KFAR KILA, Lebanon: An Israeli military unit installed Monday an apparent spying device near the barbed wire fence marking the border with Lebanon.
The device was placed facing the border village of Kfar Kila. Residents saw the Israeli vehicle driving slowly along the border before the device was planted.
Israeli warplanes also flew over the Kfarshouba and the Shebaa Farms, as well as over areas in south Lebanon.
WASHINGTON -- Seasonal storms have exposed once more some perennial political divisions over California water.
Citing the latest rainfall, seven of the state’s lawmakers are urging the Obama administration to free up more irrigation deliveries for San Joaquin Valley farms. The muscular Capitol Hill lineup is noticeable both for who’s on it and who’s not.
In a telling alliance, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein joined with House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and four other House Republicans, as well as one House Democrat, in calling for increased deliveries.
“Based on historical weather patterns, these storms could be our last chance this year to receive, capture, and move a sizable amount of water to those farms and communities that desperately need it for public health and safety and for their livelihoods that are under severe threat,” the lawmakers wrote Thursday.
Pointedly, they cited “a significant imbalance of regulatory burdens” in declaring that “there is clearly no imminent threat” to federally protected fish species.
Those not signing the letter to the Interior and Commerce departments were equally telling.
Neither Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer nor any of the House Democrats whose congressional districts include the vulnerable Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta joined the letter. The only Democrat who did, Rep. Jim Costa of Fresno, was one of the few Democrats to vote for a far-reaching California water bill approved by the Republican-controlled House several weeks ago.
Some environmental advocates cast the latest division in stark terms.
“Sen. Feinstein along with her Republican colleagues have decided to further mug our native species and water quality to serve up more subsidies and water to the mega farms on the West Side,” said Patricia Schifferle, owner of the firm Pacific Advocates.
Feinstein has occasionally angered environmentalists, as well some Northern California Democrats, with some of her previous water proposals on behalf of San Joaquin Valley farms. At the same time, she has also positioned herself as a potential deal-maker.
On Friday, Boxer sent her own letter to the administration, urging officials to “take all prudent and responsible measures within current regulation and law.”
“We cannot miss opportunities to provide some immediate relief during these rain events, but we must also ensure that we meet health and human safety requirements in our state,” Boxer wrote.
On March 12, Feinstein privately met in her Senate office with McCarthy, Costa and three other GOP lawmakers to hash out legislative ideas that might be represent a compromise between the House-passed bill and a competing Senate bill co-authored by her and Boxer.
The behind-the-scenes session lasted over an hour, letting the members, some of whom have had past conflicts, both spell out priorities and develop a working relationship. Feinstein had previously met one-on-one with freshman Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., the chief author of the House’s California water bill.
So far, the meeting participants are trying to keep a low profile as they pursue a potential deal.
In a more public arena, as chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, Feinstein next Wednesday will be able to press the California water questions on the heads of the Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Since at least last September, trains carrying tank cars filled with crude oil have rolled into the the former McClellan Air Force base. Workers have transferred the oil, including some volatile Bakken crude, from trains to tanker trucks, which take it to Bay Area refineries.
Until this week, Sacramento’s InterState Oil ran the crude operation without a required permit. Local fire and emergency officials who would be called upon to respond in case of a spill or fire weren’t informed it was happening.
Jorge DeGuzman, supervisor of permitting for the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, said an inspector first discovered in the fall of 2012 that InterState Oil was unloading ethanol from rail cars at McClellan without a permit. The company then applied for a permit and received it in October 2012.
Last September, another inspection revealed that InterState was transferring crude oil from rail cars to trucks taking their loads to Bay Air refineries; again without a permit.
The company was not fined, and continued the ethanol and crude operations during the permitting process. The crude oil permit was approved this week.
Fuel transfer operations such as the one at McClellan have popped up in California and other states amid an energy boom driven by hydraulic fracturing of shale oil formations in North Dakota and elsewhere. While the oil furthers economic growth and energy independence, it’s also bringing unforeseen safety risks to communities, catching many state and local officials off guard.
“As long as it’s not stored, I don’t think it’s required for them to inform me,” said Steve Cantelme, Sacramento’s chief of emergency services. Still, he said, “I would like to know about it.”
State and local governments have scant jurisdiction over the movement of goods on rail lines, which is generally a matter for the federal government.
Federal regulators and the rail industry have taken voluntary steps to improve the safety of such shipments, including reduced speeds, more frequent inspections and using safer routes. They're also working on a safer design for tank cars. But some state and local officials feel the response hasn't matched the risk they face.
Fiery derailments in Alabama, North Dakota and Canada in the past several months have raised safety and environmental concerns about rail shipments of crude. On July 6, a 72-car train of crude oil from North Dakota broke loose, rolled down a hill and derailed in the lakeside village of Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The unusually volatile oil fed a raging fire and powerful explosions that leveled the center of town. Of the 47 people who were killed, five vanished without a trace.
The issue has received limited attention in California because the state has continued to rely on its traditional petroleum supply, which arrives on marine tankers.
