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Source: Chicago Teamsters
The reduction in emissions is due in part to stricter federal standards and in part to efforts by the state, the Times said. After a 2007 study revealed the level of emissions from the ports, the Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Washington offered grants to help tug companies re-power boats with cleaner engines.
Five years after federal regulators discovered that ports contributed to a third of the worst air pollution in the Puget Sound area, a new survey reported Tuesday that toxic exhaust has declined by as much as 50 percent at the ports, the Seattle Times said.
The ports also launched programs to reduce emissions after the 2007 study was released. According to the Times, the ports of Seattle and Tacoma subsidized fuel for vessels that used fuel lower in sulfur than what the EPA required. The Port of Seattle also offered incentives for truckers to drive vehicles with cleaner-burning engines.
More at KCPQ-TV
Bolivian leader Evo Morales frequently invokes in his speeches the facts revealing the subversive role taken by the US Embassy in Bolivia. It put obstacles in the way of organizing the Bolivian national assembly and encouraged separatism in the five of Bolivia’s provinces which sit on important deposits of natural reserves and contribute 75-80% of the national GDP. While a referendum demonstrated that 2/3 of Bolivians support the socioeconomic course Morales is steering, the US diplomats and agents did a huge job with a multimillion budget to plunge the country into a state of discord. USAID helped form opposition youth gangs, sponsored anti-government rallies, and planted myriads of increasingly radical NGOs in Bolivia. The US Embassy’s plane was used to shift protesters to the Beni and Pando departments where they tried to block the airports and to prevent the arrival of Morales when he planned to personally help the situation revert to normalcy on site. In September, 2008, Morales declared Goldberg persona non grata over charges that the US diplomat assisted separatists in Bolivia. A bunch of CIA and DEA officers caught recruiting the Bolivian army and security staff or...
Source: NYTimes
Source: Campus Times
Source: Seattle Times
Bunge Ltd. (BG), Argentina’s second- biggest exporter, was excluded from the Cereals Register by the Argentine government amid a tax probe, the Official Gazette said today, without elaborating.
Being excluded will postpone Bunge’s readmission later, a tax agency official who asked not to be identified because of the agency’s communications policy, said in a telephone interview from Buenos Aires.
Bunge’s local subsidiary was suspended from the register Oct. 1, forcing the company to pay a tax rate of 25 percent to export grain, up from a previous 10 percent. Argentina’s tax agency said then it was investigating Bunge because of unpaid income taxes since 2006.
More at Bloomberg
Already $305 million in public money has been spent on the Port of Anchorage expansion, but not all that went toward the dock in question. New roads, an expanded rail line, a new port security system and a fuel pipeline were built with project money as well, according to federal officials. That work will still be usable.
A federal agency says a new, still-unreleased study examining the troubled Port of Anchorage expansion project suggests that it shouldn’t go forward as designed because of the risk of shifting forces during an earthquake.
Instead of constructing a traditional dock on piling, interlocking sheets of steel have been hammered into the sea floor to form U-shaped cells, called Open Cell Sheet Pile, that are then backfilled with dirt and gravel. The project has been stalled since 2010 when inspections found that numerous steel sheets were damaged during installation.
“While the study is still being finalized, preliminary findings support our concerns that selection of an Open Cell Sheet Pile design was inappropriate for the conditions at the Port of Anchorage,” the Maritime Administration, known as MARAD, said in a prepared statement. “Specifically,...
Source: In These Times
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