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Reports: Apparent Gas Explosion at Florida Shopping Center Injures Several

An apparent gas explosion at a shopping plaza in Plantation, Florida, injured several people on Saturday, authorities and local media reported.

Video posted to Twitter showed the force of the blast scattered debris across a parking lot and blew out several windows at a nearby L.A. Fitness gym, sending patrons running for the exits.

The Plantation fire department said on Twitter that there were multiple patients being treated at the scene.

The Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported that witnesses said a vacant restaurant appeared to be the source of the explosion. The city of Plantation is about 6 miles west of Fort Lauderdale.

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Reports: Deadly Airstrike in North Syria Kills 13 People

A war monitor and first responders group say an airstrike has killed at least 13 people in a village in northwestern Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the dead, most of them internally displaced persons, include seven children and three women. They died on Saturday in a Syrian government airstrike on the village of Mhambel in the province of Idlib.
 
Opposition-allied first responders known as the White Helmets also reported the attack and the casualties.
 
Idlib is the last major rebel stronghold in Syria’s eight-year civil war. Government troops backed by Russia have been using heavy airstrikes in their campaign to take the area in the past months.

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UK-flagged Tanker Reported ‘Safe and Well’ After Stop in Gulf

UK-flagged supertanker Pacific Voyager which halted in the Gulf on Saturday is “safe and well,” a British official told Reuters, after Iran dismissed reports its Revolutionary Guards had seized the vessel.

A Revolutionary Guards commander on Friday had threatened to seize a British ship in retaliation for the capture by Royal Marines of Iranian supertanker Grace 1 in Gibraltar.

The Pacific Voyager stopped in the Gulf en route to Saudi Arabia from Singapore before resuming its course, Refinitiv Eikon mapping showed.

It stopped as part of a routine procedure to adjust its arrival time at its next port, an official at UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) told Reuters.

The UKMTO, which coordinates shipping in the Gulf, had been in contact with the tanker, the official said.

On Saturday an Iranian cleric said Britain should be “scared” about Tehran’s possible retaliation for the seizure of the Grace 1, the Fars semi-official news agency reported.
“I am openly saying that Britain should be scared of Iran’s retaliatory measures over the illegal seizure of the Iranian oil tanker,” said Mohammad Ali Mousavi Jazayeri, a member of the
Assembly of Experts clerical body.

Tensions are high in the Gulf following last month’s attacks on vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping route, and Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone. Washington and Saudi
Arabia have directly blamed Iran for the attacks on tankers, something Tehran denies.

The attacks have raised fears of a broader confrontation in the region where the United States has boosted its military
presence over perceived Iranian threats.

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Iraq Celebrates Babylon Becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Iraq is celebrating the UNESCO World Heritage Committee’s decision to name the historic city of Babylon a World Heritage Site in a vote in Azerbaijan.

Friday’s vote comes after Iraq bid for years for Babylon to be added to the list of World Heritage Sites.

The city on the Euphrates River is about 85 kilometers (55 miles) south of Baghdad.

The 4,300-year-old Babylon, now mainly an archaeological ruin and two important museums, is where dynasties have risen and have fallen since the earliest days of settled human civilization.

Parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi and Minister of Culture Abdul-Amir al-Hamadani congratulated the Iraqi people on the announcement.

The vote comes years after the Islamic State group damaged another Iraq World Heritage site in the country’s north, the ancient city of Hatra.
 

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Another Coal Company Bankruptcy Leaves 1,700 Workers Facing Layoffs   

The U.S. coal industry sank deeper this week as the nation’s sixth-largest coal company declared bankruptcy.

Though the Trump administration has taken measures aimed at supporting coal, six of the 10 largest coal companies have gone bankrupt since 2014.

Blackjewel LLC’s Chapter 11 filing comes just weeks after the No. 3 producer, Cloud Peak Energy, declared bankruptcy. 

The coal industry has been pummeled as electric utilities switch from coal-fired power to cleaner, cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. 

It is good news for the climate and public health. Burning coal produces more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants than other fuels. 

But the trend has been devastating for the coal industry and its employees. 

Blackjewel, a subsidiary of Revelation Energy, employed about 1,700 workers in four states, including Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, according to court filings. 

Gas, wind, solar

In bankruptcy filings, Blackjewel blamed a “combination of an abundant, cheap and reliable alternative fuel in the form of natural gas, increased usage of renewable sources of energy,” plus stricter environmental regulations, for the coal industry’s decline. 

