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Long the preserve of geeky enthusiasts, bitcoin is going mainstream in Asia, attracting Mrs Watanabe — the metaphorical Japanese housewife investor — South Korean retirees and thousands of others trying to escape rock-bottom savings rates by investing in the cryptocurrency.

Asia’s moms and pops, regular investors in stock and futures markets, have been dazzled by bitcoin’s 100 percent surge so far this year. In comparison, the broader Asian stocks benchmark has gained 17 percent over the same period.

Even after a tumble from last week’s record $2,779.08 high, bitcoin rose more than 60 percent in May alone, driven higher in part by investors in Japan and South Korea stepping in as China cooled after a central bank crackdown earlier this year.

Legal tender in Japan

Over the last two weeks, and encouraged by Japan’s recognition of bitcoin as legal tender in April, exchanges say interest has jumped from the two countries. Bitcoin trades at a premium in both, because of tough money-laundering rules that make it hard for people to move bitcoin in and out.

“After I first heard about the bitcoin scheme, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. It’s like buying a dream,” said Mutsuko Higo, a 55-year-old Japanese social insurance and labor consultant who bought around 200,000 yen ($1,800) worth of bitcoin in March to supplement her retirement savings.

“Everyone says we can’t rely on Japanese pensions anymore,” she said. “This worries me, so I started bitcoins.”

Thriving investment culture

Asia has proved fertile ground for bitcoin because of the region’s thriving retail investment culture, where swapping investment tips is common. China, Japan and South Korea are home to several of the world’s busiest cryptocurrency exchanges, according to a ranking by CoinMarketCap.

“Right now, it’s a form of speculation, like stocks,” said Park Hyo-jin, a 27-year-old South Korean who owns around 3 million won ($2,700) of bitcoin. “I don’t think anybody in South Korea buys bitcoin to use it.”

The risks, though, are rising too.

Bitcoin is largely unregulated across Asia, while rules governing bitcoin exchanges can be patchy.

In Hong Kong, bitcoin exchanges operate under money service operator licenses, like money changers, while in South Korea they are regulated similar to online shopping malls, trading physical goods. Often there are no rules on investor protection.

Park and Higo were drawn into bitcoin by friends. Others are attracted through seminars, social media groups and blogs penned by amateur investors.

Noboru Hanaki, a 27-year-old Japanese web marketer and bitcoin investor, said his personal finance blog gets around 30,000 page views each month. The most popular post is an explanation of bitcoin, he said, noting that when the bitcoin price surged last month, readership of the article doubled.

Rachel Poole, a Hong Kong-based kindergarten teacher, said she read about bitcoin in the press, and bought five bitcoins in March for around HK$40,000 ($5,100) after studying blogs on the topic. She kept four as an investment and has made HK$12,000 tax-free trading the fifth after classes.

“I wish I’d done it earlier,” she said.

Not everyone’s making money.

Scams, pyramid schemes

The bitcoin frenzy has spawned scams, with police in South Korea last month uncovering a $55 million cryptocurrency pyramid scheme that sucked in thousands of homemakers, workers and self-employed businessmen seduced by slick marketing and promises of wealth.

Leonhard Weese, president of the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong and a bitcoin investor, warned amateur investors against speculating in the digital currency.

Some larger exchanges have voluntarily adopted security measures and compensation guarantees, according to their websites, although there are dozens of smaller platforms operating more or less unchecked.

In South Korea, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) has set up a task force to explore regulating cryptocurrencies, but it has not set a timeline for publishing its conclusions, an official there said.

In Japan — where memories are still fresh of the spectacular 2014 collapse of Mt. Gox, the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange at the time — the Financial Services Agency (FSA) said it supervises bitcoin exchanges, but not traders or investors.

Some professional investors say bitcoin can be a useful hedge to help diversify a portfolio, but investors should be cautious.

“This is an extremely volatile and innovative asset class,” said Pietro Ventani, managing director of APP Advisers, an asset allocation strategy firm.
…

Exactly eight years after the Great Recession ended, the U.S. job market has settled into a sweet spot of steadily solid growth.

 

The 4.4 percent unemployment rate matches a decade low. Many people who had stopped looking for jobs are coming off the sidelines to find them. More part-timers are finding full-time work. About all that’s still missing is a broad acceleration in pay. 

 

On Friday, when the government releases the jobs report for May, that pattern is likely to extend itself. The consensus expectation of economists is that the Labor Department will report that employers added 176,000 jobs, according to a survey by FactSet, a data provider. That’s right in line with the monthly average of 174,000 over the past three months.

 

All told, it’s evidence of an American economy that is running neither too hot nor too cold, with growth holding at a tepid but far from recessionary 2 percent annual rate. Few economists foresee another downturn looming, in part because the recovery from the recession has been steady but grinding, with little sign of the sort of overheated pressures that normally trigger a recession.

 

May jobs expectations high

Separate reports Thursday solidified expectations that job growth for May was healthy. Payroll processor ADP reported that in a private survey of companies, it found that a hefty 253,000 jobs were added in May, mostly among companies with fewer than 500 workers.

 

Nor are layoffs much of a concern. Weekly applications for unemployment benefits, which tend to reflect the pace of layoffs, averaged a low 238,000 over the past four weeks, according to the Labor Department.

 

The government’s monthly jobs report produces a net gain by estimating how many jobs were created and comparing that figure with how many it estimates were lost.

 

The unemployment rate is expected to have remained in May at 4.4 percent, a low figure that historically has reflected a healthy job market. If hiring maintains its current pace, it would exceed population growth, and the unemployment rate should eventually fall even further.

 

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimates that monthly job growth above 80,000 or so should cause the unemployment rate to fall.

 

“I think 4 percent unemployment is dead-ahead, and we’ll probably go past that,” he said. 

 

Other measures of unemployment

Still, the jobs report produces several different measures of unemployment, and the broadest gauge might be most critical to watch Friday. This particular measure includes not only the officially unemployed but also part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs and people who want a job but aren’t actively looking for one and so aren’t counted as unemployed.

 

Known as the “U-6” rate, this measure is one of the favorite metrics for Trump administration officials. The U-6 has plunged since January to 8.6 percent in April, a 0.8 point decline.

 

The decline in that measure is an encouraging sign that jobless people who had given up hope of working are now being hired. If that trend continued in May, a falling U-6 would point to a strengthening economy despite weak growth during the first three months of the year.

