at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council called after Pyongyang on Sunday tested what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb that can fit onto an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Monday that the U.S. is running out of patience with Kim, who is “begging for war.” She said only the strongest sanctions would allow a resolution of the growing nuclear threat through diplomacy.

Haley said the 15 Security Council members would negotiate a new draft resolution of tougher sanctions this week and push for a vote next Monday.

It has been just more than a month since the Security Council adopted a sanctions resolution in the wake of the regime’s two long-range ICBM tests, conducted in July, aiming to slash a third of Pyongyang’s $3 billion annual export revenue by banning coal, iron, lead and seafood. What remains untapped that has the potential to stifle Pyongyang’s nuclear pursuits is cutting off its supplies of oil and other fuels.

Draft resolution

The U.S. draft resolution of new U.N. sanctions, obtained by VOA Wednesday, calls for a ban on the sale of oil, as well as refined petroleum products and natural gas liquids, to North Korea.

Support from China and Russia is critical to impose an oil embargo on North Korea. The two countries are not only permanent members of the Security Council but also major energy exporters to the reclusive country.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday resisted the idea of blocking oil shipments to the North as a punishment for the regime’s continued development of nuclear weapons and as a way to force the country back to the negotiating table.

Beijing, from which Pyongyang imports nearly all of its oil and gas, has yet to indicate its position on such a measure, only reiterating its support of peaceful negotiations.

“The leverage [the Chinese] have on crude oil is immense,” Joseph DeTrani, former special envoy for Six-Party Talks with North Korea, told VOA’s Korean Service.

DeTrani said the consequence of severing China’s oil supplies to North Korea would be disastrous — the crumbling of an already fragile North Korean economy followed by the implosion and destabilization of the regime.

Despite China’s strained relations with Pyongyang in recent years, the odds of Beijing publicly backing oil sanctions seem remote, he added.

“China doesn’t have a great relationship with North Korea … but they do have a peace and friendship treaty that goes back to 1961,” said the former envoy, in reference to The Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. “China doesn’t want to make North Korea a total enemy. They want to have some leverage. They don’t want to totally alienate the leadership in Pyongyang.”

Fine line for China

Richard Bush, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, said Beijing walks a fine line between taking punitive measures against Pyongyang for its provocative acts and providing enough resources to the regime, allowing it to survive.

As Bush puts it, China wants to prove that it is “a real tiger” to Kim, who has ignored its advice to show restraint and proceeded with various weapons tests.

But at the same time, China worries that imposing a blockade on oil to North Korea could put the country in danger of collapse. China, which shares a border with North Korea, not only fears a refugee crisis if the regime fails, but also values North Korea as a strategic buffer between China and South Korea, where the U.S. maintains a large military presence.

It is likely China would try to create some flexibility when considering new sanctions, such as setting a ceiling for North Korea’s annual oil imports or pushing forward a graduated approach to restrictions on crude oil, Bush suggested.

“This would be in the hope that flexibility on the part of the international community would lead to flexibility on North Korea’s part,” he added. “But I don’t think that’s going to work.

“China doesn’t want to be seen as sort of totally being dictated to by the United States. It wants to preserve its own freedom of action and flexibility, but at the same time be responsive to the concern of the international community about where North Korea is going. So I would look for some sort of intermediate position,” Bush said.

With the latest nuclear test producing an estimated explosive yield of 120 kilotons,10 times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb test a year ago, the Chinese are concerned about the level of threat North Korea poses to their country, said Yun Sun, a China expert at the Stimson Center in Washington.

Nevertheless, there has been no indication from China that it is willing to cut off its oil supply to North Korea at this time, Sun said, adding it could instead move to place oil exports under a “humanitarian” exception during U.N. Security Council negotiations.

“So if China categorically put oil supply and put the food assistance to North Korea under the humanitarian catalog, then I think it will be very tricky for countries to demand China to cut the supply because the Chinese will argue that those are for humanitarian purpose,” Sun said.

Margaret Besheer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
…

With child labor soaring in Lebanon following the outbreak of war in Syria, the United Nations published Wednesday the first guide in Arabic to help farmers and officials seeking to protect them from risks like sexual abuse and injury.

Children as young as 5, largely Syrian refugees and poor Lebanese, are missing out on school and harming their health by working on farms, especially in remote, rural regions like the Beqaa, it said.

“Abuse and exploitation is widespread,” Frank Hagemann, the International Labor Organization’s deputy director for Arab states told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

More than 9 million, or almost one in 10 children in the Middle East and North Africa, are child laborers, mostly working in agriculture, ILO  data show.

“It has been fueled by the refugee influx, by the need of refugee families to earn a livelihood, by their economic misery,” Hagemann said.

Lebanon has more than 1 million Syrian refugees, including nearly 500,000 children, after a government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2011 led to civil war, and Islamic State militants used the chaos to seize territory in Syria and Iraq.

The guide, co-written with the Food and Agriculture Organization, includes information on the risks child laborers face — for example, sexual abuse, contamination from pesticides and missing out on their right to education.
…

One of China’s biggest textile mills is planning its first North American factory in a small town in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas.

Forrest City, located near the Mississippi River, is where the Chinese textile giant Shandong Ruyi plans a $410 million investment to spin yarn at a factory where local workers once built Japanese televisions.

Mayor Larry Bryant says the company is already working on training at the local community college.

“I think everybody is happy,” Bryant said. “Everybody is waiting. If they would tell people tomorrow to come out to fill out applications, they would have thousands.”

Ruyi’s project will consume 200,000 bales of Arkansas cotton annually, nearly all the cotton the state grows each year. So Arkansas Economic Development Commission Executive Director Mike Preston expects a surge of new planting.

