The U.S. economy posted another impressive month, adding 228,000 jobs in November. The unemployment rate, now at a 17-year low, remains unchanged at 4.1 percent. But even as more Americans returned to the workforce, job recruiters say the job market is changing and both employers and employees need to be prepared. Mil Arcega reports.
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The wildfire that roared through the orchards of California’s Ventura County destroyed much of the region’s avocado crop not just with flames, but also with fierce Santa Ana winds and a thick blanket of ash.

With the so-called Thomas Fire just 10 percent contained by Friday afternoon, after blackening more than 132,000 acres across Ventura County and destroying some 400 homes and other structures, it is too soon to know the extent of the damage to the upcoming avocado harvest.

But experts say even the mostly family-owned orchards spared by the epic conflagration may have suffered devastating losses to their crops from the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that blow out of the California desert, knocking avocados from the trees with gusts up to 80 miles per hour. (129 kilometers per hour)

The fruit cannot be sold for human consumption once it is on the ground because of food safety regulations.

“A lot of that fruit everybody was looking forward to harvesting next year is laying on the ground,” said John Krist, chief executive of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.

​Vulnerable to the wind

Avocados are the rare produce trees planted in hillside groves because of their shallow roots, said Ben Faber, a University of California farm adviser in Ventura. The fruit, typically harvested in February or March, is full-sized and heavy by December, held by a long stem.

Those factors make avocados, already growing away from their natural environment in Central and South America, more vulnerable to the whipping winds than the lemon orchards dotting the flatlands of Ventura, Faber said.

Lemons are also a lighter fruit with a shorter, sturdier stem. Ventura County is California’s largest growing region for both lemons and avocados. The state produces about 90 percent of the nation’s avocado crop and 80 percent of its lemons.

Delayed impact

Some avocado trees that do not appear to have been scorched could also reveal damage later, collapsing from internal heat damage. Fruit that did not burn or get blown off the branches may be sunburned by the loss of canopy.

Both lemon and avocado crops are also likely to suffer further from the thick coating of ash left by the Thomas Fire, which interferes with the natural enemy insects that hunt the pests feeding on the fruit trees. Those enemy insects are known to growers as “bio-controls.”

“When you get all this ash, they can’t do their jobs,” Faber said of the enemy insects. “That’s going to cause a disruption to the bio controls that’s going to go on for a year or more. So the impact of the fires is not all immediate.”

Unlike grapes at wineries in California’s Napa Valley wine-growing region hit by wildfires in October, however, avocados and lemons will not be affected by smoke from the fires because of their thick skins.

Experts said at the time that the delicate grapes, if exposed to sustained heavy smoke, could be vulnerable to “smoke taint,” which can alter their taste and aroma.

Prices not likely to rise

Consumers are not expected to see an impact on avocado prices because Ventura County is only a small piece of the worldwide production chain dominated by Mexico and South America, the farm bureau’s Krist said.

Avocado prices have been higher in most U.S. markets during the second half of 2017, according to the Hass Avocado Board, in part because of a poor harvest last year in the United States and Mexico.

The wildfire news didn’t have a major effect on the stock price of the Limoneira Company, the nation’s largest avocado grower, as shares closed essentially unchanged on Friday.
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NAFTA trade negotiators convene in Washington next week for a limited round of talks unlikely to move the needle on major sticking points, but aimed at demonstrating some progress toward closing easier chapters.

Last month’s round of negotiations to update the North American Free Trade Agreement in Mexico City failed to resolve major differences, as Canada and Mexico pushed back on what they saw as unreasonable U.S. demands on automotive content rules, dispute settlement and a five-year sunset clause.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that the United States wanted to see “meaningful progress” before year’s end.

The “intersessional” meetings in a Washington hotel come with lower expectations and without trade ministers from the three countries, who are due to attend a World Trade Organization meeting in Buenos Aires.

Some lobbyists and trade experts said that chapters with the best chances of showing progress were among those that Canada and Mexico had agreed to create or update in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal: digital trade, food safety, state-owned enterprises and telecommunications.

NAFTA negotiators have not closed any chapters since completing talks on competition policy and small-medium enterprises in late September. Talks have since been dominated by U.S. demands, such as for half of all North American automotive content to be produced in the United States.

Less rhetoric, more substance

“The intersessional could be a chance to turn the temperature down,” said Max Baucus, a former U.S. senator who chairs Farmers for Free Trade, a coalition of U.S. farm sector groups. “This should be a round for the worker bees, with less rhetoric and more concrete negotiations.”

A senior Canadian government source said no progress would be made on the most contentious issues at the Washington talks.

Separately, Canada’s chief negotiator, Steve Verheul, said the U.S. “extreme proposals” were proving very hard to deal with.

“We will not accept U.S. proposals that would fundamentally weaken the benefits of NAFTA for Canada and undermine the competitiveness of the North American market in relation to the rest of the world,” Verheul told Canadian lawmakers this week.

The Washington meetings follow stepped-up lobbying efforts by NAFTA backers in the United States to warn against the dangers of withdrawing from the nearly 24-year-old trade pact.

Top Detroit auto executives met with Vice President Mike Pence, and pro-trade Republican senators met with President Donald Trump.

Moises Kalach, the head of Mexico’s CCE business lobby and a government consultant, said that the United States would need to back off from some of its “extreme” positions for compromises to be made.

“We’re ready to dance. The question is whether the American government is willing to do so,” Kalach told Reuters.
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Britons who voted for Brexit in the hope of slashing immigration seem set for disappointment. In the farming and food industries at least, any exodus of Polish and Romanian workers may simply be followed by arrivals of Ukrainians and Filipinos.

From dairy farms to abattoirs, employers say not enough Britons have an appetite for milking cows before dawn or disemboweling pig carcasses — jobs often performed by workers from the poorer, eastern member states of the European Union.

With unemployment at a four-decade low of 4.3 percent, even Brexit supporters acknowledge the industries will need some migrant workers after Britain leaves the EU in 2019, ending the automatic right of the bloc’s citizens to work in the country.

Employers praise eastern European staff for their skills and work ethic.

“They are a massively valuable part of our work force and a massively valuable part of the food industry overall,” said Adam Couch, chief executive of Cranswick plc, a meat processing group founded by pig farmers.

Food and drink is the largest U.K. manufacturing sector, with a turnover of 110 billion pounds ($147 billion) in 2015, government figures show. Much of it depends heavily on staff from elsewhere in the EU, mainly the post-communist east.

For example, the British Meat Processors Association says 63 percent of workers in the sector come from other EU countries, and in some plants it can be as high as 80 percent.

The proportion has risen partly due to increased demand for more labor-intensive products such as boneless meat.

Association members have found it impossible to recruit the additional employees needed from Britain, the BMPA says.

Pro-Brexit campaigners say Britain needs to reduce its reliance on EU workers.

“Our sights should be firmly set on raising the skill level of our own domestic workers, employing domestic whenever we possibly can and automating,” said Owen Paterson, a member of parliament for the ruling Conservatives.

But Paterson, who as a former Environment Secretary was responsible for U.K. agricultural policy from 2012-14, added: “Where there is a clear shortage and no technological solution, by all means bring in labor but the good news is we wouldn’t be limited to the EU. We will have the whole world to choose from.”

