World leaders meeting at the United Nations General Assembly, which begins Tuesday in New York, must make nuclear arms control a priority, according to a group of over 100 political, military and diplomatic figures. They have issued a statement warning that the risks of nuclear accident, misjudgment or miscalculation have not been higher since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.

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The Islamic State terror group has issued a new audio recording , claiming to show the group’s reclusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi encouraging his supporters and fighters to conduct more military operations and engage in more propaganda.

The recording, posted to the internet Monday by IS’s al-Furqan media division, also calls on IS supporters not to forget about Muslims being held in prisons and refugee camps.

U.S. officials have yet to comment on the purported recording.

Earlier this year, the terror group released a video of the man it claimed was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seeking revenge for the fall of the terror group’s self-declared caliphate In Iraq and Syria.

IS Claims Video Shows Reclusive Leader, Calls for Revenge

The Islamic State issued a new video Monday claiming to show its reclusive leader delivering a message to his followers, urging them to seek revenge for the fall of the terror group’s self-declared caliphate In Iraq and Syria.

The more than 18-minute-long video posted to the internet by IS’s al-Furqan media division shows a man, allegedly Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, sitting cross-legged against a white backdrop with a machine gun and a couple of pillows by his side. 

The man is seen speaking with other IS members, whose faces are blurred or covered with masks, acknowledging the recent fall of the

Before that, the 48-year-old Baghdadi had not been seen since he gave a sermon at the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, Iraq, in July 2014.

The lack of public appearances and the sporadic messages attributed to him had led to speculation about his whereabouts, while also sparking numerous rumors of his death. But U.S. military and intelligence officials have long believed Baghdadi is alive and hiding in remote areas of Syria or Iraq where IS remains entrenched, possibly with local support.

Since 2016, the United States has offered a reward of up to $25 million for information that helps bring Baghdadi to justice. Only one other person, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, has a reward that high.

VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.

…

A U.N. investigator finds that two years after the violent expulsion of more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, the situation in their home country remains too dangerous for them to return from their refuge in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh.

U.N. Special Rapporteur, Yanghee Lee, says Myanmar commits ongoing gross violations of international law and uses brutal measures to repress ethnic minorities in Rakhine and southern Chin states.

She says many civilians have been killed and tens of thousands displaced by the indiscriminate use of heavy artillery and other methods of warfare used by both the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s armed forces, and the Arakan Army, an insurgent group in Rakhine.

Doubts Hang Over Fresh Rohingya Repatriation Attempt to Myanmar 

Rohingya interviewed by UN say they don’t want to go home until their safety is guaranteed and they are recognized as citizens in Buddhist-majority country

She says by no stretch of the imagination is it possible to believe the Rohingya refugees would be safe if they returned to Myanmar. In August, she notes an agreement was hatched to repatriate 3,450 refugees.

She says Myanmar claims to have done what is necessary for the repatriation to be successful and blames Bangladesh for delays in the operation going ahead. She says the contrary is true.

“Myanmar has done nothing to dismantle the system of violence and persecution, and the Rohingya who remain in Rakhine live in the same dire circumstances that they did prior to the events of August 2017,” said Lee. “They are denied citizenship and recognition, face regular violence, including in the context of the ongoing conflict between the Arakan Army and the Tatmadaw.”

The U.N. investigator says the Rohingya are unable to move freely and have little access to food, health care, education, livelihoods and services.

Myanmar’s Permanent Representative to the U.N. in Geneva, Kyaw Moe Tun, denounces Yanghee Lee’s lack of impartiality, objectivity and good faith. He says Myanmar has zero tolerance for any violation of human rights and any form of violence, especially against children, women and the vulnerable.

He acknowledges no Rohingya have returned under the bilateral arrangements, but notes some Hindu and Muslim people have gone back on their own volition. He says it is crystal clear some people want to return.

He calls on the U.N. Human Rights Council to replace Yanghee Lee with a new special rapporteur who understands Myanmar’s history and recognizes the difficulties it faces in moving toward a democratic society.

…

…

Visiting a black church bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in the civil rights era, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Sunday the country hasn’t “relegated racism and white supremacy to the pages of history” as he framed current tensions in the context of the movement’s historic struggle for equality.

He spoke to parishioners at 16th Street Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham as they commemorated the 56th anniversary of the bombing that killed four black girls in 1963. “It’s in the wake of these before-and-after moments when the choice between good and evil is starkest,” he said.