 

But the influx of job seekers can also inflict a drag on pay growth. As more people start seeking jobs, employers begin to have less incentive to raise pay. It’s only when employers face a shallow pool of job applicants that they tend to feel compelled to raise pay in hopes of hiring people who fit their needs.

 

Annual growth in average hourly earnings was a so-so 2.6 percent in April. And whatever meaningful pay raises that exist are going disproportionately to managers and supervisors. For workers who aren’t supervisors, average hourly pay has risen just 2.3 percent. In a healthy economy, average pay gains would typically grow roughly 3.5 percent a year.

 

The Trump administration has designated the pace of hiring for good-paying skilled jobs in construction, manufacturing and mining as among the key categories it monitors for economic health. Those three sectors were relatively weak in April.
…

A jail in Chicago is serving some of the best Italian pizza in town. Inmates are making gourmet pizzas for their fellow prisoners. It’s part of a training program called Recipe for Change in which the inmates can acquire skills to get jobs after they are released. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday he was confident that Congress would raise the federal debt limit  “before there’s an issue” with U.S. creditworthiness, and he pledged that the Trump administration’s tax reform plans would be paid for.

“We’re going to get it increased,” Mnuchin told Fox Business Network about the debt limit. “The credit of the United States is the utmost. I’ve said to Congress they should do it as quickly as they can. But we are very focused on working with them and I’m confident we’ll get there before there’s an issue.”

Mnuchin said last week that he wanted a “clean” debt ceiling increase before the start of Congress’ summer recess in early August.

Mnuchin said that it “makes no sense” to view the Trump administration’s tax reform plans through a “static” budget analysis that does not account for economic growth effects. He has previously pledged that increased economic growth would generate more revenue to offset lower tax rates.

“We’re about creating economic growth, we’re about broadening the base and we’re going to make sure that this is tax reform, not just tax cuts, and that they’re paid for,” Mnuchin said.
…

President Donald Trump is moving the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, signed by nearly 200 other nations.

Trump said Thursday that the Paris agreement hurts U.S. economic growth, costs millions of American jobs and puts U.S. firms at a disadvantage. However, his decision contrasted with the views of hundreds of American business leaders who urged him to continue participating in the climate agreement.

While the president said Washington would stop implementing the Paris accord immediately, he added that he would begin negotiations aimed at rejoining the Paris accord or a similar agreement on terms more advantageous to the United States.  

“We will see if we can make a deal that’s fair,” Trump said. An audience at the White House Rose Garden warmly applauded his announcement.

Among the many corporations that opposed the move to bow out of the Paris Agreement were Mars, Nike, Levi Strauss and Starbucks. Their top corporate officers signed a letter to Trump several months ago, arguing that failing to build a low-carbon economy would put U.S. “prosperity at risk.”

WATCH: Trump: US ‘Will Cease All Implementation’ of Paris Climate Accord

Trump: ‘Fortune’ at stake

Trump said the climate agreement, as presently written, would cost U.S. businesses “a vast fortune” and lead to the loss of 7 million jobs by 2025.

Tesla founder Elon Musk tried to persuade the president to stay in the accord and said Wednesday that he would quit the White House business advisory council if Washington left the Paris Agreement.

GE chief Jeff Immelt has written that customers, partners and countries are demanding technology that generates electric power while improving energy efficiency and cutting costs.

Oil companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil recently argued that the Paris Agreement gives their firms a more predictable future, and therefore more manageable one. The oil companies and some coal firms also say remaining part of the accord helps maintain U.S. influence over future talks.  

Earlier this week, more than 60 percent of Exxon shareholders voted to require that the firm do more analysis and disclosure of the likely impact of tougher climate policies on company revenue. Previous efforts to force such disclosures failed to get a majority of votes from shareholders.  

Some other business, Republican and conservative groups agreed with Trump’s action. The Heritage Foundation, for example, said the accord produces “devastating” economic costs and “zero” environmental benefits.
…

A Chinese company that makes shoes for Ivanka Trump and other brands denied allegations Thursday of excessive overtime and low wages made by three activists who have been arrested or disappeared.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Hua Haifeng, an investigator for China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, had been arrested on a charge of illegal surveillance while his two colleagues — Li Zhao and Su Heng — are missing and rights groups fear they have been detained. They were investigating Huajian Group factories in the southern Chinese cities of Ganzhou and Dongguan.

 

“We are shocked,” Long Shan, a spokeswoman for the Huajian Group, said in an email to The Associated Press. “As a renowned global media outlet, you have put out many untrue reports not based on facts and without our consent.”

 

China Labor Watch executive director Li Qiang said Thursday he still had not been able to confirm the status of the two men. Huajian was contacted before AP’s initial reports were published but issued no statement until Thursday.

 

Long said the company had stopped producing Ivanka Trump shoes months ago. She said that Hua Haifeng joined the group’s factory in Dongguan on May 20, but left after less than a week, and Su Heng began working at their Ganzhou factory on April 28, but also left after a short time. She said she did not know their current whereabouts.

 

“By coming to Huajian to work, they are Huajian employees. Huajian staff must comply with China’s laws and regulations and Huajian’s rules,” she said, adding that at least one of the men “used methods like taking photographs and video to obtain the company’s trade secrets, which is not in line with the company’s regulations. Our company has the right to hold him accountable.”

 

She said reports of managers verbally abusing workers, including insults and a crude reference in Chinese to female genitalia, were based on misunderstanding. “It is the local dialect being used as management language,” she said.

 

She said Huajian was looking into allegations of improper use of student interns.

 

Ivanka Trump’s brand declined to comment on the allegations or the arrest and disappearances. Marc Fisher, which produces shoes for Ivanka Trump and other brands, said it was looking into the allegations.

 

China Labor Watch has been exposing poor working conditions at suppliers to some of the world’s best-known companies for nearly two decades, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China’s state security apparatus.

 

The arrest and disappearances come amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China’s ruling Communist Party, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch. Faced with rising labor unrest and a slowing economy, Beijing has taken a stern approach to activism in southern China’s manufacturing belt and to human rights advocates generally, sparking a wave of critical reports about disappearances, public confessions, forced repatriation and torture in custody.

