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The White House released a report Thursday contending that the United States’ war on poverty — a drive that started over 50 years ago to improve the social safety net for the poorest citizens of the world’s largest economy — is “largely over and a success,” contrasting with other reports on the nation’s poor.

The report, authored by President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, called for federal aid recipients to be pushed toward work requirements.

The report says poverty, when measured by consumption, has fallen by 90 percent since 1961. It also says that only 3 percent of Americans currently live under the poverty line.

“The timing is ideal for expanding work requirements among non-disabled working-age adults in social welfare programs,” according to the report. “Ultimately, expanded work requirements can improve the lives of current welfare recipients and at the same time respect the importance and dignity of work.”

U.N. report

The council’s report contrasts with a U.N. report on poverty in the U.S. that was released last month. That report said about 12 percent of the U.S. population lives in poverty, and that the U.S. “leads the developed world in income and wealth inequality.”

Phillip Alston, a U.N. adviser on extreme poverty and the author of the report, wrote in December 2017 that he believed Trump and his administration, along with U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, “will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes.”

In April, Trump signed an executive order outlining work mandates for low-income citizens on federal aid programs. These programs included Medicaid, which provides federal health insurance for low-income individuals, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides these low-income individuals with assistance in food purchasing.

Both programs were among those introduced in the 1960s, during the administration of then-President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat who coined the term “war on poverty” during his first State of the Union address.

Four state mandates

The Trump administration has already permitted four states — Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas, and New Hampshire — to implement work requirement programs for Medicaid recipients, the first such restrictions enforced on the program. In June, however, a federal judge struck down Kentucky’s mandate, writing that the administration’s waiver “never adequately considered whether [the program] would in fact help the state furnish medical assistance to its citizens, a central objective of Medicaid.”

Anne Marie Regan, a senior staff attorney for the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, one of the organizations that successfully challenged the Kentucky waiver, told VOA that while she didn’t know the specifics of other states’ Medicare waivers, she thought similar challenges could be successful because of the administration’s insistence on work requirements.

Regan said her state’s proposal would have removed 95,000 people from health care coverage.

“The war on poverty is certainly not over,” Regan said. “There’s certainly still a great need for a safety net.”

In June, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a farm bill that includes work requirements for some adults who receive food assistance benefits. Every Democrat, along with 20 Republicans, voted against the bill, which is not expected to pass the Senate.
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Failing to let girls finish their education could cost the world as much as $30 trillion in lost earnings and productivity, yet more than 130 million girls are out of school globally, the World Bank said Wednesday.

Women who have completed secondary education are more likely to work and earn on average nearly twice as much as those with no schooling, according to a report by the World Bank.

About 132 million girls worldwide aged 6 to 17 do not attend school, while fewer than two-thirds of those in low-income nations finish primary school, and only a third finish lower secondary school, the World Bank said.

If every girl in the world finished 12 years of quality education, lifetime earnings for women could increase by $15 trillion to $30 trillion, according to the report.

“Overall, the message is clear: Educating girls is not only the right thing to do,” the World Bank said in the report, “it also makes economic and strategic sense for countries to fulfill their development potential.”

Other positive impacts of completing secondary school education for girls include a reduction in child marriage, lower fertility rates in countries with high population growth, and reduced child mortality and malnutrition, the World Bank said.

“We cannot keep letting gender inequality get in the way of global progress,” Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank chief executive, said in a statement.

The benefits of educating girls are considerably higher at secondary school level in comparison to primary education, said Quentin Wodon, World Bank lead economist and main report author.

“While we do need to ensure that, of course, all girls complete primary school, that is not enough,” Wodon told Reuters.

Women who have completed secondary education are at lesser risk of suffering violence at the hands of their partners, and have children who are less likely to be malnourished and themselves are more likely to go to school, the report said.

“When 130 million girls are unable to become engineers or journalists or CEOs because education is out of their reach, our world misses out on trillions of dollars,” Malala Yousafzai, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in a statement.

“This report is more proof that we cannot afford to delay investing in girls,” said Yousafzai, an education activist who was shot in the head at the age of 15 by a Taliban gunman in 2012.

The report was published ahead of U.N. Malala Day on Thursday, which marks the birthday of the Pakistani activist.
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Uber’s business in Kenya said on Friday it will keep its fares unchanged for now, after associations representing taxi drivers in the country signed a deal giving guidelines for better fares and working conditions.

“As of today, we will not be adjusting our fares as we are busy completing a deeper study of driver economics in light of the concerns and feedback that we have received from drivers to ensure that fares are correctly priced,” a spokesperson for Uber Technologies said in an email to Reuters.

The Digital Taxi Association of Kenya, representing more than 2,000 ride-hailing taxi drivers, signed a deal on Wednesday meant to give drivers higher pay and better conditions.

The drivers told Reuters they thought the deal would cushion them in the event of falling fares arising from discounts companies offers to passengers. They had staged a nine-day strike seeking higher fares and better working conditions.

As in other markets, these ride-hailing services in Kenya initially faced opposition and sometimes hostility from other taxi drivers.

Kenya is Uber’s second-largest market in sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa. It competes mostly against its local rival Taxify, which has gained popularity in Nairobi in the past year and a half, but does not disclose numbers of active riders and users.
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As farmer Brian Duncan gently brushes his hands over the rolling amber waves of grain in the fields behind his rural Illinois home, this picturesque and idyllic American scene belies the dramatic hardship he currently faces.

“We’re in trouble,” he told VOA.

