African leaders met on Sunday to launch a continental free-trade zone that if successful would unite 1.3 billion people, create a $3.4 trillion economic bloc and usher in a new era of development.

After four years of talks, an agreement to form a 55-nation trade bloc was reached in March, paving the way for Sunday’s African Union summit in Niger where attendees will unveil which
nation will host the trade zone’s headquarters, when trading will start and discuss how exactly it will work.

It is hoped that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) — the largest since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994 — will help unlock Africa’s long-stymied economic potential by boosting intra-regional trade, strengthening supply chains and spreading expertise.

“The eyes of the world are turned to Africa,” Egyptian President and African Union Chairman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at the summit’s opening ceremony.

AfCFTA “will reinforce our negotiating position on the international stage. It will represent an important step.”

Africa has much catching up to do: its intra-regional trade accounted for just 17% of exports in 2017 versus 59% in Asia and 69% in Europe, and Africa has missed out on the economic booms
that other trade blocs have experienced in recent decades.

Economists say significant challenges remain, including poor road and rail links, large areas of unrest, excessive border bureaucracy and petty corruption that have held back growth and
integration.

Members have committed to eliminate tariffs on most goods, which will increase trade in the region by 15-25% in the medium term, but this would double if these other issues were dealt with, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates.

The IMF in a May report described a free-trade zone as a potential “economic game changer” of the kind that has boosted growth in Europe and North America, but it added a note of caution.

“Reducing tariffs alone is not sufficient,” it said.

Divergent interests

Africa already has an alphabet soup of competing and overlapping trade zones — ECOWAS in the west, EAC in the east, SADC in the south and COMESA in the east and south.

But only the EAC, driven mainly by Kenya, has made significant progress towards a common market in goods and services. These regional economic communities (REC) will continue to trade among themselves as they do now. The role of AfCFTA is to liberalise trade among those member states that are not currently in the same REC, said Trudi Hartzenberg, director at Tralac, a South Africa-based trade law organization.

The zone’s potential clout received a boost on Tuesday when Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, agreed to sign the agreement at the summit. Benin has also since agreed to join.
Fifty-four of the continent’s 55 states have signed up, but only 25 have ratified.

One obstacle in negotiations will be the countries’ conflicting motives.

For undiversified but relatively developed economies like Nigeria, which relies heavily on oil exports, the benefits of membership will likely be smaller than others, said John Ashbourne, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics.

Nigerian officials have expressed concern that the country could be flooded with low-priced goods, confounding efforts to encourage moribund local manufacturing and expand farming.

In contrast, South Africa’s manufacturers, which are among the most developed in Africa, could quickly expand outside their usual export markets and into West and North Africa, giving them
an advantage over manufacturers from other countries, Ashbourne said.

The presidents of both countries are attending the summit.

The vast difference in countries’ economic heft is another complicating factor in negotiations. Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa account for over 50% of Africa’s cumulative GDP, while its six sovereign island nations represent about 1%. “It will be important to address those disparities to ensure that special and differential treatments for the least developed countries are adopted and successfully implemented,” said Landry Signe, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Africa Growth Initiative.

Regulations governing rules of origin, removal of non-tariff barriers and the development of a payments and settlements system are expected to be unveiled at the summit.

…

Three people were gored and a further two people suffered head trauma during the first day of Spain’s best-known bull-running festival in the northern town of Pamplona on Sunday, the Red Cross said.

One man was loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher shortly after the dash through the medieval town center’s narrow streets to the bullring, which lasted two minutes and 41 seconds.

Thousands of runners, dressed head to toe in white, with bright-red neckerchiefs, gather every year for the traditional morning run, after which the animals are kept in the bullring until the afternoon’s fights.

A total 53 people were treated by the Red Cross. Runners often get injured at traditional bull-runs in Spain, but no one has died at Pamplona’s San Fermin festival since Spaniard Daniel Jimeno was gored in the neck by a Jandilla bull in 2009.

This year, the bulls were from cattle breeder Puerto de San Lorenzo, whose bulls have been responsible for one goring in the past. One person was gored on the opening day of the festival last year.

Locals and tourists alike will join in the 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) run every morning until next Sunday.

The festival regularly stokes debate about the treatment of animals. On Friday, protesters lay half-naked on the street with fake spears coming out of their backs to protest against what they see as cruelty.
 

…

A British newspaper reported Sunday that Britain’s ambassador to the United States has described U.S. President Donald Trump as “inept” and “uniquely dysfunctional.”

The Mail published the highly unflattering portrait of the U.S. leader, quoting comments allegedly taken from a cache of leaked diplomatic memos from Ambassador Kim Darroch.  

According to the newspaper, Darroch described Trump as someone who “radiates insecurity” and who is “incompetent.”

“We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal,” Darroch is reported to have written.

The ambassador cautioned British officials, however, not to dismiss Trump’s chances for re-election, saying the president has a “credible path” to another four years in the White House.  

The Mail said Darroch warned that Trump could “emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like [Arnold] Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of The Terminator.”

Britain’s Foreign Office has not denied the comments.  A spokeswoman said ambassadors are expected “to provide ministers with an honest, unvarnished assessment of the politics in their country.”  She added, “We pay them to be candid.”

…

An apparent gas explosion at a shopping plaza in Plantation, Florida, injured several people on Saturday, authorities and local media reported.

Video posted to Twitter showed the force of the blast scattered debris across a parking lot and blew out several windows at a nearby L.A. Fitness gym, sending patrons running for the exits.

The Plantation fire department said on Twitter that there were multiple patients being treated at the scene.

The Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported that witnesses said a vacant restaurant appeared to be the source of the explosion. The city of Plantation is about 6 miles west of Fort Lauderdale.

…

A war monitor and first responders group say an airstrike has killed at least 13 people in a village in northwestern Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the dead, most of them internally displaced persons, include seven children and three women. They died on Saturday in a Syrian government airstrike on the village of Mhambel in the province of Idlib.
 
Opposition-allied first responders known as the White Helmets also reported the attack and the casualties.
 
Idlib is the last major rebel stronghold in Syria’s eight-year civil war. Government troops backed by Russia have been using heavy airstrikes in their campaign to take the area in the past months.

…

UK-flagged supertanker Pacific Voyager which halted in the Gulf on Saturday is “safe and well,” a British official told Reuters, after Iran dismissed reports its Revolutionary Guards had seized the vessel.

A Revolutionary Guards commander on Friday had threatened to seize a British ship in retaliation for the capture by Royal Marines of Iranian supertanker Grace 1 in Gibraltar.

The Pacific Voyager stopped in the Gulf en route to Saudi Arabia from Singapore before resuming its course, Refinitiv Eikon mapping showed.

It stopped as part of a routine procedure to adjust its arrival time at its next port, an official at UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) told Reuters.

The UKMTO, which coordinates shipping in the Gulf, had been in contact with the tanker, the official said.

On Saturday an Iranian cleric said Britain should be “scared” about Tehran’s possible retaliation for the seizure of the Grace 1, the Fars semi-official news agency reported.
“I am openly saying that Britain should be scared of Iran’s retaliatory measures over the illegal seizure of the Iranian oil tanker,” said Mohammad Ali Mousavi Jazayeri, a member of the
Assembly of Experts clerical body.

Tensions are high in the Gulf following last month’s attacks on vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping route, and Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone. Washington and Saudi
Arabia have directly blamed Iran for the attacks on tankers, something Tehran denies.

The attacks have raised fears of a broader confrontation in the region where the United States has boosted its military
presence over perceived Iranian threats.

…

The United States on Saturday welcomed a provisional agreement forged by Sudan’s ruling military council and a coalition of opposition and protest groups to share power for three years as an “important step forward.”

The U.S. State Department said in statement that special envoy for Sudan Donald Booth will return to the region soon. The agreement brokered by the African Union and Ethiopia Union, announced on Friday, is due to be finalized on Monday.

“The agreement between the Forces for Freedom and Change and the Transitional Military Council to establish a sovereign council is an important step forward,” the State Department said. “We look forward to immediate resumption of access to the internet, establishment of the new legislature, accountability for the violent suppression of peaceful protests, and progress toward free and fair elections.”

Sudan Military, Pro-Democracy Movement Agree to Share Power

The two sides will share power during a transition period of about three years

The deal revived hopes for a peaceful transition of power in a country plagued by internal conflicts and years of economic crisis that helped to trigger the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in April.

Relations between the military council that took over from Bashir and the Forces for Freedom and Change alliance broke down when security forces killed dozens of people as they cleared a
sit-in on June 3. But after huge protests against the military on Sunday, African mediators brokered a return to direct talks.

…

A small Ohio city is shooting for the moon in celebrating its native son’s history-making walk 50 years ago this month.

The hometown of Neil Armstrong has expanded its usual weekend “summer moon festival” to 10 days of Apollo 11 commemorations . Tens of thousands of visitors — the biggest crowds here since Armstrong’s post-mission homecoming — are expected.

There will be hot air balloons, ’60s-themed evenings, concerts, rocket launches and a visit from five other Ohio astronauts. And “the world’s largest moon pie,” all 50 pounds of it.

Event planning began two years ago in a city of about 10,000 that has added nearly 3,000 residents since 1969 but retains that everybody-knows-everybody rural town feel. Jackie Martell of the chamber of commerce calls the moon landing anniversary an event that “just resonates for the entire world,” and a continuing source of local pride.

This Day in History: US Astronaut Neil Armstrong Walks on the Moon in 1969

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The immortal words of American astronaut Neil Armstrong, uttered on July 20, 1969, when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.

Along with astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins aboard Apollo 11, NASA made history this day 48 years ago, inspired by a 1961 speech by then President John F.

Dave Tangeman turned 12 on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 took Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon, and he and his family gathered around the black-and-white TV in their living room that evening to watch their neighbor. Hundreds of millions of people around the world were watching with them as Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface to make “one giant leap for mankind.”

“It was just so unbelievable that somebody from this little town could accomplish something like that,” said Tangeman, now transportation director for the local schools. He likes to joke that the town puts on a big birthday party for him every July.

Though Tangeman doesn’t remember much else about his 12th birthday, he has vivid memories of Armstrong’s triumphant welcome-home parade that Sept. 6, when most of the city of some 7,000 people joined tens of thousands of visitors to line the streets or climb onto roofs to see Armstrong, celebrities including entertainer Bob Hope, and the marching band from Armstrong’s Purdue University alma mater.

“History will always record that the first person to set foot on the moon was Neil Armstrong from Wapakoneta, Ohio,” said Dante Centuori, executive director of the Armstrong Air and Space Museum. “That’s not going to change.”

Neil Armstrong Memorabilia Fetches $7.5 Million at Auction

Memorabilia that belonged to the first man to set foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong, has fetched more than $7.4 million at auction.

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions says the item that sold for the highest price, $468,500, at Saturday’s auction was Armstrong’s spacecraft ID plate from Apollo 11’s lunar module Eagle.

Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, at his grandparents’ farm just outside Wapakoneta. His family moved around Ohio before settling back at Wapakoneta for his high school years. Growing up some 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) north of the Dayton home of the aviation-pioneering Wright Brothers, young Neil was fascinated with airplanes from an early age, building models and hanging them up in his bedroom.

As a teen in Wapakoneta, he used earnings from an after-school job at a drugstore to pay for flying lessons, pedaling his bicycle a few miles every day to an airfield to practice his skills. He made his first solo flight at age 16, 20 years before he went into space for the first time inside Gemini 8 for what became a harrowing mission that he survived to make history in 1969.

Celebrations got started last October with a red-carpet gala for a special showing of “First Man ,” starring Ryan Gosling and based on historian James R. Hansen’s Armstrong biography, in the historic downtown Wapa theatre .

Downtown shops are well-supplied with T-shirts, coffee mugs, moon artwork and moon landing memorabilia to sell in the coming days. But the museum — with its moon base-shaped top visible from Interstate 75 — will be the centerpiece for activities around the anniversary, including a NASA livestream broadcast on July 19.

Centuori, the museum director who joined the facility in January, has been overseeing construction and remodeling to get ready for the expected influx eager to see planes and space artifacts associated with Armstrong. Those include the Aeronca Champion plane Armstrong flew as a teen, an F5D Skylancer plane he flew as a Navy test pilot, the Gemini 8 capsule he rode into space, and a small moon rock. The museum also will debut an expanded Armstrong education center for students to focus on science, technology, engineering and math.

The museum, which opened in 1972, also will unveil two of three new statues in town honoring Armstrong. Although James Rhodes, Ohio’s governor at the time, began planning for the museum even before Armstrong was back on Earth, the astronaut himself preferred a low profile in his post-NASA years. He lived in the Cincinnati area until his death in 2012 at age 82.

In keeping with Armstrong’s nature, the museum advises entering visitors that “Mr. Armstrong has never been involved in the management of this museum nor benefited from it in any way.”

He did, though, embrace his Wapakoneta connection, telling his welcome-home crowd: “I’m proud to stand before you today and consider myself one of you.”

Helping represent those who came after him in space at the celebration will be five of the two dozen other astronauts with Ohio ties: Michael Good, Gregory Johnson, Robert Springer, Donald Thomas and Sunita Williams.

…

Iraq is celebrating the UNESCO World Heritage Committee’s decision to name the historic city of Babylon a World Heritage Site in a vote in Azerbaijan.

Friday’s vote comes after Iraq bid for years for Babylon to be added to the list of World Heritage Sites.

The city on the Euphrates River is about 85 kilometers (55 miles) south of Baghdad.

The 4,300-year-old Babylon, now mainly an archaeological ruin and two important museums, is where dynasties have risen and have fallen since the earliest days of settled human civilization.

Parliament speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi and Minister of Culture Abdul-Amir al-Hamadani congratulated the Iraqi people on the announcement.

The vote comes years after the Islamic State group damaged another Iraq World Heritage site in the country’s north, the ancient city of Hatra.
 

…

The U.S. coal industry sank deeper this week as the nation’s sixth-largest coal company declared bankruptcy.

Though the Trump administration has taken measures aimed at supporting coal, six of the 10 largest coal companies have gone bankrupt since 2014.

Blackjewel LLC’s Chapter 11 filing comes just weeks after the No. 3 producer, Cloud Peak Energy, declared bankruptcy. 

The coal industry has been pummeled as electric utilities switch from coal-fired power to cleaner, cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. 

It is good news for the climate and public health. Burning coal produces more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants than other fuels. 

But the trend has been devastating for the coal industry and its employees. 

Blackjewel, a subsidiary of Revelation Energy, employed about 1,700 workers in four states, including Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, according to court filings. 

Gas, wind, solar

In bankruptcy filings, Blackjewel blamed a “combination of an abundant, cheap and reliable alternative fuel in the form of natural gas, increased usage of renewable sources of energy,” plus stricter environmental regulations, for the coal industry’s decline. 

Coal consumption is at its lowest point in four decades. 

The dramatic rise of natural gas in the United States has undercut the economics of coal-fired power. The United States has been the world’s leading natural gas producer since 2009. 

Meanwhile, this April marked the first time coal-fired electricity generation slipped behind renewable sources,  including wind, solar and hydropower, in monthly totals.  Those figures fluctuate seasonally, but they highlight the rise of renewables and coal’s descent.

While several companies have emerged from insolvency, “You can’t say the coal industry fixed itself with bankruptcies,” said analyst Karl Cates at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “It bought itself some more time. But it continues to be a sector in decline.”

Trump support

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule last month that might prolong the life of some coal-fired power plants. 

The Affordable Clean Energy rule targets greenhouse gas emissions in the electric power sector. By focusing on power plant efficiency, the EPA says, the rule will reduce emissions up to 35 percent by 2030. 

It replaces the Obama administration’s more stringent Clean Power Plan that was expected to force many coal-fired plants to close. 

Critics note that if plants do stay open longer because of the rule, they will produce more greenhouse gases, even if they are more efficient. 

Given market forces and industry trends, however, it’s not clear how many plants would avoid shutdown under the new rule.

Some coal backers are pursuing technology to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks and bury it underground or use it to produce products. 

While carbon capture, utilization and storage technology exists, it currently costs too much to make economic sense on a large scale. 

Congress has recently passed bipartisan legislation aimed at making it viable. 

“Carbon capture technologies are essential to reducing emissions while protecting jobs,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from the coal state of West Virginia and one of the bill’s lead sponsors. 

…

Marilyne Tatang, 23, crossed nine borders in two months to reach Mexico from the West African nation of Cameroon, fleeing political violence after police torched her house, she said.

She plans soon to take a bus north for four days and then cross a 10th border, into the United States. She is not alone, a record number of fellow Africans are flying to South America and then traversing thousands of miles of highway and a treacherous tropical rainforest to reach the United States.

Tatang, who is eight months pregnant, took a raft across a river into Mexico on June 8, a day after Mexico struck a deal with U.S. President Donald Trump to do more to control the biggest flows of migrants heading north to the U.S. border in more than a decade.

