Business
U.S. lawmakers press GM CEO on California emissions
|
General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra faced questions from U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday on a workers’ vote at a company plant in Mexico and the company’s support for emissions reductions.
Barra met with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other senior Democrats on Capitol Hill, and touted the company’s decision announced earlier in the day to boost spending on electric and autonomous vehicles to $35 billion through 2025.
“We’re committed to an all-EV future,” Barra said in brief comments to Reuters after the meeting. “We had a lot of conversations about a lot of things that we can do to enable EV adoption.”
Until November, GM backed the Trump administration’s effort to block California from setting tougher emissions standards than the federal government.
Pelosi had expressed disappointment with GM’s support for Republican President Donald Trump’s position on the emissions rules, a source briefed on the matter said, and she urged GM to work with California and the Biden administration to reach the strongest possible vehicle emissions standards.
The administration of Democratic President Joe Biden is set to unveil revised vehicle emissions rules in July.
GM said last week it backs emissions reductions outlined in a 2019 deal struck between California and other major automakers, but wants the federal government to endorse changes to speed the adoption of electric vehicles.
Barra also faced questions about a delayed worker vote at a GM plant in Silao, Mexico.
Mexico’s Labor Ministry scrapped an initial union-led vote in April, citing “serious irregularities,” and later ordered the GM union to hold a new ballot within 30 days of its May 11 statement. No vote has been scheduled
The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office in May asked Mexico to review potential labor abuses at the Silao plant under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Last month, U.S. Representatives Dan Kildee, Bill Pascrell and Earl Blumenauer, all Democrats, pressed GM to answer questions about potential abuses in Mexico.
“We want to see some real demonstration of embracing the labor standards in Mexico — more than compliance,” Kildee told Reuters after the meeting. “The situation in Silao — I raised that with Mary — that’s a problem.”
The Democrats urged GM to commit to providing workers with physical copies of the contract, publicly posting contracts and to meet other requirements.
Kildee offered additional steps GM could take to support workers and meet USMCA requirements, and the three lawmakers followed up with a written list of suggested actions, congressional aides said.
The suggestions “would be tangible demonstrations of GM’s commitment to lead on compliance with the new labor standards,” Kildee told Reuters.
Earlier Wednesday, some House lawmakers on a trade panel, including Kildee, had a virtual meeting with Mexico’s ambassador to the United States in which the GM labor issued was raised.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Business
Unplanned shutdown of Imperial pipeline will affect delivery of fuel to Winnipeg for months – The Globe and Mail
Imperial Oil Ltd. has shut down a key pipeline that supplies the Winnipeg area with gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, as the Calgary-based company scrambles to make repairs and find ways to continue transporting fuel to the city by truck and train.
Routine inspections by Imperial IMO-T earlier this year found what the provincial government calls “integrity concerns” in a section of the Winnipeg Products Pipeline under the Red River near St. Adolphe, a community about 30 kilometres south of Manitoba’s capital. The line was shut down on Sunday as a result – an unplanned move that the company says is “preventative maintenance to ensure the integrity of the line.”
Imperial would not provide details about what the inspections uncovered that required the repairs.
The City of Winnipeg’s chief administrative officer, Michael Jack, initially contended that the problem is far worse than Imperial has said but changed his opinion on Monday.
“Candidly, I don’t believe this PR statement accurately conveys the gravity of the situation; we have reason to believe the supply of gasoline products to the entire city (and beyond) may be compromised for a period of time,” he wrote to city councillors on Sunday, in an e-mail obtained by The Globe and Mail.
At a press conference on Monday, Mr. Jack told reporters he is “feeling good” after conversations with Imperial. “We are paid to worry about these things. We don’t send a lot of e-mails saying everything is fine,” he said.
“A discussion around gas can cause people to get anxious, and we just simply don’t have any reasons to think anybody should.”
Later on Monday, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said while there is no reason for the public to panic or for people to stock up on fuel, the government is looking at obtaining backup supplies in case Imperial falls short.
Mr. Kinew said he has also been in contact with North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum to enquire about equipment, logistical expertise and any fuel supplies that the province can turn to the state to help with. More than 50,000 train cars carrying fuel as well as fuel trucks are on their way to Winnipeg as of this week, he said.
“We have a week or two worth of fuel supply in the city right now. Our hope is that that backup supply will be in place ahead of that two-week period,” the Premier said.
The pipeline carries refined petroleum products to Winnipeg from the Enbridge Mainline pipeline at Gretna, Man., on the Canada-U.S. border.
Imperial said in a statement Sunday night that it is arranging alternate forms of transport to keep fuel moving into Winnipeg and surrounding communities. The company is also identifying other terminal locations where customers can pick up products, including at Enbridge’s Gretna crude oil tank terminal, which remains connected to pipeline supply from Western Canada. The terminal has a capacity of about 335,000 barrels.
Gasoline supply will be managed with additional storage and loading capacity at the Gretna terminal, using rail and trucks to transport the fuel to Imperial’s Winnipeg terminal, and arranging for customers to use other supply points outside of the region where possible.