Wheat is just one product that grows on Duncan’s diverse farm, also home to about 70,000 hogs annually, which Duncan said “were projected to be profitable this year.”

Were, but not anymore.

Pork is now subject to a 62 percent Chinese tariff, and demand is drying up in one of the world’s largest pork markets.

“Once that tariff went on, the pork stopped going into China. Not going to Taiwan, either. Not finding other routes. That market just disappeared,” said Duncan, who expected to see a $4 to $5 profit on each pig, then watched it become a $7 to $8 loss per head.

“The difference between making and losing money in the hog industry is exports,” said Duncan, acknowledging that for most hog farmers, exports are key to profits. A lack of competitive access to international markets could spell long-term financial hardship, particularly for independent pork producers like Duncan.

“The reality is 95 percent of the world population is outside these borders. We need them … as markets and trading partners,” Duncan said.

Tariffs begin to bite

U.S. farmers like Duncan are beginning to feel the effects of such tariffs imposed by China in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum.

In May 2017, Trump touted a potential trade deal with Beijing.

The objective in part was to reduce the trade deficit with China. But this month, the administration tangled with China over alleged theft of intellectual property and technology and the pressuring of foreign companies doing business in China to cede such property. Washington imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion of imported Chinese goods and threatened more; China retaliated with tariffs on $34 billion worth of U.S. goods — including soybeans and pork. 

U.S. tariffs on an addition $16 billion worth of Chinese exports are in the works, and the administration also is targeting another $200 billion in Chinese goods for tariffs. China has vowed more retaliation. 

As the trade dispute continues, Duncan, who also serves as vice president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, is losing money on virtually everything growing on his farm because of imposed or impending tariffs.

“Soybeans were a buck and a half higher than they are now,” he told VOA. “Corn was 50 to 70 cents higher than it is now. So, certainly the attitude has changed here in the last two to three weeks.”

So has Duncan’s mood.

“Frustrated. This was preventable. This was predictable — the outcome. There was a better way to go about this,” he said.

​Long-term loss of market

“Tariffs are kind of a last resort for a really specific instance or really serious breach of a contract and not something that you would lob out there to try to make progress in a trade agreement, and I think that’s what surprised farmers a bit,” said Tamara Nelsen, senior director of commodities with the Illinois Farm Bureau.

Nelsen said history shows the long-term impact of tariffs and trade embargoes is a loss of market access and competitiveness for U.S. products.

“In every event, we lost market share, or we encouraged production somewhere else of that same product. And it took U.S. agriculture 20, 30 years to get some of those markets back. And in some cases, we haven’t gotten those markets back.”

For Duncan, the long-term impact on the reputation of U.S. agricultural products is his biggest concern.

“How are we going to be seen? Is a country going to look at us and say, ‘Why would I sign an agreement with them, anyhow? If they don’t like something we do, are they just going to put a bunch of tariffs up and blow things up?’ How are we seen going forward in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years? For me, that is the biggest issue more than the here and now.”

Farm income at risk

But in the here and now is the difficult reality that farmers are also experiencing their fifth year of declining income.

“We’ve seen farm income cut in half in the last four years for various reasons. We could easily see it cut in half again if we lost all our export markets,” which Duncan said could increase dependence on government aid at a time when lawmakers in Washington debate new farm legislation that the agriculture industry needs to provide security.

All of the uncertainty has him evaluating his options the next time he heads to the ballot box.

“It’s the economy, stupid. My vote will depend an awful lot on the farm economy,” he said. “That’s just the world I live in.”

A world that is now more connected — and dependent on international trade — than ever before.
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U.S. farmers are beginning to feel the effects of tariffs imposed by China in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, while the short-term concern for farmers is the impact on profits this year, the bigger worry is the longer term consequences of the escalating trade dispute.
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U.S. senators Thursday continued a bipartisan rebuke of President Donald Trump’s punitive trade strategy, one day after an overwhelming vote asserting a congressional role in the imposition of tariffs for national security reasons. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports from Capitol Hill, where anti-tariff sentiment is strong but not universal.
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President Donald Trump’s criticism of Germany’s involvement in a natural gas pipeline deal with Russia launched a tense two days of NATO meetings in Brussels — but it also may have set the tone for the U.S. leader’s highly anticipated summit with his Russian counterpart Monday in Helsinki.

In a taut exchange with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday, Trump said Nord Stream 2 — an offshore pipeline that would deliver gas to Germany directly from Russia via the Baltic Sea — leaves the Western military alliance’s largest and wealthiest European member “totally controlled” by and “captive to” Russia.

“We’re supposed to protect you against Russia but [Germany is] paying billions of dollars to Russia, and I think that’s very inappropriate,” Trump told Stoltenberg.

According to the U.S. leader, Germany “got rid of their coal plants, got rid of their nuclear, they’re getting so much of the oil and gas from Russia. I think it’s something NATO has to look at.”

As Europe’s biggest natural gas consumer, Germany relies on Russia for roughly half of its gas imports, which account for 20 percent of its current energy mix, according to London-based Marex Spectron group. The International Energy Association projects German natural gas demand to increase by 1 percent in the next five years, as Berlin continues phasing out its nuclear power plants by 2022.

Expanding upon the existing Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which has been transporting gas from Russia to Germany along the same Baltic Sea route since 2011, Nord Stream 2, currently slated for completion by 2019, would roughly double Russia’s export volume.