Coal consumption is at its lowest point in four decades. 

The dramatic rise of natural gas in the United States has undercut the economics of coal-fired power. The United States has been the world’s leading natural gas producer since 2009. 

Meanwhile, this April marked the first time coal-fired electricity generation slipped behind renewable sources,  including wind, solar and hydropower, in monthly totals.  Those figures fluctuate seasonally, but they highlight the rise of renewables and coal’s descent.

While several companies have emerged from insolvency, “You can’t say the coal industry fixed itself with bankruptcies,” said analyst Karl Cates at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “It bought itself some more time. But it continues to be a sector in decline.”

Trump support

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule last month that might prolong the life of some coal-fired power plants. 

The Affordable Clean Energy rule targets greenhouse gas emissions in the electric power sector. By focusing on power plant efficiency, the EPA says, the rule will reduce emissions up to 35 percent by 2030. 

It replaces the Obama administration’s more stringent Clean Power Plan that was expected to force many coal-fired plants to close. 

Critics note that if plants do stay open longer because of the rule, they will produce more greenhouse gases, even if they are more efficient. 

Given market forces and industry trends, however, it’s not clear how many plants would avoid shutdown under the new rule.

Some coal backers are pursuing technology to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks and bury it underground or use it to produce products. 

While carbon capture, utilization and storage technology exists, it currently costs too much to make economic sense on a large scale. 

Congress has recently passed bipartisan legislation aimed at making it viable. 

“Carbon capture technologies are essential to reducing emissions while protecting jobs,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from the coal state of West Virginia and one of the bill’s lead sponsors. 

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African Migrants in Record Numbers Head for US via Latin America

Marilyne Tatang, 23, crossed nine borders in two months to reach Mexico from the West African nation of Cameroon, fleeing political violence after police torched her house, she said.

She plans soon to take a bus north for four days and then cross a 10th border, into the United States. She is not alone, a record number of fellow Africans are flying to South America and then traversing thousands of miles of highway and a treacherous tropical rainforest to reach the United States.

Tatang, who is eight months pregnant, took a raft across a river into Mexico on June 8, a day after Mexico struck a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump to do more to control the biggest flows of migrants heading north to the U.S. border in more than a decade.

Trump threats encourage migrants

The migrants vying for entry at the U.S. southern border are mainly Central Americans. But growing numbers from a handful of African countries are joining them, prompting calls from Trump and Mexico for other countries in Latin America to do their part to slow the overall flood of migrants.

As more Africans learn from relatives and friends who have made the trip that crossing Latin America to the United States is tough but not impossible, more are making the journey, and in turn are helping others follow in their footsteps, migration experts say.

Trump’s threats to clamp down on migrants have ricocheted around the globe, paradoxically spurring some to exploit what they see as a narrowing window of opportunity, said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

“This message is being heard not just in Central America, but in other parts of the world,” she said.

Record breaking numbers from Africa

Data from Mexico’s interior ministry suggests that migration from Africa this year will break records.

The number of Africans registered by Mexican authorities tripled in the first four months of 2019 compared with the same period a year ago, reaching about 1,900 people, mostly from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which remains deeply unstable years after the end of a bloody regional conflict with its neighbors that led to the deaths of millions of people.

‘They would have killed me’

Tatang, a grade school teacher, said she left northwest Cameroon because of worsening violence in the English-speaking region, where separatists are battling the mostly French-speaking government for autonomy.

“It was so bad that they burned the house where I was living … they would have killed me,” she said, referring to government forces who tried to capture her.

At first, Tatang planned only to cross the border into Nigeria. Then she heard that some people had made it to the United States.

“Someone would say, ‘You can do this,’” she said. “So I asked if it was possible for someone like me too, because I’m pregnant. They said, ‘Do this, do that.’“

Tatang begged her family for money for the journey, which she said so far has cost $5,000.

Epic journey

She said her route began with a flight to Ecuador, where Cameroonians don’t need visas. Tatang went by bus and on foot through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala until reaching Mexico.

She was still deciding what to do once she got to Mexico’s northern border city of Tijuana, she said, cradling her belly while seated on a concrete bench outside migration offices in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula.

