US Mega Millions Jackpot Climbs to $1.1B

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DES MOINES, Iowa — The Mega Millions jackpot climbed to an estimated $1.1 billion after no one matched the game’s six numbers Friday night, continuing a stretch of more than three months without a big winner. 

The numbers drawn were: 3, 8, 31, 35, 44, 16. 

The jackpot increased after a drawing for an estimated $977 million failed to produce a jackpot winner. 

No one has won the game’s jackpot since December 8, a string of 30 consecutive drawings without anyone taking home the top prize. That has enabled the jackpot to slowly grow, week after week. 

The $1.1 billion prize is for a sole winner who chooses to be paid through an annuity over 30 years. Winners almost always opt for a cash payment, which for the next drawing Tuesday night is an estimated $525.8 million. 

A lucky player winning the $1.1 billion jackpot would take home the eighth largest in U.S. lottery history. 

The other U.S. lottery game, Powerball, has grown to an annuity jackpot of $750 million and a cash payout of $357.3 million. The next Powerball drawing is scheduled to take place Saturday night. 
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China’s Renewables, Oil Consumption Fit Gulf States, Analysts Say

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Tel Aviv, Israel — During China’s annual national legislature this month, Premier Li Qiang announced plans to construct more solar and wind farms as well as hydropower projects.

China is already the world’s largest producer of renewable energy and also holds near-monopolies on the globe’s renewable energy manufacturing and supply chain. Last year alone China produced more solar panels than the U.S. has ever produced in total.

China’s dominance in electric vehicle battery components and solar power panels has rattled Western governments, including those of the European Union and the United States, which blame Beijing’s “huge” state subsidies. The U.S. has responded with its own subsidies and incentives to boost American production.

China is also the world’s biggest consumer of fossil fuels and the globe’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. But analysts say that puts Beijing in a good position to partner on renewable energy growth with a somewhat surprising group — oil producers in the Persian Gulf.

Gulf States including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Kuwait and Iraq produced about a third of the world’s crude oil in 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But they’re also diversifying away from those industries with help from China, say analysts.

Energy and Geopolitics Researcher Elai Rettig at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University tells VOA it’s a mutually beneficial investment as the shift to green energy will free up oil for sale to the Gulf’s main consumers in Asia, especially China.

“In that region, oil is cheaper than water,” notes Rettig.  “The more you invest in the Gulf, the more you can trust they’ll see you get oil even under sanctions. China is the biggest oil importer in the world and needs to make sure someone will sell them cheap oil if there’s a confrontation with the U.S.”

But it’s less about the Gulf states’ love of China and more about Beijing’s ability to deliver on large-scale projects at lower costs, says Li-Chen Sim, a nonresident fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

“The Chinese can produce low-priced, polysilicon for solar panels because labor costs are cheaper, so products are cheaper. Solar model assembly in China is 50% cheaper than in Europe,” she told VOA.

Western countries have raised tariffs on Chinese imports and offered fresh subsidies to encourage domestic competition. The European Union this month approved import taxes on Chinese electric vehicles and is considering them for solar panels.

The EU this month moved closer to banning products made with forced labor, which is expected to include polysilicon components for solar panels made in China’s western Xinjiang region, which supplies nearly half the global demand.

The United States stopped all imports from the region in 2022 as part of a crackdown on forced labor imposed on the region’s ethnic Uyghur Muslim minority, which China denies.

Despite pushback from the West, plunging solar prices are making it harder to compete with Chinese manufacturers.

Nonetheless, China has some competition when it comes to renewable energy in the Gulf States, says Sim.

“China plays a role [in the Gulf] in the financing, contractor and equipment sectors — in financing they are significant. But in fact, not as significant as the Japanese,” she said.  “Japan’s role in green energy financing in the Gulf is huge.”

During his July 2023 Middle East tour aimed at promoting Japan’s green technology and regional economic ties, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida signed signed 23 agreements with the UAE to strengthen cooperation and existing partnerships.

Japan in 2017 became the first country in the world to formulate a national hydrogen strategy with plans to become the first “hydrogen society.”

