Since November, tens of thousands of angry French have taken to the streets, first against a fuel tax hike and now with myriad demands including better pay, fewer taxes, greater equality and citizens’ participation in governing. More than 50,000 protesters were on the streets Saturday, February 9. How and when the protests will end is still in question. From Paris, Lisa Bryant reports for VOA.
…

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde on Sunday met Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and assured him that IMF stands ready to support his country.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the World Government Summit in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, both IMF and prime minister Imran Khan’s office said.

“I reiterated that the IMF stands ready to support Pakistan,” Lagarde said in a statement following meeting Khan.

A team from the International Monetary Fund visited Pakistan in November to discuss a possible bailout with officials, though the talks ended without agreement, but since then the government official said talks were still ongoing on a possible bailout.

Pakistan — which has gone to the IMF repeatedly since the late 1980s — is facing a balance of payments crisis.

“I also highlighted that decisive policies and a strong package of economic reforms would enable Pakistan to restore the resilience of its economy and lay the foundations for stronger and more inclusive growth,” said Lagarde, calling the meeting “good and constructive”.

Pakistan — a regular borrower from the IMF since the 1980s — last received an IMF bailout in 2013 to the tune of $6.6 billion.

Forecasts by the IMF and World Bank suggest the Pakistani economy is likely to grow between 4.0 and 4.5 percent for the fiscal year ending June 2019, compared to 5.8 percent growth in the last fiscal year.

Addressing the World Government Summit, prime minister Khan said his government has started a reform program and was trying to improve its economic policies.

“Reforms are painful but it is essential if we have to get out of our current problems,” Khan told the summit and said his government was making efforts to cut down the fiscal and current account deficit.

Khan hoped that the time has come that “Pakistan will take off”.

Khan has launched a highly publicized austerity drive since being sworn in, including auctioning off government-owned luxury vehicles and buffaloes, in addition to seeking loans from “friendly countries” and making overtures to the IMF.

The United Arab Emirates, Pakistan’s largest trading partner in the Middle East and a major investment sources, recently offered $3 billion to support Pakistan’s battered economy.

Islamabad also secured $6 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia and struck a 12-month deal for a cash lifeline during Khan’s visit to the kingdom in October.

It has also received billions of dollars in Chinese loans to finance ambitious infrastructure projects.

Despite the pledges, the ministry of finance said Pakistan would still seek broader IMF support for the government’s long-term economic planning.

In January, Pakistan launched a new investment certificate for overseas citizens, aimed at easing the country’s balance of payments crisis.

 
…

A joint study by the International Labor Organization and U.N. Children’s Fund finds the vast majority of the world’s children lack effective social protection coverage. It says this dooms them to a life of extreme poverty, with negative implications for society.

The study finds only one third of children between zero and 14 years of age have any social protection. That means two-thirds, or 1.3 billion children live without a social safety net.

International Labor Organization Social Protection Department Director Isabel Ortiz says just slightly more than one percent of GDP is allocated to social protection for children. She says this huge under-investment gap needs to be covered.

“And, of course, the numbers worsen as we go by region. In Africa, for instance, children represent 40 percent of the African population overall. However, only 0.6 percent is actually invested in social protection for children,” she said.

The report finds children fare best in Europe and Central Asia where 87 percent have social protection coverage, followed by children in the Americas with 66 percent. Asia and Africa have the worst records. The report says no data is available on the Arab States.

The report highlights the impact extreme poverty has upon the lives of children and the societies in which they live. Chief of the U.N. Children’s Fund Child Poverty and Social Protection Unit, David Stewart, says 385 million children are living on under $1.90 a day.

“I think one of the most striking statistics, which emerges is that children are two times as likely to be living in poverty as adults,” he said. “Now, for children it is particularly concerning because poverty can have a lifetime implication for children. You do not have a second chance at nutrition, at health care, and education.”

Stewart says this has negative implications for children, and for societies and economies as well.

The ILO and UNICEF recommend the rapid expansion of social protection for children including the consideration of universal cash grants to children. Authors of the report say evidence clearly shows cash transfers play a vital role in breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and vulnerability.

 
…

A portion of TransCanada Corp’s Keystone oil pipeline remained shut on Thursday for investigation of a possible leak on its right-of-way near St. Louis, Missouri, a company spokesman said.

TransCanada shut the pipeline on Wednesday between Steele City, Nebraska and Patoka, Illinois and sent crews to assess the situation, spokesman Terry Cunha said in an email.

The 590,000 barrels-per-day Keystone pipeline is a critical artery taking Canadian crude from northern Alberta to U.S. refineries.

Two pipelines operating near the release site will be excavated on Friday to determine the source of the leak, said Darius Kirkwood, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The agency is monitoring the response to the reported leak, he said.

Canadian pipelines are already congested because of expanding production in recent years, forcing the Alberta provincial government to order production cuts starting last month. Canadian heavy oil has attracted greater demand following U.S. sanctions against Venezuela’s state oil company.

The discount on Canadian heavy crude compared to U.S. light oil widened to $10.15 per barrel on Thursday morning from $9.40 earlier, according to Net Energy Exchange.

TransCanada shares eased 0.2 percent to C$55.98 in Toronto.