Trump says the $11 billion, 800-mile pipeline expansion linking Russia and Germany would give Moscow greater geopolitical leverage over Europe at a time of heightened international tensions, an opinion in keeping with that of his his immediate predecessor, former President Barack Obama, and former President George W. Bush, who opposed Nord Stream 1.

The administrations have long pushed for Germany, Europe’s largest energy consumer, to buy American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in an attempt to overtake a sector of the market long dominated by Russian distribution routes that run through Ukraine.

Poland and Lithuania, who are among Nord Stream 2’s most vociferous European critics, have built LNG terminals that would stand to profit from an American takeover of the market. But other former Soviet satellite nations — such as Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia — have long warned that a growing reliance on Russian energy not only compromises European security, but rewards Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and other campaigns to destabilize the European Union.

There have been numerous price disputes between Moscow and Kyiv over natural gas deliveries to Ukraine, whose pipelines serve other European nations. In 2009, a disagreement between the two nations cut natural gas supplies to Western Europe in the middle of winter, leaving many without heat.

Nord Stream 2, they argue, will not only deprive land-transit countries such as Poland and Ukraine of billions in annual transit fees, it will also give Russia a way to penalize Eastern European foes without sacrificing lucrative deals further to the west.

According to Atlantic Council energy expert Agnia Grigas, Nord Stream 2 contradicts the EU’s official energy security strategy, which calls on EU nations to diversify energy sources, distributors and routes.

“If Nord Stream 2 is built, Germany would be the EU country most exposed to dubious Russian influence,” Grigas recently reported. “Moscow already has a track record of relying on German businesses and lawmakers to advance its own strategic goals. For instance, following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, large German companies with considerable business ties with Russia were among the harshest critics of Western sanctions against Moscow.”

As a private project backed by energy giants such as Shell — a British-Dutch multinational — Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper, along with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, Nord Stream 2 is also being financed by private firms from Austria, France and Britain, but not by German tax funds.

In responding to Trump’s Wednesday tirade against Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she knew all too well from her childhood in the East what it is like to live under Soviet control. But she said energy deals with Russia do not make 21st-century Berlin beholden to Moscow.

“I am very happy that today we are united in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of that, we can say that we can make our independent policies and make independent decisions,” she said.

Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, a longtime friend of Putin, has championed the Nord Stream enterprise since just before being voted out of office in 2005. He soon went on to lead the shareholder committee of Nord Stream AG, a consortium for construction and operation of the submarine pipeline, eventually going on to become chairman of the Kremlin-controlled Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company.

In March, European politicians increased calls for sanctions against the ex-chancellor for representing Russian interests, though his name has yet to appear on any lists of individuals targeted for sanctions.

Despite repeated U.S. warnings that companies involved in the deal also risk being slapped with sanctions, Nord Stream 2 is scheduled for completion next year.

This story originated in VOA’s Russian service. 
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The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday that it would appeal a federal judge’s approval of AT&T Inc.’s $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner.

The Justice Department opted in June not to seek an immediate stay of the court’s approval of the merger, allowing the merger to close on June 14. The department still had 60 days to appeal the decision.

The government’s court filing did not disclose on what ground it intended to challenge the approval.

AT&T and the Justice Department did not immediately comment.

AT&T shares fell 1 percent after the bell.

The merger, announced in October 2016, was opposed by President Donald Trump. AT&T was sued by the Justice Department but won approval from a judge to move forward with the deal in June following a six-week trial.

Judge Richard Leon of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the tie-up between AT&T’s wireless and satellite businesses and Time Warner’s movies and television shows was legal under antitrust law.

The Justice Department had argued the deal would harm consumers.
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Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who was detained for three months in an anti-corruption campaign under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pledged support on Thursday for the young leader’s program of sweeping reforms.

“I was honored to meet with my brother HRH the Crown Prince and to discuss economic matters and the private sector’s future &; role in #Vision2030 success,” he tweeted with a photograph of the royal cousins embracing in front of a desk.

It is the first publicly disclosed meeting between the two men since the anti-corruption crackdown was launched in November.

“I shall be one of the biggest supporters of the Vision through @Kingdom_KHC &; all its affiliates,” Prince Alwaleed added, referring to his international investment company.

Vision 2030 is Prince Mohammed’s scheme to wean the world’s top crude exporter off oil revenues and open up Saudis’ cloistered lifestyles. The corruption sweep alarmed the Saudi business community as well as international investors the kingdom is courting to support the reforms.

Prince Alwaleed, the kingdom’s most recognised business figure, was freed in January after being held at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel along with scores of royals, senior officials and businessmen, most of whom reached financial settlements with the authorities.

He said in March he had cut a deal but declined to disclose the details. He said he was in discussions with the Public Fund, the sovereign wealth fund chaired by the crown prince, about making joint investments inside the kingdom. He previously told Reuters that he was innocent and expected to keep full control of his firm.

In the absence of more information, speculation has run rampant about whether Prince Alwaleed secured his freedom by forfeiting part of his fortune — once estimated by Forbes magazine at $17 billion — or stood up to authorities and won.
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Britain’s government is nearing a decision to buy four to six surveillance planes built by U.S. aerospace giant Boeing, sources familiar with the plans said Thursday — a move that could stir a growing debate over U.K. and European defense jobs.

The contract to replace its six aging E-3D Sentry airborne early warning (AWACS) planes with a fleet of Boeing E-7 Wedgetail jets would, if confirmed, be worth over $1 billion.

But the decision, which could be announced in coming weeks, is likely to anger some U.K. lawmakers who have called for a full competition, and may also spark formal protests by European defense companies keen for the business.

Airbus, which is said to be teaming up with Sweden’s Saab to offer an alternative, is anxious to try to prevent the deal being awarded without a competition and does not rule out mounting a legal challenge, a person close to the matter said.

A spokesman for Britain’s defense ministry said, “We tender contracts competitively wherever appropriate. It is too early to comment further at this time.” Boeing and Airbus had no immediate comment.

The decision over whether to order the equipment from the United States or to look to continental Europe reflects broader divisions over Britain’s external relations after it leaves the European Union, with thousands of high-tech jobs at stake.

U.S. President Donald Trump, whose support is vital as Britain seeks to forge new trade deals outside the European Union, extolled the benefits of buying from U.S. arms firms including Boeing after a NATO summit on Thursday.

But Airbus, which recently clashed with the U.K. government over delays in negotiating Brexit, is expected to defend a European solution based on its A330 jetliner and Saab’s Erieye radar and will argue Boeing trade actions put U.K. jobs at risk.

“It would mean the U.K. is no longer a trustworthy place to do business,” a person close to the company said.

The chairman of the British parliament’s defense committee this month posted a letter dated June 26 to the procurement minister, arguing that open competition would save money.

Boeing’s supporters say the E-7A planes — based on the 737 jetliner and already in use by Australia, South Korea and Turkey — would speed delivery to the UK military, which had deferred purchases to devote resources to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Boeing is willing to offer U.K. firms a significant share of work on the program, one of the sources said. It would fly 737 jetliners to the U.K. and allow firms there to do work needed to turn them into airborne surveillance and command assets.
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The U.S. is on pace to leapfrog both Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s biggest oil producer.

The latest data released by the Energy Information Administration shows U.S. output growing again next year to 11.8 million barrels a day.

 

Linda Capuano, who heads the agency, says that would make the U.S. the world’s No. 1 producer.

 

The director of the International Energy Agency, a group of oil-consuming countries, made a similar prediction in February.

 

Russia and Saudi Arabia pumped more crude than the U.S. last year.

 

Production is booming in U.S. shale fields because of newer techniques such as fracking and horizontal drilling.
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Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said on Wednesday the country will soon sign up to a $3 trillion African free trade zone.

Nigeria is one of Africa’s two largest economies, the other being South Africa. Buhari’s government had refused to join a continental free-trade zone established in March, on the grounds that it wishes to defend its own businesses and industry.

The administration later said it wanted more time to consult business leaders.

“In trying to guarantee employment, goods and services in our country, we have to be careful with agreements that will compete, maybe successfully, against our upcoming industries,” Buhari told a news conference during a visit by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“I am a slow reader, maybe because I was an ex-soldier. I didn’t read it fast enough before my officials saw that it was all right for signature. I kept it on my table. I will soon sign it.”

The continental free-trade zone, which encompasses 1.2 billion people, was initially joined by 44 countries in March. South Africa signed up earlier this month.

Economists point to the continent’s low level of intra-regional trade as one of the reasons for Africa’s enduring poverty and lack of a strong manufacturing base.
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China expressed shock Wednesday at the Trump administration’s decision to prepare 10-percent tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese imports covering thousands of products, the latest move in an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

China’s commerce ministry called the decision totally unacceptable and vowed to respond.

The proposed new U.S. tariffs follow the decision to impose duties in two stages on $50 billion in Chinese goods. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the Trump administration has patiently urged China to stop its unfair practices, open its market and engage in true market competition. 

“Rather than address our legitimate concerns, China has begun to retaliate against U.S. products,” Lighthizer said in a statement announcing the tariffs.”There is no justification for such action.”

The proposed tariffs come just days after the Trump administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on more than 800 Chinese products worth about $34 billion, citing what it calls China’s unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.Beijing followed suit with an equal amount of levies on U.S. goods.

Christine McDaniel, a senior research fellow at George Mason University in Virginia, told VOA that while the Trump administration’s actions have bipartisan congressional support, its strategy to date of tariffs and investment restrictions could be costly to U.S. manufacturers and consumers.

“A tariff is a tax and in today’s global economy.American manufacturers are simply tied to suppliers from outside the U.S. for their competitiveness.So when we tax those imports, we’re taxing American manufacturers, not to mention consumers, and that heavily handicaps our own manufacturers.”

McDaniel said the longer the tariff battle goes on, the greater the impact will be felt in both economies.She added trade actions against China would be more effective if they were done in concert with America’s allies.McDaniel also expects China to eventually change its policies away from state-owned enterprises and implement more market-oriented rules and regulations, but predicts that will take time.

Despite bipartisan support, the Trump administration’s latest move drew criticism from House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is retiring at the end of his term in January. Ryan reiterated his opposition to the president’s tariffs Wednesday, saying they “are not the right way to go.” Ryan singled out China as one of a number of countries that engage in unfair trade practices, but added, “I just don’t think tariffs are the right mechanism” to resolve the problem.

The Trump administration’s decision was received with dismay by key lawmaker Senator Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.Hatch said in a statement the decision “appears reckless and is not a targeted approach.”

A high-ranking administration official said the U.S. Trade Representative’s office will accept public comments on the plan and hold hearings in late August, before reaching a final decision.
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The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel has been welcomed by U.S. producers of the material but slammed by American manufacturers that rely on a global steel supply chain to make everything from cars to razor blades. VOA’s Michael Bowman visited a can company that is being squeezed by the new tariff and has this report, which was produced by Elizabeth Cherneff.
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Grabbing a bicycle from a docking station and riding the streets of Paris used to be one of the city’s many charms, but the once-loved Velib system has fallen into disarray and some new dockless bike-share programs are struggling to survive.