 

 

 

 
…

The business relationship between China and Europe is showing several contradictory trends as Beijing seeks to protect its own state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and its leaders seek foreign investments promising further liberalization in rules.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was in Berlin on Wednesday calling for joint efforts to promote trade liberalization and investment facilitation. On the same day, a European industry body in China expressed concerns about discrimination against foreign investors and painted a bleak picture of investment growth by Europe-based companies.

Li’s itinerary, which includes a visit to the European Union headquarters in Brussels, comes in the midst of rising political demand for ensuring reciprocity in business dealings with China. Some European countries are asking the EU to make laws enabling them to closely scrutinize Chinese investments and weed out the dubious ones.

 “The discussion in itself shows that there is a lot of frustration in Europe on the lack of reciprocity,” said Mats Harborn, president of the European Chamber. “We have open bets for Chinese investments while for us to go to China is a whiling road, so this is causing now political discussions in Europe,” he said. 

Given such political conditions, Li’s agenda may seem very ambitious unless China is ready to offer major trade-offs. He is trying to persuade European leaders to accord the status of “market economy” to China, and relax their actions on the dumping of Chinese goods. He also wants the EU to grant a certificate of airworthiness for a China-developed large passenger plane, the C919.

Thomas Gatley, head of research at Beijing-based Gavekal Dragonomics, said the central government in Beijing does make some efforts to open up investment sectors by tweaking the negative list. But these actions are not implemented on the ground.

 “We have seen some measures in the form of revised negative list, slowly sub-sector by sub-sector, China opening up to foreign investment in the official capacity,” Gatley told VOA. “But the (foreign) firms continue to find that when they try to operate in these previously closed areas, there is a lot of de facto barriers to success. That continues to be the substance of complaints by foreign companies.”

European companies have reported much better performance in China in the past year. Harborn said this had to do with the government’s stimulus package in 2016, and there are questions if the high growth scenario will continue in the coming months.

Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist for Capital Economics, said the Chinese economy showed signs of recovery in 2016 because of a generous flow of credit by financial institutions. But this may not continue as the government is cracking down on risky lending.

“We had quite a sharp slowdown in credit over the past half year, particularly since the start of the year, they have been cracking down quite hard on financial risks on bank and financial institutions,” Evans-Pritchard told VOA. 

A business confidence survey conducted by the European Chamber revealed over 60 percent of its member-companies regard China’s slowing economy as the number one cause for concern. This is a significant change from past years when the focus of complaints was discriminatory treatment of foreign companies and regulatory controls.

But several members of the Chamber continue to worry about discrimination, saying environmental enforcement agencies are still a lot tougher with foreign companies than they are with local ones.

Another new source of worry for foreign firms is the increasing competitiveness of Chinese companies, which is something that will increase with time as Beijing goes about implementing the China 2025 plan to push the local industry into using the next generation of technology.

“European companies in China acknowledge that Chinese companies are getting increasingly innovative. Rather than a challenge, this should be perceived as an opportunity,” said Denis Depoux, Roland Berger Co-Head for Asia. 
…

Canada’s defense minister repeated a threat Wednesday to cancel the purchase of 18 fighter jets from Boeing Co. because of the company’s trade complaint against Canadian plane maker Bombardier.

 

Harjit Sajjan said Boeing’s action against Bombardier is “unfounded” and not the behavior of a “trusted partner.” He said buying the Super Hornet fighter jets “requires a trusted industry partner.”

Sajjan urged Boeing to withdraw the complaint. Canada’s foreign minister has also threatened to block the order.

 

“Our government — and I stress this — our government is disappointed in the action of one of our leading industry partners,” he said. 

Complaint could mean duties

 

Chicago-based Boeing’s trade complaint prompted a U.S. Commerce Department anti-dumping investigation that could result in duties being imposed on Bombardier’s new larger C Series passenger aircraft. Boeing insists the plane receives Canadian government subsidies that give it an advantage internationally.

 

Canada’s threat is coming amid increasing trade disputes with the U.S. 

 

Scott Day, a spokesman for Boeing, noted that Sajjan also recognized Boeing as a strong partner in the past and for the future. Day defended the company’s trade action. 

 

“This is a commercial matter that Boeing is seeking to address through the normal course for resolving such issues,” Day said in an email. 

 

Boeing petitioned the U.S. Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate subsidies of Montreal-based Bombardier’s C Series aircraft. Boeing says Bombardier has received more than US $3 billion in government subsidies that let it engage in “predatory pricing.”

 

Brazil has also launched a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization over Canadian subsidies to Bombardier. Sao Paolo-based Embraer is a fierce rival of Bombardier.

Government investment

 

The Quebec government invested US $1 billion in exchange for a 49.5 percent stake in the C Series last year. Canada’s federal government also recently provided a US $275 million loan to Bombardier, which struggled to win orders for its new medium-size plane. But Bombardier won a 75-plane order for the C Series from U.S.-based Delta Air Lines in 2016. Bombardier said its planes never competed with Boeing in the sale to Delta.

 

The Canadian government said late last year it would enter into discussions on buying 18 Super Hornet jet fighters from Boeing on an interim basis and hold an open competition to buy more planes over the next five years. Canada remains part of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. 

 
…

Major investors put U.S. industry on notice Wednesday that climate change matters, even as reports emerged that President Donald Trump plans to withdraw the United States from an international pact to fight global warming.

A number of large institutional fund firms including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, supported a shareholder resolution calling on ExxonMobil to share more information about how new technologies and climate change regulations could impact the business of the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. The proposal won the support of 62.3 percent of votes cast.

The victory, on such a wide margin, was hailed by climate activists as a turning point in their decades-long campaign to get oil and gas companies to communicate how they would adapt to a low-carbon economy.

Major investors see major risk

With major investors now seeing climate change as a major risk, activists said U.S. corporations will have to be more transparent about the impact of a warming planet even if the United States withdraws from the 2015 Paris climate accord, as Trump promised during his presidential campaign.

“Economic forces are outrunning any other considerations,” said Anne Simpson, investment director for sustainability at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, one of the sponsors of the resolution.

She credited big investors in Exxon for the change, since at least some of them switched their votes after last year when a similar measure won just 38 percent support.

“We have seen a sea change in their viewpoint,” she said.

Many top investors now consider their votes on shareholder proposals “on merit, rather than considering it a test of loyalty to management,” she said.