‘Money for a month’

On the meat production line, Romanian Dumidru Voicu explained the attractions of working at Cranswick’s plant in Milton Keynes, a town northwest of London.

“I just want to do something with my life, save some money and make my own business. The money for a week here is the money for a month in Romania,” said Voicu, who arrived in the country about the time that Britons voted to leave the EU in June last year.

An estimated 27,000 permanent staff from elsewhere in the EU worked in British agriculture last year, House of Commons staff noted in a briefing paper for members of parliament. This figure is swollen at times by around 75,000 seasonal workers.

A further 116,000 EU citizens worked in food manufacturing.

The Food and Drink Federation predicts the sector, which employs about 400,000 people, needs to recruit another 140,000 by 2024.

The government, which wants to reduce immigration sharply, has yet to announce its post-Brexit policy but farm minister George Eustice has recognized employers’ concerns. “Leaving the EU and establishing controlled migration does not mean closing off all immigration,” he told parliament in earlier this year.

However, a government document leaked in September showed that restrictions for all but the highest-skilled EU workers were under consideration.

Such a possibility alarms farm employers. “Without EU labor there will be no British pig industry as we know it,” said Zoe Davies, chief executive of the National Pig Association.

British farmers have relied on foreign labor for a long time, at least around harvest time. A Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme was introduced shortly after World War II.

The government ended it in 2013 before Romanians and Bulgarians won the automatic right to work in Britain, arguing that there were now enough EU workers to fill farm vacancies.

With EU citizens to lose that right on Brexit, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) wants the scheme — or something similar — reinstated. This may mean going back to the time when people from beyond eastern Europe filled farm jobs.

Michael Oakes, chairman of the dairy board at the NFU, says older colleagues remember when people from countries such as the Philippines worked on British farms.

“There are other countries in the world that would help to solve the problem but at the moment because they are not within the EU they are not necessarily able to come in and work.”

Filipinos already work on New Zealand farms but such an idea could prove politically difficult in Britain as the pro-Brexit side fought the referendum on promises to curb immigration.

Many of the 17 million Britons who voted to leave are likely to be unhappy if they find eastern Europeans simply replaced by non-EU workers such as Filipinos or Ukrainians.

“Perhaps we need to broaden out the opportunities but a lot of people voted for Brexit because of immigration reasons, so it is a tricky one for the government,” said Oakes.

Making sacrifices

Any new seasonal plan could still recruit in the EU, but might be forced to widen its scope to get the required numbers.

Net migration to the UK fell to 230,000 in the year to June, far from the government’s ambition of arrivals “in the tens of thousands”. Still, EU citizens accounted for three quarters of the 106,000 drop, the Office for National Statistics reported.

The figures present a mixed picture, with a net 20,000 Poles leaving the country in 2016 but 50,000 Romanians arriving.

But some eastern Europeans say they feel less welcome since the referendum and resent the negative attitude of some Britons.

“I was quite upset. Why do you have a problem with me if I am coming to take a job you don’t want and I am paying tax?” said Zoltan Peter, who came to England in 2009 to work on a dairy farm in western England, initially leaving his wife and baby daughter at home in Romania.

Peter now works as a regional manager for LKL, a firm which recruits workers to the dairy industry, but says the early years were not easy. “I didn’t catch my daughter starting to talk, but you sometimes you make sacrifices and eastern European people are making sacrifices,” he told Reuters.

A drop in sterling since the referendum has also made Britain less attractive for farm workers who earn at least 7.20 pounds an hour. That was worth 41 Polish zlotys before the vote but now it buys only 34.

Part of the answer may lie in a drive to recruit and train more British workers, despite Peter’s doubts.

Oakes said he needed people prepared to work long, unsocial hours often in cold, wet conditions. Milking on his farm starts at 4.30 a.m. and the day does not end until 8 p.m. “It is an early start or a late finish, and occasionally on bad days you might have to do both,” he said.
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Bangladesh’s central bank has asked the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to join a lawsuit it plans to file against a Philippines bank for its role in one of the world’s biggest cyber-heists, several sources said.

The Fed has yet to respond formally, but there is no indication it would join the suit.

Unidentified hackers stole $81 million from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the New York Fed in February last year, using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system. The money was sent to accounts at Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp and then disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines.

Nearly two years later, there is no word on who was responsible, and Bangladesh Bank has been able to retrieve only about $15 million, mostly from a Manila junket operator.

​Legal action discussed

Officials from Bangladesh Bank and the New York Fed spoke about legal action against RCBC in a conference call last month that was also attended by two representatives from SWIFT, according to three sources in Dhaka who had direct knowledge of the conversations.

It was agreed that Bangladesh Bank would send a proposal on the suit to the New York Fed, they said.

“The aim is to file a case by March-April in New York,” said one of the sources. “Work is on. Bangladesh Bank is likely to send something to the Fed soon.”

The source said the idea was it would be a civil suit to recover the money, and that Bangladesh hoped the Fed and SWIFT would be joint petitioners.

Subhankar Saha, a spokesman for Bangladesh Bank, said he had no knowledge of any plans to sue RCBC but that “efforts are on to recover the entire stolen money.”

The New York Fed and SWIFT declined comment.

A source familiar with the New York Fed’s thinking confirmed that Bangladesh Bank’s external counsel raised the idea of filing a suit against RCBC in the call.

The New York Fed officials agreed to review any proposal Bangladesh Bank wrote up, but they did not formally agree to a joint effort, and have not since worked on it nor heard from Bangladesh Bank, the source said.

​Rogue employees

RCBC has blamed rogue employees, and Philippine prosecutors have filed money-laundering charges against a former RCBC bank manager and four people who owned the bank accounts where the funds were sent, but are not identifiable because the accounts were in fake names. They are the only people to be formally cited in association with the crime.

Bangladeshi officials have cited internal RCBC documents, also seen by Reuters, to assert that the Filipino bank ignored suspicions raised by some RCBC officials when the money was first remitted to the accounts on Feb. 5, 2016, and then delayed acting on requests from RCBC’s head office to freeze the funds on Feb. 9.

RCBC did not respond to requests for comment. But it has said in the past that it would not pay any compensation and that Bangladesh Bank bore responsibility for the theft since it was negligent.

RCBC was fined a record 1 billion Philippine pesos ($20 million) by the country’s central bank last year for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through it.

Separately, a Bangladesh court has sent letters rogatory to the United States seeking the findings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the case, said the main police investigator in Dhaka. Letters rogatory are documents used to obtain judicial assistance from foreign courts.

“We have questions for the Federal Reserve Bank, we want to collect the FBI report, what their findings are,” Molla Nazrul Islam, a special superintendent of police in Bangladesh, told Reuters this week.

An FBI spokeswoman said the agency could not comment on ongoing cases.

A hacking group called Lazarus that is believed to have connections to North Korea has been linked to the Bangladesh cyberheist, and some U.S. officials said earlier this year that prosecutors were building a case against Pyongyang. But no case has yet been filed.
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A federal judge in Michigan has sentenced a former high-level Volkswagen manager to seven years in prison for his part in the scheme to cheat emissions tests and defraud consumers.

Oliver Schmidt has also been fined $400,000. He pleaded guilty in August to charges that included defrauding the United States and violating the Clean Air Act.

“This sentence reflects how seriously we take environmental crime,” Acting U.S. Attorney Daniel Lemisch said Wednesday. “Protecting national resources is a priority of this office. Corporations and individuals acting on behalf of corporations will be brought to justice for harming our environment.”

Schmidt was the general manager of Volkswagen’s U.S. Environment and Engineering office. He admitted knowing about and agreeing with engineers to carry out a scheme to install a device on certain VW diesel vehicles that would switch on for emissions tests, but switch off during normal driving.

Customers bought the cars believing they were environmentally friendly when in fact the cars were polluting as much as 30 times higher than U.S. standards.

Federal courts have ordered Volkswagen to spend more than $1 billion to buy back or repair the affected cars.
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China’s Ofo launched its dockless bicycles in Paris on Wednesday, becoming the fourth bike-sharing plan operator in a city set to banish all combustion-engine cars by 2030.

Ofo France general manager Laurent Kennel told Reuters the firm, one of two bike-sharing giants in China, had put just over 100 of its bright yellow bicycles on Paris roads on Wednesday and plans to ramp that up to 1,000 bikes by year-end.

Ofo comes hot on the wheels of Hong Kong-owned Gobee.bike, which launched in October and whose bright green bikes, estimated at a few thousand, can be seen on every Paris street.

A third Asian player, Singapore-owned oBike, has a few hundred bikes on Paris streets, and will also compete with the city’s long-established Velib plan.

Unlike the dockless Asian bikes, the Velib bikes must be parked in fixed docking stations of which there are some 1,800 in Paris, but which are often full in popular parts of the city.

“We want to be leader in free-floating bikes in Paris and France,” Kennel said.

He added that to cover Paris well, the firm plans to put several thousand bikes on the road, although there are no immediate plans to match Velib’s 24,000 bicycles.

Like Velib, the Ofo bikes have three gears – unlike the gearless Gobee and oBike bikes – but will be slightly more expensive at 0.50 euros ($0.6) per 20 minutes, compared to 0.50 euros for 30 minutes for the other two Asian operators.

Ofo’s bikes will be free for the first 40 minutes until the end of the year. Velib is free the first half hour for users with a subscription.

Kennel said Ofo operate more than 10 million bikes in 200 cities worldwide, the vast majority in China, and a few thousand in Europe, including in Milan, Madrid, Vienna, Prague, London and Cambridge.

Ofo, which has raised more than $1 billion from Chinese venture capitalists, including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., will cooperate with Paris city authorities, which have said they want to regulate the dockless bike plans to prevent chaos on Paris sidewalks.

The dockless bikes can be found and unlocked with a mobile phone app, and after use they can be left anywhere. So far there have been no pile-ups as have been seen on Chinese roads.

The new Asian bike share operators’ entry into the Paris market is well timed, as longtime Velib operator JCDecaux is replaced by the Smoovengo consortium, which won a 600-700 million euro ($700-$825 million) contract to run the Paris city bike-sharing system from 2018 to 2032.

Dozens of Velib docking stations have been out of order for weeks as Velib’s old docking stations are replaced with Smoovengo’s new stations.

The Paris city government is building more bike lanes as it tries to reduce automobile traffic in a bid to cut pollution.

($1 = 0.8486 euros)
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Vulnerable communities uprooted by climate change are being left out of a voluntary pact to deal with migration, campaigners said, after the United States pulled out of the global deal.

Although people within low-lying states are being forced to relocate because of worsening storms and rising seas, they will not be recognized in U.N. migration pact talks next year, putting lives at risk, campaigners said.

“Many of the situations we find ourselves in, here in the Pacific, are not caused by us. We continue to ask, ‘Where is the justice?’ Those of us who are least responsible, continue to bear the brunt,” said Emele Duituturaga, head of the Pacific Islands Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (PIANGO).

Hoping for acceptance

“We hope that there will be an openness and an acceptance that climate-induced migration is one that the world community has to be responsible for,” she said on the sidelines of a conference co-hosted by PIANGO in Fiji’s capital, Suva.

With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopted a political declaration in September 2016 in which it also agreed to spend two years negotiating a pact on safe, orderly and regular migration.

U.S. President Donald Trump this week withdrew from negotiations because the global approach to the issue was “simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the U.S. decision, his spokesman said, but expressed hope the United States might re-engage in the talks ahead of the start of formal negotiations in February.

Unique heritage

Climate displacement is already a reality for Telstar Jimmy, a student from the Bank Islands in northern Vanuatu.

Her family has relocated several times because of worsening cyclones and flooding, as rising seas slowly wash away ancestral homelands and burial sites.

“The foundations of our unique heritage were taken,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Relocation just meant safety and continuing to exist. But now the question is: Safe and existing for how much longer?”

Worldwide, sea levels have risen 26 centimeters (10 inches) since the late 19th century, driven up by melting ice and a natural expansion of water in the oceans as they warm, U.N. data show. Seas could rise by up to a meter by 2100.

‘It’s only going to get worse’

“With climate-induced displacement, we know that there are already people, communities and countries at risk,” said Danny Sriskandarajah, head of the rights group CIVICUS, co-hosting the Fiji conference. “It’s only going to get worse [and] we need to come up with ways to manage those flows.”

PIANGO and CIVICUS are among campaign groups drafting a declaration that calls on the United Nations to recognize climate change as a key driver of migration.

The 1951 Refugee Convention recognizes that people fleeing persecution, war and conflict have the right to protection, but not those forced out by climate change.

Trump also plans to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate accord, which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century with a radical shift to cleaner energies to curb heat waves, downpours, floods and rising sea levels.

The deal aims to hold the global temperature rise to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and try to limit the rise even further, to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The U.S. is the only country that is not part of the climate pact after Syria and Nicaragua joined this year.

“I’m a bit nervous because other countries may also pull out with the U.S., and that’s going to be a bigger issue for us, especially at a time when we’re trying to battle climate change,” said Vanuatu local Jimmy. “Whatever each country does will impact the lives of other people around the whole globe.”
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Luxury goods companies may ban sales of their products on online platforms like Amazon to preserve their aura of exclusivity, the European Union’s top court said Wednesday. 

The European Court of Justice ruled in favor of the German branch of luxury cosmetics group Coty, whose brands include Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs, which sought to keep its products from selling on non-authorized digital sale platforms. 

​The court said Coty’s effort to limit distributors “is appropriate to preserve the luxury image of those goods,” adding that it “does not appear to go beyond what is necessary.” Coty wanted to ban an authorized distributor from selling its products on Amazon.de in a case pending at a Frankfurt court, which requested a ruling from EU judges.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association said the ruling was “bad news for consumers who will face fewer choices and also less competition when they want to shop online.”

Germany’s antitrust agency said it was examining the EU court ruling, but expected it to have only a limited effect on its own decisions.

The court in Luxembourg “apparently made a great effort to limit its statements to the realm of real prestige products, where the luxurious aura is a significant part of the product itself,” said Andreas Mundt, the head of the Federal Cartel Office.

Manufacturers of goods that aren’t luxury brands “still have no carte blanche to sweepingly limit their distributors’ use of sales platforms, according to our assessment,” Mundt added.
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The U.N.’s intellectual property agency says China racked up a record 1.3 million patent applications last year, topping the combined total in the U.S., Japan, Korea and Europe.

The World Intellectual Property Organization says innovators worldwide filed 3.1 million patent applications in 2016, up 8.3 percent from a year earlier, marking the seventh-straight yearly increase.

