YCLOAK

The U.S. economy had a net gain of 209,000 jobs in July, while the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.3 percent. That matches the lowest jobless rate in 16 years.

Friday’s Labor Department report says job gains were seen in restaurants, business services and health care. The average hourly wage rose nine cents an hour in July, to reach $26.36. That is up 65 cents over the past year, or growth at a 2.5 percent rate.

Boosting Labor Participation Rate for Women Key to Healthy Economy

The chief economist for the job search company “Indeed” says slow wage growth may reflect job gains in low-paying areas like food service. Jed Kolko also says the job gains are well above what is needed to keep up with growth in the workforce.

While Friday’s newest government unemployment report shows strong job growth and rising wages, it also shows 7 million Americans out of work and another 5.3 million who want full-time work but can only find part-time employment.

On Twitter Friday, President Donald Trump called the official government job numbers “Excellent” and wrote that cutting regulations helped job growth.

During the campaign, when the official jobless rate was around 5 percent, candidate Trump called the job numbers “phony” and said they should not be believed. Back then, he insisted that the actual unemployment rate was far higher, perhaps as high as 42 percent. 
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Japanese automakers Toyota Motor Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp. said Friday they plan to spend $1.6 billion to set up a joint-venture auto manufacturing plant in the U.S. — a move that will create up to 4,000 jobs. 

The plant will have an annual production capacity of about 300,000 vehicles and will produce Toyota Corollas for the North American market. Mazda will make cross-over models there that it plans to introduce to that market, both sides said.

The companies will split the cost for the plant equally. 

Toyota said that it changed its plan to make Corollas at a plant in Mexico, now under construction, and instead will produce Tacoma pickups there. 

EV rumors

The Japanese automakers were reportedly planning to work together to develop electric vehicles. 

EVs have become an increasingly competitive market segment because of concerns about global warming and the environment.

Japanese rival Nissan Motor Co., which is allied with Renault SA of France and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., is the global leader in electric vehicles.

Better batteries

In the past, Toyota, which makes the Prius hybrid, Camry sedan and Lexus luxury models, was not overly bullish on electric vehicles, noting the limited cruise range of the technology. But recent breakthroughs in batteries allow for longer travel per charge.

In 2015, Toyota and Mazda agreed to find new areas where they can work together, but they had not announced specifics.

Toyota already provides hybrid technology to Mazda, which also makes compact cars for Toyota at its Mexico plant.

Mazda, based in Hiroshima, Japan, used to have a powerful partner in Dearborn-based Ford Motor Co., which bought 25 percent of Mazda in 1979, and raised it to 33.4 percent in 1996. But Ford began cutting ties in 2008, and has shed its stake in Mazda.
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One of the most deprived suburbs in Paris is expected to be a big winner now the French capital is in line to host the 2024 Olympics with thousands of homes and a new swimming center to be built in Seine-Saint-Denis for the games.

The poorest of France’s 101 mainland departments, Seine-Saint-Denis sprawls east and north from Paris, much of it a drab expanse of grey buildings, abandoned factories and poverty.

Paris learned on Monday that it was a near certainty to be the IOC’s chosen host for the 2024 games when its only remaining rival, Los Angeles, agreed to wait another four years. Budapest, Boston, Hamburg and Rome had all pulled out of the race.

“La Joie est Libre! (Joy Ahead!),” said the front-page headline of L’Equipe sports newspaper, welcoming the news with a play on words. A series of Islamist militant attacks frightened away many visitors from the French capital and city officials hope winning the bid will boost tourism.

Organizers of the games say their aim to lift Seine-Saint-Denis’s fortunes helped their case with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

“Bearing in mind the symbolic and real divides which there sometimes still are between Paris and its suburbs, this young, working class place, with young people of all colors and all origins allows us to say to the IOC that these games are a wonderful opportunity to show that Paris is bigger than Paris,” Stephane Troussel, president of Seine-Saint-Denis, told Reuters.

Tony Estanguet, co-chair of the Paris bid, said: “We looked at the success of the games in London and for sure, the fact that London succeeded in leaving a strong legacy, a physical legacy in the east of London, was very important for us.”

Not Convinced

Not all locals are sure of the benefits however. Some have half an eye on Stratford, a swath of east London that was redeveloped for the 2012 games, but where rising rents have pushed locals out of similarly created new housing there.

“When there is a lot of investment landlords will also take advantage by adding a bit, increasing the rents,” said Fode Abass Toure, a 45-year-old resident of Bobigny.

“And even the restaurants will try to increase prices of products because a lot of tourists will come,” he said.

Seine-Saint-Denis has a reputation as a Socialist bastion where the French Communist Party and hard-left have a strong presence. It was in the area where the deaths of two youths who were hiding from police in a power station set off 2005 riots.

Unemployment in and around its main towns of Saint-Denis and Bobigny is approaching double the national average at more than 18 percent. Three out of 10 of its 1.5-million-strong population are immigrants, or the children of immigrants, mostly from Africa, a similar proportion are classed as living in poverty.

The Paris games – which have a relatively modest budget by recent standards at around 7 billion euros ($8.27 billion), will leave behind two permanent new developments, both of them in Seine-Saint-Denis.

They are the Olympic Village itself, which will be converted after the games to provide more than 3,500 homes, and a swimming center to stand alongside the Stade de France stadium, built for the 1998 football World Cup, now to be reborn as the Olympic Stadium where track and field athletes will compete.

“Same in Sport”

At a run-down local pool that will be transformed into a water polo venue, children splashed as they played during a visit by Reuters.

“Sport brings people together,” said sports activity leader Jose Defaria, aged 22.

“Even if we don’t come from the same social background, I think we’re the same in sport, we are brought closer together and we make links and it’s good for everyone. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”

Paris 2024 – enthusiastically backed by the country’s tennis-playing new President Emmanuel Macron – plans to make the most of the city’s existing sports facilities and take full advantage of its landmarks.

Boxers will compete alongside tennis players at the clay court French Open tennis venue, Roland Garros, on the city’s western fringe, while the nearby clubs Paris Saint Germain and Stade Francais will host respective sports of soccer and rugby.

Distance races on foot and bicycle will start and finish at the Eiffel Tower, in whose shadow the ever-popular beach volleyball competition will play out.

Fencing and taekwondo will be held under the majestic steel and glass of the Grand Palais near the Champs Elysees, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has bet her reputation on the Seine river being clean enough for open water swimming in time for the games.

Attacks Scared Tourists

Official confirmation due in September would mean one of the world’s most visited cities can mark the centenary of the 1924 Paris Olympics with a repeat showing. Amongst the stars of those games was U.S. swimming gold medalist Johnny Weismuller who later became known for his role in the Tarzan films.