Among Exxon’s top investors, Vanguard Group and BlackRock opposed last year’s call for climate change reporting. A spokeswoman for Vanguard, which has about 7 percent of Exxon’s shares, declined to comment on its voting this year.

A person familiar with the matter said funds run by BlackRock, which holds about 6 percent of Exxon shares, voted in favor of the climate resolution.

Filings showing their exact votes are not due for months.

But both fund firms and others have taken steps since last year to make it easier to support climate resolutions.

Doug Holt, a spokesman for Exxon’s ninth-largest investor Northern Trust Corp, said it voted in favor of the proposal, citing its own guidelines updated in 2016.

Vote from the street

The investment firms’ approach reflects a new interest in climate matters among their own investors, who have stuffed money into so-called green mutual funds and other vehicles that use environmental factors in their stock picking.

Wall Street’s priorities have shifted the terms of debate at a number of other energy and utility companies. A majority of shareholders voting at Occidental Petroleum Corp and PPL Corp called for similar reports on the risks of climate change. Votes on two more of the measures are scheduled for June 7 at Devon Energy and at Hess.

Michael Crosby, involved in corporate outreach for the Midwest Capuchin Franciscans, a religious order, said Wednesday’s vote was a rejection of Exxon’s arguments it already provides enough detail on its outlook.

“The Street is saying, you have to give better evidence,” Crosby said.

Exxon and the Paris deal

After the measure passed, Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said its board would reconsider its climate communications.

The activists now face the task of maintaining alliances with leaders like Woods who opposed their resolutions but who in some cases support the 195-nation Paris agreement. Exxon said in a March 22 letter to the White House that the Paris deal is “an effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change.”

Trump had at least one ally at Exxon’s meeting in Dallas, Steven Milloy of Potomac, Maryland, who urged other investors to support his resolution that would make it harder to file proposals like the one on climate change.

Milloy said management should show less concern for climate issues, which he called misplaced, and cited Trump as a model.

“For the first time we have a president who actively opposes climate hysteria,” Milloy said.

According to Exxon, Milloy’s proposal received support from 1.6 percent of votes cast.
…

The head of a New York-based advocacy group has called on President Donald Trump and his older daughter to help secure the release of three men who reported labor violations at a Chinese company that makes shoes bearing the Ivanka Trump brand.

“We appeal to President Trump, Ivanka Trump herself, and to her related brand company to advocate and press for the release of our activists,” Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, the men’s employer, said Wednesday.

The Ivanka Trump brand has declined to comment.  The White House and Ivanka Trump’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.  Calls to provincial police in China were not answered. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was unaware of the situation and declined to make further comments.

Hua Haifeng and two other labor activists, Li Zhao and Su Heng, had been covertly investigating labor conditions at two Chinese factories that make shoes for Trump and other brands, in the cities of Ganzhou and Dongguan. They disclosed preliminary findings to China Labor Watch, indicating workers at the factories had been subject to extremely long hours.

Hua was arrested in Jiangxi province on suspicion of illegally using eavesdropping equipment; he and the other two men disappeared Saturday and were last seen in Ganzhou, in southern Jiangxi province, China Labor Watch reported Tuesday.

The arrest and disappearances came amid Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on the country’s advocacy groups and civil society. In the past year, dozens of human rights activists have been detained in China.

The global human rights group Amnesty International called for the release of the three men if they are being held only for investigating possible labor abuses at the factories, which are owned by Huajian International.

“Activists exposing potential human rights abuses deserve protection, not persecution,” said Amnesty International spokesman William Nee. “The trio appear to be the latest to fall foul of the Chinese authorities’ aggressive campaign against human rights activists who have any ties to overseas organizations, using the pretense of ‘national security.’ ”

The relationship between the Trump family and China has received widespread attention since last year’s presidential campaign.  While Trump has accused China of taking coveted manufacturing jobs from the U.S., the Trump family has sought to benefit financially from the Chinese market.

Trump recently obtained more than 75 trademarks in China. The family of Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, is attempting to raise money from Chinese investors for a real estate venture.
…

When Rajnish Dhall’s driver wanted to borrow money to buy a home, Dhall suggested he go to a bank. But without proof of income or tax returns to show his credentials, the driver said no bank would lend to him.

It was the start of a whole new business for Dhall, a former banker whose firm aims to help the hundreds of millions of informal workers who make up the bulk of India’s labor force.

They are the newly emerging home-owning class.

“My driver was earning a steady income and could have paid back the loan easily, yet none of the banks would lend to him because he didn’t have the necessary paperwork,” Dhall told Reuters. “The housing problem is very real and visible, especially in a city like Mumbai. There is certainly aspiration to own a home, but without finance, there is no way to realize the aspiration.”

Dhall lent his driver the money, then looked more closely at home loans for a host of other workers in the informal sector.

Of India’s 470 million-strong workforce, about 90 percent is in the informal sector. They include domestic help, street vendors, daily wage earners and small business operators, who may have no collateral and whose incomes are irregular.

They have few options besides borrowing from money lenders and employers, Dhall found. So he set up Micro Housing Finance Corp. to give home loans to low-income and informal workers.

Housing for all

More homes are desperately needed.

Already, one in three Indians live in cities, many in crowded slums and other informal settlements. Every year, tens of thousands of villagers migrate to cities in search of jobs, and the pace of urbanization is set to rise.

India has a shortage of about 20 million urban homes; the shortfall disproportionately affects families earning less than 16,000 rupees ($248) a month, according to consultancy KPMG.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made affordable housing a priority, offering incentives such as subsidized loans to meet a 2022 target of “Housing for All,” even as critics say the plan bypasses the homeless.

The government plan aims to create 20 million new urban homes and 30 million rural homes.

An affordable home is typically about 250 square feet (23 square meters) in size, and can cost up to 1.2 million rupees ($18,600). It is aimed at families earning 8,000-25,000 rupees a month, and is usually located in the outskirts of the city where land is cheaper.

In recent years, developers including the Tata group, Mahindra and TVS group have entered the affordable housing market, enticed by government incentives and future potential.

These big firms have enhanced the quality and reputation of affordable homes, which were once described as “vertical slums.”

About 15 micro home finance companies have also launched, with reputable builders and more ready finance combining for better results for low-income earners.

Increasingly, it is a choice between “owning a good-quality, formal home in the periphery of the city over a badly made or informal home in the city,” said Vikram Jain, director of social consultancy FSG, which has studied the segment.

“With more developers and better access to finance, they are well designed, quality constructions that residents take pride in owning,” he told Reuters.

From chalk to pigeons

India’s micro housing finance companies have a loan portfolio of more than $160 million, with near-zero defaults, Jain estimates.

But micro home loans of up to 1 million rupees for low-income clients only account for a quarter of home loans.

Micro home finance companies lend up to 90 percent of the value of the property, at slightly higher interest rates of about 13 percent, on average. The repayment term can be up to 25 years.

Since its founding, MHFC has dispensed about 14,000 home loans, Dhall said.

Its customers represent 600 diverse professions — from a man selling grains to feed pigeons, to one making marking chalk for tailors, and a grass seller for people with cows at home.

At Aadhar Housing Finance — owned in part by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation — more than three-quarters of customers did not have a credit history when they asked for a loan, said Chief Executive Deo Shankar Tripathi.

Aadhar has given more than 50,000 home loans, mostly in India’s poorest states where customers typically buy a plot of land and build a modest home, Tripathi said.

The high cost of land needed to build homes can be a challenge to affordable housing. Rising construction costs and limited financing for developers are other constraints.

But Tripathi said nobody should be deterred.

“Owning a home is a dream for everyone. For the low-income segment, a home means security, empowerment and greater inclusion in society,” Tripathi said.

“We cannot give them a big bungalow like Mukesh Ambani’s [India’s wealthiest man], but we can make a decent home within the reach of everyone,” he said.
…

A group of Senate Democrats has sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump requesting information about a raft of trademark approvals from China this year that they say may violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on gifts from foreign governments.

“China’s rapid approvals after years of court battles have raised questions as to whether the trademarks will prevent you from standing up to China on behalf of American workers and their businesses,” the eight senators, led by Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal, wrote in the letter Tuesday.

 

China’s most recent nod for a Trump trademark, covering clothing, came on May 6, bringing to 40 the number of marks China has granted or provisionally granted to the president and a related company, DTTM Operations LLC, since his inauguration. If there are no objections, provisional approvals are formally registered after 90 days. China has also rejected or partially rejected nine Trump trademarks since the inauguration.

 

Trademarks give the holder monopoly rights to a brand in a given market. In many jurisdictions, like China, they can also be filed defensively, to prevent squatters from using a name. Because trademarks are granted at the discretion of foreign governments and can be enormously valuable, they can be problematic for U.S. officials, who are barred by the emoluments clause of the constitution from accepting anything of value from foreign states without congressional approval.

 

In their letter, the senators were particularly interested in any special efforts Trump, his Chinese lawyers, or the U.S. Embassy in China, which sometimes advocates for U.S. firms, may have made to secure approval for the president’s trademarks. They cited an Associated Press report quoting one of Trump’s lawyers in China, Spring Chang, who said that “government relations are an important part of trademark strategy in China.”

 

Concern about favoritism is particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party. China has defended its handling of Trump’s intellectual property interests, saying it followed the law in processing his applications, though some trademark lawyers viewed the pace as unusually quick and well-coordinated. In addition, China approved one trademark for Trump-branded construction services after a 10-year legal battle that turned in his favor only after he declared his candidacy.

 

Alan Garten, chief legal officer of The Trump Organization, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. He has previously said that Trump’s trademark activity in China predates his election and noted that Trump has stepped away from managing his company. However, the president retains an ownership stake in his global branding and real estate empire.

 

In April, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, added “gratuitous Chinese trademarks” to its lawsuit against the president for alleged emoluments violations. Trump has dismissed the suit as without merit.
…

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said Tuesday that he would sign deals for U.S. goods and services worth $15 billion to $17 billion during his visit to Washington, mainly for high-technology products and for services.

“Vietnam will increase the import of high technologies and services from the United States, and on the occasion of this visit, many important deals will be made,” Phuc told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce dinner.

Phuc, who is due to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday at the end of a three-day visit to the United States, did not provide further details of the transactions.

GE Power Chief Executive Officer Steve Bolze told the dinner that General Electric Co. would sign deals worth about $6 billion with Vietnam, but also offered no details.

Phuc’s comments came after U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed concern about the rapid growth of the U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam, saying this was a new challenge for the two countries and that he was looking to Phuc to help address it.

“Over the last decade, our bilateral trade deficit has risen from about $7 billion to nearly $32 billion,” Lighthizer said. “This concerning growth in our trade deficit presents new challenges and shows us that there is considerable potential to improve further our important trade relationship.”

Reducing deficits

Lighthizer and other Trump administration trade officials have pledged to work to reduce U.S. bilateral deficits with major trading partners. The $32 billion deficit with Vietnam last year — the sixth-largest U.S. trade deficit — reflects growing imports of Vietnamese semiconductors and other electronics products in addition to more traditional sectors such as footwear, apparel and furniture.

The trade issue has become a potential irritant in a relationship where Washington and Hanoi have stepped up security cooperation in recent years, given shared concerns about China’s increasingly assertive behavior in East Asia.

Phuc’s meeting with Trump makes him the first Southeast Asian leader to visit the White House under the new administration.

It reflected calls, letters, diplomatic contacts and lower-level visits that started long before Trump took office in Washington, where Vietnam retains a lobbyist at $30,000 a month.

Vietnam was disappointed when Trump ditched the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, in which Hanoi was expected to be one of the main beneficiaries, and focused U.S. trade policy on reducing deficits.
…

Mexico’s foreign minister says the country is “inevitably” set to review rules of origin when renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, giving a boost to President Donald Trump’s manufacturing push.

Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray said Tuesday at an event in Miami that NAFTA has allowed Mexican industry to enter the U.S. market with lax rules of origin. The rules dictate how much U.S. content a product assembled in Mexico must have in order to escape tariffs when being imported into the United States. Currently set at 62.5 percent for the auto industry, that number could increase.

“One part that must inevitably be reviewed is the chapter on rules of origin,” Videgaray said at the University of Miami. “Over time, the free trade agreement has sometimes been used — not always, of course, but sometimes — as a way to access the U.S. market perhaps with laxity in some ways of rules of origin.”

The Trump administration told Congress this month there would be 90 days of consultations on the renegotiation of the 23-year-old pact before beginning talks with Canada and Mexico. Annual trade of goods between Mexico and the U.S. was worth $525 billion in 2016, with the U.S. running a trade deficit of more than $63 billion.

The foreign minister said Mexico won’t entertain any talks on building a wall along the border. Videgaray maintained it is seen as an unfriendly sign and questioned its efficiency. Trump’s budget seeks $2.6 billion for border security technology, including money to design and build a wall along the southern border. Trump repeatedly promised voters during the campaign that Mexico would pay for a wall.
…

A man investigating working conditions at a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-brand shoes has been arrested and two others are missing, the arrested man’s wife and an advocacy group said Tuesday.

Hua Haifeng was accused of illegal surveillance, according to his wife, Deng Guilian, who said the police called her Tuesday afternoon. Deng said the caller told her she didn’t need to know the details, only that she would not be able to see, speak with or receive money from her husband, the family’s breadwinner.

China Labor Watch Executive Director Li Qiang said he lost contact with Hua Haifeng and the other two men, Li Zhao and Su Heng, over the weekend. By Tuesday, after dozens of unanswered calls, he had concluded: “They must be held either by the factory or the police to be unreachable.”

China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, was planning to publish a report next month alleging low pay, excessive overtime and the possible misuse of student interns. It is unclear whether the undercover investigative methods used by the advocacy group are legal in China.

For 17 years, China Labor Watch has investigated working conditions at suppliers to some of the world’s best-known companies, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China’s state security apparatus.

“Our plan was to investigate the factory to improve the labor situation,” Li said. “But now it has become more political.”

Disney decision

Walt Disney Co. stopped working with a toy maker in Shenzhen last year after the group exposed labor violations. China Labor Watch has also published reports on child labor at Samsung suppliers and spent years investigating Apple Inc.’s China factories. In the past, the worst thing Li feared was having investigators kicked out of a factory or face a short police detention.

That has changed.

The arrest and disappearances came amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China’s ruling Communist Party, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch. Faced with rising labor unrest and a slowing economy, Beijing has also taken a stern approach to activism in southern China’s manufacturing belt and to human rights advocates generally, sparking a wave of critical reports about disappearances, public confessions, forced repatriation and torture in custody.

Another difference is the target of China Labor Watch’s investigation: a brand owned by the daughter of the president of the United States.

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred questions to Ivanka Trump’s brand. The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment for this story.

Abigail Klem, who took over day-to-day management when the first daughter took on a White House role as presidential adviser, has said that the brand requires licensees and their manufacturers to “comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions.”

No reply from police

Li said China Labor Watch asked police about the three missing investigators on Monday but received no reply. Li added that a friend had tried to file a missing-person report on Li Zhao in Jiangxi, where the factory is located, but was told he had to do so in the man’s hometown.

AP was unable to reach the other investigators’ families. China’s Ministry of Public Security and police in Ganzhou city and Jiangxi province could not be reached for comment Tuesday, which was a national holiday in China.

All three men were investigating Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co.’s factory in Jiangxi province, just north of Guangdong province. Su Heng had been working undercover at the factory since April, Li said. The parent company is known as Huajian Group.

In January, Liu Shiyuan, then spokesman for the Huajian Group, told AP the company makes 10,000 to 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for Ivanka Trump’s brand — a small fraction of the 20 million pairs the company produces a year. A current spokeswoman for the company, Long Shan, did not reply to questions Tuesday. “I told you I could not check until tomorrow,” she said. “If your official letter contains a stamp and signature, we can confirm whether the media is real or not.”

Li said investigators had seen Ivanka Trump-brand shoes in the factory, as well as production orders for Ivanka Trump, Marc Fisher, Nine West and Easy Spirit merchandise.

“We were unaware of the allegations and will look into them immediately,” a spokeswoman for Marc Fisher, which manufactures Ivanka Trump, Easy Spirit and its own branded shoes, said in an email. Nine West did not respond to requests for comment.

Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng were blocked from leaving mainland China for Hong Kong in April and May — something that had never happened to his colleagues before, Li said. Hua Haifeng was stopped at the border Thursday and later questioned by police, Li said. During their final phone conversation on Saturday, Hua told Li that police had asked him to stop investigating the Huajian factory — another turn of events that Li said was unprecedented.

Excessive overtime, low wages

Li said the men had documented excessive overtime, with working days sometimes stretching longer than 18 hours, and a base salary below minimum wage. They were working to confirm evidence suggesting that student interns, some of whom allegedly quit in protest, were putting in excessive hours on work unrelated to their field of study, in violation of Chinese law, Li said.

The use of student workers in China is legal, but meant to be strictly regulated. Rights groups and journalists have documented widespread abuse of the system over the years.

“It is the role of the police to prevent that kind of independent investigation,” said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director for Amnesty International. “The threshold is much lower today than it was one year ago, two years ago, and if this is something that has a foreign diplomacy dimension, that would make national security personnel even more willing to stop it.”

Hua’s wife, Deng, meanwhile, has yet to tell the couple’s children, ages 3 and 7, about their father’s plight. But they seem to know anyway, she said.

“My son suddenly burst into tears. He said he missed Papa,” Deng said by phone from her home in central China’s Hubei province. “I said Papa would come home soon and buy you toys.”

She said the child looked at her and answered: “Papa was taken away by a monster.”
…

Fuel shortages have paralyzed the small central African nation of Burundi, threatening further damage to an economy already moribund after years of political violence and raising questions about the role of the country’s only oil importer.

The problem has damaged two big foreign investors, Kenya’s KenolKobil and South Africa’s Engen, a subsidiary of Malaysian parastatal Petronas.

The shortages, which forced the government to introduce rationing on May 16, have paralyzed commerce and caused food prices to jump by around a third, raising the prospect of a wave of economic migration. More than 400,000 people have already fled Burundi into the volatile central African region.

Anti-corruption campaigners said the fuel shortages became severe after Burundian company Interpetrol Trading Ltd. received the lions’ share of dollars that are allocated by the central bank to import fuel.

“The oil sector is undermined by favoritism and lack of transparency, because the rare hard currency available in the central bank reserves is given to one oil importer,” said Gabriel Rufyiri, head of anti-graft organization OLUCOME.

The central bank declined to answer Reuters’ questions.

