SHANGHAI – A new British policy allowing Hong Kong residents to claim British citizenship is a violation of international law and interferes with China’s internal affairs, China’s embassy in London said on Thursday.
British Interior Minister Priti Patel said on Wednesday that Hong Kong people with British National Overseas visas would be able to apply for citizenship starting from January 2021.
Britain had made that decision despite opposition from Beijing and China would respond strongly if it was not reversed, the Chinese embassy said in a statement.
The move “severely violated (Britain’s) own commitments, seriously interfered with the internal affairs of China and seriously violated international law and the basic norms of international relations,” it said.
London’s decision, which could allow nearly three million Hong Kong residents to settle in Britain, came after Beijing imposed a national security law on the former British colony that democracy activists said would end the freedoms promised in 1997 when the territory was returned to Chinese rule.
Britain says the law breaches the terms of the handover treaty agreed in 1984. China accuses Britain of interfering in Hong Kong and Chinese affairs.
“The Chinese side urges the British side to recognise the reality that Hong Kong has returned to China, to look at the Hong Kong national security law objectively and immediately correct its mistakes,” the embassy said. —Reuters
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump announced a plan on Wednesday to send federal agents to the Democratic-run cities of Chicago and Albuquerque to crack down on violent crime in an escalation of his “law and order” theme heading into the final months before the presidential election.
Trump, joined at a White House event by Attorney General William Barr, unveiled an expansion of the “Operation Legend” program to more cities in a further effort by federal officials to tackle violence.
“Today I’m announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime,” said Trump, a Republican who has accused Democratic mayors and governors of tolerating crime waves. “This bloodshed must end; this bloodshed will end,” he said.
The program involves deploying federal law enforcement agents to assist local police in combating what the Justice Department has described as a “surge” of violent crime.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, both Democrats, welcomed the federal help, so long as it was to assist local law enforcement with community policing and public safety. Both rejected the use of federal agents for the kind of protest crackdown seen in Portland, Oregon, saying such actions would be met with legal action.
“If the Trump administration wishes to antagonize New Mexicans and Americans with authoritarian, unnecessary and unaccountable military-style ‘crackdowns,’ they have no business whatsoever in New Mexico,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement.
Barr sought to differentiate the initiative from the use of federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to quell unrest in Portland, where local authorities have complained about the federal involvement.
Barr said the law enforcement personnel from a variety of agencies will serve as ‘street’ agents and investigators who will be working to “solve murders and take down violent gangs.”
“This is different than the operations and tactical teams we use to defend against riots and mob violence,” Barr said. “We will continue to confront mob violence. But the operations we are discussing today are very different ‚Äì they are classic crime fighting.”
Trump hopes his “law and order” push will resonate with his political base as he trails Democrat Joe Biden in opinion polls ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election. But the initiative risks inflaming tensions running high in many cities in the wake of the death in police custody of George Floyd, an African-American.
Operation Legend involves federal agents from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and other agencies partnering with local law enforcement.
Lightfoot said it was not unusual for federal law enforcement to work alongside local partners, but urged Chicagoans to watch for any sign that federal agents, especially DHS officers, were stepping “out of line.”
“We don’t need federal troops, we don’t need unnamed, secret federal agents,” said Lightfoot, in reference to tactics used by federal personnel in Portland.
Trump has emphasized a robust policing and military approach to the protests across the United States about racial inequality after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
The White House has sought to focus on city crime even as Trump’s approval numbers plummet in response to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We are waiting for the mayor (Lightfoot), respectfully, and other mayors and governors to call us. We are ready, willing and able to go in there with great force,” Trump told reporters later on Wednesday.
Operation Legend is named for LeGend Taliferro, a 4-year-old boy who was shot and killed while he slept early on June 29 in Kansas City, Missouri, according to the Department of Justice’s website. —Reuters
UNITED NATIONS – World leaders will send videos instead of physically gathering at the United Nations in September due to the coronavirus pandemic, the General Assembly decided on Wednesday, a move that paves the way for people wary of traveling to the United States – like North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un – to participate.
The annual high-level meeting had been shaping up to be a week-long celebration of the 75th anniversary of the world body, but U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres suggested in May that leaders send video statements due to likely travel issues.
The 193-member General Assembly agreed on Wednesday to the special measures.