“That’s going to turn around and put money back in their pockets and the people they employ as well as anyone in between, people who are baling the cotton, transporting and bringing it to facility and anyone transporting out,” he said. “So the supply chain on a company like this, a project like this is exponential.”

Some Chinese investors in the U.S. face challenges from labor unions amid claims of workplace culture clashes.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who has brought nearly $2 billion worth of Chinese investment to his state, says there are always cultural differences to work through.

“There are things we can learn from China entrepreneurship and China workers, how they do things and say, ‘Hey, it’s a great idea that we ought to adopt here.’ And vice versa,” Hutchinson said. “I think you will see that China’s business leaders will see some very good practices that we have that they may want to adopt. I see this as a great win for both sides whenever we have those exchanges.”

The owner of a local barbecue restaurants expects the new Chinese bosses to receive a warm welcome in Forrest City.

“It can’t do anything but help, not only my business, but all the businesses,” said Pierre Evans, owner of Delta Q Barbecue. “That influx of income and influx of money is going to be a big impact to a small community like this.”

Local leaders are especially encouraged by the company’s promise to create 800 jobs and offer wages of more than $15 an hour. That’s nearly double the minimum wage in a community that has been struggling economically for decades.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump is making a new push Wednesday for a tax overhaul, visiting the midwestern state of North Dakota to call for lower corporate and individual tax rates.

Trump is pressing Congress to approve tax reforms in the coming months, with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin predicting that changes can be completed by the end of the year.

But tax legislation is one of several complicated issues Congress is facing and Republican and Democratic lawmakers have sharply divergent ideas of how to change the country’s complex tax code.

Trump plans to meet with workers at an oil refinery in North Dakota, a largely rural state along the northern U.S. border with Canada. The White House said Trump would make the case that one of the country’s last major tax overhauls, in 1986, also occurred under a Republican president like Trump, Ronald Reagan, with support from Democratic lawmakers.

North Dakota Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp is traveling with the president on Air Force One to her state, and Trump is hoping she will join at least a handful of other Democrats to support a tax overhaul. With Trump’s national voter approval rates mired in the 30-percent range, Democratic lawmakers in Washington have shunned Trump’s legislative initiatives, mostly notably his efforts to dismantle national health care policies championed by former president Barack Obama.

Specific tax changes

Trump’s tax pitch is the second he has made in a week on trips to states he won in last year’s contentious election against Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State. But like his speech in Missouri last week, Trump is expected to steer clear of specific tax changes he wants.

Trump has continued to call for a national corporate tax rate cut from 35 to 15 percent, a figure most U.S. economists say is unreachable without adding a new tax of some sort to offset the lost revenue the government needs to operate.

As he prepared for the North Dakota trip, Trump again made the inaccurate claim the United States is “the highest taxed nation in the world.” Numerous studies of tax rates around the globe show that by various measures, U.S. taxation is relatively low compared to that in other developed countries.

The World Economic Forum said U.S. business taxes do not rate among the world’s top 27 countries, all of which have total rates above 50 percent. The top U.S. rate, including additional state corporate taxes, totals nearly 39 percent, but corporations often pay far less after deducting their business expenses.

Trump met with top Republican congressional leaders Tuesday about taxes, telling them, “If we’re going to keep momentum going and allow the economy to truly take off as it should, it is vital that we reduce crushing tax burden on our companies and on our workers.

“This is more than just tax reform. This is tax cutting,” Trump said. “We’re going to cut taxes, we’re going to reduce taxes, for people, for individuals, for middle income families. We’re going to reduce taxes for companies.”

Trump has feuded with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell in recent months over the Senate’s failure to overhaul U.S. health care policies.

But McConnell praised Trump’s commitment to the tax overhaul, saying he was “very engaged on this issue.”

 
…

One of China’s biggest textile mills is planning its first North American factory in a small town in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas. VOA’s Ping Zhang went to have a look at local expectations and the promise of new jobs.
…

The second round of talks on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement ended Tuesday amid resistance to discussing Mexico’s low wages and large differences over dispute resolution mechanisms.

The head negotiators for all three countries at the talks in Mexico City said progress had been made, but U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer said some areas were going to be challenging.

“There’s no secret that the labor provisions will be contentious and that it’s our objective to have provisions that raise wage rates in Mexico,” Lighthizer said. “I think that’s in the interest of Mexicans and in the interest of the United States.”

He also said that while the U.S. had proposed eliminating the current dispute resolution mechanism, “we haven’t had any detailed negotiations” on the system, which is known as Chapter 19.

Text was coming together for most chapters of the treaty, however, including small and medium enterprises, competitiveness, digital trade, services and the environment.

“The strategy is to conclude in the short term those things that can be concluded” and then tackle the thornier issues, Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo said.

Regarding energy, Guajardo said “there are no points of difference or controversy.” He said the main question was whether it should have its own chapter or be spread across all chapters.

But those close to the talks said relatively few concrete proposals appear to have been made on contentious issues like dispute-resolution mechanisms, seasonal farm tariffs and regional content rules.

The United States wants to eliminate the Chapter 19 private arbitration panels, while Canada wants to keep them. The panels can overrule tariffs, making it harder for the United States to unilaterally block products.

“It is clear that there are differing positions on Chapter 19,” Guajardo said.

Produce growers, many of whom have operations in all three countries, said they like the current dispute resolution system. They said changing it might force them to adjudicate disputes in courts in one of the three countries, a prospect they don’t relish.

