Mexico’s foreign minister on Wednesday criticized hold-ups in the flow of goods and people at the U.S-Mexico border, and said he planned to discuss the matter with U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials later in the day.

After days of traffic delays at sections of the border that have alarmed businesses, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the disruptions were raising costs for supply chains in both countries.

“Slowing down the flow of people and goods at the northern border is a very bad idea,” Ebrard said in a post on Twitter, using unusually frank language on an issue that has caused constant friction between Mexico and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Ebrard said his ministry would get in contact on Wednesday with the new leaders of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department’s former secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who had overseen Trump’s bitterly contested immigration policies during her tenure, stepped down at the weekend.

The border slowdowns have occurred after Trump late last month threatened to close the frontier if Mexico did not halt a surge in undocumented migrants reaching the United States.

On Monday, a judge in San Francisco said the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum seekers to Mexico while their claims worked through a backlogged immigration court system was not authorized by U.S. law.

The White House said on Tuesday it would appeal the ruling and that its policy was part of a “cooperative program extensively negotiated with the government of Mexico.”

However, in a sign of ongoing tensions over the issue, Mexico’s foreign ministry noted afterwards that the return of the migrants was a “unilateral” measure with which it did not agree but was allowing on a “temporary” basis.

On Wednesday morning, only one of six lanes for commercial vehicles was open at the Bridge of the Americas border crossing between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, according to online data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

 
…

Cloaked in black and carrying white buckets filled with artificial blood, the group filed in silence to the entrance of London’s Downing Street, behind a troupe of child and teen activists.

Ringing a bell as they walked, the 45 adults — all participants in Extinction Rebellion, a protest movement seeking rapid action to curb global warming — formed an arc facing the British prime minister’s residence and poured out their buckets, turning the surrounding road into a sea of red.

The liquid, they said, symbolized “the blood of our children,” on the hands of politicians who have failed to act on climate change and stem its impacts, from worsening floods and droughts to growing poverty and water and food shortages.

Among those at the protest in March were three members of Christian Climate Action, a small group of retirees and students who say their religious faith is compelling them to take an increasingly active role in trying to stop climate change.

Climate change “is leading to a social collapse. We need to respond in more caring and collective ways,” said Phil Kingston, 83, a Catholic church member from Bristol who took a train to London to participate in the Downing Street demonstration.

As climate change protests pick up in London and around the world, they are drawing an increasingly broad range of protesters, from students following in the footsteps of 16-year-old Swedish “school strike” leader Greta Thunberg to grandparents concerned about the growing risks their grandchildren face.

Religious groups — from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and other faiths — are among those joining the protests, out of concern, in some cases, about the moral and spiritual implications of human-driven climate change.

Christian Climate Action took shape about six years ago, initially with just a handful of active members from a range of Christian denominations, said Ruth Jarman, 55, one of the group’s original members.

But as it has become involved with Extinction Rebellion — an emerging movement that uses nonviolent protest to demand action on climate change — interest in the Christian action group is growing, especially among younger generations, members say.

“Finding Extinction Rebellion really fitted in with our values so well. It’s very clear on using nonviolence, being motivated by values of love and care rather than anger,” said Jarman, who lives in Hartley Wintney in Hampshire.

Since November, Christian Climate Action activists have disrupted traffic, spray-painted government buildings with political messages and the Extinction Rebellion hourglass symbol, blockaded entrances — and prayed for action, Jarman said.

An Anglican parishioner, she has been arrested five times for those protests — a risk not all Christians are willing to take, she admitted.

But “for me, it’s the first verse of the Bible that hits home: If God created all that is, what does it mean for us to be destroying it?” she asked. “For us to be participating in its destruction is sacrilegious — not something believing Christians should be doing.”

Faith in action

Faith groups, in Britain and around the world, have taken a growing role in pushing action on climate change, with some churches, mosques and temples pulling their investments out of fossil fuels, championing efforts to cut food waste and raising awareness about climate risks.

Last July, the Church of England’s governing body, the General Synod, voted to disinvest by 2023 from fossil fuel companies that fail to meet the aims of the Paris climate agreement.

Under that 2015 deal, world governments agreed to hold global average temperature hikes to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.

Because faith groups around the world control trillions of dollars in assets, such pledges can help drive action in companies that fear losing investment, or push much-needed cash to greener investments.

Experts say religions, which connect with people’s emotions and personal lives, could help mobilize them in the fight against climate change where facts and politics have failed.