China alone accounted for 98 percent of that increase, with its patent office receiving 236,600 more applications than in 2015.

Releasing WIPO’s annual intellectual property report Wednesday, Director-General Francis Gurry cited the “extraordinary growth numbers” that epitomize the trend of recent years.

WIPO said trademark applications shot up by 16 percent to about 7 million, and worldwide industrial design applications increased by 10.4 percent to almost 1 million, again led by growth in China.
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U.S. worker productivity rose 3 percent in the third quarter, the best showing in three years, while labor costs fell for a second straight quarter.

The increase in productivity in the July-September quarter was double the 1.5 percent gain in the second quarter and both quarters were up significantly from a scant 0.1 percent rise in the first three months of the year. Labor costs fell 0.2 percent after an even bigger 1.2 percent decline in the second quarter.

The third quarter figure for productivity was unchanged from an initial estimate while labor costs were initially estimated to have risen by 0.5 percent.

Economists are hopeful that the upturn in productivity may be a sign that this key measure of living standards is improving after a prolonged period of weakness.

Economists believe finding ways to increase productivity, the amount of output per hour of work, is the biggest challenge facing the economy right now. They say that without an improvement, the Trump administration will have difficulty reaching its goal of doubling economic growth in coming years.

The upturn in the past two quarters reflects the fact that overall output, as measured by the gross domestic product, accelerated sharply following a weak start to the year. GDP grew at an annual rate of 3.3 percent in the third quarter, the government reported last week, and that followed a 3.1 percent rise in the second quarter. It was the first back-to-back GDP gains of 3 percent or better in three years.

Productivity actually declined in 2016, dropping 0.1 percent. It was the first annual decline in 34 years and followed a string of weak annual performances since the economy emerged from recession in mid-2009.

Productivity has averaged annual gains of just 1.2 percent from 2007 through 2016, a sharp slowdown from average annual gains of 2.6 percent from 2000 to 20007. Those increases reflected a boost from the increased use of computers and the internet in the workplace.

Rising productivity allows employers to boost wages without triggering higher inflation.
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Venezuela’s plan to create an oil-backed cryptocurrency faces the same credibility problems that dog the ruling Socialist Party in financial markets and is unlikely to fare any better than the struggling OPEC member itself, investors and technical experts say.

President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday floated a plan to create the “petro” that would be backed by the world’s largest crude reserves, amid a crippling economic crisis worsened by U.S. sanctions that limit Venezuela’s capacity to borrow money.

Cryptocurrencies rely on confidence in clear rules and equal treatment of all involved, three experts said, adding that Venezuela is widely seen as flouting basic property rights and mismanaging its existing bolivar currency.

Without such confidence, the “petro” would neither help Venezuela raise funds nor help it avoid sanctions levied by the government of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“If any government is willing to set up a fair set of rules for a cryptocurrency, it would be a great thing,” said Sean Walsh of Redwood City Ventures, a bitcoin and blockchain-focused investment firm.

“But if an administration has a history of unfair treatment of the population, then tacking on a buzzword like ‘cryptocurrency’ isn’t going to change that behavior.”

The Information Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. In further comments on Tuesday, Maduro said Venezuela’s new virtual currency would be backed by oil from the heavy-crude Orinoco Belt, plus gold and diamonds.

Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, has soared in recent weeks to nearly $12,000 in what detractors call evidence of a bubble but supporters insist is the start of a new monetary system not dependent on central banks.

Venezuela’s inflation is expected to top 1,000 percent this year, driven by unchecked expansion of the money supply and a currency control system that critics say provides favorable treatment to well-connected officials and businessmen at the expense of everyday citizens.

‘Do We Trust Venezuela?’

Under the 15-year-old foreign exchange regime, state agencies receive dollars to import food and medicine at a rate of 10 bolivars while private citizens now pay more than 108,000 per greenback on the black market. The black market rate has depreciated more than 99 percent under Maduro.

Basic food and medical items are increasingly out of reach for most citizens, fueling malnutrition and preventable diseases. Maduro says the country is victim of an “economic war” led by political adversaries with the support of Washington.

Maduro has not outlined the rules that would govern the proposed currency, including what rights its holders would have over Venezuela’s oil reserves.

“The fact that the bolivar’s value has plummeted shows that people have very little faith in Venezuela,” said Yazan Barghuthi of Jibrel Network, a blockchain development firm.

“A tokenized asset will still have the same problem: Do we trust the institution that is backing this to fulfill the promises that this token represents?”

U.S. sanctions, in response to accusations of human rights violations and undermining of democracy, have effectively blocked the country from issuing new debt and have made global banks increasingly wary of working with Venezuela.

But Venezuela is unlikely to find foreign companies willing to accept payment for food or medicine in newly minted petros and has little chance of convincing creditors to accept them in lieu of dollars when making payments on its distressed bonds, the experts said.

“Given that there is no stable judicial system in Venezuela, no one will trust anything that the government claims is backed by assets of any kind,” wrote Marshall Swatt, founder of bitcoin exchange Coinsetter, in an email. “Even if the technology were proper and prevented government meddling (impossible to imagine), it is dead on arrival.”
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The government of Brazil’s President Michel Temer is far from assembling the coalition needed to pass a landmark pension reform, but potential supporters of the measure are now more organized, a key legislator said on Monday.

“We’re still enormously far (from having the needed votes), but we have a party leader committed, a party president committed, one party that’s set to commit,” Brazil’s lower house speaker, Rodrigo Maia, told journalists after an event in Rio de Janeiro.

Pension reform is the cornerstone policy in President Temer’s efforts to bring Brazil’s deficit under control. But the measure is widely unpopular with Brazilians, who are accustomed to a relatively expansive welfare net.

In order to curry support from Congress, Temer and his allies watered down their original proposal in November, requiring fewer years of contributions by private sector workers to receive a pension.

According to several government sources, Temer’s allies have grown more optimistic in the last week about the reform’s chances.

However, speed is essential for the bill’s passage. A congressional recess begins on Dec. 22, and lawmaking thereafter will be hampered by politics, as lawmakers ramp up their campaigns for 2018 elections.
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The finance ministers from the 19 countries that use the euro are deciding who should lead their regular meetings, with Portugal’s Mario Centeno widely tipped to take the helm of a group that has led the currency bloc’s crisis-fighting efforts.

The decision of who will succeed Dutchman Jeroen Dijsselbloem as president of the so-called eurogroup is expected later Monday. Dijsselbloem, who has held the post for nearly five years, has been one of the most high-profile European politicians during a period that saw a number of countries, notably Greece, teeter on the edge of bankruptcy and the euro currency itself come under threat.

Three other candidates are in the frame, too: Luxembourg’s Pierre Gramegna, Slovakia’s Peter Kazimir and Latvia’s Dana Reizniece-Ozola.

Whoever gets the presidency will inherit a eurozone in far better shape than the one that existed during Dijsselbloem’s tenure. The economy is growing strongly while worries over Greece’s future in the bloc have subsided and the country is poised to exit its bailout era next summer.

A victory for Centeno, who in Portugal has favored easing off budget austerity policies, has the potential to mark a new era for the eurozone.

While eurozone governments still insist that countries must keep their public finances in shape, there’s a greater acknowledgement that many people, particularly in southern Europe, have grown weary of austerity. Following the departure of long-time German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a Centeno victory would encapsulate that shift.