“I think industries across all three countries have found Chapter 19 to be an effective, timely method for dealing with disputes,” said the head of the United Fresh Produce Association, Thomas Stenzel. Repealing it “could certainly make it a much more complicated, legalistic process.”

The U.S. also wants to tighten labor standards and local content rules in products like autos. But business groups want to keep wages out of the talks. Lighthizer declined to go into detail on either of those topics.

“I think mandating wages becomes very difficult across multiple countries,” said Stenzel. “Within the trade agreement itself we believe that the workers’ standards of fair treatment, addressing forced labor, child labor, those issues, is appropriate. But when it comes to wages we don’t feel that that is as appropriate in the trade agreement.”

Mexico has drawn plants and investments by capitalizing on low wages and weak union rules, and Mexican business and labor leaders appear to be resistant to any attempt to tighten labor standards or ensure that Mexican wages rise.

Mexican and Canadian auto unions have said in a report that Mexican autoworkers earn about $3.95 an hour, which is about one-ninth of average wages north of the border.

The United States also wants to increase minimum levels of regional content in products like autos, so that fewer parts are imported from Asia or Europe, assembled in Mexico and labelled “made in North America.”

As for seasonal anti-dumping tariffs, Stenzel said growers don’t like the idea though that proposal appears not to have been formalized yet. Such measures seek to protect producers like tomato growers in Florida against surges in Mexican imports. Stenzel and other big producers fear it could be extended to apply to other crops.

The five days of talks in Mexico City were held in around two dozen working groups. The first round of talks took place in Washington in mid-August and the next round will be held Sept. 23-27 in Ottawa, Canada.
…

Leaders of BRICS, an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa combined, on Monday expressed concerns over Pakistan-based militant groups and cited them as a problem for regional security.

The economic bloc called for the supporters of these groups to be held accountable.

The call for action comes two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump put Pakistan on notice to stop harboring Afghan militant groups that use Pakistani soil to plan and launch attacks against Afghan and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

BRICS members condemned terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and called for an “immediate cessation of violence” in the country.

“We, in this regard, express concern on the security situation in the region and violence caused by the Taliban, ISIL/DAISH, Al-Qaida and its affiliates, including Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, TTP and Hizb ut-Tahrir,” read a joint declaration issued by the economic bloc during its annual summit in China’s Xiamen.

“We reaffirm that those responsible for committing, organizing, or supporting terrorist acts must be held accountable,” the declaration added.

While the BRICS statement has not named Islamabad directly, many of the groups cited in the declaration find safe haven in the country.

Washington and Kabul have long accused Islamabad of turning a blind eye to the issue of safe havens for Afghan militant groups.

Trump last month blamed Pakistan for “housing” terrorist groups that are fighting Afghan and American forces in Afghanistan. He vowed not to be “silent about Pakistan’s safe havens” for the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.

New Delhi also has accused Pakistan-based religious groups of supporting militancy in Indian Kashmir.

Analysts say the new charges put additional pressure on Pakistan for its alleged support of regional militant groups that are fighting in Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir.

“The BRICS summit’s decision that Laskar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are a threat to the region will certainly have an impact on Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts,” Rasul Baksh Raees, a political analyst in Pakistan, told VOA.

Possible change in China’s stance

Experts believe the BRICS statement also indicates a change in China’s traditional stance toward militant groups in the region.

“This has now become a necessity, as China and Russia are looking into the matter very seriously and it’s becoming evident that China might not support Pakistan the way it has done in the past,” Pakistani analyst Raza Rumi told VOA.

Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, believes the BRICS statement is a serious development.

“This is a big deal because China has agreed to single out, on the global stage, terror groups that it typically blocks from getting sanctioned on the global stage,” Kugelman said.

He believes China has economic interests in the region and “needs stability in Pakistan as it builds out its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [CPEC] in that country.”

“In fact, Beijing has a strong interest in Pakistan cracking down on all terror groups, not just some,” Kugelman underscored.
…

As a parade of motorists rolled down their windows on the edges of a Houston Home Depot parking lot offering cash, the crowd of day laborers had slowly thinned to about a dozen by mid-morning.

The workers who were already gone were off to tear out soggy carpeting, carry ruined sofas to the curb and saw apart mold-infested drywall. Those who still remained knew they were hot commodities and weren’t going to settle for low offers.

The owner of a car dealership shook his head and drove off after his $10-an-hour proposal to clean flooded vehicles drew no takers. A pickup driver who promised $50 for two hours to rip out wet carpeting and move furniture was told the job was too short to be worthwhile.

Day laborers — many of them immigrants and many of them in the country illegally — will continue to be in high demand as workers who clear debris make way for plumbers, electricians, drywall installers and carpenters. Employers are generally small, unregulated contractors or individual homeowners, resulting in a lack of oversight that creates potential for workers to be unpaid or work in dangerous conditions.

Houston’s day laborers are generally settling for $120 to $150 to clear homes of Harvey’s debris for eight hours. As noon struck Friday, three workers took a job for $100 for up to five hours rather than let the whole day slip. It didn’t hurt that the contractor provided tools, distributed bottles of cold water and dangled the prospect of more steady work clearing other houses.

“Now we’ll be busy for the rest of the year,” said the contractor, Nicolas Garcia, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico who has had his own business for 15 years. “Now that this disaster happened, we have to step it up.”

Garcia, 55, is working about 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston in the Southbelt/Ellington area, a middle-class residential neighborhood whose main streets are lined with fast-food restaurants, strip malls and churches. Waters reached 5 feet in some streets on Aug. 27, forcing families with young children to escape on neighbors’ boats and inflatable swimming pool toys.