Kingston, of Christian Climate Action, points to Laudato Si – Pope Francis’ 2015 papal encyclical that called on the world to unite against climate change impacts, particularly on the poor and powerless – as one of his motivations for taking action.

Most members of Christian Climate Action have a history of campaigning against climate change by writing letters to politicians, doing charity work or walking in marches, Jarman said.

But over time, they saw their efforts produce little action — one reason the group has stepped up its tactics, she said.

“As Christians, we should be prepared to make any sacrifice necessary to serve and protect God’s creation,” Jarman said.

Father Martin Newell, 51, a Catholic priest who works with the Congregation of the Passion, a religious order devoted to serving vulnerable communities, has been committed to activist causes for decades, having previously advocated against nuclear arms and weapons trading.

These days, however, Newell — who lives at Birmingham’s Austin Smith House, a shelter for refugees and asylum seekers — is also working with the Christian Climate Action.

“I realized when someone asked what keeps me up at night [that] I was having nightmares about climate change,” he said.

When the group asked Newell, who has been arrested many times as part of protests, how to get started taking a more active role in climate campaigning, “I thought this is maybe an answer to my prayer,” he said.

The priest has since educated members of the group on how to effectively use civil disobedience tactics and has become an active member of the group.

In late February, Christian Climate Action held a training session in London that featured everything from prayer and discussions about what the Bible says about non-violent action to practice with protest tactics, according to a flier for the event.

At such events, 83-year-old Kingston said he has “gained much clarity about the nuances of non-violent direct action,” including how to best interact with the police and other authorities.

“Being respectful in word and deed to all persons is the essential component,” he said.

Disapproval

Not all of the Christian Climate Action protesters have had the support of their churches, and some say they have faced strong disapproval.

Kingston’s priest, for instance, was “rather horrified” when the parishioner was sent to court in 2016 for criminal damage, stemming from a protest during which Jarman and Newell were also arrested and fined, Kingston said.

The activists had targeted the Department of Energy and Climate Change building in London, to point out that the U.K. government’s action at home on climate change didn’t match its rhetoric at talks leading up to the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“We painted whitewash — it’s from the Bible, it comes from Jesus talking about hypocrisy — on the building, and we painted in black paint, ‘Department for Extreme Climate Change,'” Jarman said.

“Then we kneeled down on the pavement and prayed, and got arrested.”

Kingston subsequently was banned him “from any kind of public face with the parish” by his priest at the time, the activist said.

But he has pushed ahead, contacting other parishioners through his private email and becoming increasingly public with his views.

“I don’t care — the stakes are too high. The church should be much more upfront and brave,” he said.

The protester said he began seeing climate change as a serious threat when his first grandchild was born nearly two decades ago.

He realized that “my grandchildren and all their generations in front of them … are voiceless” despite being likely to face climate change’s worst impacts, he said.

“It’s a justice issue. The upcoming generations need life, and we are creating tremendous suffering” by destabilizing the planet’s climate, he said.

He said having older protesters working alongside young activists in the Extinction Rebellion protests has its particular benefits.

“What we’ve realised is neither the corporations nor the government want to arrest us,” he said. “We are a liability in terms of health.”

The activists say their protests aim to achieve a few things in particular: big cuts in Britain’s climate-changing emissions, more honesty from politicians about climate threats, and the creation of a formal parliamentary “Citizen’s Assembly” to discuss needed changes to climate policy and advise the government.

The assembly is crucial in order to “do what is right rather than what is politically acceptable,” Jarman said.

But the protest movement is having a secondary effect as well, Jarman said, in bringing together people who might not otherwise have met and joined forces.

Mothiur Rahman, a legal strategist who works with Extinction Rebellion, for instance, said protesters who are members of faith groups have asked their churches to house out-of-town participants arriving to take part in a new round of protests set to begin April 15.

“One church has given their support and will have their doors open for us to sleep over in, and I am speaking to a mosque as well,” Rahman added.

Newell said he thinks faith-based protesters have found a solid welcome among more traditional environmental activists, and have a role to play as climate protests grow.

“The people who started Extinction Rebellion, and environmentalists, tend to be more secular. But they understand faith and trusting God and are open to people joining them,” the priest said.

“We appreciate them and they appreciate us,” he said.

 
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After generations of trawling the same waters, the fishermen on the coast of Tamil Nadu in southeastern India know where to cast a net or park a boat without resorting to signs or GPS maps.