Hoteliers are keen for a much-needed shot in the arm.

Although hotel occupancy rates are rising, up 7.2 percent at 76.9 percent in the first half of this year, they are short of the 80 percent rate hoteliers enjoyed in 2014 before Islamist militant attacks scared off tourists.

A successful Olympic legacy is far from assured for any city, with recent hosts enjoying contrasting fortunes.

The legacy of the Athens Games left derelict, run-down arenas and unused stadiums. Four years earlier, Sydney used the Games to develop an Olympic Park which is now a thriving commercial, residential and sporting suburb.

Four years after Athens, Beijing aimed to use the games to showcase itself as a progressive world power. London’s 2012 evoked a feelgood factor before domestic politics reversed that optimism. In 2016, while Rio’s games lacked a certain luster they underlined the South American nation’s ability to deliver in the face of economic and social adversity.
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Researchers in England are hoping to help root out modern-day slavery in northern India by using detailed satellite imagery to locate brick kilns — sites that are notorious for using millions of slaves, including children.

A team of geospatial experts at the University of Nottingham use Google Maps and dozens of volunteers to identify potential sites of exploitation and report them to authorities.

“The key thing at the moment is to get those statistics right and to get the locations of the brick kilns sorted,” said Doreen Boyd, a co-researcher on the “Slavery from Space” project.

“There are certainly activists on the ground that will help us in terms of getting the statistics and the locations of these brick kilns to [government] officials.”

Anti-slavery activists said the project could be useful in identifying remote kilns or mines that would otherwise escape public or official scrutiny.

“But there are other, more pressing challenges like tackling problematic practices, including withheld wages, lack of transparent accounting … no enforcement of existing labor laws,” said Jakub Sobik, spokesman at Anti-Slavery, a London-based nongovernmental organization.

Millions of people in India are believed to be living in slavery. Despite a 1976 ban on bonded labor, the practice remains widespread at brick kilns, rice mills and brothels, among others.

The majority of victims belong to low-income families or marginalized castes like the Dalits or “untouchables.”

Nearly 70 percent of brick kiln workers in South Asia are estimated to be working in bonded and forced labor, according to a 2016 report by the International Labor Organization. About a fifth of those are underage.

The project relies on crowdsourcing, a process where volunteers sift through thousands of satellite images to identify possible locations of kilns. Each image is shown to multiple volunteers, who mark kilns independently.

The team is currently focused on an area of 2,600 square kilometers in the desert state of Rajasthan — teeming with brick-making sites — and plans to scale up the project in the coming years.

Researchers are now in talks with satellite companies to get access to more detailed images, rather than having to rely on publicly available Google Maps.

The project is one of several anti-slavery initiatives run by the university, which include research on slave labor-free supply chains and human trafficking.
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In a change from chocolates and fizzy drinks, the French are starting to offer fresh oysters from vending machines in the hope of selling more of the delicacy outside business hours.

One pioneer is Tony Berthelot, an oyster farmer whose automatic dispenser of live oysters on the Ile de Re island off France’s western coast offers a range of quantities, types and sizes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

French oyster farmers are following in the footsteps of other producers of fresh food who once manned stalls along roadsides for long hours but now uses machines.

“We can come at midnight if we want, if we have a craving for oysters. It’s excellent; they’re really fresh,” Christel Petinon, a 45-year-old client vacationing on the island, told Reuters.

The Ile de Re’s refrigerated dispenser, one of the first and with glass panels so customers can see what they are buying, is broadly similar to those that offer snacks and drinks at railway stations and office buildings worldwide.

Customers use their bank card for access, opening the door of their choice from a range of carton sizes and oyster types.

Berthelot, 30 years an oyster breeder, sees it as an extra source of revenue rather than an alternative to normal points of sale like food markets, fishmongers and supermarkets.

“We felt as though we were losing lots of sales when we are closed,” he said.

“There was a cost involved when buying this machine, of course, but we’re paying it back in installments … And today, in theory, we can say that the calculations are correct and it’s working.”

Selling oysters from a machine bets on more than just open-mindedness among consumers. Live mollusks not kept cool enough or stored too long out of seawater can cause food poisoning when opened.

The Berthelots say the machine has an appeal to a younger generation accustomed to buying on the internet and unperturbed by the absence of a shopkeeper.
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Nigeria will legalize illegal mini refineries in the Niger Delta oil hub by the end of the year and supply them with crude at a reasonable price, the presidency said Thursday, fulfilling a demand from community leaders.

On Monday, Niger Delta leaders threatened to pull out of peace talks with the government unless their demands were met by Nov. 1.

“The Federal Government has started the process of replacing illegal refineries in the region with modular ones,” the presidency said in a statement as Acting President Yemi Osinbajo met Niger Delta community leaders in Abuja.

Each of the Niger Delta states would receive two modular refineries to start up in the fourth quarter, the statement said.

Swampland poverty

The government has been in talks with community leaders since last year to end militant attacks on oil production facilities, which cut the OPEC member’s output by 700,000 barrels a day for several months last year.

But a military crackdown on thousands of illegal refineries in the southern swamps, which process crude oil stolen from oil majors and state oil firm NNPC, has raised tensions.

The refineries process stolen crude in makeshift pipes and metal tanks hidden in oil-soaked clearings deep in the southern swampland’s thick bush land.

Working on other demands

The Niger Delta leaders had presented President Muhammadu Buhari a list of 16 demands last November to drag the southern swampland out of poverty. The militants then halted attacks to give the talks a chance.

The presidency said it was also discussing with oil majors to move their regional headquarters to the Niger Delta, another demand from communities complaining they do not benefit from the crude in their region.

Osinbajo was appointed by Buhari to head Nigeria while Buhari is on medical leave in Britain for an undisclosed ailment.

Oil exports are now set to exceed 2 million barrels per day (bpd) in August, the highest in 17 months, up from just more than 1 million bpd at certain points last year, thanks to a steady decline in attacks on pipelines. 

 
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Under a best-case scenario, a newly negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would not be implemented before the end of next year or the start of 2019, Mexico’s economy minister said Thursday.

Among other issues, NAFTA talks would focus on how to provide more certainty in dispute resolutions, Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said in a radio interview.

“According to the possible calendars of approval, the best of the scenarios that we could have … would be the start of implementation almost at the end of 2018 or the start of 2019,” Guajardo said.

Mexico has set out the goals of prioritizing free access for goods and services, greater labor market integration and a strengthening of energy security.

Last week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said during a visit to Mexico that he hoped farm business with Mexico would not suffer due to President Donald Trump’s drive to get a better deal for manufacturers.

Speaking in Japan on Thursday, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said the best way to calm Trump’s worries about commerce with Mexico were through more trade, not less.