Interpetrol’s lawyer, Sylvestre Banzubaze, said: “I am not associated with the day-to-day operations and only intervene on legal questions. You should address your questions directly to Interpetrol sources.”

He did not respond when asked for further contacts, and the company does not have a website.

Rufyiri said that government sources told him that the bulk of dollars for fuel purchasing had been allocated to Interpetrol since March this year.

Reuters confirmed with two other sources that Interpetrol received the bulk of dollar allocations. Other companies only received a small fraction of the dollars they needed, the sources said, severely damaging their businesses.

Earlier this month, South African petrol company Engen confirmed it had sold its assets in Burundi to Interpetrol.

Engen declined to comment further. KenolKobil also declined to comment, but Burundian citizens say most of their petrol stations have been closed for three months.

Sole importer

Interpetrol is now the sole oil importer and runs all the fuel storage tanks in the country, said an industry source.

Banzubaze said there was “no link” between Interpetrol’s shareholders and any member of the government.

But a 2011 U.S. State Department report described attempts by senior government officials to pressure judges into dropping a corruption case against the company, owned by brothers Munir and Tariq Bashir. Neither the government nor Interpetrol’s lawyer responded when asked about the status of the case.

Government officials blame dollar shortages on aid cuts that donors imposed after President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term in 2015, triggering a wave of political violence.

“These days, fuel importers don’t get enough dollars to bring petroleum products,” said Daniel Mpitabakana, the government’s director of fuel management.

Burundi’s economy shrank by 0.5 percent last year, and the International Monetary Fund expects no growth at all this year and 0.1 percent next year.

Black market prices for fuel range between 5,000 to 6,000 Burundi francs per liter, vendors said, double the official price of 2,200 francs.

The street exchange rate is 2,600 francs to the dollar, although it is just over 1,700 to the dollar at the central bank. Only the central bank can receive dollar deposits and allocate dollars to businesses.

In the capital, queues at empty petrol stations snaked around the block. One civil servant said he had taken the last three days off work to search for gas.

“I have no fuel for days and I don’t know if by chance will get it today,” he said, asking not to be named.

Burundi has also been battered by drought and almost two years of political instability. Hundreds of people were killed and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee abroad during the political violence, which still sometimes erupts in low-level clashes.

Almost 3 million of Burundi’s 11 million citizens are dependent on food aid, the U.N. says.
…

In a roadside cafe in Kenya’s majestic highlands, Elly Sigilai cradled a steaming mug of tea and recalled how 17 relatives died after British colonialists ousted them in 1934 to plant tea on their family land.

The 79-year-old is one of hundreds of elderly Kenyans seeking to sue the British government for alleged displacement and torture by its colonial predecessor, in a case that could encourage other former colonies to press similar claims.

“Those on this list died from malaria and sleeping sickness,” said Sigilai, a neatly folded piece of paper in his hand naming the dead in his family, including two brothers and a sister. “They were sent to a valley infested by tsetse flies to die.”

Survivors and their descendants hope to win “significant” compensation from Britain’s High Court and the return of swaths of land, largely owned by international tea companies, said George Tarus, a legal adviser to the government of Nandi County in Kenya’s North Rift region, which is financing the case.

“We became beggars in our own land,” Sigilai said, removing a faded baseball cap and putting it on the table by his tea.

“We love it,” he said of the commodity which is grown in and around Kericho, 260 kms (162 miles) northwest of Kenya’s capital. “But it has brought a lot of misery to my community.”

Around 200 people have already come forward with evidence to support the case, Tarus said.

“All land within Nandi belongs to the county and we want it all to be given back to us,” he said.

Kenya’s 47 counties manage leaseholds on their land.

A British foreign office spokeswoman declined to comment on the legal proceedings.

The case could be politically important for millions of voters ahead of Kenya’s elections in August, with some politicians already starting to stoke tensions over land.

More than 1,200 Kenyans were killed following a disputed 2007 poll, largely in the Rift Valley where resentment over the loss of land during the colonial era still festers.

Much of the land vacated when the British left Kenya in 1963 after 43 years was sold to the political elite who could afford to buy it, rather than returned to its original owners.

Atrocities

Kenya was one of Britain’s most important colonies with hundreds of settlers moving into the best agricultural land to grow tea, coffee and tobacco, forcing Africans into reserves and employing them as cooks, guards and gardeners.

The British displaced hundreds of Nandi and Kipsigis families — sub-tribes of Kenya’s third-largest ethnic group, the Kalenjin — from the Rift Valley highlands for tea plantations.

“They have to pay for what they did to us,” said Moses Mosonet, 83, a Nandi, his eyes coated with a milky veneer.

“They can take their tea and leave us with our land,” he said, seated outside his home, which overlooks lush, hilly tea estates in Nandi, some 70 km north of Kericho, not far from the African reserve where his parents were taken eight decades ago.

Kenya is the world’s largest exporter of black tea, an industry which employs more than 3.5 million Kenyans, directly and indirectly, the national trade union says.

London-based Finlays, one of the tea companies whose land is being targeted, declined to comment.

Dozens of villages were decimated, the potential plaintiffs say, and those who opposed the displacement tortured and exiled.

“Serious atrocities were committed,” said Philemon Koech of Lilan and Koech Associates, which won a tender from Nandi County government in March to pursue a civil case for reparations. “If such things like the torture of the people and their subsequent displacement were to happen in present day, we would be dealing with the International Criminal Court [ICC].”

More than 5,200 other elderly Kenyans won almost 14 million pounds ($18 million) in compensation from Britain in a 2013 out-of-court settlement for abuse by colonial forces during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency.

Evidence

Gathering evidence will not be easy, particularly as the annexation of African land was legal under British colonial law, said Gitobu Imanyara, a Kenyan human rights lawyer.

“There can hardly be anyone alive to corroborate some of the claims,” he said.

Once the evidence is collected, British lawyer Karim Khan, who specializes in international criminal law and international human rights law, has agreed to assess its worth.

“I will advise on the merits or otherwise of a case under English law,” he told Reuters by phone. “I can’t possibly say that there will definitely be a case in the High Court until I have advised on the evidence.”

Khan is well-known in Kenya for successfully defending deputy president William Ruto against charges of crimes against humanity in the ICC from 2013 to 2016.