Diesel supply will be managed by rail, and jet fuel by truck.
Imperial said in an e-mail Monday that it expects the line will be out of service for three months, but the company is working to expedite work where possible.
The provincial government and Imperial say nothing has been spilled into the environment from the pipeline.
However, the pipeline shutdown comes at a time of increased scrutiny of Imperial. It came under fire early last year for failing to tell local Indigenous communities about months of leaking from tailings at its Kearl oil sands facility in Northern Alberta into the environment. There have also been two spills at the site in the past year.
The oil pipeline shutdown also comes just weeks after two City of Winnipeg sewage pipelines burst under the Red River. Hundreds of millions of litres of raw sewage had spilled into the river for days, a situation the city attributed to aging infrastructure.
Mr. Kinew said the province is not yet sure whether the Imperial shutdown relates to Winnipeg’s old infrastructure. He is leaning on the company to do the right thing, but “with a healthy dose of skepticism,” he said.
“Through the initial stages of this response, we have seen that there is probably a need for more regulation and legislation in this space,” he said.
Business
USD/JPY moving around, swings helped by thinning liquidity ahead of Bank of Japan decision – ForexLive
Business
Tech giant Nvidia unveils higher performing ‘superchips’ to power AI – Al Jazeera English
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tells developers conference that computing is advancing at an ‘insane’ rate.
Nvidia has unveiled its latest family of chips for powering artificial intelligence as it seeks to consolidate its position as the major supplier to the AI frenzy.
“We need bigger GPUs. So, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to a very, very big GPU,” CEO Jensen Huang said on Monday at a developers conference in California, referring to the graphics processors that are vital in the creation of generative AI.
The event, dubbed the “AI Woodstock” by Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, has become a can’t-miss date on big tech’s calendar due to Nvidia’s singular role in the AI revolution that has taken the world by storm since the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022.
“I hope you realise this is not a concert, this is a developers’ conference,” Huang joked as he took the stage in a packed arena usually reserved for ice hockey games and concerts.
Nvidia’s powerful GPU chips and software are an integral ingredient in the creation of generative AI, with rivals like AMD or Intel still struggling to match the power and efficiency of the company’s blockbuster H100 product, launched in 2022.
Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have also developed chips with AI in mind but for now are stuck trying to get their hands on Nvidia’s coveted products to deliver on their own AI promises.
That linchpin role in the AI revolution has seen Nvidia’s share price rise by roughly 250 percent over the last 12 months, propelling the company above Amazon when measured by market capitalisation, behind only Microsoft and Apple.
Not letting up, Nvidia told the audience of developers and tech executives it was releasing an even more powerful processor and accompanying software, on a platform called Blackwell – named after David Blackwell, the first Black academic inducted into the National Academy of Science.
Blackwell GPUs were AI “superchips” four times as fast as the previous generation when training AI models, Nvidia said.
“The rate at which computing is advancing is insane,” Huang said.
They would also deliver 25 times the energy efficiency, Nvidia said, a key claim when the creation of AI is criticised for its ravenous needs for energy and natural resources when compared with more conventional computing.
Unlike its rivals Intel, Micron and Texas Instruments, Nvidia, like AMD, does not manufacture its own chips, but uses subcontractors, mainly the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
Given the geopolitical concerns with Taiwan and China, this could be a potential weak spot, and the US has banned Nvidia from sending its most powerful chips to Chinese companies.
Nvidia also announced other AI developments, including a platform for training humanoid robots.
Project Gr00t, which Nvidia said was not named after the Guardians of the Galaxy movie character Groot, was described as the “world’s first human foundation model”.
Gr00t-powered robots will be designed to understand what people say and mimic people’s movements, learning from experience how to interact with the world, according to Nvidia.
The models “will enable a robot to learn from a handful of human demonstrations so it can help with everyday tasks and emulate human movement just by observing us”, Nvidia said.
Nvidia said it was also working with Apple to put AI capabilities into the newly-released Vision Pro spatial computing gear.
The collaboration comes as Apple is under pressure to show it is not being left behind by Amazon, Google, Meta and OpenAI when it comes to artificial intelligence.
Nvidia also unveiled the Earth-2 Cloud Platform for predicting climate change, using simulation by AI supercomputers.
-
Media16 hours ago
Supreme Court leans against limiting Biden administration contacts with social media platforms
-
Science16 hours ago
Global wildlife study during COVID-19 shows rural animals are more sensitive to human activity
-
News14 hours ago
Brian Mulroney's sons thank Canadians, politicians for outpouring of support – CBC.ca
-
Science15 hours ago
New England College of Optometry Issues Safety Advisory for Solar Eclipse – New England College of Optometry
-
Sports15 hours ago
Sault duo celebrates historic perfect season for university hockey team – SooToday
-
Art17 hours ago
Banksy Goes Green With New Street Art That's Like An Optical Illusion – HuffPost
-
Tech13 hours ago
PlayStation 5 Pro rumored to beef up GPU and ray tracing, bring AI acceleration
-
Media14 hours ago
Struggling Sports Illustrated inks deal to stay afloat following partnership – NBC News