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The Trump administration has invited the heads of Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler to the White House to discuss U.S. tariffs on carmakers, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Citing industry and diplomatic sources, the paper said the meeting could possibly take place as soon as next week, depending on circumstances. Handelsblatt said it was not known whether U.S. President Donald Trump would attend the meeting.

A spokesman for Volkswagen declined to confirm or deny whether the carmaker had received an invitation. Sources close to VW said it had not received an invitation.

 

Daimler and BMW did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has threatened for months to impose tariffs on all European Union-assembled vehicles, a move that could up-end the industry’s business model for selling cars in the United States.

But he has refrained from imposing car tariffs while the United States and European Union launch negotiations to cut other trade barriers.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday thanked Saudi Arabia for tamping down world oil prices, a day after saying the U.S. would not turn its back on Riyadh despite its responsibility for killing a dissident U.S.-based Saudi journalist.

From his retreat along the Atlantic Ocean in Florida, Trump praised the Saudis, second only to the U.S. as an oil producer but the biggest global exporter, for sending enough crude to world markets to keep oil prices in check.

Before leaving Washington for the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump told reporters at the White House that U.S. national security and economic interests outweigh any human rights concerns. He said turning his back on Saudi Arabia, despite the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, “would be a terrible mistake.”

“We’re staying with Saudi Arabia,” Trump announced. He noted the kingdom’s opposition to Iran and its purchases of American military equipment that mean, according to the president, “hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investment.”

Russia and China “are not going to get that gift,” Trump said before adding that oil prices would soar if the U.S.-Saudi relationship is broken up.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an interview with a Kansas City radio station, defended Trump’s stance favoring Saudi Arabia, while noting that the U.S. had sanctioned 17 Saudis believed involved in the Khashoggi killing.

“We are going to make sure that America always stands for human rights,” Pompeo said.

But the top U.S. diplomat said the protection of Americans was of paramount concern to Trump.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been an important national security partner to the United States, pushing back against the murderous regime in Iran that actually presents real risk to the American people, and we are determined to make sure that the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia stays strong so that we can protect America,” Pompeo said.

‘Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t’

Asked at the White House about the CIA’s reported conclusion that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman likely knew about or ordered the plot to kill Khashoggi inside Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul, Trump replied: “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.” Of the CIA’s finding, he declared: “They have nothing definitive.”

The president denied his decision to avoid harshly punishing the Saudis for the October 2 killing has anything to do with his personal business interests.

“I don’t make deals with Saudi Arabia. I don’t make money from Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “Being president has cost me a fortune.”  

Trump said earlier he understands that some lawmakers in Congress want to pursue sanctions against Riyadh for the killing “for political or other reasons” and said, “They are free to do so.”

“I will consider whatever ideas are presented to me, but only if they are consistent with the absolute security and safety of America,” Trump said.

But the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Bob Corker and Democrat Robert Menendez, sent a letter to Trump Tuesday reminding him U.S. law requires him to examine whether the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s death.

The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act requires the president to determine if a foreign official is responsible for a human rights violation.

The act is named for Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky who was apparently beaten to death in prison in 2009 after accusing Russian officials of tax fraud.

 

“I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” Senator Corker tweeted Tuesday. He added that  Congress will consider “all the tools at our disposal” to determine the role of the crown prince in the Khashoggi killing. 

Khashoggi lived in the United States, writing opinion articles for The Washington Post that were critical of the crown prince and Riyadh’s military involvement in Yemen.

His editor at the Post, Karen Attiah, described Trump’s statement as “full of lies and a blatant disregard for his own intelligence agencies. It also shows an unforgivable disregard for the lives of Saudis who dare criticize the regime. This is a new low.”

 

U.S Intelligence Community

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Veterans of the U.S. Intelligence Community are also expressing their disdain with the president’s stance.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, who has repeatedly clashed with Trump, said on Twitter that Trump “excels in dishonesty” so now it is up to Congress to obtain and declassify the CIA findings on Khashoggi’s death.

“No one in Saudi Arabia — most especially the Crown Prince — should escape accountability for such a heinous act,” Brennan wrote.

Former CIA officer Ned Price wondered Tuesday “how appointed intelligence leaders could continue to serve after this betrayal is beyond me.”

A Saudi prosecutor cleared the crown prince of wrongdoing last week while calling for the death penalty for five of the 11 suspects indicted in the killing.  The prosecutor said a total of 21 people have been detained.

Turkish officials concluded that Khashoggi was tortured and killed and his body dismembered. His remains have not been found.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday Turkey might formally seek a United Nations investigation of the killing if cooperation with Riyadh reaches an impasse.
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The Trump administration on Tuesday said that China has failed to alter its “unfair” practices at the heart of the U.S.-China trade conflict, adding to tensions ahead of a high-stakes meeting later this month between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The findings were issued in an update of the U.S. Trade Representative’s “Section 301” investigation into China’s intellectual property and technology transfer policies, which sparked U.S. tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods that later ballooned to $250 billion.

“We completed this update as part of this Administration’s strengthened monitoring and enforcement effort,” USTR Robert Lighthizer said in a statement. “This update shows that China has not fundamentally altered its unfair, unreasonable, and market-distorting practices that were the subject of the March 2018 report on our Section 301 investigation.”

In the update, USTR said it had found that China had not responded “constructively” to the initial section 301 reports and failed to take any substantive actions to address U.S. concerns. It added that China had made clear it would not change its policies in response to the initial investigation.

USTR said that China was continuing its policy and practice of conducting and supporting cyber-enabled theft of U.S. intellectual property and was continuing discriminatory technology licensing restrictions.

The update said that despite the relaxation of some foreign ownership restrictions, “the Chinese government has persisted in using foreign investment restrictions to require or pressure the transfer of technology from U.S. companies to Chinese entities.”

The report comes as the Trump administration and top Chinese officials are discussing possible ways out of their trade war and negotiating details of the Trump-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the G20 leaders summit in Buenos Aires at the end of November.

But acrimonious trade rhetoric between the governments of the world’s two largest economies has been increasing in recent days, spilling over into an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit last weekend. A top Chinese diplomat said on Tuesday that the failure of APEC officials to agree on a communique from the summit was a result of certain countries “excusing” protectionism, a veiled criticism of Washington’s tariffs.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Saturday that the United States would not back down from the trade dispute, and might even double tariffs, unless Beijing bowed to U.S. demands.
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Stocks dropped again Tuesday as losses mounted for the world’s largest technology companies. Retailers also fell, and energy companies plunged with oil prices as the market sank back into the red for the year. 

 

Oil prices tumbled another 6.6 percent as Wall Street reacted to rising oil supplies and concerns that global economic growth will slow down, a worry that’s intensified because of the trade tensions between the U.S. and China. 

 

Technology companies were hit after the Trump administration proposed new national security regulations that could limit exports of high-tech products in fields such as quantum computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence. 

 

Retailers also skidded. Target’s profit disappointed investors as it spends more money to revamp its stores and its website, while Ross Stores, TJX and Kohl’s also fell on disappointing forecasts. 

 

The S&P 500 index lost 48.84 points, or 1.8 percent, to 2,641.89. The Dow Jones industrial average sank 551.80 points, or 2.2 percent, to 24,465.64. 

 

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite lost 119.65 points, or 1.7 percent, to 6,908.82. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks shed 27.53 points, or 1.8 percent, to 1,469.01. 

 

The Dow industrials have lost 3.7 percent in the last two days, and the S&P 500 is off 3.4 percent. The Nasdaq is off 4.7 percent. The S&P 500 index has fallen 9.9 percent from the record high it set exactly two months ago. 

 

Investors are measuring several headwinds and increasingly playing it safe. The global economy is showing signs of weakening, with the United States, China and Europe all facing the rising threat of a slowdown, which can hurt demand for commodities such as oil and threaten company profits. Trade tensions between the U.S. and China appear to be getting worse instead of improving, contributing to the sell-off in tech stocks and multinational industrial companies. 

 

For much of this year, investors were hopeful the U.S. and China would easily resolve their differences on trade. That hope has faded in the last two months. While U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet this month at a gathering of the Group of 20 major economies, the proposed limits on tech exports were one more reason to worry. 

 

“A resolution doesn’t seem to be coming in the short term,” said Katie Nixon, the chief investment officer for Northern Trust Wealth Management. “A lot of the companies that are front and center [like] Alphabet, Apple, IBM … could be significantly limited in the way they export their technology.” 

