US Senate Votes to Advance Sweeping Semiconductor Industry Bill

• 07, 26, 2022
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The U.S. Senate voted 64-32 on Tuesday to advance legislation to dramatically boost U.S. semiconductor manufacturing in a bid to make the domestic industry more competitive with China.

The legislation provides about $52 billion in government subsidies for U.S. semiconductor production as well as an investment tax credit for chip plants estimated to be worth $24 billion.

The Senate is expected to vote on final passage in coming days and the U.S. House could follow suit as soon as later this week.

President Joe Biden and others have cast the issue in national security terms, saying it is essential to ensure U.S. production of chips that are crucial to a wide range of consumer goods and military equipment.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo called the vote “a symbol of the strong bipartisan coalition working to build more chips in America. These chips keep our economy strong and our country safe.”

The bill aims to ease a persistent shortage that has dented production in industries including automobiles, consumer electronics, medical equipment and high-tech weapons, forcing some manufacturers to scale back production. Auto production has been especially hit hard.

“The pandemic made clear with unforgiving clarity how America’s chip shortage was creating a crisis,” the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer said before the vote.

The Semiconductor Industry Association said the vote is a “vital step toward enactment of legislation that will strengthen American chip production and innovation, economic growth and job creation, and national security.”

Biden pushed hard for the bill, which has been in the works for well over a year, with a version passing the Senate in June 2021 but stalling in the House. This frustrated lawmakers from both parties who view competition with China and global supply chain issues as top priorities.

Critics like Senator Bernie Sanders have called the measure a “blank check” to highly profitable chips companies.

Biden met virtually on Monday with the chief executives of Lockheed Martin Corp, Medtronic and Cummins Inc along with labor leaders as part of the administration’s push for the legislation.
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Russian FM Lavrov Heads to Ethiopia, Seeking Closer Ties

• 07, 26, 2022
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Russia’s foreign minister is heading to Ethiopia Tuesday, his last stop on a four-nation tour of Africa aimed at countering Western criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Western nations blame the invasion for worsening food shortages in record drought-stricken East Africa, including Ethiopia. But Ethiopia has also been under Western pressure over its war with Tigray rebels and has a historic friendship with Russia.

Sergey Lavrov will round off his Africa tour by meeting with Ethiopian officials in Addis Ababa as he fends off accusations that his country is exporting hunger through its war in Ukraine.

He will also try to strengthen ties with Ethiopia’s federal government, whose relations with the West have soured amid accusations of human rights abuses in the Tigray conflict.

Russia’s presence in Ethiopia is scant compared to other countries. It does not have a large aid footprint like the U.S. Nor does it invest heavily in infrastructure as the Chinese do.

But the two countries have a strong diplomatic partnership. Since the Tigray war started in November 2020, Russia has shielded Ethiopia at the United Nations Security Council by insisting meetings be held behind closed doors and using its veto to block statements condemning alleged abuses by Ethiopian forces.

It is not unusual to hear people in Addis Ababa express a preference for Russia over Western countries, which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has suggested are behind a conspiracy supporting the Tigray People’s Liberation Front rebel group, or TPLF.

Moges Zewdu Teshome, an independent researcher, said the Russia-Ethiopia relationship has deep historical roots.

“The Ethiopian government has always been in a good relationship even during those turbulent periods of the Cold War, of course, siding with the Soviet Union, as you may recall,” he said. “And then if we see it in the context of the current quagmire which Ethiopia is in when it comes to its international relations and foreign policy posture, Russia has been backing the Ethiopian claims and or at least positions in the U.N. Security Council.”

Ethiopian officials will likely seek assurances from Lavrov that Black Sea wheat exports will resume. Ethiopia has plans to boost its wheat production in an attempt to become self-sufficient. But for the time being, it imports over 40% of its grain from Ukraine and Russia, and some 30 million Ethiopians currently rely on food aid sourced from global grain markets.

Last year, as the Tigray war continued, Russia signed a security partnership with Ethiopia. The deal raised eyebrows among Western diplomats whose countries suspended aid.

However, Awet Weldemichael, a professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, said Russia cannot displace the Western presence in Ethiopia, especially as the prime minister tries to rehabilitate ties with the U.S. now that the Tigray conflict is cooling down.

“I don’t think that the West’s relationship with the Ethiopian prime minister is as bad as it was six months ago or a year ago,” he said. “We increasingly see the West has been actively normalizing the prime minister and his policies. In light of that, in light of the mending of fences, so to speak, between Addis Ababa and Western capitals. I doubt that Foreign Minister Lavrov will have much of a chance.”

