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After years of delays, US automaker Tesla is expected on Thursday to deliver its first battery-powered semi truck, with which it hopes to get a jump start on the nascent electric heavy duty vehicle market by offering longer ranges without recharging.

The Elon Musk-led company is scheduled to hand over the keys to its first electric truck — dubbed “Semi” — at its Nevada manufacturing plant to multinational food company PepsiCo.

With its sleek design, the Tesla electric semi has been highly anticipated since Musk unveiled a prototype in 2017, but the launch of full-scale production has been delayed well past the initial 2019 expectation.

Other manufacturers have meanwhile entered the market, from traditional truck makers such as Daimler, Volvo and China’s BYD, to startups like US company Nikola.

The competition has also begun to roll out their deliveries, and have many orders of their own waiting to fill.

However, the truck that “the market has been waiting for… is the one from Tesla,” says Dave Mullaney, a transportation specialist with sustainability think tank RMI.

Legacy manufacturers have primarily converted their diesel-designed trucks to electric.

“The Tesla, on the other hand, was designed to be electric from the very first design,” says Mullaney, who also underlined the company’s 15 years of experience in electric vehicles.

If the Tesla vehicle lives up to expectations, “it’s going to be a huge difference,” Mullaney says.

In a tweet on Saturday, Musk said that one Semi had driven 500 miles (800 kilometers) with a total weight of 81,000 pounds (nearly 37 tons).

The electric vehicles currently on offer only have a range of 250 to 300 miles.

– Physical limitations? –

To carry heavy loads over such long distances, the battery “needs to be very large — that makes it very heavy, takes up a lot of space and is very costly,” says Mike Roeth, director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE).

“The industry has kind of been wondering whether you can physically package that much battery” and keep the truck’s weight low enough to be able to do the job, Roeth adds.

With the ability to travel up to 500 miles without recharging, long-distance trips in electric trucks would be much more feasible, allowing drivers to return to warehouses in the same day.

Even longer trips could be taken over several days if drivers can find charging stations at truck rest stops.

The use of electric light duty vehicles for short-haul deliveries has been steadily growing for some time, but new regulations are pushing manufacturers and transporters to speed up the transition and build out long-haul capabilities.

The most populous US state, California, has passed a law phasing out combustion engine trucks, which has since been followed by other states.

The European Union is also expected to debate new standards in the coming months.

Companies are also facing pressure to have more environmentally conscious reputations.

They “want to be on the right side of history,” says Marie Cheron of the Europe-based association Transport & Environment.

Those who do not commit to a decarbonization strategy, some of whom say they are waiting for technologies to improve, “are falling behind,” she says.

Another motivation to transition, Roeth says, is that drivers who have been able to test them, “love the electric trucks a lot.”

“They’re very quiet, they don’t have the smells of the exhaust, and they are comfortable to drive.”

– Cost considerations –

For the adoption of electric trucks to accelerate, their range must truly live up to promises and batteries ideally would shrink, several analysts told AFP.

The charging infrastructure must also be built out.

That means adding more charging stations, but also building an electric distribution system strong enough to allow, for example, ten trucks to plug in at the same time in one parking lot.

The biggest factor will certainly be price.

An electric truck costs about 70 percent more to buy than a diesel truck at the moment, but in terms of energy and maintenance, it’s cheaper, Mullaney says.

“Battery electric vehicles will be competitive with diesel… it’s only a matter of time,” a spokeswoman for the American manufacturer Navistar, a subsidiary of Traton, told AFP.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives says that Tesla must now “prove they can produce at scale, they need to execute.”

In late October, Musk said that Tesla is aiming to build 50,000 Semis by 2024.

In 2018, when production of Tesla’s Model 3 sedan struggled to ramp up, Musk showed that he was capable of getting his teams to speed up.

Ives says Musk’s attention is unfortunately focused on his newest acquisition, Twitter.

“The circus show there takes away a monumental moment in Tesla history,” he adds.

France’s Emmanuel Macron was set to be hosted by President Joe Biden at the White House Thursday for a state visit mixing sumptuous ceremonies with hard-edged talks on transatlantic trade and how to manage a rising China.

A military honor guard was due to be standing ready at the White House to welcome the French leader, accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, before the two presidents meet in the Oval Office for what are expected to be substantial discussions as they seek to defuse tensions over what Macron has described as “aggressive” subsidies for US manufacturers.

They were to give a joint press conference ahead of winding up the day with a lavish dinner featuring French favorites of wine and cheese — but in both cases American-made.

The two governments have emphasized their historic links — France is the United States’ oldest ally — as well as their close partnership in the Western alliance confronting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, Macron made clear, in unusually blunt language, that he is not just in Washington to discuss the easy parts of the relationship.