But their customary rights over this common space – a right won by families who have fished it for centuries – are under threat as the demands of modern life threaten age-old livelihoods and their once fertile habitat.

First, families’ land and precious sea access was usurped by factories and ports. Now, their rights are under fresh attack by a newly amended Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) law.

“Governments have treated the coastline as an empty space that economic actors can take over, forgetting that it is common property of coastal villages, towns and cities,” said Kanchi Kohli, a researcher at think tank Center for Policy Research.

“The changes to the law negate the socio-ecological uniqueness of this space and opens it up to mindless real estate development, mass-scale tourism and industry,” she said.

R.L. Srinivasan, who lives in Kaatukuppam – one of half a dozen villages by Ennore Creek near the city of Chennai – is typical of the fishermen under threat.

The Ennore Creek is drained by two seasonal rivers that empty into the Bay of Bengal through a network of canals, wetlands, salt marshes and mangroves, where villagers once harvested salt, caught crabs and filled their nets with fish.

Home to about 300,000 people, the area was protected by state and federal coastal zone laws, which banned construction, reclamation or alteration of the course of the water bodies.

But as Chennai expanded and industries fled the city, the state greenlighted ports, coal-powered thermal plants, and petroleum and chemicals factories, which destroyed the salt pans, polluted the water and killed the fish and the crabs.

“The Creek has been our life, our livelihood for generations,” said Srinivasan.

“Yet for the government, it is just land that can be used as an industrial zone and a dumping ground. The lives and livelihoods of the fishers do not matter,” he said.

Millions at risk

It is a scene playing out in thousands of coastal settlements dotting India’s 7,500-kilometer- (4,660 mile-) shoreline, from remote rural hamlets to bustling urban colonies.

With reduced no-development zones, and laxer rules for real estate and commercial projects, the new CRZ opens up common-use spaces such as beaches, salt marshes, and boat parking areas for tourism and industry, according to analysts.

More than 4 million people in India are estimated to make a living from fishing and related activities. They are often among the nation’s earliest inhabitants, yet have few formal rights over the land or the water on which they depend.

Amid urbanization and industrialization, India’s coasts have become dumping grounds for sewage, garbage and factory waste, even as they fight the rising threat of erosion and flooding.

The Congress party-led government sought to protect the fishing community and preserve their ecology by enacting the CRZ law in 2011.

But several states diluted it, so as to promote tourism and industry and generate jobs. In 2014, a new government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a review of the CRZ.

Despite protests from coast dwellers and environmentalists, a cut in the no-development zones was announced in January, allowing eco-tourism and waste treatment in sensitive areas.

The government says the law was amended to “conserve and protect the unique environment of coastal stretches and marine areas, besides livelihood security to the fisher communities and other local communities in coastal areas.”

But life is about to get much harder for Srinivasan and his fellow anglers, said Pooja Kumar at the advocacy Coastal Resource Center in Chennai.

“Coastal communities are hanging by a thread,” she said. “The communities have fished and lived in these areas for generations, but with no record of their common spaces, their fishing grounds, they are extremely vulnerable.”

Mapping

Their one hope may be the modern mapping methods they once shunned.

The Coastal Resource Center began mapping coastal villages in Tamil Nadu about five years ago, using handheld GPS devices to mark common spaces – including where fishermen parked their boats and dried the catch – then plotting the spots on a map.

These maps are then sent to district and state officials for their approval, so they can be integrated into official maps under the coastal zone management plan.

Kumar and her colleagues have mapped about 75 of Tamil Nadu’s 650 coastal villages so far.

Not all their maps have been integrated with official survey maps, but they have been used to resolve disputes between fishing communities, and helped stop the construction of a road that would have passed through a coastal settlement, she said.

“The mapping gives the community a sense of confidence and security. They are seen as people with rights, rather than as encroachers,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “There is an urgent need to map the coastal commons. It is the most effective tool for assertion of the community rights.”

Of some 677 ongoing Indian land conflicts documented by research organization Land Conflict Watch, nearly a third involve commons, including forests, grazing lands and coasts.

But with no legal protection for the coastal commons, mapping them and having the states recognize them will still not protect them under the new CRZ notification, said Kohli.

The Congress party, in a manifesto released ahead of a general election starting on April 11, has vowed to reverse the dilutions of the CRZ, and preserve the coasts without affecting the livelihoods of fishing communities.

That may be Kaatukuppam’s only hope, after the state in 2017 released a map that did not show most of Ennore Creek. In its place stood land earmarked for a petrochemical park.