The former vice president called out the names of the victims — Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley. He drew nods of affirmation as he warned that “the same poisonous ideology that lit the fuse on 16th street” has yielded more recent tragedies including in 2015 at a black church in South Carolina, in 2018 at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh and in August at an El Paso, Texas , Wal-Mart frequented by Latino immigrants.

Key Takeaways From Democrats’ Third 2020 Debate

Will it have any effect on fundamentals of nominating fight that remains remarkably stable at top with five months until voting begins?

He condemned institutional racism as the direct legacy of slavery and lamented that the nation has “never lived up to” the ideals of equality written into its founding documents. But then he added a more personal note. “Those who are white try,” Biden said, “but we can never fully understand.”

Biden praised the congregation for offering an example of “rebirth and renewal” to those communities and to a nation he said must recommit itself to “giving hate no safe harbor — demonizing no one, not the poor, the powerless, the immigrant or the ‘other.’”

Biden’s appearance in Birmingham comes at a political inflection point for the Democrats’ 2020 polling leader. He is trying to capitalize on his strength among older black voters even as some African American and other nonwhite leaders, particularly younger ones, view Biden more skeptically.

From his long time in government, as a senator and vice president, the 76-year-old Biden has deep ties in the black community. Though Biden didn’t mention President Donald Trump in his remarks, he has made withering critiques of the president’s rhetoric and policies on race and immigration a central feature of his candidacy.

Yet Biden also draws critical, even caustic appraisals from younger nonwhite activists who take issue with his record. That includes his references to working productively alongside segregationist senators in the 1970s to distrust over his lead role in a 1994 crime law that critics frame as partially responsible for mass incarceration, especially black men.

The dynamics flared up again Thursday after Biden, during a Democratic debate, offered a sometimes incoherent answer when asked how the nation should confront the legacy of slavery. At one point, Biden suggested nonwhite parents use a play a record player to help their children with verbal and cognitive development. That led to a social media firestorm and commentary that Biden takes a paternalistic view of black and brown America even as he hammers Trump for emboldening more obvious forms of racism.

Author Anand Giridharadas called Biden’s answer “appalling — and disqualifying” for “implying that black parents don’t know how to raise their own children.”

Biden gave only slightest of nods to some of those critiques Sunday.

Biden’s audience seemed to reflect his relative popularity with black voters more than the fierceness of his critics.

Parishioners wielded their cellphones when he arrived with Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, a white politician beloved in the church for his role as the lead prosecutor who secured convictions in the bombing case decades after it occurred. The congregation gave Biden a standing ovation as he concluded his 20-minute remarks.

Alvin Lewis, a 67-year-old usher at 16th Street Baptist, said the welcome doesn’t necessarily translate to votes. But as Lewis and other congregants offered their assessment of race relations in the United States under Trump, they tracked almost flawlessly the arguments Biden has used to anchor his campaign.

“Racism has reared its head in a way that’s frightening for those of us who lived through it before,” Lewis said, who said he was at home, about “20 blocks from here” when the Klan bomb went off at 10:22 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1963. “No matter what anyone says, what comes out of the president of the United States’ mouth means more than anything,” Lewis added, saying Trump “has brought out some nastier times in this country’s history.”

Antoinette Plump, a 60-year-old who took in the service alongside lifelong member Doris Coke, 92, said racism “was on the back burner” until Trump “brought out all the people who are so angry.”

Coke, who was at the church on that Sunday in 1963, said, “We’ve come a long way.” But she nodded her head as Plump denounced Trump.

Nearby sat Fay Gaines, a Birmingham resident who was in elementary school in 1963 — just a few years younger than the girls who died.

Gaines said she’s heard and read criticisms about Biden. Asked whether she’d seen his “record players” answer in the debate, she laughed and said she did. But he remains on her “short list” of preferred candidates.

“I think there may just be a generational divide,” she said of the reaction. “People who lived through all these struggles maybe can understand how to deal with the current situation a little better.”

That means, she said, recognizing a politician’s core values.

“I trust Joe Biden,” she said. “History matters. His history matters.”

…

Roughly 49,000 workers at General Motors plants in the U.S. plan to go on strike just before midnight Sunday, but talks between the United Auto Workers and the automaker will resume.

About 200 plant-level union leaders voted unanimously in favor of a walkout during a meeting Sunday morning in Detroit. Union leaders said the sides were still far apart on several major issues and they apparently weren’t swayed by a GM offer to make new products at or near two of the four plants it had been planning to close, according to someone briefed on the matter.

“We stood up for General Motors when they needed us most,” union Vice President Terry Dittes said in a statement, referring to union concessions that helped GM survive bankruptcy protection in 2009. “Now we are standing together in unity and solidarity for our members.”

UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg said Sunday evening that contract talks would resume at 10 a.m. Monday, but the strike was still expected to go ahead.

GM on Friday offered to build a new all-electric pickup truck at a factory in Detroit that is slated to close next year, according someone who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because that person wasn’t authorized to disclose details of the negotiations, which hadn’t been released to the public. The automaker also offered to open an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where it has a plant that has already stopped making cars. The new factory would be in addition to a proposal to make electric vehicles for a company called Workhorse, the person said.

It’s unclear how many workers the two plants would employ. The closures, especially of the Ohio plant, have become issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. President Donald Trump has consistently criticized the company and demanded that Lordstown be reopened.

The UAW’s Rothenberg said the company made general statements about why it is planning to strike, but he would not comment further on GM’s offer. The union said it would strike for fair wages, affordable health care, profit sharing, job security and a path to permanent employment for temporary workers.

In a statement, GM also said the offer made to the union on Saturday included more than $7 billion in U.S. factory investments and the creation of 5,400 new positions, a minority of which would be filled by existing employees. GM would not give a precise number. The investments would be made at factories in four states, two of which were not identified.

The statement also said the company offered “best in class wages and benefits,” improved profit sharing and a payment of $8,000 to each worker upon ratification. The offer included wage or lump sum increases in all four years of the deal, plus “nationally leading” health benefits.

The announcement came hours after the union let its contract with GM expire Saturday night.

If there is a strike, picketers would shut down a total of 53 GM facilities, including 33 manufacturing sites and 22 parts distribution warehouses. GM has factories in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas.

On Saturday, Dittes, the union’s chief bargainer, said in a letter to GM members that after months of bargaining, both the union and GM were far apart on issues such as wages, health care, temporary employees, job security and profit-sharing. The letter to members and another one to GM were aimed at turning up the pressure on GM negotiators.

A strike would bring to a halt GM’s U.S. production, and would likely stop the company from making vehicles in Canada and Mexico as well. That would mean fewer vehicles for consumers to choose from on dealer lots, and it would make it impossible to build specially ordered cars and trucks.

The strike would be the union’s first since a two-day work stoppage at GM in 2007.

On Friday, union leaders extended contracts with Ford and Fiat Chrysler indefinitely, but the pact with General Motors was still set to expire Saturday night.

The union picked GM, which is more profitable than Ford and Fiat Chrysler, as the target company, meaning it’s the focus of bargaining and would be the first company to face a walkout.

Talks between the union and GM were tense from the start, largely because GM plans to close four U.S. factories, including the one on the Detroit border with the enclave of Hamtramck, and Lordstown. The union has promised to fight the closures.

Here are the main areas of disagreement:

— GM is making big money, $8 billion last year alone, and workers want a bigger slice. The union wants annual pay raises to guard against an economic downturn, but the company wants to pay lump sums tied to earnings. Automakers don’t want higher fixed costs.

— The union also wants new products for the four factories GM wants to close. The factory plans have irked some workers, although most of those who were laid off will get jobs at other GM factories. GM currently has too much U.S. factory capacity.

— The companies want to close the labor cost gap with workers at plants run by foreign automakers. GM pays $63 per hour in wages and benefits compared with $50 at the foreign-owned factories. GM’s gap is the largest at $13 per hour, followed by Ford at $11 and Fiat Chrysler at $5, according to figures from the Center for Automotive Research.

— Union members have great health insurance plans and workers pay about 4% of the cost. Employees at large firms nationwide pay about 34%, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The automakers would like to cut costs.

…

Syrian government troops on Sunday bombarded a rebel-held area in the Syrian northwestern province of Idlib, a monitor group said.

Several missiles targeted towns and villages in the southern part of Idlib that are controlled by rebel forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

No casualties were reported in the Sunday attack.

Despite a unilateral ceasefire that was declared by the Syrian government and its ally Russia in late August, government forces have continued targeting towns and cities across the Syrian province, experts said.  

“The ceasefire is vague and seems to only apply in certain parts of Idlib,” said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory.

He said that details of the ceasefire haven’t fully been disclosed.

“What is clear, however, is that [Syrian] regime forces want to recapture two highways that connect Aleppo to Damascus and Latakia. Both routes go through south Idlib,” Abdulrahman told VOA.

Syrian rebels said they have managed to halt the regime’s assault on south Idlib temporarily.