Videgaray said negotiators would need to be careful not to tweak trade rules on sourcing components too much or they could risk driving up the costs of goods like electronics.

“The important thing that we are not going to do is hurt the region’s competitivity, and much less the region’s consumers,” Videgaray said, according to a transcript.
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Women in the United States are starting bushiness at one and a half times the rate of their male peers. Effective entrepreneurship could help cut the economic gap between women and men, which the World Economic Forum says could otherwise take decades to close around the globe.  As VOA’s Jim Randle reports, experts say more than one-third of U.S. businesses are headed by women and they expect that percentage to grow.
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U.S. President Donald Trump may soon attempt to increase pressure on China to change its trade practices and do more to stop North Korea’s weapons programs.  

Reports in the financial press say President Trump may sign an order as soon as Friday to start an investigation of Chinese demands that foreign companies share technology secrets in exchange for access to the massive Chinese market.  That investigation could, eventually, lead to higher tariffs on Chinese-made products headed for the U.S. market, which is the world’s largest. Trade experts warn the action might violate U.S. commitments under the World Trade Organization.  

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross recently wrote that China’s trade practices, including forced technology transfer, are unfair, hurt U.S. exports, and contribute to a $347 billion deficit in the trade in goods between the United States and China.

As a presidential candidate, Trump harshly criticized China approach to commerce.  He has also said has said China, which is North Korea’s neighbor and major trading partner, could do far more to stop Pyongyang’s efforts to improve nuclear weapons and missiles.  U.S. experts warn that North Korean missile and bomb tests show that nation is a growing threat to the United States.

Trump’s tough stance on trade issues helped him win votes from working class voters who believe they have lost jobs due to unfair foreign competition.  His approach was a break with the traditional Republican pro-trade and pro-business stance.  Earlier this week, Trump’s Democratic party opponents accused Trump of talking tough about trade issues but failing to take effective action.

 
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Avon’s CEO will leave the company in March as the struggling beauty products maker continues a turnaround campaign.

Sheri McCoy has led the company for five years and sits on the board, but there has been some external pressure from activist investors for a change in leadership.

Avon said Thursday that it has hired an executive search firm to help find McCoy’s successor.

“The platform is in place for a new CEO to continue accelerating the pace of change and take Avon to sustainable profitable growth,” McCoy said in a company release.

Barrington Capital Group had been pushing for significant action at Avon since 2015, when it sent a letter saying that, “significant, immediate changes in leadership and strategic direction are needed.”

In March 2016 Avon announced that it was cutting 2,500 jobs and moving its headquarters from New York to the U.K.

Avon Products Inc. launched a three-year transformation plan last year and so far it has sold its North American business to private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management and realized $180 million in cost savings. But those efforts have been arduous.

The company on Thursday said it had swung to a loss of $45.5 million in the second quarter. It had an adjusted loss of 3 cents per share on revenue of $1.4 billion. Analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research predicted earnings of 6 cents per share on revenue of $1.44 billion.

Shares fell slightly in premarket trading.
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Deaths in U.S. coal mines this year have surged ahead of last year’s, and federal safety officials say workers who are new to a mine have been especially vulnerable to fatal accidents.

But the nation’s coal miner’s union says the mine safety agency isn’t taking the right approach to fixing the problem.

Ten coal miners have died on the job so far this year, compared to a record low of eight deaths last year.

The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration is responding to the uptick in deaths with a summer initiative, sending officials to observe and train miners new to a particular mine on safer working habits. The push comes during a transition for the agency, amid signals from President Donald Trump that he intends to ease the industry’s regulatory burden.

Federal inspectors powerless

The miner’s union, the United Mine Workers of America, says the agency initiative falls short. It notes federal inspectors who conduct such training visits are barred from punishing the mine if they spot any safety violations.

“To take away the inspector’s right to issue a violation takes away the one and only enforcement power the inspector and the agency has,” UAW president Cecil Roberts wrote in a recent letter to the federal agency.

Patricia Silvey, a deputy assistant secretary at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, said eight of the coal miners who died this year had less than a year’s experience at the mine where they worked.

“We found from the stats that category of miners were more prone to have an accident,” Silvey said in an interview with The Associated Press before the 10th death occurred at mine in Pennsylvania on July 25.

New miners die in accidents

Silvey pointed to a death last May at West Virginia’s Pinnacle Mine where a miner riding a trolley rose up and struck his head on the mine roof. She said the fatality could have been due to the miner’s unfamiliarity with the mine. The miner had worked there nine weeks, according to an accident report. And in the most recent death, a miner less than two weeks into the job at a mine in eastern Pennsylvania was run over by a bulldozer July 25.

Five of the 10 coal mining deaths this year have occurred in West Virginia, and two more in Kentucky. Alabama, Montana and Pennsylvania each had one coal mining death. Nine of the miners killed this year had several years’ experience working at other mines.

The mine safety agency’s injury numbers show that workers who were new to a mine had more than double the injuries. Going back to October 2015, miners who worked at a specific mine less than a year suffered 903 injuries, compared to 418 for miners working at a mine one to two years.

Training for miners

The mine safety agency says it will visit mines and “offer suggestions” on training miners who have been at a mine less than a year. Silvey said the union is correct that inspectors won’t be writing safety violations, but that the initiative “has in no way undermined our regular inspection program.”

The miner’s union said the federal agency should not expect safety suggestions to carry the same weight as citations and fines.

“To believe that an operator will comply with the law on their own free will is contrary to historical experience and naive on MSHA’s part,” the letter said.

Strong enforcement

A former MSHA official said the agency would be “tying the hands” of inspectors if they don’t allow them to write citations on the training visits.

“The record low fatal injury rate among coal miners in recent years is because of strong enforcement of the law,” said Celeste Monforton, who served on a governor-appointed panel that investigated West Virginia’s 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster that killed 29 miners. There were 12 coal mining deaths in 2015 and 16 in 2014.

“It would be a disgrace to see that trend reversed,” she said.

Phil Smith, a spokesman for the miner’s union, said the union’s safety department met recently with MSHA on the dispute, but MSHA maintained it has the authority to conduct observation visits without enforcement.

Safety boss’ position vacant

The mine safety agency’s top position has been vacant since former Assistant Secretary of Labor Joe Main left in January. Main, a former miner’s union official, focused on eliminating hazards at troubled mines by increasing aggressive inspections after West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch explosion. Main declined to comment.

Silvey said a vacancy at the mine safety agency’s top position hasn’t hindered their efforts. She said she knew of no timetable for hiring a new assistant secretary of Labor to oversee the mine safety agency.