Trump threats encourage migrants

The migrants vying for entry at the U.S. southern border are mainly Central Americans. But growing numbers from a handful of African countries are joining them, prompting calls from Trump and Mexico for other countries in Latin America to do their part to slow the overall flood of migrants.

As more Africans learn from relatives and friends who have made the trip that crossing Latin America to the United States is tough but not impossible, more are making the journey, and in turn are helping others follow in their footsteps, migration experts say.

Trump’s threats to clamp down on migrants have ricocheted around the globe, paradoxically spurring some to exploit what they see as a narrowing window of opportunity, said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

“This message is being heard not just in Central America, but in other parts of the world,” she said.

Record breaking numbers from Africa

Data from Mexico’s interior ministry suggests that migration from Africa this year will break records.

The number of Africans registered by Mexican authorities tripled in the first four months of 2019 compared with the same period a year ago, reaching about 1,900 people, mostly from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which remains deeply unstable years after the end of a bloody regional conflict with its neighbors that led to the deaths of millions of people.

‘They would have killed me’

Tatang, a grade school teacher, said she left northwest Cameroon because of worsening violence in the English-speaking region, where separatists are battling the mostly French-speaking government for autonomy.

“It was so bad that they burned the house where I was living … they would have killed me,” she said, referring to government forces who tried to capture her.

At first, Tatang planned only to cross the border into Nigeria. Then she heard that some people had made it to the United States.

“Someone would say, ‘You can do this,’” she said. “So I asked if it was possible for someone like me too, because I’m pregnant. They said, ‘Do this, do that.’“

Tatang begged her family for money for the journey, which she said so far has cost $5,000.

Epic journey

She said her route began with a flight to Ecuador, where Cameroonians don’t need visas. Tatang went by bus and on foot through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala until reaching Mexico.

She was still deciding what to do once she got to Mexico’s northern border city of Tijuana, she said, cradling her belly while seated on a concrete bench outside migration offices in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula.

“I will just ask,” she said. “I can’t say, ‘When I get there, I will do this.’ I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

Reuters spoke recently with five migrants in Tapachula who were from Cameroon, DRC and Angola. Several said they traveled to Brazil as a jumping-off point.

They were a small sampling of the hundreds of people, including Haitians, Cubans, Indians and Bangladeshis, clustered outside migration offices.

Political volatility in Cameroon and the DRC in recent years has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

People from the DRC made up the third largest group of new refugees globally last year with about 123,000 people, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency, while Cameroon’s internally displaced population grew by 447,000 people.

The number of undocumented African migrants found by authorities in Mexico quadrupled compared with five years ago, reaching nearly 3,000 people in 2018.

Most obtain a visa that allows them free passage through Mexico for 20 days, after which they cross into the United States and ask for asylum.

More families coming, too

Few choose to seek asylum in Mexico, in part because they don’t speak Spanish. Tatang said the language barrier was especially frustrating because she speaks only English, making communication difficult both with Mexican migration officials and even other Africans, such as migrants from DRC who speak primarily French.

Those who reach the United States often send advice back home, helping make the journey easier for others, said Florence Kim, spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration in West and Central Africa.

Like their Central American migrant counterparts, some Africans are also showing up with families hoping for easier entries than as individuals, said Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute.

U.S. data shows a huge spike in the number of families from countries other than Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras at the U.S. southern border. Between last October and May 16,000 members of families were registered, up from 1,000 for the whole of 2018, according to an analysis by the MPI.

Regional approach

The grueling Latin America trek forces migrants to spend at least a week trudging across swampland and hiking through mountainous rainforests in the lawless Darien Gap that is the only link between Panama and Colombia.

Still, the route has a key advantage: Countries in the region typically do not deport migrants from other continents partly because of the steep costs and lack of repatriation agreements with their home countries.

That relaxed attitude could change, however.

Under a deal struck with United States last month, Mexico may start a process later this month to become a safe third country, making asylum-seekers apply for refuge in Mexico and not the United States.

To lessen the load on Mexico, Mexico and the United States plan to put pressure on Central American nations to do more to prevent asylum-seekers, including African migrants, from moving north.

For the moment, however, more Africans can be expected to attempt the journey, said IOM’s Kim.