 

Apple fell 4.8 percent to $176.98 and is down 23.7 percent from the peak it reached Oct. 3, though it’s still up almost 5 percent this year. Microsoft lost 2.8 percent to $101.71 and IBM fell 2.6 percent to $117.20. 

 

As the tech giants swoon, investors have lately turned to safer bets such as utilities, real estate companies and makers of household goods. They’ve also sought the safety of U.S. Treasuries. 

 

The price of oil has been falling sharply in recent weeks and is now down 30 percent since Oct. 3. 

 

Saudi Arabia and other countries started producing more oil after the Trump administration announced renewed sanctions on Iran, Nixon noted. The administration granted waivers to several countries that allowed them to continue importing oil from Iran, creating a supply glut that pushed prices dramatically lower. 

 

Nixon said OPEC countries will probably cut back on oil production, but some investors are worried that the buildup in crude stockpiles is a sign the global economy isn’t doing as well as expected. 

 

Earnings from retailers didn’t help investors’ mood. Target plunged 10.5 percent to $69.03 after reporting earnings that missed Wall Street’s estimates because of higher expenses. Ross Stores, TJX and Kohl’s also fell on disappointing forecasts. 

 

Tech stocks were among the biggest losers in Europe, too. Nokia and Ericsson, two top suppliers of telecom networks, each fell about 3 percent. European indexes fell, with Germany’s DAX index dropping 1.6 percent and the French CAC 30 falling 1.2 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 0.8 percent. 

 

Stocks also declined in Asia. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 1.1 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 2 percent. 

 

Benchmark U.S. crude lost 6.6 percent to $53.43 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, fell 6.4 percent to $62.53 per barrel in London. Oil prices have nosedived since early October. 

 

Wholesale gasoline fell 5.5 percent to $1.50 a gallon and heating oil skidded 4.6 percent to $1.99 a gallon. Natural gas dipped 3.8 percent to $4.52 per 1,000 cubic feet. 

 

Bond prices were steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note remained at 3.06 percent. 

 

Gold slipped 0.3 percent to $1,221.20 an ounce. Silver fell 0.9 percent to $14.27 an ounce. Copper slid 1.2 percent to $2.77 a pound. 

 

The dollar fell to 112.40 yen from 112.54 yen. The euro fell to $1.1399 from $1.1453. 
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Analysts say Boeing Co. is canceling a conference call that it scheduled to discuss issues around its newest plane, which has come under scrutiny since a deadly crash in Indonesia. 

The company didn’t immediately give an explanation Tuesday. 

CFRA Research analyst Jim Corridore said canceling the call as “a bad look for the company” when it’s facing questions about potential problems with sensors on the 737 MAX. 

U.S. airline pilots say they weren’t told about a new feature that could pitch the nose down automatically if sensors indicate the plane is about to stall. 

On Oct. 29, a Lion Air MAX 8 plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board. 

Boeing shares are down about 13 percent since Nov. 9. 
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Shares in automakers Nissan, Mitsubishi and Renault fell sharply Tuesday after the arrest of executive Carlos Ghosn on allegations of “significant acts” of financial misconduct.

All three firms are considering replacing him as chairman.

Nissan, one of the world’s biggest automakers, said Ghosn falsified reports about his compensation “over many years” and that its internal investigation also found he had used company assets for personal purposes.

Japanese media reported Monday that Ghosn is being questioned by Tokyo prosecutors, suspected of failing to report millions of dollars in income. 

Nissan said that based on a report by a whistleblower, it conducted an internal investigation of Ghosn and Representative Director Greg Kelly and shared its findings with public prosecutors. The company said both men had been arrested.

The automaker said its investigation showed that Ghosn had underreported his income to the Tokyo Stock Exchange by more than $40 million over five years.

The Ashai newspaper reported that prosecutors have raided Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama. 

The Brazilian-born Ghosn, who is of Lebanese descent and a French citizen, was the rare foreign top executive in Japan.

Ghosn was sent to Nissan in the late 1990s by Renault SA of France, after it bought a controlling stake of Nissan. He is credited with rescuing Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy.

In 2016, Ghosn also took control of Mitsubishi, after Nissan bought a one-third stake in the company, following Mitsubishi’s mileage-cheating scandal. 

Together, the three automakers comprise the biggest global carmaking alliance, manufacturing one of every nine cars sold around the world. The three companies employ more than 470,000 people in nearly 200 countries.

Before Ghosn’s arrest, Satoru Takada, an analyst at TIW, a Tokyo-based research and consulting firm, said his detention would “rock the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance as he is the keystone of the alliance.”
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World stock markets fell Monday as worries about softening demand for the iPhone dragged down shares of Apple Inc and persistent trade tensions between China and the United States sapped investor sentiment.

Concerns about slowing economic growth also pushed down the dollar.

The U.S. benchmark S&P 500 stock index dropped 1.7 percent following a decline in shares of Apple and its suppliers. The Wall Street Journal reported Apple had cut production orders in recent weeks for iPhone models it launched in September.

Renewed tensions between China and the United States also weighed. At an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative meeting in Papua New Guinea over the weekend, the issue prevented leaders from agreeing on a communique, the first time such an impasse had occurred in the group’s history.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said in a blunt speech Saturday that there would be no end to U.S. tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods until China changed its ways.

“That APEC was unable to issue a final statement clearly indicates that China versus the rest of the world isn’t just about the United States,” said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham, Massachusetts. “It’s a widening of trade concerns that are already rattling markets.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 395.78 points, or 1.56 percent, to 25,017.44, the S&P 500 lost 45.54 points, or 1.66 percent, to 2,690.73 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 219.40 points, or 3.03 percent, to 7,028.48.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.30 percent.

Mixed signals regarding the Federal Reserve’s course of rate hikes in the face of a potential economic slowdown also weighed on markets, investors said.

Federal Reserve policymakers have recently raised concern about a potential global slowdown, leading some market watchers to suspect the tightening cycle may not have much further to run.

Data released Monday by the National Association of Home Builders showed weakening sentiment in the U.S. housing market, adding to concerns over economic growth.

Still, New York Fed President John Williams stated that the U.S. central bank is moving ahead with its plans for gradual rate hikes as it marches toward a more normal policy stance.

“There’s a widening gap between the Fed and what the markets think is the right course,” McMillan said.

Reflecting economic growth concerns, the dollar dropped to a two-week low Monday. The dollar index fell 0.3 percent.

In similar fashion, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield hit its lowest level in more than a month. Benchmark 10-year notes last rose 3/32 in price to yield 3.0628 percent, from 3.074 percent late Friday.

Boosted by the drop in the dollar, gold added 0.2 percent to $1,223.56 an ounce.

Oil prices edged up, finding support from a reported drawdown of U.S. inventories, potential European Union sanctions on Iran and possible OPEC production cuts.

Brent crude futures settled at $66.79 a barrel, up 3 cents. U.S. crude futures settled at $56.76 a barrel, up 30 cents.
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A new United Nations survey finds that opium cultivation in Afghanistan has decreased by 20 percent in 2018 compared to the previous year, citing a severe drought and falling prices of dry opium at the national level.

The total opium-poppy cultivation area decreased to 263,000 hectares, from 328,000 hectares estimated in 2017, but it was

still the second highest measurement for Afghanistan since the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) began monitoring in 1994.

The potential opium production decreased by 29 percent to 6,400 tons from an estimated 9,000 tons in 2017.

The UNODC country representative, Mark Colhoun, while explaining factors behind the reduction told reporters in Kabul the farm-gate prices of dry opium at the harvest time fell to $94 per kilogram, the lowest since 2004.

The decreases, in particular in the northern and western Afghan regions, were mainly attributed to the severe drought that hit the country during the course of the last year, he added.

“Despite these decreases, the overall area under opium-poppy cultivation is still the highest ever recorded. This is a clear challenge to security and safety for the region and beyond. It is also a threat to all countries to and through which these drugs are trafficked as well as to Afghanistan itself,” said Colhoun.

He warned that more high-quality low-cost heroin will reach consumer markets across the world, with increased consumption and related harms as a further likely consequence.

“The significant levels of opium-poppy cultivation and illicit trafficking of opiates will further fuel instability, insurgency and increase funding to terrorist groups in Afghanistan,” he said.

Colhoun noted that while there is no single explanation for the continuing high levels of opium-poppy cultivation, rule of law-related challenges such as political instability, lack of government control and security as well as corruption have been found to be among the main drivers of illicit cultivation.

The UNODC survey estimated that the total farm-gate value of opium production decreased by 56 percent to $604 million, which is equivalent to three percent of Afghanistan’s GDP, from $1.4 billion in 2017. The lowest prices strongly undermined the income earned from opium cultivation by farmers.

The study finds that 24 out of the 34 Afghan provinces grew the opium-poppy in 2018, the same number as in the previous year.

The survey found that 69 percent of the opium poppy cultivation took place in southern Afghanistan and the largest province of Helmand remained the leading opium-poppy cultivating region followed by neighboring Kandahar and Uruzgan and Nangarhar in the east.

It noted that opium poppy weeding and harvesting provided for the equivalent of up to 354,000 full-time jobs to rural areas in 2017.

A U.S. government agency, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), has noted in its latest report that as of September 30, Washington’s counternarcotics-related appropriations for the country had reached almost $9 billion.

“Despite the importance of the threat narcotics pose to reconstruction and despite massive expenditures for programs including poppy-crop eradication, drug seizures and interdictions, alternative-livelihood support, aviation support, and incentives for provincial governments, the drug trade remains entrenched in Afghanistan, and is growing,” said Sigar, which monitors U.S. civilian and military spendings in the country.

 

 
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Japanese automaker Nissan says it has determined that its chairman, Carlos Ghosn, falsified reports about his compensation “over many years.” The company said its internal investigation also found Ghosn had used company assets for personal purposes.

Japanese media are reporting Monday that Ghosn is being questioned by Tokyo prosecutors on allegations that he underreported his income and that he will likely be arrested.

Ghosn is suspected of failing to report hundreds of millions of dollars in income.

Nissan says Ghosn will be dismissed from the company.

The Ashai newspaper reported that prosecutors have raided Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama.

The Brazilian-born Ghosn, who is of Lebanese descent and a French citizen, was the rare foreign top executive in Japan.

Ghosn was sent to Nissan in the late 1990s by Renault SA of France, after it bought a controlling stake of Nissan. He is credited with rescuing Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy.

In 2016, Ghosn also took control of Mitsubishi, after Nissan bought a one-third stake in the company, following Mitsubishi’s mileage-cheating scandal.

“If he is arrested, it’s going to rock the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance as he is the keystone of the alliance,” said Satoru Takada, an analyst at TIW, a Tokyo-based research and consulting firm.

Shares in Renault fell more than 12 percent in late morning trading in Paris after the news about Ghosn came out.

 

 

 

 

 

 
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The United States and China offered competing views to regional leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Papua New Guinea, trading sharp words over trade, investment, and regional security.  Washington said it can provide a better option for regional allies under is “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategy.  as VOA’s State Department correspondent Nike Ching reports, the APEC gathering ended without a formal leaders’ statement.
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Federal Reserve policymakers on Friday signaled further interest rate  increases ahead, but raised relatively muted concerns over a potential global  slowdown that has markets betting heavily that the Fed’s rate hike cycle will soon peter out.

The widening chasm between market expectations and the rate path the Fed laid out just two months ago underscores the biggest question in front of U.S. central bankers: How much weight to give a growing number of potential red flags, even as U.S. economic growth continues to push down unemployment and create new jobs?

“We are at a point now where we really need to be especially data dependent,” Richard Clarida, the newly appointed vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said in a CNBC interview. “I think certainly where the economy is today, and the Fed’s projection of where it’s going, that being at neutral would make sense,” he added, defining “neutral” as interest rates somewhere between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent.

But that range that implies anywhere from two more to six more rate hikes, and Clarida declined to say how many more increases he would prefer.

He did say he is optimistic that U.S. productivity is rising, a view that suggests he would not see faster economic or wage growth as necessarily feeding into higher inflation or, necessarily, requiring higher interest rates. But he also

sounded a mild warning.

“There is some evidence of global slowing,” Clarida said. “That’s something that is going to be relevant as I think about the outlook for the U.S. economy, because it impacts big parts of the economy through trade and through capital markets and the like.”

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan, in a separate interview with Fox Business, also said he is seeing a growth slowdown in Europe and China.

“It’s my own judgment that global growth is going to be a little bit of a headwind, and it may spill over to the United States,” Kaplan said. .

The Fed raised interest rates three times this year and is expected to raise its target again next month, to a range of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent. As of September, Fed policymakers expected to need to increase rates three more times next year, a view they will update next month.

Over the last week, betting in contracts tied to the Fed’s policy suggests that even two rate hikes might be a stretch. The yield on fed fund futures maturing in January 2020, seen by some as an end-point for the Fed’s current rate-hike cycle, dropped sharply to just 2.76 percent over six trading days.

At the same time, long-term inflation expectations have been dropping quickly as well. The so-called breakeven inflation rate on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, has fallen sharply in the last month. The breakeven rate on five-year TIPS hit the lowest since late 2017 earlier this week.

Those market moves together suggest traders are taking the prospect of a slowdown seriously, limiting how far the Fed will end up raising rates.

But not all policymakers seemed that worried. Sitting with his back to a map of the world in a ballroom in Chicago’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans downplayed risks to his outlook, noting that the leveraged loans that some of his colleagues have raised concerns about are being taken out by “big boys and girls” who

understand the risks.

He told reporters he still believes rates should rise to about 3.25 percent so as to mildly restrain growth and bring unemployment, now at 3.7 percent, back up to a more sustainable level.

Asked about risks from the global slowdown, he said he hears more talk about it but that it is not really in the numbers yet.

But the next six months, he said, bear close watching.

“There’s not a great headline” about risks to the economy right now, Evans told reporters. “International is a little slower; Brexit — nobody’s asked me about that, thank you; [the slowing] housing market: I think all of those are in the mix for uncertainties that everybody’s facing,” he said.

“But at the moment, it’s not enough to upset or adjust the trajectory that I have in mind.”

Still, Evans added, the risks should not be counted out: “They could take on more life more easily because they are sort of more top of mind, if not in the forecast.”
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Now that South Africa’s highest court has relaxed the nation’s laws on marijuana, local entrepreneurs are trying to cash in on the popular herb. Among the latest entries to the market: several highly popular cannabis-laced alcohol products, which deliver the unique taste, though without the signature high. Marijuana activists say this could just be the beginning and that the famous plant could do much more for the national economy. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Johannesburg.
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Place names in Arlington County have never been a simple matter. A major fight broke out when National Airport was named for Ronald Reagan in 1998. A fight continues over whether to name a park next to the airport for Nancy Reagan. And in the 1920s, the Postal Service refused to establish a post office in Arlington because the street names were so confusing and haphazard.

So it is fitting that as Arlington officials celebrated Amazon’s decision to locate a new headquarters in the area, there was a bit of confusion over the place name.

Amazon announced Tuesday that it was coming to National Landing, a place people had not heard of because it doesn’t exist. Economic development officials who were wooing the online retailing giant came up with the name as a way to describe the multiple neighborhoods that were being offered as a site.

Those neighborhoods — Crystal City and Pentagon City in Arlington County, and Potomac Yard in the city of Alexandria — span multiple jurisdictions, so the name allowed Alexandria and Arlington to work cooperatively without marketing one locality over another.

Unfortunately, because the yearlong process of wooing Amazon had been so secretive, the moniker that had become so commonplace in the economic-development discussions had zero recognition among the general public. So Amazon’s use of the name in its big announcement left people scratching their heads.

Some people confused it with National Harbor, a new development in Maryland that has attracted one of the biggest casinos on the East Coast. Comedian Remy Munasifi, who made his name poking fun at Arlington in a YouTube rap that has been viewed more than 2 million times, suggested that Arlington National Cemetery would soon be renamed “Kindle Shores.”

Rep. Don Beyer, whose congressional district encompasses the neighborhoods, got in on the act when he suggested that the location of a new $1 billion graduate campus be dubbed “Hokie Landing.” The campus was a key incentive offered to Amazon by Virginia, which promised to double the number of students who graduate each year with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science and related fields.

No official steps were ever taken to rename the region, and local officials have made clear they have no intention of trying to rename Crystal City or any other neighborhood.

In a tweet posted by Arlington Economic Development on Thursday, Arlington County Manager Mark Schwartz explained that National Landing was simply “a way to avoid saying, ‘Parts of Arlington, parts of Alexandria.’ ”

Christina Winn, director of business investment for Arlington Economic Development, said officials never imagined “there would be so much conversation” about the concept. Winn said there’s no intention to supplant or override the name of Crystal City, which draws its name from a big chandelier in one of the first apartment buildings to go up in the area in the 1960s.

Still, she said, if Arlington and Alexandria team up on another economic-development pitch in the future, she said that the moniker might be revived.

“It worked once,” she said.
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Land laws mean nothing unless communities can prove their ownership, researchers said Thursday, calling for better tools to map the land and stave off conflict over property.

