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Washington — When activists, policymakers and representatives from across the globe gather next week in New York to participate in climate week, one pressing issue on the agenda that is less frequently discussed and known will be the environmental impact of seabed mining.
As countries look for ways to lower emissions, critical minerals are playing a key role in that transition. Critical minerals are used in all kinds of green technologies, from solar panels and wind turbines to batteries in electric vehicles. And one place where those mineral resources are abundant is deep under the sea.
The debate over accessing seabed resources is heated. Supporters say the technology exists to safely access these critical minerals undersea, but environmentalists and activists say the potential of undiscovered biodiversity on the seafloor is too important to endanger.
During climate week, which will take place on the sidelines of U.N. General Assembly meetings, organizers are expected to host a roundtable on the environmental impact of seabed mining and other discussions about critical minerals.
The World Economic Forum says that if the globe wants to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, two-thirds of vehicles must be powered by electric batteries. And the International Energy Agency says that to reach that goal, the world needs six times more mineral resources by 2040 than it has today.
Some of the largest mineral deposits are found on the ocean floor in the form of polymetallic nodules, or rocks.
Ocean of resources
According to the International Seabed Authority, or ISA, there are 21 billion tons of polymetallic nodules strewn across the seabed of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, or CCZ. Each nodule contains a combination of electric vehicle battery components such as nickel, manganese, copper and cobalt. The ISA plans to release regulations for mining in the international waters of the CCZ by 2025.
The ISA has already awarded 17 exploration contracts for polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone – a large swath of the Pacific Ocean the size of the continental United States which sits between Hawaii and Mexico. Three of those exploration contracts went to The Metals Company, a Canadian deep-sea mining company.
The Pacific Island Nations of Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga have sponsored The Metals Company’s efforts to develop a portion of the seabed. In an interview with VOA, CEO Gerard Barron said the company is ready to begin as soon as the ISA allows mining.
“Our collector methodology is to put a robot on the seafloor which crawls around the ocean floor and fires a jet of water at the nodule and it creates an inverse pressure and lifts the nodule up, and so we don’t go down and scour the seafloor,” said Barron via Zoom, adding that TMC has spent the past decade focused on testing this equipment and collecting data on its environmental impact as part of its permit application to the ISA.
Moratorium needed
Critics worry scooping up these mineral-rich rocks will disrupt important biodiversity – much of it still unnamed and some of it undiscovered. Researchers have found that 90% of the more than 5,000 species in the zone are new to science. Eddie Palu, president of the Tonga Fishery Association, wants a pause for more research.
“We demand a moratorium on the seabed mining until the environmental, economic and social risk are comprehensively understood,” he said during a panel discussion at the recent Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga.
Shiva Gounden from Greenpeace Australia Pacific, who also sat on the panel, agreed.
“We know only very little of the deep sea, and the race for the final frontier could cause irreversible damages to the people and to the communities of our Pacific,” Gounden said.
But scientists say no light and very little oxygen reaches the deep sea – limiting the life there to mostly bacteria and small invertebrates.
The Metals Company’s Barron said combating climate change is a bigger threat to the planet than undersea mining, adding that the company’s environmental impact studies show that “we can safely collect these nodules” and turn them into battery metals without having “a negative impact on the ocean.”
“The notion that we can do any extraction with zero impact is a dream,” added Barron. “The oceans are impacted by every single thing we do today, especially global warming. So, we need to address the main driver for climate change and reduce emissions.”
Fueling innovation
Still, the quest to do just that – access minerals on the seabed with minimal impact to the environment – has created competition between technology companies.
U.S. tech startup Impossible Metals is testing a robot which can avoid nodules where it detects life and harvests those where it does not.
“The vehicle hovers above the seabed, uses the camera and it actually picks up the nodules one by one. So this really minimizes all of the negative concerns around big sediment plumes,” CEO Oliver Gunasekra told VOA in an interview.
Gunaskera’s company spun off Viridian Biometals. Its technology bypasses energy-intensive processes such as smelting with bacteria which can separate metal ore from the rock around it. The process creates no emissions or waste.
“The bacteria need oxygen just like we do to breathe. And when there’s not enough oxygen in the water around them, the bacteria have learned that there’s oxygen in the rocks, and they have adapted to breathe that oxygen,” said Viridian CEO Eric Macris.
Impossible Metals and Viridian Biometals say they are two to three years out from commercializing their technology, depending on funding. TMC says it could be ready to begin its collection operations as soon as international regulations are released next year.
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The three candidates vying to become the next secretary-general of the Commonwealth have all given strong backing for Britain and other European powers to pay reparations to their former colonies for past atrocities, including the transatlantic slave trade. Henry Ridgwell has more from London.
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Taipei, Taiwan — A recent attempt by a Chinese man to illegally enter Taiwan after crossing the 180-kilometer-wide Taiwan Strait in a rubber boat is raising concerns on the island about its coastal defense capabilities and overall preparedness amid rising tensions between Beijing and Taipei.
Last Saturday, a 30-year-old Chinese man surnamed Wang was spotted in a dinghy about 100 meters offshore near Taiwan’s northern Linkou District in New Taipei City at about 6:30 in the morning.
After being treated for severe dehydration at a nearby hospital, Wang was detained by local authorities for illegally entering Taiwan. Wang told authorities that he was in debt in China and wanted to start a new life in Taiwan.
Wang is one of 18 Chinese nationals who have tried to illegally enter Taiwan since July of last year. When reached for comment on the cases, Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration declined to share how many of them were able to reach Taiwan’s shores, like Wang.
In June, a former Chinese naval captain was able to reach the Tamsui ferry pier in Northern Taiwan on a speedboat, shocking many because of how far he was able to get before being detected. At the time, a Chinese man surnamed Ruan said he was fleeing to Taiwan seeking freedom after being threatened by Chinese police for sharing articles critical of the Chinese government.
