Hundreds of Egyptians protested around the country on Tuesday, blocking roads and surrounding government offices, after a change to the way bread rations are managed raised fears that the government was cutting food subsidies by the back door.

Bread subsidies are an explosive issue in Egypt, where over 70 million receive state rations. Core inflation in the country has soared above 30 percent since Egypt floated its currency in November, securing a $12 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to support a government austerity program.

Protests began on Monday after changes to a bread subsidy scheme left some people without their ration.

Unrest grew on Tuesday, with angry crowds gathering in the port city of Alexandria, in at least one poor Cairo neighborhood, and several other cities across Egypt.

Supply—Uprising became the top trending Twitter hashtag for Egypt as Egyptians posted pictures of confused people outside bakeries and in the street.

“We were surprised when the bakers refused to give us bread with the excuse that the Supply Ministry reduced their rations,” said Ahmed Faraj, an Alexandria resident.

Most protests drew small crowds and dissipated quickly, but offered the first major evidence of public anger over rising living costs.

“We are suffering from high prices. We have nothing left to live on but bread and now the government wants to deprive us of it,” said Samia Darwish, a 50-year-old homemaker in Alexandria.

Sale of bread subsidized

Egypt operates a system in which each family receives a plastic card to buy five subsidized loaves per person per day.

The government then pays bakeries a subsidy per loaf.

Bakers also receive “gold cards” to sell bread to individuals without a smartcard — generally those waiting for cards.

The Supply Ministry issued a statement on Monday denying it planned to cut bread subsidies after local media reported that rations would go from five to three loaves a day.

However, last week it did reduce the amount bakers can sell via the “gold card” scheme, according to a document seen by Reuters. The move is likely aimed at reducing misuse of those cards, which costs the government hundreds of millions of pounds a year.​

Bread sales lead to black market

A Reuters report last year revealed flaws in the system allow bakers to overstate sales to profit from the black market, where they sell subsidized flour to private bakeries at a profit, costing the government billions of pounds.

The dangers are not lost on President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, in a country where economic discontent has helped unseat two presidents in five years. He has promised prosperity and stability in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, and has committed to protecting the poorest from the pain of austerity.

“We want the president to know that the poor are dying of the high prices,” said Gamal Ahmed, from Alexandria.

Abdel Aal Darwish, the head of the bakeries division at the Alexandria Chambers of Commerce, called on the government to reverse the move and issue all Egyptians with cards.
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Brazil’s worst-ever recession intensified unexpectedly in the final quarter of 2016, data showed on Tuesday, frustrating hopes for signs of a recovery and stepping up pressure on President Michel Temer and the central bank to do more to promote growth.

Brazil’s gross domestic product contracted by 3.6 percent last year, statistics agency IBGE said, following a 3.8 percent drop in 2015. The nation’s two-year downturn is the longest and deepest on record for Latin America’s biggest nation.

The economic contraction worsened in the fourth quarter, with a steeper-than-expected decline of 0.9 percent, following a 0.7 percent drop in the previous three months.

Investment tumbled 10.2 percent in 2016, in a sharp drop that is partly blamed by economists on Brazil’s chronically high interest rates.

The central bank started to cut its benchmark rate from a decade-high of 14.25 percent in October and is expected to take it to single digits this year.

The disappointing data fueled calls for the central bank to accelerate the pace of rate cuts, currently running at 75 basis points per meeting. Yields on rate futures showed an increasing chance of a steeper cut when the bank makes its next scheduled policy decision in April, according to traders.

“There’s a lot of idle capacity in the economy and that’s a reason for the central bank to move faster,” said Cristiano Oliveira, chief economist at  Sao Paulo-based Banco Fibra, responding to Tuesday’s data.

Slow growth rate expected

The majority view among economists is that Brazil will emerge from recession in 2017, but at a very slow growth rate of 0.5 percent, which would be insufficient to reduce unemployment.

The government has forecast growth of 1 percent.

Some economists tempered their views even further following the dismal performance in 2016.