The contractor led a caravan of workers to a four-bedroom house that was in better shape than others. Sharon Eldridge, a 63-year-old renter who lives alone, landed in about a foot of water when she stepped out of bed Sunday. Her furniture and clothes were ruined, but she didn’t have to evacuate.

Armando Rivera, a 36-year-old Honduran who is living in the country illegally and raising four children with his wife, said it was painful to see so many people die and lose their home, but the storm would jolt the local construction economy.

“When there is work, you can live a good life,” he said as he took a break from knifing Eldridge’s water-logged beige carpeting into pieces small enough to carry outside.

Construction workers were scarce even before Harvey struck. The Associated General Contractors of America, a trade group, said Tuesday that a survey of 1,608 members showed 58 percent struggled to fill carpentry jobs and 53 percent were having trouble finding electricians and bricklayers. Texas’ shortages were more acute.

Nationwide unemployment in construction was 4.7 percent in August, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier. Ken Simonson, chief economist for the contractor trade group, said the latest indicator was the lowest for any August since the government began keeping track in 2000.

“From what I’m reading, we’ve never seen so many homes either destroyed or at least rendered uninhabitable at once,” Simonson said. “I doubt there is enough labor with the skills.”

A sharp increase in immigration arrests under President Donald Trump may further limit the labor pool. The Houston office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made about 10,000 arrests this year, second-highest in the country after Dallas. The region has about 600,000 immigrants in the country illegally, third-largest behind New York and Los Angeles.

Laborers who gathered at Home Depot stores for Harvey work — some on their fourth of fifth major storm — swapped stories about exploitation that either they or someone they knew had suffered. Jose Pineda, a Nicaraguan who entered the country illegally in 2005 through the Arizona desert, said he had injured his arm with a saw and was shorted $380 but decided not to complain. Arturo Garcia, a legal resident from Mexico, knows three people who got hernias on the job and had to pay for surgery out of pocket because they were uninsured.

Storm recoveries pose heightened danger. A 2009 study by researchers at University of California, Los Angeles and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network found that day laborers working on storm recovery during Hurricane Katrina were commonly exposed to mold, worked on roofs without safeguards against falling and were exposed to chemicals and asbestos.

Pineda, 40, joined three other laborers at a three-bedroom house with soaked red carpet, moldy leather chairs, a television and other furniture strewn about as if a tornado hit. The owner balked in the Home Deport parking lot when workers asked for $120 each to clear the house and bargained them down to $100.

When Pineda saw the home and experienced its overwhelming stench, he realized it would take much longer than the owner promised and insisted on $150. The workers left when the owner refused.

“They didn’t realize that everything in the house was ruined,” said the owner, who identified himself only by his first name, Guy. “We just don’t have the money to pay them.”

 
…

Chinese millennials with a dim view of their career and marriage prospects can wallow in despair with a range of teas such as “achieved-absolutely-nothing black tea,” and “my-ex’s-life-is-better-than-mine fruit tea.”

While the drink names at the Sung chain of tea stalls are tongue-in-cheek, the sentiment they reflect is serious: A significant number of young Chinese with high expectations have become discouraged and embrace an attitude known on social media as “sang,” after a Chinese character associated with the word “funeral” that describes being dispirited.

“Sang” culture, which revels in often-ironic defeatism, is fueled by internet celebrities, through music and the popularity of certain mobile games and TV shows, as well as sad-faced emojis and pessimistic slogans.

It’s a reaction to cut-throat competition for good jobs in an economy that isn’t as robust as it was a few years ago and when home-ownership — long seen as a near-requirement for marriage in China — is increasingly unattainable in major cities as apartment prices have soared.

“I wanted to fight for socialism today but the weather is so freaking cold that I’m only able to lay on the bed to play on my mobile phone,” 27-year-old Zhao Zengliang, a “sang” internet personality, wrote in one post. “It would be great if I could just wake up to retirement tomorrow,” she said in another.

Such ironic humor is lost on China’s ruling Communist Party.

In August, Sung Tea was called out for peddling “mental opium” by the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, which described sang culture in an editorial as “an extreme, pessimistic and hopeless attitude that’s worth our concern and discussion.”

“Stand up, and be brave. Refuse to drink ‘sung tea,’ choose to walk the right path, and live the fighting spirit of our era,” it said.

China’s State Council Information Office did not reply to a request for comment for this story.

Despondency among a segment of educated young people is a genuine concern for President Xi Jinping and his government, which prizes stability.

The intensifying censorship clampdown on media and cyberspace in the run-up to autumn’s Communist Party congress, held once every five years, extends even to negativity, with regulations issued in early June calling for “positive energy” in online audiovisual content.

Later that month, some young netizens were frustrated when Bojack Horseman, an animated American TV series about a half-man/half-horse former sitcom star, and popular among the “sang” generation for his self-loathing and cynicism, was pulled from Chinese streaming site iQiyi.

“Screw positive energy,” Vincent, a 27-year old Weibo user, commented under a post announcing the news.

A spokesperson at iQiyi said the decision to remove Bojack Horseman was due to “internal process issues” but declined to give further details.

Social media and online gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd has even gone on the counterattack against “sang” culture. It has launched an ad campaign around the Chinese word “ran” — which literally means burning and conveys a sense of optimism — with slogans such as “every adventure is a chance to be reborn.”

Only-child blues

Undermining “sang” may take some doing.

“Sang” is also a rebellion against the striving of contemporary urban China, no matter the cost or hopes of achieving a goal. Tied to that is intense social and family pressure to succeed, which typically comes with the expectation that as members of the one-child generation people will support aging parents and grandparents.

