Month: September 2019

A judge cleared the way Tuesday for OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to stay in business while it pursues bankruptcy protection and settlement of more than 2,600 lawsuits filed against it in a reckoning over the opioid crisis.

At the first court hearing since the Chapter 11 filing late Sunday, Purdue lawyers secured permission for the multibillion-dollar company based in Stamford, Connecticut, to maintain business as usual — paying employees and vendors, supplying pills to distributors, and keeping current on taxes and insurance.

The continued viability of Purdue is a key component of the company’s settlement offer, which could be worth up to $12 billion over time.

Under the proposal, backed by about half the states, the Sackler family, which owns Purdue, would turn the company, its assets and more than $1 billion in cash reserves over to a trust controlled by the very entities suing it.

The Sacklers have also agreed to pay a minimum of $3 billion of their own money to the settlement over seven years, as well as up to $1.5 billion more in proceeds from the planned sale of their non-U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

“This is a highly unusual case in that the debtors have pledged to turn over their business to the claimants,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain said. “All of the claimants, in essence, have the same interest in maximizing the value of the business and avoiding immediate and irreparable harm.”

Joe Rice, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs, estimated it could be more than a year before the bankruptcy and settlement are finalized.

“This is not a sprint. We’ve got a little bit of a marathon here,” he said after the three-hour hearing in New York City’s northern suburbs.

Purdue’s bankruptcy filing has effectively frozen all litigation against the company, which its lawyers said has been spending more than $250 million a year on legal and professional fees, but it has not stopped lawsuits against the Sacklers from moving forward.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is suing the Sacklers and opposes the proposed settlement, said last week that her office found that members of the family used Swiss and other accounts to transfer $1 billion to themselves.

Purdue lawyer Marshall Huebner said he hoped states that are opposed to the proposed settlement could be persuaded to change their positions.

“In essence, America itself that stands to benefit or lose from the success or failure of these reorganization proceedings,” Huebner said.

None of the Sacklers attended the hearing, but the family name did come up several times as Purdue lawyers declared that they wouldn’t benefit from any steps taken Tuesday to keep the company in business.

As the bankruptcy unfolds, Purdue will continue to pay its approximately 700 employees under preexisting salary structures.

No member of the Sackler family is an employee and none will receive payments, Purdue lawyer Eli Vonnegut said.

Because of commitments Purdue made before the bankruptcy filing, the company will pay sign-on bonuses to five employees and retention bonuses to about 100 employees. The company agreed to hold off on seeking to continue other bonus plans, such as incentive bonuses.

Drain, the judge, also allowed the company to continue covering legal fees for current and former employees, which Vonnegut estimated wouldn’t exceed $1.5 million per month. The company stopped covering legal fees for members of the family on March 1, he said.

“We swear up and down that no payments will go to the Sacklers,” Vonnegut said.

Purdue lawyers argued that the sign-on and retention bonuses were vital to attracting and keeping top talent in a tumultuous time for the company. Covering employee legal fees is important to morale and sends a strong signal that the company backs the people who work for it, the lawyers said.

Bankruptcy trustee Paul Schwartzberg objected, saying the bonuses went “way beyond” normal compensation and were padding the pockets of employees who already make upward of $300,000 a year.

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International Criminal Court judges said Tuesday that the court’s prosecutor can appeal against the rejection of her request to open an investigation into crimes linked to the long-running conflict in Afghanistan.

In April, a panel of judges rejected the proposed investigation, saying it would not be in the interests of justice because an investigation and prosecution were unlikely to be successful as those targeted — including the United States, Afghan authorities and the Taliban — are not expected to cooperate.

Seeking leave to appeal, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that reasoning ran contrary to the court’s goal of prosecuting grave crimes when national authorities are unwilling or unable to do so.

Bensouda must now file a detailed appeal that will be considered by judges, a process likely to take months.

Her November 2017 request to open an investigation angered Washington because as well as alleging that crimes were committed by the Taliban and Afghan security forces, Bensouda said she had information that members of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies were involved in crimes.

Her request said they allegedly “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence against conflict-related detainees in Afghanistan and other locations, principally in the 2003-2004 period.”

Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington would revoke or deny visas to ICC staff seeking to investigate alleged war crimes and other abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

Bensouda said that the Taliban and other insurgents killed more than 17,000 civilians since 2009.

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The recent attacks on Saudi Arabia’s crude oil hub at the Abqaiq and Khurais production facilities reveal that even a nation with a sophisticated military and a massive defense budget is still vulnerable to drone strikes.

The United States says satellite images and intelligence information show Iranian weapons were used in the aerial attacks that have shut down half of the kingdom’s oil production. Security experts say this latest incident sparks growing concern over the rapid evolution of technologies expanding drones’ offensive capabilities.  

Unidentified U.S. officials have been telling Western media that more than a dozen attacks targeted the installations from a west-northwest direction and not from the southwest as claimed by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who said they carried out the coordinated assault.   

In July, the Houthis, who are fighting a Saudi-led coalition war in Yemen, showed off their Iranian-made weapons long-range cruise missiles, dubbed “Al-Quds”, and explosives-laden “Sammad 3” drones that reportedly can hit targets as far as 1,500 kilometers away.

No previous attack, since the Yemen conflict began four years ago, however, has interrupted oil supplies. But the assaults have taken 5.7 million barrels of oil a day off the world’s markets.  They have also exposed the vulnerability of the pumping heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry.

Defense analysts say the attacks have exposed structural problems in the kingdom’s defenses. They say the systems – albeit sophisticated – are designed to defend against traditional-style attacks – and not asymmetrical ones from the air by drones.

‘Unprecedented’

Middle East analyst Theodore Karasik at Gulf State Analytics told VOA the incident’s security and military implications are huge.

“The gravity is really off the charts. This is literally the oil industry’s 9/11. The targeting of these two facilities was 100-percent successful in delivery of a swarm of cruise missiles and drones. This is the ultimate scenario for taking out energy infrastructure by use of this type of weaponry. The significance of the event itself and the damage done is unprecedented. We are dealing with a rapid escalation in terms of what the responses and counter responses will be,” he said.

Saudi authorities say their initial investigation shows Iranian devices were used in the attacks, but the location origin of the attacks was not clear and they were “working to determine the launch point.” Washington has urged Saudi Arabia to decide what the appropriate response to the attacks should be. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry has called for an international investigation into the incident.

“Maybe the Saudis want to buy some time here before they respond in any kind of way,” said analyst Karasik. “It puts the Saudis in a tough spot about what they want to do next. But clearly there has to be a response from the West or else Iran will continue to run roughshod over everybody else.  The issue here is that Iran has shown all of its cards when it comes to missiles and drones. So, now in the response, if there is a military response it will target command and control nodes and the oil industry.  The thinking here is that any attack on Iran must set back Iran’s military ability 10 to 15 years.”

‘Game-changer’

Jeffrey Price, a security consultant and an aviation management professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, told VOA the drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia are a “game-changer,” and he sees the drone strike as the “next front of a new war.”

“That’s the challenge. When you have so much territory to protect and protect it all evenly and equally it’s very difficult to defend, particularly with missiles and drones. They move much faster, particularly the missiles can move much faster than the manned aircraft can. Both of them have a much lower radar signature than a standard aircraft would, so it’s really about stepping up all of those defenses to detect these new threats,” he said.

It used to be that only governments had air forces, but drones have democratized violence from the sky,” says another analyst, Bernard Hudson, a fellow on Persian Gulf security issues at Harvard University, quoted in the Washington Post newspaper.

He says the Houthis, with Iran’s help and advice, have perfected the practice to a level no one else has done.  Jeffrey Price expects a change in how insurgents invest in weapons.

“What drones have done is really handed everybody the capability of a standoff strike autonomously and anonymously without any sort of accountability.  It’s going to be much harder to find out who is operating these,” Price said.

Price and others worry the current offensive capability of drones is many times ahead of the defensive capabilities that governments are now trying to develop.

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It may be possible to help tackle climate change while still munching on the occasional bacon sandwich or slurping a few oysters, a new study suggested on Tuesday.

Scientists found that diets in which meat, fish or dairy products were consumed only once a day would leave less of a footprint on climate change and water supplies than a vegetarian diet including milk and eggs, in 95% of countries they analysed.