An official with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources said on Wednesday that the release of oil had stopped and it planned to find the leak on Thursday.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

 
…

Twitter said Thursday profits rose sharply in the fourth quarter, lifted by gains in advertising despite a drop in its global user base.

The short-messaging platform said it posted a $255 million profit in the final three months of 2018, compared with $91 million a year earlier, as revenues rose 24 percent to $909 million.

But Twitter’s base of monthly active users declined to 321 million — a drop of nine million from a year earlier and five million from the prior quarter.

Twitter said it would stop using the monthly user base metric and instead report “monetizable” daily active users in the US and worldwide.

Using that measure, Twitter showed a base of 126 million worldwide, up nine percent over the year.

“2018 is proof that our long-term strategy is working,” said chief executive Jack Dorsey.

“Our efforts to improve health have delivered important results, and new product features like a single switch to move between latest and most relevant tweets have been embraced by the people who use Twitter. We enter this year confident that we will continue to deliver strong performance by focusing on making Twitter a healthier and more conversational service.”

Twitter shares sputtered and then fell sharply after the report, dropping as much as eight percent in pre-market trade.

Jasmine Enberg of the research firm eMarketer said the earnings were nonetheless positive.

“Twitter’s Q4 earnings prove that the company is still able to grow its revenues without increasing its user base,” she said.

“The falloff in monthly active users is likely a continuation of Twitter’s efforts to remove questionable accounts.”

Twitter, which has struggled to keep up with fast-growing rivals like Facebook and Instagram, said it changed the measure for its user base to reflect “our goal of delivering value to people on Twitter every day and monetizing that usage.”

 
…

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Robert Bosch have agreed to pay lawyers representing owners of U.S. diesel vehicles $66 million in fees and costs, according to court filing on Wednesday and people briefed on the matter.

In a court filing late on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, lawyer Elizabeth Cabraser said after negotiations overseen by court-appointed settlement master Ken Feinberg, the companies agreed not to oppose an award of $59 million in attorney’s fees and $7 million in costs.

The lawyers had originally sought up to $106.5 million in fees and costs.

Under a settlement announced last month, Fiat Chrysler and Bosch, which provided emissions control software for the Fiat Chrysler vehicles, will give 104,000 diesel owners up to $307.5 million or about $2,800 per vehicle for diesel software updates.

The legal fees are on top of those costs. Fiat Chrysler and Bosch did not immediately comment late Wednesday.

Fiat Chrysler is paying up to $280 million, or 90 percent of the settlement costs, and Bosch is paying $27.5 million, or 10 percent. The companies are expected to divide the attorney costs under the same formula, meaning Fiat Chrysler will pay $60 million and Bosch $6 million, the people briefed on the settlement said.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen must still approve the legal fees. He has set a May 3 hearing on a motion to grant final approval.

The Italian-American automaker on Jan. 10 announced it settled with the U.S. Justice Department, California and diesel owners over civil claims that it used illegal software that produced false results on diesel-emissions tests.

Fiat Chrysler previously estimated the value of the settlements at about $800 million.

Fiat Chrysler is also paying $311 million in total civil penalties and issuing extended warranties worth $105 million, among other costs.

The settlement covers 104,000 Ram 1500 and Jeep Grand Cherokee diesels from the model years 2014 to 2016. In addition, Fiat Chrysler will pay $72.5 million for state civil penalties and $33.5 million to California to offset excess emissions and consumer claims.

The hefty penalty was the latest fallout from the U.S. government’s stepped-up enforcement of vehicle emissions rules after Volkswagen AG admitted in September 2015 to intentionally evading emissions rules.

The Justice Department has a pending criminal investigation against Fiat Chrysler.
…

President Donald Trump says Treasury Department official David Malpass is his choice to lead the World Bank.

Trump introduced Malpass on Wednesday as the “right person to take on this incredibly important job.” Malpass is a sharp critic of the 189-nation lending institution.

Malpass says he’s honored by the nomination. He says a key goal will be to implement changes to the bank that he and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin helped negotiate, and to ensure that women achieve full participation in developing economies.

Malpass would succeed Jim Yong Kim, who departed in January three years before his term was to end.

Other candidates will likely be nominated for the post by the bank’s member countries. A final decision on a new president will be up to the bank’s board.
…

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that President Donald Trump had a “quite productive” dinner with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. He says they discussed a wide range of subjects, from the state of the economy to the Super Bowl and Tiger Woods’ golf game.

Talking to reporters at the White House, Mnuchin said that Trump was very engaged during the casual dinner Monday night. It took place in the White House residence and marked the first time Powell and Trump have met since Powell took office as Fed chairman a year ago.

Mnuchin said that Powell’s comments were consistent with what he has been saying publicly about the economy. The Fed said in a statement that Powell did not discuss the future course of interest rates.

 
…

Rwanda said on Tuesday it had signed a $400 million deal to produce bottled gas from Lake Kivu, which emits such dense clouds of methane it is known as one of Africa’s “Killer Lakes.”

The project by Gasmeth Energy, owned by U.S. and Nigerian businessmen and Rwandans, would suck gas from the lake’s deep floor and bottle it for use as fuel. This should, in turn, help prevent toxic gas bubbling to the surface.

The seven-year deal, signed on Friday, was announced on Tuesday.

Rwanda already has two companies that extract gas from Lake Kivu to power electricity plants.

