Month: July 2019

Fire broke out at an Exxon Mobil oil refinery in Texas on Wednesday, sending a large plume of smoke into the air, in the latest of a series of petrochemical industry blazes this year in the Houston area.

The fire began around 11 a.m. at an Exxon Mobil facility in Baytown, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Houston.

The city of Baytown said the fire is in an area that contains polypropylene material and that Exxon Mobil has requested some nearby residents to shelter in place as a precaution.

It was not immediately known if there were injuries.

Television video from the fire showed dark smoke rising into the air from a large metal stack that was on fire. Crews were dousing the stack and surrounding structures with water.

In a statement, Irving, Texas- based Exxon Mobil said the fire occurred at its Olefins plant, which produces ethylene, a chemical used to make plastic and industrial products. Ethylene is highly flammable. According to records kept by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Olefins plant had 68 tons (69 metric tons) of ethylene on site in 2017. It also had large quantities of other potentially hazardous chemicals, including ammonia, benzene, and propylene.

Exxon Mobil said it was conducting air quality monitoring at the site on Wednesday and it was cooperating with regulatory agencies.

“Our first priority remains the safety of people, including our employees, contractors and the community,” the company said.

The Olefins plant is part of the company’s 3,400-acre refinery complex in Baytown. It is one of eight plants that Exxon agreed to retrofit with anti-pollution technology in a settlement with the U.S. government. The company also agreed to pay $2.5 million in fines to federal and state authorities after being accused of violating the Clean Air Act with industrial flares from its factories.

Wednesday’s fire is the latest one to have taken place at Houston-area petrochemical facilities this year, including one at another facility on the Exxon Mobil Baytown complex.
On March 16, a fire erupted at a refinery on Exxon Mobil’s Baytown complex. The fire was extinguished hours later, but Harris County officials say it continued to release toxic pollutants for eight more days. The county has sued Exxon Mobil, accusing the company of violating the federal Clean Air Act.

Also in March, a fire burned or days at a at a petrochemical storage facility in nearby Deer Park and caused chemicals to flow into a nearby waterway.

In April, one worker died after a tank holding a flammable chemical caught fire in nearby Crosby.

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The Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday for the first time since 2008, citing concerns about the global economy and muted U.S. inflation, and signaled a readiness to lower borrowing costs further if needed.

Financial markets had widely expected the quarter-percentage-point rate cut, which lowered the U.S. central bank’s benchmark overnight lending rate to a target range of 2% to 2.25%.

In a statement at the end of its latest two-day policy meeting, the Fed said it had decided to cut rates “in light of the implications of global developments for the economic outlook as well as muted inflation pressures.”

The Fed said it will “continue to monitor” how incoming information will affect the economy, adding that it “will act as appropriate to sustain” a record-long U.S. economic expansion. The decision drew dissents from Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren and Kansas City Fed President Esther George who argued for leaving rates unchanged.

Both have raised doubts about a rate cut in the face of the current expansion, an unemployment rate that is near a 50-year-low, and robust household spending.

On the opposite flank, U.S. President Donald Trump is likely to be disappointed the Fed did not deliver the large rate cut he had demanded. Trump has repeatedly harangued the central bank
and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for not doing enough to help his administration’s efforts to boost economic growth.

‘Strong,’ but ‘soft’

Powell and other Fed officials in recent weeks have walked a middle ground, flagging risks like continued uncertainty on the global trade front, low inflation and a weakening world economy,
but repeating the view the United States is fundamentally in a good spot.

Powell is expected to elaborate on the Fed’s thinking in a news conference at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT).

The Fed said in its statement that it continued to regard the labor market as “strong” and added that household spending had “picked up.” But it noted business spending was “soft” and
that measures of inflation compensation remain low.

The Fed said the rate cut should help return inflation to its 2% target but that uncertainties about that outlook remain. Sustained expansion of economic activity and a strong labor
market are also the most likely outcomes, the Fed said.

Underscoring its decision to ease policy across the board, the Fed also said it would stop shrinking its massive holdings of bonds starting Aug. 1, two months ahead of schedule.

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Between 2000 and 2010, an estimated 248,000 children — some as young as 12 — were married in the U.S.  Studies show most teens who are forced into marriage face financial strain and divorce. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti introduces us to two teens who had very different experiences.

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Boston police are tracking nearly 5,000 people — almost all of them young black and Latino men — through a secretive gang database, newly released data from the department shows.