But it will have to compete with China, already the world’s top producer and consumer of hydrogen, though most of it is generated with high-carbon emission fossil fuels like coal.  
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US Congress Averts Government Shutdown, Passing $1.2 Trillion Bill

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Congress early Saturday overwhelmingly passed a $1.2 trillion budget bill, keeping the government funded through a fiscal year that began six months ago and sending it to President Joe Biden to sign into law and avert a partial shutdown.

The vote on passage was 74-24.

Key federal agencies including the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State and Treasury, which houses the Internal Revenue Service, will remain funded through September 30 after the bill was passed in the Democratic-majority Senate.

But the measure did not include funding for mostly military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan or Israel, which are included in a different Senate-passed bill that the Republican-led House of Representatives has ignored.

Senate leaders spent hours Friday negotiating a number of amendments to the budget bill that ultimately were defeated. The delay pushed passage beyond a Friday midnight deadline.

But the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a statement saying agencies would not be ordered to shut, expressing confidence that the Senate would promptly pass the bill, which it did.

While Congress got the job done, deep partisan divides were on display again, as well as bitter disagreement within the House’s narrow and fractious Republican majority. Conservative firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened to force a vote to remove Speaker Mike Johnson, a fellow Republican, for allowing the measure to pass.

The 1,012-page bill provides $886 billion in funding for the Defense Department, including a raise for U.S. troops. Biden, a Democrat, has indicated he will sign it.

Johnson, as he has done more than 60 times since succeeding his ousted predecessor Kevin McCarthy in October, relied on a parliamentary maneuver on Friday to bypass hardliners within his own party, allowing the measure to pass by a 286-134 vote that had substantially more Democratic support than Republican.

For most of the past six months, the government was funded with four short-term stopgap measures, a sign of the repeated brinkmanship that ratings agencies have warned could hurt the creditworthiness of a federal government that has nearly $34.6 trillion in debt.

“This legislation is truly a national security bill 70% of the funding in this package is for our national defense, including investments that strengthen our military readiness and industrial base, provide pay and benefit increases for our brave servicemembers and support our closest allies,” said Republican Senator Susan Collins, one of the main negotiators.

Opponents cast the bill as too expensive.

“It’s reckless. It leads to inflation. It’s a direct vote to steal your paycheck,” said Senator Rand Paul, part of a band of Republicans who generally oppose most spending bills.

The last partial federal government shutdown occurred during Donald Trump’s presidency, from December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019. The record-long interruption in government services came as the Republican insisted on money to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and was unable to broker a deal with Democrats.

Greene lashes out

The new budget bill passed the House with 185 Democratic and 101 Republican votes, which led Greene, a hardline conservative, to introduce her measure to oust Johnson.

That move had echoes of October, when a small band of hardliners engineered a vote that removed McCarthy for relying on Democrats to pass a stopgap measure to avert another partial government shutdown. They had been angry at McCarthy since June, when he agreed with Biden on the outlines of the fiscal 2024 spending that were passed on Friday.

McCarthy’s ouster brought the House to a halt for three weeks as Republicans struggled to agree on a new leader, an experience many in the party said they did not want to repeat as the November election draws nearer.

And Greene said she would not push for an immediate vote on her move to force Johnson out.

“I filed a motion to vacate today. But it’s more of a warning than a pink slip,” the Georgia Republican told reporters.

Indeed, some Democrats said on Friday that they would vote to keep Johnson, if he were to call a vote on a $95 billion security assistance package already approved by the Senate for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

That measure is unlikely to come up anytime soon, as lawmakers will now leave Washington for a two-week break.

Pockets of Republican opposition to more funding for Ukraine have led to fears that Russia could seriously erode Kyiv’s ability to continue defending itself.

Life is unlikely to become easier for Johnson anytime soon, with the looming departure of two members of his caucus — Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher — set to whittle his majority to a mere 217-213 in a month’s time. At that point, Johnson could afford to lose only one vote from his party on any measure that Democrats unite to oppose.
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100 Iconic Washington Cherry Trees To Be Cut Down, Including ‘Stumpy’

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washington — The sun is setting on Stumpy, the gnarled old cherry tree that has become a social media phenom. This year’s cherry blossom festivities in Washington will be the last for Stumpy and more than 100 other cherry trees that will be cut down as part of a multiyear restoration of their Tidal Basin home.