On Wednesday, however, a court in Taipei sentenced Ruan to eight months in prison for illegally entering Taiwan. He confessed to the crime but claimed his deep knowledge of the Chinese military could help Taiwan cope with threats posed by Beijing.
Some experts say the two Chinese men’s attempts to illegally enter Taiwan expose loopholes in Taiwan’s coastal defense capabilities.
“Even though Taiwan’s defense ministry has highlighted the strategic importance of defending coastal areas in northern Taiwan, Taiwan’s coast guard, which is in charge of coastal defense, has not prioritized setting up advanced surveillance technologies, such as infrared thermal cameras, in these areas, which lead to their failure of detecting the two Chinese men before they reach Taiwanese shores,” said Chieh Chung, a military researcher at the National Policy Foundation in Taiwan.
Some lawmakers from Taiwan’s main opposition party Kuomintang, who favor friendly relations with China, say the two incidents show the Taiwanese government has failed to provide the coast guard with adequate funding and the right equipment to monitor attempted illegal entry.
In response to opposition lawmakers’ criticism of underfunding the coast guard, Taiwan’s Premier Cho Jung-tai vowed to accelerate the review of the recent incidents and determine whether the coast guard needs more advanced technologies or personnel to support their work.
Apart from accelerating the installation of advanced surveillance technologies along coastal areas in northern Taiwan, Chieh said Taiwan’s coast guard should consider strengthening coastal patrols by purchasing commercial drones and increasing coordination with Taiwanese fishermen.
“Taiwan’s coast guard can use commercial drones to help conduct patrols along coastal areas during the day and Taiwanese fishermen could immediately inform the coast guard if they spot any unusual vessels in waters near Taiwanese shores,” he told VOA in a phone interview.
Growing gray zone challenges
Intrusions into Taiwanese waters by Chinese coast guard vessels also are posing a problem for Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration and raising questions about preparedness. This is particularly true in waters off Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen and Matsu islands, which are just a few kilometers from China’s coast.
Late last week, Taiwan said four Chinese coast guard vessels entered restricted waters near Kinmen, prompting Taipei to deploy four coast guard vessels to drive away the Chinese vessels. The incident was the 39th incursion carried out by Chinese coast guard vessels this year, officials said.
While Beijing describes the incursions, which include boarding Taiwanese vessels, as being part of “law enforcement patrols,” analysts in Taiwan say they challenge Taipei’s territorial claims around its outlying islands and are unilaterally seeking to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
Chieh said since the Taiwanese government has focused on enhancing wartime coordination between the coast guard and the navy over the last few years, it has overlooked the need to strengthen the Taiwanese coast guard’s maritime law enforcement capabilities and upgrade its vessels and training.
“Some of the coast guard vessels that Taiwan purchased in previous years are not suitable to engage in close-range encounters with Chinese coast guard vessels because the structure of those vessels is not solid enough,” he told VOA.
Some analysts suggest Taiwan should carry out a series of reforms to rapidly enhance the coast guard’s capabilities.
“The Taiwanese government should enhance the coast guard’s budget, increase their manpower, and strengthen their law enforcement capabilities by arranging exchanges with other countries’ coast guard,” Su Tzu-yun, a military expert at the Taipei-based Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told VOA by phone.
Military analysts say China likely will maintain high-level pressure on Taiwan through repeated coast guard incursions in the coming months, and Taipei should ensure its coast guard has enough support to cope with the wide range of challenges that Beijing poses.
“Instead of letting the coast guard oversee both Taiwan’s maritime defense and coastal defense, the Taiwanese government should consider assigning some of the responsibilities to the army or the navy,” Lin Ying-yu, a military expert at Tamkang University in Taiwan, told VOA by phone.
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Washington — The United States has identified and taken down a botnet campaign by China-directed hackers to further infiltrate American infrastructure as well as a variety of internet-connected devices.
FBI Director Christopher Wray announced the disruption of what he called Flax Typhoon during a cyber summit Wednesday in Washington, describing it as part of a much larger campaign by Beijing.
“Flax Typhoon hijacked Internet-of-Things devices like cameras, video recorders and storage devices — things typically found across both big and small organizations,” Wray said. “And about half of those hijacked devices were located here in the U.S.”
Wray said the hackers, working under the guise of an information security company called the Integrity Technology Group, collected information from corporations, media organizations, universities and government agencies.
“They used internet-connected devices — this time, hundreds of thousands of them — to create a botnet that helped them compromise systems and exfiltrate confidential data,” he said.
But Flax Typhoon’s operations were disrupted last week when the FBI, working with allies and under court orders, took control of the botnet and pursued the hackers when they tried to switch to a backup system.
“We think the bad guys finally realized that it was the FBI and our partners that they were up against,” Wray said. “And with that realization, they essentially burned down their new infrastructure and abandoned their botnet.”
Wray said Flax Typhoon appeared to build on the exploits and tactics of another China-linked hacking group, known as Volt Typhoon, which was identified by Microsoft in May of last year.
Volt Typhoon used office network equipment, including routers, firewalls and VPN hardware, to infiltrate and disrupt communications infrastructure in Guam, home to key U.S. military facilities.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington Wednesday rejected the U.S accusations.
“Without valid evidence, the U.S. jumped to an unwarranted conclusion and made groundless accusations” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in an email, responding to the allegations about Flax Typhoon.
“The U.S. itself is the origin and the biggest perpetrator of cyberattacks,” Liu added. “We urge the U.S. to stop its worldwide cyber espionage and cyberattacks, and stop smearing other countries under the excuse of cyber security.”
The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have previously warned that Chinese-government directed hackers, like Volt Typhoon, have been positioning themselves to launch destructive cyberattacks that could jeopardize the physical safety of Americans.
Following Wednesday’s announcement by the FBI, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) issued an advisory encouraging anyone with a device that was compromised by Flax Typhoon to apply needed patches.