“We are responding directly by targeting the positions from where the shells are fired,” Naji Mustafa, a spokesman for the Turkish-backed National Liberation Front opposition force, told Reuters news agency Sunday.

In Syria’s Idlib, Foreign Jihadists Complicate Efforts to Achieve Stability

Syrian state media reported Sunday that clashes broke out between regime troops and jihadist forces in the southern countryside of Idlib

The Idlib province, home to nearly 3 million people, is the last major stronghold of rebel forces fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Idlib is largely controlled by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaida affiliate in Syria.

According to the latest U.N. count, at least 1,000 civilians have been killed in Idlib since April.

Last month, Syrian regime forces backed by Russia retook control of Idlib’s strategic town of Khan Sheikhoun, which had been under rebels’ control since 2014.

Civilians returning

On Sunday, Syrian state media reported that thousands of displaced civilians have begun returning to their homes in south Idlib that recently have been cleared of rebel fighters.

“Thousands of citizens return to their villages… of the southern Idlib countryside,” SANA news agency said.

The Syrian Observatory, however, claimed that those people had been living in regime-held areas and weren’t displaced due to the recent fighting.

“Most of them are from the [nearby province of] Hama and only a small number is actually from areas such as Khan Sheikhoun,” the Observatory reported.

Failed deal?

For years, Idlib has been a center of contention between Russia and Turkey, two powers that support opposite sides of the Syrian conflict.

In September 2018, Moscow and Ankara reached an agreement that postponed a planned Syrian regime offensive on Idlib and other areas near the Turkish border.

As part of that agreement, Turkey was required to remove all extremist groups from the province, some of which are allied with the al-Qaida terror group.

Some experts say that Syrian regime’s ongoing push to recapture Idlib from rebels indicates Russia’s discontent with Turkey’s failure to implement its part of the deal on Idlib.

“This is a reflection of Russia’s policy towards Idlib,” said John Saleh, a Syrian researcher based in Washington.

“Moscow has realized that Turkey cannot commit to the 2018 agreement, which included removing all radical groups from Idlib. That’s why Russia is determined to support Syrian regime troops to retake these areas from Turkish-backed rebels in Idlib,” he told VOA.

Presidents of Turkey, Russia and Iran are to meet in Ankara on Monday to discuss the situation in Syria. Idlib is expected to take center stage in those talks, reports said.

…

U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar on Sunday responded to the son of a 9/11 victim who criticized the congresswomen last week on the anniversary of the attacks.

Nicholas Haros Jr., whose mother died in the World Trade Center, spoke at the ceremony on the 18th anniversary of the attacks wearing a shirt that said “Some people did something,” a reference to comments Omar earlier this year. “Today I am here to respond to you exactly who did what to whom,” he said.

While speaking to the Council on American-Islamic Relations in March, Omar said the group was founded because “some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”  The comments sparked immediate backlash.

On Sunday, Omar was once again asked about her comments and those of Haros while appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation.

“9/11 was an attack on all Americans. It was an attack on all of us, and I certainly could not understand the weight of the pain that the families of the victims of 9/11 must feel,” Omar said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

But, she said, we should also remember that “many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them,” in the aftermath of the attacks.

“So what I was speaking to was that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as suspect,” she told Face the Nation.

…

Tunisians voted Sunday to select their next president among some two dozen candidates with unofficial results suggesting two outsider candidates are ahead. 

More than seven million people were eligible to cast their ballot in what is only the North African country’s second free presidential election, eight years after its so-called Jasmine Revolution.

A steady stream of people filed into this primary school, lining up under posters offering instructions on how to vote. Nineteen-year-old college student Yomna El Benna is excited to be voting for the first time.

“I’m going to vote for Mourou…for many reasons….when I was deciding, I eliminated the persons who I’m not convinced with…they cannot lead Tunisia,” El Benna said.

That’s Abdelfattah Mourou from the moderate Islamist Ennahdha party, running to replace 92-year-old president Beji Caid Essebsi who died in July. Mourou’s part of a dizzying lineup of presidential hopefuls, including two women. Among them: government ministers, far left politicians and jailed media tycoon Nabil Karoui. A runoff vote is expected, following next month’s legislative elections.

Zohra Goummid voted for Prime Minister Youssef Chahed. “He’s got experience, he’s young,’ she says. ‘We Tunisians know him well. The other candidates are just upstarts.”

But with Tunisia’s economy sputtering and unemployment high, others are looking for new faces, outside the political establishment.