Starting in early summer, crews will begin working to replace the crumbling seawall around the Tidal Basin, the area around the Jefferson Memorial with the highest concentration of cherry trees. The work has been long overdue, as the deterioration, combined with rising sea levels, has resulted in Potomac waters regularly surging over the barriers.

The twice-daily floods at high tide not only cover some of the pedestrian paths, they regularly soak some of the cherry trees’ roots. The $133 million project to rebuild and reinforce the sea wall will take about three years, said Mike Litterst, National Park Service spokesperson for the National Mall.

“It’s certainly going to benefit the visitor experience, and that’s very important to us,” Litterst said. “But most of all, it’s going to benefit the cherry trees, who right now are every day, twice a day, seeing their roots inundated with the brackish water of the Tidal Basin.” Litterst said entire stretches of trees to the water, as wide as 100 yards, or 90 meters, have been lost and can’t be replaced “until we fix the underlying cause of what killed them in the first place.”

Stumpy still alive

Stumpy remains alive, if in rough shape.

Plans call for 140 cherry trees — and 300 trees total — to be removed and turned into mulch. When the project is concluded, 277 cherry trees will be planted as replacements.

The mulch will protect the roots of surviving trees from foot traffic and break down over time into nutrient-rich soil, “so it’s a good second life” for the trees being cut down, Litterst said.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is widely considered to be the start of the tourist season in the nation’s capital. Organizers expect 1.5 million people to view the pink and white blossoms this year, the most since the coronavirus pandemic. Large numbers of cherry blossom fans have already been drawn to the area as the trees entered peak bloom on March 17, several days earlier than expected.

Tree becomes social star

Stumpy became a social media star during the pandemic of 2020. Its legacy has spawned T-shirts, a calendar and a fanbase. News of Stumpy’s final spring has prompted people to leave flowers and bourbon and had one Reddit user threatening to chain themselves to the trunk to save the tree.

The good news on Stumpy is that the National Arboretum plans to take parts of the tree’s genetic material and create clones, some of which will eventually be replanted at the Tidal Basin.

The regular flooding at the Tidal Basin — sea levels have risen about a foot since the the seawall was built in the early 1990s — is just one of the ways climate change has impacted the cherry trees. Rising global temperatures and warmer winters have caused peak bloom to creep earlier in the calendar.

This year’s peak bloom, when 70% of the city’s 3,700 cherry trees will be flowering, was originally predicted to start around Saturday but ended up being declared on March 17. By comparison, the 2013 peak bloom began on April 9.

Leslie Frattaroli, national resources program manager for the Park Service, told The Associated Press in February that peak bloom could regularly come in the middle of March by 2050.

“All the timing is off.” he said. “It’s a huge cascading effect.”

Another weather side effect: A mid-March cold snap in the D.C. area should actually extend this year’s bloom past the predicted April 9 ending.

For visitors and cherry blossom enthusiasts, the annual tradition of a stroll on the Tidal Basin under the flowers is a core Washington experience.

Jorge and Sandra Perez make a point of coming every year from Stafford, Virginia.

“Yes, we have cherry blossoms in my community, but it’s a completely different feel when you see all of them bloom together,” Sandra Perez said. “And you can walk through, you know, the trees under it and smell it. And it’s just, it’s a beautiful view.”

They also came looking for Stumpy, having heard the legend and knowing this would be its final spring.

“It’s actually beautiful,” Jorge Perez said. “So, it’s sad to see him leave.”
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US Pledges Additional $22M to Fight Terrorism in Mozambique

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Maputo, Mozambique — U.S. officials pledged $22 million in new funding Thursday to help Mozambique fight Islamist militants in the country’s troubled, oil-rich Cabo Delgado, where an insurgency has intensified in recent weeks.

The United States already had pledged $100 million.

At the end of a five-day visit to Maputo, Anne Witkowsky, U.S. assistant secretary of state for conflict and stabilization operations, said the funding aims to help Mozambique with stabilizing and peacebuilding efforts in its northern provinces.

