[1/4]An endangered coho salmon swims during spawning season in Lagunitas Creek in Marin County, California, U.S. January 13, 2022. Picture taken January 13, 2022. REUTERS/Nathan Frandino/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Nov 8 (Reuters) – U.S. commercial fishing groups on Wednesday sued 13 tire manufacturers in California, saying a chemical used in their tires is poisoning West Coast watersheds and killing rare trout and salmon.
The Institute for Fisheries Resources and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations sued Bridgestone Corp (5108.T), Continental (CONG.DE), Goodyear Tire & Rubber (GT.O), Michelin (MICP.PA) and others in San Francisco federal court, alleging a chemical used in their tires known as 6PPD is killing protected salmon and trout in violation of the Endangered Species Act.
The fishing groups said the chemical, which becomes toxic when it degrades, is released from tires as vehicles drive around and park. They said the degraded chemical can be flushed into waterways during storms, where it kills protected salmon and trout.
Declining fish populations have led to restrictions on commercial fishing, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said researchers have identified the degraded form of 6PPD as causing salmon mortality, and that scientists believe trout and other fish are also likely being killed by the chemical.
The groups, which say that pollution has decimated their industry, want the court to issue an injunction barring the companies from manufacturing tires with the chemical without first taking measures to protect fish and watersheds.
The tire manufacturers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
The lawsuit is the first in the U.S. to target tire manufacturers for their use of 6PPD, which is found in nearly every tire on the planet, according to Elizabeth Forsyth, an attorney for the fishing groups with the environmental law firm Earthjustice.
Forsyth said the lawsuit focuses on West Coast impacts from the chemical, but that she expects there will be further scientific evidence tying the chemical to damages elsewhere in the future.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said earlier this month that it would take steps to regulate the chemical, which has been used in tires for decades and acts as a stabilizer to prolong the life of rubber. The EPA said exposure to the chemical can kill fish within a few hours.
In July, California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control adopted a rule requiring tire manufacturers to evaluate safer alternatives to 6PPD, noting the threat to coho salmon.
Together, the 13 tire manufacturers sued on Wednesday account for 80% of the domestic U.S. tire market, according to the lawsuit.
Reporting by Clark Mindock, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Sandra Maler
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
TOKYO, April 25 (Reuters) – Japanese startup ispace inc (9348.T) is preparing to land its Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) spacecraft on the moon early on Wednesday, in what would be the world’s first lunar landing by a private company if it succeeds.
The M1 lander is set to touch down around 1:40 a.m. Japan time (1640 GMT Tuesday) after taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX rocket in December.
Success would mark a welcome reversal from the recent setbacks Japan has faced in space technology, where it has big ambitions of building a domestic industry, including a goal of sending Japanese astronauts to the moon by the late 2020s.
In one of the biggest blows, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) last month lost its new medium-lift H3 rocket to forced manual destruction after it reached space. That was less than five months since JAXA’s solid-fuel Epsilon rocket failed after launch in October.
The 2.3-metre-tall (7.55 ft) M1 will begin an hour-long landing phase from its current position, in the moon’s orbit some 100 km (62 miles) above the surface moving at nearly 6,000 km/hour (3,700 mph), Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie told a media briefing on Monday.
Ujiie likened the task of slowing down the lander to the correct speed against the moon’s gravitational pull to “stepping on the brakes on a running bicycle at the edge of a ski jumping hill.”
Only the United States, the former Soviet Union and China have soft-landed a spacecraft on the moon, with attempts in recent years by India and a private Israeli company ending in failure.
After reaching the landing site at the edge of Mare Frigoris, in the moon’s northern hemisphere, the M1 is to deploy a two-wheeled, baseball-sized rover developed by JAXA, Japanese toymaker Tomy Co (7867.T) and Sony Group (6758.T), as well as the United Arab Emirates’ four-wheeled “Rashid” Rover.
The M1 is also carrying an experimental solid-state battery made by NGK Spark Plug Co (5334.T), among other objects to gauge how they perform on the moon.
In its second mission scheduled in 2024, the M1 will bring ispace’s own rover, while from 2025, it is set to work with U.S. space lab Draper to bring NASA payloads to the moon, targeting building a permanently staffed lunar colony by 2040.
Shares of the Tokyo-based lunar transportation startup had a blistering market debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange this month as investors bet its lunar development and transportation business will fit in with Japan’s national policy of defence and space development.
Reporting by Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Stephen Coates
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
SHANGHAI/HONG KONG, Dec 12 (Reuters) – For more than a decade, Chinese developers’ debt-fuelled construction boom enriched the country’s shadow banks, who were eager to capitalise on the needs of an industry desperate for credit and too risky for traditional lenders.
Now, in the wake of a government clampdown on real estate firms’ debt binge, that credit demand has collapsed – and so too has the single biggest revenue stream for shadow banks, also known as trust firms.
China’s shadow banking industry – worth about $3 trillion, roughly the size of Britain’s economy – is scrambling for new business, including direct investment in companies, family offices and asset management.
It is also shrinking, with once-well-paid employees leaving for other jobs after scavenging for new deals. The industry’s plight is a sharp contrast to China’s main street financial firms, which the crisis has not yet seriously affected.