“We see zero growth in 2017, or maybe just a little bit above that,” said Carlos Kawall, chief economist at Banco Safra, in Sao Paulo. “We should not see any big recovery this year; we will have to wait until 2018.”

Green shoots sprouting slowly

Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles rebuked that pessimism by saying after the figures were announced that Brazil is “clearly” starting to grow again, based on indicators ranging from cardboard and motorcycle production to supermarket sales.

A revised forecast for economic growth in 2017 will be announced by March 22, Meirelles said, taking into account the worse-than-expected fourth-quarter data.

Betting that investors’ growing confidence in Brazil would hold, the government reopened on Tuesday a 10-year global bond seeking to raise at least $500 million.

Signs of an imminent recovery include a rebound in vehicle traffic, which appears to have hit bottom in the fourth quarter, according to a senior executive at CCR SA, the country’s biggest toll road operator.

Car output also jumped nearly 15 percent in February, according to the national automakers’ association Anfavea, and farmers hope to harvest a record soy crop this year.

None of that, however, is likely to make for anything more than a shallow and underwhelming recovery, according to Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos.

“A very weak labor market backdrop and still high levels of household and corporate indebtedness should limit the strength of the recovery,” Ramos said.

Tax hikes not ruled out

The downturn has left nearly 13 million people unemployed, caused a record number of bankruptcy filings and led agencies to strip Brazil of its hard-won investment grade credit rating.

It also contributed to the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff last year and to the low approval ratings of her successor, President Temer, whose agenda of budget and pension reforms has helped fuel a strong rally in Brazilian equities and currency since last year.

If the economy continues to disappoint, tax revenues could fall short of expectations, putting the country’s budget target at risk. Meirelles said the government could raise taxes or cut spending further if necessary to achieve its 143.1 billion reais ($45.87 billion) primary deficit goal.

Although this recession has been the deepest in Brazil’s history, it has not been marked by the financial upheaval seen in other crises in the country’s turbulent economic past.

Previous downturns were often accompanied by sovereign debt crises, capital flight and hyperinflation, none of which happened during the current slump.
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Swiss firms from food and beverage giant Nestle to banking groups UBS and Credit Suisse pledged new goals on Tuesday for supporting and promoting women.

While Switzerland has Europe’s second-highest proportion of women in the workforce, it trails global standards on gender diversity in boardrooms and in management positions.

Consultancies EY, Deloitte and PwC and staffing agency Adecco all committed to increase female leadership in their Swiss businesses to between 20 and 35 percent by 2020.

This follows a recent survey by EY that found Swiss firms with at least 20 percent women in top management rated their financial situation as better, while studies by UBS have found companies with greater gender diversity consistently outperform.

Women represent just 6.7 percent of Swiss executives, according to Credit Suisse, compared with a global average of 13.8 percent and European average of 12.6 percent. They occupy one out of eight board seats, half the European average.

Hiring plans

Swiss women-in-business initiative Advance has spearheaded the move, with Credit Suisse’s domestic business saying it would strive for equal hiring in campus recruitment, while Nestle committed to grow the proportion of women in management positions worldwide every year.

Siemens Switzerland pledged to reach equal pay in the next three years, while IKEA Switzerland improved its paid paternity leave to two months.

Switzerland was the second-to-last European country to embrace women’s suffrage in 1971, more than half a century after Norway, Germany, Canada and the United States. And it took two decades more for the Swiss supreme court to force one canton to let women take part in local votes in 1990.

IKEA Switzerland head Simona Scarpaleggia, one of just four female CEOs out of 78 in Credit Suisse’s study, helped found Advance in 2013 and says the Swiss system needs to change to make things more straightforward for working mothers.

“Either you give up your time, which happens most often, or you get private support, which is very expensive. It wouldn’t be so complicated to change this system, as many other countries are doing,” said Scarpaleggia, who also co-chairs the U.N. High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, said.

Policy positions

The Swiss government hopes women will help fill a growing shortfall of skilled labor, but it eschews many policies, such as quotas and more parental leave, that promote women elsewhere.