Portugal was one of four eurozone countries that had to be bailed out during the region’s debt crisis. In 2011, the country required a 78 billion-euro rescue after its budget deficit grew too large and bond market investors asked for hefty premiums to lend to the government. In return for the financial lifeline, Portuguese governments had to enact a series of spending cuts and economic reforms.

Though the strategy may have worked in bringing Portugal’s public finances into better shape, austerity accentuated a recession and raised unemployment. Since Centeno took office in the Socialist government that came to power in December 2015, Portugal’s deficit has fallen to 2 percent, the lowest in more than 40 years while the unemployment rate is down to an almost 10-year low of 8.5 percent, after peaking at a record 16.2 percent in 2013.

Ahead of the meeting where the vote will take place, Centeno said his aim, should he come out on top, would be to “generate consensus” in the “challenging” period ahead.

“We have showed everyone that we can reach consensus, we can work with other parties, we can work with institutions,” he said. “Portugal is an example of that.”

Dijsselbloem said keeping the eurogroup “together and united” should be the primary purpose of the eurogroup president.

“It’s the only way we take decisions in the eurogroup,” he said.

 
…

Workers at several Indonesian palm oil plantations that supply Pepsi and Nestle suffer from a variety of labor abuses, including lower-than-minimum wages, child labor, exposure to pesticides, and union busting, according to a new report from the Rainforest Action Network (RAN).

The report covers three palm oil plantations operated by Indofood, the biggest food company in Indonesia and the country’s only producer of PepsiCo-branded snacks, and follows up on previous reports from the same groups of plantation workers. Indofood remains certified as “sustainable” by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) despite ongoing labor abuses, which activists say raises the question of what possible incentives there are for a mega-corporation to reform its labor practices.

“Since our first report in June 2016, which broke the scandal, to this one nearly one and a half years later, hardly anything has changed,” said Emma Lierley, RAN’s Communications Manager. “Pepsi hasn’t even issued a public response.”

Pepsi Co., Indofood, and RSPO could not be reached for comment.

Widespread abuse

Workers at palm oil plantations on the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra reported the same catalog of abuses that they suffered 17 months ago, such as exposure to dangerous pesticides with inadequate protective equipment. They also complain of withheld wages and unpaid overtime, as well as frequent use of daily contract workers and unpaid laborers (like workers’ wives), which the study authors say are all also risk factors for child labor.

“We’re asking that Indofood reform labor practices on its plantations immediately,” said Lierley. “PepsiCo has a significant amount of leverage.” “Indofood could certainly move the needle” as well, she said.

But the RSPO has no clear path forward, admitted Robin Averbeck, a RAN campaigner.

“The RSPO has failed to include workers as critical stakeholders in its system since its creation up until this very day,” said Averbeck. “Fundamentally it will never address labor rights issues in a meaningful way unless workers are integrated as key constituents in the system and play an active role in monitoring and enforcing the standard themselves.”

RSPO has never revoked a company’s sustainability certification for labor violations.

“After nearly a year and a half of an official RSPO complaint containing indisputable evidence documenting widespread labor violations on multiple Indofood plantations, the RSPO has failed to sanction or suspend Indofood,” said Averbeck, who said the inaction was a “fundamental failure” and suggested that the RSPO suspend Indofood immediately.

The palm oil problem

Labor abuse in Indonesia is not unique to the palm oil industry — it has been documented widely across the garment, domestic work, and mining sectors, among others — but in recent years, palm oil has become particularly ripe for exploiting workers.

Palm oil is found in countless household products and foods, from lipstick to potato chips, and it grows very well in the tropical rainforest of Southeast Asia. It is cheap and easy to plant at great scale and swathes of the Borneo rainforest in both Indonesia and Malaysia, have been transformed in recent years into the trademark bright green grids of a palm oil plantation.

But the crop has displaced dozens of indigenous communities and employed thousands of child laborers and unpaid, underpaid, and abused workers. Global demand for palm oil shows no sign of slowing down — the industry is estimated to be worth $93 billion by 2021.

Difficulty of labor reform

The best mechanism for workers’ rights remains trade unions, but there are a number of obstacles to effective organizing among palm oil workers, according to Andriko Otang of Indonesia’s Trade Union Rights Commission.

“For one thing, there is the sheer difficulty of organizing,” said Otang. “A worker has to spend 400,000 rupiah (about $28) for a one-way ticket to the regional capital.” A roundtrip could turn out to be half their monthly salary, he said.

Another factor is the logistical barriers to organizing in places like rural Kalimantan, where there is weak cell signal and low access to information. “If you want to organize even a single strike, it’s so difficult,” said Otang.

Beyond discriminating against actual and potential union members, according to the RAN report, Indofood employs a large impermanent workforce, who cannot unionize. According to its 2016 Sustainability Report, Indofood’s plantation arm, IndoAgri, reported 38,104 permanent workers and 34,782 casual workers.

Despite the formidable odds, said Otang, there have been success stories for palm oil workers: in South Kalimantan and Palembang, workers have organized multi-company collective bargaining agreements and abolished the practice of casual work.

“As long as you have a strong independent union and solidarity between officials and members, labor reform is possible,” he said.
…

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says his government will launch a cryptocurrency, or digital currency, to circumvent what he called a financial “blockade” by the U.S. government.

The new currency will be called the “petro,” the leftist leader said in his TV address Sunday. It will be backed by the socialist-run OPEC nation’s oil, gold and mineral reserves.

That will allow Venezuela to advance toward new forms of international financing for its economic and social development, Maduro said.

“Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency – the petro-currency, the petro – to advance in monetary sovereignty, to make its financial transactions, to overcome the financial blockade,” he explained. “This will allow us to move toward new forms of international financing for the economic and social development of the country. And it will be done with a cryptocurrency issue backed by reserves of Venezuelan riches of gold, oil, gas and diamonds.”

Maduro did not give any details what the new currency’s value will be, how it will work or when it will be launched.

The government also announced the creation of a “blockchain observatory” software platform for buying and selling virtual currency.

Opposition leaders objected to Maduro’s announcement, saying the currency would need congressional approval. Some questioned whether the digital currency would even be introduced in the midst of turmoil.

Venezuela’s traditional currency, the bolivar, has significantly declined in recent weeks as U.S. sanctions make it harder for the country to stay current on its foreign debt.
…

A committee exploring the effects of recreational marijuana on Nevada’s gambling industry is wrestling with how the state’s casinos might deal with the pot business while not running afoul of federal law.

Lured by a potential economic impact in the tens of millions of dollars, Gov. Brian Sandoval’s Gaming Policy Committee is trying to figure out how casinos can host conventions and trade shows on marijuana.

The 12-member committee ended its meeting Wednesday without a formal decision on the matter, but Sandoval said he hopes to have committee recommendations for possible regulations by February.

The Nevada Gaming Commission has discouraged licensees in the past from becoming involved with the marijuana business, fearing legal backlash. Committee members have also voiced opposition to the idea of allowing marijuana use at resorts.

However, events like MJBizCon, a conference on various aspects of the marijuana growing industry, have drawn the attention of the gambling industry because of their strong turnout.

Cassandra Farrington, who started the conference, told the committee that the event brought about 18,000 people to the Las Vegas Convention Center last month and it’s only expected to grow. She noted that marijuana products are not allowed on the show floor, and people who violate that ruled are expelled.

