Some in the U.S. solar-power industry are hoping a decision this week by President Donald Trump doesn’t bring on an eclipse.

Companies that install solar-power systems for homeowners and utilities are bracing for Trump’s call on whether to slap tariffs on imported panels.

The solar business in the U.S. has boomed in recent years, driven by falling prices for panels, thanks in part to cheap imports. That has made solar power more competitive with electricity generated from coal and natural gas.

A green-technology research firm estimates that tariffs could cost up to 88,000 U.S. jobs related to installing solar-power systems.

On the other side are two U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies that argue the domestic manufacturing of solar cells and modules has been decimated by a flood of imports, mostly from Chinese companies with operations throughout Asia.

The four members of the U.S. International Trade Commission – two Republicans and two Democrats – unanimously ruled in October that imported panels are hurting American manufacturers, although they differed on exactly how the U.S. should respond. Trump has until Friday to act on the agency’s recommendations for tariffs of up to 35 percent.

Trump has wide leeway – he can reject the recommendations, accept them, or go beyond them and impose tougher tariffs. Congress has no authority to review or veto his action. Countries harmed by his decision could appeal to the World Trade Organization.

The trade case grew out of a complaint by Suniva Inc., a Georgia-based subsidiary of a Chinese company, which declared bankruptcy last April. Suniva was joined by SolarWorld Americas, the U.S. subsidiary of a German company. Both blame their difficulties on a surge of cheap imports, mostly from Asia. Suniva wants higher tariffs than those recommended by the trade commission.

The U.S. Commerce Department imposed stiff anti-dumping duties on imported panels made from Chinese solar cells in 2012. Tim Brightbill, SolarWorld Americas’ lawyer, said Chinese companies have gotten around those sanctions by assembling panels from modules produced in other Asian countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam. That makes the current trade case even more important, he said.

“It is a global case. It addresses the global import surge,” Brightbill said. “We need the strongest possible remedies from President Trump to maintain solar manufacturing here in the United States.”

A consultant for SolarWorld said tariffs on imports could create at least 12,000 jobs and up to 45,000 depending on capacity growth, and that installer jobs would also increase.

While U.S. solar manufacturing has shriveled, installations – from home rooftops to utility-scale operations – have boomed. Installations have soared more than tenfold since 2010, with the biggest jump coming in 2016, after prices for solar panels collapsed.

The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group for U.S. installers, says tariffs would drive up the cost of installing solar-power systems, leading to a drop in demand.

“We are selling energy that can be created by wind, by natural gas, by hydro, by coal, by nukes. When you raise the price of what we are selling, we can’t compete,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, the group’s president.

Jim Petersen, CEO of PetersenDean, a California company that installs solar rooftop panels mostly for residential customers, once favored tariffs on imported panels, which he found to be of inferior quality. He has changed his mind.

Petersen said tariffs could stunt his business by raising the cost of a job, which ranges from $6,000 to $60,000 or more. He said he might be forced to lay off up to 25 percent of his 3,200 installers.

“This is bad for American jobs, bad for the consumer,” he said.

In the New Mexico desert, Albuquerque-based Affordable Solar is working on a $45 million solar farm to help power a massive new data center for Facebook. The company’s president, Kevin Bassalleck, said tariffs would hurt homegrown companies that make racks, tracking systems and electronics that are part of a power system. He said jobs at those companies are hard to outsource.

“If you ever set foot in a solar module assembly factory, most of what you see are robots. There are very few people,” he said. “But if go out on to any one of our project sites like the Facebook project, you would see a small army of people working and installing things.”

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat and advocate for renewable energy, says his state could lose more than 1,500 jobs by 2020 if tariffs are imposed, and tariffs won’t revive U.S. solar manufacturing.

“The jobs that have been lost because of cheaper solar cells have already been lost,” Heinrich said in an interview. “These tariffs are then going to take the very rapidly growing, successful, good jobs that we have built in manufacturing of the other equipment, in installing, and reduce those jobs to a fraction of what they should be.”

The conventional wisdom is that Trump will impose sanctions. Developers anticipating tariffs began flooding foreign manufacturers with orders last fall, driving up prices.

Brightbill, the lawyer for SolarWorld Americas, sounded confident.

“This administration’s focus is on U.S. manufacturing and U.S. jobs and getting tough on China for the trade deficit,” he said, “so we think the administration’s goals are very well-aligned with saving U.S. solar manufacturing.”
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The exiled former leader of the Maldives said Monday that this year’s presidential election could be the last chance to extricate his country from increasing Chinese influence, which he described as a land grab in the guise of investments in island development.

Mohamed Nasheed told reporters in Sri Lanka’s capital that current President Yameen Abdul Gayoom has opened the doors to Chinese investment without any regard for procedure or transparency.

“A large emerging power is busy buying up the Maldives,” Nasheed said, explaining that he was referring to China.

China is “buying up our lands, buying up our key infrastructure and effectively buying up our sovereignty,” he said.

China considers Maldives to be key cog in the Indian Ocean in its “One Belt One Road” project along ancient trade routes through the Indian Ocean and Central Asia. The initiative is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature project and envisages building ports, railways and roads to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Africa and Europe.

Nasheed is disqualified from contesting the presidency this year due to a prison sentence. He is now living in exile in Britain after going there for medical treatment while in prison.

Nasheed said he is awaiting a decision from the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which he hopes will ask the Maldivian government to allow him to run in the election. His trial on terrorism charges and 13-year prison sentence in 2015 drew widespread international criticism for an alleged lack of due process.

The U.N. working group on arbitrary detention said Nasheed’s sentencing was unlawful.

Nasheed became the archipelago state’s first democratically elected president 10 years ago, ending a 30-year autocratic rule. However, he resigned in 2012 after public protests for ordering the arrest of a senior judge.

He lost the 2013 presidential election to Gayoom.

Maldives’ democratic gains have largely diminished under Gayoom’s presidency, with all of his potential election opponents either jailed or in exile. Nasheed says the opposition parties are in discussion to field a common candidate if he is unable to run.

“President Yameen wants a coronation; not an election. We won’t let that happen,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from the government.
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Australia has filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization that accuses Canada of placing “discriminatory” rules on the sales of imported wine.

Canada is Australia’s fourth-biggest wine market. Officials in Canberra say rules in Canada unfairly discriminate against overseas wine.

An official protest has been lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against regulations in the Canadian province of British Columbia, where wine produced locally can be sold in grocery stores but imports must be sold in a “store within a store” with a separate cash register.

Canberra’s objection also targets policies in other provinces, including Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, as well as federal practices in Canada, which could breach a WTO agreement. They mean higher prices for foreign wines, as well as other barriers to sale, according to the Australian complaint.

“Australia is seeing its market share and that market erode. That concerns me, it concerns wine exporters,” said Australian trade minister Steve Ciobo. “Potentially this could cost Australian jobs, so I want to make sure we are on the front foot about protecting Australia’s interests.”

Australia’s complaint to the WTO is similar to one made by the United States, which has accused Canada of placing unfair limits on the sale of imported wine.

In October, the U.S. said British Columbia was favoring local vineyards by giving their wine an exclusive retail outlet in grocery store shelves and cutting out U.S. competition.

A spokesman for Canada’s international trade minister said the federal government works to ensure its liquor policies “are consistent with our international trade commitments”.

Under WTO rules, Canada has 60 days to settle the dispute with Australia.

After that, Canberra could ask the WTO to adjudicate, which could result in Canada being forced to change its laws or risk trade sanctions.