It said that as of this past June, the Flax Typhoon botnet was making use of more than 260,000 devices in North America, Europe, Africa and Southeast East.
The NSA said almost half of the compromised devices were in the U.S. Another 18 countries, including Vietnam, Bangladesh, Albania, China, South Africa and India, were also impacted.
your ad hereEgypt ruffled Ethiopia’s feathers after Cairo sent military aid to Somalia, which had accused Ethiopia of planning to annex its territory. The two countries are locked in yet another battle over a dam Addis Ababa has been constructing on a major tributary of the Nile River.
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For the first time in over a decade, elections for 90 seats in Indian-administered Kashmir’s general assembly are being held. This is the first vote since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the region’s semi-autonomous status. Separatist leaders and parties are participating in the election against Modi’s party. VOA’s Yusuf Jameel has more from Srinagar, Kashmir. Camera: Zubair Dar
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WASHINGTON — Americans can now renew their passports online, bypassing a cumbersome mail-in paper application process that often caused delays.
The U.S. State Department announced Wednesday that its online passport renewal system is now fully operational.
“By offering this online alternative to the traditional paper application process, the Department is embracing digital transformation to offer the most efficient and convenient passport renewal experience possible,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
After staffing shortages caused mainly by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lengthy passport processing delays, the department ramped up hiring and introduced other technological improvements that have reduced wait times by about one-third over last year. It says most applications are now completed in far less than the advertised six to eight weeks. The online renewal system is expected to further reduce that.
The system will allow renewal applicants to skip the current process, which requires them to print out and send paper applications and a check by mail and submit their documents and payment through a secure website, www.Travel.State.Gov/renewonline.
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LAGOS — Nigeria’s hydrological services agency has warned of potential flooding in 11 states after neighboring Cameroon said it was starting to release water from one of its largest dams following recent heavy rainfall in West and Central Africa.
The warning comes as Nigeria is already grappling with severe floods in northeastern Borno state where a dam burst its walls after heavy rains that have also caused floods in Cameroon, Chad, Mali and Niger — all part of Africa’s Sahel region that usually receives little rain.
The Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) said it had been notified by authorities in Cameroon on Tuesday that they had started controlled water releases from Lagdo dam.
Cameroon has several dams on the Benue River, which flows downstream to Nigeria.
A spokesperson for Cameroon’s utility ENEO, which manages the dam, told Reuters there was a possibility that the dam could be flooded, but the reservoirs had not been opened on Wednesday morning.
The NIHSA said Lagdo dam managers would gradually release water in a way not to exceed the capacity of the Benue river downstream to prevent flooding.
But 11 states, including Benue, Nasarawa and Kogi in the food producing central belt region and southern oil producing states of Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers were at risk, said NIHSA.
It urged federal and state authorities in Nigeria “to step up vigilance and deploy adequate preparedness measures to reduce possible impacts of flooding that may occur as a result of increase in flow levels of our major rivers at this period.”
In 2022, Nigeria lost more than 600 people and farmlands to the worst flooding in a decade following heavy rain and after Cameroon released water from Lagdo dam.
Experts said then that Nigeria’s failure to complete a dam of its own that was supposed to backstop the Cameroonian one worsened the disaster.
Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, is prone to flooding but critics say defective infrastructure and poor planning worsen the situation.
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SPRING VALLEY, Sri Lanka — Whoever Sri Lanka’s next president is, Muthuthevarkittan Manohari isn’t expecting much to change in her daily struggle to feed the four children and elderly mother with whom she lives in a dilapidated room in a tea plantation.
Both leading candidates in Saturday’s presidential election are promising to give land to the country’s hundreds of thousands of plantation workers, but Manohari says she’s heard it all before. Sri Lanka’s plantation workers are a long-marginalized group who frequently live in dire poverty, but they can swing elections by voting as a bloc.
Mahohari and her family are descended from Indian indentured laborers who were brought in by the British during colonial rule to work on plantations that grew first coffee, and later tea and rubber. Those crops are still Sri Lanka’s leading foreign exchange earners.
For 200 years, the community has lived on the margins of Sri Lankan society. Soon after the country became independent in 1948, the new government stripped them of citizenship and voting rights. Around 400,000 people were deported to India under an agreement with Delhi, separating many families.
The community fought for its rights, winning in stages until achieving full recognition as citizens in 2003.
There are around 1.5 million descendants of plantation workers living in Sri Lanka today, including about 3.5% of the electorate, and some 470,000 people still live on plantations. The plantation community has the highest levels of poverty, malnutrition, anemia among women and alcoholism in the country, and some of the lowest levels of education.
They’re an important voting bloc, turned out by unions that double as political parties that ally with the country’s major parties.
Despite speaking the Tamil language, they’re treated as a distinct group from the island’s indigenous Tamils, who live mostly in the north and east. Still, they suffered during the 26-year civil war between government forces and Tamil Tiger separatists. Plantation workers and their descendants faced mob violence, arrests and imprisonment because of their ethnicity.
Most plantation workers live in crowded dwellings called “line houses,” owned by plantation companies. Tomoya Obokata, a U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, said after a visit in 2022 that five to ten people often share a single 3.05-by-3.6 meter room, often without windows, a proper kitchen, running water or electricity. Several families frequently share a single basic latrine.
There are no proper medical facilities in the plantations, and the sick are attended to by so-called estate medical assistants who do not have medical degrees.
“These substandard living conditions, combined with the harsh working conditions, represent clear indicators of forced labor and may also amount to serfdom in some instances,” Obokata wrote in a report to the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.
The government has made some efforts to improve conditions for the planation workers, but years of fiscal crisis and the resistance of powerful plantation companies have blunted progress. Access to education has improved, and a small group of entrepreneurs, professionals and academics descended from planation workers has emerged.