It is among the handful of developed countries that give new fathers no time off, meaning infant care falls largely on women.

High child care costs mean many new mothers opt out of their professions or return part time, generally not returning to full time until children reach age 9, statistics show.

Many women step off the ladder later in their careers, tired of being pigeonholed and passed over for promotions.

“Companies are surprised that, if they look at the statistics, it’s often women between 45 and 50 who are leaving,” said Nia Joynson-Romanzina, who left UBS in 2015 to found consultancy iCubed.

The Advance initiative is seeking to “change Switzerland one company at a time,” Citi Country Officer Kristine Braden said.

“I’m quite optimistic because, despite the conservative approach, Swiss people are very pragmatic,” Scarpaleggia said.
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The U.S. trade deficit in January hit the highest level in nearly five years.

Tuesday’s report from the Commerce Department says the gap between what Americans sell to foreigners and what U.S. customers buy from overseas grew by 9.6 percent for the month to $48.5 billion.

U.S. exports rose six-tenths of a percent, as American companies sold more cars overseas, but U.S. commercial aircraft sales faltered. Export gains were overwhelmed by a surge in imported cell phones and autos, along with rising costs for oil imports.

The head of the White House National Trade Council, Peter Navarro wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently that the trade deficit hurts economic growth and could be a threat to national security.

In a note to journalists, analysts at Wells Fargo Securities say growing exports and imports are also a sign of improving economies in the United States and key trading partners. They blame some of the trade gap on the strength of the U.S. dollar, which means American-made products are more expensive, and harder to sell on global markets.

Other concerns came to light in a survey of hundreds of economists across the nation by the National Association for Business Economics. Many of these experts said expected increases in government spending could increase the deficit.

In a VOA interview, survey committee chair Richard DeKaser said members have concerns about efforts to limit immigration to the United States, and would support allowing more arrivals for highly-skilled migrants.

Housing market

A separate report from a private company says U.S. home prices jumped a strong 6.9 percent during the past year. Tuesday’s report from CoreLogic also forecasts a 4.8 percent price gain over the next year, which is well above the expected rate of inflation. The authors say prices are rising because of economic recovery, limited supply of homes for sale, and continued low mortgage interest rates.

Economists have been watching the housing market with particular care since severe problems in this sector contributed to the Great Recession.
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The secret to better job satisfaction may be as easy as having a healthy sex life, a new study suggests.

According to researchers at Oregon State University, married employees who “prioritized sex at home” were better workers and enjoyed work more.

On the other hand, the research showed that people who bring work-related stress home “impinges on employees’ sex lives,” leading researchers to recommend leaving work at the office.

The reason sex helps workers enjoy work more is that it releases dopamine and oxytocin, both of which are mood enhancers the effects of which can last into the next day. They added that the effects can last for at least 24 hours and worked equally among men and women.

“We make jokes about people having a ‘spring in their step,’ but it turns out this is actually a real thing and we should pay attention to it,” said Keith Leavitt, an associate professor in OSU’s College of Business and an expert in organizational behavior and management. “Maintaining a healthy relationship that includes a healthy sex life will help employees stay happy and engaged in their work, which benefits the employees and the organizations they work for.”

“This is a reminder that sex has social, emotional and physiological benefits, and it is important to make it a priority,” Leavitt said. “Just make time for it.”

For their study, researchers followed 159 married employees for two weeks and had them fill out two brief questionnaires each day. Those who had sex reported better moods the next day, particularly in the morning, which allowed them to be more engaged.

“Making a more intentional effort to maintain a healthy sex life should be considered an issue of human sustainability, and as a result, a potential career advantage,” Leavitt said. “Employers [in the U.S.] can steer their employee engagement efforts more broadly toward work-life balance policies that encourage workers to disconnect from the office,” he said.

The French recently enacted a law that bars after-hours email and gives employees a ‘right to disconnect.’

“Technology offers a temptation to stay plugged in, but it’s probably better to unplug if you can,” he said. “And employers should encourage their employees to completely disengage from work after hours.”

The study was published this month in the Journal of Management.
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