A summary provided by the department shows that 66% of those in its database are black, 24% are Latino and 2% are white. Black people comprise about 25% of all Boston residents, Latinos about 20% and white people more than 50%.

The racial disparity is “stark and troublesome,” said Adriana Lafaille, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which, along with other civil rights groups, sued the department in state court in November to shed light into who is listed on the database and how the information is used.

Central American youths are being wrongly listed as active gang members “based on nothing more than the clothing they are seen in and the classmates they are seen with,” and that’s led some to be deported, the organizations say in their lawsuit, citing the cases of three Central American youths facing deportation based largely on their status on the gang database.

”This has consequences,” Lafaille said. “People are being deported back to the countries that they fled, in many cases, to escape gangs.”

Boston police haven’t provided comment after multiple requests, but Commissioner William Gross has previously defended the database as a tool in combating MS-13 and other gangs.

One 24-year-old native of El Salvador nearly deported last year over his alleged gang involvement said he was a victim of harassment and bullying by Bloods members as a youth and was never an MS-13 member, as police claim.

The man spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he fears retribution from gang members.

He said he never knew he’d made the list while in high school until he was picked up years later in a 2017 immigration sweep.

The gang database listed him as a “verified” member of MS-13 because he was seen associating with known MS-13 members, had feuded with members of the rival Bloods street gang, and was even charged with assault and battery following a fight at school, according to records provided by his lawyer, Alex Mooradian.

Mooradian said he noted in immigration court that the man, who was granted special immigrant juvenile status in 2014, reported at least one altercation with Bloods members to police and cooperated with the investigation. Witnesses also testified about the man’s good character and work ethic as a longtime dishwasher at a restaurant.

”Bottom line, this was a person by all metrics who was doing everything right,” said Mooradian. “He had legal status. He went to school. He worked full time. He called police when he was in trouble. And it still landed him in jail.”

Boston is merely the latest city to run into opposition with a gang database. An advocacy group filed a lawsuit this month in Providence, Rhode Island, arguing the city’s database violates constitutional rights. Portland, Oregon, discontinued its database in 2017 after it was revealed more than 80% of people listed on it were minorities.

In Chicago, police this year proposed changes after an audit found their database’s roughly 134,000 entries were riddled with outdated and unverified information. Mayor Lori Lightfoot also cut off U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement access ahead of planned immigration raids this month.

California’s Department of Justice has been issuing annual reports on the state’s database since a 2017 law began requiring it. And in New York City, records requests and lawsuits have prompted the department to disclose more information about its database.

In Boston, where Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh has proposed strengthening the city’s sanctuary policy, the ACLU suggests specifically banning police from contributing to any database to which ICE has access, or at least requiring police to provide annual reports on the database. Walsh’s office deferred questions about the gang database to police.

Like others, Boston’s gang database follows a points-based system. A person who accrues at least six points is classified as a “gang associate.” Ten or more points means they’re considered a full-fledged gang member.

The points range from having a known gang tattoo (eight points) to wearing gang paraphernalia (four points) or interacting with a known gang member or associate (two points per interaction).

The summary provided by Boston police provides a snapshot of the database as of January.

Of the 4,728 people listed at the time, a little more than half were considered “active” gang associates, meaning they had contact with or participated in some form of gang activity in the past five years. The rest were classified as “inactive,” the summary states.

Men account for more than 90% of the suspected gang members, and people between ages 25 and 40 comprise nearly 75% of the listing.

The department last week provided the summary along with the department’s policy for placing people on the database after the AP filed a records request in June.

The ACLU was also provided the same documents in response to its lawsuit as well as a trove of other related policy memos and heavily redacted reports for each of the 4,728 people listed on the database as of January, according to documents provided by the ACLU and first reported Friday by WBUR.

The ACLU has asked the city for less-redacted reports, Lafaille said. It’s also still waiting for information about how often ICE accesses the database and how police gather gang intelligence in schools.

”After all this time, we still don’t have an understanding about who can access this information and how it’s shared,” she said. “That’s something the public has a right to know.”

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The U.N. human rights office criticized the Trump administration’s decision to reinstate federal executions after a 16-year hiatus, saying it bucks the national and international trend to abolish the death penalty. 

The U.N. human rights office says Washington’s decision to resume executions of federal inmates on death row flies in the face of the most basic human right, that of the right to life.  It says it also is a blow to progress toward universal abolition of capital punishment.