Zhao’s online posts, often tinged with dark humor, have attracted almost 50,000 fans on microblogging site Weibo. Zhao turned the subject into a book last year: A Life Where You Can’t Strive for Success All The Time.

While China’s roughly 380 million millennials — or those aged about 18 to 35 — have opportunities that earlier generations would have found unimaginable, they also have expectations that are becoming harder to meet.

The average starting salary for college graduates dropped by 16 percent this year to 4,014 yuan ($608) per month amid intensifying competition for jobs as a record 8 million graduate from Chinese universities — nearly ten times the number in 1997.

Even among elite “sea turtles” — those who return after studying overseas, often at great expense — nearly half of 2017 graduates earned less than 6,000 yuan per month, a Zhaopin.com survey found, with 70 percent of respondents saying their pay is “far below” expectations.

Home-ownership is a nearly universal aspiration in China, but it is increasingly difficult to get on the property ladder in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

An average two-bedroom home in Beijing’s resale market costs around 6 million yuan ($909,835) after prices surged 36.7 percent in 2016, according to Fang.com, China’s biggest real estate website. That’s about 70 times the average per capita disposable income in the city; the ratio is less than 25 times for New York City.

Median per person rent in Beijing, where most of the estimated 8 million renters are millennials, according to Ziroom.com, has risen 33 percent in the past five years to 2,748 yuan a month in June, equivalent to 58 percent of median income in the city, a survey by E-House China R&D Institute found. The costs often mean that young Chinese workers have to live on the edges of cities, with long, stressful journeys to work.

Financial pressures also contribute to young Chinese waiting longer to get married.

In Nanjing, a major eastern city, the median age for first marriages rose to 31.6 last year, from 29.9 in 2012, official data showed.

Rising expectations

“Sang” contrasts with the optimism of those who entered adulthood during the years of China’s double-digit economic growth in previous decades. That generation was motivated by career prospects and life quality expectations that their parents and grandparents, who had learned to “eat bitter” during tougher times, could only dream of.

“Our media and society have shoved too many success stories down our throat,” said Zhao.

“‘Sang’ is a quiet protest against society’s relentless push for achieving the traditional notion of success. It is about admitting that you just can’t make it,” she told Reuters.

It is also a symptom of the lack of channels for frustrated young adults to vent frustration, a survey of 200 Chinese university students by researchers at state think tank Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) found in June.

“The internet itself is a channel for them to release pressure but, due to censorship, it’s impossible to do so by openly venting,” Xiao Ziyang, a CASS researcher, told Reuters.

“It’s necessary for the government to exercise public opinion control to prevent social problems.”

Sung Tea founder Xiang Huanzhong, 29, said he expects pressure on young Chinese adults only to grow, citing the aging of the population as a particular burden for the young.

Xiang has capitalized on the trend with products named after popular “sang” phrases. The chain has single locations in 12 cities after opening its first permanent tea stall in July in Beijing, where a best-selling “sitting-around-and-waiting-to-die” matcha milk tea costs 18 yuan.

Xiang said he chose tame names for his products so as not to attract censure from authorities, leaning toward the self-deprecating.

He took issue with the People’s Daily’s critical editorial.

“It didn’t try to seriously understand at all,” he said.

Wang Hanqi, 21, a student at Nanjing Audit University, sought out Sung Tea after hearing about it on social media.

“I’m a bit disappointed that the names for the tea are not ‘sang’ enough,” he said in an interview outside the Beijing stall.
…

Security guard Eric Leon watches the Knightscope K5 security robot as it glides through the mall, charming shoppers with its blinking blue and white lights. The brawny automaton records video and sounds alerts. According to its maker, it deters mischief just by making the rounds.

Leon, the all-too-human guard, feels pretty sure that the robot will someday take his job.

“He doesn’t complain,” Leon says. “He’s quiet. No lunch break. He’s starting exactly at 10.”

Even in the technology hotbed stretching from Silicon Valley to San Francisco, a security robot can captivate passers-by. But the K5 is only one of a growing menagerie of automated novelties in a region where you can eat a delivered pizza made via automation and drink beers at a bar served by an airborne robot. This summer, the San Francisco Chronicle published a tech tourism guide listing a dozen or so places where tourists can observe robots and automation in action.

Yet San Francisco is also where workers were the first to embrace mandatory sick leave and fully paid parental leave. Voters approved a $15 hourly minimum wage in 2014, a requirement that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law for the entire state in 2016. And now one official is pushing a statewide “tax” on robots that automate jobs and put people out of work.

It’s too soon to say if the effort will prevail, let alone whether less-progressive jurisdictions might follow suit. The tussle points to the tensions that can flare when people embrace both technological innovation and a strong brand of social consciousness.

Such frictions seem destined to escalate as automation makes further inroads into the workplace. One city supervisor, Norman Yee, has proposed barring food delivery robots from city streets, arguing that public sidewalks should be solely for people.

“I’m a people person,” Yee says, “so I tend to err on the side of things that should be beneficial and safe for people.” 

Future for workers

Jane Kim, the city supervisor who is pushing the robot tax, says it’s important to think now about how people will earn a living as more U.S. jobs are lost to automation. After speaking with experts on the subject, she decided to launch a statewide campaign with the hope of bringing revenue-raising ideas to the state legislature or directly to voters.

“I really do think automation is going to be one of the biggest issues around income inequality,” Kim says.

It makes sense, she adds, that the city at the center of tech disruption take up the charge to manage that disruption.

“It’s not inherently a bad thing, but it will concentrate wealth, and it’s going to drive further inequity if you don’t prepare for it now,” she says.