But that’s changing. In December 2012, the state received fewer than 100,000 barrels of oil by rail. A year later, it was receiving nearly 1.2 million, according to the California Energy Commission.
“It potentially could be a fatal issue here in Sacramento,” Cantelme said.
The state projects that within two years, California could receive a quarter of its petroleum supply by rail. That would mean at least six trains of 100 tank cars every day, or 500,000 barrels of oil, passing through the capital. The capacity of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is 830,000 barrels.
InterState officials declined a request by The Sacramento Bee to observe the McClellan operations. The company also declined to answer questions The Bee sent last week about the facility, including how frequently the transfers take place and what safety precautions are taken.
In an emailed statement, the company’s president, Brent Andrews, said InterState has “the highest regard for safety procedures” and is “very thorough in our education and training with our employees.”
InterState’s new permit allows it to transfer about 11 million gallons of crude oil and ethanol a month at McClellan.
“That’s a lot,” said Darren Taylor, assistant chief of operations at the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Department.
Neither McClellan Business Park, where the operation takes place, nor Patriot Rail, the short line railroad that switches the cars there, were required to verify that InterState had the necessary permits.
Another company, Carson Oil, was unloading ethanol at McClellan without a permit, but has since received one. Carson, based in Portland, Ore., is also seeking a permit to unload crude oil at McClellan in hopes of securing a contract. Carson did not return phone messages and emails requesting comment.
“If we don’t see anything alarming, we don’t shut a business down just because they missed some paperwork,” DeGuzman said. “The inspector felt it was a paperwork procedure.”
The McClellan operation straddles the boundary between Metropolitan Fire’s jurisdiction and that of the Sacramento Fire Department. Both departments could be involved in an emergency response to the site.
After a reporter told him about the facility last week, Dan Haverty, the city fire department’s interim chief, sent his battalion chief and a hazardous materials inspector to McClellan, where they reported finding 22 tank cars loaded with crude oil.
Haverty said far more hazardous commodities move by rail through Sacramento, including toxic chemicals, such as chlorine and anhydrous ammonia, and that his department has planned and trained for emergencies involving those materials.
Taylor said he was “comfortable and confident” in his department’s capabilities.
But Niko King, Sacramento’s assistant fire chief, said he didn’t have a lot of information on what was coming through the region by rail and new risks his department might face.
“I don’t want to say we’re in front of the curve,” he said. “We’re definitely reacting.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation has required that petroleum producers test and properly label and package Bakken oil before it is transported. But once the oil reaches its destination, whether a refinery or a transfer facility, such as the one in Sacramento, it’s handled no differently than conventional crudes.
The McClellan operation falls outside of some agencies’ jurisdiction. The Sacramento County Environmental Management Department regulates crude oil storage facilities, but McClellan isn’t considered one.
“We regulate the stuff that’s there” for more than 30 days, said Elise Rothschild, chief of the department’s Environmental Compliance Division, “not the stuff in transit.”
The railroads bringing crude oil to Sacramento, meanwhile, are not required to tell local officials that they’re doing so. One of them, BNSF Railway, is the nation’s largest hauler of crude oil in trains, mostly from North Dakota.
Earlier this month, CSX, the largest railroad on the East Coast, reached an agreement with Pennsylvania’s emergency management agency to share information on the shipment of hazardous materials on its network, including crude oil.
But the agreement requires state officials not to make the information public. It is possible to determine where shipments are going, however. BNSF, for example, lists Sacramento as one of its crude-by-rail terminals on a marketing website. A Sacramento Bee photographer who visited the McClellan site recently found crude oil being transferred from rail cars to trucks, activity that was plainly visible.
Cantelme said he’s begun in recent weeks to organize a regional task force with other local officials and the state Office of Emergency Response in an effort to better understand the risks of such operations and develop a coordinated response plan.
“This is preliminary for us,” he said. “We’re just now getting into it.”
A McClatchy analysis of federal data showed that more than 1.2 million gallons of crude oil spilled from trains in 2013 alone. In contrast, fewer than 800,000 gallons had been spilled nationwide from 1975 to 2012.
“Nobody saw this incredible increase in volume,” said Tom Cullen, administrator of the oil spill prevention office in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. In his January budget proposal, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed increasing funding for the Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response and shifting its focus from marine spill to inland spills.
Other states where crude oil shipments have increased are taking action.
In January, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed several state agencies to review safety procedures and emergency response plans. That state’s capital, Albany, has become a hub for rail shipments of North Dakota and Canadian oil for East Coast refineries. Earlier this month, Albany County placed a moratorium on the expansion of a train-to-barge facility blocks from state offices until the completion of a health study.
Washington lawmakers considered several measures to address increased oil shipments, including a 5-cents a barrel tax on crude oil shipped by rail into the state, but the efforts died before the session adjourned last week.
Activists in the Bay Area cities of Benicia, Richmond and Martinez are fighting the expansion of crude oil deliveries to local refineries. Earlier this month, Elizabeth Patterson, the mayor of Benicia, called on Brown to sign an executive order similar to Cuomo’s.