That is partly because raising dairy cows for milk, butter and cheese requires large amounts of energy and land, as well as fertilisers and pesticides to grow fodder, emitting greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet, the study said.

Diets that contain insects, small fish and molluscs, meanwhile, have as similarly small an environmental impact as plant-based vegan diets but are generally more nutritious, said researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

They calculated greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater use for nine different diets – ranging from one meatless day a week and no red meat, to pescatarian and vegan – in 140 countries.

Many climate activists and scientists have called for a shift to plant-based diets to keep climate change in check and reduce deforestation, since producing red meat requires a lot of land for grazing and growing feed.

Agriculture, forestry and other land use activities accounted for nearly a quarter of man-made greenhouse gas emissions from 2007-2016, the U.N. climate science panel said in a flagship report last month.

But there is no one-size-fits-all solution, said Keeve Nachman, assistant professor at the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who led the study on diets.

US Experts Reviewing Low-Carb, Other Diets for Guidelines

Some followers of low-carb eating are hoping for a nod of approval in the upcoming U.S. dietary guidelines that advise Americans on what to eat.

It may seem minor, but backers say low-carb’s inclusion could influence nutrition advice that doctors give and help shape government food programs like school lunches.
 
Current guidelines cite the Mediterranean, vegetarian and other diets as examples of healthy eating.
 
U.S.

In low- and middle-income countries such as Indonesia, citizens on average need to eat more animal protein for adequate nutrition, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

That means diet-related heat-trapping emissions and water use in poorer countries would need to rise to reduce hunger and malnutrition, while high-income countries should reduce their consumption of meat, dairy and eggs, the study said.

On average, producing a serving of beef emits 316 times more greenhouse gases – including methane – than pulses, 115 times more than nuts, and 40 times more than soy, it added.

According to the World Resources Institute, a U.S.-based think-tank, diners in North and South America, Europe and the former Soviet Union make up only a quarter of the global population but ate more than half of the world’s meat from ruminants – such as cattle, sheep and goats – in 2010.

The latest study also found that producing a pound of beef in Paraguay contributes nearly 17 times more greenhouse gases than in Denmark, partly because in Latin America, it often involves cutting down forests to clear land for cattle grazing.

A typical diet in Niger has the highest water footprint, researchers noted, mainly due to millet production and crop residues that cannot be consumed.

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Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani escaped an attack on his campaign rally in Parwan province that killed 24 people and wounded more than 30 others Tuesday.

The president was about to address the rally when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle detonated his explosives near the military facility where the gathering was held. Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesman for Afghan Ministry of Interior, tweeted that no one inside the building was harmed and the rally continued after the incident.

Qasim Sangeen, the head of Parwan provincial hospital told VOA bodies of the dead and wounded had been taken to a provincial hospital.

This is the first security incident since July 28, the official beginning of the election campaign in Afghanistan.  

The Afghan Taliban have taken responsibility for the attack, warning people to stay away from rallies and election related gatherings, promising to carry out further attacks on election activity.

“If despite the warnings they go to such meetings and get harmed, it is their responsibility,” a message from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.

Afghans are expecting a higher level of violence in the run up to the September 28 election due to a breakdown in peace talks between the United States and Taliban earlier this month.

The insurgent group has intensified its regional outreach, taking a trip first to Moscow and more recently to Iran.

“The main purpose was to explain our position on the recent developments in the peace process and the agreement that has already been completed,” said Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen, referring to an agreement between the insurgents and a U.S. team led by Special Representative on Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad.

Khalilzad had indicated that the two sides had agreed “in principle” to a deal and that he was waiting for his boss, President Donald Trump, to approve it. As both sides waited for a date to be announced for the formalization of the agreement, President Trump unexpectedly tweeted that the talks were over because of a Taliban attack that had killed a U.S. soldier.

The peace talks had continued after previous U.S. solider deaths in Afghanistan.

Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman, said the group had little idea why the U.S. backed out, saying that they contacted Khalilzad’s team after the Tweet.

“We wanted them to tell us why they finalized everything and agreed to sign it within a week, and quite unexpectedly backed out,” he said, adding that they did not receive an answer.