Clare Akamanzi, chief executive of the Rwanda Development Board, told Reuters bottled methane would help cut local reliance on wood and charcoal, the fuels most households and tea factories use in the East African nation of 12 million people.

“We expect to have affordable gas which is environmentally friendly,” she said. “We expect that people can use gas instead of charcoal, the same with industries like tea factories instead of using firewood, they use gas. It’s part of our green agenda.”

The deep waters of Lake Kivu, which lies in the volcanic region on Rwanda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, emit such dense clouds of methane that scientists fear they might erupt, killing those living along its shore.

Eruptions from much smaller methane-emitting lakes in Cameroon, one causing a toxic cloud and another sparking an explosion, killed a total of nearly 1,800 people. The shores of Lake Kivu are much more densely populated.

Gasmeth Energy said it would finance, build and maintain a gas extraction, processing and compression plant to sell methane domestically and abroad.

The bottled gas should be on sale within two years, Akamanzi said, adding that prices had yet to be determined.
…

When he was younger, the only thing that Enrique Morales knew about marijuana was that you smoked it to get high.

Today, the former driver is a horticulturist on a cannabis plantation about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo and he says drops of marijuana oil have been key to treating his mother’s osteoarthritis.

“My perception has now changed. It is a plant that has a lot of properties!” he said.

The company that owns the plantation, Fotmer SA, is now part of a flourishing and growing medical cannabis industry in Uruguay.

The country got a head start on competitors in December 2013 when it became the first in the world to regulate the cannabis market from growing to purchase, a move that has brought a wave of investment.

For Uruguayan citizens or legal residents over 18 years old, the law allows the recreational use, personal cultivation and sale in pharmacies of marijuana through a government-run permit system, and officials later legalized the use and export of medical marijuana to countries where it is legal.

No company has yet begun large-scale export operations, but many say selling medical cannabis oil beyond the local market of 3.3 million inhabitants is key to staying ahead of the tide and transforming Uruguay into a medical cannabis leader along with the Netherlands, Canada and Israel.

“The Latin American market is poorly supplied and is growing,” said Chuck Smith, chief operating officer of Denver, Colorado-based Dixie Brands, which recently formed a partnership with Khiron Life Sciences, a Toronto company that has agreed to acquire Dormul SA, which has a Uruguayan license to produce medical cannabis.

“Uruguay is taking a leadership position in growing high CBD, high value hemp products. So we see that as a great opportunity from a supply chain perspective,” he said, referring to the non-psychoactive cannabidiols that are used in medical products.

Khiron has said it should be able to export medical marijuana from Uruguay to southern Brazil under regulations of the Mercosur trade bloc, marking a milestone for Uruguayan marijuana companies focused on exports.

Fotmer, based in the small town of Nueva Helvecia, also currently employs 80 people and is investing $7 million in laboratories and 10 tons of crops that it hopes to ship to countries including Germany and Canada, which is struggling to overcome supply shortages in its cannabis market.

Fotmer s 35,000 marijuana plants are sheltered in 18 large greenhouses measuring 12.5 meters by 100 meters (41 feet by 328 feet), where workers such as Morales change into special clothing, wash their hands with alcohol and wear gloves and surgical masks to avoid any contamination.

Helena Gonzalez, head of quality control, research and development for Fotmer, said the precautions are important in producing a quality product that can be used in medical research into the effects of cannabis products.

“Aiding that research is another of our objectives,” she said.

The first crop of prized flowers will be harvested for their cannabis oil in March.

The oil containing THC and CBD will be extracted in its labs to eventually manufacture pills, creams, ointments, patches and other treatments for cases of epilepsy and chronic pain, among other ills.

Competition is arriving as well. In December, Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez inaugurated a $12 million laboratory owned by Canada s International Cannabis Corp., which aims to produce and export medicine from hemp, a variety of cannabis that contains CBDs but has no psychoactive effects.

Despite the momentum, experts say there is one key problem: Countries including Ecuador, Cuba, Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala continue to prohibit both the recreational and medicinal use of marijuana and exports of cannabis products are subject to a complex web of international regulations that is still being developed.

Marcos Baudean, a member of Monitor Cannabis at the University of the Republic of Uruguay, says another difficulty is that the South American country is competing for market share. He said cannabis exports give the country a chance to expand beyond its traditional exports of raw materials into more sophisticated products involving science and biology.

Diego Olivera, head of Uruguay s National Drug Secretariat, said Uruguay s comprehensive cannabis law, along with its strong rule of law and transparent institutions, gives it a head start.

“Uruguay today has a dynamism in the cannabis industry that is very difficult to find in other sectors,” he said.
…

Taxi-drivers in the Spanish capital seeking tighter regulation of Uber and other ride-hailing services called off their indefinite strike on Tuesday after 16 days during which they obtained no concessions from the Madrid regional government.

Madrid’s refusal to accept drivers’ demands came after ride-hailing companies Uber and Cabify said last week they were suspending their services in Barcelona in response to the regional government’s imposition of limits on how they operate in the city.

Union representatives in Madrid said the strike had demonstrated the unity and power of the drivers, which would help them continue the fight for their demands.

“It is a long war, in which you can lose battles, but in the end I’m sure we can win,” Julio Sanz, head of the Taxi Federation union, told reporters.