BEIRUT: Lebanon Monday slashed by up to 50 percent the price of phone calls made through prepaid cards issued by the state-run telecom provider Ogero.
“I have issued a March 27, 2014, decision numbered 148/1 to reduce the price of phone calls made through the prepaid cards Telecarte and Kalam by 50 percent for land line calls and 30 percent for cellular phone calls,” Telecoms Ministry Butros Harb told reporters during a news conference.
People using the cards will now pay LL50 instead of LL100 for every minute of call time on a landline and LL100 instead of LL200 on a cellular line.
“This will facilitate communications and better serve citizens, particularly low-income individuals such as students, workers, and users of public phone booths and domestic workers,” he said.
Harb said the move would also revive the prepaid cards market which he said had been frozen for a period of three years.
“It would also revitalize the process of selling these prepaid cards after a three-year freeze in sales which affected [Treasury] revenues,” he said, noting that the Treasury was losing $110 million annually as a result of the decline in sales of prepaid cards.
GENEVA -- Switzerland's competition watchdog has launched an investigation into whether eight banks colluded to fix a foreign exchange rate.
The Swiss Competition Commission says it is examining the two largest Swiss banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, along with Zurich Cantonal Bank, Julius Baer and foreign banks JP Morgan Chase., Citigroup, Barclays Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
The regulator said in a statement Monday that there are "indications" that the banks have cooperated to manipulate exchange rates on trading between banks by sharing confidential information, price-setting and coordinating actions.
It says trading in major world currencies appears to be affected, and more banks and brokers also may be involved.
Credit Suisse said it was "astonished' by the allegations, which are "inappropriate and harmful to our reputation."
BERLIN -- Workers at one of Amazon.com's German distribution centers are on strike in a dispute over wages.
The ver.di union said Monday that workers at the American online retailer's logistics center in Leipzig were staging the short-term warning strike to try to get management to return to the negotiating table.
Ver.di says it may extend the action to other logistics centers, and is also threatening multiple-day strikes.
Amazon has offered Christmas bonuses to workers but the union says it also wants wage increases.
The union says Amazon workers receive lower pay than others in retail and mail-order jobs. Amazon says its distribution warehouses in Germany are logistics centers and employees already earn wages on the upper end of that industry.
Amazon has about 9,000 fulltime employees in Germany.
YOKOHAMA, Japan -- The economic and financial impact of global warming is complex and not well understood. In some scenarios there would be economic benefits for countries that get warmer and wetter and consequently more fertile agriculturally. Drier weather in some regions would result in sharply lower crop yields.
Overall, changes in climate are expected to cause significant disruptions that also exact an economic toll. Advisers to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say that the world economy may suffer losses of between 0.2 percent and 2 percent of income if temperatures rise by 2 degrees from recent levels.
Below are some of the costliest impacts, according to a 49-page summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which met in Yokohama near Tokyo this week.
— ENERGY
Demand for residential air conditioning in the summer will rise from 300 terawatt hours a year in 2000 to about 4,000 terawatt hours in 2050 and more than 10,000 terawatt hours in 2100. Rising incomes will drive most of that increase, climate change a quarter of it. For comparison, Vietnam currently consumes about 100 terawatt hours of power in a year.
— INFRASTRUCTURE
Relocation of industries and communities will cost billions of dollars even in wealthy countries. Countries must also reckon with damage to transport infrastructure, homes, industries and agriculture from increasingly extreme weather, droughts and storms, especially in low-lying coastal areas.
— WATER
The impact is unpredictable: wetter weather could yield a windfall of $3 trillion in the U.S. in the 21st century; drier weather could raise costs by $13 trillion. Ensuring enough water for industry and other consumption will cost about $12 billion a year worldwide while development of water supply and provisioning in developing countries will cost $73 billion.
— FOOD PRODUCTIVITY
A need for more labor to produce food to offset dropping crop yields could leave fewer workers available for other work. As food becomes more expensive, consumers may shift to cheaper foods but also spend less on other goods and services. Climate change may also increase competition for labor, capital, land and water.
— POVERTY
Scientists say climate change will worsen poverty, especially in tropical, developing countries, but even in affluent countries. Climate-related diseases such as malaria and diarrhea impair children's cognitive and physical development, while higher child death rates may lead parents to have more children, reducing the amount of money available to care for and educate each child.
— CONFLICT
Climate change raises the risks of violent conflict such as civil wars by amplifying the impacts of poverty and economic crises, while increasing competition for scarce land, water and food. The resulting damage, deaths and instability would exact a steep toll on affected economies.
— INTANGIBLES
Apart from the monetary toll from damage and uncertainties connected with climate change many impacts will exact a price impossible to tally in dollars and cents, said Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, a co-chairman of the climate change panel.
"We mustn't forget there are a lot of impacts that you cannot quantify easily," he said, such as human deaths, extinction of species, damage to ecosystems, loss of cultural heritage, among many.
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Online:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch
