Protesters took to the streets in towns and cities across Tunisia for a fourth day Friday, as anger grows over price hikes introduced by the government. Demonstrations in 2011 in Tunisia grew into the revolution that overthrew the government and triggered a wave of uprisings across the Arab world. Seven years on, the dictatorship may have gone but, as Henry Ridgwell reports, lingering social and economic problems are driving the anger, raising the prospect that the unrest could spread.
…
The Athens subway came to a standstill Friday as Greeks protested new reforms that parliament is set to approve Jan. 15 in return for bailout funds, including restrictions on the right to strike.
In the first major industrial upheaval of 2018, the shutdown of the Athens metro, used by about 938,000 commuters daily, caused traffic gridlock in the city of 3.8 million people.
Ships were unable to sail as workers went on strike and state-run hospitals had to rely on reserve staff as doctors walked off the job. More work stoppages were expected Monday.
The bill pending approval in parliament Monday would reduce family benefits, introduce a new process for foreclosures on overdue loans and make it harder to call a strike.
It has outraged many Greeks, who have seen living conditions and incomes plummet since the country first sought international aid to stave off bankruptcy in 2010, and required another two bailouts thereafter.
Rule changes
At present, unions can call strikes with the support of one-third of their members. The new law would raise that to just more than 50 percent, which creditors hope would limit the frequency of strikes and improve productivity that lags about 20 percent behind the EU average.
PAME, a communist-affiliated union, was scheduled to hold a demonstration in central Athens at midday (1000 GMT) Friday.
“Blood was shed by generations which came before us to have the right to strike. Now a so-called left wing government is trying to abolish it,” said Nicos Papageorgiou, a 50-year-old hotel worker.
Syriza, the dominant party in the government elected in 2015, has its roots in left-wing labor activism.
Papageorgiou and about 200 other PAME members rallied outside the finance ministry Thursday evening. Earlier in the week, there were angry scenes when some union members burst into the labor ministry, demanding the government rescind the bill.
ADEDY, the largest union of public-sector workers, scheduled a work stoppage for Monday.
The government says it needs the reforms to receive tranches of bailout aid. The latest bailout, worth up to 86 billion euros ($104 billion), expires in August. So far Greece has received 40.2 billion euros, and a new tranche is expected to be worth around 4.5 billion euros.
…
China’s trade with North Korea plunged 50 percent in December as U.N. sanctions imposed over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development tightened, the government reported Friday.
China accounts for nearly all of the isolated North’s trade and energy supplies. Beijing has imposed limits on oil sales and cut deeply into the North’s foreign revenue by ordering North Korean businesses in China to close, sending home migrant workers and banning purchases of its coal, textiles, seafood and other exports.
Imports from the North shrank 81.6 percent to $54 million in December while exports to the isolated, impoverished country contracted 23.4 percent to $260 million, said a spokesman for the Chinese customs agency, Huang Songping.
UN sanctions
The U.N. Security Council has steadily tightened trade restrictions as leader Kim Jong Un’s government pressed ahead with nuclear and missile development in defiance of foreign pressure.
Beijing was long Pyongyang’s diplomatic protector but has supported the U.N. sanctions out of frustration with what Chinese leaders see as their neighbor’s increasingly reckless behavior.
Despite the loss of almost all trade, the impoverished North has pressed ahead with weapons development that Kim’s regime sees as necessary for its survival in the face of U.S. pressure.
China has steadily increased economic pressure on Pyongyang while calling for dialogue to defuse the increasingly acrimonious dispute with U.S. President Donald Trump’s government.
Pressure, but not too much
Analysts see North Korea’s need for Chinese oil as the most powerful economic leverage against Pyongyang. But Chinese leaders have warned against taking drastic measures that might destabilize Kim’s government or send a wave of refugees fleeing into China.
Chinese leaders have resisted previous U.S. demands for an outright oil embargo but went along with the latest limits.
Under restrictions announced Jan. 5, Chinese companies are allowed to export no more than 4 million barrels of oil and 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum products to the North per year. They are barred from supplying its military or weapons programs.
Chinese officials complain their country bears the cost of enforcement, which they say has hurt businesses in its northeast.
…
Fiat Chrysler Automobile said on Thursday it will shift production of Ram heavy-duty pickup trucks from Mexico to Michigan in 2020, a move that lowers the risk to the automaker’s profit should President Donald Trump pull the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Fiat Chrysler said it would create 2,500 jobs at a factory in Warren, Michigan, near Detroit and invest $1 billion in the facility. The Mexican plant will be “repurposed to produce future commercial vehicles” for sale global markets. Mexico has free trade agreements with numerous countries.
Fiat Chrysler Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne a year ago raised the possibility that the automaker would move production of its heavy-duty pickups to the United States, saying U.S. tax and trade policy would influence the decision.
If the United States exits NAFTA, it could mean that automakers would pay a 25 percent duty on pickup trucks assembled in Mexico and shipped to the United States. About 90 percent of the Ram heavy-duty pickups made at Fiat Chrysler’s Saltillo plant in Mexico are sold in the United States or Canada, company officials said.
Negotiators for the United States, Mexico and Canada are scheduled to meet later this month for another round of talks on revising NAFTA. Canadian government officials earlier this week said they are convinced that Trump intends to announce his intention to quit the agreement.
Trump has threatened to force the rollback of NAFTA, which enables the free flow of goods made in the United States, Canada and Mexico across the borders of those countries.