After it launched in 2007, Velib quickly became a hit, signing up more than 250,000 users who could take advantage of 20,000 bikes around the city. But advertising company JCDecaux’s concession to run Velib expired last year.

A French-Spanish consortium called Smovengo won the tender to run the service for the next 15 years, but it struggled to meet a January deadline to install new docking stations and has battled a raft of technology problems, leaving users frustrated.

At the same time, four dockless bike-share programs, all run by Asian operators, have popped across the city, offering users the ability to unlock a free-standing bike via an app for a fee.

While initially popular thanks to their novelty and Velib’s problems, some of those schemes are now running into trouble, with users unhappy with the quality of the bikes, many of which have been vandalized or thrown in the Seine.

Singapore’s oBike this week became the second of the programs to give up on Paris, which wants to be an urban leader in green mobility. Officials of oBike did not return calls, but a former official said key staff in France had left the company.

In February, Hong Kong startup Gobee.bike halted its operations because of theft and vandalism.

China-owned bike-share firms Ofo and Mobike remain active and have been steadily growing their numbers, thanks in part to Smovengo’s struggle to get fully up and running.

Laurent Kennel, general manager at Ofo France, said the firm now had about 2,500 of its bright yellow bikes on Paris roads and aimed to increase that to 3,000 to 4,000 by the end of summer.

“In Paris and elsewhere, there have been low-quality bikes that were not made to last,” he said. “Free-floating bike sharing hasn’t created the chaos that some had predicted a few months ago. It’s going quite well.”

Mobike also has several thousand of its red bikes on Paris streets and has been adding a larger version, more suited to European frames, also with three speeds, like Ofo and Velib.

Paris cyclists have welcomed the new programs, but are nostalgic for the old Velibs, which they say offered a better, smoother ride and were cheaper, thanks to state subsidies.

“Bike-share services are good for short distances. You can drop them wherever you want, which is convenient,” said Paris cyclist David Bober. “But their quality is not great and they are not very comfortable for long distances.”

He said he used to pay about 30 euros a year for his Velib subscription but that membership for two Asian dockless schemes costs him around 20 euros a month.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has recognized that the city needs to get a grip on the programs and make sure Velib works.

“We know there is this entire field, this entire space of mobility which exists and can be managed in a different way. But for us it clear that it must be regulated,” she said.

Still, more startups are using Paris as a test center. Last month, California-based Lime launched a fleet of dock-free electric scooters in the city, part of a wider rollout in several European cities.

Danish bike share operator Donkey Republic has also launched several hundred dockless bikes. Unlike Mobike and Ofo, the large Danish bikes cannot be parked anywhere but must be chained up at designated parking spots.
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The United States has decided to impose tariffs on $200 billion worth of imports from China after efforts to negotiate a solution to a trade dispute failed to reach an agreement, senior administration officials said Tuesday.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the United States would impose tariffs of 10 percent on the additional Chinese imports.

The move would be the latest in the escalating trade skirmish between the world’s two biggest economies. They slapped tariffs on $34 billion worth of each other’s goods last week.

President Donald Trump has said the United States might ultimately impose tariffs on more than $500 billion worth of Chinese goods — roughly the total amount of U.S. imports from China last year.

Administration officials said a two-month process would allow the public to comment on the proposed tariffs before the list is finalized.
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In an ideal world, Alex Fearnside would cycle home from work, park his bike in the basement of his apartment complex in Melbourne city center, then jog upstairs through a beautiful courtyard to his flat, stopping only for a quick chat with other residents in the shared dining area.

Later, Fearnside and his wife would head down to the communal kitchen to eat a meal cooked by their neighbors.

Fearnside’s 10-year-old dream for life in the Australian city is nearing reality as it awaits planning approval. It is shared by 50 other Melbourne residents who belong to Urban Coup, a collective that wants to turn a disused button factory in an old industrial area into a co-housing community by 2020.

“What is driving us is we want to know our neighbors,” said the 38-year-old environmental scientist. “We want to know that as we’re growing old, we have people around us who have similar values to who we are and what we bring.”

Urban Coup is one of five innovative housing initiatives that put community at their heart.

The projects are supported with expertise and networks mobilized by Resilient Melbourne, part of 100 Resilient Cities, a network backed by The Rockefeller Foundation to help cities deal with modern-day pressures.

This year, more than half of Asia-Pacific’s population will be urban, and that figure will increase to two-thirds by 2050, the United Nations estimates.

But as the region’s cities continue to expand, services and infrastructure are struggling to keep pace with rising populations and economic growth, while the effects of climate change have created additional challenges.

The Melbourne projects aim to help find solutions to the city’s expanding urban sprawl, worsening traffic congestion and growing social isolation – all of which can contribute to problems like alcoholism and domestic violence.

And by building stronger community bonds, Melbourne should be better placed to recover from potential shocks and stresses, such as rising temperatures and droughts, infrastructure failures and potential pandemics, the schemes’ proponents say.

“Many of the people who started Urban Coup remember growing up on streets where they knew everybody on that street,” said Fearnside. “We wanted a building that would enable us to know our neighbors and allow us to support each other.”

Urban Sprawl

In the past decade, Melbourne has topped various polls as the world’s most liveable city, attracting new residents to Australia’s second-biggest city.

Just under 5 million people live there, and the population is expected to double over the next 30 years, putting increased strain on infrastructure and housing.