“Each Member State, observer State and the European Union can submit a pre-recorded statement of its Head of State, Vice-President, Crown Prince or Princess, Head of Government, Minister or Vice-Minister, which will be played in the General Assembly Hall … after introduction by their representative who is physically present,” according to the decision.
Traditionally hundreds of events are also held on the sidelines of the U.N. debate, but General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande wrote in a letter to states that they were “encouraged to move all side events to virtual platforms to limit the footprint and number of people in the U.N. building.”
The coronavirus has infected at least 15.1 million people and there have been more than 619,000 known deaths worldwide, according to a Reuters tally. New York was a global epicenter earlier this year for the virus, which emerged in China late last year.
As U.N. host country the United States agreed to grant entry to leaders and diplomats from all U.N. member states. However, diplomats say it regularly limits the delegation size of some of its adversaries, like Iran.
While North Korea’s Kim has met three times with U.S. President Donald Trump since 2018 for now-stalled denuclearization talks, he has never traveled to the United States as leader or taken part in the U.N. General Assembly.
The country’s former foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, traveled to New York to address the United Nations from 2016 to 2018, but he did not attend last year. North Korea’s U.N. mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Kim would send a video statement for this year’s high-level meeting. —Reuters
Twitter said on Wednesday that the hackers who breached its systems last week likely read the direct messages of 36 accounts, including one belonging to an elected official in the Netherlands.
In tweets from its support account and an updated blog post, Twitter said it had no indication that the private messages of any other elected officials were obtained.
Twitter previously said the attackers tweeted from 45 “verified” accounts, including those belonging to such well-known names as CEOs Elon Musk and Bill Gates and former Vice-President Joe Biden.
Asked by Reuters if the 36 accounts where messages might have been read included any verified accounts, Twitter said it would not answer.
In general, someone with the ability to tweet from an account would also be able to read previously sent or received messages that had not been deleted.
That would make it likely that some of the most famous people in the world had private messages read by hackers still at large. The FBI is investigating the case from its San Francisco office.
Twitter previously said that the attackers downloaded mass data from eight accounts, none of them the verified accounts with blue checks that include famous people, officials, and some in the media.
The downloading tool does not provide access to Twitter messages, a spokeswoman said.
For accounts they won access to, the company said the hackers would have been able to see phone numbers and e-mail addresses but not previous passwords. — Reuters
India is the world’s biggest exporter of rice and the world’s second-biggest producer after China. Across the country’s grain bowl states of Haryana and neighboring Punjab, thousands of farmers have been forced by the coronavirus to mechanize planting.
RAIPUR JATTAN, India/SINGAPORE — For more than two decades, Indian farmer Ravindra Kajal cultivated rice the way his forefathers had—every June he flooded his fields with water before hiring an army of farmhands to plant paddy seedlings.
But a scarcity of workers this year because of the coronavirus forced Kajal to change. He irrigated the field just enough to moisten the soil and leased a drilling machine to directly sow seeds on his 9-acre (3.6-hectare) plot.
“Since I was more than comfortable with the tried-and-tested way of growing rice, I opted for the new method with some trepidation,” said Mr. Kajal, 46, looking over his field, green with rice saplings, in the Raipur Jattan village in Haryana state.
“But I’ve already saved around 7,500 rupees ($100) per acre because I hardly spent on water and workers this year,” he said.
India is the world’s biggest exporter of rice and the world’s second-biggest producer after China. Across the country’s grain bowl states of Haryana and neighboring Punjab, thousands of farmers like Mr. Kajal have been forced by the coronavirus to mechanize planting.
They are still wary of the technology and overturning the time-honored use of manual labor.
But Kahan Singh Pannu, Punjab’s agriculture secretary, is convinced a historic change is underway that could dramatically increase India’s rice output, which in turn could impact world markets.
“It is no less than a revolution in Indian agriculture,” he told Reuters.
Government officials say the so-called direct seeding of rice (DSR) method could increase yields by about one-third and slash costs on workers and water.
The DSR machines allow farmers to grow more than 30 saplings per square metre against the usual 15 to 18 seedlings, said Naresh Gulati, a state government farm official in Punjab.
Punjab is the home of the 1960s Green Revolution that led to a spike in crop yields. This year, farmers there have used seed drilling machines to sow rice on more than half a million hectares, a big increase compared with less than 50,000 hectares in 2019, growers and government officials said.
Mr. Pannu expects DSR use to jump again next year.
“More and more farmers are using the DSR technology which seems to be so promising that the entire 2.7 million hectares of Punjab’s rice area could come under it next year, which will be a watershed for India’s rice production,” he said.
Avinash Kishore, a research fellow at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), said if this year’s crop was good, DSR would be the way forward.
“The scale of this year’s shift to the DSR is a momentous change in rice cultivation in India,” he said.
Sudhanshu Singh, a senior agronomist at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, said the shift to DSR was “one of the rare positive fallouts from COVID.”
NO MIGRANT LABOR
None of the world’s major rice exporting nations—India, Vietnam and Thailand—makes significant use of seeding machines.
They have come into play in a big way in India this year because hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers from Bihar and Jharkhand states in the east did not arrive in the northern grain belt for the 2020 planting season due to the coronavirus lockdown.
That pushed up the price of local workers and made it more economical for farmers to lease rice planting machines rather than pay for hired help, said Jaskaran Singh Mahal, a director at the Punjab Agricultural University.
Farm wages have gone up by 1,500 rupees an acre to about 4,500 rupees this year, and growers need around half a dozen workers to transplant rice paddy on a one acre plot.
In comparison, farmers can hire planting machines for 5,000 to 6,000 rupees per acre, which can cover 25 to 30 acres in a day, rice growers said.
“Other than helping us save on major overheads such as water and labor, DSR is swift, unlike the old method which was tedious and time-consuming,” said Devinder Singh Gill, a farmer in Punjab’s Moga district, well known for its aromatic basmati rice.
The conventional method requires farmers to sow seeds in nurseries and then wait for 20 to 30 days before manually transplanting the seedlings into plantation fields that are ankle-deep in water.
Seeding machines allow farmers to bypass the nursery stage and plant straight into fields.
Water conservation is another key attribute of DSR, which is crucial in a mostly dry, monsoon dependent country like India.
Under the conventional method, 3,000 to 5,000 litres of water is used in India to produce 1 kg of rice—the most water-thirsty crop—and DSR allows growers to cut water use by at least 50% to 60%, farmers and government officials said.
The main challenge for farmers using direct seeding machines is managing weeds, which require the spraying of herbicides through the season.
Still, even factoring in the extra costs of these applications, the overall cost of cultivation is substantially lower under DSR, said Mr. Kajal, the farmer in Haryana.
Another drawback will be that if the method is adopted across the farm belt, there will be huge unemployment in the eastern states next year.
But farmers say they will wait to see the harvest in October before deciding whether to stick with the technology next year.
“The new technology leads to a lot of saving on account of water and labor, but the real test lies in productivity and farmers will not be fully convinced unless they see some rise in their yields,” said Ashok Singh, a rice farmer. — Reuters
The United States said Huawei’s equipment could be used by the Chinese government for espionage—a charge denied by Huawei and Beijing—and has pressed its allies to ban it. — REUTERS
French authorities have told telecoms operators planning to buy Huawei 5G equipment that they won’t be able to renew licenses for the gear once they expire, effectively phasing the Chinese firm out of mobile networks, three sources close to the matter said.
Like other countries in Europe, France is laying the ground for its next-generation 5G mobile market in the middle of a growing geopolitical storm between two global superpowers.
The United States said the company’s equipment could be used by the Chinese government for espionage—a charge denied by Huawei and Beijing—and has pressed its allies to ban it.
France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI said this month it would allow operators to use equipment, including Huawei’s, under licenses of three to eight years. But it added it was urging telcos not currently using the Chinese company’s gear to avoid switching to it.
Operators must each apply for dozens of licenses for equipment to cover different parts of the country.
The sources said ANSSI had informed operators of most license decisions for large cities. They said the bulk of authorizations for Huawei gear were for three or five years, while most of those for equipment from European rivals Ericsson or Nokia received eight-year licenses.
ANSSI’s decisions have not been made public, either by the agency or by the companies.
The sources added that operators had also been told by French authorities during informal conversations in recent months, not stated formally in documents, that licenses granted for Huawei equipment would not be renewed thereafter.