“We have seen the crabs disappear, the fish disappear. We had never seen a river disappear,” Srinivasan said. “But it is not just us who are suffering; people should realize this sort of development hurts everyone.”
…

Rob Garver contributed to this report

The top Senate Democrat says President Donald Trump’s picks to fill two vacant seats on the Federal Reserve Board are unqualified for the job.

Trump has nominated former pizza chain boss Herman Cain and conservative economic commentator Stephen Moore for the Fed — posts that need Senate confirmation. Both are strong Trump supporters.

“I don’t see the qualifications of Cain or Moore fitting in with the mission of the Fed, which is to conduct monetary policy and not be political,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said Tuesday.

Cain is best known as the former CEO of the Godfather’s Pizza chain and a failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate.

He had several top positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. But local Fed boards do not set monetary policy and do not have the global impact that the main Federal Reserve has.

Stephen Moore was a Trump campaign economic adviser and is a TV commentator and columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

Opponents to their nominations say they could compromise the Fed’s credibility as an independent policymaking body that responds only to economic trends, not politics.

Chief White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told CNN television that Cain and Moore are both “very smart people” and said Trump has “every right to put people on the Federal Reserve board … who share his philosophy.”

But Cain has faced charges of sexual harassment, which he denies, and Moore owes more than $75,000 in back taxes. He was once found in contempt of court for failing to pay $300,000 in alimony and child support.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has not commented on the qualifications of either man, only saying “We’re going to look at whoever the president sends up.”
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Boeing’s orders and deliveries sank in the first quarter, with zero new orders for the 737 MAX following a worldwide grounding in March in the wake of two fatal plane crashes.

The groundings forced Boeing to freeze deliveries of the MAX, which had been its fastest-selling jetliner until a March 10 crash on Ethiopian Airlines that killed all 157 onboard, just five months after a similar crash on Lion Air that killed all 189 passengers and crew.

Total orders, an indication of future demand, fell to 95 aircraft in the first quarter from 180 a year earlier, suggesting a wait-and-watch approach for airlines as Boeing rides out the worst crisis in its history.

Still, Boeing is ahead of its European rival Airbus, which last week said it had won 62 gross orders during the first three months of 2019 but some 120 cancellations left it with a negative net order.

Chicago-based Boeing’s first-quarter 737 deliveries tumbled about 33 percent, pushing total aircraft deliveries down 19 percent to 149 from a year earlier. Boeing delivered just 11 MAX in March before the suspension.

Deliveries are financially important because that is when planemakers receive the bulk of money from airlines’ purchases.

It is still unclear when the MAX jets will fly again, with global regulators including China saying they would join a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration panel to review the aircraft’s safety.

“A fix and removal of the grounding prior to September 2019 could be perceived positively,” Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu said, noting that fresh scrutiny of the certification process could potentially filter into Boeing’s 777X program.

Boeing’s shares, which have lost about 13% since the crash, were down 1.66 percent at $368.32 in afternoon trading.

Goldman Sachs said it does not expect Boeing to deliver any MAXs in the second quarter and said it was difficult to expect MAX orders at the upcoming Paris Air Show in June.

The latest variant of Boeing’s 737 family, which makes up the bulk of its narrow-body production, has been viewed as the likely workhorse for global airlines for decades and central to Boeing’s long-running battle against Airbus.

Boeing said last week it would cut monthly 737 MAX production by 20 percent starting mid-April, without giving an end-date.

The company had been ramping up MAX deliveries before the grounding, with the planes accounting for nearly half of its deliveries in the last few months.

There were more than 300 MAX jetliners in operation at the time of the fatal Lion Air crash last October, and about 4,600 more on order.
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Britain’s Standard Charter Bank has agreed to more than $1 billion in fines and forfeited assets to the U.S. and New York state for violating U.S. sanctions against trade with Iran.

Federal and state prosecutors said Tuesday that between 2007 and 2011, the global financial institution processed about 9,500 financial transactions worth about $240 million through U.S. financial institutions to benefit Iranian entities.

In addition, U.S. authorities said an unnamed former bank employee in the United Arab Emirates pleaded guilty in Washington to conspiring to defraud the U.S. and to violate the trade sanctions.

Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said the case “sends a clear message to financial institutions and their employees: If you circumvent U.S. sanctions against rogue states like Iran — or assist those who do — you will pay a steep price.”

He said that “when a global bank processes transactions through the U.S. financial system, its compliance program must be up to the task of detecting and preventing sanctions violations. And when it is not, banks have an obligation to identify, report and remediate any shortcomings.”