The United Nations reports around 170 of 194 U.N. member sates either have abolished the death penalty altogether in law or in practice.

Human rights spokesman Rupert Colville says executing people is wrong on many levels.  He says a major concern is the risk of putting to death people who are innocent of the crime for which they are charged.  He says reports in the United States based on DNA evidence have shown that some states have put innocent people to death.

“There is also really an absence of any proof that the death penalty actually serves as a deterrent, which is often given as a reason for using it,” Colville said. “And, there also, of course, are considerable concerns, especially in the United States that it is being applied arbitrarily and often in a discriminatory fashion, particularly… affects people from poor backgrounds and from minorities.”  

Factbox: The 5 Men Scheduled to Die as Federal Executions Resume 

US government plans to resume executions after 16-year hiatus, picking five killers of children to be first to die

Last week, U.S. Attorney General, William Barr reinstated federal executions.  He says the first executions of five inmates on death row are to begin in December with additional executions to be scheduled at a later date.

Sixty inmates are currently on the federal death row in the U.S.  A recent poll finds 56 percent of Americans support the death penalty, a considerable drop from 80 percent in the mid-1990s.

Colville says Attorney General Barr’s decision is counter to U.S. and international trends.  He notes 21 states have completely abolished the death penalty and four others have issued moratoriums, creating a 50-50 split in the country between states that favor capital punishment and those that do not.

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Steve Herman contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump defended again Tuesday what critics are characterizing as racist rhetoric, focused on the majority African American city of Baltimore and one of its prominent representatives in Congress, Elijah Cummings, whose powerful committee is trying to obtain communications of White House officials, including the president’s family members.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump defended his recent inflammatory remarks, saying “I think I’m helping myself because I’m pointing out the tremendous corruption that’s taken place in Baltimore and other Democratic-run cities.”

Trump said “Those people are living in hell in Baltimore” and that “largely African American” city residents have let him know “they really appreciated what I’m doing.”  He also said he is the “least racist person in the world”

Trump doubled down on his criticism of Cummings, claiming “all that money that’s been spent (in Baltimore) over 20 years has been stolen and wasted by people like Elijah Cummings.”

On Monday, Trump falsely stated Baltimore has nation’s worst crime statistics under Cummings’ leadership.

Cummings Releases Letters About Flynn, Foreign Payments

While Baltimore has a high crime rate, several other cities — including St. Louis, Detroit and Memphis — are ranked more dangerous, according to recent crime statistics

A critical series of tweets targeting Cummings began Saturday and has continued, with Trump referring to the congressman’s district as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

Government statistics show, however, that Cummings’s district, which includes impoverished parts of Baltimore and well-off suburban enclaves adjoining the city, has higher per capita income and higher median home values than the national average.

The focus on the Baltimore area and its congressman comes amid Trump battling over the past week on social media with others he has singled out for criticism, including two friendly nations: France and Sweden.
 
Trump also recently has been assailing four first-term Democratic lawmakers, all women of color, saying they should “go back” to their home countries, even though all four are American citizens, three of them by birth and the fourth, a Somali refugee, through naturalization.
 

As Trump unleashed his attacks, Cummings has defended himself.

“Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.”
 
In recent congressional hearings, Cummings, as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, berated Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland Security chief, for the condition of the country’s detention facilities at the border and the government’s lax records on tracking the whereabouts of migrant parents it had separated from children at the border.
 
Cummings’s committee is also investigating Trump’s presidency, but he is not among the more than 100 Democrats calling for impeachment proceedings. 
 
The committee, voting along party lines last Thursday, authorized subpoenas for personal emails and texts used for official business by top White House aides, including Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.
 
Cummings said lawmakers had obtained “direct evidence” that the president’s daughter, Kushner and others were using personal accounts for government business in violation of federal law and White House policy.
 
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney rejects the notion that Trump’s attacks on Cummings are racially motivated.
 
“The president is attacking Cummings for saying things that are not true,” Mulvaney told the Fox News Sunday interview show. “It has absolutely zero to do with race.”

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The United States is not ruling out working-level talks with North Korean officials on the sidelines of Southeast Asian regional meetings in Thailand this week, with experts noting Pyongyang’s recent missile launch is unlikely to reverse Washington’s current diplomatic efforts. 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will arrive in Bangkok on Aug. 1, where he will co-chair the U.S.- Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Ministerial.