“I know one thing, it’s a presidential appointment,” she said.
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Three top Democratic senators, in a rare show of bipartisanship, on Wednesday urged U.S. President Donald Trump to stand up to China as he prepares to launch an inquiry into Beijing’s intellectual property and trade practices in coming days.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer pressed the Republican president to skip the investigation and go straight to trade action against China.

“We should certainly go after them,” said Schumer in a statement. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio also urged Trump to rein in China.

Tensions between Washington and Beijing have escalated in recent months as Trump has pressed China to cut steel production to ease global oversupply and rein in North Korea’s missile program.

Sources familiar with the current discussions said Trump was expected to issue a presidential memorandum in coming days, citing Chinese theft of intellectual property as a problem. The European Union, Japan, Germany and Canada have all expressed concern over China’s behavior on intellectual property theft.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would then initiate an investigation under the Trade Act of 1974’s Section 301, which allows the president to unilaterally impose tariffs or other trade restrictions to protect U.S. industries, the sources said.

It is unclear whether such a probe would result in trade sanctions against China, which Beijing would almost certainly challenge before the World Trade Organization.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement to Reuters that China “opposes unilateral actions and trade protectionism in any form.”

Leverage for talks

U.S. Section 301 investigations have not led to trade sanctions since the WTO was launched in 1995. In the 1980s, Section 301 tariffs were levied against Japanese motorcycles, steel and other products.

“This could merely be leverage for bilateral negotiations,” James Bacchus, a former WTO chief judge and USTR official, said of a China intellectual property probe.

Some trade lawyers said that WTO does not have jurisdiction over investment rules — such as China’s requirements that foreign companies transfer technology to their joint venture partners — allowing sanctions to proceed outside the WTO’s dispute settlement system.

But Bacchus argued the United States has an obligation to turn first to the Geneva-based institution to resolve trade disputes, adding: “There is an obligation in WTO to enforce intellectual property rights that is not fully explored.”

Lighthizer and Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, have complained the WTO is slow to resolve disputes and biased against the United States.

The threat comes at a time when Trump has become increasingly frustrated with the level of support from Beijing to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile program.

Trump has said in the past that China would get better treatment on trade with the United States if it acted more forcefully against Pyongyang. Beijing has said its influence on North Korea is limited.

China also says trade between the two nations benefits both sides, and that Beijing is willing to improve trade ties.

A senior Chinese official said Monday that there was no link between North Korea’s nuclear program and China-U.S. trade.

Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to Lighthizer urging action to stop China from pressuring U.S. tech companies into giving up intellectual property rights.

Wyden’s state of Oregon is home to several companies that could make a case regarding intellectual property rights and China, including Nike and FLIR Systems.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average set a sixth-straight record Wednesday, closing above 22,000 for the first time, but experts point out that whatever goes up must always come down.

The Dow closed up a fraction at 22,016.

Healthy earnings reports from computer technology giant Apple, the world’s largest publicly traded company, and airplane manufacturer Boeing were major contributors to the Dow hitting another major milestone.

The Dow Jones is an index of 30 major companies from a variety retail, manufacturing and service industries. It has been used as a gauge of the health of the U.S. stock market for more than 100 years.

The Dow is up 11 percent so far this year and all of Wall Street has been in what is known as a “bull market” for several years.

It has been buoyed, in part, by better-than-expected corporate earnings and expectations brought on by the pro-business Trump White House.

But some analysts say they cannot see a lot of room for the Dow to go much higher.

They say that while they expect more positive earnings reports, Congress’ inaction on President Trump’s proposed tax cuts could take some wind out of investor optimism.

Plus, they point out that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is an index of just 30 companies, which they say is sometimes a narrow gauge of overall investor confidence.

Some other world markets have outperformed the New York Stock Exchange so far this year, such as the Dow Jones China 88 Index, the eurozone’s Euro Stoxx Index and the Sao Paulo Bovespa Index in Brazil.
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India, one of the world’s largest markets for pharmaceuticals, is drawing up its first set of marketing rules for drugmakers, restricting gifts and trips offered to doctors and pharmacists to 1,000 rupees ($15), according to a draft proposal seen by Reuters.

Such rules are common overseas, but are not set in stone in India, where campaigners have long demanded a crackdown on unethical selling practices that include gifts ranging from electrical appliances to foreign trips to woo physicians and pharmacists into prescribing and stocking specific medicines.

The country has voluntary marketing guidelines for drugmakers, but critics say they are ineffective.

“In India, corruption and bribery of doctors is widespread,” said Samiran Nundy, a leading gastrointestinal surgeon. “I’ve seen a range of ways in which this works, from presents to doctors to paying for them to attend conferences.”

“It’s great that marketing rules are coming into place,” he added. “I hope that these will be enforced.”

Besides limiting marketing spending, the draft proposal — drawn up by the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) and under review of India’s law ministry — also forbids drugmakers from making false claims on the curative abilities and efficacy of drugs.

An official at the DoP declined to comment on the draft’s specifics, but confirmed to Reuters that the order was under review, though the implementation date for the rules is not set.

The draft says a failure to abide by the rules would result in a marketing ban on a drugmaker for up to a year or more, depending on the degree of the violation. It would also lead to confiscation of all packs of the company’s highest-selling drug brands, which would then be given away to government hospitals.

Companies would also be able to turn a marketing suspension order into a fine, according to the proposal, by paying penalties of between 500,000 rupees ($7,800) and 100 million rupees ($1.56 million), depending on the order’s severity.

Trial samples

The rules limit the number of free samples a company can offer a doctor to full treatment courses for three patients.

But they don’t specify that only new medicine samples can be given away for free, noted Amitava Guha, national co-covener of the health care-focused civil society group Jan Swasthya Abhiyan.

“If this is applicable to all medicines of a company, there will be no change in the present situation,” he said, calling it a major loophole that the companies could exploit.

He also said the marketing ban penalty was vague as it did not specify if it would bar the company from marketing all, or specific, products. The penalty would be “meaningless” for a single product, as drug company salesmen market in private meetings so there is no material evidence, Guha said.

The Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA), a lobby group of India’s largest drugmakers, said it supports mandatory rules for curbing undesirable marketing practices, but they should be transparent, easy to implement and unambiguous.

This “should not be reduced to yet another ‘Inspector Raj,'” IPA Secretary General D.G. Shah said, adding that rules should also address the need for doctors’ continuing medical education.

“Someone has to take responsibility of keeping doctors up to date with the latest advances in the field of medicines.”

The draft rules allow drugmakers to sponsor trips for doctors, pharmacists and relatives to attend seminars, medical conferences or scientific meetings, so long as the companies maintain a record of the minutes, expenses and agenda.