“Preposterous” is what William Santana Li, CEO of security robot maker Knightscope calls the supervisor’s idea. His company created the K5 robot monitoring the Westfield Valley Fair mall in San Jose.

The private security industry, Li says, suffers from high turnover and low pay. As he sees it, having robots handle menial tasks allows human guards to assume greater responsibilities — like managing a platoon of K5 robots — and likely earn more pay in the process.

Li acknowledges that such jobs would require further training and some technological know-how. But he says people ultimately stand to benefit. Besides, Li says, it’s wrong to think that robots are intended to take people’s jobs.

“We’re working on 160 contracts right now, and I can maybe name two that are literally talking about, `How can I get rid of that particular human position?”‘

Spurring new jobs

The question of whether — or how quickly — workers will be displaced by automation ignites fierce debate. It’s enough to worry Bill Gates, who suggested in an interview early this year a robot tax as a way to slow the speed of automation and give people time to prepare. The Microsoft co-founder hasn’t spoken publicly about it since.

A report last year from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that 9 percent of jobs in the United States — or about 13 million — could be automated. Other economists argue that the impact will be much less drastic.

The spread of automation should also generate its own jobs, analysts say, offsetting some of those being eliminated. Workers will be needed, for example, to build and maintain robots and develop the software to run them.

Technological innovation has in the past created jobs in another way, too: Work involving new technologies is higher-skilled and typically higher-paying. Analysts say that much of the extra income those workers earn tends to be spent on additional goods and services, thereby creating more jobs.

“There are going to be a wider array of jobs that will support the automation economy,” said J.P. Gownder, an analyst at the research firm Forrester. “A lot of what we’re going to be doing is working side by side with robots.”

What about people who lose jobs to automation but can’t transition to more technologically demanding work?

Lawmakers in Hawaii have voted to explore the idea of a universal basic income to guarantee wages to servers, cooks and cleaners whose jobs may be replaced by machines. Kim, the San Francisco supervisor, is weighing the idea of using revenue from a robot tax to supplement the low wages of people whose jobs can’t be automated, like home health care aides.

Doug Bloch, political director of Teamsters Joint Council 7 in Northern California and northern Nevada, said there have been no mass layoffs among hotel, trucking or food service staff resulting from automation. But that day is coming, he warns.

Part of his responsibility is to make sure that union drivers receive severance and retraining if they lose work to automation.

“All the foundations are being built for this,” he says. “The table is being set for this banquet, and we want to make sure our members have a seat at the table.”

Innovation ‘moves the world forward’

Tech companies insist their products will largely assist, and not displace, workers. Savioke, based in San Jose, makes 3-foot-tall (91 centimeter) robots — called Relay — that deliver room service at hotels where only one person might be on duty at night. This allows the clerk to stay at the front desk, said Tessa Lau, the company’s “chief robot whisperer.”

“We think of it as our robots taking over tasks but not taking over jobs,” Lau says. “If you think of a task as walking down a hall and waiting for an elevator, Relay’s really good at that.”

Similarly, friends Steve Simoni, Luke Allen and Gregory Jaworski hatched the idea of a drink-serving robot one night at a crowded bar in San Francisco. There was no table service. But there was a sea of thirsty people.

“We all wanted another round, but you have to send someone to leave the conversation and wait in line at the bar for 10 minutes and carry all the drinks back,” Allen says.

They created the Bbot, a box that slides overhead on a fixed route at the Folsom Street Foundry in San Francisco, bringing drinks ordered by smartphone and poured by a bartender — who still receives a tip. The bar is in Kim’s district in the South of Market neighborhood.

Simoni says the company is small and it couldn’t shoulder a government tax. But he’s glad policymakers are preparing for a future with more robots and automation.

“I don’t know if we need to tax companies for it, but I think it’s an important debate,” he says.

As for his trio, he says: “We’re going to side with innovation every time. Innovation is what moves the world forward.”
…

Ken Beck characterizes his life as a farmer in the U.S. right now as a gamble.

“Risky at best,” he told VOA. “There is no money in this game anymore.”

Beck says he is entering a fifth year of losing money, due in part to lower corn and soy prices, along with high input costs for fertilizer and seed.  

But he says there is something the U.S. government can do to help.

“Trade. Which is under attack right now.”

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP agreement, earlier this year erased Beck’s hope for increased demand, and ultimately a boost in prices for his corn and soybeans.

That is why he now is closely watching the U.S. government’s efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, with Canada and Mexico.

Campaign promises

Renegotiating NAFTA fulfills a campaign promise made by President Donald Trump. While much of the focus is on manufacturing jobs, the original NAFTA agreement, signed in 1994, provided a critical boost for U.S. agricultural exports, and farmers like Beck are concerned about any changes to the current agreement that could negatively affect their bottom line.  

“For a corn producer, grain producer, NAFTA’s been extremely good,” said Beck, standing not far from some of that produce which could ultimately travel south of border after it is harvested later this year.

The U.S. sent more than $2.5 billion of corn to Mexico in 2016, making the U.S. one of the top suppliers to its southern neighbor.

“They have a rising middle class there that wants to eat protein, and I produce protein,” Beck explained.

But this year, Mexican imports of both U.S. soybean and corn are down, and Beck knows his protein isn’t the only one on the market.

“Mexico for the first time in history bought corn from Argentina. Was it cheaper? No. But they are sending a signal,” he said.

Other signals that concern Beck are those from President Trump, who has threatened to withdraw from NAFTA, creating further uncertainty for U.S. farmers.

“I think everybody’s running a little bit scared because we are in uncharted territory,” he told VOA.