“I will just ask,” she said. “I can’t say, ‘When I get there, I will do this.’ I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

Reuters spoke recently with five migrants in Tapachula who were from Cameroon, DRC and Angola. Several said they traveled to Brazil as a jumping-off point.

They were a small sampling of the hundreds of people, including Haitians, Cubans, Indians and Bangladeshis, clustered outside migration offices.

Political volatility in Cameroon and the DRC in recent years has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

People from the DRC made up the third largest group of new refugees globally last year with about 123,000 people, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency, while Cameroon’s internally displaced population grew by 447,000 people.

The number of undocumented African migrants found by authorities in Mexico quadrupled compared with five years ago, reaching nearly 3,000 people in 2018.

Most obtain a visa that allows them free passage through Mexico for 20 days, after which they cross into the United States and ask for asylum.

More families coming, too

Few choose to seek asylum in Mexico, in part because they don’t speak Spanish. Tatang said the language barrier was especially frustrating because she speaks only English, making communication difficult both with Mexican migration officials and even other Africans, such as migrants from DRC who speak primarily French.

Those who reach the United States often send advice back home, helping make the journey easier for others, said Florence Kim, spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration in West and Central Africa.

Like their Central American migrant counterparts, some Africans are also showing up with families hoping for easier entries than as individuals, said Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute.

U.S. data shows a huge spike in the number of families from countries other than Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras at the U.S. southern border. Between last October and May 16,000 members of families were registered, up from 1,000 for the whole of 2018, according to an analysis by the MPI.

Regional approach

The grueling Latin America trek forces migrants to spend at least a week trudging across swampland and hiking through mountainous rainforests in the lawless Darien Gap that is the only link between Panama and Colombia.

Still, the route has a key advantage: Countries in the region typically do not deport migrants from other continents partly because of the steep costs and lack of repatriation agreements with their home countries.

That relaxed attitude could change, however.

Under a deal struck with United States last month, Mexico may start a process later this month to become a safe third country, making asylum-seekers apply for refuge in Mexico and not the United States.

To lessen the load on Mexico, Mexico and the United States plan to put pressure on Central American nations to do more to prevent asylum-seekers, including African migrants, from moving north.

For the moment, however, more Africans can be expected to attempt the journey, said IOM’s Kim.

“They want to do something with their life. They feel they lack a future in their country,” she said.

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A Celebration of Independence, in Trump Fashion

America’s annual Independence Day is celebrated a bit differently in Washington, D.C., this year, with a display of military might and a speech about patriotism by U.S. President Donald Trump. The event draws Trump supporters, as well as protesters who accuse the president of politicizing a nonpartisan holiday and wasting taxpayer money. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.

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German Fire Exercise Aims to Prevent Notre Dame Tragedy

A single cigarette may have started the April fire that destroyed much of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  Flames tore through the global tourist destination as firefighters struggled to find and extinguish their source.  German authorities want to make sure what happened in France, doesn’t happen there.  Arash Arabasadi has more.

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https://www.voltron.voanews.com/node/3941531/edit?destination=/admin/content%3Ftype%3Dvideo_episode#edit-group-teaser-contentAntarctic Sea Ice Plunges from Record High to Record Lows

The amount of sea ice around Antarctica has plunged from a record high to a record low in just three years, according to a new report released this week by the U.S. space agency NASA. Faith Lapidus reports scientists are not sure why.

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India Plans $330B Renewables Push by 2030 Without Hurting Coal

India said on Thursday it needs $330 billion in investments over the next decade to power its renewable energy dream, but coal would remain central to its electricity generation.

The energy guzzling country wants to raise its renewable energy capacity to 500 Gigawatts (GW), or 40% of total capacity, by 2030. Renewables currently account for 22% of India’s total installed capacity of about 357 GW.

“Additional investments in renewable plants up to year 2022 would be about $80 billion at today’s prices and an investment of around $250 billion would be required for the period 2023-2030,” according to the government’s economic survey presented to parliament on Thursday.

India wants to have 175 GW of renewable-based installed power capacity by 2022.

 The investment estimate reflects the magnitude of financial challenges facing one of the world’s most important growth markets for renewable energy, with government data indicating a growth slowdown in private and capital investments in the year ended March 2019.

India, which receives twice as much sunshine as European countries, wants to make solar a cornerstone of its renewable expansion, but also wants to make use of its cheap and abundant coal reserves, the fifth-largest in the world.