 
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Iran’s supreme leader has ordered the Revolutionary Guard to loosen its hold on the economy, the country’s defense minister says, raising the possibility that the paramilitary organization might privatize some of its vast holdings.

The comments this weekend by Defense Minister Gen. Amir Hatami appear to be a trial balloon to test the reaction of the idea, long pushed by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate. Protests over the country’s poor economy last month escalated into demonstrations directly challenging the government.

But whether the Guard would agree remains unclear, as the organization is estimated to hold around a third of the country’s entire economy.

Hatami, the first non-Guard-affiliated military officer to be made defense minister in nearly 25 years, made the comments in an interview published Saturday by the state-run IRAN newspaper. He said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered both the country’s regular military and the Guard to get out of businesses not directly affiliated to their work.

“Our success depends on market conditions,” the newspaper quoted Hatami as saying.

He did not name the companies that would be privatized. The Guard did not immediately acknowledge the supreme leader’s orders in their own publications, nor did Khamenei’s office.

The Guard formed out of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect its political system, which is overseen by Shiite clerics. It operated parallel to the country’s regular armed forces, growing in prominence and power during the country’s long and ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s. It runs Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well its own intelligence operations and expeditionary force.

In the aftermath of the 1980s war, authorities allowed the Guard to expand into private enterprise.

Today, it runs a massive construction company called Khatam al-Anbia, with 135,000 employees handling civil development, the oil industry and defense issues. Guard firms build roads, man ports, run telecommunication networks and even conduct laser eye surgery.

The exact scope of all its business holdings remains unclear, though analysts say they are sizeable. The Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which long has been critical of Iran and the nuclear deal it struck with world powers, suggests the Guard controls “between 20 and 40 percent of the economy” of Iran through significant influence in at least 229 companies.

In his comments, Hatami specifically mentioned Khatam al-Anbia, but didn’t say whether that too would be considered by the supreme leader as necessary to privatize. The Guard and its supporters have criticized other business deals attempting to cut into their piece of the economy since the nuclear deal.
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Saudi Arabia’s energy minister urged global oil producing nations on Sunday to extend their cooperation beyond 2018, but said this might mean a new form of deal rather than continuing the same supply cuts that have boosted prices in recent months.

It was the first time that Saudi Arabia had publicly raised the possibility of a new form of coordination among oil producers after 2018. Their agreement on supply cuts, originally launched last January, is set to expire in December this year.

Cooperation ‘here to stay’

Khalid al-Falih, speaking to reporters ahead of a meeting later in the day of the joint ministerial committee, which oversees implementation of the cuts, said extending cooperation would convince the world that coordination among producers was “here to stay.”

“We shouldn’t limit our efforts to 2018, we need to be talking about a longer framework of cooperation,“ Falih said. ”I am talking about extending the framework that we started, which is the declaration of cooperation, beyond 2018.

“This doesn’t necessarily mean sticking barrel by barrel to the same limits or cuts, or production targets country by country that we signed up to in 2016, but assuring stakeholders, investors, consumers and the global community that this is something that is here to stay. And we are going to work together.”

Falih said the global economy had strengthened while supply cuts, of which Saudi Arabia has shouldered by far the largest burden, had shrunk oil inventories around the world. As a result, the oil market will return to balance in 2018, he said.

$70 a barrel oil

Falih and energy ministers from the United Arab Emirates and Oman noted that the rise of the Brent oil price to three-year highs around $70 a barrel in recent weeks could cause an increase in supply of shale oil from the United States.

But both Falih and UAE minister Suhail al-Mazroui said they did not think the rise in prices would hurt global demand for oil.

Kuwait’s oil minister Bakheet al-Rashidi said any discussion among producers on the future of the agreement on supply cuts would not occur Sunday, but was expected to happen at a meeting in June. OPEC and other producers led by Russia are next scheduled to meet to discuss oil policy in June.
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Afghanistan’s arts and architecture were once the pride of Asia. However, more than four decades of war have left many of the country’s traditional crafts on the verge of extinction. Now a Britain-based organization, Turquoise Mountain, is working to preserve Afghan heritage in the capital’s still surviving commercial district, Murad Khani. VOA Deewa service’s Munaza Shaheed reports from a recent trip to Kabul.
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Donald Trump, the presidential candidate, would not like the way Trump, the president, is crowing about today’s unemployment rate. He’d be calling the whole thing a “hoax.”

Trump raised a red flag about declining jobless numbers during his campaign, denying President Barack Obama any credit. Trump noted that the jobless rate masks the true employment picture by leaving out the millions who have given up looking for work.

But Trump is seeing red no more. The same stats he assailed in 2015 and 2016 now are his proof of “fantastic,” “terrific” economic progress, for which he wants the credit.

That disconnect is part of why Trump’s statements about the economy this past week, some accurate on their face, fall short of the whole truth.

Trump also made the far-fetched claim that the economy is better than it has ever been. And in a week consumed with the dustup over a government shutdown, Trump’s doctor stepped forward with a testament to the president’s health that other physicians found to be too rosy.

A look at some recent remarks away from the din of the budget battle:

Black unemployment

TRUMP: “Black unemployment is the best it’s ever been in recorded history. It’s been fantastic. And it’s the best number we’ve had with respect to black unemployment. We’ve never seen anything even close.” — remarks from Oval Office Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Yes, the black unemployment rate of 6.8 percent is the lowest on record. No, it’s not far and away superior to any time in the past. In 2000, it was within 1 point of today’s record for six months, and as low 7 percent.

As Trump was quick to note as a candidate, the unemployment rate only measures people without jobs who are searching for work. Like other demographic groups, fewer African-Americans are working or looking for work than in the past. Just 62.1 percent of blacks are employed or seeking a job, down from a peak of 66.4 percent in 1999.

The black unemployment rate would be much higher if the rate of black labor force participation was near its levels before the Great Recession.

During the campaign, Trump claimed that real unemployment then was a soaring 42 percent. It’s not quite clear, but he could have been referring to the percentage of the U.S. population without jobs — a figure that includes retirees, stay-at-home parents and students. At the time, he considered the official jobless rate a “phony set of numbers … one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.”

Women’s unemployment

TRUMP: “We’re making incredible progress. The women’s unemployment rate hit the lowest level that it’s been in 17 years. Well, that’s something. And women in the workforce reached a record high. … That’s really terrific, and especially since it’s on my watch.” — at women’s event Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Again — yes, but. The 4 percent jobless rate for women is at a 17-year low, just as it is for the overall population. But the labor force participation rate by women is lower today than in 2000. The proportion of women in the workforce is not at a record high.

Overall economy

TRUMP: “Our country is doing very well. Economically, we’ve never had anything like it.” — from Oval Office on Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Never say never. The U.S. economy had better employment stats during the 2000 tech boom, for one example. It’s enjoyed stock market surges before. It’s had blazing, double-digit annual growth, a far cry from the 3.2 percent achieved during the second and third quarters of 2017. That was the best six-month pace since 2014 — hardly the best ever.

The economy added about 170,000 new jobs a month during Trump’s first year. That was slightly below the average of 185,000 in Obama’s last year.

Trump checkup

DR. RONNY JACKSON, White House physician, on his examination of Trump: “I think he’ll remain fit for duty for the remainder of this term and even for the remainder of another term if he’s elected. … His cardiac health is excellent.” — White House briefing Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Physicians not connected with the White House have widely questioned that prediction of seven more years of healthy living and that conclusion about his heart. Cardiac functioning was indeed normal in the tests, according to the readings that were released. But Trump is borderline obese and largely sedentary, with a “bad” cholesterol reading above the norm despite taking medication for it. He’ll be 72 in June. It’s doubtful that most men that age with similar histories and findings would get such a glowing report from their doctors.