As more estates have been built on greenfield sites outside the center, the rise in urban sprawl has brought problems.

Housing developments have outpaced infrastructure, leading to dormitory suburbs, whose residents commute daily but enjoy few services, amenities and transport links.

That causes traffic congestion and longer commute times, as well as a lack of interaction between neighbors, experts say.

“We live in a really beautiful part of Melbourne but we don’t really know our neighbors,” said Fearnside, who currently lives with his wife in a townhouse 5 km (3 miles) north of the central business district.

In Melbourne’s central areas, high-rise blocks have become more common in recent years. But as in many other Australian cities, first-time buyers and families have struggled to afford steeper prices stoked by overseas property investors.

And much new construction has been driven by developers, which tend to put profit before the provision of leisure or communal facilities.

On average, Melbourne property prices have doubled over the last decade, said Clinton Baxter, state director at Savills property agency in the city, and this trend is set to continue.

Central government efforts to help first-time buyers include a grant for deposits and stamp duty concessions, while state governments have sought to open up more land and fast-track approval processes for developments.

Despite this, the supply of new and affordable housing in Melbourne has struggled to keep up with demand. It is not uncommon to see would-be buyers camping out overnight ahead of a land sale to be front of the queue for their own building plot.

“The state government has struggled to keep up with the infrastructure requirements for such a rapidly growing city,” Baxter said.

Living Experiment

The five projects supported by Resilient Melbourne will bring together developers, city and state government agencies, service providers and potential buyers and renters.

Each project is crafted around different community-focused models – some based on renewal of the inner-city and others starting from scratch on greenfield sites.

The projects will also be part of an academic study.

“We want this to be a genuine living experiment so that we can understand in deep ways what works and what doesn’t work – and record it so the successes can be replicated in Melbourne but also internationally,” said Toby Kent, the city’s chief resilience officer.

The projects backed by Resilient Melbourne include a greenfield site for about 5,000 homes led by developer Mirvac.

It is working with local authorities to incorporate community aspects from an early stage.

Besides at least one new school, there will be a town center with shops and a supermarket, and a hub to house programs and events run by the council or residents, with a community-managed cafe and playground, said Anne Jolic, a director at Mirvac.

“Often people who move to some of these … new housing (developments) will feel very isolated,” she said.

Melbourne developer Assemble, meanwhile, plans to turn an old CD and DVD factory near the city center into 73 flats.

The property will include communal spaces like a cafe, a co-working space, crèche and grocery store, and is consulting with potential residents and existing neighbors on the design.

When the final plans are drawn up, residents will pay a refundable 1 percent deposit to secure a place, said Kris Daff, managing director of Assemble.

Once built, they will move in and start a five-year lease with an option to buy at a pre-agreed price, or exit the lease and leave at any time.

Services and events on offer will include dry cleaning, apartment cleaning, dog walking, community dinners, walking groups and film nights in a communal room.

“There is a huge amount of research that shows that when acute shocks have struck in cities, communities where there are existing connections are better able to bounce back,” said Kent, Melbourne’s resilience chief.
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The president of OPEC urged Canada on Tuesday to invest in infrastructure to move oil and gas, or risk watching investment flow away to the United States.

The Canadian government agreed in May to buy the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and a related expansion project from Kinder Morgan Canada for C$4.5 billion ($3.4 billion), highlighting the lengths deemed necessary to overcome stiff opposition to such projects.

Insufficient space in the country’s oil pipelines has deepened the discount Canada’s heavy crude can attract from U.S. refiners, compared with U.S. light oil futures.

“If you don’t have the major infrastructure, investors are going to go to your neighbor, where infrastructure is not an issue,” said Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries President Suhail al-Mazrouei. “Act and act quickly if you want to retain those investors. I am being frank because I want to be a true friend to the Canadians.”

“I don’t want them to lose opportunities,” he added.

Mazrouei was speaking in Calgary at a TD investor conference during the city’s Stampede, an annual rodeo that is also the year’s major meet and greet for Canada’s energy sector.

Mazrouei, the United Arab Emirates’ energy minister, also singled out Canada’s low-priced natural gas. Much of it is produced in landlocked Alberta, and the country lacks a robust liquefied natural gas (LNG) export sector to consume it.

LNG Canada, a proposed C$40 billion export facility for the British Columbia coast, is being reviewed by its joint venture partners ahead of a final investment decision.

“The solution is LNG and pipelines to export that natural gas,” Mazrouei said. “If you provide optionality for the gas, it’s going to fix itself.”
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Iran formally opened a secondary market for hard currency Tuesday, abandoning after three months an effort to dictate a single exchange rate for the rial against the dollar as the threat of U.S. sanctions pressures the Iranian currency.

The new market will cater to small exporters and importers from the private sector, the Tasnim and Fars news agencies reported. Fars said the first transaction exchanged rials for United Arab Emirates dirhams, at a rate equivalent to 75,000 rials to the U.S. dollar.

A central bank official said the secondary market would allow exchange rates to fluctuate freely.

“The price of the foreign currency will be set based on supply and demand,” Mehdi Kasraeipour, the central bank’s director of foreign exchange rules and policies, was quoted as saying on Monday by the IRNA state news agency.

Authorities had announced in early April they were unifying official and free-market rates for the rial in favor of a single rate set by the central bank, and warned that those caught trading the dollar at other rates would face arrest.

The move aimed to halt a plunge in the rial to record lows against the dollar that was fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from world powers’ 2015 deal with Iran on its nuclear program.