  The annual economic survey warned India against abruptly halting coal-based utilities, citing risks to its banking sector and the stability of the electricity grid.

“It may not be advisable to effect a sudden abandonment of coal based power plants without complete utilization of their useful lifetimes as it would lead to stranding of assets that can have further adverse impact on the banking sector,” the survey said.

Thermal power plants account for 80% of all industrial emissions of particulate matter, sulfur and nitrous oxides in India. India, one of the world’s largest coal producers and greenhouse gas emitters, estimates coal to be its energy mainstay for at least the next three decades. The country’s coal use rose 9.1% to nearly a billion tons in 2018-19.

The survey said it would be difficult for a growing economy like India to migrate to renewable power supply unless “sufficient technological breakthrough in energy storage happens in the near future”.

Environmentalists worry that India’s rising use of coal at a time when many Western nations are rejecting the dirty fossil fuel will hamper the global fight against climate change, despite the country’s commitment to renewable energy.

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Malaysian ex-PM Stepson to be Charged With Money Laundering

Malaysia’s anti-graft agency said Thursday it has detained Riza Aziz, the stepson of former Prime Minister Najib Razak and a Hollywood film producer, and will charge him with money laundering.

Anti-Corruption Commission chief Latheefa Koya said Riza was picked up Thursday but has been released on bail.

“He has to appear before the court tomorrow to face charges under AMLA,” she said, referring to the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001. She declined to give details.

Riza was quizzed last July by the agency over alleged theft and money laundering at the 1MDB state investment fund.

U.S. investigators say Riza’s company, Red Granite Pictures Inc., used money stolen from 1MDB to finance Hollywood films including the Martin Scorsese-directed “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Red Granite has paid the U.S. government $60 million to settle claims it benefited from the 1MDB scandal.

Alleged corruption at the 1MDB fund helped bring on the unexpected defeat of Najib’s coalition in May 9 polls last year. The new government reopened investigations that were stifled while Najib was in office.

Najib is currently on trial for alleged criminal breach of trust, abuse of power and money laundering linked to 1MDB. He denies the charges. His wife, Rosmah Mansor, also has pleaded not guilty to money laundering and tax evasion related to 1MDB but her trial date has not been set.

Najib’s daughter, Nooryana Najwa, slammed the legal action against her brother.

“Despite the settlement in the U.S. and the fact that alleged wrongdoings occurred entirely outside of Malaysia, the MACC decides to press charges after a whole year of leaving this case in cold storage. He is not a criminal,” she wrote on Instagram, accompanied by a picture of her with Riza taken earlier Thursday before his arrest.

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US Deports 37 Cambodian Refugees After Criminal Convictions

Thirty-seven Cambodian deported by the United States arrived in Phnom Penh on Thursday, 32 of them refugees who fled during the rule of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1970s or war that followed their ouster, an aid group said.

Thousands of Cambodian refugees started new lives in the United States after fleeing the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-1979 reign of terror, in which up to 2 million people are believed to have been killed or died of overwork and starvation, and subsequent chaos.

Some of them, after spending most of their lives in the United States, are sent back to a homeland they hardly know after running afoul of U.S. law.

“They — their families, actually — fled the terrors of the Khmer Rouge era and post — Khmer Rouge chaos. Many were born in Thai refugee camps,” said Bill Herod, spokesman for the Khmer Vulnerability Aid Organization (KVAO), a group that helps Cambodian deportees adjust after being sent back from the United States.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has in the past criticized the United States over the deportations and accused it of breaking up the families of those forced to leave.

Thirty-five of the 37 deportees were convicted criminals who were sent back to Cambodia via a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flight from Dallas, ICE said in a statement on
its website.

ICE said it had increased the number of Cambodian immigrants it had deported from 2017 to 2018 by 279%. There are still about 1,900 Cambodians in the United States who are subject to deportation, of which 1,400 are convicted criminals, according to ICE.

“All of them have served time in prison for felony convictions. Some come directly from prison, but most completed their sentences long ago and were living freely at the time they were detained for deportation,” Herod said of the deportees who arrived on Thursday.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has already deported thousands of people from Vietnam and Cambodia with criminal records as part of broader attempts to limit immigration to the United States.

The United States has been seeking to send thousands of immigrants from Vietnam back to the communist-ruled country despite a bilateral agreement that should protect most from deportation.

Trump has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his administration and is highlighting the issue as he aims for re-election in 2020.

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