From South Africa to the Amazon rainforest, battles over land and who owns it are unleashing unprecedented conflict and labyrinthine legal cases as governments and companies seek to exploit ever more of the world’s natural resources, from trees to minerals to rubber.

With an estimated 70 percent of the world unmapped, more than 5 billion people lack proof of ownership, according to the Lima-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy.

Laws no safeguard

Speaking at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual two-day Trust Conference, which focuses on a host of human rights issues, experts said the existence of laws in itself was no safeguard against abuse.

South Africa enshrines security of tenure in its constitution but the government rides roughshod over locals by promoting controversial mining deals, said Aninka Claassens, director of the University of Cape Town’s Land and Accountability Research Center.

More than two decades after the end of apartheid, whites still own most of the land in resource-rich South Africa and ownership remains a highly emotive subject ahead of next year’s national election.

“Our constitution means nothing unless people affected can prove their land rights, that’s why recorded rights are so important,” she said. “Mining is destroying livelihoods and land.”

Who owns what, where

Mapping property rights is crucial to understand “who owns what, where and how,” said Anne Girardin, land surveyor at the Cadasta Foundation, which develops digital tools to document and analyze land and resource rights information.

“That allows you to monitor changes in land resources, but also to better protect them,” she added.

More than 200 activists protecting their land and environment were killed in 2017, according to a survey of 22 countries by Global Witness, marking the deadliest year since the human rights group began collecting data.

Better and more coordinated information is needed to ward off more deadly conflicts, the experts said, citing satellite images and smartphones as tools that could document land.

Technology is plentiful but resources are scattered, Girardin said.

“It would take all the land surveyors we have 200-300 years to map the world’s undocumented land, so we need to be more pragmatic and work together,” she said.

Communities document land

Rampant deforestation means communities should rush to document their own land rather than wait for governments to act, said Nonette Royo, executive director of the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, which helps indigenous people.

“In the world, forest area the size of Belgium disappears every year,” she said.

For Claassens, land rights should be mapped and recorded in accordance with who uses land as well as who actually owns it.

“Who uses the land? Most often, it’s women,” she said, adding that women were often excluded from property records.

Women are key in the fight for land rights from Brazil to Cambodia, often deployed at the frontline to ward off development and protect family plots, fields and villages.
…

Ethically driven businesses are becoming increasingly popular and profitable but they can face threats for shaking up the existing order, entrepreneurs said on Social Enterprise Day.

When Meghan Markle wore a pair of “slave-free” jeans on a royal tour of Australia last month, she sparked a sales stampede and shone a spotlight on the growing number of companies aiming to meet public demand for ethical products.

“Right now is the perfect time to have this kind of business,” said James Bartle, founder of Australia-based Outland Denim, which made the $200 (150 pound) jeans. “There is awareness and people are prepared to spend on these kinds of products.”

Social Enterprise Day

Social Enterprise Day, which celebrates firms seeking to make profit while doing good, is being marked in 23 countries, including Australia, Nigeria, Romania and the Philippines, led by Social Enterprise UK (SEUK), which represents the sector.

Outland Denim is one such company, employing dozens of survivors of human trafficking and other vulnerable women in Cambodia to make its jeans, which all contain a written thank-you message from the seamstress on an internal pocket.

Bartle said he wanted to create a sustainable model that gives people power to change their future through employment.

More companies are striving to clean up their supply chains and stamp their goods as environmentally friendly and ethical, with women and millennials, people born between 1982 and 2000, driving the shift to products that seek to improve the world.

“For-profits create the mess, and then the not-for-profits clean it up,” said Andrew O’Brien, director of external affairs at SEUK, which estimates that 2 million British workers are employed by a social enterprise. “We are an existential threat to that system, by coming through the middle and forcing businesses to change the way they do business.”

Risky business 

Britain has the world’s largest social enterprise sector, according to the U.K. government. About 100,000 firms contribute 60 billion pounds ($76 billion) to the world’s fifth largest economy, SEUK says.

Elsewhere in the world, it can be a risky business.

“I get threats,” said Farhad Wajdi who runs Ebtakar Inspiring Entrepreneurs of Afghanistan, which helps women enter the workforce by training and providing seed money for them to operate food carts in the war-torn country. “I can’t go to the provinces.”

His work has met resistance in parts of Afghanistan, a conservative society where women rarely work outside the home.

“A social enterprise can lead to sustainable change in those communities,” Wajdi said on the sidelines of the Trust Conference in London. “It can propagate gender equality and create friction for social change at a grassroots level.”

Niche? Window dressing?

There is, however, a danger that social enterprise will remain a niche form of business or become window-dressing for firms that just want to improve their public image.

“I don’t want social enterprise to become the next (corporate social responsibility), another (public relations) move,” said Melissa Kim, the founder of Costa Rican-based Uplift Worldwide, which supports social enterprises.

“To me this is just good business, and good sustainable business is not just about the environment and human rights … if you care about your relationships internally and externally you will stay in business.”
…

As world leaders land in Papua New Guinea for a Pacific Rim summit, the welcome mat is especially big for China’s president.

A huge sign in the capital, Port Moresby, welcomes Xi Jinping, picturing him gazing beneficently at Papua New Guinea’s leader, and his hotel is decked out with red Chinese lanterns. China’s footprint is everywhere, from a showpiece boulevard and international convention center built with Chinese help to bus stop shelters that announce their origins with “China Aid” plaques. 

On the eve of Xi’s arrival for a state visit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, newspapers in the country ran a full-page statement from the Chinese leader. It exhorted Pacific island nations to “set sail on a new voyage” of relations with China, which in the space of a generation has transformed from the world’s most populous backwater into a major economic power. 

With both actions and words, Xi has a compelling message for the South Pacific’s fragile island states, long both propped up and pushed around by U.S. ally Australia: they now have a choice of benefactors. With the exception of Papua New Guinea, those island nations are not part of APEC, but the leaders of many of them have traveled to Port Moresby and will meet with Xi.

The APEC meeting, meanwhile, is Xi’s to dominate. Headline-hogging leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump are not attending. Trump’s stand-in, Vice President Mike Pence, is staying in Cairns in Australia’s north and flying into Papua New Guinea each day. Australia’s new prime minister, Scott Morrison, the country’s fifth leader in five years, is barely known abroad.

“President Xi Jinping is a good friend of Papua New Guinea,” its prime minister, Peter O’Neill, told reporters. “He has had a lot of engagement with Papua New Guinea and I’ve visited China 12 times in the last seven years.”

Pacific island nations, mostly tiny, remote and poor, rarely figure prominently on the world stage but have for several years been diligently courted by Beijing as part of its global effort to finance infrastructure that advances its economic and diplomatic interests. Papua New Guinea with about 8 million people is by far the most populous, and with its extensive tropical forests and oil and gas reserves is an obvious target for economic exploitation.

Six of the 16 Pacific island states still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, a sizeable bloc within the rapidly dwindling number of nations that recognize the island regarded as a renegade province by Beijing. Chinese aid and loans could flip those six into its camp. A military foothold in the region would be an important geostrategic boost for China, though its purported desire for a base has so far been thwarted. 

Beijing’s assistance comes without the oversight and conditions that Western nations and organizations such as the World Bank or International Monetary Fund impose. It is promising $4 billion of finance to build the first national road network in Papua New Guinea, which could be transformative for the mountainous nation. But experts warn there could also be big costs later on: unsustainable debt, white elephant showpieces and social tensions from a growing Chinese diaspora.

“China’s engagement in infrastructure in PNG shouldn’t be discounted. It should be encouraged but it needs to be closely monitored by the PNG government to make sure it’s effective over the long term,” said Jonathan Pryke, a Papua New Guinea expert at the Lowy Institute, a think tank in Sydney.

“The benefits of these projects, because a lot of them are financed by loans, only come from enhanced economic output over a long time to be able to justify paying back these loans,” he said.

“The history of infrastructure investment in PNG shows that too often there is not enough maintenance going on,” Pryke said. “There’s a build, neglect, rebuild paradigm in PNG as opposed to build and maintain which is far more efficient.”

Some high-profile Chinese projects in Papua New Guinea have already run into problems. A promised fish cannery hasn’t materialized after several years and expansion of a port in Lae, the major commercial center, was botched and required significant rectification work. Two of the Chinese state companies working in the country, including the company responsible for the port expansion, were until recently blacklisted from World Bank-financed projects because of fraud or corruption.