At a lunch with lawmakers and business leaders Wednesday, he lashed out at Biden’s signature policy called the Inflation Reduction Act, which is set to pour billions of dollars into environmentally friendly industries, with strong backing for US-based manufacturers.

The White House touts the IRA legislation as a groundbreaking effort to reignite US manufacturing and promote renewable technologies. European Union governments are crying foul, threatening to launch a trade war by subsidizing their own green economy sector.

“This is super aggressive for our business people,” Macron said, warning that what he sees as unfair US practices will “kill” European jobs.

“The consequence of the IRA is that you will perhaps fix your issue but you will increase my problem. I’m sorry to be so straightforward,” Macron said.

The White House responded by insisting that the state visit is about the two presidents’ “warm relationship.”

US advances in the clean energy economy will help Europeans too, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. The IRA “presents significant opportunities for European firms as well as benefits to EU energy security. This is not a zero-sum game.”

In a speech later at the French embassy, Macron said the subsidies could become a real sticking point in US relations with Europe.

While voicing support for the environmental goals of the IRA, Macron said “these are choices that will split the West,” even as he agreed that ties remained solid for now.

On Wednesday evening, he and his wife joined Biden and First Lady Jill Biden for dinner in an Italian restaurant in Washington for a moment that was both private and “political,” according to an adviser to the Elysee, ahead of Thursday’s official events.

Also on Wednesday, Macron joined Vice President Kamala Harris at NASA headquarters in Washington to discuss cooperation in space — and to propose putting the first Frenchman on the Moon.

– Menu and music –

Macron’s two busy days in Washington will culminate Thursday with the first formal state dinner of Biden’s presidency — the grand tradition having been shelved due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Grammy-award-winning American musician Jon Batiste will perform at the banquet, which the White House said will kick off with butter-poached Maine lobster, paired with caviar, delicata squash raviolo and tarragon sauce.

The main course features beef and triple-cooked butter potatoes, before leading to the cheese course of award-winning US brands, and finally orange chiffon cake, roasted pears with citrus sauce and creme fraiche ice cream.

Washing all that down will be three different wines — all from US vineyards.

– China high on agenda –

Trade tensions, however, are only part of the uncomfortable flip side to the red carpet occasion.

Another gripe in Europe is the high cost of US liquid natural gas exports — which have surged to help compensate for canceled Russian deliveries.

There is also divergence on how to deal with the rise of superpower China. The question — with Washington pursuing a more hawkish tone and EU powers trying to find a middle ground — is unlikely to see much progress.

“Europe has since 2018 its own, unique strategy for relations with China,” tweeted French embassy spokesman Pascal Confavreux in Washington.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said China will be “very high on the agenda” this week but stressed that both countries share a broad approach.

“We believe that not only France, but every other member of the G7 — frankly, our NATO allies too — see the threats and challenges posed by China in the same way.”

Scientists often study the grim impacts of losing wildlife to hunting, habitat destruction and climate change. But what happens when endangered animals are brought back from the brink?

Research has shown restoring so-called “keystone” species — those with an outsized impact on their environment — is vital for the health of ecosystems, and can come with unexpected benefits for humans.

Here are some notable examples from North America. 

– Wolves –

Few species evoke the American wild as much as wolves. 

Though revered by Indigenous communities, European colonists who arrived in the 1600s embarked on widespread extermination campaigns through hunting and trapping.

By the mid-20th century, fewer than a thousand gray wolves were left in the contiguous United States, down from at least a quarter million before colonization.

Extinction was averted in the 1970s when lawmakers passed the Endangered Species Act, helping revive the apex predator in parts of its former range.

Then, in the mid-1990s, the government took wolves from Canada and reintroduced them to Yellowstone National Park.

This generated a wealth of data that scientists are still working to understand.

The new arrivals kept elk numbers down, preventing them from over-browsing vegetation that provides material for birds to build nests and beavers to build dams — a phenomenon known as a trophic cascade.

The recovered vegetation helped stop soil erosion into rivers, changing their course by reducing meandering.

While building their dams, the beavers also create deep ponds that juvenile fish and frogs need to survive.

When they embark on hunts, wolves focus on weak and diseased prey, ensuring survival of the fittest.

A recent paper even found that wolves brought back in the midwestern state of Wisconsin kept deer away from roads, reducing collisions with cars.

Amaroq Weiss, a biologist and senior wolf advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity compared ecosystems to tapestries, “and when we take out some of the threads, we weaken that tapestry,” she told AFP.

It’s thought there are now more than 6,000 gray wolves in the contiguous United States. The main threat is legalized hunting in some states.

– Buffalo –

The story of the American buffalo — also known as bison — is inextricably linked to the dark history of the early United States.

From an estimated 30 million, their number plummeted to just hundreds by the late 19th century as the US government sought to wipe out plains tribe Indians whose way of life depended on the animal.