The city’s taxi drivers started the protests on Jan. 20 against the private services, which offer rides that often undercut taxi prices and can be hailed via the internet rather than in the street.

Last week, riot police backed by a fleet of tow trucks had to clear hundreds of vehicles blocking the capital’s Paseo de la Castellana thoroughfare.

In September, Spain’s government gave ride-hailing companies four years to comply with regulation granting them just one new licence for every 30 taxi licences. The cab drivers are demanding stricter regulations now.

Following protests by Barcelona taxi-drivers, the Catalan government had ruled that ride-hailing services could only pick up passengers after a 15-minute delay from the time they were booked.
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President Donald Trump plans to nominate David Malpass, a Trump administration critic of the World Bank, to lead the institution.

That’s according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to comment publicly on personnel decisions.

Trump is expected to make an announcement later this week.

Malpass, the undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department, has been a sharp critic of the World Bank, especially over its lending to China.

Malpass would succeed Jim Yong Kim, who announced in January that he is stepping down three years before his term was set to expire.

The final decision on a successor to Kim will be up to the bank’s board.

Politico was first to report on the nomination.

 
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Negotiating new World Trade Organization rules to try to rein in China’s “mercantilist” trade practices would be largely a futile exercise, the Trump administration’s trade office said on Monday, vowing to pursue its unilateral approach to protect U.S. workers, farmers and businesses.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office used its annual report to Congress on China’s WTO compliance in part to justify its actions in a six-month trade war with Beijing aimed at forcing changes in China’s economic model.

The report also reflects the United States’ continued frustration with the WTO’s inability to curb what it sees as China’s trade-distorting non-market economic policies, and offered little hope that situation could change soon.

“It is unrealistic to expect success in any negotiation of new WTO rules that would restrict China’s current approach to the economy and trade in a meaningful way,” the USTR said in the report.

Some U.S. allies, including Canada, the European Union and Japan, which are also frustrated with pressures created by China’s economic policies, have begun talks on the first potential changes and modernization of WTO rules since it was founded in 1995.

But any WTO rule changes must be agreed by all 164 member nations, and past efforts have stalled. It was “highly unlikely” China would agree to new disciplines targeting changes to its trade practices and economic system, the USTR said.

Tariff deadline

The report shed little light on progress in talks between the United States and China to ease a bruising tariff fight, despite a swiftly approaching March 2 deadline to hike U.S. tariffs to 25 percent from 10 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods imports.

The WTO report follows two days of intense talks between high-level U.S. and Chinese officials last week centered on U.S. demands for structural policy changes. These include enforcing intellectual property protections, ending cyber theft of trade secrets, halting the forced transfers of American technology to Chinese firms and reining in industrial subsidies.

While U.S. President Donald Trump said he would like to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to hammer out a trade deal, the USTR report makes clear a massive amount of work will be needed to bridge the gulf between the two countries.

It cited the key structural issues in the talks, which also include China’s new cybersecurity law and discriminatory regulatory practices, as examples of how China aids domestic firms at the expense of foreign competitors in ways that escape WTO rules, adding that China has become “a unique and pressing problem for the WTO and the multilateral trading system.”

The criticism also comes as the United States weakens the WTO’s role as global commerce watchdog by blocking the appointments of judges to its appellate body, which may no longer be able to function by December, when two judges step down.

‘Holding China accountable’

USTR said the United States intends to “hold China accountable” for adhering to existing WTO rules and “any unfair and market-distorting trade practices that hurt U.S. workers, businesses, farmers or ranchers.”

“Until China transforms its approach to the economy and trade, the United States will take all appropriate actions to ensure that the costs of China’s non-market economic system are borne by China, not by the United States,” USTR said.

The agency reiterated a broad array of concerns over China’s key structural issues, such as its 2025 plan for investment in particular sectors and its failure to follow market-oriented principles expected of WTO members, the report said.

“China retains its non-market economic structure and its state-led, mercantilist approach to trade, to the detriment of its trading partners,” it said.
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Brazil’s government has opened discussions with congressional leaders, state governors and mayors on a pension reform bill that would set the minimum retirement age for men and women at 65, a government official said on Monday.

The proposal is one of several under consideration, as President Jair Bolsonaro looks to get the legislative ball rolling on his ambitious plans to overhaul Brazil’s creaking social security system.

Currently, if workers have contributed into the system for at least 15 years, the earliest men can retire is 65 and for women it is 60. But men can retire at any age if they have paid into the system for at least 35 years, and women if they have contributed for 30 years.

Speaking to reporters outside the Economy Ministry in Brasilia, Rogerio Marinho, secretary of social security and labor at the ministry, confirmed talks were underway on the proposal to change that.

Part of the proposal, which was originally reported by O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, stipulates that workers must pay into the system for a minimum of 20 years.

“Until a draft has been finalized, Bolsonaro cannot confirm anything on social security,” Bolsonaro’s spokesman Otavio Rego Barros said on Monday.

Bolsonaro has put overhauling social security at the top of his agenda. Depending on the final proposals, it could save up to 1.3 trillion reais ($354 billion) over the next decade, economy ministry sources reckon.

Investors have pinned much of their optimistic outlook for Brazil this year on Bolsonaro delivering on pension reform. The elections of Bolsonaro allies as house and senate presidents last week were seen as a step in that direction.