Xi’s newspaper column asserted China is the biggest foreign investor in Papua New Guinea, a statement more aspirational than actual. Its involvement is currently dwarfed by the investment of a single company—ExxonMobil’s $19 billion natural gas extraction and processing facility.

Australia, the former colonial power in Papua New Guinea, remains its largest donor of conventional foreign aid. Its assistance, spread across the country and aimed at improving bare bones public services and the capacity of government, is less visible. 

But its approach is shifting in response to China’s moves. 

In September, the Australian government announced it would pay for what is typically a commercial venture — a high-speed undersea cable linking Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands that promises to make the internet and telecommunications in the two island countries faster, more reliable and less expensive.

Earlier this month, Australia announced more than $2 billion of funding for infrastructure and trade finance aimed at Pacific island nations and also agreed to joint development of a naval base in Papua New Guinea, heading off feared Chinese involvement. It is also boosting its diplomatic presence, opening more embassies to be represented in every Pacific island state.

“The APEC meeting is shaping up to be a faceoff between China and Australia for influence in the Pacific,” said Elaine Pearson, the Australia director of Human Rights Watch.

That might seem a positive development for the region, but Pearson cautioned that competition for Papua New Guinea’s vast natural resources has in the past had little positive impact on the lives of its people.

“Sadly exploitation of resources in PNG has fueled violent conflict, abuse and environmental devastation,” she said.

 

 
…

This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them. 

 

PURU NI TIMBUL, MALAYSIA — Swinging his machete with an economy of movement that only the jungle can teach, Matakin Bondien lopped a stray branch from the path of his boat. He hopped barefoot from the prow, climbed a muddy slope and stared once more at what he’d lost. 

Not long ago, the clearing had been home to mangroves, saltwater-loving trees that anchor a web of life stretching from fish larvae hatching in the cradle of their underwater roots to the hornbills squawking at their crown. Now the trees’ benevolent presence was gone, in their place a swath of stripped soil littered with felled trunks as gray as fossils. 

“Do you think we can find any food in this place now?” asked Bondien, a village leader of the Tombonuo people. “The company thinks it can do anything it wants — that we don’t count.” 

The company is Sunlight Inno Seafood. Owned by Cedric Wong King Ti, a Malaysian businessman known as “King Wong,” it has bulldozed swaths of mangroves in the Tombonuo’s homeland in northern Borneo to make space for plastic-lined ponds filled with millions of king prawns. The shrimp are destined to be fattened for three months, scooped up in nets, quick-frozen, packed into 40-foot refrigerated containers and loaded onto cargo ships bound for distant ports. 

Gargantuan as it may seem to Bondien and his relatives, the project represents only a speck in the global aquaculture industry, one of the world’s fastest-growing sources of protein. 

Unfolding across Asia and around the world, this revolution in farming could help mitigate the impacts of climate change — or make them even worse. 

As the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases causes the world’s oceans to warm, ecosystems that formed hundreds of thousands of years ago are being upended in less than a human lifespan. Across the planet, fish and other marine creatures are being forced into a desperate search for cooler waters. Even coral is on the move: Some Japanese reefs are expanding northward at up to nearly nine miles per year, researchers have found. 

Tropical seas may be the hardest hit. Species in the once-stable conditions near the equator could find it much harder to tolerate even mild temperature increases than hardier cousins at higher latitudes, which are used to coping with the contrast between summer and winter. 

“If you ask me what is the No. 1 concern that I have on climate change effects on fisheries, it is on these tropical, developing countries,” said William Cheung, director of science at the Nippon Foundation-University of British Columbia Nereus Program. “The sheer speed of the change will make it that much harder for marine life to adapt.” 

Coral reefs, as vital to tropical fish as trees are to birds, are becoming more vulnerable to a process called bleaching, which occurs when a spike in water temperatures causes coral to expel the algae that provide their kaleidoscopic colors, leaving them prone to starvation or disease. Today, swaths of the once-psychedelic Great Barrier Reef in Australia have turned boneyard white and largely devoid of life. 

Scientists fear a similar fate could await the Coral Triangle, a huge underwater wonderland east of Borneo endowed with a trove of biodiversity comparable to the rainforests of the Amazon Basin. Millions of people depend on its bounty to survive, a large share of them Malaysians, who eat an average of 125 pounds of fish each a year — more than double the world average. 

With climate change bearing down on the tropics, the search is on for a more sustainable way of getting food from the sea, one that doesn’t take more than nature can give. 

Farther to the north on Borneo, an island divided among Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, villagers are raising sea cucumbers: curious-looking creatures resembling giant slugs that are typically braised and served with oysters, mushrooms and spring onions, or — if you’re in Japan — thinly sliced, flavored with wasabi and eaten raw. 

These echinoderms, close relatives of sea urchins and starfish, may not appeal to every palate. But farming them has one of the lightest footprints of any form of food production, a reminder of the vast untapped global potential for harvesting oysters, mussels, clams and many other types of filter-feeders. 

A couple of hours’ drive from the Sunlight Seafood shrimp farm, inhabitants of the stilted village of Mapan Mapan have created a maze of sunken enclosures fenced with a barnacle-covered mesh.  

Immersed waist-deep in one of these briny paddocks, sea-cucumber farmer Astinah Binti Jamari plucked one of the sandpaper-skinned creatures from the seabed. It responded by squirting her with a jet of saltwater — a defense normally used to scare away crabs.  

A revolution in fish 

Forty years ago, only 5 percent of the world’s fish production was farmed. After decades of rapid growth, aquaculture reached a tipping point in 2013, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, when the amount the industry raised in cages, tanks and ponds outweighed the tonnage of freely swimming fish hauled from lakes, rivers and seas for people’s plates. 

​In many respects, the industry has a good-news story to tell. Farmed salmon, for example, can convert feed into edible protein far more efficiently than cows or pigs, while producing fewer greenhouse gases. Now, almost all the salmon sold in restaurants and supermarkets is raised in captivity, with Norway, Chile and Scotland the biggest producers. 

But this phenomenal expansion has come at a cost. The appetite for farmed species is so voracious, almost 20 percent of the annual catch from the world’s seas is ground into fishmeal, a nutrient-rich powder that forms the basis of the feeds used from salmon cages in Scottish lochs to shrimp ponds on Borneo. Vast amounts of fish have been taken from poorer countries to feed species destined for the plates of wealthier consumers. In addition, shrimp farms, in particular, have made coastal communities in the tropics even more vulnerable by cutting down mangroves, their first line of defense against extreme weather and rising sea levels. 

Since the mid-1970s, the aquaculture industry has led to the destruction of more than 1.3 million acres of mangroves spread across Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, China, Brazil and Ecuador, according to a 2013 paper in the Bulletin of Marine Science. Untreated waste and epidemics of shrimp-killing diseases mean the gains can be short-lived: A study published this year identified more than half a million acres of abandoned shrimp ponds in Indonesia alone. 

Nevertheless, some governments in Southeast Asia and Latin America have concluded that it’s worth sacrificing more mangroves in return for the export earnings and employment the projects can generate. Among them is the Malaysian state of Sabah, which is a partner in King Wong’s shrimp farm. 

Hope of a better life 

In 2013, representatives of Sunlight Seafood offered leaders of the Tombonuo and other indigenous communities a deal. In return for some of the land flanking the tidal creeks where their mangroves stood, locals recalled, the company would provide running water, electricity and much-needed employment for youths in the surrounding area, known as Pitas. 

Five years since the bulldozers went to work, Tombonuo community leaders say they’ve lost more than 2,000 acres of mangroves and that the jobs and infrastructure they were promised haven’t materialized. 

“I have no words. It’s like we’ve lost our whole world,” said Samad Samayong, a Tombonuo elder, surveying a sacred outcrop consecrated by his ancestors that is now encircled by shrimp ponds. “We only realized what was happening when it was too late.” 

On the other side of a fence, a lone worker trudged past carrying a large bag of Royal Dragon brand shrimp feed on his shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice Samayong and other Tombonuo watching from the trees. 

Sunlight Seafood didn’t respond to Reuters’ requests for comment made by telephone, email and a letter hand-delivered to its office in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah. Reuters also contacted a law firm in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, that had acted for the company in the past but received no reply. 

Sunlight Seafood has issued statements to Borneo media saying the project was built on land long earmarked for aquaculture by government officials, and that it is boosting the economy in Pitas, one of the poorest districts in Sabah. 

The sheer scale of the farm is only fully apparent from up close. In July, a Reuters reporter and photographer accompanied Samayong, Bondien and others on a three-boat party to various points where water from the ponds gushed from pipes, leaving foamy trails of scum in the creeks. 