“It was an intentional genocide to remove the buffalo, to the remove the Indians and force them onto reservations,” Cody Considine of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) told AFP.

Buffalo, he explained, are an integral part of TNC’s efforts to re-establish prairies in the Nachusa Grasslands of Illinois.

The buffalo, who were introduced there in 2014 and now number around a hundred, favor eating grass over flowering plants and legumes, which in turn allows a variety of birds, insects and amphibians to flourish.

“Some of these species without that grazing simply just disappear off the landscape due to the high competition of the grasses,” added Considine.

As they forage, bisons’ hooves kick up and aerate the soil, further aiding in plant growth as well as seed dispersion. 

TNC currently manages some 6,500 buffalo, and is creating a pilot program with tribal partners that involves transferring excess animals to Indigenous communities, as part of broader efforts to revive America’s national mammal. 

Some 20,000 buffalo are now thought to roam in “conservation herds,” though none are truly free roaming, added Considine.

– Sea otters –

As the dominant predator of marine nearshore environments, sea otters play a hugely important role in their ecosystem.

Historically they spanned from Baja California up the West Coast up to Alaska, Russia and northern Japan, but hunting for fur in the 1700s and 1800s decimated their numbers, which were once up to 300,000. 

They were thought for a while to have been completely exterminated off California, but a small surviving population of around 50 helped them partially recover to some 3,000 today.

Jess Fujii, sea otter program manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, told AFP that research during the 1970s in the Aleutian Islands showed the otters maintained the balance of kelp forest by keeping a check on the sea urchins that graze on them.

In the last decade, more complex interactions have come to light. These include the downstream benefits of otters for eelgrass habitats in California estuaries. 

Here, the sea otters controlled the population of crabs, which meant there were more sea slugs who were able to graze algae, keeping the eelgrass healthy.

Eelgrass is considered a “nursery of the sea” for juvenile fish, and it also reduces erosion, which can factor in coastal floods.

“Kelp and eelgrass are often considered good ways to sequester carbon which can help mitigate the ongoing impacts of climate change,” stressed Fujii, a prime example of how destruction of nature can worsen planetary warming.

With his distinctive long dreadlocks and slouchy beanie, Abdallah Ahmed has always known his choice of lifestyle means trouble in Sudan, where long-oppressed Rastafarians say they are being targeted anew. 

Ahmed, 31, has for years been enamoured of the Rastafari tradition which emerged in Jamaica last century and for him represents “telling the truth, being courageous, fighting for rights”.

The number of Rastafarians in Sudan is unknown, and the community had largely lived underground under the autocratic rule of Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted in April 2019 following mass protests against his regime.

“We were very enthused after Bashir’s fall,” said Ahmed, a long-time Bob Marley fan also known as “Maxman”, at an art exhibition where he was performing reggae music with his band.

“Musicians and artists flourished,” he said, donning brightly coloured head and wrist bands.

But a brief whiff of freedom did not last as a post-Bashir transition to civilian rule was upended last year when army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan led a military coup.

Rastafarianism considers former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie to be its Messiah, but like many followers in Sudan, Ahmed told AFP that he saw it “not as a religion”

“It’s a lifestyle, and it’s me.”

Under Bashir, community members were regularly harassed, had their heads shaved and faced persecution under stringent public order laws restricting how people dress or behave in public.

Ahmed said he had been arrested for drug possession in 2017 while performing music in public, and was flogged 20 times.

Followers of the Rastafari tradition have always been “easy targets” for security forces due to their looks, said Ahmed.

“It however never stopped us from growing our hair,” he added.

“Some of us died while holding on to their personal lifestyle.”

– ‘Rasta never dies’ –

The killings of several Sudanese Rastafarians in mass anti-coup demonstrations since Burhan’s takeover last year have given rise to a popular protest slogan, “The Rasta never dies”.

At least 121 people have been killed in the crackdown on protests since the October 2021 coup, according to pro-democracy medics. 

Noting the “peacefulness and spontaneity” of the demonstrations, 35-year-old filmmaker Afraa Saad told AFP “this made us believe they were being especially targeted.”

“I believe the slogan emerged to say that their good reputation will last.”

Being a woman, Saad said she has faced greater scrutiny than men Rastafarians since she embraced the tradition during the height of the anti-Bashir demonstrations.

“The most persistent objection is why would a girl wear dreadlocks when there are other more acceptable hairstyles,” she said, noting a “prevalent stereotype” tying dreadlocks with drug use and “unbecoming behaviour”.

Saad sees her lifestyle choice as part of Sudanese women’s uphill battle against strict policing of social mores since the Bashir regime.

Women were at the forefront of the mass protests against the longtime autocrat’s rule, voicing their anger at decades of discrimination that severely restricted their role in society.