Retired professor Mohammed Sami Neffati voted for a friend of his — 61-year-old law expert Kais Saied, who opted for door-to-door campaigning instead of large rallies. He isn’t eloquent, Neffati says, but he’s got a chance, because he’s honest.

But other Tunisians stayed home, disappointed about the state of their country—and skeptical that any of the candidates can turn things around.

…

A watery grave of old sunken ships has been designated the newest national marine sanctuary in the United States. Located in Maryland about 60 kilometers south of Washington, the “ghost fleet” rises like an apparition out of the water when the tide is low. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to this underwater park with ships going back more than one hundred years.
 

…

Selecting a college or university from the thousands in the U.S. can be mind-boggling.

Many applicants turn to a web search to find rankings of the “best” colleges and will find U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Princeton Review, and Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education ranking sites, to name a few. Are those rankings and lists accurate, though, and, more importantly, are those “top” schools the best for you?

U.S. News & World Report published its first “America’s Best Colleges” report in 1983, and many schools use those rankings to promote themselves. However, some educators have questioned the published rankings and how useful they are.

Experts rank college rankings

Ray Anderson is a former high school principal who works with AGM-College Advisors in Virginia. Anderson says that while he uses the rankings and talks with students about the results, what’s more important is knowing what the student wants, likes and is capable of doing.

“The focus is on who you are, and then what schools match you,” Anderson said, “not matching you to the school.”

Jeffrey Stahl, a Virginia high school counselor, agrees that rankings have limited value.

He said the rankings “can be helpful,” but that some students pay too much attention to the name of a school and its position in rankings.

“So much about the campus environment, students, professors, cannot be shown just by ranking,” Stahl said. He suggests that families use the ranking information as a starting point. Then, they should widen their search, make their own list, and go see the colleges for themselves.

David Hawkins, executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, is more critical of the way college rankings are used, saying rankings “are not mathematically proven to measure the quality of any single college, much less to provide comparisons between colleges.”

He said lower-ranked schools may have difficulty getting students interested in their programs.

“As such,” he said, “the rankings have been known to create ethical problems, as institutions misreport data or otherwise seek to manipulate their ranking.”

In July, U.S. News & World Report “de-ranked” five institutions from its list for misreporting information. Consequently, the magazine said, their ranking numbers were “higher than they otherwise would have been.”

Students must look past those ratings to a gain a broader opinion about the schools for themselves.

Hawkins noted that international applicants might think rankings come from the U.S. government, but that’s not true, he said.

“We try to emphasize that these are commercial publications, rather than official rankings of any sort,” he said.

Richard DeMillo, the executive director of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for 21st Century Universities, which describes itself as a “living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education,” says, while the higher rank is “nice, it does not matter.”

DeMillo, whose school moved up 13 positions in Forbes’ latest list, said he believes that Forbes, U.S. News & World Report and other publications are providing a service, “if you ignore the ranking part of it.”

For example, he finds the information about all the study programs to be useful. The ratings sometimes list lesser-known schools that might be strong in a field of study that a student is interested in.

“There are so many hidden gems out there,” Stahl said. “Just because a college doesn’t make the list doesn’t mean it doesn’t have great programs and resources.”

…

At two of the world’s biggest coal mines, the finances got so bad that their owner couldn’t even get toilet paper on credit.

Warehouse technician Melissa Worden divvied up what remained of the last case, giving four rolls to each mine and two to the mine supply facility where she worked.

Days later, things got worse.

Mine owner Blackjewel LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection July 1. Worden at first figured the accounts would get settled quickly and vendors of everything from copy paper to parts for house-sized dump trucks would soon be back to doing normal business with the mines.

“The consensus was: In 30 days, we’ll look back on this, and we made it through, and we’ll be up and running, and it’s a fresh start,” Worden said.

What happened instead has shaken the top coal-producing region in the United States like a charge of mining explosive. Blackjewel furloughed most of its Wyoming employees and shut down Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr mines, the first idled by hardship since coal mining in the Powder River Basin exploded in the 1970s.

It’s a big hit to the region straddling northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana, where coal has quietly supported the economies of both states for decades and fuels a shrinking number of power plants in 28 states.

Negotiations that could reopen the two Wyoming mines under new ownership — potentially previous owner Bristol, Tennessee-based Contura Energy — are stalled more than two months later. Some 600 employees remain off the job. They lost health insurance coverage in late August.

And doubts are growing about the long-term viability of the region’s coal mines — particularly Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr, the fourth- and sixth-biggest in the U.S. by production, respectively.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be that naive again,” said Worden, 44.