ANSSI declined to comment.
A spokesman for the prime minister’s office, which oversees the permissions on 5G equipment, said ANSSI was working with operators within the legal framework, adding that any authorization granted at present did not impinge on whether these would later be renewed or interrupted.
Huawei declined to comment.
Such restrictions, though, would amount to a de facto phase-out of Huawei within France’s 5G networks by 2028, given the short time-frame of the licenses, according to the sources, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
French operators might still manage to get an eight-year authorization for Huawei equipment in some cases, and could yet decide to use its gear for that time period, the sources said. But even this meant eventually dismantling it, they added.
One of the sources said it would be difficult for a telecom operator to take the risk of investing in Huawei gear, given new mobile technology like 5G takes at least eight years to yield a return on investment. “Granting three years amounts to a flat refusal,” the person added.
’SIMILAR TO BRITAIN’
An effective ban would be particularly troublesome for Bouygues Telecom and Altice Europe’s SFR, the two French telecom operators that already use Huawei’s equipment in their current mobile network.
The new authorizations for 5G network equipment are linked to existing 4G gear—meaning that if an operator opts for a different supplier for 5G, it would also have to replace its existing 4G infrastructure.
The companies have already said several times this year that such a scenario, in which they may be compelled to replace part of their grid at great cost, would lead them to asking for compensation from the state.
Bouygues and Altice declined to comment on whether they had applied for Huawei licenses or any license decisions or whether they had held informal conversations with ANSSI. They also declined to comment on whether they would now drop any purchase plans for Huawei equipment.
France’s two other major operators, leader Orange and Iliad, mainly rely on Nokia, Ericsson, or both for their mobile networks.
Iliad and Orange declined to comment.
In Britain, where major telecoms groups are heavily reliant on Huawei technology, the government has ordered the Chinese company’s equipment to be purged from the 5G network by 2027.
“France’s position is similar to that of Britain, but the government’s communication is different,” one of the sources said. “Huawei can’t do much about it.” — Reuters
Dell EMC introduces PowerStore that combines the advantages of cutting-edge storage hardware with the flexibility and simplicity of modern software design.
Four Filipino social communities have been selected to be part of a training program by Facebook.
MentalHealthPH, Filipina Homebased Moms (FHMoms), BEAGIVER, and Advancement for Rural Kids (ARK) will be joining nine other participants from Australia, Indonesia, and Thailand for Facebook’s Community Accelerator. It is a six-month program that aims to help communities by providing training, mentorship, and funding of up to $3 million, with a guaranteed $30,000 for each participant.
MentalHealthPH, led and co-founded by Yves Miel Zuniga, aims to promote and protect mental health in the Philippines with the help of social media and digital technology. They have launched numerous campaigns such as Voices of Hope, which collates the inspiring stories of Filipinos dealing with their mental health.
Starting out as a Facebook support group for freelancing mothers, FHMoms has transformed into an e-learning, e-commerce, and job-matching platform. The objective of founder Maria Korina Bertulfo is to help mothers gain financial security and achieve personal growth, and help women find home-based livelihood opportunities.
BEAGIVER is a social enterprise founded by Josh Mahinay that supports education and local livelihood through various endeavors. Their bags are manufactured locally, sourcing materials and manpower from communities in Zamboanga, Bulacan, Rizal, and Manila. Furthermore, they donate a bag for every one sold to a beneficiary student from their partner schools.
Founded by Ayesha Vera Yu, the goal of ARK is to solve hunger, get children in the provinces back to school, and create a self-sustaining future. Through their 5-cent School Lunch program, farmers and fisherfolk harvest and prepare their children’s lunches from a community garden themselves, giving them the nutrition that they need to stay in school.
Other participants include Ripple, an Australian platform that connects young people with purpose-driven career development opportunities and aims to increase their civic participation; MotherHope Indonesia, a community that promotes perinatal mental health literacy in support of affected mothers and families; and Young Pride Club, which provides learning opportunities and on-the-ground and online activism activities on gender equality and the LGBT+ community for Thai youth.
Selection criteria included the desire to create social impact, leadership, business model, and capacity to scale. “In the end, it boiled down to communities that are already driving positive, lasting change, but need help to scale their efforts and grow in size,” said Grace Clapham, head of community partnerships – APAC at Facebook.