The Bovespa stock market hit a record high on Monday above 98,500 points, and the real has risen around 7 percent against the dollar in the last six weeks.

($1 = 3.6707 reais)
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A federal bankruptcy judge approved a major debt restructuring plan for Puerto Rico on Monday in the first deal of its kind for the U.S. territory since the island’s government declared nearly four years ago that it was unable to repay its public debt.

The agreement involves more than $17 billion worth of government bonds backed by a sales-and-use tax, with officials saying it will help the government save an average of $456 million a year in debt service. The deal allows Puerto Rico to cut its sales-tax-backed debt by 32 percent but requires the government to pay $32 billion in the next 40 years as part of the restructuring. 

Senior bondholders, who hold nearly $8 billion, will be first to collect, receiving 93 percent of the value of the original bonds. Junior bondholders, many of whom are individual Puerto Rican investors and overall hold nearly $10 billion, will collect last and recover only 54 percent.

‘An important step’

“Puerto Rico has taken an important step toward its total financial recovery,” Gov. Ricardo Rossello said in a statement. “This represents more than $400 million annually that will be available for services in critical areas such as health, education, pension payments, and public safety, in compliance with other obligations.”

The deal was previously approved by bondholders but prompted hundreds of people to write and email Judge Laura Taylor-Swain, who held a hearing on the issue nearly three weeks ago, to express concerns about the government’s ability to make those payments and the effect it will have on public services. In her ruling, she wrote that she reviewed and carefully considered all those messages before making a decision. 

“Many of the formal and informal objections raised serious and considered concerns about the Commonwealth’s future ability to provide properly for the citizens of Puerto Rico who depend upon it,” she wrote. “They are not, however, concerns upon which the Court can properly act in making its decision … the Court is not free to impose its own view of what the optimal resolution of the dispute could have been.”

Reasonable compromise

The judge said that the deal represents a reasonable compromise and that further litigation would present a “significant gamble” for Puerto Rico. The island is mired in a 12-year-old recession and struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria as the government tries to restructure a portion of its more than $70 billion public debt load. 

A U.S. government report issued last year said Puerto Rico’s public finance problems are partly a result of government officials who overestimated revenue, overspent, did not fully address public pension funding shortfalls and borrowed money to balance budgets. The Government Accountability Office also reviewed 20 of Puerto Rico’s largest bond issuances over nearly two decades and found that 16 were issued solely to repay or refinance debt and fund operations, something many states prohibit.

Taylor-Swain’s ruling said the compromise is “admittedly, deeply disappointing to countless citizens of Puerto Rico and investors in Commonwealth bonds.”

A federal control board that oversees the island’s finances praised the ruling, saying in a statement that the bond restructuring will help revive Puerto Rico’s economy. 

“The deal demonstrates … our determination to resolve Puerto Rico’s debt crisis and establish sustainable foundations for (the) island’s economic road to recovery,” said Natalie Jaresko, the board’s executive director.

Settlement called a good deal

Antonio Fernos, a Puerto Rico economist, said in a phone interview that the agreement is a good deal.

“It’s positive because it brings some clarity to bondholders and what the board and government are willing to accept in negotiations,” he said.

More challenges remain, with Puerto Rico’s government still negotiating with those who hold general obligation bonds. 

Last month, the control board asked the judge to invalidate $6 billion worth of that debt, including all general obligation bonds issued in 2012 and 2014, alleging that issuance violated debt limits established by the island’s constitution. Taylor-Swain has held hearings on the issue, but has not ruled yet.

In November, Puerto Rico’s government reached a debt-restructuring deal with creditors holding more than $4 billion in debt issued by the now-defunct Government Development Bank.

 
…

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Canada and faces possible extradition to the United States, is exploring a defense that claims U.S. charges against her are politically motivated, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Monday.

Meng, the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., is the central figure in a high-stakes dispute between the United States and China. Canada arrested Meng in December at the request of the United States and last month she was charged with wire fraud that violated U.S. sanctions on Iran.

“The political overlay of this case is remarkable,” Richard Peck, lead counsel for Meng, told the Toronto newspaper in a telephone interview.

“That’s probably the one thing that sets it apart from any other extradition case I’ve ever seen. It’s got this cloud of politicization hanging over it,” Peck added.

The office of Canadian Justice Minister David Lametti and Peck did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A Huawei spokesman declined comment.

In December, U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Reuters interview he would intervene in the Justice Department’s case against Meng if it would serve national security interests or help close a trade deal with China.

Canada fired John McCallum, its ambassador to China, in January after he said Meng could make a strong argument against being sent to the United States.

“He [Mr. McCallum] mentions some of the potential defenses – and certainly, I think any person that knows this area would see the potential for those defenses arising,” Peck told the newspaper.

Meng’s lawyers are also planning to challenge whether her alleged conduct would be deemed criminal under Canadian law, the Globe and Mail said.
…

Pushpa Ithal may not fit the stereotype of the typical Silicon Valley CEO — she’s female, foreign-born, and a mother.

Nevertheless, Ithal is an entrepreneur, living the Silicon Valley dream of running her own startup.

Like her, many foreign-born tech women are finding a place in the Valley — as tech companies have become more and more dependent on foreign-born workers to create their products and services.