He also has criticized automakers for moving jobs and investment in new manufacturing facilities to Mexico and prodded them to add more auto production in the United States.
On Wednesday, Toyota Motor Corp and Mazda Motor Corp announced they would build a new $1.6 billion joint venture auto assembly plant in Alabama, drawing praise from Trump.
Vice President Mike Pence praised Fiat Chrysler’s announcement. “Manufacturing is back. Great announcement. Proof that this admin’s AMERICA FIRST policies are WORKING!” Pence said in a Twitter posting.
Chrysler raised its output in Mexico by 39 percent in 2017 to 639,000 vehicles, according to Mexican government data. That made Fiat Chrysler the third-largest producer of vehicles in Mexico in 2017, after Nissan Motor Co and General Motors Co.
The United States and Canada are the principal markets for full-size heavy-duty pickup trucks, most of which are produced in the United States by FCA, GM, Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co.
Miguel Ceballos, FCA spokesman for Mexico, said the company in 2018 and 2019 expects more growth in Mexico, and the moment it stops producing the Ram Heavy Duty pickups it will start to produce the new commercial vehicle, “which still does not have a name,” Ceballos said.
“It is going to be for global distribution, at the moment the Ram is only distributed at the level of NAFTA,” he said. Ceballos said there was no current plan to either reduce or grow the workforce in Mexico.
GM has been readying a plant in Silao, Mexico, to build a new generation of large pickup trucks.
FCA on Thursday said it also would make a special bonus payment of $2,000 to about 60,000 FCA hourly and salaried employees in the United States totaling about $120 million.
Typically, U.S. automakers only pay bonuses to hourly workers as part of collective bargaining agreements.
…
Women flocked to Le Mall in Jeddah on Thursday to check out the kingdom’s first car exhibition aimed at women, a few months after Saudi Arabia granted them the right to drive.
Pink, orange and yellow balloons hung in the mall’s showroom as women posed for photos and selfies in front of the cars. One woman in the driver’s seat fixed her face cover. Another wrapped her turquoise-painted fingernails around the steering wheel, feeling it out.
Progressive era
In a decree issued in September, King Salman ordered by June an end to the ban on women drivers, a conservative tradition that has limited women’s mobility and been seen by rights activists as an emblem of their suppression.
Saudi Arabia is the only country that bans women drivers.
The landmark royal decree has been hailed as proof of a new progressive trend in the deeply conservative Muslim kingdom.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, is the face of that change. Many young Saudis regard his recent ascent to power as proof their generation is taking a central place in running a country whose patriarchal traditions have for decades made power the province of the old and blocked women’s progress.
Saleswomen
“I’ve always been interested in cars, but we didn’t have the ability to drive,” said Ghada al-Ali, a customer. “And now I’m very interested in buying a car, but I would like the payments and prices to not be very high.”
Saudi Arabia’s cost of living has risen after the government hiked domestic gas prices and introduced value-added tax (VAT) in January.
The exhibition focused on fuel-efficient cars and provided a team of saleswomen to help their new customer base. The showroom carried signs emblazoned with the slogan “Drive and Shop,” a play on words in Arabic, using the female form of the verbs.
“It is known that women are the largest section who shop in malls,” said Sharifa Mohammad, the heads the exhibition’s saleswomen. “This whole mall is run by women anyway. All the cashiers are women. Everyone in the restaurants are women.”
…
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will replace Obama-era carbon and clean water regulations and open up a national debate on climate change in 2018, part of a list of priorities for the year that also includes fighting lead contamination in public drinking water.
The agenda, laid out by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in an exclusive interview with Reuters on Tuesday, marks an extension of the agency’s efforts under President Donald Trump to weaken or kill regulations the administration believes are too broad and harm economic growth, but which environmentalists say are critical to human health.
“The climate is changing. That’s not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100? … I think the American people deserve an open honest transparent discussion about those things,” said Pruitt, who has frequently cast doubt on the causes and implications of global warming.
Pruitt reaffirmed plans for the EPA to host a public debate on climate science sometime this year that would pit climate change doubters against other climate scientists, but he provided no further details on timing or which scientists would be involved.
Pruitt said among the EPA’s top priorities for 2018 will be to replace the Clean Power Plan, former President Barack Obama’s centerpiece climate change regulation which would have slashed carbon emissions from power plants. The EPA began the process of rescinding the regulation last year and is taking input on what should replace it.
“A proposed rule will come out this year and then a final rule will come out sometime this year,” he said. He did not give any details on what the rule could look like, saying the agency was still soliciting comments from stakeholders.
He said the agency was also planning to rewrite the Waters of the United States rule, another Obama-era regulation, this one defining which U.S. waterways are protected under federal law. Pruitt and Trump have said the rule marked an overreach by including streams that are shallow, narrow, or sometimes completely dry — and was choking off energy development.
Pruitt said that in both cases, former President Barack Obama had made the rules by executive order, and without Congress. “We only have the authority that Congress gives us,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt’s plans to replace the Clean Power Plan have raised concerns by attorneys general of states like California and New York, who said in comments submitted to the EPA on Tuesday that the administrator should recuse himself because as Oklahoma attorney general he led legal challenges against it.
Biofuels and staff cuts
Pruitt said he hoped for legislative reform of the U.S. biofuels policy this year, calling “substantially needed and importantly” because of the costs the regulation imposes on oil refiners.
The Renewable Fuel Standard, ushered in by former President George W. Bush as a way to help U.S. farmers, requires refiners to blend increasing amounts of biofuels like corn-based ethanol into the nation’s fuel supply every year.