For the first half of the program, the participants will learn about growth strategies, the Facebook tools that they can utilize to grow and scale their communities, and how to measure impact. They will also create a customized curriculum for their communities’ growth.
For the remaining half, they will iterate and execute their curricula with funding, network support, and a dedicated team provided by Community Accelerator. The program then concludes with the communities showcasing their work and progress to external funders and partners.
Community Accelerator is part of the Facebook Community Leadership Program (CLP), a global initiative that invests in leaders who build communities. Other efforts include Learning Labs, a program that brings Facebook group administrators together into a digital classroom for structured learning, and the Community Hub, a platform that provides resources on how Facebook groups work as well as stories and news about various Facebook communities.
All Day Supermarket again adds another large format store to its growing presence in Cavite. All Day Supermarket Silang was opened on July 17, 2020, bolstering the AllValue position in the area by adding the convenience of a supermarket to the existing AllHome and Coffee Project in the area.
All Day Supermarket Silang is a welcome addition to the neighborhood, as it provides a refreshed grocery shopping experience to Silang’s predominantly can-do market. It is also easily accessible to the residents of Tagaytay, making the All Day promise of an excellent shopping experience easily available to them.
Established in 2014, All Day is a proudly Filipino-owned supermarket, mini-nart and convenience store chain that aims to provide Filipinos an upgraded, refreshed and world-class grocery experience. All Day stores take pride in providing the convenience of having everything and elevating the grocery experience—beautiful stores, international flavors care of the Gastroville food hubs and a just-the-way-you-like-it Paluto food service that redefines cooking and eating the freshest.
From 2017 up to present, All Day Supermarket has now opened 21 stores, including locations in Molino, Kawit, Las Pinas, Libis, Taguig, Sta. Rosa, Pampanga, Global South, Naga, Iloilo, General Trias and Tanza, Evia, Starmal lAlabang, Malolos, Dasmarinas, North Molino, Imus and Salawagand 76 convenience store locations all across the country.
Digital communication tools such as Zoom and Slack have become indispensable as companies shift to a “hybrid virtual model” of work, which management consulting firm McKinsey & Company described as a setup wherein one part of the workforce works from home while the other works on-site.
While these tools have made communication safe and more convenient, they also have downsides that the workforce must be aware of.
Kea, a 25 year-old digital marketing specialist for an entertainment company, was used to face-to-face meetings and frequent interactions across their different departments. When her company was forced to work remotely due to the pandemic, she found it difficult to adjust to this new means of communication. “We’ve had at least three Zoom meetings in a week, but I still felt like it was a struggle to communicate to each other online,” she recalled.
Kea’s company has an on-site skeletal work arrangement in place: rank-and-file employees report to the office once a week, while supervisors and managers are required to come in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Similar arrangements are becoming the norm and will probably continue even after the pandemic. Despite the advantages—such as increased productivity due to the elimination of lengthy commutes—licensed professional counselor and mental health professional Danielle Cruz cautioned against the pitfalls of online communication, the main one being a higher risk of misunderstanding because of the additional layer of technology.
“Face-to-face interaction has less barriers in the process of communicating with one another. That’s why we have to be more careful since whatever we say might get misunderstood or misinterpreted easily,” she said of online communication through screens.
Employees may also feel that the boundaries between their home and work lives are blurring. “Some might think that they still need to observe proper office decorum but of course, it’s hard to accomplish that when you’re not in an office setting,” said Samuel I. Cabbuag, an assistant professor from the University of the Philippines Diliman Department of Sociology.
MASKING FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
Face-to-face communication has also been hampered by the need to wear face masks, which hinders an employee from holistically processing a colleague’s facial expressions. This could be especially taxing for the likes of deaf and autistic workers, who rely much on non-verbal cues during communication.
Gestures like handshakes, hugs, and the hand on the shoulder, which convey feelings of trust, gratitude, and comfort, are used sparingly or not at all due to social distancing protocols. This may affect the well-being of and camaraderie among employees, as touch has been found to help reduce stress and foster connectedness with others. “Friendly touching serves as social glue that binds people in the workplace and in the community. It engenders feelings of trust and cooperation. It makes coworkers have more team spirit and more empathy for each other,” said David J. Linden, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, in an article by Fast Company.