Silicon Valley, the global center for high-tech innovation, could be renamed “Immigrant Valley.” When it comes to technical talent, the engine of Silicon Valley is fueled by foreign-born workers, many of whom are from humble roots. And having worked hard to get here, many have ambitions beyond their day jobs.

One of them is Ithal.

On Sundays, she and her two children, ages 5 and 10, pick out the clothes the kids will wear the coming week. Each outfit is placed on a labeled hanger. Then she does the same with the week’s snacks.

“So there are no surprises for the kids,” Ithal said.

Being organized is one of Ithal’s strategies for juggling parenting and running her own startup. And while that juggle is commonplace in Silicon Valley, Ithal is part of a distinct club — foreign-born women in tech. 

Hailing from countries such as India and China, these women make up the majority of all women in certain Silicon Valley fields and are often the only females on male-dominated teams in tech companies. 

Their uniqueness does not stop there. Foreign-born women in tech are more likely to be married and have children than their U.S.-born female coworkers.

​Immigrant Valley

Born in Bangalore, India, Ithal has worked for big tech companies and startups. Her husband, also from India, has built successful startups. Starting her own firm, however, was a leap.

“I came here all the way, let’s risk it,” recalled Ithal, founder and CEO of a company called MarketBeam, which is an AI-driven social marketing company.

More than 60 percent of tech workers in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, home to Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and other U.S. tech firms, are immigrants, according to the Silicon Valley Institute of Regional Studies. Immigrants work at all levels of the industry. Many are executives, company founders and venture capitalists.

But foreign-born women stand out. In an industry where women make up about 20 percent of the technical workforce, many of these jobs are filled by foreign-born women.

Technical roles

Nearly three-quarters of all women in their prime working year and in technical occupations in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, according to the institute. In computers and mathematics, foreign-born women make up nearly 80 percent of the female workforce.

The numbers surprised Rachel Massaro, vice president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley and senior researcher at the institute. It’s her job to contribute to an annual index of Silicon Valley that looks at housing, transportation and population.

“I double-checked, triple-checked the number just to make sure it was even real,” Massaro said.

Many things contribute to foreign-born women dominating tech — the dearth of women seeking a technical education in the United States, and an emphasis on tech education for girls in other countries, with many seeing technical skills as a path to financial independence and possibly a work visa in the U.S.

There are also stereotypes of what women can and should do with their lives both in the U.S. and overseas.

​Working and raising children

Looking more closely at these women, Massaro found a few other surprises — 71 percent of foreign-born female tech workers ages 25-44 are married, compared to 39 percent of native-born female tech workers.

And they are more likely to be mothers — 44 percent have children, compared to 27 percent of U.S.-born female workers.

One of those women is Lingling Shi, who was born in China. She saw studying computer science as her ticket.

“Computer science, for most of us, it’s easier to apply for a green card,” she said. “It’s not my main interest, I’ll be honest.”

But Shi has succeeded in each of her jobs — she brushes up on any new technical areas online in the evenings — and is now vice president of digital banking technology at East West Bank. With her husband, who is also from China and in tech, she is raising her son.

“I guess for Chinese, the family building is most important thing,” she said.

No amount of career success would fulfill her parents’ desire for grandchildren. The message from family is clear, Shi said — “Oh, you are VP of Engineering now, but you don’t have a kid?”

Many women from India and China are “under a set of cultural expectations and norms that they will have a family right away — and they will excel in their careers,” said AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information, who has written about immigrants in tech.

“These women are really kind of super women in the tasks that they take on,” she added.

As Silicon Valley looks to bring more women into the technical workforce, these women provide a model of how to thrive.
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Nissan announced Sunday it has cancelled plans to make its X-Trail SUV in the UK — a sharp blow to British Prime Minister Theresa May, who fought to have the model built in northern England as she sought to shore up confidence in the British economy after it leaves the European Union.

Nissan said it will consolidate production of the next generation X-Trail at its plant in Kyushu, Japan, where the model is currently produced, allowing the company to reduce investment costs in the early stages of the project.

That reverses a decision in late 2016 to build the SUV at Nissan’s Sunderland plant in northern England, which employs 7,000 workers. That plant will continue to make Nissan’s Juke and Qashqai models. The announcement Sunday made no mention of any layoffs relating to the X-Trail SUV decision.

“While we have taken this decision for business reasons, the continued uncertainty around the UK’s future relationship with the EU is not helping companies like ours to plan for the future,” Nissan Europe Chairman Gianluca de Ficchy said in a statement.

Less than two months before Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29, Britain still doesn’t have an agreement on what will replace 45 years of frictionless trade. This has caused an enormous amount of concern among businesses in Britain, which fear the country is going to crash out of the vast EU trade bloc without a divorce deal, a scenario economists predict would hurt the U.K. economy.

The Nissan decision, first reported by Sky News, is a major setback for May’s Conservative government, which had pointed to Nissan’s 2016 announcement that Sunderland would make the SUV — months after the country’s Brexit referendum — as proof that major manufacturers still had confidence in Britain’s economic future.

Nissan’s announced its plans to build the X-Trail and Qashqai models in Sunderland after the government sent a letter to company officials offering undisclosed reassurances about its ability to compete in the future.

British politicians have sharply criticized May’s Brexit deal and voted it down in Parliament.