Sanctions coming back

Some U.S. sanctions against Iran’s economy are to be reimposed in August and some in November, and the prospect has triggered a panicky flight of ordinary Iranians’ savings into dollars.

The single-rate system failed to stabilize the rial, however, and in late June, the currency sank to record lows of around 90,000 per dollar in black market trade. It was around 80,000 on Tuesday, compared with about 43,000 at the end of 2017.

Worse still, the new system starved importers, other private businesses and Iranians traveling abroad of hard currency, because few holders of dollars were willing to sell at the unattractive central-bank set rate, now 43,010.

Only government agencies and some importers of “priority” goods could obtain dollars at the official rate, prompting complaints by Iranian business leaders and two days of protests by some market traders in Tehran, who shut their shops.

The secondary market was launched Tuesday to ease the hard currency shortage, although Kasraeipour did not elaborate on how it would work or say whether the government might intervene if the rial fell too sharply there.

Tehran has tried twice previously in the past two decades to create a single-exchange rate system for the rial, but both attempts quickly failed because of inadequate dollar supplies, corruption and speculation against the Iranian currency.
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Uber is getting into the scooter-rental business.

 

The ride-hailing company said Monday that it is investing in Lime, a startup based in San Mateo, California.

 

“Our investment and partnership in Lime is another step towards our vision of becoming a one-stop shop for all your transportation needs,” Rachel Holt, an Uber vice president, said in a statement.

 

Uber will add Lime motorized scooters to the Uber mobile app, giving consumers another option for getting around cities, especially to and from public transit systems, Holt said.

 

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

 

Lime co-founders Toby Sun and Brad Bao wrote in a blog that Uber’s “sizable investment” is part of a $335 million fund-raising round led by GV, the venture-capital arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc. They said Alphabet is among several new investors. The money will help Lime expand and develop new products.

According to the company website, customers can rent Lime scooters in more than 70 locations in the U.S. and Europe and leave them parked for the next customer to ride. The company is looking to buy tens of thousands of motorized foot-pedal scooters to expand its reach.

 

The scooters aren’t without their critics, however, who consider them a nuisance and a hazard to pedestrians. Officials in cities like San Francisco have been torn between promoting cheap and relatively non-polluting transportation and keeping sidewalks safe and clear of clutter.

 

For Uber, the Lime investment follows its purchase for an undisclosed sum of Jump Bikes, which rents electric bicycles in a half-dozen cities including San Francisco, Chicago and Washington.

 

San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi aims to turn Uber into the Amazon.com of transportation, a single destination where customers can go to hitch a ride in a car and on other modes of transportation — even buy rides on city buses and subway systems. Uber also has a food-delivery service.

 

Rival Lyft is looking for new rides too. Last week, it bought part of a company called Motivate that operates Citi Bike and other bike-sharing programs in several major U.S. cities including New York and Chicago. It will rename the business Lyft Bikes. Terms of that deal were not disclosed either.

 

While the often brightly colored rental bikes are becoming a more common sight in the U.S., they have already gained widespread use in China and parts of Europe.
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President Donald Trump is threatening to “respond” after several major U.S. drug companies raised prices of some widely prescribed medicines.

“Pfizer and others should be ashamed that they have raised drug prices for no reason,” Trump tweeted Monday. “They are merely taking advantage of the poor and others unable to defend themselves while at the same time giving bargain basement prices to other countries in Europe and elsewhere.”

Pfizer hiked the cost of about 40 different drugs earlier this month, including Viagra for male impotence, Lipitor for treating high cholesterol, and the arthritis drug Xeljanz.

Trump, who campaigned on promises to lower drug prices, said in May that some companies were volunteering to cut prices.

Pfizer said the list price of medicines do not include discounts and rebates, and that customers generally do not pay full price at the drug counter.

It also said it makes more than 400 different drugs and is cutting prices on some of them.
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Behind a row of sealed red incubator doors in a new facility in northern China, about 400,000 chicks are hatched every day, part of the rapidly modernizing supply chain in China’s $37 billion egg industry, the world’s biggest.

As China overhauls production of everything from pork to milk and vegetables, farmers raising hens for eggs are also shifting from backyards to factory farms, where modern standardized processes are expected to raise quality and safety.

That’s an important step in a country where melamine-tainted eggs and eggs with high antibiotic residues have featured in a series of food safety scandals in recent years. It is also spurring demand for higher priced branded eggs over those sold loose in fresh produce markets.

“These days if you’re a small farmer, your eggs won’t get into the supermarkets,” said Yuan Song, analyst with China-America Commodity Data Analytics.

Tough new regulations on treating manure and reducing the environmental impact from farms have also pushed many small farmers out.

Most egg producers now have between 20,000 and 50,000 hens, said Yuan, a significant change even from two years ago. The remainder with less than 10,000 birds are likely to be shut down soon as local governments favor larger producers that can be more easily scrutinized.

High-tech hatchery

Those rapid changes are driving investments like the 150 million yuan ($22.60 million) hatchery in Handan, about 400km (250 miles) southwest of Beijing.

The highly automated plant, owned by a joint venture between China’s Huayu Agricultural Science and Technology Co. Ltd. and EW Group’s genetics business Hy-Line International, is the world’s biggest hatchery of layer chicks, or birds raised to produce eggs rather than meat.

By producing 200,000 females a day, or around 60 million layers a year (one day a week is for cleaning), it can meet demand from larger farms who want to buy day-old-chicks in one batch, said Jonathan Cade, president of Hy-Line International, based in West Des Moines, Iowa.