On Aug. 2, Pompeo will participate in the East Asia Summit (EAS) Ministerial and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Ministerial, and will hold a bilateral meeting with Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai to discuss ways to further strengthen the U.S.-Thai alliance.

“I head to Asia tomorrow midday, I’ll be in Bangkok for a couple of days. We hope that we can have working-level discussions starting again very soon,” Pompeo said Monday when asked about diplomatic engagement with North Korea during an event in Washington.

“We’re not going to talk about the specific bilateral meetings, other than the ones that have been announced,” said a senior State Department official in a briefing when asked if U.S. officials will hold talks with North Korea officials on the sidelines of ASEAN meetings.

In recent days, the U.S.-led United Nations Command said it will continue to support confidence-building measures setting the stage for dialogue, and for diplomats to work toward permanent peace and final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea.

After North Korea’s latest ballistic missile test last Thursday, Pompeo suggested talks could still continue. 

“I think we’re still going to proceed,” said the top U.S. diplomat in an interview with Fox News.  “I mean, I think we’re still going to go sit down and have a conversation about this. North Korea has engaged in activity before we were having diplomatic conversations far worse than this.”

Media reports said North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho will not attend this week’s ASEAN related meetings in Bangkok. While in the past North Korea’s foreign minister had skipped the forum from time to time, Pyongyang has always sent other diplomats to attend.

“We are clearly going to be continuing to talk to our allies who face this issue quite closely,” State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus told VOA on Monday.  

Foreign ministers from Japan and South Korea will also attend the East Asia Summit in Bangkok.

North Korea’s July 25 missile tests were a “relatively modest [action] along the North Korean messaging spectrum,” argued Todd Rosenblum, a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council. He said Pyongyang’s latest missile launch “should not and likely will not have much impact on current negotiating efforts.”

South China Sea

Pompeo’s meetings with ASEAN foreign ministers also come amid China’s increasingly assertive actions in the South China Sea, a resource-rich region contested by several ASEAN members, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, as well as Taiwan and China. 

China has landfilled and militarized islets over the past decade.

“We have an interest in ensuring stability there,” said a senior State Department official.

The U.S. strongly opposes China’s efforts to assert its unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea. Washington is calling for a code of conduct between China and ASEAN to be “in line with” existing international laws.

“We’re very concerned,” Ortagus told VOA in an interview Monday, referring to recent Chinese anti-ship missile launches from man-made structures in the disputed South China Sea, and a standoff between China and Vietnam.

Last week, Vietnam urged an “immediate withdrawal” of a Chinese government-run vessel in the disputed South China Sea as the standoff between the two nations over China’s ongoing geological survey work intensified. China asked Vietnam to respect “China’s sovereign rights and jurisdiction” over the area near the disputed Spratly Islands. Vietnam said Chinese vessel’s activities fall within the Vietnamese waters. 

Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs Congressman Eliot Engel recently issued a statement on Chinese interference in Vietnamese-controlled waters.

“China’s recent aggression in the South China Sea is a disturbing demonstration of a country openly flouting international law,” said Engel. “Just as importantly, China’s behavior threatens the interests of U.S. companies operating in the area.” 

Australia, Pacific Islands 

From Thailand, Pompeo will head to Australia on Aug. 4.  Newly sworn-in U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper will join Pompeo in Sydney for the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN).

“The United States has no better friend or ally than Australia,” said a senior State Department official in a phone briefing to reporters. Pompeo will safeguard “sovereignty in Pacific Island countries and Southeast Asia,” according to the State Department.

On Aug. 5, the top U.S. diplomat embarks on a trip to the Federated States of Micronesia, making him the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to visit the Pacific Island nation. The visit comes days after an inauguration ceremony of its new President David Panuelo. 

Pompeo will also meet with leaders from Pacific island nations that have compact associations with the U.S., including Palau and the Marshall Islands. The U.S. provides more than $350 million in projects and economic assistance to the Pacific island nations during the last fiscal year.

The U.S. is working with the Federated States of Micronesia “in keeping the Western Pacific and Indo-Pacific region free and open,” said State Department’s Director for Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Islands Nicholas Dean in a recent briefing.

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U.S. President Donald Trump Monday signed a bipartisan bill to ensure that a Victim Compensation Fund related to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 never runs out of money.

“Our nation owes each of you a profound debt that no words or deeds will ever repay. But we can and we will keep our nation’s promise to you,” the president said in the White House Rose Garden, flanked by first responders.

The president called the first responders “true American warriors.”