May’s government has refused to rule out a no-deal Brexit, saying the threat strengthens her hand with EU negotiators. Parliament voted last week to give May more time to try to iron out a compromise with the bloc.

Nissan’s change of heart comes just days after Britain’s carmakers issued a stark assessment about Brexit’s impact on the industry, warning that their exports are at risk if the U.K. leaves the EU without an agreement.

Investment in the industry fell 46 percent last year and new car production dropped 9.1 percent to 1.52 million vehicles, in part because of concerns over Brexit, the Society of Motor Manufacturing said.

The group’s chief executive, Mike Hawes, described the threat of a no-deal Brexit as “catastrophic.”

He says the drop in investment is only a foreshadowing of what could happen if the U.K. leaves the EU on March 29 without a deal.

“With fewer than 60 days before we leave the EU and the risk of crashing out without a deal looking increasingly real, UK Automotive is on red alert,” Hawes said Thursday. “Brexit uncertainty has already done enormous damage to output, investment and jobs.”

 
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Finding a comfortable working environment can sometimes be difficult, especially for women working in male-dominated fields like science and technology. But some new startups are all about creating spaces that cater to and are dominated by women. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The most recent round of trade talks between the United States and China concluded in Washington this week with no firm deal other than a commitment to keep talking. Nike Ching reports on the status of the talks between the world’s leading economies, as they try to find common ground before more America tariffs come online in early March.
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Although they can afford to purchase a home, more well-to-do Americans are choosing to rent instead.

The number of U.S. households earning at least $150,000 annually that chose to rent rather than buy skyrocketed 175 percent between 2007 and 2017, according to an analysis by apartment search website RentCafe, which used data from the Census Bureau to reach its conclusions.

This new breed of renters challenges long-held assumptions that Americans rent a place to live primarily because they can’t afford to buy a home.

“Lifestyle plays an important part in their decision to rent,” study author Alexandra Ciuntu told VOA via email. “Renting in multiple cities at once has its perks, and so does changing one trendy location after another.”

Business and technology hubs like San Francisco and Seattle have the highest numbers of wealthy renters.

“Given the escalating house prices, it seems like a verifiable better decision to go with renting for longer,” Ciuntu said. “Given that in San Francisco, for example, $200,000 buys you just 260 square feet, it’s understandable why top-earners give renting a serious try before deciding whether to invest in a property or not.”

In fact, in both San Francisco and New York, wealthy renters outnumber well-to-do buyers. There are more high-earning renters — 250,000 — in New York City that anywhere else in the country.

“Ten years ago we would have associated real estate equity with life stability, whereas the two are not necessarily interrelated nowadays,” Ciuntu said. “Renting proves to be a more flexible option for those enjoying a dynamic and rich lifestyle. From a more millennial standpoint, this is no longer a brief solution before settling down, but rather an attractive world of possibilities.”

However, this rental enthusiasm doesn’t mean folks in the wealthiest brackets are rejecting homeownership, according to Ciuntu. Between 2007 and 2017, Chicago added 9,800 more wealthy owners than high-income renters, Seattle gained 13,400, and Denver added almost 18,000 more well-to do earners than wealthy renters.
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U.S. employers shrugged off last month’s partial shutdown of the government and engaged in a burst of hiring in January, adding 304,000 jobs, the most in nearly a year.

The healthy gain the government reported Friday illustrated the job market’s resilience nearly a decade into the economic expansion. The U.S. has now added jobs for 100 straight months, the longest such period on record.

The unemployment rate did rise in January to 4 percent from 3.9 percent, the Labor Department said, but mostly for a technical reason: The number of people counted as temporarily unemployed jumped 175,000, with most of that increase consisting of federal workers and contractors affected by the shutdown.

The government on Friday also sharply revised down its estimates of job growth in November and December. Still, hiring has accelerated since last summer, a development that has surprised economists because hiring typically slows when unemployment is so low.

“The overwhelming conclusion from today’s numbers is that the U.S. labor market remained incredibly strong at the start of 2019,” said Leslie Preston, senior economist at TD Economics.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, said that many federal workers and contractors likely went out and found part-time work during the 35-day shutdown. The ability of many of them to do so is itself a sign of the job market’s strength, Swonk said.

Last month’s healthy job gain will assuage some concerns that had arisen about the U.S. economy. Global growth is weakening, the Trump administration is engaged in a trade war with China and higher mortgage rates have slowed home sales. Those factors have led many economists to forecast slower growth this year compared with 2018.

Yet strong hiring should boost household incomes, fueling more consumer spending, which would help drive economic growth.

Most sectors of the economy reported solid hiring gains in January. Education and health care added 55,000 jobs, retailers nearly 21,000 and professional and business services, which includes such higher-paying positions as engineers and architects, 30,000. 

Rising pay

The ongoing demand for workers is leading some businesses to offer higher pay to attract and keep staff. Average hourly wages rose 3.2 percent in January from a year earlier. That’s just below the annual gain of 3.3 percent in December, which matched October and November for the fastest increase since April 2009.

Teresa Carroll, an executive at the staffing firm Kelly Services, said her company has explained to many clients that they have to pay more to find the workers they need. Some employers are still reluctant to offer higher pay, which has made it harder for them to find and keep workers, she said.