Trump has some things in his favor: “incredible genes, I just assume,” said his doctor, and no history of tobacco or alcohol use.

But “by virtue of his age and his gender and the fact he has high cholesterol and that he is in the overweight-borderline obese category, he is at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease,” said Dr. Ranit Mishori, a primary care physician and professor of family medicine at Georgetown University. “The physician was saying, yes he’s in excellent health — but yes he does have risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Which is why the comment he will remain healthy for the remainder of his term makes little sense to me. How you can make that kind of assessment from a one-point-in-time examination? Just from those four factors he is at a higher risk.”

Trump’s LDL, the bad cholesterol, registered at 143, a number his doctor wants below 120.

Jackson also said Trump has nonclinical coronary atherosclerosis, commonly known as hardening of the arteries from plaque, which is a combination of calcium and cholesterol.

That’s common in people older than 65 and can be a silent contributor to coronary heart disease. Jackson’s conclusion was based on a coronary calcium score of 133, which Mishori called “a little bit concerning” because it could show mild coronary artery disease, although how to interpret these scores isn’t clear-cut. Jackson said he consulted a variety of cardiologists about that calcium score and the consensus was reassuring.

Abortion viewpoints

TRUMP: “Americans are more and more pro-life. You see that all the time. In fact, only 12 percent of Americans support abortion on demand at any time.” — remarks Friday to opponents of abortion rights.

THE FACTS: Neither side of the abortion debate is scoring breakaway support in public opinion research. Gallup said in conjunction with its poll in June: “The dispersion of abortion views today, with the largest segment of Americans favoring the middle position, is broadly similar to what Gallup has found in four decades of measurement.” In short, half said abortion should be “legal only under certain circumstances,” identical to a year earlier, while 29 percent said it should be legal in all circumstances. The smallest proportion, 18 percent, said it should always be illegal.

Americans’ positions on abortion are sufficiently nuanced that both sides of the debate can find polling that supports their point of view. Polling responses on abortion are also highly sensitive to how the questions are asked.

But in the main, the public is not clamoring for abortion to be banned or to be allowed in all cases.

Trump’s claim that only 12 percent support abortion “on demand” may come from a Marist poll sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, which opposes abortion rights. In that poll, 12 percent said abortion should be “available to a woman any time during her entire pregnancy.”

Most polls have found that a distinct minority, though more than 12 percent, think the procedure should be legal in all cases. The percentage was 25 percent in an AP-NORC poll, 21 percent in a Quinnipiac poll, both done in December.
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Imagine if cigarettes were no longer addictive and smoking itself became almost obsolete; only a tiny segment of Americans still lit up. That’s the goal of an unprecedented anti-smoking plan being carefully fashioned by U.S. health officials.

But the proposal from the Food and Drug Administration could have another unexpected effect: opening the door for companies to sell a new generation of alternative tobacco products, allowing the industry to survive — even thrive — for generations to come.

The plan puts the FDA at the center of a long-standing debate over so-called “reduced-risk” products, such as e-cigarettes, and whether they should have a role in anti-smoking efforts, which have long focused exclusively on getting smokers to quit.

“This is the single most controversial — and frankly, divisive — issue I’ve seen in my 40 years studying tobacco control policy,” said Kenneth Warner, professor emeritus at University of Michigan’s school of public health.

The FDA plan is two-fold: drastically cut nicotine levels in cigarettes so that they are essentially non-addictive. For those who can’t or won’t quit, allow lower-risk products that deliver nicotine without the deadly effects of traditional cigarettes.

This month the government effort is poised to take off. The FDA is expected to soon begin what will likely be a years-long process to control nicotine in cigarettes. And next week, the agency will hold a public meeting on a closely watched cigarette alternative from Philip Morris International, which, if granted FDA clearance, could launch as early as February.

The product, called iQOS, is a pen-like device that heats Marlboro-branded tobacco but stops short of burning it, an approach that Philip Morris says reduces exposure to tar and other toxic byproducts of burning cigarettes. This is different from e-cigarettes, which don’t use tobacco at all but instead vaporize liquid usually containing nicotine.

For anti-smoking activists, these new products may mean surrendering hopes of a knockout blow to the industry. They say there is no safe tobacco product and the focus should be on getting people to quit. But others are more open to the idea of alternatives to get people away from cigarettes, the deadliest form of tobacco.

Tobacco companies have made claims about “safer” cigarettes since the 1950s, all later proven false. In some cases the introduction of these products, such as filtered and “low tar” cigarettes, propped up cigarette sales and kept millions of Americans smoking. Although the adult smoking rate has fallen to an all-time low of 15 percent, smoking remains the nation’s leading preventable cause of death and illness, responsible for about one in five U.S. deaths.

Anti-smoking groups also point to Big Tobacco’s history of manipulating public opinion and government efforts against smoking: In 2006, a federal judge ruled that Big Tobacco had lied and deceived the American public about the effects of smoking for more than 50 years. The industry defeated a 2010 proposal by the FDA to add graphic warning labels to cigarette packs. And FDA scrutiny of menthol-flavored cigarettes — used disproportionately by young people and minorities — has been bogged down since 2011, due to legal challenges.

“We’re not talking about an industry that is legitimately interested in saving lives here,” said Erika Sward of the American Lung Association.

But some industry observers say this time will be different.

“The environment has changed, the technology has changed, the companies have changed — that is the reality,” said Scott Ballin, a health policy consultant who previously worked for the American Heart Association.

Under a 2009 law, the FDA gained authority to regulate certain parts of the tobacco industry, including nicotine in cigarettes, though it cannot remove the ingredient completely. The same law allows the agency to scientifically review and permit sales of new tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. Little has happened so far. Last year, the agency said it would delay the deadline for manufacturers to submit their vapor-emitting products for review until 2022.

The FDA says it wants to continue to help people quit by supporting a variety of approaches, including new quit-smoking aids and opening opportunities for a variety of companies, including drugmakers, to help attack the problem. As part of this, the FDA sees an important role for alternative products — but in a world where cigarettes contain such a small amount of nicotine that they become unappealing even to lifelong smokers.

“We still have to provide an opportunity for adults who want to get access to satisfying levels of nicotine,” but without the hazards of burning tobacco, said FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb. He estimates the FDA plan could eventually prevent 8 million smoking-related deaths.

​’Smoke-free future’

Philip Morris International and its U.S. partner Altria will try to navigate the first steps of the new regulatory path next week.

At a two-day meeting before the FDA, company scientists will try and convince government experts that iQOS is less-harmful than cigarettes. If successful, iQOS could be advertised by Altria to U.S. consumers as a “reduced-risk” tobacco product, the first ever sanctioned by the FDA.

Because iQOS works with real tobacco, the company believes it will be more effective than e-cigarettes in getting smokers to switch.

Philip Morris already sells the product in about 30 countries, including Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom.

iQOS is part of an elaborate corporate makeover for Philip Morris, which last year rebranded its website with the slogan: “Designing a smoke-free future.” The cigarette giant says it has invested over $3 billion in iQOS and eventually plans to stop selling cigarettes worldwide — though it resists setting a deadline.

Philip Morris executives say they are offering millions of smokers a better, less-harmful product.

Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids still sees danger. He says FDA must strictly limit marketing of products like iQOS to adult smokers who are unable or unwilling to quit. Otherwise they may be used in combination with cigarettes or even picked up by nonsmokers or young people who might see the new devices as harmless enough to try.

“As a growing percentage of the world makes the decision that smoking is too dangerous and too risky, iQOS provides an alternative to quitting that keeps them in the market,” Myers says.