Calling security in north Mozambique critical, Witkowsky told VOA that the U.S.-financed programs provide training for local government officials to deliver services; promote social cohesion through peace clubs, sports and the arts; and increase educational and employment opportunities for youth.

“Mozambique is a priority partner country under our strategy to prevent conflict and promote stability,” she said. “So, the U.S. supports a Mozambique that is more prosperous, more secure, more resilient and more democratic for all.”

Since 2017, Mozambique’s province of Cabo Delgado has faced an armed insurgency, with some attacks claimed by an extremist group calling itself Islamic State.

On Monday, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi warned that terrorism could divide the country, advocating that citizens unite to fight rebel groups in the province.

Nyusi spoke after missionaries, priests and religious sisters were forced to flee from remote towns and villages to Pemba and other large cities, which are overwhelmed with persons displaced by the conflict.

Nyusi said resolution of the problem depends on the unity of Mozambicans and foreign forces supporting them.

The Reverend Marcos Macamo, a scholar of African theology and religious sciences, is part of a coalition of religious and civic advocacy groups that are urging the government to open negotiations with the militants. But, he said, even diplomacy has its own challenges.

“The terrorists … wouldn’t have power unless local people give them information,” Macamo said. “They [locals] open the doors slightly so that the enemy can enter.”

The insurgency in northern Mozambique began in 2017 but has seen an increase in attacks since the beginning of this year. In the last few days alone, there have been several raids on towns and villages, and people have been killed or kidnapped.

According to humanitarian agencies, the insurgency has killed at least 5,000 people and displaced more than 1 million.

Oil giants Exxon Mobil and Total are among international energy companies developing natural gas projects offshore of northern Mozambique.
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Cocoa Prices Triple in One Year as Climate Change Hits Crops

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Nairobi, Kenya — With a week until Easter, chocolate lovers should brace themselves for higher prices when they purchase their favorite seasonal treats.

A nonprofit environmental group says cocoa costs three times more than it did a year ago because of climate change and the El Nino weather effect. Prices reached $8,000 per ton this week, compared with $2,500 last year at this time.

Amber Sawyer, a climate and energy analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, or ECIU, a U.K.-based nonprofit group, said the volatile weather patterns in the top cocoa-producing countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast have affected international commodity prices.

“Chocolate producers are trying to buy up cocoa, but there’s a reduced supply of it,” she said. “So obviously, because of the reduced supply, the demand has gone up, and the prices have therefore gone up for confectionery companies who make chocolate. These costs are now being fed through to consumers.”

Ghana and Ivory Coast, which produce nearly 60% of global cocoa, experienced heavy rains in December. Flooding caused crop damage and led to cocoa plants rotting with black pod disease.

Extreme heat has hurt, too.

“That’s affecting not only the crop, because it’s difficult to grow cocoa in these conditions, but also the farmers themselves,” Sawyer said.

“Farmers have gone from having too much rain to not enough rain, which means that they’re behind on production and unable to sell on the international markets,” she said.

Ghana has reduced its cocoa production estimate this year from 850,000 to 650,000 tons due to adverse weather conditions and smuggling.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data show cocoa is grown in countries that are most vulnerable and less prepared to deal with climate change.

A U.K.-based World Weather Attribution website analysis released Thursday showed that West Africa experienced an intense heatwave in February, with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

Izidine Pinto, a researcher with the Royal Netherlands Metrological Institute connected with the website, said the heatwaves and heavy rainfall affect people’s lives and jobs.

“Climate change is making rainfall heavier and heatwaves like these more intense,” he said. “These changes to extreme weather are making life more dangerous for people in West Africa. … This is damaging livelihoods … damaging crops and making food prices more expensive.”

Weather experts note that heatwaves used to occur once every 100 years before widespread fossil fuel burning, but in today’s climate, heatwaves happen once every 10 years.

African countries bear the brunt of climate change despite contributing the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The ECIU urges wealthier nations to offer financial and technical aid to assist farmers in managing the impact of severe weather and climate change.
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