Mandatory code

In a letter last year, Tapan Sen, a member of India’s upper house of parliament, urged the government to act on drafting a mandatory code on the marketing of pharmaceuticals, citing irregular practices by several companies.

Indian media reported that the letter said the country’s largest drugmaker, Sun Pharma, Abbott India and privately-held Macleods Pharmaceuticals were among drugmakers found to have sent doctors on “pleasure trips.”

Abbott said at the time that it had a strict policy against providing gifts and other incentives to doctors, while Macleods refuted the allegations.

Sun told Reuters it organizes “continuous medical education” programs to educate doctors, not promote its products, and these are compliant with the voluntary marketing guidelines set by the government in 2015.

The current draft says companies will be allowed to organize screening camps or awareness campaigns at public health centers, but it bars advertising by stealth and mandates that doctors involved in such events be paid commensurate to their average daily income.

To ensure implementation of the rules, an Ethics Compliance Officer of the rank of joint secretary to the Indian government would be appointed.

Pharmaceutical marketing practices have long been a subject of controversy globally. In India, where health insurance is scarce and many rely on pharmacists for medical advice, critics say sketchy practices have led to over-prescription of strong cocktail drugs, causing drug-resistance.

GlaxoSmithKline was battered by a bribery scandal in China that landed it with a record $490 million fine in 2014.

It went on to slash the number of sales reps and overhaul its business globally, stopping sales-based incentives for drug reps and reducing paid junkets for doctors.
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As the U.S. stock market hit a new all-time high Wednesday, key U.S. lawmakers staked out core positions for a looming battle that could impact economic performance for decades: reforming America’s complicated and much-maligned tax system.

“Comprehensive tax reform represents the single most important action we can take now to grow the economy and to help middle-class families finally get ahead,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, adding that Washington has a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to act.

“For families, we want to make their taxes simpler, fairer and lower. For small businesses, we want to provide the conditions they need to form, invest and grow,” McConnell said.

An object of near-universal ridicule, the federal tax code is thousands of pages long and forces many Americans to hire accountants or attorneys to comply with its vast array of provisions.

President Donald Trump made tax reform a major campaign promise last year, including lowering America’s corporate tax rate, the highest among the world’s major economies. Failure to deliver on what has been a core Republican pledge to voters for multiple election cycles would be a bitter pill for a party still licking its wounds over its inability — so far — to abolish former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

While Senate Democrats unified in opposition to repealing Obamacare, many say they are eager to work with Republicans on tax reform so long as certain conditions are met.

“First, don’t cut taxes for the top 1 percent [richest Americans],” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. “Second, don’t increase the [federal] debt and deficit. And third, negotiate in a fair and open process.”

Opposition to reconciliation

Democrats are objecting to any Republican attempt to pass tax reform though reconciliation, a Senate procedure that sets aside the three-fifths majority commonly required to advance a bill. Under reconciliation, Republicans could approve tax reform using their narrow Senate majority, bypassing Democrats entirely.

Schumer warned that reconciliation would torpedo “bipartisan tax reform before a discussion between our two parties has even begun.”

“Is he [McConnell] closing the door on bipartisanship because he so dearly wants to cut taxes on the top 1 percent?” the minority leader asked. “The wealthy are doing great right now, God bless them.”

For his part, McConnell promised ample opportunities for Democrats to help shape a final tax reform bill.

“Our expectation is for this legislation to move through the committees this fall under regular order, followed by consideration on both the House and Senate floor,” the majority leader said. “There’s a great deal of bipartisan consensus about what ails our tax code, and my hope is our friends on the other side of the aisle [Democrats] will join us in a serious way to address it.”

Revenue-neutral

McConnell has said that tax reform should be revenue-neutral, meaning that any tax cuts would have to be offset by revenue increases in other areas of the federal code. It is widely assumed that Republicans will propose reducing a variety of tax rates paid by wage earners and businesses, while eliminating some tax deductions many Americans use to lower their tax bills.

For decades, some Republicans have argued that tax cuts pay for themselves by stimulating the economy, leading to higher output and more tax revenue. Democrats contend the theory was proven false under the administrations of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, which saw deficits rise after major tax cuts were enacted.
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Egypt’s foreign reserves reached over $36 billion in July, a record high, which the prime minister described as “good news” as it shows that the economy is recovering, the central bank said Tuesday.

The bank announced the increase in a brief statement saying that the figure is 4.7 billion dollars higher compared to the previous month. In December 2010, foreign reserves reached $36 billion.

Egypt’s Prime Minister Sherif Ismail hailed the increase of the foreign reserves saying, “this is an assuring message about the Egyptian economy and that we are capable of covering the needs of the Egyptian people.”

 “This means that the Egyptian economy has recovered,” he said.  

$12 billion loan from IMF

The rise comes after the government secured a $12 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. In order to qualify for that loan, the government imposed a set of tough economic measures, including subsidy cuts and the flotation of its local currency.

The economic measures were hailed by the IMF but have left many Egyptians struggling with both reduced buying power and spiraling inflation while the government struggles to generate jobs in country with an official population of 92 million.

This summer, Egypt raised electricity prices by more than 40 percent and increased gasoline prices by up to 55 percent while doubling the price of the household staple butane canisters, used for cooking.

Measures benefit middle, lower classes

Ahead of the latest hikes, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi approved a package of measures benefiting middle and lower class Egyptians, including income tax relief, bonuses for state employees, increases in pensions and ration card subsidies.

The government embarked on the economic reform program soon after el-Sissi took office three years ago. Egypt’s economy has been battered since the 2011 uprising and continues to face major challenges, including a rising Islamic militancy. Tourism, a major pillar of national revenue, was dealt a blow in 2015 when militants belonging to an affiliate of the Islamic State group downed a Russian airliner killing all 224 people aboard.

 
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Some European oil majors have made inroads into the emerging U.S. offshore wind energy market, aiming to leverage their experience of deepwater development and the crowded offshore wind arena at home.

Late entrants to the offshore wind game in Europe, which began with a project off Denmark 25 years ago and is now approaching maturity, they are looking across the Atlantic at what they view as a huge and potentially lucrative new market.

Norway’s Statoil has won a license to develop a wind farm of the New York coast, is marketing its new floating turbine to California and Hawaii and is retraining some oil and gas staff to work in its wind division.

Royal Dutch Shell bid for a lease offshore North Carolina earlier this year while Denmark’s DONG Energy, a wind energy pioneer which agreed to sell its oil and gas business in May, is in a Massachusetts-based offshore wind consortium, holds a lease off the New Jersey coast and has opened an office in Boston.

Offshore wind generation began in the United States late last year, ironically after the election of President Donald Trump. He is skeptical about climate change, complains about subsidies for renewable energy and battled against an offshore wind farm near his Scottish golf resort.