It’s unclear whether existing alternatives to cigarettes help smokers quit, a claim often made by e-cigarette supporters. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests about 60 percent of adult e-cigarette users also smoke regular cigarettes.

The case for lower nicotine

Experts who study nicotine addiction say the FDA plan is grounded in the latest science.

Several recent studies have shown that when smokers switch to very low-nicotine cigarettes they smoke less and are more likely to try quitting. But they also seek nicotine from other sources, underscoring the need for alternatives. Without new options, smokers would likely seek regular-strength cigarettes on the black market.

Crucial to the FDA proposal is a simple fact: Nicotine is highly addictive, but not deadly. It’s the burning tobacco and other substances inhaled through smoking that cause cancer, heart disease and bronchitis.

“It’s hard to imagine that using nicotine and tobacco in a way that isn’t burned, in a non-combustible form, isn’t going to be much safer,” said Eric Donny, an addiction researcher at the University of Pittsburgh.

A study of 800 smokers by Donny and other researchers showed that when nicotine was limited to less than 1 milligram per gram of tobacco, users smoked fewer cigarettes. The study, funded by the FDA, was pivotal to showing that smokers won’t compensate by smoking more if nicotine intake is reduced enough. That was the case with “light” and “low-tar” cigarettes introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, when some smokers actually began smoking more cigarettes per day.

Still, many in the anti-smoking community say larger, longer studies are needed to predict how low-nicotine cigarettes would work in the real world.

Legal risks

Key to the FDA plan is the assumption that the two actions will happen at the same time: as regulators cut nicotine in conventional cigarettes, manufacturers will provide alternative products.

But that presumes that tobacco companies will willingly part with their flagship product, which remains enormously profitable.

Kenneth Warner, the public policy professor, said he would be “astonished” if industry cooperates on reducing nicotine levels.

“I don’t think they will. I think they will bring out all of their political guns against it and I’m quite certain they will sue to prevent it,” he said.

In that scenario, the FDA plan to make cigarettes less addictive could be stalled in court for years while companies begin launching FDA-sanctioned alternative products. Tobacco critics say that scenario would be the most profitable for industry.

“It’s like Coke, you can have regular Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, we’ll sell you any Coke you like,” said Robin Koval, president of the Truth Initiative, which runs educational anti-tobacco campaigns.

But the FDA’s Gottlieb says the two parts of the plan must go together. “I’m not going to advance this in a piecemeal fashion,” he said.

When pressed about whether the industry will sue FDA over mandatory nicotine reductions, tobacco executives for Altria and other companies instead emphasized the long, complicated nature of the regulatory process.

“I’m not going to speculate about what may happen at the end of a multiyear process,” said Jose Murillo, an Altria vice president. “It will be science and evidence-based and we will be engaged at every step of the way.”
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Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet said it would launch a second-hand business this year, becoming the first big brand to announce plans to tap into a fast-growing market for pre-owned premium watches.

The company told Reuters it would launch the business at its outlets in Switzerland this year. If this proved successful, it would roll out the operation in the United States and Japan.

“Second-hand is the next big thing in the watch industry,” Chief Executive Francois-Henry Bennahmias told Reuters in an interview at the SIHH watch fair in Geneva this week.

Going to the ‘dark side’

Luxury watchmakers have hitherto eschewed the second-hand trade, fearing diluting the exclusivity of their brands and cannibalizing their sales. They have instead ceded the ground to third-party dealers.

But some are now looking to change tack, driven by an industry-wide sales slowdown combined with a second-hand market that is expanding rapidly, fuelled by online platforms like Chrono24 and The RealReal.

“At the moment, in watches, we leave it to what I call the ‘dark side’ to deal with demand for pre-owned pieces,” added Bennahmias, whose company is known for its octagonal Royal Oak timepieces that sell for 40,000 Swiss francs ($41,680) on average.

“Anybody but the brands (is selling second hand) — it’s an aberration commercially speaking,” he said.

Others may follow

Several smaller brands, including H.Moser & Cie and MB&F, have signaled interest in the second-hand trade.

“It is important to control the sale of second-hand watches to protect the owners and the value of watches already in the market by keeping the grey market in check,” H.Moser & Cie boss Edouard Meylan told Reuters.

MB&F, which plans to launch second-hand sales via its website this year, told Reuters it expected to typically give a 20-30 percent discount on second-hand watches. A spokesman said customers buying from established watch brands could feel confident they were getting genuine products in good working order and with a valid warranty.

Bigger brands Rolex, Patek Philippe, Swatch Group, Richemont and Breitling all declined to comment, when asked whether they planned to enter the second-hand market, while LVMH’s watch division was not immediately available.

Starting small

Audemars Piguet said it would initially allow customers to trade in old watches as part-exchange for new ones, and then sell the second-hand watches. It has not yet decided whether to buy second-hand watches for cash.

Experts say the second-hand luxury watches business, mostly done via online platforms or specialized retailers, is growing rapidly as a new generation of customers that values variety more than permanent ownership enters the luxury world.

In an example of the discounts offered online, a diamond-studded Audemars Piguet Royal Oak “with moderate scratches” sells for $9,450 on The RealReal, about a third of the estimated retail price.

Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Jon Cox said he estimated the size of the second-hand market at $5 billion a year in revenue, including watches sold at auction, and that it had outperformed the market for new pieces in the last couple of years.

That is still dwarfed by a new luxury watch sector worth 37 billion euros ($45.3 billion), according to consultancy Bain & Cie. However Swiss watch exports fell 3.3 percent in 2015 and 9.9 percent in 2016 before posting a modest 2.8 percent rise in the first 11 months of 2017.

US top market for pre-owned

The United States, where sales of new watches have been falling for years, is the No. 1 market for pre-owned watches, followed by Britain and Japan, said U.S. retailer Danny Govberg, who sells new watches for Rolex and other brands, but also an increasing number of second-hand timepieces.

His company said its second-hand sales had grown by 37-40 percent year-on-year over the past five years. In an example of prices, it said it listed a second-hand Audemars Piguet Royal Oak for $24,950 compared with a $32,000 retail price.

Together with a partner in Hong Kong and a Singapore-based investor, Govberg recently launched global e-commerce platform WatchBox for buying and selling pre-owned luxury watches.

“People sell us watches by the bucket,” he said.

He said many people sold watches to buy a new one so the pre-owned market was actually driving new sales, like in the car market. 

“The brands are still trying to figure it out, they don’t have the solution yet,” he said.
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Foreign investors in Vietnam will welcome a fairer, more predictable set of business practices as the government pursues the heads of local firms over corruption, analysts believe.

Some foreign companies might review their own books to ensure clean accounting, as prosecutors investigate executives in Vietnamese firms over suspected graft. Most will laud the crackdown as steps toward transparency, fairness in business and better-run local partner companies, economists predict.

“The corruption cleanup, I think so far, seems to be well received,” said Song Seng Wun, an economist with the private banking unit of CIMB in Singapore. “There is at least on the surface an effort to clean up and be more transparent in the way of doing business as a way to ensure firmer ground.”

Increased confidence among foreign factory investors, who already like Vietnam for its cheap land and labor, would help buoy the Southeast Asian country’s overall economy.

Foreign investment anchors Vietnam’s $202 billion GDP, which the Asian Development Banks expects will expand by 6.5 percent this year.

​Corruption crackdown widens

High-level graft trials swept Vietnam in much of 2017 as citizens complained vociferously about a range of violations, from bribery during traffic stops to illegal land-use deals.