Refining companies say the EPA-administered policy costs them hundreds of millions of dollars annually and threatens to put some plants out of business. But their proposals to change the program have so far been rejected by the Trump administration under pressure from the corn lobby.
The EPA in November slightly raised biofuels volumes mandates for 2018, after previously opening the door to cuts.
The White House is now mediating talks on the issue between representatives of both sides, with input from EPA, and some Republican senators from states representing refineries are working on possible legislation to overhaul the program.
Pruitt said he also hoped Congress could produce an infrastructure package this year that would include replacing municipal water pipes, as a way of combating high lead levels in certain parts of the United States.
“That to me is something very tangible very important that we can achieve for the American people,” he said.
Pruitt added that EPA also is continuing its review of automobile fuel efficiency rules, and would be headed to California soon for more meetings with the California Air Resources Board to discuss them.
California in 2011 agreed to adopt the federal vehicle emission rules through 2025, but has signaled it would opt out of the standards if they are weakened, a move that would complicate matters for automakers serving the huge California market.
In the meantime, Pruitt said EPA is continuing to reduce the size of its staff, which fell to 14,162 employees as of Jan. 3, the lowest it has been since 1988, under Ronald Reagan when the employment level was 14,400. The EPA employed about 15,000 when Obama left office.
Nearly 50 percent of the EPA will be eligible to retire within the next five years, according to the agency.
…
Walmart will raise entry-level wages for U.S. hourly employees to $11 an hour in February as it benefits from last month’s major overhaul of the U.S. tax code and competes for low-wage workers in a tight labor market.
But on the same day, the world’s largest retailer and private employer, officially called Wal-Mart Stores Inc, announced layoffs as it shuttered many of its Sam’s Club discount warehouse stores.
A senior company official who declined to be named said about 62 stores would be affected, about one-tenth of the chain overall.
About 50 stores will be shut permanently after a review of store profitability and up to 12 more stores will be shut and reopened as e-commerce warehouses, the person said.
Every Sam’s Club store employs about 150 workers, bringing the total number of affected jobs to about 7,500, the person said. Many of them will be accommodated in new jobs at the newly opened warehouses and other stores, the official said.
Earlier Thursday, Walmart announced the wage hike saying it would also offer a one-time cash bonus, based on length of service, of up to $1,000, and expand maternity and parental leave benefits.
Reactions
The layoffs went unaddressed but the wage increase attracted praise from the White House.
“Walmart is the largest employer in the country and to see them make that kind of effort to over a million workers is a big deal … and I think further evidence that the tax reform and tax cut package are having the impact that we had hoped,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Thursday.
U.S. Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin also praised Walmart’s decision to raise wages.
The timing of the store closure announcement hours after the wage hike drew some criticism.
“While pay raises are usually a good thing, this is nothing but another public relations stunt from Walmart to distract from the reality that they are laying off thousands of workers and the ones who remain will continue to receive low wages,” said activist Randy Parraz, director of Making Change at Walmart, a United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) affiliate.
Wage hikes
The pay increase, Walmart’s third minimum wage increase since 2015, and bonus will benefit more than 1 million U.S. hourly workers, the company said.
The Walmart wage hike, taking minimum pay up from the current $10 an hour after in-house training, is aimed at helping the company attract workers at a time when the U.S. unemployment rate is at 4.1 percent, a 17-year low, making it harder to attract and retain minimum wage employees.
Walmart is likely to save billions of dollars from the new tax law, which slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, and the wage hikes will cost the retailer only a fraction of those gains, analysts said.
“Given how low unemployment is, they would have had to hike wages anyway, the tax bill just made that move easier,” said Edward Jones analyst Brian Yarborough.
Rival retailer Target Corp raised its minimum wage to $11 in September, and said it would raise its minimum wage to $15 by 2020.
Walmart and Target’s new minimum wage levels exceed the state minimum wage, in all but three states, according to a research note from financial services firm BTIG. Eighteen U.S. states increased their minimum wage on Jan.1 but the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009.
Walmart’s announcement follows companies like AT&T Inc, Wells Fargo & Co and Boeing Co, which have all promised more pay for workers since the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress passed the biggest overhaul to the U.S. tax code in 30 years.
…
Ford Motor Co said Thursday that it had confirmed a second death in an older pickup truck caused by a defective airbag inflator of Takata Corp., and it urged 2,900 owners in North America to stop driving their vehicles immediately until they can get replacement parts.
The second-largest U.S. automaker said it confirmed in late December that a July 2017 crash death in West Virginia in a 2006 Ford Ranger was caused by a defective Takata inflator. It previously reported a similar death in South Carolina that occurred in December 2015.
Ford said both Takata deaths occurred with inflators built on the same day installed in 2006 Ranger pickups. At least 21 deaths worldwide are linked to the Takata inflators that can rupture and send deadly metal fragments into the driver’s body.
The faulty inflators have led to the largest automotive recall in history. The other 19 deaths have occurred in Honda Motor Co. vehicles, most of which were in the United States.
Ford issued a new recall for automobiles that had been previously recalled in 2016. Of those 391,000 2004-06 Ranger vehicles, the new recall announced on Thursday affects 2,900 vehicles. These include 2,700 in the United States
and nearly 200 in Canada. The new recall will allow for identification of the 2,900 owners in the highest risk pool.