The $7.4 billion fund had been running low, with benefits slashed severely.

The legislation signed Monday extends the fund through 2092, essentially providing for first responders for the rest of their lives.

Comedian and former host of The Daily Show, John Stewart, had lobbied Congress for the bill’s passage, publicly feuding with Senator Rand Paul in the process.

On Tuesday, the vote passed the Senate 97-2.  Paul and Senator Mike Lee from Utah voted against the bill.

Since 9/11, more than 40,000 people have applied to the fund.

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The roughly 2,000 state and local governments suing the drug industry over the deadly opioid crisis have yet to see any verdicts or reach any big national settlements but are already tussling with each other over how to divide any money they collect.

The reason: Some of them want to avoid what happened 20 years ago, when states agreed to a giant settlement with the tobacco industry and used most of the cash on projects that had little to do with smoking’s toll.

“If we don’t use dollars recovered from these opioid lawsuits to end the opioid epidemic, shame on us,” Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear said.

Overdoses from opioids, which include prescription painkillers and illegal drugs like heroin, have surpassed automobile crashes in recent years as the biggest cause of accidental deaths in the U.S., accounting for the loss of more than 400,000 lives since 2000.

An Associated Press analysis found that by 2011 and 2012, the industry was shipping enough prescription opioids to give every man, woman and child in the U.S. nearly a 20-day supply each year.

In their lawsuits, the governments contend the brand-name manufacturers fraudulently downplayed the addiction risks of the powerful painkillers while encouraging doctors to prescribe their patients more drugs and at higher doses. They also argue that drugmakers and distributors failed to stop suspiciously large shipments. The defendants dispute the allegations.

In the late 1990s, attorneys general for all 50 states reached colossal settlements under which tobacco companies would pay them forever. A tally by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids found states have received more than $161 billion so far.

But some of the money has gone toward such things as roads, bridges or teacher pensions. Some of the money went into states’ general fund accounts, available for all sorts of uses.

“Most states have used their settlement recoveries, which are massive, for everything but the problem that gave rise to the litigation,” said Doug Blake, a former Minnesota assistant attorney general who worked on the state’s tobacco settlement.

The anti-smoking group says that for the fiscal year that ended in June, states took in $27.3 billion from the settlements and from tobacco taxes and spent just 2.4% of that on kick-the-habit and smoking-prevention programs. The group also found that states spend, on average, less than one-fifth of what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends on anti-smoking programs.

In the opioid litigation, plaintiffs want to make sure the money goes toward treating addiction and preventing drug abuse. Some also want to be reimbursed for extra taxpayer costs associated with the epidemic, such as rising expenses for jails and mental health services, more ambulance runs and police calls, and more children of addicts placed in the care of the child-welfare system.

Close to 2,000 local governments have made claims against the drug industry. While the states’ lawsuits are in state court, most of the city and county claims are in federal court, where they have been consolidated under one Cleveland-based judge who is pushing for a settlement.

Joe Rice, an architect of the tobacco settlement and one of the lead lawyers in the opioid cases, with clients including both local governments and states, said local governments are suing partly because they think they can do a better job with the money than states did with the tobacco funds. Rice noted the opioid crisis has run up costs for local governments in ways cigarettes did not.

New Jersey’s Camden County, for instance, started allocating extra money for its Office of Mental Health and Addiction to deal with problem back in 2015. That first year, the county of a half-million people just outside Philadelphia kicked in $150,000. This year, it is up to $600,000.

The sum does not include other crisis-related costs sprinkled throughout the county budget: $156,000 for opioid treatment for jail inmates, cleaning up “needle parks” and holding an annual recovery softball game.

In the event of a nationwide settlement, Rice and other lawyers representing local governments have proposed a plan that would set in advance how much county and local governments would get, based on the amount of drugs shipped there, the overdose deaths and the number of people addicted.

In the case of a $1 billion national settlement, for instance, Camden County would get $1.3 million, and the communities in the county would share an additional $900,000.

But many attorneys general have asked U.S. District Judge Dan Polster not to approve the plan. Thirty-eight warned in a filing this month that the process “would make `global peace’ more, not less, difficult to achieve.”

The states also worry about the wisdom of splitting settlement funds with local governments.

“Doling out small buckets of funds without regard to how the funds should be spent is the opposite of a `coordinated’ response, which would balance statewide efforts — such as public education campaigns — with any local efforts,” the attorneys general wrote.

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