Blackjewel, based in Milton, West Virginia, told its Wyoming employees this week that the mines might be up and running soon and to let the company know if they wanted their jobs back.

Worden said she felt little reassurance. On a break at a part-time electrical contracting job in North Dakota, she wondered if she should accept any offer of full-time work or hold out for her old job.

She’s not the only one questioning long-held assumptions about Powder River Basin coal mines, which produce cleaner-burning coal less expensively than mines in other parts of the U.S. and weren’t widely thought of being at risk despite a push for renewable energy to combat climate change.

But with coal in long-term decline, how the basin might eventually scale down production to a sustainable level has become a big question, said Rob Godby, director of the Center for Energy Economics and Public Policy at the University of Wyoming.

“The irony here — and it’s really a cruel irony — is everybody is focused on getting these miners back to work. But really the solution to creating a healthy industry is some mines close,” Godby said.

For now, little appears changed in Gillette, a city of 30,000 people at the heart of the basin of rolling grasslands midway between the Black Hills and snowcapped Bighorn Mountains. Tattoo shops are abundant, and big, late-model pickup trucks still cruise the main drag.

This year, however, has been especially tumultuous. Three of the Powder River Basin’s nine producers — Westmoreland Coal, Cloud Peak Energy and Blackjewel — have filed for bankruptcy since March. Two others, Arch Coal and Peabody, have announced they will merge assets in the region.

The turmoil comes as U.S. coal production is down more than 30% since peaking in 2008. Utilities are retiring aging coal-fired power plants and switching to solar, wind and cheaper and cleaner-burning natural gas to generate electricity despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to prop up the coal industry.

A decade ago, about half of U.S. electricity came from coal-fired power. Now it’s less than 30%, a shift that heavy equipment operator Rory Wallet saw as utilities became less willing to lock in multiyear contracts for Belle Ayr mine’s coal.

“The market’s changed,” Wallet said. “The bankruptcies all tie into that.”

Wallet, 40, followed his father, an equipment mechanic, into the Belle Ayr mine in 2008. He said the recent mine closures and loss of his $80,000-a-year job took him by surprise.

He has four children, ages 11 to 16, and his wife’s job at the Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant in Gillette is their main income while they await news about the mines.

Blackjewel said Thursday that it was working on plans to restart the mines while pursuing their sale. There were no indications in federal bankruptcy court filings in West Virginia that the mines were set to reopen, however.

“This is a fast-moving and sometimes unpredictable process, and accordingly, we do not have answers to all of your questions at this time,” the company’s statement said.

Wallet is looking for a job and using his downtime to sell “We Will Rise Again” T-shirts to benefit families of out-of-work coal miners. He’s also lobbying Wyoming lawmakers to fight harder to force Washington state to approve a port facility expansion that would allow more coal exports to Asia.

He questions the outlook from Godby of the Center for Energy Economics and Public Policy that some mines must close.

“I think, with Rob, it’s the middle- to worst-case scenario,” Wallet said. “The ports are going to be a big deal. Asia is going to be a big deal.”

Wallet pointed out that the Powder River Basin still has a century or two of recoverable coal left. And just north of Gillette, the state has invested $15 million in a facility to study how to capture climate-changing carbon dioxide from a working power plant and profitably use it in products ranging from concrete to biofuels.

Wallet is optimistic that technology could save coal. But carbon capture, if it happens at all, could arrive too late to do the coal industry much good amid global concern about climate change, Godby said.

“We will not see widespread adoption of carbon capture and storage for at least a decade,” Godby said. “That’s just the reality.”

He also doubted that exports can save the region’s coal industry. There’s no direct rail line to the Pacific Northwest from most of the basin’s mines, and the amount of coal that the proposed export terminal could handle would offset only a small fraction of the amount that production has declined, Godby said.

Powder River Basin mines employ about 5,000 miners — 20% fewer than eight years ago. But the impact is even wider because an additional 8,000 jobs, from teachers to car mechanics, have indirect ties to the broader economy around the coal industry.

Local unemployment rose to 5.7% in July, compared with 4.1% a year earlier.

Trump got 88% of the vote in Campbell County, the heart of the basin. Locals cheered when he lifted a federal moratorium on coal leases that former President Barack Obama imposed, but Worden and Wallet disagree about whether changing environmental regulations will do much good in the long run. Wallet thinks improvement could be just around the corner.

Both say coal should continue to have a place in the economy alongside renewable energy.

“It needs to be a group effort, not green is on one side and black is on the other,” Worden said. “We don’t want this community to die.”
 

…