In September, a court in Hanoi handed a death sentence to the former chairman of state-owned gas and oil firm PetroVietnam and sentenced an official from Vietnam-based OceanBank to life imprisonment for “roles in a multimillion-dollar graft case that has riveted the nation,” according to the local media outlet VnExpress International.

Nguyen Xuan Son, who had served as chairman of the board, received the death penalty for misappropriating $13.6 million from the bank, the news outlet said.

This month, former ruling Communist Party Politburo member Dinh La Thang went on trial along with 21 other officials from PetroVietnam and its affiliates. He is accused of causing losses of about $35 million.

Trinh Xuan Thanh, former head of PetroVietnam Construction, faces charges in this case over violating economic management regulations and misappropriating property. He generated international attention in August when the German government accused agents from Hanoi of abducting him in Berlin as he was seeking asylum.

Observers say this trial is part of Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s broader campaign against corruption.

The nonprofit advocacy group Transparency International ranked Vietnam 113 of 176 countries and regions evaluated in 2016 for perceptions of corruption. New York-based business compliance consultancy Gan Integrity cites bribery, political interference and “facilitation payments” across industries in Vietnam.

The same year the government told its legislature that numerous officials had been “neglecting their duties and failing to uphold moral standards and political virtues,” VnExpress reported.

​Local-foreign schism

Foreign-owned firms may review in-house accounting or money-handling procedures now to make sure they’re following rules in case a disgruntled employee contacts authorities, business experts say.

Western firms generally follow strict British anti-corruption laws when in Vietnam, though investors from elsewhere in Asia may use different standards, said Ralf Matthaes, managing director of Infocus Mekong Research, a market research company in Ho Chi Minh City.

Ford Motor Co. and Intel are among the best-known foreign investors. But most capital comes from South Korea, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan. Foreign-operated factories usually make goods, from garments to smartphones, for export.

“There are variances between different countries,” said Dustin Daugherty, senior associate in business intelligence with the consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City.

Overall, he said, “they are much more compliance-oriented by far. They’re much more concerned about following the rules. There are fewer corners cut.”

In 2017, registered foreign direct investment in Vietnam reached $29.68 billion as of Dec. 20, an increase of 44 percent from the same period of 2016, according to Ministry of Planning and Investment data.

Foreign and local companies often benefit from each other now rather than competing. Local suppliers provide raw material to foreign-owned factories, for example, or offer back-end support. The state gas firm and OceanBank faced no direct competition from foreign investors.

But a clean company could lose out on land deals, subsidies or government procurement if competing with a corrupt one willing to make payoffs.

Eventually state firms may take on foreign ones overseas, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia. That shift would raise the urgency for fair play in business.

Vietnamese officials, he said, are “trying to once again a renewed effort to improve the performance of state-owned enterprise, equitize and privatize them, make them more efficient so they can deal with foreign competition and go abroad and perform.”

Corruption “doesn’t seem to affect the flow of foreign investment but it hurts Vietnam,” said Thayer, who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs.
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Widow Ahatho Turuga lost 20 of her goats to drought early last year, but the shopkeeper is planning to reinvest in her herd once she has saved enough money.

“I think I will start with four goats and see how it goes,” she said, rearranging soap on the upper shelf of her shop in Loglogo, a few kilometers from Marsabit town.

She recalled how frequent droughts had left her on the edge of desperation, struggling to care for six of her own children and four others she adopted after their mother died.

But Turuga is finding it easier to cope since taking part in a rural entrepreneurship program run by The BOMA Project, a nonprofit helping women in Kenya’s dry northern areas beat extreme poverty and adapt to climate change.

The U.S. and Kenya-based organization provides two years of business and life-skills training, as well as mentorship.

Groups of three women are each given a startup grant of 20,000 Kenyan shillings ($194.55) and a progress grant of 10,000 shillings to set up a business.

After graduating, they carry on operating their businesses — mainly small shops selling groceries and household goods — either together or on their own.

The women also club together in savings groups of at least 15 people, who put away anything from 400 shillings a month each, and make loans to members at an interest rate of 5 to 10 percent.

Habibo Osman, a mother of five who was in the same group as Turuga, has been able to support her family even after divorcing her husband.

The 1,200 shillings she earns each week from the shop she established as a BOMA business has enabled her to enroll her eldest child, aged five, in nursery school. She is now hoping to save enough to buy her own land.

No more aid

Ahmed “Kura” Omar, BOMA’s co-founder and deputy country director, said his native Marsabit is one of Kenya’s driest counties. It is often hit by prolonged drought, with many families losing livestock in its mainly pastoralist economy, he added.

“Given that there is no foreseeable end to these drought patterns, we need to stop relying on food distribution and aid money, and create more sustainable, life-long solutions,” Kura told Reuters.

BOMA CEO Kathleen Colson said the program aimed to help break the cycle of dependency on aid, giving women power over their lives and the means to move out of extreme poverty.

“People need to be treated with dignity and be empowered to achieve self-sufficiency and effect change on a community level,” she said.

BOMA asks villagers to help identify the poorest women among them to participate in the training. After completing the program, they help other women, a process that raises income levels across the entire area.

Bakayo Nahiro, a widow and mother of six, belongs to the Namayana women’s saving group in Kargi in Marsabit. She has amassed 25,000 shillings in savings, but said profit margins go down in drought periods as people take shop goods on credit when they have no livestock to sell.

Money is power

Jane Naimirdik, a BOMA trainer and mentor, said communities in Marsabit are highly patriarchal, but the program helps women gain a voice in society.

The practice of grouping women in threes creates mutual accountability but also offers protection from husbands who may want to take money from them, she added.

“We once handled a case where the husband tried to take the wife’s savings by force, but we approached [him] and told him the money did not belong to his wife but to the women’s savings group and he understood,” said Naimirdik.

Moses Galore, Kargi’s village chief, said no such incidents had been reported to him, and men appreciated their wives’ financial contribution to the household.

Magatho Mifo, a BOMA business owner, said her husband was happy about her commercial activities as she could now provide for her family while he travels for days in search of pasture for his herd.

Her neighbors’ wives and children buy goods on credit when the men are away looking for grazing, and repay her when they return. This helps the community during lean times and generates more income for her business, she said.

“My husband sometimes gets angry when I attend the women’s group meetings, because they can last a long time, but once I arrive home with a bag of food or something else, all is forgotten,” said Khobobo Gurleyo, another entrepreneurship program member.

Business partnerships

BOMA mentor Naimirdik said the women are also trained in conflict management to strengthen their business partnerships.

Ideally, each group includes women of different ages so as to benefit from the experience of older members and to make the program sustainable as it passes to subsequent generations, she said.

In addition, the women receive information about family planning and the importance of having small families, as well as child and maternal health and hygiene, she added.

The BOMA Project has reported positive results in the communities where it works in Marsabit County and Samburu East, with about 15,700 women enrolled in its program since 2008.

Data collected during a 2016 exit survey of participants found that after two years, 99 percent of BOMA businesses were still open.

Members experienced a 147 percent increase in their income, and a 1,400 percent increase in their savings, alongside a 63 percent drop in children going to bed hungry.

The BOMA Project plans to expand its program across East Africa’s drylands by partnering with governments and other development agencies.

In Kenya, it is undertaking a pilot program with the government involving 1,600 women in Samburu, in addition to its existing work.

The project aims to reach 1 million women and children by 2022, said CEO Colson.
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Turkey’s main business lobby on Thursday called on the government to end the state of emergency as parliament extended it for a sixth time since it was imposed after an attempted coup in 2016.

Emergency rule allows President Tayyip Erdogan and the government to bypass parliament in passing new laws and allows them to suspend rights and freedoms. More than 50,000 people have been arrested since its introduction and 150,000 have been sacked or suspended from their jobs.

The Turkish parliament on Thursday voted to extend the state of emergency, with the ruling AK Party and the nationalist opposition voting in favor.

Rights groups and some of Turkey’s Western allies fear Erdogan is using the crackdown to stifle dissent and crush his opponents. Freedom House, a Washington-based watchdog, downgraded Turkey to “not free” from “partly free” in an annual report this week.

In order to preserve its international reputation, Turkey needs to start normalizing rapidly, Erol Bilecik, the head of the TUSIAD business lobby said.

“The first step in that regard is bringing an end to the state of emergency,” he told a meeting in Istanbul.

Parliament was due to extend emergency rule after the national security council on Wednesday recommended it do so.

The state of emergency has negatively impacted foreign investors’ decisions, another senior TUSIAD executive said.

“As Turkey takes steps towards becoming a state of law, direct investments will increase, growth will accelerate, more jobs will be created,” Tuncay Ozilhan said, adding that he hoped this would be the last extension of emergency rule.

The government says its measures are necessary to confront multiple security challenges and root out supporters of the cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom it blames for the coup attempt. Gulen has denied any involvement.

But critics fear Erdogan is pushing the NATO member towards greater authoritarianism.

Some 30 emergency decrees have been published since the failed coup. They contain 1,194 articles and cover defense, security, the judiciary, education and health, widely restructuring the relationship between the state and the citizen.

A total of 2,271 private educational institutions have been shut down in the crackdown, as well as 19 labor unions, 15 universities, 49 hospitals and 148 media outlets.

The two co-heads of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition party, parliament’s third-largest, are in jail on terrorism charges, as are several of the parties deputies.

The Turkish Journalists’ Association says about 160 journalists are in jail, most held since the failed coup. Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists called Turkey the world’s top jailer of journalists.
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Nigeria moved closer to turning the first part of a long-awaited oil industry bill into law after the lower house passed the same version of the legislation approved by the Senate last year, a lawmaker in the House of Representatives said on Thursday.

It is the first time both houses have approved the same version of the bill. It still needs the president’s signature to become law.

The legislation, which Nigeria has been trying to pass for more than a decade, aims to increase transparency and stimulate growth in the country’s oil industry.

Under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, the Petroleum Industry Bill was broken up into sections to ease passage.

The House of Representatives passed the first part called the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) on Wednesday.

“The PIGB, as passed yesterday, is the same as passed by the Senate. We have harmonized everything and formed the National Assembly Joint Committee on PIB,” Alhassan Ado Doguwa, a lawmaker in the House of Representatives, told reporters in the capital Abuja.

“Every consideration of the bills is now under the joint committee. We have broken the jinx after 17 years. We are working on the other accompanying bills.”

Doguwa is the chairman of the lower house’s Ad-hoc Committee on the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) as well as of the National Assembly Joint Committee on PIB.

The joint committee is working on two more bills as part of the PIB.

The governance section deals with management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Uncertainty over terms affecting taxation of upstream oil development has been the main sticking point holding back billions of dollars of investment for the oil industry. This will be addressed later in an accompanying bill.

Shell, Chevron, Total, ExxonMobil and Italy’s Eni are major producers in Nigeria through joint ventures with the state oil firm NNPC.

The PIGB would create four new entities whose powers would include the ability to conduct bid rounds, award exploration licenses and make recommendations to the oil minister on upstream licenses.

“It’s an unprecedented step forward. The PIB is something that has defied the last two governments,” Antony Goldman of PM Consulting said.

“The detail of what is agreed will determine the extreme to which the bill takes politics out of the sector and tackles systemic corruption.”

 
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Wall Street roared upward Wednesday, with investor enthusiasm sending all three major stock indices to record finishes, and the Dow to its first close above 26,000 points.

The blue-chip Dow gained 1.3 percent to close at 26,115.65 — just eight trading sessions after breaking the 25,000 mark — with strong showings from Boeing, IBM and Intel. 

The broader S&P 500 added 0.9 percent to close at 2,802.56, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained a full percentage point to settle at 7,298.28.

With just 11 trading days so far in 2018, Wednesday’s session marked the seventh time this year all three major indices closed at all-time highs.

Maris Ogg of Tower Bridge Associates told AFP the sustained rally was boosted by a “confluence of good news,” including strong company earnings, slashed corporate tax rates, higher worker compensation and new investment.

“This is a boost for productivity” and gave market players greater confidence, she said.

IBM gained 2.9 percent after analysts upgraded their price target for the company’s stock, and chipmaker Intel rose a similar amount, while aviation giant Boeing jumped 4.7 percent after announcing a joint venture to make aircraft seats.

Buoyant markets were comforted in midafternoon as a Federal Reserve survey portrayed the national economy growing at a “modest to moderate” pace.

Persistent cold weather in the United States helped oil prices shrug off weakness early in the weak, helping oil stocks nudge markets higher.

Exxon Mobil rose 1.2 percent, and ConocoPhillips increased 1.7 percent, while Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron each rose 0.3 percent.

The jubilant performance came despite continued pain at General Electric, which sank 4.7 percent as investors worked to evaluate component businesses within the company ahead of a possible breakup.

Goldman Sachs fell 1.8 percent after reporting a steep quarterly drop in trading income.
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Financial crime fighters at the U.S. Treasury are “aggressively” pursuing virtual currency platforms that lack strong internal safeguards against money laundering, a top official told a Senate panel on Wednesday.

With more criminals using the emerging asset class to store and transmit their ill-gotten gains, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) will pursue malfeasant virtual currency platforms even if they are located overseas, Sigal Mandelker, the U.S. Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes, told the Senate Banking Committee.

U.S.-based platforms for bitcoin and other virtual currencies are required to comply with antimoney laundering (AML) rules including filing suspicious activity reports, with around 100 such platforms registered with FinCEN. But many other countries have no such requirements.

“The real vulnerability that we all have to address is that while we have regulatory authorities in place here in the United States and we do enforce those… we need other countries to do the same,” Mandelker told the committee’s hearing on U.S. antimoney laundering laws.

Mandelker said the U.S. government would also encourage other countries to introduce stricter regulation of virtual currencies, which law enforcement officials say are attractive to criminals making illegal transactions because they can be used anonymously.

In July, the Treasury moved to shut down the website of Russia’s BTC-e exchange, one of the world’s largest bitcoin platforms, and ordered it to pay a $110 million fine for allegedly facilitating transactions involving ransomware, computer hacking, and drug trafficking, among other crimes.

A U.S. jury also indicted a Russian man in July in connection with the alleged crimes perpetrated by the platform.

Regulators and governments around the world are still debating how to address risks posed by cryptocurrencies. In recent weeks, South Korea, Japan and China have all made noises about a regulatory crackdown while officials in France vowed to investigate the emerging asset class.

Senators on Wednesday expressed concerns over the risks posed by cryptocurrencies to the global financial system with Democratic Senator Mark Warner saying the U.S. had “a lot of work to do” to get a grip on the issue.

U.S. markets regulators said this month they plan to take more aggressive enforcement action against exchanges that may be defrauding investors or allowing market manipulation.

The price of bitcoin slumped to $10,000 on Wednesday, halving in value from its peak price of almost $20,000 hit just in December, with investors gripped by fears regulators could clamp down on the volatile currency.
…

Bitcoin slid to $10,000 on Wednesday for the first time since Dec. 1, leaving the cryptocurrency down by close to half from its peak hit last month.

Bitcoin, the largest and most prominent cryptocurrency, fell more than 11 percent to hit $10,000 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, amid worries about a regulatory clampdown.

The cryptocurrency touched a peak of almost $20,000 in December — and indeed crossed over that threshold on some exchanges — but has since been roiled by several large sell-offs.
…

In a modest apartment near a Caracas slum, nutrition professor Nancy Silva and four aids spread rich, dark Venezuelan cocoa on a stone counter to make chocolate bars to be sold in local shops that cater to the crisis-hit country’s dwindling elite.

Like some 20 recently launched Venezuelan businesses, Silva uses the country’s aromatic cocoa to make gourmet bars of the kind that can fetch more than $10 each in upscale shops in Paris or Tokyo.

The oil-rich but recession-devastated nation’s Byzantine bureaucracy makes large-scale exports nearly impossible for small businesses.

As a result, most of her bars are sold locally for less than one U.S. dollar – well out of reach of millions of Venezuelans who earn less than that in a week, but reasonably priced for the well-heeled of an increasingly two-tiered economy.

But entrepreneurs who have launched new Venezuelan chocolatiers in recent years say producing gourmet bars allows them to make a living amid the collapse of a socialist economic system – and dream of exports as a golden opportunity down the road.

“Our real oil is cocoa,” said Silva, owner of the chocolatier Kirikire that in 2014 won an award from the prestigious Salon du Chocolat fair in Paris. “In Europe, they’re snatching up these bars.”

Silva faces constant operational challenges due to hyperinflation and Soviet-style product shortages. But these are offset by steady access to high-quality aromatic cocoa from a cocoa farm in eastern Venezuela owned by her family.

Her bars are sold in high-end Caracas grocery stores, delis and liquor stores, where everything from staple products to luxury goods are amply available to the well-heeled – in contrast to the long lines and bare shelves of most shops.

Silva is now focused on getting her chocolate to France, where she once sold a single kilo of her chocolate for the equivalent of 80 euros ($96), which is today the equivalent of five years of minimum wage salary in Venezuela.

Standing in her way are a range of permits such as customs authorizations and sanitary inspections that take months in Venezuela’s notoriously inefficient bureaucracy.

The Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Venezuela was the world’s leading cocoa producer at the end of the 18th century when it was still a Spanish colony, according to Jose Franceschi, who has written books about cocoa and whose great-grandfather founded the Venezuela’s gourmet Franceschi chocolate brand.

But the cocoa trade was overshadowed by the rise of the oil industry in the early 20th century. Critics say it was further weakened by state takeovers under late President Hugo Chavez, who boosted state involvement in the economy as part of promises to create a society of equals.

But since the crash of oil markets, Venezuela has become a sharply divided society where oil engineers and public hospital doctors rarely make as much as $50 a month while a small group citizens with access to even modest amounts of hard currency can afford fine dining and gourmet products.

Bean to Bar

Output of 16,000 tons per year is less than 1 percent of the global total, and less than 10 percent of the production of regional heavyweights Brazil and Ecuador.

Many gourmet bars made in the United States now prominently advertise the use of Venezuelan cocoa but generally mix in other less-desirable cocoas. Bars made in Venezuela, in contrast, are made with 100 percent local cocoa.

This gives the new Venezuelan chocolatiers a leg up as they tap into the global ‘bean-to-bar’ movement, in which chocolate makers oversee the entire process of turning cocoa fruit into sellable treats.

On the second floor of an old mansion in Caracas, economist and chef Giovanni Conversi has been making specialty chocolate for two years under the name Mantuano.

Sprinkled with sea salt or aromatic fruits from the Amazon, the chocolate bars are a hit in London, Miami and Panama City in specialty chocolate stores or shops that specialize in Latin American food.

He and four assistants produce 9,000 bars a month in Caracas. He has opened a factory in Argentina that buys cocoa from small-scale producers like Yoffre Echarri, who two decades ago inherited his grandfather’s plantation in the beach town of Caruao.

He opens the fruit to remove the beans and the accompanying sweet white pulp, which has a strong aroma of tropical fruit and then ferments the mixture in plastic bags buried underground.

That process retains more aroma than the traditional method of fermenting in wooden boxes.

He sells the beans to Venezuelan chocolatiers for less than $1 per kilo, about half the international price.

“Clients can’t get enough. Those who three months ago were asking for five kilos now call for 50,” said Echarri.

Many small chocolatiers only manage to get products to foreign markets by carrying them in suitcases on commercial flights, though well-established brands such as El Rey have formal export operations to the United States and Europe.

In Japan, El Rey is represented by the food division Japanese trading house Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Still, some 1,700 people have recently studied artisanal chocolate at the Simon Bolivar University.

“Everyone wants to give it a shot,” said Rosa Spinosa, the head of the program created two years ago.

($1 = 0.8363 euros)
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El Salvador is discussing a deal with Qatar under which Salvadoran migrants facing the loss of their right to stay in the United States could live and work temporarily in the Middle Eastern country, the government of the Central American nation said on Tuesday.

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration said that as of September 2019, it would eliminate the temporary protected status, or TPS, that allows some 200,000 Salvadorans to live in the United States without fear of deportation.

Presidential communications chief Eugenio Chicas said El Salvador was in talks to see how Salvadorans could be employed in Qatar, a wealthy country of some 2.6 million people that is scheduled to host the soccer World Cup in 2022.

“The kingdom of Qatar … has held out the possibility of an agreement with El Salvador whereby Salvadoran workers could be brought across in phases (to Qatar),” Chicas told reporters.

After an unspecified period, the Salvadorans would return home, Chicas added, without saying how many workers the program could encompass.

El Salvador’s foreign minister, Hugo Martinez, is in Qatar until Friday and said in a statement that Salvadorans could work in engineering, aircraft maintenance, construction and agriculture.

Martinez also noted that Qatar had offered to provide health services to the Central American country, which is struggling with a weak economy and gang violence.
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Ethiopian Airlines says it has finalized an agreement with Zambia to re-launch the southern African country’s national carrier.

The partnership with Zambia comes as Ethiopian Airlines is opening new routes and hubs and is acquiring new aircraft.

In a statement Tuesday, the airline said it will have a 45 percent stake in the Zambian carrier and it aims to make the Zambian capital, Lusaka, its newest aviation hub. The remaining 55 percent will be acquired by the Zambian government which is aiming to revive the country’s aviation sector after Zambia Airways ceased operations on January 2009.

“The launching of Zambia Airways will enable the traveling public in Zambia and the Southern African region to enjoy greater connectivity options,” said Ethiopian Airlines CEO, Tewolde Gebremariam. “It is only through partnerships among African carriers that the aviation industry of the continent will be able to get its fair share of the African market, currently heavily skewed in favor of non-African airlines.”

Gebremariam told The Associated Press earlier this month his company is also exploring opportunities in other African countries including Mozambique, Djibouti and Congo.

Ethiopian Airlines currently operates from hubs in Lomé, Togo with ASKY Airlines and in Lilongwe, Malawi. Its main hub is in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Ethiopian Airlines currently flies to more than 100 destinations. Airline officials say that recent currency devaluations in some African countries and a subsequent rise in jet fuel prices could hamper its profits.
…

Bitcoin slid as much as 18 percent on Tuesday to a four-week low, as fears of a regulatory crackdown on the market spread after reports suggested it was still possible that South Korea could ban trading in cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin’s slide triggered a selloff across the broader cryptocurrency market, with biggest rival Ethereum down 23 percent on the day at one point, according to trade website Coinmarketcap, and the next-biggest, Ripple, plunging by as much as a third.