“If you have a shock like pulling out of TPP or not keeping the agreement going on NAFTA, it makes the markets nervous and it lowers the farmers farm income,” said Tamara Nelsen, senior director of commodities for the Illinois Farm Bureau.  

She has heard from many farmers in recent weeks, including those she met with during the 2017 Farm Progress show in Decatur Illinois — one of the largest Farm shows in the country — who tell her they are concerned about the increased rhetoric as negotiations continue.

“We hope that some of the rhetoric, like anti-trade, anti-exports for agriculture, will turn around and we’ll actually have some achievements,” said Nelsen.

Status quo

Meanwhile, Beck says he isn’t looking for dramatic changes for agriculture in NAFTA, and would be satisfied with the status quo.

“Hopefully cooler heads prevail and we can tweak this,” he said, “or do a little something, and nothing much really changes.”

Whatever happens, Nelsen says it’s important to reach a new agreement — soon. “There’s a presidential election next year in Mexico, and so if things do not move quickly, it’s possible they might make progress here in the U.S. and Canada and Mexico in the next four months, and then we might see a slide into some stalemate. So the hope is, by Ag groups and others, to keep it moving.”

Beck also hopes negotiations keep moving, because time to make money isn’t on his side at the moment.

“Decisions in the next few weeks are going to have to be made for next year already,” he noted. “If you are going to start cutting costs, where do you start?”

As Beck keeps one eye on his bank account, the other is looking at the skies above his Illinois farm as he deals with the other major unknown in his life right now — the weather.

 
…

Amanda Spartz nearly did not renew her home’s flood insurance policy after her first year in Florida. Two hurricanes came close to the Fort Lauderdale suburbs last year, but they didn’t hit and her home isn’t in a high-risk flood zone. She figured she could put the $450 annual premium, due next week, to another use.

Then Harvey hit Houston, its historic rains causing massive floods even in low-risk neighborhoods. Spartz, a business analyst, paid the bill this week.

Harvey a wake-up call

If Spartz had dropped her policy, she would not have been alone. Far fewer Americans compared with five years ago are paying for flood insurance in coastal areas of the United States where hurricanes, storms and tidal surges pose a serious threat, according to an Associated Press analysis of government data. The center for the problem is South Florida, where Spartz lives. The top U.S. official overseeing the National Flood Insurance Program told AP that he wants to double the number of Americans who buy flood insurance.

“I was talking to my husband and I said that if something like Harvey happens here, I don’t want to be on the hook,” said Spartz, who relocated from Cincinnati. “It isn’t a lot of money to save yourself the heartache if it does happen.”

What’s driving the drop in policies? Congress approved a price hike, making premiums more expensive, and maps of some high-risk areas were redrawn. Banks became lax at enforcing the requirement that any home with a federally insured mortgage in a high-risk area be covered. Memories of New Orleans underwater in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina have faded.

Without flood insurance, storm victims would have to draw on savings or go into debt, or perhaps be forced to sell.

Fewer policies in force

The number of policies in force today has fallen in 43 of the 50 states since 2012, dropping from almost 5.5 million to just less than 5 million, a decrease of 10 percent, AP’s analysis found. In low-lying Florida, where by far more flood insurance policies are sold than in any other state, the drop has been almost 16 percent. In only two states, Hawaii and South Carolina, are at least 50 percent of homes in flood hazard areas insured under the program.

AP’s analysis also showed the percentage of homes in high-risks areas that have flood insurance is sometimes frighteningly low. In Spartz’s home of Broward County, it’s only 13 percent. In Houston’s Harris County, it’s 28 percent. In New Orleans, it’s 46 percent.

Roy Wright, the director of the insurance program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, acknowledges that the decrease is alarming and says he hopes to double the number of policies in the near future. He also wants to persuade more communities to limit construction in high-risk flood zones. Congress is likely to reauthorize the insurance program before it expires Sept. 30.

​Flood insurance debate

President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, said he expects changes to the flood program to be debated on Capitol Hill later this fall, after the immediate Houston recovery is underway.

“This administration’s been pretty clear that we’d like to see some responsible reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program,” he said Thursday at the White House. “I don’t think now’s the time to debate those things.”

Last year, the program collected about $3.3 billion in premiums and paid out about $3.7 billion for losses. FEMA paid out $3.5 billion per year over the past 12 years, which included Katrina.

“It is about consumer choice. It’s about consumer education. It’s about an education related to flood risk. It’s about communities galvanizing around it. It’s also about communities making choices about how they want to build going into the future so that people are at less risk. When they are at less risk, their premiums are cheaper,” Wright told the AP.

Lax enforcement

One way to compel more homeowners to buy policies would be for banks to enforce the coverage requirement for homeowners with a federally insured mortgage if they live in a Special Flood Hazard Area. Experts said that’s not happening. Many homeowners let the policy lapse after a few years, correctly thinking the bank will not check. Or a bank will sell mortgages to another bank, and paperwork on whether homes require flood insurance isn’t reviewed. About 7 out of 10 homeowners have a mortgage.

“The banks are not watching the hen house,” said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman with the Insurance Information Institute. “They sell these mortgages from a bank to another bank and to another bank, and whether that home needs flood insurance slips through the cracks.”

In Mississippi, the number of federally insured properties fell by nearly 15 percent, from about 75,000 in 2012 to 64,000 this year. The decreases were even higher in some coastal communities, including Gulfport and Long Beach, cities that took a direct hit from Katrina.

Ned Dolese, president and co-founder of Gulfport-based Coastal American Insurance Co., suspects the drop in Mississippi is largely because of a lack of government enforcement.