Jessie Liu, a prosecutor in Washington, said the bank, the unnamed former employee and Mahmoud Reza Elyassi, an Iranian national and former bank customer in Dubai, “undermined the integrity of our financial system and harmed our national security by deliberately providing Iranians with coveted access to the U.S. economy.” 

Elyassi has been charged with two criminal counts linked to the conspiracy.

The indictment in the case said Elyassi and his co-conspirators used general trading companies in the UAE as fronts for a money exchange business in Iran. 
…

More families of victims of the Lion Air crash in Indonesia are suing Boeing after its chief executive apologized and said a software update for the MAX 8 jet would prevent further disasters.

Family members and lawyers said Monday that CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s comment last week related to an automated flight system was an admission that helps their cases.

The anti-stall system is suspected as a cause of the Lion Air crash in October and an Ethiopian Airlines crash in March that also involved a MAX 8 jet. The two crashes killed a total of 346 people.

Preliminary reports into both crashes found that faulty sensor readings erroneously triggered the anti-stall system that pushed the plane’s nose down. Pilots of each plane struggled in vain to regain control.

Families of 11 Lion Air victims said at a news conference organized by Jakarta law firm Kailimang & Ponto that they are joining dozens of other Indonesian families in filing lawsuits against Boeing.

“Boeing’s CEO explicitly apologized to 346 passenger families,” said Merdian Agustin, whose husband died in the crash. “We hope this is good momentum to have compensation rights.”

Agustin, the mother of three children, said that she and dozens of other families have not received 1.2 billion rupiah ($85,000) compensation they are entitled to in Indonesia because they refused to sign a “release and discharge” document that extinguishes their right to sue Lion Air, Boeing or their subsidiaries.

“We refused to sign such a document containing statements that are treating our loved ones like lost baggage,” Agustin said. “It’s ridiculous and hurts us.”

Boeing acknowledged that the sensor malfunctioned and Muilenburg said last week that a new software update would prevent future incidents. “It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk,” Muilenburg said in a video statement. “We own it, and we know how to do it.”

Lawyer Michael Indrajana said that since the crash, families in Indonesia have faced a complicated and painful process against Boeing and Lion Air in their battle to get compensation.

He said the Boeing CEO’s statement shows the airline is now acknowledging responsibility.

“No amount of money can bring their loved ones back,” he said. “We want to fight for the orphans, so they have the opportunity to get a better future.”

Boeing said last week that it will cut production of its troubled 737 Max airliner this month, underscoring the growing financial risk it faces the longer that its best-selling plane remains grounded after the two crashes.

The company said that starting in mid-April it will cut production of the plane to 42 from 52 per month so it can focus its attention on fixing the flight-control software that has been implicated in the crashes.

The move was not a complete surprise. Boeing had already suspended deliveries of the Max last month after regulators around the world grounded the jet.

Boeing also announced it is creating a special board committee to review airplane design and development.

The announcement to cut production comes after Boeing acknowledged that a second software issue has emerged that needs fixing on the Max — a discovery that explained why the aircraft maker had pushed back its ambitious schedule for getting the planes back in the air.
…

China and Pakistan say their ongoing multibillion-dollar infrastructure development cooperation program under Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has entered the next stage after achieving initial targets, dismissing reports the project increased Islamabad’s debt burden rather than boosting economic growth. 

Officials in the neighboring countries, traditionally strong allies, say 22 “early harvest” projects, launched five years ago under what is known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), have been completed with an unprecedented Chinese investment of $19 billion. 

It has built new roads, power plants and operationaliZed the deep-water strategic Arabian Sea commercial port of Gwadar, which overlooks some of the world’s busiest oil and gas shipping lanes and is celebrated as the gateway to CPEC.

Responding to skeptics

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang, while responding to skeptics Monday, defended the corridor as “an important pilot program” under BRI, saying it has created tens of thousands of local jobs in addition to meeting the power demand of nearly nine million households in Pakistan.

“Of all current CPEC projects, only less than 20 percent are financed with Chinese loans, while the rest are all funded by direct investments or grants from China. Far from adding to Pakistan’s burden, the CPEC actually strengthened the local economic structure,” Lu explained at his regular news conference in Beijing. 

“Leveraging international financing to carry out major projects, as a common practice across the world, is an effective tool for developing countries in particular to overcome the funding bottleneck and boost growth,” the Chinese spokesman stressed.