It took hours to trace even a portion of the fence enclosing the site. The barrier’s stark edges cut a jarring contrast to the tangle of mangrove roots straddling saltwater and land, their branches home to proboscis monkeys, pig-tailed macaques, blue-eared kingfishers and storks. 

The Sabah Environmental Protection Association, a nongovernmental organization, says Sunlight Seafood has already cut down 2,300 acres of mangroves, citing satellite imagery. 

“They cleared the mangroves with no proper consultation with the community,” said the group’s president, Lanash Thanda. “They have to redress the wrong they have done.” 

Apart from losing more trees, Samayong and Bondien fear diggers will further encroach on their ancestral shrines, such as an eerie riverbank guarded by a spirit husband and wife. 

Visiting on his boat, Bondien dedicated a cigarette he had rolled from mangrove bark to the couple, placing it on an altar made of branches. 

“It’s not only the forest that’s being destroyed,” said Mastupang Somoi, another member of the Tombonuo. “It’s our identity.” 

Trees provide buffer 

With evidence mounting that mangroves represent an effective buffer against climate impacts, some tropical countries are starting to question the gusto with which they once felled the trees, which can take 15 years to mature. 

Were it not for the way mangroves served as shields, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami could have taken many more than 220,000 lives. The trees can also help mitigate the impact of rising sea levels: Their multi-tiered root systems trap sediment to raise the land around them relative to the encroaching waves. 

Equally ingeniously, mangroves sequester more greenhouse gases than almost any other type of forest, as well as serving as natural larders of fish, birds, fruit and the kind of snails you can eat raw by snapping their conical shells and sucking out the innards. 

“If you catch a fish in the open sea or off a coral reef, it may well have spent part of its life in the mangroves,” said Dan Friess, an associate professor of geography at the National University of Singapore. 

Sabah’s government says it is committed to striking a balance between economic development and preserving Borneo’s extraordinary natural heritage, including by designating extensive areas of forest as nature reserves for threatened orangutans and creating Malaysia’s largest marine protected area. 

Earlier this month, Junz Wong, Sabah’s agriculture minister, toured the Sunlight Seafood farm and said the company had operated “quite professionally” and created nearly 400 jobs. On his Facebook page, Wong said he had rejected a company request to cut down an additional 1,000 acres of mangroves. “I told them NO,” he wrote. “No more destroying of mangroves.” 

In July, a Reuters reporter visited Sunlight Seafood’s offices in a suburb of Kota Kinabalu and hand-delivered a letter summarizing the Tombonuo community’s grievances and requesting an interview with owner Wong or another company representative. 

While the reporter was explaining the purpose of the letter to a worker who had been sent to meet him at the door, a security guard cut their conversation short and escorted the reporter off the premises. The guard then closed the gate to the driveway. It bore a large sign in red letters warning that trespassers would be prosecuted. 

​Food without a face 

Nestled in sea-cucumber farmer Jamari’s palm, the specimen she had fished from the seabed convulsed with a slow-motion shudder. Jamari, once a struggling single parent, says the creatures came to her rescue, earning her enough money to put her five children through school and build a new house. 

“The sea cucumbers are my treasure chest,” she said. “I can’t even imagine what life would be like without them.” 

Mapan Mapan has earned so much money from its sunken farms that it has declared an annual sea cucumber “birthday” festival, at which villagers give thanks by stewing a share of their harvest in a communal meal. 

Chinese traders have been importing sea cucumbers for more than a thousand years. Served at royal banquets, they were considered both a status symbol and an aphrodisiac. A Ming Dynasty book published in 1602 called “Miscellanies of Five Items” lists them as “sea ginseng.” 

This mystique drives much of the appetite today. In the decade that ended in 2016, global production of sea cucumbers more than doubled to nearly 275,000 tons, according to the FAO. 

At top Chinese restaurants, the echinoderms are used to make one of the world’s most expensive soups, a broth called Buddha Jumps Over the Wall that can sell for $400 and needs to be ordered five days in advance. 

Irwin Wong is a manager at Oceandrive, a Malaysian seafood company that buys the sea cucumbers for export. He served as an adviser when Mapan Mapan started cultivating the creatures eight years ago in a 20-farmer pilot project backed by the local government. He says the scheme is harvesting wild sea cucumbers at a sustainable rate, but that even better management could help Borneo produce many more. 

“Perhaps this is the lowest impact of all aquaculture activities,” Wong said, standing on a platform overlooking a planned new phase, to be built with barnacle-proof mesh and more durable epoxy-coated stakes. “It can seriously go very big.” 

Researchers believe there is enormous potential to scale up global production of plankton-eaters such as scallops, clams, oysters, cockles and other bivalves — and, of course, sea cucumbers. 

“The current way of feeding ourselves is simply not sustainable,” said Sebastian Ferse, an ecologist at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research in Bremen, Germany. “I think on a global level we have to start thinking about the lower levels of the marine food chain, such as bivalves, when it comes to supplying our proteins.” 

Scientific advisers to the European Union agree. They concluded last year that it should be possible to harvest a combined 165 million tons annually of bivalves and seaweed — almost double the world’s annual landings of wild-caught fish. 

The beauty of these creatures is that, unlike farmed fish or prawns, they don’t require any feed apart from the nutrients they absorb from the sea. No mangroves have to be felled to culture them. Neither do they spew tons of fish waste or chemical pollutants. In fact, bivalves actually remove toxins from the water; a single oyster filters 50 gallons of seawater a day. 

Yet even as the risks posed by climate change bring the potential of shellfish, seaweed and sea cucumbers into sharper focus, it is also putting them in danger. As oceans absorb carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels, seawater is rapidly becoming more acidic. There is already evidence that acidification can make mussels’ shells more brittle, or weaken their grip on rocks, leaving them at greater risk of being swept away by advancing waves. 

​‘Preserve every species’ 

Life has been kind to the prize specimens at the Borneo Marine Research Institute: mammoth tropical fish known as giant grouper, which can weigh as much as a person, and in some cases have been swimming in spirals in silo-like tanks for almost 20 years. The only drama happens at feeding time. When fresh sardines hit the surface, the fish dart through the water with torpedo force. 

Their wild relatives will have to work a lot harder to survive. In experiments to simulate the effects of more acidic waters, the institute has found that grouper — a staple in the Coral Triangle — find it harder to reproduce, and their young don’t develop properly. The findings have sharpened concerns about what climate change will mean for the region’s marine life, already struggling with plastic pollution, runoff from oil palm plantations, damage to reefs by dynamite fishing and the loss of mangroves. 

Shek Qin, a research assistant, visits the busy fish-landing quay at Kota Kinabalu two nights a week to monitor catches of sharks and rays. In the early hours of a July morning, she picked up a newly landed shark by its tail, plonked it onto the dock and cheerfully inserted her forefinger into its mouth, peering inside to inspect the teeth — a trick for classifying a specimen more accurately, especially if fishermen have lopped off the fins. 

“It’s a whole food web: If one species is declining, others will get affected, too,” Qin said, cradling a recently deceased hammerhead. “That’s why we need to preserve every species of fish.” 

Near the fence surrounding the Sunlight Seafood shrimp farm, villagers Bondien and Samayong moored their flotilla under some mangrove trees and cast lead-weighted hooks. Samayong’s daughter Ida remembered her grandfather regaling her with tales of the monster fish of his youth — notably, a ray he once caught that was bigger than his boat. But that day, nothing came to nibble. 

“You used to be able to catch a fish here in 10 minutes,” said Bondien, his line slack in the water. “Now, even if you have good bait, you can wait an hour and get only one — maybe nothing.”  

Around a bend in the river, an empty bag of Royal Dragon feed had become snagged in some mangrove branches. It was emblazoned with an image of a shrimp. 
…

Climate change, steel and migration have emerged as sticking points in the final communique that world leaders will issue at the end of the Group of 20 summit in Argentina later this month, an Argentine government official said on Thursday.

Those issues were the “most complicated” areas of discussion, said Argentina’s Pedro Villagra Delgado, the lead organizer, or “sherpa,” for the summit of leaders from key industrialized and developing economies. 

But he told a press briefing he was optimistic these issues would be resolved in time.

The G20 communique is a non-binding agreement on key international policy issues and will be presented at the conclusion of the two-day summit, which begins on Nov. 30.

Climate goals concern United States

Villagra Delgado said the United States was resistant to including language that outlined guidelines for climate goals in the document.

After withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement last year, the United States broke with other G20 member countries who have pledged to end coal usage and take steps to reach the goals outlined in the accord.