“There are no teeth in FEMA or the NFIP to whack you over the head if you, the consumer, don’t renew your flood policy,” he said.

Maps redrawn

FEMA periodically redraws flood-risk maps, moving some homes from mandatory-carry areas to a less-risky category. When the requirement is lifted, homeowners gamble or believe their home is no longer in danger. As Harvey proved, a lower-risk neighborhood is not a no-risk neighborhood.

After the city of Central, Louisiana, successfully petitioned FEMA last year to change its flood maps, it sent letters notifying roughly 2,000 residents that their homes no longer were inside the high-risk zone. Kyle Cutrer didn’t get flood insurance when he purchased a house in Central last summer, outside the flood zone.

Last August, a slow-moving storm dumped an estimated 7 trillion gallons of rainwater on south Louisiana, more than 60 centimeters (2 feet) of rain in some places. The deluge overtopped rivers and damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes, inundating many neighborhoods that had never seen such catastrophic flooding.

About 30 centimeters (1 foot) of water washed into Cutrer’s home, causing approximately $40,000 in damage. He used about $16,000 from FEMA to pay for some repairs; he paid the rest himself.

Cutrer said his real-estate agent and mortgage company had both assured him he did not need flood insurance, which would have cost him about $300 annually.

“I was told, ‘You’ll never flood. You won’t have a problem here,”’ he said. “As a first-time homebuyer, I was trying to keep that note as low as possible.”

A week after the flood, he called his insurance agent and purchased a flood policy.

“I’m not going to be able to stop the flood. But if it comes, I’ll be fine,” he said.
…

Sah Phon can live with some grief from his ancestral spirits.

The elderly villager abandoned them in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province in favor of a relocation package after learning his homeland would be swallowed by an enormous dam. But he’s confident they will forgive him.

“If we do something wrong, we pray in accordance with our traditions; for example [sacrificing] pigs and chickens for praying. And we pray so that we can be recovered,” he reasons.

Once a fisherman from Sre Kor village near the confluence of the Sre Pok and Se San rivers, Phon has watched as fish stocks have dwindled over the past few years.

Some blame the dam construction, others destructive techniques such as electro-fishing but all agree the population of fish is rapidly shrinking.

Relocation offer

So with his village set to be flooded and his primary source of income dead, Phon took a relocation offer early. He says he was the first.

The swift decision paid off. Phon struck out in a relocation lottery with a house right next to the entrance road of Kbal Romeas Thmey (New Kbal Romeas).

He built up a business selling household wares in the prime location and says he’s doing fine.

“It’s different because it has a highway — an ASEAN highway,” he boasted as his grandson hooks bait to a line — practicing the skills of his grandfather’s dying profession. “Before I could not transport any goods. Now I can. The truck can get into our home to transport goods. Whatever I need, they can reach my home.”

Phon has been lucky, but there are only so many general stores one village can support and not many others are as enthusiastic about relocation.

That includes his brother, Sah Voeurn, who like thousands of ethnic minority villagers facing eviction, is pained by the prospect of abandoning a fundamentally different way of life.

“I really don’t want to live there. The situation is difficult, there’s not enough water. It’s mountain land and it’s rocky and sandy and very difficult to do agriculture,” he said.

Behind the rows of shiny blue new roofs at the relocation villages each family has a small plot of land. On the surface, the village looks quite nice.

Inadequate compensation

Away from the prying eyes of company representatives and local officials monitoring the area, many quietly complain that opportunities to generate income are scarce, the soil is poor and personal movements are heavily restricted.

Voeurn feels so strongly against relocation that he has traveled the long journey from Sre Kor to Kbal Romeas to join a community protest — a trip made harder by multiple police checkpoints attempting to restrict access to the area.

“The government is building the dam to get more income for the government, not for the villagers,” he said on the eve on a pig sacrifice with 50 Bunong families that are holding out and trying to stop the dam

The 400-megawatt Lower Se San II, which is Cambodia’s largest dam so far with a flood plain of 335 square kilometers, hasn’t just stirred controversy because of the roughly 4,000 families it will forcibly displace.

It has far wider implications for fish stocks, conservationists argue.

More than 9 percent of the fisheries for the entire Mekong river would be lost because of the Lower Se San II, according to a report in the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Science.

Even an environmental impact assessment commissioned by the dam’s developers and approved by the Cambodian government in 2010 found the impacts on fish would be severe, as it would block migratory species.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy did not respond to multiple request to comment on the impact of the project.

With Cambodian’s energy demands predicted by some estimates to triple between 2012 and 2020 and supply already heavily reliant on imports, the government argues the more than $800-million project will supply much needed power to five provinces.

Debates rage about how this benefit stacks up economically against the loss of fish and impacts on water flow and quality.

What none of the arguments over figures can appreciate though is the value of a fundamentally different way of life, or whether affected villagers will attain a better standard of life by being dragged into the formal economy rather than living effectively off grid.

“The native people have a way of life opposite to mainstream people, native people consider nature as friend and don’t have a passion to own,” says Loek Sreyneang, a project officer at Cambodia Indigenous Youth Association.

The scores of families holding out want an audience with the government, but that has not been forthcoming.

So instead they have taken their case to the provincial court, arguing the development amounts to a systematic attack on indigenous people and thus a crime against humanity under Cambodian law.

That desperate final act will almost certainly have no impact and in weeks their houses will be underwater.

“I can feel their misery to leave from home, a fatherland which they have lived in for ages,” Loek Sreyneang lamented.
…

Homelessness is a serious problem, and there are a variety of approaches to combating it. Faith Lapidus has the story of one effort to tackle the problem in Los Angeles, one tiny house at a time.
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