A Mazda Motor Corp. spokeswoman said Thursday that the company would conduct a similar recall and stop-drive warning for some 2006 Mazda B-Series trucks, which were built by Ford and are similar to the Ranger.
Japanese auto supplier Takata plans to sell its viable operations to Key Safety Systems, an affiliate of China’s Ningo Joyson Electric Corp., for $1.6 billion. Takata did not immediately comment Thursday on the Ford action.
Agency echoes Ford warning
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration urged owners to heed Ford’s warning. “It is extremely important that all high-risk air bags are tracked down and replaced immediately,” NHTSA spokeswoman Karen Aldana said.
Ford said it would pay to have vehicles towed to dealerships or send mobile repair teams to owners’ homes and provide free loaners if needed.
Takata said in June that it had recalled, or expected to recall, about 125 million vehicles worldwide by 2019, including more than 60 million in the United States. Nineteen automakers worldwide are affected.
Takata inflators can explode with excessive force, unleashing metal shrapnel inside cars and trucks, and have injured more than 200 people. The defect led Takata to file for bankruptcy protection in June.
In 2017, prosecutors in Detroit charged three former senior Takata executives with falsifying test results to conceal the inflator defect. None has come to the United States to face charges.
Last year, Takata pleaded guilty of wire fraud and was subject to paying a total of $1 billion in criminal penalties in a U.S. court in connection with the recalls.
Automakers have struggled to get enough replacement parts for the massive recalls. A November NHTSA report said about two-thirds of U.S. vehicles recalled had not yet been repaired.
Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said in a statement Thursday that the latest death was evidence of “the very definition of a failed recall.” NHTSA must do more, he said, to make the recall a priority.
In November, NHTSA rejected a petition from Ford to delay recalling 3 million vehicles with potentially defective airbag inflators to conduct additional testing.
In June 2016, NHTSA warned that airbag inflators on more than 300,000 unrepaired recalled 2001-03 model year Honda vehicles showed a substantial risk of rupturing, and urged owners to stop driving them until they were fixed. NHTSA said the inflators have as high as a 50 percent chance of a rupture in a crash.
…
Two French rights groups have filed a lawsuit against electronics giant Samsung, accusing it of misleading advertising because of alleged labor abuses at factories in China and South Korea.
It’s the latest labor challenge to Seoul-based Samsung, which has faced growing health complaints from workers in recent years, even as profits soar thanks to its blockbuster semiconductor business.
The unusual lawsuit filed Thursday in Paris court by groups Sherpa and ActionAid France names Samsung Global in Seoul and its French subsidiary. It is now up to the court to decide whether to take up the case.
It accuses Samsung of “deceptive trade practices,” based on documents from China Labor Watch and others alleging violations including exploitation of children, excessive working hours and use of dangerous equipment and gases.
Samsung did not immediately comment. On its website, it says it maintains “a world-class environment, safety and health infrastructure and rigorous standards to safeguard our employees’ well-being.”
The lawsuit is part of larger efforts by rights groups to use French courts to hold multinationals to account for alleged wrongdoing, and to push for an international treaty against corporate abuses.
The groups argue that French consumers were among those deceived by Samsung’s pledges of ethical treatment of workers, and therefore French courts can rule in the case. But they want to call attention to the problem beyond French borders.
“We hope to make things evolve not only in France but on an international level,” said Marie-Laure Guislain, legal director for Sherpa.
“It’s not just about Samsung,” she told The Associated Press. “It’s the rights of workers under question.”
China Labor Watch has published several reports on child labor at Samsung suppliers in China based on years of undercover investigations. The New York-based nonprofit has long investigated working conditions at suppliers to some of the world’s best-known companies including Walt Disney Co. and Apple Inc.
In South Korea, where Samsung is a national icon, courts recently have begun to rule in favor of workers believed sickened by chemicals used in manufacturing. Many former Samsung workers have sought compensation or financial aid from the government or from Samsung for a possible occupational disease.
Samsung also is recovering from a management crisis, after its de facto leader Lee Jae-yong was sentenced to prison for bribery and other charges, and the departure of the heads of its semiconductor, mobile business and TV divisions.
Britain could lose almost 500,000 jobs and 50 billion pounds ($67.41 billion) investment over the next 12 years if it fails to agree a trade deal with the European Union, according a report commissioned by London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Cambridge Econometrics, an economics consultancy, looked at five different Brexit scenarios, from the hardest to the softest form of Brexit, and broke down the economic impact on nine industries, from construction to finance.
The study said that in a no-deal scenario, the industry that fares the worst will be financial and professional services, with as many as 119,000 fewer jobs nationwide.
“If the Government continue to mishandle the negotiations we could be heading for a lost decade of lower growth and lower employment,” Khan said. “Ministers are fast running out of time to turn the negotiations around.”
Britain and the EU will soon begin the much harder task of defining their future trading relationship, after settling the broad terms of their divorce settlement last month.
A stand-off between Britain and the EU over the future access to single market for London’s vast financial services industry is shaping up to be one of the key Brexit battlegrounds before Britain is due to leave the bloc in March 2019.
…
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has caved in to pressure from the governor and is banning oil and gas drilling off the Florida coast.
“I support the governor’s position that Florida is unique and its coasts are heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver,” Zinke said in a statement late Tuesday.
He outright admitted that Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott pressured him to put the state’s waters off limits.
Last week, the Trump administration proposed opening nearly all U.S. offshore waters to oil and gas drilling, reversing former Obama administration policies.
The White House has said it wants to make the U.S. more energy independent.