CLARITY IS KEY
With these barriers standing in the way of effective communication and fruitful social interaction, what can be done to lessen the chance of misunderstanding?
For online calls, Harvard Business Reviewsuggests using video for all participants and ensuring that all of their faces are visible. This provides non-verbal cues and makes everyone feel that they are all truly in the same meeting. Of course, this suggestion is only as effective as the speed of one’s Internet connection.
When it comes to written material such as e-mail, Turalt, an online communications AI solutions provider, said that empathy is key. Try to imagine how the recipient may interpret your words. Reviewing before sending also helps, as it helps you spot unnecessary words or points that need to be emphasized.
In order to prevent the blurring of one’s home and work selves, employees must set up separate spaces at home for work and rest. “In that way, you will also create a psychological boundary between personal and professional space,” said Ms. Cruz. “As much as possible, avoid working inside your bedroom because you have to program your mind that your bedroom is a space for rest. Designate a workplace in your homes where you can work. Once work hours are done, leave that space so you can condition your mind that you are about to rest.”
Employees can institute time-based boundaries. Harvard Business Reviewsuggests sticking to a predetermined number of work hours and aligning this with your family in order to prevent any misunderstandings. “Disconnect hours” in between work also provide a leeway for rest, house chores, and errands.
As social beings that thrive on proximity and communication, COVID-19 presents challenges that affect us not only at work but also in other aspects of our lives. While these may initially be difficult to manage, there are ways of thriving and surviving—even if from a two-meter distance or through screens.
In California’s sun-drenched Kern Valley, Chevron Corp. has found a way to use one of the state’s clean-energy programs to cut the cost of pumping oil, to the chagrin of some environmentalists.
Since April, solar panels have been powering oil pumps at Chevron’s Lost Hills 7,981 barrel-a-day oil field, according to the company. The 29-megawatt site, owned and operated by San Jose-based SunPower Corp., is designed to provide the field with 80% of its electricity, equal to taking more than 4,000 cars off the road. In exchange, Chevron will earn so-called low-carbon fuel standard credits worth about $4 million a year at current prices.
“Electricity is one of Lost Hills field’s largest operating expenses, so having solar will be an important factor to help keep those costs down and maintain the planned oil field life,” Veronica Flores-Paniagua, a Chevron spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
Renewable energy costs have fallen “substantially” over time, making its application to oil fields more economic, Telisa Toliver, Chevron Pipeline & Power’s general manager for renewable power, said in an interview. “We see this business model for us as something we hope to replicate,” she said.
The Lost Hills project, Chevron’s largest solar-powered oil field, marks an unusual twist in the fate of the state’s decade-old Low Carbon Fuel Standard Program. The carbon-trading plan, designed to cut emissions 20% by 2030, has mostly been used to supplant gasoline and diesel with ethanol and biodiesel in vehicles. But it’s starting to benefit local oil companies as well, a development that environmentalists say may subvert the program’s intent of ushering in more renewable fuels.
“Instead of putting solar panels alongside oil rigs, we should be putting solar panels next to more solar panels,” Brian Nowicki, California Climate Policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said by e-mail. “That’s how we start truly transitioning to cleaner energy.”
For more than a decade, California has struggled to reconcile a leadership role in the fight against climate change with the reality of being among the biggest oil-producing states in the US Fossil fuels still dominate California’s energy mix, with most of the oil that’s used imported in tankers from as far away as Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The Chevron project is one of three oil-field solar projects approved for LCFS credits by the California Air Resources Board since early June. The companies, including Grade Water and Power LLC., E&B Natural Resources Management Corp. and Rotterdam Ventures Inc., are benefiting from a provision that was added to the program in its early years allowing oil drillers to qualify for credits through so-called “innovative crude oil production methods” such as solar or carbon-capture-and-storage. Before June, just two other projects were approved for LCFS credits since 2016, both involving the use of solar power at oil fields. — Bloomberg
The Philippines is suspending its decision to allow non-essential overseas travel, after only one company agreed to provide health insurance to outbound passengers.
Only passengers with bookings until July 20 will be allowed to leave for non-essential trips abroad, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said at a televised briefing.
The Philippines has 72,269 virus cases, including 1,843 deaths, as of Wednesday. — Bloomberg