This year, the government negotiated a raise in the minimum daily wage for a plantation worker to $4.50 per day, plus an additional dollar if a worker picks more than 22 kilos in a day. Workers say this target is almost impossible to achieve, in part because tea bushes are often neglected and grow sparsely.
The government has built better houses for some families and the Indian government is helping to build more, said Periyasamy Muthulingam, executive director of Sri Lanka’s Institute of Social Development, which works on plantation worker rights.
But many promises have gone unfulfilled. “All political parties have promised to build better houses during elections but they don’t implement it when they are in power,” Muthulingam said.
Muthulingam says more than 90% of the plantation community is landless because they have been left out of the government’s land distribution programs.
In this election, sitting President Ranil Wickremesinghe, standing as an independent candidate, has promised to give the line houses and the land they stand on to the people who live in them, and help develop them into villages. The main opposition candidate, Sajith Premadasa, has promised to break up the plantations and distribute the land to the workers as small holdings.
Both proposals will face resistance from the plantation companies.
Manohari says she’s not holding out hope. She’s more concerned with what’s going to happen to her 16-year-old son after he was forced to drop out of school due to lack of funds.
“The union leaders come every time promising us houses and land and I would like to have them,” she said. “But they never happen as promised.”
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TOKYO/TAIPEI — A Chinese aircraft carrier entered Japan’s contiguous waters for the first time on Wednesday, Japan’s defense ministry said, the latest in a string of military maneuvers that has ratcheted up tensions between the neighbors.
The carrier, accompanied by two destroyers, sailed between Japan’s southern Yonaguni and Iriomote islands, entering an area that extends up to 24 nautical miles from its coastline where Japan can exert some controls as defined by the United Nations.
Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Moriya said Tokyo had conveyed its “serious concerns” to Beijing, describing the incident as “utterly unacceptable from the perspective of the security environment of Japan and the region.”
“We will continue to closely monitor Chinese naval vessels’ activities in the waters around our country and will take all possible measures to gather information and conduct vigilance and surveillance,” Moriya told a news conference.
Japan last month lodged a protest with China after one of its naval survey vessels entered Japanese waters, shortly after an airspace breach. In July, a Japanese navy destroyer made a rare entry into China’s territorial waters near Taiwan, according to the Japanese media.
An uptick in Chinese military activity near Japan and around Taiwan in recent years has stoked concerns in Tokyo. Japan has responded with a defense buildup it says aims to deter China from using military force to push its territorial claims in the region.
Earlier on Wednesday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had spotted the same Chinese aircraft carrier group sailing through waters off its east coast in the direction of Yonaguni, Japan’s southernmost island, which is about 110 km east of Taiwan.
China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its territory, has been staging regular exercises around the island for five years to pressure it to accept Beijing’s claim of sovereignty, despite Taipei’s strong objections.
The ministry said the Chinese ships, led by Liaoning, the oldest of China’s three aircraft carriers, were spotted in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday sailing through waters to the northeast of Taiwan.
Taiwan tracked the ships and sent its forces to monitor, it said. China’s defense ministry did not answer calls seeking comment.
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BEIJING — Malaysia’s king Sultan Ibrahim will visit China starting Thursday, the first by a Malaysian monarch in a decade, where he will meet President Xi Jinping and likely seek support for projects boosting connectivity to neighboring Singapore.
The ceremonial ruler from the southern state of Johor, will be accompanied by Malaysia’s transport and housing ministers, a statement from the country’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
“His Majesty’s visit provides an excellent opportunity for both sides to reaffirm a shared commitment in ensuring that Malaysia-China relations continue to remain forward-looking, dynamic and prosperous,” Malaysia’s foreign ministry said.
Sultan Ibrahim was installed as the country’s 17th king in January, under a unique system of monarchy where the heads of Malaysia’s nine royal families take turns to sit on the throne every five years and are supposed to stay above politics.
But the 65-year-old has indicated he intends to weigh in on the country’s political issues and proposed in a media interview before his ascension that Malaysia’s state oil firm Petronas and the country’s anti-corruption agency report directly to the king.
The last time a Malaysian king visited China was in 2014.
Ibrahim will also meet China’s second-ranking official, Premier Li Qiang, Malaysia’s foreign ministry said.
Li visited Kuala Lumpur in June and backed Malaysian plans to develop its connectivity through a $10-billion rail link to other China-backed railway projects in Laos and Thailand.
Li said that the initiative would realize plans for a proposed Pan-Asia railway running from Kunming in China to Singapore, presumably through Johor, which is where the outspoken Sultan wants to develop a rail link, too.
Ibrahim has spoken of plans to revive a stalled high-speed rail project between Malaysia and Singapore, with a border crossing in Forest City, a $100-billion joint venture between China’s Country Garden 2007. HK and a private Malaysian company backed by the Sultan.
Data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute shows the embattled Chinese developer had invested just $110 million out of the total $26 billion Chinese firms have directed to Malaysia since 2010, the bulk of which was in its metals, energy and transport sectors.
The two countries’ commercial ties came under the spotlight earlier this month when Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said China had protest notes to stop Malaysia’s oil exploration activities in the South China Sea, but stressed the two sides continued to communicate over the issue.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea as its territory based on historic maps, including parts of the exclusive economic zones of Malaysia the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan and Vietnam. An international arbitration tribunal in 2016 said China’s claim had no basis under international law, a ruling Beijing does not recognize.
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WASHINGTON — Tupperware Brands and some of its subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday, the food container firm said in a statement.
The company, known for its trademark food storage containers, has been hit by dwindling sales in recent years.
Last year the New York Stock Exchange-listed firm warned of “substantial doubt” about its ability to keep operating in light of its poor financial position.
“Over the last several years, the company’s financial position has been severely impacted by the challenging macroeconomic environment,” president and CEO Laurie Ann Goldman said in a statement announcing the bankruptcy filing.
“As a result, we explored numerous strategic options and determined this is the best path forward,” added Goldman.