Ethiopia abstained from voting on the U.N. resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March.
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EU Energy Ministers Agree to Reduce Gas Use

• 07, 26, 2022
•  Nbiz
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European Union energy ministers approved a plan Tuesday to reduce natural gas use by 15% in order to cut dependence on Russian supplies.

The agreement involves voluntary reductions between August and March, and will allow member states to stockpile supplies ahead of the coming winter months.

In case of emergency, the EU could make the cuts mandatory, although with certain exemptions that were agreed to as part of a compromise in order to reach the agreement.

The deal also comes amid the prospect that Russia will cut off gas supplies to the EU in response to EU sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s Gazprom has said it would further reduce already slowed supplies to Europe beginning Wednesday.

Gazprom has blamed the reductions on repairs to the Nord Stream pipeline, but EU officials have said the moves are politically motivated.

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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David Trimble, Architect of N Ireland Peace Deal, Dies at 77

• 07, 26, 2022
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David Trimble, a former Northern Ireland first minister who won the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a key role in helping end Northern Ireland’s decades of violence, has died, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) said Monday. He was 77.

The party said in a statement on behalf of the Trimble family that the unionist politician died earlier Monday “following a short illness.”

Trimble, who led the UUP from 1995 to 2005, was a key architect of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland known as “the Troubles.”

Keir Starmer, leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, called Trimble “a towering figure of Northern Ireland and British politics” in a tweet Monday. Current UUP leader Doug Beattie praised Trimble as “man of courage and vision,” a tribute echoed by leaders from across the political divide.

The UUP was Northern Ireland’s largest Protestant unionist party when, led by Trimble, it agreed to the Good Friday peace accord.

Although a hardliner unionist when he was younger, Trimble became a politician whose efforts in compromise were pivotal in bringing together unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland’s new power-sharing government.

Like most Protestant politicians at the time, Trimble initially opposed efforts to share power with Catholics as something that would jeopardize Northern Ireland’s union with Britain. He at first refused to speak directly with Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

He ultimately relented and in 1997 became the first unionist leader to negotiate with Sinn Fein.

Former British Prime Minister John Major said Trimble’s “brave and principled change of policy” was critical to peace in Northern Ireland.

“He thoroughly merits an honorable place amongst peacemakers,” Major said.

The peace talks began formally in 1998 and were overseen by neutral figures such as former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. The outcomes were overwhelmingly ratified by public referendums in both parts of Ireland.

Trimble shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with Catholic moderate leader John Hume, head of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), for their work.

Trimble was elected first minister in Northern Ireland’s first power-sharing government the same year, with the SDLP’s Seamus Mallon as deputy first minister.

But both the UUP and the SDLP soon saw themselves eclipsed by more hardline parties — the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein. Many in Northern Ireland grew tired of Trimble and his colleagues, who appeared to be too moderate and compromising.

Trimble struggled to keep his party together as the power-sharing government was rocked by disagreements over disarming the IRA and other paramilitary groups. Senior colleagues defected to the DUP, Trimble lost his seat in Britain’s parliament in 2005, and soon after he resigned as party leader. The following year he was appointed to the upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords.

Northern Ireland power-sharing has gone through many crises since then — but the peace settlement has largely endured.

“The Good Friday Agreement is something which everybody in Northern Ireland has been able to agree with,” Trimble said earlier this year. “It doesn’t mean they agree with everything. There are aspects which some people thought were a mistake, but the basic thing is that this was agreed.”

William David Trimble was born in Belfast on October 15, 1944, and was educated at Queen’s University, Belfast.

He had an academic career in law before entering politics in the early 1970s, when he became involved in the hardline Vanguard Party. He surprised many when he won the leadership of the UUP in 1995.

Trimble was not always a popular leader, and his negotiations toward the peace accord attracted criticism from elements of his party.

“David faced huge challenges when he led the Ulster Unionist Party in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations and persuaded his party to sign on for it,” Adams said Monday in a statement. “It is to his credit that he supported that Agreement. I thank him for that.

“While we held fundamentally different political opinions on the way forward nonetheless I believe he was committed to making the peace process work,” Adams continued. “David’s contribution to the Good Friday Agreement and to the quarter century of relative peace that followed cannot be underestimated.”

Trimble is survived by his wife, Daphne, and children Richard, Victoria, Nicholas and Sarah.
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