Villagra Delgado also said China disagreed with the rest of the G20 countries on steel, but did not provide further details over the specifics of their disagreement.

The United States has skirmished with a number of its trading partners — including China — over steel, imposing a 25 percent duty on imports of steel and a tariff of 10 percent on aluminum.

Other countries objected to including language about immigration in the communique, Villagra Delgado said, but would not elaborate on which countries expressed concern.

WTO reform may be on table

Reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) may also be a topic of discussion at this month’s meeting, Villagra Delgado said, but added that specific issues to be discussed in the G20 sessions were still being worked out.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the WTO, while China has claimed the 20-year-old organization’s dispute resolution mechanisms are outdated in the current global economy.
…

A U.S. congressional commission said Wednesday that China appears to have relaxed enforcement of sanctions on North Korea and called on the Treasury Department to provide a report on Chinese compliance within 180 days.

In its annual report, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said the Treasury report should include a classified list of Chinese financial institutions, businesses and officials involved in trading with North Korea that could be subject to future sanctions.

The bipartisan commission said China had appeared to enforce sanctions on North Korea more thoroughly than in the past in 2017 and in early 2018.

But this effort appeared to have relaxed since a thaw in relations between China and North Korea as the long-time ally of Beijing began to engage with the United States this year.

Key lifelines

“China appears to have eased off sanctions enforcement, despite its promises to keep sanctions intact until North Korea gets rid of its nuclear weapons,” the report said.

“North Korean workers have returned to jobs in northeast China, economic activity and tourism have picked up in border towns, flights in both directions have resumed, and the two countries have conducted high-profile official exchanges to discuss economic development,” it said.

It said China always left “key lifelines” in place for North Korea and there were “holes” in enforcement that included “ship to ship” transfers of goods.

The report said the Treasury Department, in recommending Chinese sanctions targets, should also “explain the potential broader impacts of sanctioning those entities.”

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously boosted sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke off funding for its weapons programs. The United States has imposed sanctions in the past on Chinese and other foreign firms for violating those steps.

Reward Pyongyang?

China and Russia have said the Security Council should reward Pyongyang for “positive developments” after U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in June and Kim pledged to work toward denuclearization.

China’s top diplomat and politburo member Yang Jiechi said after talks in Washington last week that China would “continue to enforce strictly relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

Trump has suggested China may be exerting negative pressure on U.S. efforts to press North Korea to denuclearize in response to U.S. trade measures on Beijing.

The U.S. Treasury did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the commission report, but the State Department said it expected all U.N. states to implement sanctions resolutions until North Korea gave up its nuclear weapons.
…

Safety is the biggest concern for women using public and private transport in five of the world’s biggest commuter cities, according to a global poll released Thursday as improving city access for women becomes a major focus globally. 

A Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of 1,000 women in London, New York, Mexico City, Tokyo and Cairo found 52 percent of respondents overall cited safety as their main worry, with women in Mexico City the most fearful about safety. 

Almost three in every four women in Mexico City lacked confidence they could travel without facing sexual harassment and abuse or sexual violence, with Cairo coming a close second. 

The ratio was one in four women in the other three cities. 

The time it took to travel around the city — with studies showing women often take more complex routes with more stops than men because of household and child care duties — was named as the second-biggest concern, cited by 33 percent of women. 

Time was the biggest worry for women in New York, with two-thirds saying it influenced their decision to take or stay in a job, while the cost of transport concerned women in London most, with nearly three in four women saying it was expensive. 

The poll came as city authorities have been looking at ways to ensure women have safe, efficient transport to reach jobs, education and health care. The cities are seeking to tackle inequality and poverty and boost their economies by getting more women into the workforce. 

The poll also came amid growing concern in the #MeToo climate that transport networks are magnets for sexual predators who use rush-hour crushes to hide behavior and as an excuse if caught. 

“It is very rare to find a group of women in any city who don’t have concerns about safety, and it is important for planners to think about that when designing a transport system,” said Jemilah Magnusson, spokeswoman for the U.S.-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. 

“Most transport systems focus on the solo male commuter traveling at peak hours from home and work, but women have different trip patterns. … Women must be involved in planning transit to meet their needs.” 

Laws and smartphones 

The survey, conducted Aug. 13-24 and supported by Uber, asked 200 women in each of five of the world’s largest commuter cities with underground train networks in different cultural regions about safety, time spent traveling and cost, among other issues. 

A recent International Labor Organization study said limited access to and safety of transport were estimated to be the greatest obstacles to women’s role in the labor force in developing countries, reducing probable participation by 16.5 percent. 

Transport authorities and experts said moves to improve transport for women had become a major issue in recent years because of safety concerns and congestion. 

World Bank reports have stressed that improving transport can have immediate positive results on women’s lives, be it through adding safety laws, including women in planning, or offering alternative transport, such as ride-hailing apps or bikes. 

The World Bank introduced gender as an issue for the first time this year at an annual conference on transforming transportation. 

Magnusson said including the issue of women and transport exploded into a major issue after the 2012 fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in Delhi shocked the world. 

“This was one story that brought out lots of other horror stories from women and really galvanized people,” said Magnusson, whose group promotes environmental and livable transport. 

This has led to a surge in women-only train carriages and taxi services, but just 47 percent of the women in the poll said this would improve women’s safety. 

Maria Jose Bermudez, 45, a cook who commutes three hours a day using public transport in Mexico City, said more needs to be done instead to educate men about women’s rights generally. 

“Women-only carriages don’t really solve the problem because the issue has to do with Mexico’s culture and how men treat women,” Bermudez told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

Coping with congestion 

Steve Swasey, spokesman for public transit app Moovit, said smartphones had triggered a “revolution” in mass transit with the emergence of ride-hailing apps and apps to use transport more efficiently by cutting wait times and avoiding bottlenecks. 

The Inter-American Development Bank found the higher the compliance with a transport schedule or the less congested, the lower the probability that a woman will be a crime victim. 

The Thomson Reuters Foundation poll found that 56 percent of women globally said ride-hailing apps had improved their ability to get around their cities. More than half of women in every city but Tokyo said these new forms of transport were helpful. 

“City roads are at full capacity, and there is not one major city where congestion is not a major concern,” Swasey said. “You can’t easily or quickly put more lanes on a bridge or rails in a tunnel … but you can use data to regulate the influx of traffic and change the way people use transport.” 

Magnusson said most cities were aware they should make transport more efficient and faster — but this could be a very politically unpopular move as it means cutting back on cars. 

“Taking lanes from cars to make bus lanes and bike lanes, and introducing new parking and restriction schemes, can stop cars going into cities and help speed up transport,” she said. 

 

“It is not about just one thing, but it is about creating a transport system that is fair and allows women to fully participate in society, but that in itself can be very threatening to many people.” 
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The United Kingdom and the European Union have agreed on a deal that will give London’s vast financial center only a basic level of access to the bloc’s markets after Brexit. 

The agreement will be based on the EU’s existing system of financial market access known as equivalence — a watered-down relationship that officials in Brussels have said all along is the best arrangement that Britain can expect. 

The EU grants equivalence to many countries and has so far not agreed to Britain’s demands for major concessions such as offering broader access and safeguards on withdrawing access, neither of which is mentioned in the draft deal. 

“It is appalling,” said Graham Bishop, a former banker and consultant who has advised EU institutions on financial services. The draft text “is particularly vague but emphasizes the EU’s ability to take decisions in its own interests. … This is code for the UK being a pure rule taker.” 

Britain’s decision to leave the EU has undermined London’s position as the leading international finance hub. Britain’s financial services sector, the biggest source of its exports and tax revenue, has been struggling to find a way to preserve the existing flow of trading after it leaves the EU. 

Many top bankers fear Brexit will slowly undermine London’s position. Global banks have already reorganized some operations ahead of Britain’s departure from the European Union, due on March 29. 

Currently, inside the EU, banks and insurers in Britain enjoy unfettered access to customers across the bloc in all financial activities. 

No commercial bank lending

Equivalence, however, covers a more limited range of business and excludes major activities such as commercial bank lending. Law firm Hogan Lovells has estimated that equivalence rules cover just a quarter of all EU cross-border financial services business. 

Such an arrangement would give Britain a similar level of access to the EU as major U.S. and Japanese firms, while tying it to many EU finance rules for years to come. 

Many bankers and politicians have been hoping London could secure a preferential deal giving it deep access to the bloc’s markets. 

Under current equivalence rules, access is patchy and can be cut off by the EU within 30 days in some cases. Britain had called for a far longer notice period. 