Trade shows like Farrington’s conference can generate millions of dollars in tax revenue, said Deonne Contine, the director of the Nevada Department of Taxation. Contine told the committee that a show with about 15,000 people can produce a $28.2 million economic impact on the city.

Attorney Brian Barnes said any marijuana business in gambling facilities could be considered racketeering or money laundering under federal regulations.

“Marijuana business is illegal under virtually every aspect of federal law,” Barnes said.
…

Liz Whitehurst dabbled in several careers before she ended up on a Maryland farm, crating fistfuls of fresh-cut arugula in the November chill.

The hours were better at her nonprofit jobs. So were the benefits. But two years ago, Whitehurst, 32 — who graduated from a liberal arts college and grew up in the Chicago suburbs — abandoned Washington for a three-acre plot in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

She joined a growing movement of highly educated, ex-urban, first-time farmers who are capitalizing on booming consumer demand for local and sustainable foods and who, experts say, could have a broad impact on the food system.

For only the second time in the last century, the number of farmers under 35 years old is increasing, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest Census of Agriculture. Sixty-nine percent of the surveyed young farmers had college degrees — significantly higher than the general population.

This new generation can’t hope to replace the numbers that farming is losing to age. But it is already contributing to the growth of the local-food movement and could help preserve the place of midsize farms in the rural landscape.

“We’re going to see a sea change in American agriculture as the next generation gets on the land,” said Kathleen Merrigan, the head of the Food Institute at George Washington University and a deputy secretary at the Department of Agriculture under President Barack Obama. “The only question is whether they’ll get on the land, given the challenges.”

The number of farmers aged 25 to 34 grew 2.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the 2014 USDA census, a period when other groups of farmers — save the oldest — shrank by double digits. In some states, such as California, Nebraska and South Dakota, the number of beginning farmers has grown by 20 percent or more.

New to farming

A survey that the National Young Farmers Coalition, an advocacy group, conducted with Merrigan’s help shows that the majority of young farmers did not grow up in agricultural families.

They are also far more likely than the general farming population to grow organically, limit pesticide and fertilizer use, diversify their crops or animals, and be deeply involved in their local food systems via community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs and farmers markets.

Today’s young farmers also tend to operate small farms of less than 50 acres, though that number increases with each successive year of experience.

Whitehurst took over her farm, Owl’s Nest, from a retiring farmer in 2015.

The farm sits at the end of a gravel road, a series of vegetable fields unfurling from a steep hill capped by her tiny white house. Like the farmer who worked this land before her, she leases the house and the fields from a neighboring couple in their 70s.

She grows organically certified peppers, cabbages, tomatoes and salad greens from baby kale to arugula, rotating her fields to enrich the soil and planting cover crops in the off-season.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, she and two longtime friends from Washington wake up in semidarkness to harvest by hand, kneeling in the mud to cut handfuls of greens before the sun can wilt them. All three young women, who also live on the farm, make their living off the produce Whitehurst sells, whether to restaurants, through CSA shares or at a D.C. farmers market.

Finances can be tight. The women admit they’ve given up higher standards of living to farm.

“I wanted to have a positive impact, and that just felt very distant in my other jobs out of college,” Whitehurst said. “In farming, on the other hand, you make a difference. Your impact is immediate.”

Larger impact

That impact could grow as young farmers scale up and become a larger part of the commercial food system, Merrigan said.

Already, several national grocery chains, including Walmart and SuperValu, have built out local-food-buying programs, according to AT Kearney, a management consulting firm.

Young farmers are also creating their own “food hubs,” allowing them to store, process and market food collectively, and supply grocery and restaurant chains at a price competitive with national suppliers.

That’s strengthening the local and organic food movement, experts say.

“I get calls all the time from farmers — some of the largest farmers in the country — asking me when the local and organic fads will be over,” said Eve Turow Paul, a consultant who advises farms and food companies on millennial preferences. “It’s my pleasure to tell them: Look at this generation. Get on board or go out of business.”

There are also hopes that the influx of young farmers could provide some counter to the aging of American agriculture.

The age of the average American farmer has crept toward 60 over several decades, risking the security of midsize family farms where children aren’t interested in succeeding their parents.

Between 1992 and 2012, the country lost more than 250,000 midsize and small commercial farms, according to the USDA. During that same period, more than 35,000 very large farms started up, and the large farms already in existence consolidated their acreage.

Midsize farms are critical to rural economies, generating jobs, spending and tax revenue. And while they’re large enough to supply mainstream markets, they’re also small enough to respond to environmental changes and consumer demand.

If today’s young farmers can continue to grow their operations, said Shoshanah Inwood, a rural sociologist at Ohio State University, they could bolster these sorts of farms — and in the process prevent the land from falling into the hands of large-scale industrial operations or residential developers.

“Multigenerational family farms are shrinking. And big farms are getting bigger,” Inwood said. “For the resiliency of the food system and of rural communities, we need more agriculture of the middle.”

Numbers are still small

It’s too early to say whether young farmers will effect that sort of change.

The number of young farmers entering the field is not nearly large enough to replace the number exiting, according to the USDA: Between 2007 and 2012, agriculture gained 2,384 farmers between ages 25 and 34 — and lost nearly 100,000 between 45 and 54.

And young farmers face formidable challenges to starting and scaling their businesses. The costs of farmland and farm equipment are prohibitive. Young farmers are frequently dependent on government programs, including child-care subsidies and public health insurance, to cover basic needs.

And student loan debt — which 46 percent of young farmers consider a “challenge,” according to the National Young Farmers Coalition — can strain already tight finances and disqualify them from receiving other forms of credit.

But Lindsey Lusher Shute, the executive director of the coalition, said she has seen the first wave of back-to-the-landers grow up in the eight years since she co-founded the advocacy group. And she suggested that new policy initiatives, including student loan forgiveness and farm transition programs, could further help them.

“Young farmers tend to start small and sell to direct markets, because that’s a viable way for them to get into farming,” Lusher Shute said. “But many are shifting gears as they get into it — getting bigger or moving into wholesale.”

Just last year, Whitehurst was approached by an online grocery service that wanted to buy her vegetables. Because While Owl’s Nest produces too little to supply such a large buyer on its own, the service planned to buy produce from multiple small, local farmers.

Whitehurst ultimately turned the deal down, however. Among other things, she feared that she could not afford to sell her vegetables at the lower price point the service wanted.

“For now, I’m focused on getting better, not bigger,” she said. “But in a few years, who knows? Ask me again then.”
…

The city of Zibo, China’s ceramics capital, is undergoing environmental shock therapy to clear its filthy skies and transform its economy — and not everyone is happy.

Much of Zibo’s sprawling industrial district has become a ghost town of shuttered factories, empty showrooms and abandoned restaurants after a cleanup campaign that began last year intensified this winter. Dozens of chimneys stand inactive.

“There used to be a lot of workers here, but now they are demolishing the entire place,” said a caretaker who gave his surname as Wei, pointing at the deserted warehouse of an abandoned factory he was guarding. “We have no idea what they will build here — that’s the boss’s decision.”

Zibo, home to 4.5 million people about 260 miles south of Beijing in Shandong province, is one of 28 northern Chinese cities targeted in an unprecedented six-month anti-pollution blitz as China scrambles to meet air quality targets.