Bitcoin traded as low as $11,191.59 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange. By 1400 GMT it has edged up to $11,650, but that was still down more than 14 percent, leaving it on track for its biggest one-day fall since September.

Jamie Burke, chief executive of Outlier Ventures, a venture capital firm that is one of the biggest holders of top-10 cryptocurrency IOTA, said the belief the market was overdue a correction was making traders jittery and that was exacerbating the scale of the moves.

“Anybody that understands the technology knows there’s going to be a correction – it’s going to be a big correction and it’s going to be indiscriminate, because there are no established fundamentals for anybody to distinguish between where there is and isn’t value,” Burke said.

“There’s no way you can rationalize that there’s any value in the market at the moment; everything is significantly overpriced,” he added. Burke holds a number of top-20 cryptocurrencies in a personal capacity.

South Korean news website Yonhap reported that Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon had told a local radio station that the government would be coming up with a set of measures to clamp down on the “irrational” cryptocurrency investment craze.

South Korea said on Monday that its plans to ban virtual coin exchanges had not yet been finalized, as government agencies were still in talks to decide how to regulate the market.

Further China Crackdown

That came amid news that a senior Chinese central banker had said authorities should ban centralized trading of virtual currencies and prohibit individuals and businesses from providing related services.

China shut down exchanges operating on the mainland last year – a move that also sparked a selloff, though the market later recovered.

“It’s mainly been regulatory issues which are haunting (bitcoin), with news around South Korea’s further crackdown on trading the driver today,” said Think Markets chief strategist Naeem Aslam, who holds what he described as “substantial” amounts of bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple.

“But we maintain our stance. We do not think that the complete banning of cryptocurrencies is possible,” he said.

Cryptocurrencies enjoyed a bumper year in 2017 as mainstream investors entered the market and as an explosion in so-called initial coin offerings (ICOs) – digital token-based fundraising rounds – drove demand for bitcoin and Ethereum.

The latest tumble leaves bitcoin down around 40 percent from a record high near $20,000 hit in mid-December, wiping about $130 billion off its total market value – the unit price multiplied by the number of bitcoins that have been released into the market.

A director at Germany’s central bank said on Monday that any attempt to regulate cryptocurrencies must be on a global scale as national or regional rules would be hard to enforce on a virtual, borderless community.

The latest plunge in the market came as wealth management firm deVere Group, which has $12 billion under advisement, said it was launching a cryptocurrency app that would allow users to store, transfer and exchange five of the biggest digital coins, citing “soaring global demand”.
…

A Brazilian court on Monday ordered the world’s largest iron ore miner Vale SA to repair environmental damages its operations caused in land belonging to a community of descendants of escaped slaves in northern Brazil.

Federal prosecutors announced the ruling in a statement that said the electricity transmission lines and a bauxite pipeline damaged soil and silted up rivers in the Moju “quilombola” territory in the northeast of  Pará state.

The court also ordered Vale to set up a project to generate income for the 788 families affected by the company’s operations and compensate them with cash until it was implemented.

No value was given for the cost of the reparations Vale must pay. The Rio de Janeiro-based company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a separate case, federal prosecutors recommended the suspension of Vale’s dredging operations in the Sepetiba Bay in Rio de Janeiro state after a virus killed 200 gray porpoises.

Vale said it had not been officially informed about the recommendation. It said in a statement that all its operations in the bay where it has a terminal are duly licensed and monitored by the authorities.
…

The European Union’s trade tsar has no idea what Donald Trump will tell his audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, but she is clear what the EU’s message to the U.S. president will be.

America is shooting itself in the foot by withdrawing from global leadership on trade, Cecilia Malmstrom, the 49-year-old Swede who has served as Europe’s trade commissioner for the past three years, told Reuters.

Under Malmstrom’s direction, the EU has juggled a dizzying array of trade talks over the past year. In July it clinched a preliminary deal with Japan. And early this year it hopes to seal agreements with Mexico and the Latin American Mercosur bloc.

The retreat of the United States under Trump has played a big role in this push, Malmstrom says. Countries around the world are desperate for new trading partners, and the EU, confident again after years of economic crisis and Britain’s vote in 2016 to leave the bloc, has eagerly filled the gap.

“We have shown that we have overcome that acute crisis, so many countries are turning to Europe for leadership and for partnership,” said Malmstrom, who will also be in Davos.

“With other countries we are now setting the standards and that is also why it is bad for the U.S. to withdraw because there are standards set now and they will be global.”

Since coming into office one year ago on a promise to put America first, Trump has pulled Washington out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), threatened to scrap the 90s-era North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and to introduce steel tariffs that could hit European allies as well as China.

But Malmstrom singled out Washington’s confrontational stance towards the World Trade Organization (WTO) as particularly worrying.

The Trump administration has blocked the appointment of judges to a WTO body that rules on trade disputes. If the United States does not shift its stance, that body could cease to function altogether, Malmstrom said.

She described a WTO ministerial meeting in December as a “disgrace.” The meeting in Buenos Aires failed to reach any agreements, such as on ending fishing subsidies, and descended into acrimony, in the face of stinging criticism from the United States.

“We want American leadership in the world. They shouldn’t disengage,” Malmstrom said.

Trump will be the headliner in Davos one year after Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to the ski resort in the Swiss Alps and signalled a readiness to assume a leadership role in free trade created by an inward-looking Washington.

Malmstrom described the Xi speech as “brilliant” in terms of content and timing – just three days before Trump’s inauguration.

But she said there had been no change in China’s behavior towards Europe since then. If anything, the hurdles to European investment in China have grown.

The EU seemed to have gained a free trade ally in the world’s second largest economy, but Malmstrom said Beijing had not backed up Xi’s speech with action.

“Maybe he really believes in these things, but we haven’t seen it yet in China,” she said. “We want to work in China and we want China to invest here, but the level playing field is not there. We haven’t seen anything concrete in our trade relationship.”
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Indigenous women in Latin America must be at the center of efforts to adapt agriculture to deal with the threat of climate change and help tackle hunger and poverty, said a top U.N. food official.

Jose Graziano da Silva, head of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said women were too often left out of development schemes, despite expert knowledge of the environment passed down through generations.

“They have fundamental roles in the spiritual, social and family arenas and are seed guardians — critical carriers of specialized knowledge,” Graziano da Silva told a Mexico City forum.

“Their social and economic empowerment is … a necessary condition to eradicate hunger and malnutrition in their communities,” he said, according to a statement.

Poor health care, malnutrition and illiteracy are other issues faced by indigenous women who generally have little access to the political arena, he said.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, indigenous people comprise 15 percent of those affected by hunger and extreme poverty, despite making up just 8 percent of the population in the region where 45 million identify as indigenous.

Women suffer the most. Wage levels for indigenous women in the region are often four times less than those for men, said the United Nations’ food agency.

Indigenous women can play a key role in adapting agriculture and diet to cope with climate change, said the FAO, with traditional indigenous land comprising 22 percent the world’s territory and 80 percent of its biodiversity.

The organization said it would ramp up projects to boost indigenous women’s leadership in countries including Bolivia, Paraguay, India and the Philippines this year.

In Mexico, traditional healer and Nahua speaker Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez is a candidate in July’s election, the first indigenous woman to run for the country’s presidency.
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Crude oil prices reached a 30-month high this week. But the government agency that analyzes and disseminates energy information says the rally may have run its course. The Energy Information Administration predicts U.S. crude prices will stabilize to about 55 dollars a barrel for West Texas Crude and 60 dollars a barrel for Brent Crude, with slightly higher prices for both in 2019. One energy expert disagrees and says oil prices are on their way up. Mil Arcega explains.
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