The draft deal is likely to persuade banks, insurers and asset managers to stick with plans to move some activities to the EU to ensure they maintain access to the bloc’s markets. 

Britain is currently home to the world’s largest number of banks, and about 6 trillion euros ($6.79 trillion) or 37 percent of Europe’s financial assets are managed in the U.K. capital, almost twice the amount of its nearest rival, Paris. 

London also dominates Europe’s 5.2 trillion-euro investment banking industry. 

Rachel Kent, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells who has advised companies on future trading relations with the EU, said the draft deal did not rule out improved equivalence in the future. 

“I don’t see that any doors have been closed,” she said. “It is probably as much as we could hope for at this stage.” 
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When Meghan Markle wore a pair of “slave-free” jeans on a royal tour of Australia last month, she sparked a sales stampede and shone a spotlight on the growing number of companies aiming to meet public demand for products untainted by modern-day slavery.

Australia-based Outland Denim employs dozens of survivors of human trafficking and modern slavery and other vulnerable women in Cambodia to make its $200 (150 pounds) jeans that are stamped as ethically sourced and produced, and environmentally friendly.

Founder James Bartle said his social enterprise — a business seeking to make profit while doing good — set out from day one in 2011 to know exactly where their materials and workforce came from — which had meant limited quantities and higher prices.

But he said today’s more educated and demanding consumers were happy to spend more on goods that were not damaging the planet or fueling slavery, and the unexpected publicity from Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, could hugely boost this trend.

He said the company was totally surprised when the duchess stepped off a plane in the rural Australian city of Dubbo wearing their jeans which all contain a written thank-you message from the seamstress on an internal pocket.

“[She] made it OK to wear an ethically-made brand to the world … we can’t put a value on that,” Bartle said at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference on Wednesday.

“Every brand must stand for something. The public are sick and tired of marketing,” he said. “We wanted to create a sustainable model — to give genuine power to people to change their future through employment.”

Hard to prove

More companies are not only striving to clean up their supply chains but stamping their goods as slave-free.

Yet labor activists and academics say it is very difficult for any company to prove that its supply chain is entirely free of forced labor or abuses, and the public should be wary.

Dutch chocolate-maker Tony’s Chocolonely, stamps its goods with the slogan “100 percent slave-free” — despite sourcing cocoa beans from West Africa where two million children are estimated to work and reports of forced labor are rife.

The firm said it deals directly with local farming groups rather than international traders, and traces its supply chain fully, from the beans it buys to the finished product on sale.

“Unfortunately, too many companies only pay lip service in their strife to end abuses in their supply chain, instead of really making it part of their core business” said Arjen Boekhold, a “cocoa game changer” at Tony’s Chocolonely.

“Consumers will not pay extra for products which are not genuine in quality … or in efforts to end abuses or slavery,” added Boekhold, also a speaker at the London-based conference.

“People try to push us into an ethical corner … but we are the new normal,” he told a panel discussion on slave-free goods.

‘Seismic shift’ needed

About 25 million people are estimated to be trapped in forced labor, according to the United Nations, which in 2015 agreed to a global target of ending slavery in all forms by 2030.

While more companies are going public with their anti-slavery efforts, few can categorically say their products are untainted, said Andrew Crane, an academic at Bath University.

“This is very hard to prove, any such claims cannot be trusted by consumers,” the labor issues expert added. “Maybe we don’t need companies to say they are slave-free … but that they are trying to be and doing everything they can to achieve that.”

Many companies sign up to anti-slavery schemes or codes of conduct instead of directly dealing with their workers, yet such initiatives often fail to stop abuses, experts say.

A study by Sheffield University, revealed exclusively by Reuters in May, found some Indian tea plantations stamped slavery-free by groups including Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance were abusing and underpaying workers.

“There is no doubt that low prices and cheap products are driving a race to the bottom on labor standards,” said Cindy Berman of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), an alliance of trade unions, companies and charities promoting workers’ rights.

“But getting consumers to pay more for products will only scratch the surface of the problem unless it’s part of a seismic shift in the way goods and services are traded globally.”
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Britain’s Theresa May scrambled Wednesday to sell to her Cabinet a draft Brexit divorce agreement British negotiators concluded after months of wrangling with their European Union counterparts.

But the 500-page draft remains a source of deep dispute within Britain’s ruling Conservative party and also in the country’s parliament, which will have the final say on whether to approve it.

As news emerged Tuesday that a text had been agreed, hardline Brexiteers lined up to attack the proposed agreement with former British foreign minister Boris Johnson, who resigned earlier this year, urging other ministers to join him in opposing the terms of the deal. Britain’s main opposition parties also announced their disapproval of the deal, which has not even been published yet. 

The agreement, if approved by the Cabinet and subsequently the British parliament, would see Britain remaining in a customs union for several years with the EU after it formally exits the bloc in March, but with an unclear legal path to quitting the customs arrangement while a fuller trade deal is negotiating.

Remaining in a customs union allows Britain and the EU to avoid introducing customs checks along the border separating Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and would also allow “frictionless trade” between Britain and its erstwhile partners in the EU.

Tough sell

But critics say it would reduce Britain to the status of a “vassal state” by requiring it to accept EU rules and regulations without having any say about them. It would also block Britain from signing trade deals with other countries while a trade agreement is concluded with the EU, which itself could take three or four years or even longer. Reaching trade deals independently with non-EU countries was a key selling point of Brexit for many who voted nearly two years ago in a referendum to relinquish EU membership.

“This is just about as bad as it could possibly be,” Johnson fumed Tuesday to reporters in the corridors of the British House of Commons. Other Brexiteers joined him to denounce the proposed deal, one they are determined to sabotage and which runs, they say, contrary to the Conservative Party manifesto they fought an election on a year.

“For the first time in a thousand years this place, this parliament will not have a say over the laws which govern this country. It is quite an incredible state of affairs,” Johnson added.

“She hasn’t so much struck a deal as surrendered to Brussels… the UK will be a slave state,” said Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Conservatives’ future at stake

The stakes couldn’t be higher for Theresa May. The draft agreement, May’s fate as Prime Minister and the longevity of the Conservative government are all hanging in the balance. The consequences of the process to get the draft agreement approved are difficult to guess and could end up sinking May, the Conservative government and even Brexit itself. “I don’t think anyone knows, to be truthful,” said Labour lawmaker Chuka Umunna.

May’s minority government relies on the votes in the House of Commons on a handful of lawmakers from a quirky Protestant-based Unionist party, which is also opposed to the draft deal.

Without the backing of the Democratic Unionist Party, and faced with an inevitable revolt by dozen of Conservative lawmakers, May will need to persuade opposition lawmakers to break with their party leaderships by arguing her deal is the best Britain can get.

Second vote?

But an increasing number of opposition lawmakers are jumping on the bandwagon of the People’s Vote movement, which is calling for a second Brexit referendum. Recent opinion polls suggest a majority of voters now, especially in traditional Labour heartlands, many of which voted in June 2016 for Brexit, now want Britain to retain EU membership, fearing the economic fallout from departure.

But even before seeking next month parliamentary backing for the draft customs union deal, May has to persuade her cabinet to back her — and that is not even a sure thing. On Tuesday — ahead of a full cabinet meeting called for Wednesday afternoon — May took a leaf out of the playbook of her Conservative predecessor Margaret Thatcher, who in 1990 called in ministers one by one to place them on the spot and demand their support. However, the tactic backfired on Thatcher and she was forced to resign. 

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith predicts May’s days will be numbered if she fails to reverse course and decides not to pursue a cleaner break from the EU. “If the cabinet agrees it, the party certainly won’t,” he said. Conservative lawmakers who want Britain to remain in the EU are also publicly opposing the draft agreement, placing May in a tight political vice.

Leave-supporting ministers were coming under intense pressure from hardline Brexiteers in the hours leading up to the cabinet meeting to reject the deal. They pointed to a leaked EU document outlining a strategy to force Britain to accept an almost permanent alignment with its rules and regulations governing state aid, environmental protection and workers’ rights.

In a note to EU ambassadors, Sabine Weyand, a deputy EU negotiator, said the customs union will form the basis for Britain’s future trade deal with the bloc. “They must align their rules but the EU will retain all the controls. UK wants a lot more from the future relationship, so EU retains leverage,” she wrote. 

 

 

 

 

 
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Several hundred private cargo planes in the United States deliver millions of packages per year. The FedEx superhub in Memphis Tennessee works around the clock to get parcels delivered to customers and hopefully – on time. VOA’s Lesia Bakalets traveled to Memphis to learn what part of day is the busiest for the FedEx team and how quickly they can load a plane.
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