The company said it would seek court approval for a sale process for the business to protect its brand and “further advance Tupperware’s transformation into a digital-first, technology-led company.”
The Orlando, Florida-based firm said it would also seek approval to continue operating during bankruptcy proceedings and would continue to pay its employees and suppliers.
“We plan to continue serving our valued customers with the high-quality products they love and trust throughout this process,” Goldman said.
The firm’s shares were trading at $0.5099 Monday, well down from $2.55 in December last year.
Tupperware said it had implemented a strategic plan to modernize its operations and drive efficiencies to ignite growth following the appointment of a new management team last year.
“The company has made significant progress and intends to continue this important transformation work.”
In its filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Tupperware listed assets of between $500 million and $1 billion and liabilities of between $1 billion and $10 billion.
The filing also said it had between 50,000 and 100,000 creditors.
Tupperware, whose name became synonymous with its airtight plastic containers, in recent years lost popularity with consumers and an initiative to gain distribution through big-box chain store Target failed to reverse its fortunes.
The company’s roots date to 1946, when chemist Earl Tupper “had a spark of inspiration while creating molds at a plastics factory shortly after the Great Depression,” according to Tupperware’s website.
“If he could design an airtight seal for plastic storage containers, like those on a paint can, he could help war-weary families save money on costly food waste.”
Over time, Tupper’s hermetically sealed plastic containers also became associated with “Tupperware Parties,” where friends would gather with food and drink as a company representative demonstrated the items.
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WASHINGTON/TOKYO — The U.S. national security panel reviewing Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel let the companies refile their application for approval of the deal, a person familiar with the matter said, delaying a decision on the politically sensitive merger until after the Nov. 5 presidential election.
The move offers a ray of hope for the companies, whose proposed tie-up appeared set to be blocked when the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) alleged on Aug. 31 the transaction posed a risk to national security by threatening the steel supply chain for critical U.S. industries.
CFIUS needs more time to understand the deal’s impact on national security and engage with the parties, the person said on Tuesday. Refiling sets a new 90-day clock to review the proposed tie-up and make a decision.
The review was expected to take close to the full 90 days, another person familiar with the matter said.
Nippon Steel declined to comment. CFIUS and U.S. Steel did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
“Extending the timeline takes pressure off the parties and, importantly, pushes the decision past the election in November,” said Nick Klein, a CFIUS lawyer with DLA Piper.
The deal has become a political hot potato. This month, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said at a rally in Pennsylvania, the swing state where U.S. Steel is headquartered, that she wants U.S. Steel to remain “American owned and operated,” echoing a view held by President Joe Biden.
The White House reiterated that position on Tuesday.
Harris’ Republican rival Donald Trump has pledged to block the deal if elected. Both candidates have sought to woo union votes.
Postponing the decision to after the U.S. elections will “dial down” the political temperature but does not guarantee approval, said David Boling, a former U.S. trade official who is now an analyst at Eurasia Group.
“Regardless of the CFIUS review, Nippon Steel still must reach an agreement with the United Steelworkers,” Boling said. “Without that, it’s very hard to see this deal happening.”
The United Steelworkers Union, which vehemently opposes the deal, said on Tuesday “nothing has changed regarding the risks that Nippon’s acquisition would pose to national security or the critical supply chain concerns that have already been identified.”
The deal is being closely watched in Japan, a close U.S. ally and its biggest foreign investor.
“Further strengthening economic relations, including expanding mutual investment between Japan and the U.S., are essential for both countries,” Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshi Moriya told reporters on Wednesday.
Nippon Steel shares were up 1.1% in afternoon trading in Tokyo. U.S. Steel shares closed down 0.4% on Tuesday.
CFIUS is concerned Nippon Steel’s merger could hurt the supply of steel needed for critical transportation, construction and agriculture projects, it said in its August letter to the companies, exclusively obtained by Reuters.
It also cited a global glut of cheap Chinese steel, and said that under Nippon, a Japanese company, U.S. Steel would be less likely to seek tariffs on foreign steel importers. It added that decisions by Nippon could “lead to a reduction in domestic steel production capacity.”
In a 100-page response letter to CFIUS, also exclusively obtained by Reuters, Nippon Steel said it will invest billions of dollars in U.S. Steel facilities that otherwise would have been idled, “indisputably” allowing it to “maintain and potentially increase domestic steelmaking capacity in the United States.”
The company also reaffirmed a promise not to transfer any U.S. Steel production capacity or jobs outside the U.S. and would not interfere in any of U.S. Steel’s decisions on trade matters, including decisions to pursue trade measures under U.S. law against unfair trade practices.
The deal, Nippon added, would “create a stronger global competitor to China grounded in the close relationship between the United States and Japan.”
Robust CFIUS reviews take 90 days but it is common for companies to withdraw their filings and resubmit them to give them more time to address the panel’s concerns.
According to CFIUS’s 2023 annual report, 18% of companies seeking deal approval refiled their applications last year. Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel filed for the review in March, and CFIUS allowed them to refile in June, starting a second 90-day clock that runs out on Sept. 23, Reuters reported on Friday.
In December, CFIUS could approve the deal, possibly with measures to address national security concerns, recommend that the president block it, or extend the timetable again.
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BEIJING — China’s decision to raise the retirement age will give a brief boost to its strained pension system but risks further discouraging weary young workers and cannot arrest long-term demographic decline, experts say.
The ruling Communist Party last week announced a gradual increase in the statutory retirement age starting next year — rising from 60 to 63 for men, from 55 to 58 for white-collar women workers, and from 50 to 55 for blue-collar female employees.
The government said the changes would bring a system that has changed little since the 1950s into line with decades of improvements in public health, life expectancy and education, and help society adapt to a shrinking population and workforce.
Analysts told AFP that growing concerns over the sustainability of the nationwide pension system pushed Beijing to act.