“I simply don’t heed to this,” Saad said.

“This is my identity and it’s who I am.”

For some in Sudan, wearing dreadlocks, listening to reggae music or having a Rasta-like lifestyle is merely an act of defiance.

Saleh Abdalla, 26, who wears his hair in short dreadlocks, said it was his way of protesting the October 2021 military coup. 

“We are refusing all violations that take place on behalf of authorities,” he told AFP during one anti-coup demonstration in the capital Khartoum last month.

“I will keep the Rasta (dreadlocks) until the regime falls.”

Jailed pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai’s trial under Hong Kong’s national security law was delayed Thursday as the government asked Beijing to bar Lai from being represented by a British lawyer.

Lai and several executives from the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper are being prosecuted for “colluding with foreign forces”, an offence under the law imposed on the city after huge and sometimes violent protests in 2019.

After local courts said London-based lawyer Tim Owen could represent Lai, Hong Kong’s leader asked China’s top lawmaking body to decide whether overseas lawyers could participate in national security cases.

The trial was set to start Thursday but was adjourned to December 13 for prosecutors to come up with a new timetable, pending any move from Beijing.

Defence lawyers also revealed that Hong Kong immigration authorities had “withheld the extension” of Owen’s current work visa without disclosing a reason.

Owen had already been granted a visa as he was working on another Hong Kong case, the defence said, but did not specify when the visa will expire.

AFP has contacted the Immigration Department for comment.

Lawyers from common law jurisdictions are able to work within Hong Kong’s legal system, particularly in cases where their specific expertise may be required.

Owen is a king’s counsel — a senior trial lawyer in Britain — and has previously worked on high-profile criminal cases in the financial hub.

The government earlier argued in court that letting overseas lawyers work on national security cases posed a risk, as there was no way to ensure the confidentiality of state secrets.

When the Court of Final Appeal sided against the government on Monday, city leader Lee said he would ask Beijing to intervene by issuing an “interpretation” of the national security law.

This was the first time Hong Kong invoked the mechanism under the law that allows Beijing to have the final say on how it operates.

Lai, 74, is one of Hong Kong’s best-known pro-democracy activists. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

He is already in jail for taking part in an illegal protest.

For years, his Apple Daily tabloid newspaper was scathing in its criticism of China’s Communist Party and openly supportive of democracy.

It collapsed last year after its funds were frozen under the security law and many of its senior staff were charged alongside Lai, primarily for their campaigning for international sanctions against China.

The International Court of Justice will give its judgement on Thursday on a climate change-fuelled row between Chile and Bolivia over the use of a crucial cross-border river.

Chile took its South American neighbour to the UN’s top court in 2016, asking the ICJ to declare the Silala an “international water course” and give it equal rights to the river.

It is the latest in a series of water-sharing disputes between parched Chile and landlocked Bolivia, which have been rowing over access to the Pacific Ocean for nearly 150 years.

The Silala rises in Bolivia’s high-altitude wetlands and crosses the border with Chile, flowing for around eight kilometres (five miles).

Bolivia however says the waters flow artificially into Chile due to a system of canals built to collect water from springs, and has demanded its neighbour pay compensation.

Judges at the Hague-based ICJ, which was set up after World War II to rule on disputes between UN member states, will hand down their judgment at 3 pm (1400 GMT).

The court in 2018 sank Bolivia’s bid to gain access to the Pacific, which it lost to Chile in the 1879-1884 War of the Pacific.

Former Bolivian president Evo Morales had previously sought to use the river dispute as a bargaining chip in its fight for a route to the ocean.

At the time, Morales threatened to reduce the flow of the Silala into Chile’s parched Atacama Desert and impose fees for its use.

– Troubled waters –

There have long been troubled waters between the two neighbours.

Chile and Bolivia have had no diplomatic relations since 1978 when Bolivia’s last attempt to negotiate a passage to the Pacific broke down in acrimony.

During the last hearings on the Silala case in April, Chile’s representative Ximena Fuentes said La Paz’s demand for Santiago to pay for the use of the River Silala was “absurd”.

Faced with the consequences of global climate change and freshwater becoming scarcer, “countries are called upon to cooperate in the efficient management of shared water resources,” Fuentes added.

Bolivia hit back, saying Santiago’s case was “hypothetical” and that it had “never” done anything to block the Silala’s flow on Chilean territory.

Once handed down, ICJ judgements are binding and cannot be appealed, although the court has no real means of enforcement.

Water is a major issue on a continent where climate change is having increasingly serious effects.

Chile is currently in a 13-year “Mega Drought” that is the longest in at least 1,000 years and threatens the country’s freshwater resources.

In Bolivia, the Pantanal — the world’s largest wetlands which also span Brazil and Paraguay — is experiencing its worst drought in 47 years.