“Everyone was eating a mouthful of rice, surviving another day,” said Jason Hao, who left his job this year at a Shanghai trust firm after his pay plunged from as much as 4 million yuan ($570,000) a year to about 240,000 yuan ($34,000).
He is now working at an asset management company.
Data from industry-tracking website Yanglee.com shows 1,483 real estate-related trust products were sold in 2022 through the end of September, down 69.7% from 4,891 during the same period last year.
The value of the 2022 deals was 117.2 billion yuan, down 77.9% from 531.3 billion yuan. Real estate products accounted for 8.7% of all trust products in September, compared with about 30% in the same month the last two years.
The National Audit Office and China’s banking regulator have both been reviewing trust firm accounts and deals this year for risk, said three people with knowledge of the matter.
The National Audit Office and the CBIRC did not respond to requests for comment.
In an internal meeting in October, an executive at Shanghai Trust, a state-owned firm that once focussed on property, said revenue was down by almost half this year compared with the year before, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting.
The firm plans to focus on asset management and family offices to shore up its finances while pivoting away from lending to developers, once its core business, one of the people said.
Shanghai Trust did not respond to requests for comment.
The top priority for all trust companies now is “how to transition, what will let you survive,” said another trust firm employee, who like the other current employees interviewed for this article declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
CONTAGION RISK
Trust firms were dubbed “shadow banks” because of how they operated outside many of the rules that govern commercial banks. Banks in China sell wealth management products, the proceeds of which are channelled by trust firms to property developers and other sectors that are unable to tap bank funding directly.
Because of the risk, shadow banks could charge interest rates of up to 18%, far higher than the typical 2% to 6% seen at banks at the height of the boom.
Concerns about outsized exposure to property developers have grown this year as the embattled sector in the world’s second-largest economy has slowed rapidly.
Beijing has stepped up support in recent weeks to undo a liquidity squeeze that has stifled the real estate market, which makes up a quarter of the Chinese economy and has been a key driver of growth.
OUT OF OPTIONS
At the trust unit of state-owned China Construction Bank (CCB) and Zhongrong International Trust, previously one of China’s largest shadow bankers, investing like private equity and venture capital funds has become more common, two people with direct knowledge of the companies said.
CCB Trust wants to invest in leading companies in niche fields; it recently invested in Beijing Tianyishangjia New Material Corp, which manufacturers materials used in train brakes, said one person who works at the company.
Zhongrong International Trust has been working with local governments, including Qingdao provincial authorities, to source early stage deals in intelligent manufacturing, an executive there said.
Jiangxi-based Avic Trust has been investing in waste-processing firms, including funding photovoltaic power stations that it then rents out, said a person with direct knowledge.
CCB Trust, Zhongrong International Trust and Avic Trust
did not respond to requests for comment.
In some cases, trust firms are buying projects from struggling developers and hiring new managers to recoup their losses, according to corporate records and three people in trust firms who are aware of such acquisitions.
Ping An Trust, Zhongrong International Trust, Everbright Xinglong Trust and Minmetals International Trust have all bought project companies from struggling developers in the last few months, corporate records and company announcements showed.
Ping An Trust, Zhongrong International Trust, Everbright Xinglong Trust
and Minmetals International Trust did not respond to requests for comment.
For Hao and other former trust employees, the companies’ search for stability feels familiar.
“My situation now is better than it was when I left the trust, but will never be as good as it was at the height of the boom when I was there,” Hao said.
($1 = 6.9905 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Reporting Engen Tham in Shanghai, Clare Jim and Julie Zhu in Hong Kong; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Gerry Doyle
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
MEXICO CITY, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Auto manufacturing companies Volkswagen and Continental both pledged major investments in Mexico on Thursday totaling nearly $1 billion, one of the biggest sums for the sector to be announced in a single day during the current government.
Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) said it will invest $763.5 million between 2022 and 2025 at its complex in the central state of Puebla, one of Volkswagen’s largest facilities globally, to build a new paint plant and start production of a new gasoline-powered car.
The company, which currently makes Jetta, Taos and Tiguan models at the plant, did not detail which car it would add to the line-up.
It added that the paint plant would be powered by wind turbines, becoming the carmaker’s first to run exclusively on clean energy
.
Earlier in the day, fellow German auto parts maker Continental AG (CONG.DE) said it would invest around 210 million euros ($209.16 million) to open a new automotive electronics factory and expand capacity at an existing brake components plant in the central state of Guanajuato.
Both projects are nearly completed, with openings expected early next year, it said in a statement.
Continental said it expects to generate more than 1,500 new jobs over the next three years through the expansion.
Among the other large auto companies pumping money into the country is General Motors, which last year announced a $1 billion investment at its Ramos Arizpe complex, where it will begin making electric vehicles in 2023.
Nissan in May announced a $700 million investment over the next three years.
Jeep maker Stellantis is also reported to be looking to invest billions to make electric vehicles in Mexico, while Tesla chief executive Elon Musk is considering investing in the north of the country, sources told Reuters this week.
($1 = 1.0040 euros)
Reporting by Isabel Woodford; Editing by Christian Plumb and Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.