However, a string of federal seabed leases were awarded before Trump took office and more are planned. The investment needed to get projects going is one of the biggest

obstacles.

“Undeniably, offshore wind is a big boys’ game because it requires large amounts of capital because scale is such an important cost driver,” said Samuel Leupold chief executive of DONG Energy’s offshore wind business.

While DONG has shifted decisively towards renewables, Statoil and Shell are still firmly rooted in fossil fuels and other major European oil companies, in common with their U.S. counterparts, have so far steered clear of U.S. offshore wind.

Washington estimates its potential at 2,000 gigawatts (GW), many times anticipated capacity in Europe of 25 GW by 2020, but U.S. federal subsidies expire at the end of 2019 and while they may be renewed by Congress, that is no means certain.

Costs in Europe have fallen to a level that enabled DONG to place a zero subsidy bid earlier this year, but offshore wind farms are still multi-billion dollar projects. A push into deeper U.S. waters and the bigger turbines needed to compete without subsidies will keep price tags high.

Early Days

Trump signed an executive order in March expected to roll back his predecessor Barack Obama’s plan requiring states to slash carbon emissions from power plants. There is also no carbon price mechanism across the United States like those in Europe and elsewhere, although there are two regional ones.

U.S. oil companies have some investments in solar and onshore wind, but when it comes to offshore wind, many say they are waiting for a time when government support is not needed.

“Chevron supports renewables that are scalable and can compete without subsidies,” said Morgan Krinklaw, a spokesman for Chevron, which owns an onshore wind farm.

A report from analysts at Lazard in December pegged the cost of U.S. offshore wind at $118 MWh, around twice as much as onshore wind or combined-cycle gas turbines.

Asked to comment on that figure, Statoil, which is building its first floating wind turbine park off the Scottish coast, said costs were coming down and it was working to drive them down further, partly by redeploying existing staff.

The company has about 1,000 employees in the U.S. oil industry, said Stephen Bull, senior vice president of the company’s wind business. “There’s scope for us to plug into our existing oil and gas supply chain,” he added, referring to existing contracts with equipment and service suppliers.

Statoil spokeswoman Elin Isaksen said she did not expect any of its offshore wind projects in the U.S. to have begun construction by 2019 and that it was too early to quote numbers for the New York project, while acknowledging there was, as yet, no supply chain.

“We expect to see – and will help – the supply chain evolve rapidly in step with the broader industry as offshore wind takes hold in the U.S. in the coming years,” she said.

In Virginia, where Spanish utility Iberdrola’s Avangrid has secured an offshore wind licence, a rich marine engineering heritage is expected to help local companies gain work. Smaller European oil and gas firms are also gaining work.

JDR Cable Systems, a British company that has traditionally supplied subsea power lines to oil and gas platforms, earlier this year won a $275 million contract to provide electric cables for the largest U.S. offshore wind farm off the Maryland coast.

“We are well placed to develop business in the U.S. because of the existing relationships we have in Europe,” said John Price, global sales director for renewables at JDR.

State level decision-making on electricity procurement, the next stage of getting offshore wind off the ground, is helping.

Massachusetts, where DONG has secured a seabed license, last year issued a law requiring its utilities to buy up to 1.6 GW of offshore wind power by June 2027, with a tender to be held later this year.

DONG’s North America wind power president Thomas Bostrom said it would bid in the Massachusetts power purchase tender in December and would not comment on costs ahead of that. He too, emphasized his company was playing the long game.

“As excited as we are for offshore wind in the U.S., we are still in the early days of the industry,” Bostrom said.
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Qatar filed a wide-ranging legal complaint at the World Trade Organization on Monday to challenge a trade boycott by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates, the director of Qatar’s WTO office, Ali Alwaleed al-Thani, told Reuters.

By formally “requesting consultations” with the three countries, the first step in a trade dispute, Qatar triggered a 60-day deadline for them to settle the complaint or face litigation at the WTO and potential retaliatory trade sanctions.

“We’ve given sufficient time to hear the legal explanations on how these measures are in compliance with their commitments, to no satisfactory result,” al-Thani said.

“We have always called for dialogue, for negotiations, and this is part of our strategy to talk to the members concerned and to gain more information on these measures, the legality of these measures, and to find a solution to resolve the dispute.”

The boycotting states cut ties with Qatar — a major global gas supplier and host to the biggest U.S. military base in the Middle East — on June 5, accusing it of financing militant groups in Syria, and allying with Iran, their regional foe. Doha denies these allegations.

The boycotting countries have previously told the WTO that they would cite national security to justify their actions against Qatar, using a controversial and almost unprecedented exemption allowed under the WTO rules.

They said on Sunday they were ready for talks to tackle the dispute, the worst rift between Gulf Arab states in years, if Doha showed willingness to deal with their demands.

The text of Qatar’s WTO complaint cites “coercive attempts at economic isolation” and spells out how they are impeding Qatar’s rights in the trade in goods, trade in services and intellectual property.

The complaints against Saudi Arabia and the UAE run to eight pages each, while the document on Bahrain is six pages.

No reaction

There was no immediate reaction from the three to Qatar’s complaint, which is likely to be circulated at the WTO later this week.

The disputed trade restrictions include bans on trade through Qatar’s ports and travel by Qatari citizens, blockages of Qatari digital services and websites, closure of maritime borders and prohibition of flights operated by Qatari aircraft.

The complaint does not put a value on the trade boycott, and al-Thani declined to estimate how much Qatar could seek in sanctions if the litigation ever reached that stage, which can take two to five years or longer in the WTO system.

“We remain hopeful that the consultations could bear fruit in resolving this,” he said.

The WTO suit does not include Egypt, the fourth country involved in the boycott. Although it has also cut travel and diplomatic ties with Qatar, Egypt did not expel Qatari citizens or ask Egyptians to leave Qatar.

Al-Thani declined to explain why Egypt was not included.

“Obviously all options are available. But we have not raised a consultation request with Egypt yet,” he said.

In its WTO case, Qatar would also draw attention to the impact the boycott was having on other WTO members, he added.

Many trade diplomats say that using national security as a defense risks weakening the WTO by removing a taboo that could enable countries to escape international trade obligations.

Al-Thani said governments had wide discretion to invoke the national security defense but it had to be subject to oversight: “If it is self-regulating, that is a danger to the entire multilateral trading system itself. And we believe the WTO will take that into consideration.”

Aviation group

Qatar also raised the boycott at a meeting of the U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on Monday, al-Thani said.

In comments to Qatar-based Al Jazeera television later Monday, Qatar’s transport and information minister said the boycotting countries had discriminated against Doha in violation of an international agreement guaranteeing overflights.