“The pension system is under a lot of strain,” said Zhao Litao, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.
“It is… clear to the leadership that the stakes for postponing the reform (were) getting increasingly high,” he said.
China’s retirement age had been among the youngest in the world, and officials have discussed raising it for more than a decade.
Opposition from lower-wage workers, a slowing economy and high youth unemployment had thwarted change, experts said.
Officials could wait no longer, Zhao said, partly because “the pace of population-aging and population-decline is faster than previously anticipated.”
Pension tension
China’s sprawling pension system has three pillars: basic state pensions, mandatory plans for company employees, and voluntary plans for private personal schemes.
But the state-led scheme lacks coordination at a national level, while the latter two pillars remain underdeveloped, critics say.
A top government think tank said in a 2019 report that one main state pension fund may dry up by 2035 as the workforce shrinks.
Around a third of Chinese provinces already run pension deficits, and local finances have come under more stress since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow at Australia’s Victoria University, said the higher retirement age would ease pressure on the system “in the short and medium term.”
Under the new rules, the age will rise incrementally over 15 years from 2025, so younger people will end up working for longer than those currently close to retiring.
Workers will eventually need to make a minimum of 20 years of contributions to draw their basic pension, up from the current 15 years.
“After the government increases the retirement age, this decline (in the number of workers) will become… slower,” Peng told AFP.
But, she added, “the labor force is still declining — this is a (longer-term) trend.”
Working harder, longer
But economic necessity has not necessarily bred widespread acceptance.
Many posts on Chinese social media have pointed to a perceived lack of transparency over how workers born from the 1990s onwards would be impacted.
Those generations already face widespread joblessness or an intense work culture that leaves many feeling overwhelmed or burnt out.
“For many Chinese individuals, these changes in retirement policies feel like a reneged commitment of social welfare provision — kicking the problem down an already murky road,” Yun Zhou, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, told AFP.
“As gender- and age-based discriminations remain deeply entrenched in the Chinese labor market, it remains to be seen to what extent workers… can enjoy effective labor rights protection,” she said.
Dali Yang, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said the government faced a “loss of credibility” on pensions.
Recent economic challenges have already prompted many Chinese to prioritize short-term cash over saving for retirement, Yang told AFP.
Demography is destiny
Chinese state media has said a rise in the retirement age was “inevitable” given the country’s development.
The current age was set decades ago when scarcity and poverty were common, before market reforms brought rapid gains in living standards.
Life expectancy rose from around 50 in the early 1960s to 79 by 2022, according to World Bank data.
But development coincided with families having fewer children, hastened by decades of birth restrictions under the former one-child policy.
Now, China is stuck with a growing senior population and fewer young people to fill the gap.
Experts said only a suite of bold policies — from creating high-quality jobs to raising productivity, expanding public healthcare, fostering better work-life balance and raising the social position of women — could help Beijing adapt to its alarming demographic destiny.
Several told AFP that last week’s announcement was unlikely to be the last of its kind.
“There is still considerable room to further increase the retirement age,” Zhao, of NUS, said.
But, he added, “if (younger people) have to work longer and contribute more… they want to get answers for questions like job security and quality, and the level of future pension benefits.”
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PARIS — Almost 200 environmental activists were murdered last year, with the toll especially heavy in South America, according to rights group Global Witness.
Here are the stories of three campaigners who have faced violence and repression trying to stop wildcat gold mining in Ecuador, illegal shrimp farming in Indonesia and a controversial oil project in Uganda.
‘We have a responsibility’
Daniel Frits Maurits Tangkilisan has been assaulted, arrested and prosecuted for his activism to protect a national park, but he is unbowed.
“Why be afraid? Why back down? Your home should be defended,” the 51-year-old told AFP in Jakarta, where he is awaiting a new ruling in legal proceedings against him.
Born and raised in the Indonesian capital, he “fell in love at first sight” with the remote Karimunjawa Islands National Park off Java, on his first visit in 2011. He later settled there.
Daniel began to notice the growing impact of illegal shrimp farms, which began to proliferate around 2017.
Run-off from the farms killed seaweed and forced marine life to move further from shore, impacting the livelihoods of fishing communities, he said.
In 2022, Daniel helped start the #SaveKarimunjawa movement, which pushed for a local zoning law banning the shrimp farms.
But his activism made him a target — he was threatened, assaulted and put in a chokehold, and fellow environmentalists received death threats.
He was arrested in December 2023 over allegations of hate speech stemming from a Facebook post criticizing illegal shrimp farming.
A local court sentenced him in April to seven months behind bars.
The conviction was overturned on appeal but prosecutors took the case to the Supreme Court, insisting he should not be recognized as an environmental activist.
“This is a price that must be paid,” Daniel said of the threats and legal battles.
And his activism has had some success, with recent government inspections forcing many illegal operations to shut.
“We have a responsibility to our children, grandchildren and future generations,” he said.
“If you give up… you say goodbye to your future.”
‘Hell on Earth’
Abdulaziz Bweete grew up in Kawempe, a shanty town in the Ugandan capital Kampala, and saw first-hand the devastating impact of environmental change in poorer communities.
“I have grown up seeing floods around but I had not interested myself in what is causing floods,” he told AFP.
It took two things to galvanize the 26-year-old — going to university, and seeing the Uganda government’s response to climate protests.
Bweete was among a group of student organizers who marched on parliament in July with a petition opposing a multi-billion-dollar oil project that campaigners say will badly affect a delicate environment.
He and several other young activists were arrested, charged with illegal assembly, and held in Kampala’s maximum-security Luzira prison until August.
He told AFP he and fellow protesters were beaten by police.
The activist was previously imprisoned and arrested following rallies in the capital.
“All I can say is prison is a hell on Earth,” he said.
“We don’t have freedom of protest in this country,” he said, glancing around nervously in Kyambogo University’s lush campus setting.