The city is also at the heart of a wider, long-term government effort to upgrade China’s heavy industrial economy.

Once responsible for about a quarter of China’s ceramic output, mainly floor and wall tiles, Zibo has slashed capacity by 70 percent and shut more than 150 companies and 250 production lines as part of a ruthless war on pollution.

Surviving plants have rushed to comply with tough new standards, but business is still threatened by constant production suspensions ordered by the government, as well as natural gas shortages this winter as northern cities switch to the fuel from coal.

“It is a brave step that China is taking, but they have to take it,” said Alex Koszo, the founder of Vecor, a Hong Kong-based company that has built a joint-venture plant in Zibo to manufacture environmentally friendly tiles from fly ash.

“They have the will, the money, and access to technology, so I think we are looking at a very different Zibo, and a very different Shandong, in five to 10 years.”

The local environmental bureau declined to be interviewed, telling Reuters that cleanup efforts were “still at an early stage” — but changes are already conspicuous.

With old factories marked for demolition, new apartment blocks, shopping complexes and roads are being built. The city registered growth of 7.8 percent in the first three-quarters of this year, driven by the service sector, according to the local government. Displaced workers have shifted to construction sites and other industries like textiles, residents said.

Zibo has also established a “greentech” incubator in the old district and opened a new high-tech industrial park in order to attract companies and encourage innovation in ceramics.

But some local businessmen accuse Beijing of running roughshod over local industry and paying too little heed to circumstances on the ground, with one boss accusing inspectors of behaving like “imperial envoys.”

“There is a ring of 28 cities, and pollution only needs to appear in Beijing — even just medium-level pollution — and all our factories have to shut,” said the owner of a large local factory who declined to be named, fearing repercussions. “It doesn’t matter whether you meet the standards or not, you have to shut.”

Upgrades

Over the past decade, Zibo’s ceramics makers took advantage of closures elsewhere to drive up output and seize market share in China. Zibo’s tiles were used throughout China and exported around the world. In recent years, however, the industry was weighed down by poor quality and chronic overcapacity that eroded prices and exposed the sector to European Union anti-dumping measures.

Beijing’s war on pollution served as an opportunity to tackle those problems. Now, the mainstay of the local economy is a shadow of its former self.

With annual production capacity slashed to 246 million square meters, compared with 827 million square meters before the campaign began, the government hopes surviving manufacturers can upgrade and compete with higher-end producers.

“I think the steps the government is taking now will push the costs up, and therefore the price of the goods will be up and the quality will meet international standards,” said Koszo.

But the local factory owner said the campaign has inflicted long-term damage, eroding cost advantages and driving customers away.

“If Zibo was the only place producing tiles in the whole country, then it wouldn’t be a problem. But this is an unfair policy. They are closing us but not others,” he said.

Stop-start production

Environmental officials deny the pollution crackdown or the heightened vigilance of inspectors will cause deep harm to China’s economy, saying any losses would be compensated by the long-term benefits of clean investment.

But in Zibo, even environmentally compliant manufacturers are losing customers. The factory owner said he has lost 80 percent of domestic clients and half his overseas ones, with many frustrated by the stop-start nature of production.

Zibo’s ceramics companies are not only hit by emergency closures aimed at curbing smog. A year ago, they were ordered to switch from coal to gas, but suppliers are giving priority to residential winter heating.

“People are losing patience and manufacturing is shifting to the south,” said Bryan Vadas, director at the Tile Agencies Group in Australia, which used to source products for export from Zibo but has now started buying elsewhere.

Environment Minister Li Ganjie said this year that China would not adopt an “indiscriminate one-size-fits-all approach,” adding that companies have plenty of leeway to clean up and survive.

“Only enterprises that have no clear survival value, pollute heavily and have no hope of being rectified will be shut down,” Li said.

But local enterprises have struggled to cope with repeated policy changes, with industry entry requirements adjusted four times in less than two years, the local factory owner said.

“I have worked hard to build up this business,” he said.

“Personally, I just think the government should tell us directly that they don’t want us to stay in operation. There’s no need for them to torture me.”
…

Greece’s finance minister said Saturday that an agreement had been reached between the heavily indebted country and its creditors on its progress in implementing reforms.

The agreement on the so-called Third Assessment of Greece’s latest bailout program will allow Greece to receive fresh funds next year, after implementing workplace reforms, speeding up the settlement of bad loans, tightening up rules for family subsidies and selling off state-owned power plants.

European monetary affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici also announced that a “staff-level agreement” had been reached, meaning that although creditor representatives were involved, the European Union’s finance ministers must approve the agreement, which they are expected to do Monday.

Finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos said Greece would have to vote on at least two major bills by January 22 to implement the agreement.
…

Airlines canceled more flights leaving the Indonesian island of Bali on Saturday, citing forecasts of deteriorating flying conditions because of a risk of volcanic ash from the erupting Mount Agung volcano.

A Bali airport spokesman said the airport was operating normally, but airlines such as Jetstar and Virgin Australia had opted to cancel some flights.

“Bali flying conditions expected to be clear throughout the day, but forecast for tonight has deteriorated so several flights have been canceled,” Australian budget airline Jetstar said on its Twitter account Saturday.

Thousands stranded

The erupting volcano had closed the airport for much of this week, stranding thousands of visitors from Australia, China and other countries, before the winds changed and flights resumed. 

Twenty flights were canceled Friday evening because of concerns over ash. Some airlines, including Malaysia’s AirAsia, have said they would only operate out of Bali during the day, because the ash could impair visibility at night and wind conditions in the area were unpredictable.

Airlines avoid flying through volcanic ash because it can damage aircraft engines, clogging fuel and cooling systems, hampering pilot visibility and even causing engine failure.

There are also concerns over changing weather conditions with a tropical cyclone south of Java island affecting weather and wind in the area, including for Bali, the Indonesian Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics agency said.

Consulates offer aid

Several foreign consulates have set up booths in the international departures area to assist stranded passengers.

Subrata Sarkar, India’s vice consul in Bali, told Reuters at the airport’s international departure area that they had helped around 500 passengers so far this week.

“We have advised citizens the volcano may erupt. We never say ‘please don’t come.’ But we have issued travel advisories. If it’s urgent business, then OK, but if it’s only tourism, then plans should be reconsidered,” Sarkar said.
…

President Donald Trump’s administration announced Friday that it won’t require mining companies to prove they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution, despite an industry legacy of abandoned mines that have fouled waterways across the U.S.

The move came after mining groups and Western-state Republicans pushed back against a proposal under former President Barack Obama to make companies set aside money for future cleanup costs.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said modern mining practices and state and federal rules already in place adequately address the risks from mines that are still operating.

Requiring more from mining companies was unnecessary, Pruitt said, and “would impose an undue burden on this important sector of the American economy and rural America, where most of these jobs are based.”

The U.S. mining industry has a long history of abandoning contaminated sites and leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanups. Thousands of shuttered mines leak contaminated water into rivers, streams and other waterways, including hundreds of cases in which the EPA has intervened, sometimes at huge expense.

The EPA spent $1.1 billion on cleanup work at abandoned hard-rock mining and processing sites across the U.S. from 2010 to 2014.

Since 1980, at least 52 mines and mine processing sites using modern techniques had spills or other releases of pollution, according to documents released by the EPA last year.