CPEC will ultimately give landlocked western Chinese regions the shortest and a more secure route to international markets through Gwadar port. 

Islamabad acknowledges the corridor investment has improved transportation networks and effectively resolved years of crippling power crisis facing the country. Pakistani officials reject as misplaced concerns the current foreign debt crisis stems from the project. 

“CPEC is great opportunity for Pakistan. CPEC connects us to China which is one of the biggest markets … and CPEC route will connect China and Pakistan located at strategic position of world,” Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan told a recent international conference.

​Groundbreaking

Khan traveled to Gwadar a week ago, where he performed groundbreaking for several new infrastructure development projects, including an international airport in the coastal city, marking the start of the new phase of CPEC. 

The airport, which will have a 12,000-meter runway, will be completed in three years with a Chinese financial grant of $250 million. It will be capable of handling aircraft such as an Airbus A-380, linking the once sleepy town of Gwadar to some of the world’s major destinations. 

Saudi Arabia also announced in February plans to build a $10 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in the city.

Pakistani and Chinese officials admit CPEC is behind schedule. They cited problems such as legal and administrative procedural delays in their respective countries and the recent political transition in Pakistan that brought Khan’s party to power last August. But those issues have been settled now, they say.

The “Chinese say they can easily and quickly deliver loans, but financial grants require to go through a time-consuming legal process, that’s why the work on Gwadar airport could not be started in time,” a Pakistani official told VOA. 

The newly launched phase of “broadening and expanding” CPEC projects, officials say, will see the construction of nine industrial zones across Pakistan with the help of Chinese financial and technical assistance that will boost bilateral industrial cooperation between the two countries. 

Some industries to relocate

China plans to relocate some of its industries by transferring technology to the new industrial zones to help Islamabad increase its exports to overcome its massive trade deficit and shore up cash reserves.

“CPEC has gained momentum and efforts would be made to continue the same pace in the future,” said Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar, the Pakistani minister for Planning, Development and Reform who is overseeing the project.

Officials said the groundbreaking of construction of the first industrial zone at Rashakai, in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, is expected before Prime Minister Khan travels to China later this month for bilateral meetings and to attend the second BRI summit along with 40 foreign leaders in Beijing. The launching of Rashakai will mark the “implementation stage of the Pakistan-China Industrial Cooperation,” said Minister Bakhtyar.

Beijing has extended a loan of more than $4 billion during the current financial year at an interest rate of 2 percent to help Islamabad boost its depleting foreign cash reserves.

The Chinese government has recently pledged an additional grant of $1 billion for education, health, vocational training, drinking water and poverty alleviation projects in Pakistan.

While Beijing and Islamabad have traditionally maintained close defense ties, both the counties say their deepening economic cooperation in recent years has cemented the overall relationship. 
…

Venezuela will “fulfill its commitments” to Cuba despite United States sanctions targeting oil shipments from the South American country to its ideological ally, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said on Monday.

Washington on Friday imposed sanctions on 34 vessels owned or operated by state-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela as well as on two companies and a vessel that have previously delivered oil to Cuba, aiming to choke off a crucial supply of crude to the Communist-run island.

Venezuela has long sent subsidized crude to Cuba. The United States describes the arrangement as an “oil-for-repression” scheme in which Havana helps socialist President Nicolas Maduro weather an economic crisis and power struggle with the opposition in exchange for fuel.

Arreaza said he would not reveal Venezuela’s “strategy,” but that the sanctions would not stop the shipments.

“When the conventional power of capitalism attacks you, you have to know how to respond through non-conventional means, always respecting international law,” Arreaza told reporters.

Friday’s measure came after broader sanctions Washington had slapped on

The United States, along with most Western nations, recognizes Juan Guaido, the leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, as Venezuela’s rightful leader. Guaido invoked the country’s constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing Maduro’s May 2018 re-election was a sham.

The opposition last month ordered an end to oil shipments to Cuba, but PDVSA – controlled by military officers loyal to Maduro – has continued the exports.

The most recent fuel shipment to Cuba left Venezuela’s Jose port on April 4, carrying liquefied petroleum gas, according to Refinitiv Eikon data. In the second half of March, two tankers carrying crude and two tankers carrying refined products left for Cuba.

The only tanker sanctioned on Friday, the Despina Andrianna, is currently returning to Jose after unloading crude at Cuba’s Cienfuegos refinery in March. Another three vessels are waiting off Venezuela to load with shipments destined for Cuba.
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