“They want to do something with their life. They feel they lack a future in their country,” she said.

…

Coal tycoon Chris Cline, who worked his way out of West Virginia’s underground mines to amass a fortune and become a major Republican donor, has died in a helicopter crash outside a string of islands he owned in the Bahamas.  
  
Cline and his daughter Kameron, 22, were on board the aircraft with five others when it went down Thursday, a spokesman for his attorney Brian Glasser said Friday.  
  
The death of the 60-year-old magnate led to eulogies from industry leaders, government officials and academics, who described Cline as a visionary who was generous with his $1.8 billion fortune. 
 
“He was a very farsighted entrepreneur,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. “Chris was just one of those folks who had the Midas touch.”  
  
Raney said Cline began toiling in the mines of southern West Virginia at a young age, rising through the ranks of his father’s company quickly with a reserved demeanor and savvy business moves.  
  
He formed his own energy development business, the Cline Group, which grew into one of the country’s top coal producers.  

Investment switch
  
When he thought mining in the Appalachian region was drying up, he started buying reserves in the Illinois Basin in what turned out to be a smart investment in high-sulfur coal, according to the website of Missouri-based Foresight Energy, a company he formed. 
  
Cline sold most of his interest in Foresight for $1.4 billion and then dropped $150 million into a metallurgical coal mine in Nova Scotia, according to a 2017 Forbes article titled “Chris Cline Could Be The Last Coal Tycoon Standing.”  
  
The piece captured his opulence: A mansion in West Virginia with a man-made lake big enough to ski on and a pasture that included a while stallion stud name Fabio. A gun collection so deep that federal officials would take stock once a month. A 200-foot (61-meter) yacht called Mine Games. 
 
His deep pockets eventually opened to politics: He donated heavily to President Donald Trump and other Republicans. Cline gave the president’s inaugural committee $1 million in 2017 and shared thousands more with conservative groups as well as committees representing GOP figures such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, according to federal records. 
 
He also gave to academia, bestowing at least $8.5 million on Marshall University in West Virginia. 
 
“Our hearts are heavy,” said Marshall University President Jerome A. Gilbert. “Chris’s generosity to our research and athletics programs has made a mark on Marshall University and our students for many years to come.” 
 

Authorities began searching for the helicopter after police received a report from Florida that Cline’s aircraft failed to arrive in Fort Lauderdale as expected on Thursday, Bahamas Police Supt. Shanta Knowles told The Associated Press. 
  
The bodies of the four women and three men were recovered Thursday and taken to the Bahamian capital of Nassau to be officially identified, said Delvin Major, chief investigator for the Bahamas’ Air Accident Investigation Department. The Augusta AW139 helicopter was still in the water on Friday, and based on preliminary information, she did not believe there had been a distress call before the helicopter went down. The cause of the crash is still undetermined, officials said.  
  
A Royal Bahamas Police Force statement said authorities and locals found the site 2 miles (3 kilometers) off Big Grand Cay, a group of private islands Cline bought in 2014 for less than the $11.5 million asking price.  
  
Bahamas real estate agent John Christie, who sold the land, said Big Grand Cay was developed by the late Robert Abplanalp, inventor of the modern aerosol spray valve and a friend of President Richard Nixon. The property became known as an escape for Nixon in the 1970s.  
  
Big Grand Cay comprises about 213 acres (86 hectares) distributed over about half a dozen narrow islands. At the time of its sale, the property’s mansion sat on a bluff overlooking the ocean and had five bedrooms and four bathrooms.  

Governor mourns
  
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice mourned Cline’s loss, first in a tweet he sent out Thursday in which he noted that his and Cline’s families had been very close for years.  
  
“Today we lost a WV superstar and I lost a very close friend,” Justice wrote in the tweet. “Chris Cline built an empire and on every occasion was always there to give. What a wonderful, loving, and giving man.”  
  
Cline, in his Forbes profile, defended coal and waved off some of the scientific evidence of climate change when he wasn’t posing for photos in front of tall pyramids of the black stuff.  
  
“People deserve the cheapest energy they can get,” he said. “Tell the poor in India and China that they don’t deserve to have reliable, affordable electricity.”  
  
And to that effect, he also spoke about solar panels, wind turbines and Tesla batteries on Big Grand Cay, saying “Where it makes sense, I’m absolutely for it.” 

…