In 2015, an EPA cleanup team accidentally triggered a 3-million gallon spill of contaminated water from Colorado’s inactive Gold King mine, tainting rivers in three states with heavy metals including arsenic and lead.

The Obama-era rule was issued last December under court order after environmental groups sued the government to enforce a long-ignored provision in the 1980 federal Superfund law.

“It’s galling to see the Trump administration side with industry polluters over the America taxpayer,” said Bonnie Gestring with Earthworks, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

“We’ll see them back in court,” she added.

The proposal applied to hard-rock mining, which includes precious metals, copper, iron, lead and other ores. Coal mines already were required to provide assurances that they’ll pay for cleanups under a 1977 federal law

Hard-rock mining companies would have faced a combined $7.1 billion financial obligation under the dropped rule, costing them up to $171 million annually to set aside sufficient funds to pay for future cleanups, according to an EPA analysis.

The mining industry and members of Congress from Western states welcomed Friday’s announcement.

National Mining Association President Hal Quinn said the Obama proposal resulted from environmentalists using litigation to force the government into what he said was an unnecessary rule.

“Today’s action shows that reason can prevail,” Quinn said.

Hard-rock mines in the U.S. produced about $26.6 billion worth of metals in 2015, according to the association. Of those mines, the EPA had said 221 would be subject to the dropped rule.
…

The United States has formally told the World Trade Organization (WTO) that it opposes granting China market economy status, a position that if upheld would allow Washington to maintain high anti-dumping duties on Chinese goods.

The statement of opposition, made public on Thursday, was submitted as a third-party brief in support of the European Union in a dispute with China that could have major repercussions for the trade body’s future.

China is fighting the EU for recognition as a market economy, a designation that would lead to dramatically lower anti-dumping duties on Chinese goods by prohibiting the use of third-country price comparisons.

The U.S. and EU argue that the state’s pervasive role in the Chinese economy, including rampant granting of subsidies, mean that domestic prices are deeply distorted and not market-determined.

A victory for China before the WTO would weaken many countries’ trade defenses against a flood of cheap Chinese goods, putting the viability of more western industries at risk.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told Congress in June that the case was “the most serious litigation we have at the WTO right now” and a decision in China’s favor “would be cataclysmic for the WTO.”

Lighthizer has repeatedly expressed frustration with the WTO’s dispute settlement body and has called for major changes at the organization.

The USTR brief, which follows a Commerce Department finding in October that China fails the tests for a market economy, argues that China should not automatically be granted market economy by virtue of the expiration of its 2001 accession protocol last year.

“The evidence is overwhelming that WTO members have not surrendered their longstanding rights … to reject prices or costs that are not determined under market economy conditions in determining price comparability for purposes of anti-dumping comparisons,” the brief concludes.

The move comes as trade tensions between Washington and Beijing are increasing as the Trump administration prepares several possible major trade actions, including broad tariffs or quotas on steel and aluminum and an investigation into Chinese intellectual property misappropriation.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular news briefing on Friday that some countries were trying to “skirt their responsibility” under WTO rules.

“We again urge relevant countries to strictly honor their commitment to international principles and laws, and fulfill their agreed upon international pacts,” Geng said.

The Commerce Department on Tuesday launched the first government-initiated anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations in decades on Chinese aluminum sheet imports.

U.S. officials say that 16 years of WTO membership has failed to end China’s market-distorting state practices.

“We are concerned that China’s economic liberalization seems to have slowed or reversed, with the role of the state increasing” David Malpass, U.S. Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, told an event in New York on Thursday.

“State-owned enterprises have not faced hard budget constraints and China’s industrial policy has become more and more problematic for foreign firms. Huge exports credits are flowing in non-economic ways that distort markets,” Malpass said.

The brief submitted to the WTO also argues that China should be treated the same way as communist eastern European countries, including Poland, Romania and Hungary were when they joined the WTO’s predecessor organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A senior U.S. official said those countries eventually earned market economy status as evidence of state subsidies and state distortions waned. He added that going forward, WTO members wishing to use third-country price comparisons against Chinese imports would need to keep presenting evidence of economic distortions.

 
…

Senate Republicans delayed a final vote on an overhaul of the U.S. tax code late Thursday amid furious, behind-the-scenes efforts to fine-tune the legislation to satisfy a small group of fiscal hawks whose support is needed to pass one of President Donald Trump’s core campaign promises.

“Senators will continue to debate the bill tonight,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said, adding that further votes pertaining to the tax bill would occur later Friday.

Only hours earlier, Republicans appeared poised to pass a massive restructuring of federal taxes and deal a stinging defeat to Democrats. Several wavering Republicans had signaled support for the bill, including John McCain of Arizona.

Late in the day, however, three Republicans, led by Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, clung to a demand that proposed tax cuts would be pared back if future U.S. economic performance did not meet projections.

Republicans have a two-seat Senate majority. Three defections from their ranks would torpedo the bill, given unified Democratic opposition.

With time needed to rewrite portions of the bill to satisfy the Corker contingent, Republican leaders opted to postpone further votes.

Details of plan

The underlying proposal would permanently cut corporate taxes, temporarily cut taxes on wages and salaries, boost some tax deductions Americans can claim while eliminating others, and increase the U.S. national debt, which currently is more than $20 trillion.

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation issued a report Thursday estimating the Republican plan would sap federal coffers by more than $1 trillion over a decade, even taking into account more than $400 billion in new revenue generated by a projected increase in economic activity.

“The [JCT] score ends the fantasy about magical growth, about unicorns and growth fairies showing that tax cuts pay for themselves,” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said.

Republicans insisted a vibrant economy was necessary for fiscal health, and that tax cuts would promote growth.

“If this legislation is signed into law, we are going to have a smaller deficit in future years than we are on the path to have now,” Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said. “The right incentives lead to stronger growth.”

Democrats shot back that the federal deficit and income inequality both expanded after every tax cut enacted in recent decades.

“Trickle-down economics did not work under Ronald Reagan, did not work under George W. Bush,” independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats, said. “It is a fraudulent theory.”

“All we are doing is shifting the tax to our kids,” Maine Senator Angus King, another independent who also caucuses with Democrats, said. “If 5-year-olds knew what we were doing and could vote, none of us would have a job.”

Corporate tax rate

The tax plan would cut corporate taxes from a maximum rate of 35 percent to 20 percent.

“Other countries have learned how to use their tax codes to entice U.S. businesses overseas, businesses around the globe, to their country — to move away from the United States to their countries’ more competitive tax code,” Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado said. “That disparity between the U.S. tax code and foreign tax rates has literally chased jobs and wages out of this country.”

Some Democrats agreed that U.S. corporate taxes should be lowered, but insisted the Republican plan goes too far and would eventually trigger painful cuts to federal programs that benefit the poor and elderly in the future.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey accused Republicans of mounting a “con game” in which they tout tax breaks but gloss over “their brutal, vicious cuts to programs for the poorest, the sickest, the elderly, neediest in our country.”

In a sign that Republicans were confident of passing the bill, House Speaker Paul Ryan laid the groundwork for creating a bicameral committee to reconcile differences between the Senate’s legislation and a House version that was approved several weeks ago.

A unified tax plan would have to pass both chambers before it could go to the White House for Trump’s signature.
…