“These countries have used this right arbitrarily and imposed it on aircraft registered only in the \state of Qatar,” Jassim bin Saif al-Sulaiti said.

Qatar in June asked Montreal-based ICAO to resolve the conflict, using a dispute resolution mechanism in the Chicago Convention, a 1944 treaty that created the agency and set basic rules for international aviation.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain said Sunday that they would allow Qatari planes to use air corridors in emergencies.
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The crocodile industry in Australia’s Northern Territory, a new report says, is worth more than four times the previous estimate of US $80 million. Officials hope the findings will give poorer aboriginal communities the chance to develop crocodile farming industries.

The saltwater creature is the world’s largest reptile. In Australia, they were once hunted to the brink of extinction, mainly for their skins, which were used to make durable leather goods and clothes.

They have been a protected species since the early 1970s, and their numbers in Australia’s tropical north have soared.

Economic opportunities

The Northern Territory regional government now sees economic opportunities for indigenous communities, where officials want to see an expansion of crocodile egg collection programs.

The eggs would help to stock crocodile farms owned by aboriginal groups, or traditional owners of land, which would supply reptile skins to big fashion houses including Louis Vuitton and Gucci, as well as supplying crocodile meat.

“We are looking at direct investments into rangers to make sure that we see on country a growth in the crocodile industry, so the harvesting of eggs, the growing of the crocodile locally and remotely, which is a very important and valuable use of traditional country done by traditional owners,” said Michael Gunner, the Northern Territory’s chief minister.

Hunting for sport?

An independent Australian MP, Bob Katter, has said that as crocodile numbers increase, so does the threat to people. He believes big game trophy hunters should be allowed to shoot them for sport. Katter has argued that crocodile safaris would boost the incomes of indigenous communities.

While the Northern Territory government supports crocodile safaris, the final decision rests with Australia’s federal government, which has refused to allow them. Conservationists have insisted that the shooting of iconic animals for profit in Australia is abhorrent and should never be allowed.
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At the Terranova Ranch near Fresno, California, general manager Don Cameron examines grapes in a vineyard that workers flooded last spring.

Winter rains had ended a severe drought and he was engaged in “groundwater recharge,” returning unused water from the North Fork of the Kings River to an underground aquifer, the source of irrigation for this region. Some were skeptical because he was flooding a working vineyard and not a special basin designed for the purpose.

“We’ve been through a five-year drought,” Cameron explained. “Our groundwater has been depleted during that period, and long term, we want to rebuild what we’ve lost.”

Recharging groundwater on fields that are in production was a test, and the vines were closely monitored. They held up well to the thousands of cubic meters of water that flooded the fields and percolated down to nature’s underground storage system.

A research team led by hydrologist Helen Dahlke at the University of California, Davis, wants to test this concept throughout the Central Valley.

California produce

The 50,000-square-kilometer swath of California farmland produces one-quarter of the food for Americans, and 40 percent of their fruits, nuts and vegetables.

The Terranova Farm grows 25 crops, from tomatoes to onions, and Cameron wants to see how other crops respond to the winter flooding. He is expanding the farm’s recharge project with help from a $5 million grant from the California state government, and envisions recharge efforts at farms around the state.

Aquifers are like a banking system, says Graham Fogg, a UC Davis geologist and water expert who says depleted aquifers have three times the available storage capacity of surface reservoirs. “If you’re looking for places to store water, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.

The idea of groundwater banking took root in the 1990s, when water authorities such as the Semitropic Water Storage District near Bakersfield, California, created exchange systems to credit farmers for surplus water returned to canals and reservoirs when it is not needed.

Farmers later use that water instead of pumping water from the ground. The district also floods recharge basins to let the water seep down to replenish the aquifer.

Surface and groundwater are parts of the same system, says district general manager Jason Gianquinto, “so we can take advantage of the wet years and put a lot of water in storage and then fall back on the groundwater in the dry years.”

Groundwater measures

In 2014, California legislators imposed restrictions on pumping groundwater and gave local authorities until 2020 to implement measurements and controls.

The law aims to stop aquifer depletion within two decades and create a record of groundwater use, something already seen in many other Western states.  

Hydrologist Fogg says intervention was needed because Central Valley aquifers have been dramatically lowered in places, which has led to subsidence or sinking of the ground that could potentially lead to the collapse of some aquifers. He notes that aquifer depletion is also a problem in many developing nations, including China and India.

Issues surrounding water in California are politically charged and pit residents of the north against those of the south, cities against farmers, and environmentalists against agricultural interests.

Regulations to regulate the pumping of groundwater are being drawn up by local agencies, and it needs to be done right, says farm manager Cameron, or “you’re going to have fewer jobs. It’s a ripple effect through the economy.”

He says that farmers could face a stark choice of pumping less groundwater or growing fewer crops.

Whatever happens, Cameron says, “it’s going to be a real game-changer for this area when we get to 2020,” when the groundwater management system is in place.
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More Americans applied for jobless aid last week, though the number of people seeking benefits remains near historic lows pointing to a healthy job market.

THE NUMBERS: Weekly unemployment applications rose by 10,000 to 244,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the largest weekly increase since late May. The less volatile four-week average was unchanged at 244,000. The number of people collecting unemployment benefits has fallen 8.3 percent over the past 12 months to 2 million.

THE TAKEAWAY: The job market appears solid as the U.S. enters its ninth year of recovery from the Great Recession. Employers are holding onto workers with the expectation that business will continue to improve. Jobless claims – a close indication of layoffs – have come in below 300,000 for 125 weeks in a row. That’s the longest such stretch since 1970, when the U.S. population was much smaller.

KEY DRIVERS: After a weak start this year, the economy is expected to grow at roughly 2 percent. That would be roughly in line with annual gains during the recovery. Consistent hiring has helped sustain the gradual recovery, although the expansion is starting to show its age as the pace of job gains has slowed this year.

The unemployment rate has fallen to a healthy 4.4 percent. The Labor Department’s report for June showed that U.S. employers added a robust 222,000 jobs, the most in four months and a reassuring sign that businesses may be confident enough to keep hiring despite a slow-growing economy.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it is keeping its key interest rate unchanged at a time when inflation remains undesirably low despite the job market continuing to strengthen.
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China plans to raise the speed of its bullet trains back up to 350 kph (217 mph), state media reported on Thursday, six years after a deadly high-speed rail crash prompted authorities to slow trains across the country.

Trains on China’s high-speed rail network are designed to travel up to 350 kph, but Beijing ordered speeds to be cut to between 250-300 kph in 2011 after over 30 people were killed in a train crash in eastern Zhejiang province.