But environmental groups and Republican and Democratic governors from coastal states loudly object. They say oil and gas drilling puts marine life, beaches, and lucrative tourism at risk.
The Pentagon has also expressed misgivings about drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, where naval exercises are held.
The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf was the largest such disaster in U.S. history, causing billions of dollars in damage to the Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Florida, killing more than 100,000 different marine mammals, birds, and reptiles.
…
Nearly seven years into Syria’s civil war, Syrian refugees in neighboring Lebanon are becoming poorer, leaving children at risk of child labor and early marriage, aid organizations said on Tuesday.
A recent survey by the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, U.N.’s World Food Program, and refugee agency, UNHCR showed that Syrian refugees in Lebanon are more vulnerable now than they have been since the beginning of the crisis.
Struggling to survive, more than three quarters of the refugees in Lebanon now live on less than $4 per day, according to the survey which was based on data collected last year.
“The situation for Syrian refugees in Lebanon is actually getting worse – they are getting poorer. They are barely staying afloat,” Scott Craig, UNHCR spokesman in Lebanon, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Around 1.5 million refugees who fled Syria’s violence account for a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
The Lebanese government has long avoided setting up official refugee camps. So, many Syrians live in tented settlements, languishing in poverty and facing restrictions on legal residence or work.
“Child labor and early marriage are direct consequences of poverty,” Tanya Chapuisat, UNICEF spokeswoman in Lebanon said in a statement to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“We fear this (poverty) will lead to more children being married away or becoming breadwinners instead of attending school,” she said.
According to UNICEF, 5 percent of Syrian refugee children between 5-17 are working, and one in five Syrian girls and women aged between 15 and 25 is married.
Mike Bruce, a spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said without sufficient humanitarian aid and proper work Syrian families would increasingly fall into debt and more could turn to “negative coping mechanisms” like child labor and marriage.
Cold winter temperatures in Lebanon would also hurt refugees, he said.
“Refugees are less and less able to deal with each shock that they face and severe weather could be one of those shocks,” said Bruce.
…
Sudan’s pound currency weakened to 30.5 pounds to the U.S. dollar on Tuesday from about 29.5 pounds a day earlier, traders said, continuing its fall amid protests over bread prices and an acute shortage of hard currency.
Street protests broke out across the northeastern African country after bread prices doubled in recent days, following a government announcement late last month that it was eliminating subsidies in its 2018 budget as part of austerity measures.
This month Sudan devalued its pound currency to 18 per U.S. dollar from 6.7 pounds to the dollar previously. Hard currency remains scarce in the formal banking system however, forcing importers to resort to an increasingly expensive black market.
“The dollar is rising on a daily basis and there is a strong appetite to buy at any price given its scarcity on the market,” one black market trader told Reuters.
The government has ruled out a market-determined exchange rate and the black market rate for pounds has been steadily weakening against the dollar since late last month, when the devaluation was announced.
“I expect the dollar price to continue to increase in the coming days because companies and importers are buying dollars in large quantities since the beginning of the year because the banks are not meeting their hard currency needs,” another black market trader said.
…
When urban designer Trupti Vaitla asked residents of a Mumbai slum what new features they’d like to see in their dilapidated public space, she was surprised by one popular answer: a patch of grass.
The Lotus Garden is the only open area for about 200,000 people who live in cramped and squalid tenements abutting the city’s biggest landfill. The municipal corporation had done little for its upkeep and it was littered with trash.
Three years ago, Vaitla and her team were tasked with transforming it into a space that people would actually use.
They expected residents to suggest elements like lighting, elaborate landscaping and a gym.
The team didn’t expect such enthusiasm for a simple lawn.
“But they were excited to be involved, and for them, a patch of green was really important – a small oasis in their otherwise drab and congested world,” said Vaitla, chief executive of Mumbai Environmental Social Network (MESN).
Vaitla’s team, backed by funding from United Nations Habitat, which promotes sustainable urban development, spent months cleaning up Lotus Garden. They installed lights and water, planted shrubs and grass, and built an open-air gym.
From the very first day, residents including women and children who had earlier avoided the space, swarmed in, Vaitla said.
The appetite for areas like the Lotus Garden is not surprising. In Mumbai, with its population of 18 million and counting, soaring real estate prices and relentless construction, public spaces are shrinking.
“In a crowded slum, these spaces are particularly relevant, as people have nowhere else to go,” said Pontus Westerberg, digital projects officer at UN Habitat. “These spaces also impact on their health, sanitation, safety, access to emergency services.”
Digital Lego
Encouraged by their success with Lotus Garden, MESN and UN-Habitat collaborated on another space in the nearby Gautam Nagar neighborhood. This time, they decided to use technology to encourage even more community involvement.
The team settled on Minecraft, a video game that allows players to build their own worlds using virtual Lego-like pieces.
For the past five years, UN Habitat has used Minecraft in its Block by Block programme, which aims to encourage some of the poorest communities in the developing world to participate in upgrading their common spaces.
The program is a partnership between UN Habitat, Mojang, the creator of Minecraft, and Microsoft, which owns Mojang.
“It can be a challenge to mobilize people in slums – especially the youth – who are resigned to their environment and don’t feel a sense of ownership,” said Westerberg by telephone from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
The traditional approach, using maps and drawings, often draws little interest from residents, he said.
“But with an interactive design tool like this – I call it digital Lego – they are so engaged, and that makes the process more democratic,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The Block by Block program was launched in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum. It has since been used in about 50 locations in more than 20 countries including Indonesia, Nigeria and Mexico.