Demonstrations in Uganda, ruled with an iron fist by President Yoweri Museveni for four decades, are often met with a heavy-handed police response.
Bweete said politics and climate change go hand in hand.
“If we have good leaders, we can have good climate policies. This is a long struggle, but we are determined to win,” he insisted.
‘Defend life’
Alex Lucitante, a leader of the Cofan Indigenous people on the border between Ecuador and Colombia, won a historic legal victory in 2018 over mining companies in the Amazon, striking out 52 gold mine concessions.
It helped win him the Goldman Environmental Prize — the Nobel of environmental defenders — two years ago.
But despite setting up a system of patrols and even drone surveillance, it has not stopped gold prospectors violating their territory.
“The destruction is still going on all around our land, and the threat is stronger,” he told AFP, telling of illegal mining, deforestation and threats from armed groups.
“Today, the situation is particularly critical in our territories,” said Lucitante.
“It all happens in plain sight and with the knowledge of the authorities,” which are “sometimes linked to illegal actors operating in the area,” he added.
The environmentalist has urged global leaders to listen to the “voice of Indigenous communities” and hear their plea to “defend life.”
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NEW TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s Gold Apollo said on Wednesday the pagers that were used in the detonations in Lebanon on Tuesday were not made by it but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand.
At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday.
Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo.
“The product was not ours. It was only that it had our brand on it,’ Gold Apollo founder and president, Hsu Ching-Kuang, told reporters at the company’s offices in the northern Taiwanese city of New Taipei on Wednesday.
The company said in a statement that the AR-924 model was produced and sold by BAC.
“We only provide brand trademark authorization and have no involvement in the design or manufacturing of this product,” the statement said.
Hsu earlier said that the firm with the license was based in Europe but later declined to comment on BAC’s location.
While Hsu was meeting with reporters, police officials arrived at the company.
Hezbollah fighters began using pagers in the belief they would be able to evade Israeli tracking of their locations, two sources familiar with the group’s operations told Reuters this year.
Hsu said did not know how the pagers could have been rigged to explode.
Iran-backed Hezbollah said it was carrying out a “security and scientific investigation” into the causes of the blasts.
Israel’s Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday’s detonations, according to a senior Lebanese security source and another source.
Hsu said Gold Apollo was also a victim of the incident.
“We may not be a large company but we are a responsible one,” he said. “This is very embarrassing.”
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SEOUL/TOKYO — North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles Wednesday that landed in the sea off its east coast, South Korea and Japan said.
The missiles lifted off from Kaechon, north of the capital, Pyongyang, around 6:50 a.m. local time and flew in a northeast direction, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, without specifying how many were fired.
“Our military is maintaining full readiness posture while strengthening surveillance and vigilance in preparation for additional launches and closely sharing information with the U.S. and Japan side,” it said in a statement.
About 30 minutes after the first missile notice, Japan’s coast guard said North Korea fired another ballistic missile, noting the projectiles appeared to have fallen.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said on X that it was aware of the launches and consulting closely with Seoul and Tokyo.
The North fired several short-range ballistic missiles last Thursday, the first such launch in more than two months, which it later described as a test of a new 600 mm multiple-launch rocket system.
South Korea’s JCS has said the launch might have been to test the weapons for export to Russia, amid intensifying military cooperation between the two countries.
The United States, South Korea and Ukraine, among other countries, have accused Pyongyang of supplying rockets and missiles to Moscow for use in the war in Ukraine, in return for economic and other military assistance.
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, who is visiting Russia this week to attend conferences, met her counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Tuesday and discussed ways to promote bilateral ties, the Russian foreign ministry said on its website.
Wednesday’s missile launches also came days after the isolated country for the first time showed images of centrifuges that produce fuel for its nuclear bombs, as leader Kim Jong Un visited a uranium enrichment facility and called for more weapons-grade material to boost the arsenal.
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washington — At first glance, Noah R. Smith might seem like your typical social media user. His bio says he’s a father, a former “Track and Field representative,” and a current member of the PanAm Sports organization.
On July 14, a day after the first assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Smith shared three posts from an account named “TRUMP WON.”
One post declared, “AMERICA was attacked today … we must get it together. It’s literally a matter of life and death,” accompanied by an image depicting a divine hand halting a bullet aimed at Trump.
Another post urged “all MAGA GOD Fearing Patriots” to connect, stating, “Grow These Accounts, UNITED We Are Strong.”
While it might seem that Smith is a devoted Trump supporter, closer inspection suggests otherwise. His cover photo features Chinese watermarks, his profile picture is sourced from a company that provides photos, videos and music, and his bio is lifted from an authentic account named Laurel R. Smith.
In reality, Noah R. Smith is impersonating a U.S. voter who supports Trump. A joint investigation by VOA Mandarin and Doublethink Lab (DTL), a Taiwanese social media analytics firm, uncovered 10 such accounts on X.
These accounts are linked to China’s Spamouflage network — a state-sponsored operation aimed at supporting the Chinese government and undermining its critics. This network was first identified by social media analytics company Graphika in 2019 and was used to target Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters at that time.
Following the assassination attempt on July 14, the accounts began promoting pro-Trump content. Previously, they shared material consistent with Spamouflage’s broader interests: defending China, criticizing U.S. foreign policy, and exploiting divisive domestic issues such as gun violence and racial tensions.
DTL labeled this network of accounts posing as Americans “MAGAflage 1,” because they all seem to be promoting Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again [MAGA].”
“The MAGAflage accounts are different because they are not just criticizing stuff. They are amplifying positive content about Trump,” Jasper Hewitt, a digital intelligence analyst at Doublethink Lab, told VOA Mandarin.
He added that it’s too early to draw conclusions about whom China is supporting, as researchers are still tracking accounts that criticize both Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
“Engaging with the MAGA movement, or any part of the political spectrum, might merely be a new attempt to generate authentic traffic,” Hewitt told VOA.