“They’ve enjoyed two decades of minimal pay growth in general,” she said. “It’s our job to educate our clients about the labor market.”

On a monthly basis, from December to January, wages barely rose, though. That’s likely to keep the Federal Reserve unlikely to raise interest rates in the coming months, economists said. Chairman Jerome Powell said earlier this week that the case for raising the Fed’s benchmark rate had weakened. Many economists and investors took that as a sign that a rate increase is unlikely any time in the coming months.

Swonk cautioned that some quirks likely inflated last month’s job gain. For example, some of the furloughed federal workers and contractors who took part-time jobs during the 35-day government shutdown might have been counted as having two jobs during January. Now that the shutdown has ended, these people will go back to being counted as having just one job beginning in February.

And for most of January, the weather was relatively warm in much of the United States, which likely boosted construction employment. Builders added 52,000 jobs, the most in nearly a year.

The strong job market, though, is encouraging more people who weren’t working to begin looking. The proportion of Americans who either have a job or are seeking one — which had been unusually low since the recession ended a decade ago — reached 63.2 percent in January, the highest level in more than five years.

Jessica Jacumin began a permanent job a month ago as a cook at an assisted living facility in Augusta, Georgia, after working there as a paid intern. Before that, she had been out of work and mostly not looking while she spent 18 months studying culinary arts at Helms College, a career school sponsored by Goodwill Industries.

Though Jacumin, 42, and her husband both have Navy pensions, her new job has provided much-needed income and health insurance. That, in turn, has allowed their family to spend a bit more freely.

“I am right now planning our first family vacation in three years,” she said.

Jacumin, her husband and three children will head to Hilton Head in South Carolina in July.

Impact of shutdown

The partial government shutdown caused 800,000 workers to miss two paychecks. But because these workers will eventually receive back pay, they were counted as employed in the survey of businesses that produces the monthly job gain.

But in a separate survey of households that is used to calculate the unemployment rate, some of these people were counted as temporarily jobless. That’s a key reason why the unemployment rate rose despite the healthy job gain.

Most economists have forecast that the shutdown will likely slow economic growth for the first three months of this year. But some say that even businesses that lost income from the shutdown likely held onto their staffs, knowing that the shutdown would only be temporary.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the shutdown slowed annual growth for the January-March quarter by about 0.4 percentage point, to a rate of 2.1 percent, though that loss should lead to a bounce-back later this year.

The partial government shutdown has delayed the release of a range of government data about the economy, including statistics on housing, factory orders, and fourth-quarter growth.

The reports that have been released have been mixed. The Federal Reserve’s industrial production report showed that manufacturing output rose in December by the most in nearly a year, boosted by auto production. But consumer confidence fell in January for a third straight month.
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Iranian crude oil imports by Asia’s top four buyers dropped to the lowest volume in three years in 2018 amid U.S. sanctions on Tehran, but China and India stepped up imports in December after getting waivers from Washington.

Asia’s top four buyers of Iranian crude — China, India, Japan and South Korea — imported a total 1.31 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2018, down 21 percent from the previous year, data from the countries showed.

That was the lowest since about 1 million bpd in 2015, when a previous round of sanctions on Iran led to a sharp drop in Asian imports, Reuters data showed.

The United States reimposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports last November as it wants to negotiate a new nuclear deal with the country. U.S. officials have said they intend to reduce the Islamic Republic’s oil exports to zero.

On a monthly basis, Asia’s imports from Iran rebounded to a three-month high of 761,593 bpd in December as China and India stepped up purchases after Washington granted eight countries waivers from the Iranian sanctions for 180 days from the start of November.

“We expect Iranian exports to Asia to remain stable at around 800,000 barrels per day until May, when the waivers expire,” said Energy Aspects analyst Riccardo Fabiani.

In December, China’s imports climbed above 500,000 bpd for the first time in three months, while India’s imports rose above 302,000 bpd.

Japan and South Korea did not import any Iranian crude that month because they were still sorting out payment and shipping issues, but the countries have resumed oil lifting from Iran this month.

During the 180-day period, China can import up to 360,000 bpd of Iranian oil, while India’s imports are restricted to 300,000 bpd. South Korea can import up to 200,000 bpd of Iranian condensate.

“After May, it will all depend on the U.S. administration’s decisions, which at the moment remain completely obscure. On balance, they are likely to extend the current waivers, although rumors are that there could be a significant cut in waivered volumes,” Fabiani said.

As a precaution, Indian Oil Corp, the country’s top refiner, is looking for an annual deal to buy U.S. crude as it seeks to broaden its oil purchasing options, its chairman said Wednesday.
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Ghirardelli and Russell Stover have agreed to pay $750,000 in fines after prosecutors in California said they offered a little chocolate in a lot of wrapping.

Prosecutors in Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, Fresno, Santa Cruz and Yolo counties sued the candy makers, alleging they misled consumers by selling chocolate products in containers that were oversized or “predominantly empty.”

Prosecutors also alleged that Ghirardelli offered one chocolate product containing less cocoa than advertised.

The firms didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing but agreed to change their packaging under a settlement approved earlier this month. Some packages will shrink or will have a transparent window so consumers can look inside.

San Francisco-based Ghirardelli and Kansas City-based Russell Stover are owned by a Swiss company, Lindt & Sprungli.
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