Once UN-Habitat selects a site, a Minecraft model of the site is built using photographs, videos, maps and Google Street View, if it is available. UN-Habitat then holds a workshop.
Residents are put into groups of mixed ages and genders, and given a laptop with the Minecraft model. They learn the game in a matter of minutes or hours, Westerberg said, and everyone pitches in on the redesign.
The designs are then discussed with local officials, one design is chosen, and the project is handed over to a local architect to execute.
No Swimming Pool
When Vaitla brought Minecraft to a workshop in Gautam Nagar, participants used it to create plans including better lighting, seating, trees and play areas for children.
The slum’s 6,000 residents live in close quarters, among open drains and common spaces strewn with garbage. They were looking for realistic solutions to improve their lives.
“The designs they came up with were all sensible,” Vaitla recalled. “No one said, ‘We want a swimming pool.'”
Other organizations are also putting digital tools like Google Earth and smartphones to work for disadvantaged residents of India’s urban areas.
Shelter Associates, a charity that focuses on slum upgrades, is working with residents to create maps of slums that need amenities like sewage lines, or are at risk of eviction because they are on disputed land.
This is particularly relevant as the government’s Smart Cities plan risks hastening slum evictions.
In the western state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located, Shelter Associates has mapped about 500 settlements of more than 200,000 homes, said Executive Director Pratima Joshi.
“There are so many low-cost technologies that are easy to use, and we train slum residents to use them as a first step towards mobilizing the communities,” she said.
As for Lotus Garden, residents continue to take pride in the space they redesigned, said Vaitla.
“The lawn is a bit scraggly, but still being maintained, as are other amenities,” she said. “If you involve the community, they will participate, and they will take better care of these spaces.”
…
Sitting on a rickety bench at his home in Kipipiri, in central Kenya, Samuel Macharia pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and proudly points to the signature at the bottom.
“This paper means I get paid on time for my potatoes, even when the weather is bad,” he said.
The precious document is a farming contract Macharia signed in March with the East African Potato Consortium. It says he will sell at least two tons of potatoes to food processors each harvesting season for the next two years.
“Thanks to this contract I can earn up to 22,000 Kenyan shillings ($213) per season,” he said.
Recurring drought and sudden cold spells have affected the quality of potatoes and other staples across Kenya.
Peris Mukami, a farmer from Timau village, in Meru County, said her potato yields had declined by over 10 percent in the past two years because “it is either too cold or too hot.”
“The cold damages potato vines with frostbite while heat makes them wilt,” she explained.
To try to fight back, Kenyan potato farmers such as Macharia are increasingly turning to production contracts with food processors — a system known as contract farming — through the East African Potato Consortium.
By working with the consortium, they get access to seeds that better stand up to harsher conditions, as well as better fertilizers.
They also get a guaranteed price for their crop, as long as they produce good-quality potatoes on time, said Wachira Kaguongo, head of the National Potato Council.
Fair Deals
The consortium, which was set up in 2016 by the National Potato Council, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and the Grow Africa partnership, aims to increase private investment in agriculture by linking potato farmers with food processors across the country, Kaguongo said.
Each production agreement is reviewed and approved by the National Potato Council, which ensures it is fair to both parties, said Willy Bett, cabinet secretary of the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.
“Businessmen will always want to get farmers to sign something that may not be favorable to them,” Bett told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We’re trying to prevent that by ensuring that farming activity is done on a contract basis in Kenya.”
Contract farming has allowed farmers to sell produce to food giants such as the fast-food chain KFC, formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Macharia’s potatoes now fetch 22 shillings ($0.20) per kilo, more than double what he used to get when selling them at the Kipipiri open air market.
“I am paid in cash at my farm,” he said. “And I do not have to travel to the market when I don’t want to.”
So far 5,000 farmers have signed up to the system, with a total of 23,000 expected to have made the switch by 2020, said Kaguongo.
Supply Shortage?
Felix Matheri, a researcher at the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology, said that while contract farming provides farmers with a steady income, it risks depriving poor families of their food supply.
“Contracts bind farmers to supplying an agreed amount of potatoes, meaning that when the harvest is low farmers are forced to sell all their produce to meet their obligations,” he explained.
“But potatoes are rich in starch and a critical source of nutrients — farmers should save some for home consumption,” he said.
Others have concerns about contract farming as well. Louise Wangari, a roadside seller of potatoes in Nyandarua County, said she is worried it might affect the supply she gets from farmers.
“The quantity of potatoes I was getting from farmers was already decreasing due to extreme weather,” she said.
“If they start signing contracts with other buyers, then I may be out of business soon, as I can’t afford to pay them as much as the food processors.”
…
The White House says President Donald Trump will attend this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, only the second time a U.S. president has attended the summit, and the first in 18 years.
Presidential spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Tuesday, “The president welcomes opportunities to advance his America First agenda with world leaders. At this year’s World Economic Forum, the president looks forward to promoting his policies to strengthen American businesses, American industries and American workers.”
U.S. presidents tend to avoid the elite gathering rather than be seen as too close to the ultra-rich clientele the gathering attracts. President Bill Clinton was the first and last U.S. president to attend in person, in 2000. President Ronald Reagan addressed the forum via satellite.