“That’s the best way to start off with good biosecurity,” he said. When the birds on one farm are the same age, they are less likely to spread disease.

Imported, latest-generation equipment helps speed up the throughput of the hatchery. An automatic grading machine, which can handle 60,000 eggs an hour, sorts eggs into two acceptable sizes before they enter incubators — uniform eggs produce similar sized chicks that will have the same feeding ability.

Once hatched, female chicks go to automated beak-clipping machines that process around 3,500 an hour.

Only 20 staff will be needed in the new plant, compared with around 100 in Huayu’s older hatchery, said Huayu chairman Wang Lianzeng.

Fierce competition, disease

Efficiency is important in an industry which is not expected to see much volume growth. The Chinese already eat more eggs per capita than almost everyone else, about 280 a year or almost one billion a day across the country, so consumption is unlikely to rise much.

Breeders like Huayu are trying to grow by taking market share from others. In addition to the new Handan hatchery, it is building another in Chongqing, which will bring annual production to 180 million chicks.

Layer inventory last year was around 1.2 billion, according to the China Animal Agriculture Association.

Huayu is also looking into breeding layers and building hatcheries in South-East Asia and Africa, said Wang, the chairman.

Key to industrial-scale facilities will be managing the risks of disease. Prices and demand for eggs and poultry plunged last year, after hundreds of people died from contracting bird flu, even though the disease left flocks largely unscathed.

Although that has created new opportunities for large players to expand after others were forced to exit, the impact of a disease outbreak on intensive operations is significantly higher.

Huayu itself has recently suffered from outbreaks, with high rates of poultry disease Mycoplasma synoviae (MS) in China’s breeding flocks last year, said Wang. The disease can reduce egg production in layers.

Wang said biosecurity is the major advantage in the new hatchery, which uses advanced ventilation and environmental controls to keep new chicks healthy.

“When you enter the hatchery, you wouldn’t know you’re in a hatchery,” he said, referring to the smell typical in older facilities.

Disinfection is used at every step along the chain and workers follow strict procedures on hygiene, he added.

A safe environment with very high standards of biosecurity is important in raising chicks, said Wang.

With such pressures on production, improving animal welfare is unsurprisingly not a priority, said Jeff Zhou, China representative for Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), a nonprofit.

China has no animal welfare regulations, although some companies have begun voluntarily to phase out the painful beak-trimming practice, including Huayu rival Ningxia Xiaoming Farming and Animal Husbandry Co. Ltd.

Xiaoming is also supplying male chicks from its hatcheries to local farmers to rear for meat in free-range environments, according to CIWF. Huayu sells its male chicks as food for snakes, which are farmed in China for traditional medicine.
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The possibility of more Western sanctions against Moscow is the key risk for the Russian economy, as much as 21 percent of which has already felt the impact of existing sanctions, Russia’s Analytical Credit Ratings Agency said in a report Tuesday.

Western sanctions are expected to weigh on Russia’s oil-dependent economy in the longer run, having dented incomes of Russian households, the Kremlin-backed ACRA said.

The West first imposed economic and financial sanctions against Moscow in 2014 for its annexation of Crimea and its role in the Ukrainian conflict.

Russia has responded with counter-sanctions, banning imports of a wide range of food from countries that had targeted Moscow.

Later, sanctions against Russia were expanded, putting extra pressure on Russia’s economy and the ruble.

“The risk of widening of anti-Russian sanctions remains one of the key risks that the Russian economy could face this year,” ACRA said.

New sanctions listed by ACRA might target more companies, Russian state debt or even disconnect Russia from the international SWIFT payment system.

For now, Russia’s international reserves, which stood at nearly $456 billion as of late June, “fully cover external debt, which is vulnerable to wider sanctions,” ACRA said.

“Sanctions should not be named the key factor that limits economic growth in Russia in the mid-term … The impact of sanctions on growth rate could turn out to be more pronounced in the long term for both companies and the economy in general,” ACRA said.

Western sanctions have hit Russian companies that account for 95 percent of the country’s oil and gas industry revenues.

Restrictions imposed on Russian oil and gas companies in 2014 will affect their oil output in 2020s, ACRA said.

Sanctions have also hit Russia’s major state-owned banks, which account for 54 percent of banking assets. But the sanctions’ impact on the financial health of companies and banks has been less pronounced than that of the country’s economic policies, ACRA said.

Moscow’s response to the sanctions, which limited imports, has inflated prices for a number of goods.

“Counter-sanctions have resulted in price growth and a decline in households’ incomes by 2-3 percentage points in 2014-2018,” ACRA said.
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World fish production is expected to grow over the next 10 years despite a slowdown in both farmed and wild caught fish, the U.N.’s food agency said.

In a new report on global fisheries, the Food and Agricultural Agency predicts world fish production will grow to 201 million metric tons by 2030 — an 18 percent rise over current levels.

This is despite the amount of wild caught fish leveling off and the number of farmed fish slowing down after decades of rapid growth.

“The fisheries sector is crucial in meeting FAO’s goal of a world without hunger and malnutrition, and its contribution to economic growth and the fight against poverty is growing,” FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said.

But the report said future growth depends on sustainable and stronger fishing management, and successfully fighting such problems as pollution, global warming and illegal fishing.

The report said nearly 60 million people are employed in the world’s fishing industry, with China being the biggest producer and exporter of fish.

The European Union, United States and Japan are the world’s top three consumers of fish and users of fish products.
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