The Beijing News said the government planned to implement the increased speeds between Beijing and Shanghai in September, which would cut travel time to 4.5 hours from up to 6 hours currently.

China’s newest “Fuxing” bullet trains, which were unveiled in June and are capable of top speeds of 400 kph, will be used for that journey, it said.

China is home to the world’s longest high-speed rail network which competes heavily with domestic airlines. Of China’s 31 provinces and regions, 29 are served by high-speed rail with only the regions of Tibet and Ningxia in the northwest yet to be connected.
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Intel’s more than two decade-long reign as the king of the silicon-based semiconductor is poised to end Thursday when South Korea’s Samsung Electronics elbows the U.S. manufacturer aside to become the leading maker of computer chips.

Samsung reported record-high quarterly profit and sales Thursday. Analysts say it likely nudged aside Intel in the April-June quarter as the leading maker of semiconductors, the computer chips that are as much a staple of the 21st century wired world as crude oil was for the 20th century.

Samsung said its semiconductor business recorded 8 trillion ($7.2 billion) in operating income on revenue of 17.6 trillion won ($15.8 billion) during the April-June period.

Intel, which reports its quarterly earnings later Thursday, is expected to report $14.4 billion in quarterly revenue.

On an annual basis, Samsung’s semiconductor division is widely expected to overtake Intel’s sales this year, analysts at brokerages and market research firms say.

Mobile devices and data are the keys to understanding Samsung’s ascent as the new industry leader, even as its de facto chief is jailed, battling corruption charges, and it recovers from a fiasco over Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that had to be axed last year because they were prone to catch fire.

Manufacturers are packing more and more memory storage capacity into ever smaller mobile gadgets, as increased use of mobile applications, connected devices and cloud computing services drive up demand and consequently prices for memory chips, an area dominated by Samsung.

Just as Saudi Arabia dominates in oil output, Samsung leads in manufacturing the high-tech commodity of memory chips, which enable the world to store the data that fuels the digital economy.

“Data is the new crude oil,” said Marcello Ahn, a Seoul, South Korea-based fund manager at Quad Investment Management.

For over a decade, Samsung and Intel each ruled the market in its own category of semiconductor.

Intel, the dominant supplier of the processors that serve as brains for personal computers, has been the world’s largest semiconductor company by revenue since 1992 when it overtook Japan’s NEC.

Samsung is reaping the rewards of dominating in the memory chip market which is growing much faster than the market for computers that rely on processing units dominated by Intel, said Chung Chang Won, a senior analyst at Nomura Securities.

“Greater use of smartphones and tablet PCs instead of computers is driving the rise of companies like Samsung,” Chung said.

Since 2002, Samsung Electronics has been the largest supplier of memory chips, called DRAMs and NANDs. But for years demand for memory chips was vulnerable to boom and bust cycles depending on output and on demand from the consumer electronics industry. At times, competition was brutal as supply gluts arose.

That changed in 2012 when Japan’s Elpida filed for bankruptcy and was sold to Micron Technology, leaving only three major suppliers of DRAM, a type of memory chip used in servers, computers and handsets: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron.

Tight supplies coupled with rock solid demand have pushed prices of memory chips higher, with average selling prices of DRAMs and flash memory chips doubling over the past year, bringing South Korea’s memory chip makers record wide profit margins. Both Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to report all-time high profits this year.

Amid this boom that analysts call a memory chip “super cycle,” global semiconductor revenue is forecast to jump 52 percent this year, reaching $400 billion for the first time, according to market research firm Gartner.

For the full year, Intel is expected to post $60 billion in annual sales, according to a market consensus polled by FactSet, a financial data provider. Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business is expected to report 71.9 trillion won ($62.6 billion) in full-year revenues.

Looking ahead, Samsung and SK Hynix, which control more than three quarters of the global DRAM sales, are raising their spending on semiconductor capacity and development in anticipation of robust future demand. SK Hynix raised its capital spending to 9.6 trillion won ($8.6 billion) this year, up more than 50 percent from last year. Samsung has said it plans to spend $18 billion in the next four years to expand memory chip production capacity at its South Korean plants.

Not just tech companies but also transport, retail, tourism, food and other industries are seeking ways to better use or manage data, to gain insights on trends or customer preferences and otherwise make money from “big data.” The rising use of vehicle connectivity and the “internet of things” is expected to drive still further demand for the chips that have helped Samsung move ahead, at least for now.
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Amazon is introducing express delivery to Singapore in its first direct effort to tap into surging online shopping in fast-growing Southeast Asia.

The American e-commerce company announced Thursday it will begin operating a distribution facility bigger than a football field in the wealthy island nation. It promises to deliver tens of thousands of types of items within two hours for free, if customers spend at least 40 Singapore dollars ($29.52).

That’s a step up from past international shipping options offered by Amazon, where items sometimes took weeks to arrive.

Amazon is late to capitalize on the region’s rising middle class. The biggest local competitor is Lazada, which is backed by Chinese giant Alibaba and launched in the region in 2012. It operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore.

Henry Low, the Asia Pacific director of Amazon Prime Now, said the company is keen to expand elsewhere in Southeast Asia, a market of more than 600 million people.

“I’m super excited about future possibilities,” Low said.

The number of internet users in Southeast Asia is expected to rise from 260 million now to 480 million by 2020, according to research by Google and state-owned investor Temasek Holdings. It forecasts that the value of e-commerce in the region will soar to 88 billion by 2025 from 5.5 billion in 2015.

“The offline-to-online shift will continue and we strongly believe in the great success of e-commerce [with] the rising middle class in many Southeast Asian markets,” said Hanno Stegmann, chief executive of the Asia Pacific Internet Group, the Asian arm of Rocket Internet, which founded Lazada.

As Amazon gears up in Singapore, Rocket Internet already is looking at other emerging markets. Its current focus is on Daraz, an e-commerce platform aimed at the 400 million people living in Myanmar, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Still, there’s plenty of room for growth in Southeast Asia, where e-commerce accounts for only 2.6 percent of the retail market, said Sebastien Lamy, a partner at management consultancy Bain & Company.

That’s compared with 15 percent to 25 percent seen in the U.S. and China.

Even if online commerce is just getting started, it’s already having an impact in Singapore, whose glitzy malls are the backbone of the local economy and tourism.

Mall vacancies along Orchard Road and in other areas are rising, abandoned by shoppers like Rahil Bhagat, a content producer.

Rahil started buying video games and accessories online from the U.S. in 2009. Now, he makes 75 percent of his purchases, from car parts to quinoa, online.

“Physical shopping has lost its appeal,” he told the AP. “Even if I visited a brick-and-mortar store, I would be checking online to see if it’s cheaper. It usually is.”

 
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