Still, he added that his side was willing to sign the already negotiated deal if the U.S. changed its mind but would continue to fight if the U.S. wanted to continue the war.  

He also confirmed that they were in touch with other countries as well, like China and European and Central Asian countries, and would visit them if invited

“Regional countries want to know what happened, and why?” he said.

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The nation’s worst measles epidemic in 27 years could be in its final stages as a week went by with no new reported cases.

“To get to zero is tremendously encouraging,” said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University expert on vaccination policy.

The current epidemic emerged about a year ago and took off earlier this year, with most of the cases reported in Orthodox Jewish communities in and around New York City. It started with travelers who had become infected overseas but spread quickly among unvaccinated people.

In the spring, 70 or more new cases were being reported every week. Not long ago, the nation that saw that many measles cases in a whole year.

So far this year, 1,241 cases have been confirmed — a number that didn’t rise last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday. The last time the CDC reported no new measles cases was 11 months ago.

New York Declares End of Worst Measles Outbreak in Three Decades

About 654 people, many in areas with large Orthodox Jewish communities, were infected since October last year but there have been no new cases since mid-July, the city government said

New York officials responded to the explosion of measles cases with a wave of measures, including education campaigns to counter misinformation about vaccine safety and fines for people who didn’t get vaccinated.

The epidemic has threatened the Unites States’ nearly 2-decade-old status as a nation that has eliminated measles. The status could come to an end if the disease spreads among Americans for a year or more. Other countries, including Greece and the United Kingdom, recently lost their elimination status amid a global surge in the disease.

Measles outbreaks are typically declared over when 42 days pass without a new infection. If no new cases crop up, the national outbreak would likely end on or about Sept. 30 — just before officials might have to decide on the U.S. elimination status.

The loss of elimination status in the U.S. could take the steam out of measles vaccination campaigns in other countries, said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert.

Health ministers around the world might say, “Why should we strive for elimination? We’ll just do the best we can to control measles, but we won’t go the extra several miles to get to zero,” Schaffner said.

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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.

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Several Democratic presidential candidates on Sunday lined up to call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the face of a new, uninvestigated, allegation of sexual impropriety when he was in college.

Kavanaugh was confirmed last October after emotional hearings in the Senate over a sexual assault allegation from his high school years. The New York Times now reports that Kavanaugh faced a separate allegation from his time at Yale University and that the FBI did not investigate the claim. The latest claim mirrors one offered during his confirmation process by Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate who claimed Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drunken party.

When he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Kavanaugh denied all allegations of impropriety .

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said after the new report that “Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to the American people.” She tweeted: “He must be impeached.”

A 2020 rival, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, tweeted that “Confirmation is not exoneration, and these newest revelations are disturbing. Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached.”

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke asserted in a tweeted, “We know he lied under oath. He should be impeached.” He accused the GOP-run Senate of forcing the FBI “to rush its investigation to save his nomination.”

Their comments followed similar ones from Julian Castro, a former U.S. housing secretary, on Saturday night. “It’s more clear than ever that Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath,” he tweeted. “He should be impeached and Congress should review the failure of the Department of Justice to properly investigate the matter.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont didn’t refer to impeachment by name in a tweet Sunday, but said he would “support any appropriate constitutional mechanism” to hold Kavanaugh “accountable.”

Later Sunday, Sen. Cory Booker tweeted: “This new allegation and additional corroborating evidence adds to a long list of reasons why Brett Kavanaugh should not be a Supreme Court justice. I stand with survivors and countless other Americans in calling for impeachment proceedings to begin.”

Democrats control the House, which holds the power of impeachment. If the House took that route, a trial would take place in the Senate, where Republicans now have a majority, making it unlikely that Kavanaugh would be removed from office.

Trump, who fiercely defended Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation process, dismissed the latest allegation as “lies.”

In a tweet Sunday, Trump said Kavanaugh “should start suing people for libel, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue.” It wasn’t immediately clear how the Justice Department could come to the justice’s defense.

Trump added that they were “False Accusations without recrimination,” and claimed his accusers were seeking to influence Kavanaugh’s opinions on the bench.

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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.”

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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.

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