The United States generally sends a high-profile delegation to the annual event. In the past, vice presidents Dick Cheney and Joe Biden have attended. Former vice president Al Gore, musician Bono, Brazilian writer Paulo Coehlo, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair are regular attendees. Heads of state or government from Europe and Africa are often in attendance, as well.
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss nonprofit organization that says its mission is “improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.”
January’s annual meeting in Davos is the most famous of the forum’s gatherings, drawing some 2,500 people per year. But it also holds a number of regional meetings throughout the year to discuss economic issues and other problems faced by the world.
This year the forum will be held January 23-26.
Venezuela has extended its ban on air and maritime ties with three nearby Dutch Caribbean islands, citing out of control smuggling, officials said Tuesday.
Venezuela is pressing for high-level talks with leaders of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire before trading can resume, officials said.
Vice President Tareck El Aissami said that leaders of the three islands must step up to control criminal groups that he says are smuggling Venezuelan goods, harming citizens of his country.
“We are not going to allow anymore aggression from these criminal organizations,” El Aissami said on Twitter, urging leaders of the islands to take action.
President Nicolas Maduro on Friday first ordered the 72-hour ban, accusing island leaders of being complicit in illegal trafficking. It follows threats he made in mid-December to close the routes.
Venezuelan authorities allege that the smuggling of products to neighboring countries is one of the causes of the severe shortage of food and other basic products that the South American country has been facing for several years.
The islands popular with tourists lie a short distance from Venezuela’s coast and host oil refineries run by Venezuela’s state oil giant and U.S. subsidiary Citgo.
In recent years, Venezuelans fleeing the nation’s economic collapse have sometimes fled to the islands by boat. In 2015 and 2016, Maduro took a similar measure to combat smuggling, temporarily closing the border crossings with Colombia.
French prosecutors have opened an investigation into Apple over revelations it secretly slowed down older versions of its handsets.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday a probe was opened last week over alleged “deception and planned obsolescence” of some Apple products. It is led by the French body in charge of fraud control, which is part of the Finance Ministry.
It follows a legal complaint filed in December by a French consumer rights group that aims to stop intentional obsolescence of goods by companies.
In France it is illegal to intentionally shorten the lifespan of a product in order to encourage customers replace it. A 2015 law makes it a crime, with penalties of up to two years in prison and fines of up to 5 percent of the company’s annual turnover.
Apple apologized in December for secretly slowing down older iPhones, a move it said was necessary to avoid unexpected shutdowns related to battery fatigue.
The company said on its website “we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”
Lawsuits against the company have been filed in the U.S. and Israel.
The French consumer rights group, called HOP, filed a lawsuit on Dec. 27. It claims Apple slowed down older smartphones in order to make clients buy the new iPhone 8, which was launched on the market around the same time, according to HOP’s written statement.
2017 was the costliest year on record for natural disasters in the United States, according to scientists. Sixteen disasters caused an estimated $306 billion in damage. VOA’s Steve Baragona reports.
…
Ecuador’s comptroller’s office on Monday announced it will open an audit of debt contracted in the last five years of the government of former President Rafael Correa to determine the legality of the operations and the use of the funds.
The move follows a report by the comptroller’s office revealing that some documentation relating to debt operations had been declared secret and that official reports on public debt had excluded some of the operations.
President Lenin Moreno, a former Correa protege, since his election last year been has criticized the ex-president’s handling of the economy and is seeking to unwind some Correa-era reforms. Correa says such efforts constitute a “coup” by Moreno.
A team of economists, lawyers and businessmen will analyze debt operations carried out between January 2012 and May 2017 and will present recommendations in April.
Comptroller Pablo Celi said Correa and former Finance Ministry officials had been notified about investigation.
Shortly after taking office last May, Moreno said that total public debt was $42 billion dollars, plus additional liabilities including some associated with payments to oil services companies.
I have just learned of a supposed preliminary report on the audit of the debt and a commission that includes several haters of the (Citizen’s Revolution),” Correa said via Twitter, referring to his political movement.
During a later speech in the city of Guayaquil he described the probe as “persecution.”
The former president is leading a campaign for the “No” vote in a Feb. 4 referendum on constitutional reforms include a measure to prohibit indefinite re-election, a measure Correa created that allowed him to run for a second term.
Correa himself in 2008 commissioned a team of experts to study the country’s prior debt operations. The experts concluded that several debt operations were “illegitimate,” leading his government to declare a default.
…
A US entrepreneur is taking advantage of a demand for American goods in Africa — creating an online portal for cross border trade between the two countries. As VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
…
Eritrea has temporarily shut down nearly 450 private businesses, the latest in a series of moves that has sent shockwaves through the economy of the Red Sea nation.
The closures were a response to companies hoarding cash and “failing to do business through checks and other banking systems,” according to a Dec. 29 editorial published by Eritrea’s Ministry of Information on the state-run website Shabait.com.
Most of the affected businesses operate in the hospitality sector, according to the announcement, and they will remain closed for up to eight months, depending on the severity of the violations.
About 58,000 private businesses operate across the country, according to the government; less than 1 percent was affected by the recent closures.
Replacing the currency
The government has taken other steps in recent years to reassert control over the economy.
In 2015, Eritrea mandated that citizens exchange all notes of the currency, the nakfa, for new notes. The government also imposed financial restrictions, including limits on the amount of cash that could be withdrawn from bank accounts or kept in private hands, according to multiple reports.
Business owners complained about the restrictions, and reports from inside the country indicate the rules have altered Eritrea’s black market exchange rate, which affects the price of many goods.