The first MAGAflage network was discovered by Elise Thomas, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, in April 2024. This network focuses on promoting positive content of Trump. She told VOA earlier that by wrapping a topic in a U.S. partisan political frame, these accounts got “a reasonable amount of engagement from real American users.”
Limited influence
The VOA Mandarin investigation revealed that the accounts operate in coordination. Six out of the 10 accounts were created in 2015 but had their first visible posts on May 18 or May 19, 2022.
The batch accounts — the 10 new accounts — are not very active. Each account has roughly 100 posts or reposts over the last two years. The batch accounts were inactive for one year but were awoken after the first Trump assassination attempt.
Additionally, these accounts occasionally post or repost Chinese content.
For example, an account named Super-Rabbit shared praise for China’s political and economic model from state-linked influencers like Shanghai Panda and Xinhua News Agency’s reporter Li Zexin. One post from September 3 contrasted U.S. President Joe Biden’s inactivity with China’s President Xi Jinping’s engagement in Africa.
“When Joe Biden is sitting on the beach wasted away, China’s President Xi is shaking hands with various African leaders and making a better impact in Africa,” the post said.
VOA contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment but did not receive a response as of publication time.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in a statement that “China has no intention and will not interfere in the U.S. election, and we hope that the U.S. side will not make an issue of China in the election.”
So far, the newly discovered MAGAflage 1 accounts have had limited influence, with only a handful of followers and minimal interactions.
U.S. intelligence agencies issued their latest assessment earlier this month, warning that Russia, Iran, and China are intensifying efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election.
While Russia remains the primary concern, officials noted that Chinese online influence actors have “continued small scale efforts on social media to engage U.S. audiences on divisive political issues, including protests about the Israel-Gaza conflict and promote negative stories about both political parties.”
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Beerwah, Kulgam and Srinagar, Indian administered Kashmir — Several Kashmiri political figures, including former members of banned separatist groups, have abandoned long-held separatist leanings and joined mainstream Indian politics.
This shift in the disputed Himalayan region’s political landscape comes as three weeks of voting begin on Wednesday in the first legislative assembly election since 2019 when India stripped Jammu and Kashmir, or J&K, of its limited autonomy.
One such Kashmiri figure is Sarjan Ahmad Wagay, a prominent cleric whose anti-India anthems became popular during a 2016 uprising. Wagay is running simultaneously from prison in two central Kashmir constituencies known as Ganderbal and Beerwah.
His family says that Wagay’s decision to run was inspired by the success of Sheikh Abdul Rashid, who while imprisoned in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail won a J&K seat in the Indian parliament during national elections earlier this year.
“Rashid’s victory gave his family a hope that winning the election could help get him out of prison,” a family member, Rehbar Ahmad, told VOA.
“People from Beerwah and Ganderbal visited our home and assured us of their support,” Ahmad said. “He was popular in these areas because he used to deliver religious sermons there. He is getting a lot of support from the like-minded people who want to see political prisoners out of jail.”
In the heart of Kulgam district, Sayar Ahmad Reshi, a member of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, is campaigning door-to-door. The socio-religious organization was banned by the Indian government in early 2019, accused of engaging in activities that “threatened India’s security, integrity and sovereignty.”
More than three decades ago, Jamaat-e-Islami participated in the Indian elections of 1987, but the group attributed its defeat to vote-rigging and has boycotted subsequent elections.
This year, Jamaat-e-Islami decided to again participate in the elections but could not field candidates as a party because of the ban. Instead, they encouraged at least 10 members of their organization to run as independent candidates across the Kashmir Valley.
“Jamaat-e-Islami has never had issues with India, yet the organization is accused of promoting anti-India activities,” Reshi told VOA. “If any individual was involved in such a movement, it was their own doing because there were no directives from our leadership,” he added.
“If Jamaat-e-Islami hadn’t been banned, I would have contested under its banner with a clear manifesto for social reform and justice,” Reshi said. “I am hopeful that independent candidates of Jamaat-e-Islami will emerge victorious.”
Political analyst Muzamil Maqbool told VOA that many people who long opposed the integration of Kashmir with central India have changed their minds since the region’s special autonomy was repealed in 2019.
“Kashmiri people are a leader-driven population, and all those leaders have deceived people through and through,” he said. “Now the same people are exercising their power under democracy through voting and taking part in elections.”
The candidacies of individuals previously associated with separatism have caused alarm among the region’s strongest traditional parties, the National Conference, or NC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, or PDP.
Both parties suspect that the nationally ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has encouraged the trend in a bid to divide the vote and marginalize the regional parties.
“New Delhi always wanted to create an alternative here through the newly registered political parties which failed to score … in the recently held parliamentary elections,” Maqbool said.
“However, there has been an entire paradigm shift where the focus has been shifted to many individuals, young faces and religious leaders to create an independent alternative force against regional mainstream parties.”
Earlier, veteran separatist leader Salim Geelani, switched to mainstream politics after spending 35 years in Hurriyat Conference, an amalgam of separatist political parties in the Valley.
He said that his decision to join PDP was driven by common goals including promoting infrastructure development and resolving Kashmir’s status within India.
“How can I deny the fact that I carry an Indian passport and use Indian currency? J&K remains a conflict zone and the people who lost their lives over the years, regardless of their identities, were our children,” he told VOA.
“Had there been no Kashmir issue the situation would be different today. I favored dialogue between all stakeholders of the region to resolve the Kashmir issue and I shall be in its favor forever,” he added.
BJP national spokesperson Shazia Ilmi welcomed the decision of those who have chosen to show faith in Indian democracy rather than pursue separatist goals.
“Everyone has a right to contest elections in a democracy and our democracy allows that. Nobody has a right to make statements that are secessionist in nature that promote any kind of disintegration of the country,” Ilmi told VOA.
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