State control
Tesfa Mehari, a professor of economics in England, said the Eritrean government wants a state-owned economy. That’s a trap many other countries have fallen into that generally leads to economic failure, Mehari said.
“The government cannot develop the economy. Only the people can do that,” Mehari told VOA’s Tigrigna service. “The government can only be a facilitator. There hasn’t been a country in the world that developed because of government control.”
He also said that the closures harm people’s trust in the government and in banking institutions.
“At the end of the day, if the people of Eritrea want to develop the economy of the country, they can only work based on trust, especially with banks. What you have with banks is a matter of oath,” Mehari said.
Compounding this mistrust, he added, is that the government’s actions aren’t backed by a specific law or decree that is publicly available for all to read.
In a statement, the government also acknowledged shortcomings in modernizing its banking sector with up-to-date technology and relevant expertise, another potential impediment to confidence in the system.
In contrast, Ibrahim Ibrahim, an Eritrean-born accountant who supports the government, said the actions are needed to fight inflation and stabilize the currency.
“I don’t think the Eritrean government is trying to control the economy, and I don’t think that’s the current environment,” said Ibrahim, who is based in Washington, D.C. “However, there might be a situation where the government is taking measures to adjust things that are not normal and turn it into normalcy as per usual.”
He said any government has the right to regulate its currency and the businesses operating within its borders.
“When these businesses are given permission to work, that means they’re entering a contract,” he said. “At the core of entering into such agreements is that the businesses work within the legalities and the laws in place. If these businesses are not working according to the law, the government is going to take appropriate measures.”
…
The Iranian town of Doroud should be a prosperous place — nestled in a valley at the junction of two rivers in the Zagros Mountains, it’s in an area rich in metals to be mined and stone to be quarried. Last year, a military factory on the outskirts of town unveiled production of an advanced model of tanks.
Yet local officials have been pleading for months for the government to rescue its stagnant economy. Unemployment is around 30 percent, far above the official national rate of more than 12 percent. Young people graduate and find no work. The local steel and cement factories stopped production long ago, and their workers haven’t been paid for months. The military factory’s employees are mainly outsiders who live on its grounds, separate from the local economy.
“Unemployment is on an upward path,” Majid Kiyanpour, the local parliament representative for the town of 170,000, told Iranian media in August. “Unfortunately, the state is not paying attention.”
It’s the economy
That’s a major reason Doroud has been a front line in the protests that have flared across Iran. Several thousand residents have been shown in online videos marching down Doroud’s main street, shouting, “Death to the dictator!” At night, young men set fires outside the gates of the mayor’s office and hurl stones at banks.
Anger and frustration over the economy have been the main fuel for the eruption of protests that began Dec. 28.
President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, had promised that lifting most international sanctions under Iran’s landmark 2015 nuclear deal with the West would revive Iran’s long-suffering economy. But while the end of sanctions did open up a new influx of cash from increased oil exports, little has trickled down to the wider population. At the same time, Rouhani has enforced austerity policies that hit households hard.
Demonstrations have broken out mainly in dozens of smaller cities and towns like Doroud, where unemployment has been most painful and where many in the working class feel ignored.
Fury at ruling class
The working classes have long been a base of support for Iran’s hard-liners. But protesters have turned their fury against the ruling clerics and the elite Revolutionary Guard, accusing them of monopolizing the economy and soaking up the country’s wealth.
Many protests have seen a startlingly overt rejection of Iran’s system of government by Islamic clerics.
“They make a man into god and a nation into beggars!” goes the cry heard in videos of several marches. “Clerics with capital, give us our money back!”
Food prices jump
The initial spark for the protests was a sudden jump in food prices. It is believed that hard-line opponents of Rouhani instigated the first demonstrations in the conservative city of Mashhad in eastern Iran, trying to direct public anger at the president. But as protests spread from town to town, the backlash turned against the entire ruling class.
Further stoking the anger was the budget for the coming year that Rouhani unveiled in mid-December, calling for significant cuts in cash payouts established by Rouhani’s predecessor as a form of direct welfare. Since he came to office in 2013, Rouhani has been paring them back. The budget also envisaged a new jump in fuel prices.
But amid the cutbacks, the budget revealed large increases in funding for religious foundations that are a key part of the clerical state-above-the-state, which receive hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the public coffers.
After the lifting of most sanctions in early 2016, the economy saw a major boost — 13.4 percent growth in the GDP in 2016, compared to a 1.3 percent contraction the year before, according to the World Bank. But almost all that growth was in the oil sector.
Growth outside the oil sector was at 3.3 percent. Major foreign investment has failed to materialize, in part because of continued U.S. sanctions hampering access to international banking and the fear other sanctions could eventually return.
Iran’s official unemployment rate is at 12.4 percent, and unemployment among the young, those 19 to 29, has reached 28.8 percent, according to the government-run Statistical Center of Iran.
The provinces face more economic hardship, but the pain has been felt in the capital, Tehran, and other major cities as well. But there it’s been more cushioned within a large middle class. Many can ignore those picking through trash for food. However, in December 2016, Iranians expressed shock over a series of photographs in a local newspaper showing homeless drug addicts sleeping in open graves in Shahriar, on Tehran’s western outskirts.
…
The U.S. economy ended 2017 by adding 148,000 new jobs in December. Despite the modest gain, hiring was strong enough to suggest the economic momentum will continue. But while the national unemployment rate remained unchanged at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, analysts say the pace of job growth may be slowing down. Mil Arcega has more.
…