While the undulating manicured tea bushes, extending as far as the eye can see, evoke painful memories for the elderly, the younger generation are more skeptical about the case.

“If they tell the multinationals to leave who will employ us?” asked Justus Ngetich, 30, a taxi driver in Bomet, some 70 km south of Kericho. “It is all about power and politics, not about the well-being of the people. We shall just sit here and watch the tea estates change hands from the whites to blacks.”
…

With retail stores shutting down at the fastest pace since the crash of 2008, the head of the American Booksellers Association is grateful to see business holding steady.

 

After seven straight years of growth, core membership in the independent sellers’ trade group has dropped slightly since May 2016, from 1,775 to 1,757. At the same time, the number of actual locations rose from 2,311 to 2,321, reflecting a trend of owners opening additional stores.

The association’s CEO, Oren Teicher, says sales from reporting outlets are up around 2 1/2 percent in the first four months of 2017 over the same time period last year. Sales increased 5 percent from 2015 to 2016.

 

“We’re pleased that the sales and presence of independent stores continues to grow at a time when thousands of other stores are closing,” he told The Associated Press during a recent interview.

 

Teicher said he was also encouraged by a bump in “provisional members,” those intending to open a store, from 103 to 141. During the association’s prolonged decline, when the rise of superstores and e-books helped cut membership from around 5,000 in the 1980s to just 1,401 in 2008, the market looked so dire that some profitable stores closed because the owner wanted to retire and no buyer could be found. In recent years, independent stores have been helped by a variety of factors, from the fall of Borders and the struggles of Barnes & Noble to the leveling off of e-book sales.

 

Concerns do remain for independent sellers as they prepare to join thousands of publishers, authors, agents and librarians at the industry’s annual national convention, BookExpo, which begins Wednesday at New York’s Jacob Javits Center.

Closed stores of any kind can reduce foot traffic in a shopping district and hurt booksellers among others. And one company expanding on the ground is the online giant Amazon.com, which has been cited as a factor in closings for everyone from J.C. Penney to American Apparel.

 

Amazon just opened its first bookstore in Manhattan and seventh overall. One outlet is within 1 1/2 miles of Third Place Books in Amazon’s hometown Seattle, where Third Place managing partner Robert Sindelar says sales initially dropped after the Amazon store opened in November 2015, but had bounced back by the end of last year.

 

“So it feels that their larger impact on us was short-lived,” said Sindelar, the booksellers association’s new president. “However, any bookstore — Amazon, indie or chain store — that close is going to impact our sales to some degree.”

 

BookExpo runs Wednesday to Friday and will be immediately followed by the fan-based BookCon, which ends Sunday. Profits have long been narrow or nonexistent in publishing and BookExpo/BookCon is one way to limit costs.

For much of its century-plus history, the convention rotated locations, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., in the spirit of fairness and of spotlighting different parts of the country. But since 2008, New York publishers have preferred staying home. The 2016 show in Chicago, once a favorite setting for BookExpo, was notable for a drop in attendance and floor space and a lack of high-profile guests.

 

This year, the names have returned, although floor space continues to decline and side programs have been cut back. Hillary Clinton will speak at an hour-long event billed as “An Evening With Hillary Clinton” and is expected to promote a book of essays coming this September that will touch upon her loss to Donald Trump in 2016. Daughter Chelsea Clinton will be autographing her picture book “She Persisted” and Stephen King will make a joint appearance with son Owen King. Other featured speakers include Dan Brown, Kevin Hart and Sen. Al Franken, promoting his memoir “Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.”

 

Events director Brien McDonald says that the convention will address issues within and beyond book publishing. A First Amendment “resistance” panel organized by PEN America, the literary and human rights organization, will include Scott Turow and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. A discussion sponsored by the grassroots organization We Need Diverse Books is called “Real Talk About Real Apologies.”

The panel’s moderator, Laura M. Jimenez, noted that Rick Riordan apologized for inappropriately using the term “spirit animal,” a sacred creature for some American Indians, in his novel “The Sword of Summer.” Little, Brown and Co., publisher of Lemony Snicket’s (aka Daniel Handler’s) picture book “The Bad Mood and the Stick,” promised to remove images of blacks by illustrator Matt Forsythe that were criticized as racist.

 

Jimenez said she wanted the panel to emphasize how “the overwhelming whiteness of publishing makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible for them to see the problematic representations.”

 

“It seems the insular world of children’s literature publishing creates a space where white people are unaware of their own privilege and, historically, have been unwilling to hear us,” said Jimenez, a lecturer at Boston University’s School of Education. “That is changing with Twitter and other social media outlets and blogs. … I think an all-out drive for diversity in publishing is needed.”
…

At Café Bar-Ba-Reeba on Chicago’s north side, there is one key ingredient that could make or break Executive Chef Matt Holmes’ menu.

“We feature it in our paeallas, which are our signature dish here at Café Bar Ba Reeba, as well as use it in a dessert and some other dishes as well, so its incredibly important to have high quality saffron,” Holmes explained to VOA from his test kitchen above the restaurant, where he was preparing one of those signature dishes.

Saffron has long been one of the world’s most expensive spices, at times traded as currency. The saffron “crocus” that produces the spice grows mostly in parts of Europe, Iran and India.

It is a staple in cuisine throughout Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean, but less so in the United States, where saffron — while a $60 million market  has limited appeal.

But Rumi Spice, Holmes’ saffron supplier, is hoping to change that.

“We are named after Juhalladin Rumi, he was a 13th century poet and philosopher who was born in present day Afghanistan, and a Sufi mystic,” says founder Kimberly Jung.  “One of his most famous sayings is, ‘Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasure.’”

Veterans inspired by relationships

Kimberly Jung, Keith Alaniz and Emily Miller are three of the founders of Rumi Spice, U.S. military veterans who served in Afghanistan who returned with more than just combat experience.

“I was never able to resolve just going to Afghanistan, spending time, and then leaving and never thinking about the place again, especially when you form relationships with people who live there,” says Alaniz.

Those relationships inspired the business strategy for Rumi Spice — increasing demand in the U.S. for saffron produced by Afghan farmers they met in Herat province. Saffron has very limited demand in Afghanistan, leaving the market for it outside the country.

“Afghanistan has essentially been cut off from the international market for 30 years,” says Alaniz.  “They are producing a great product but they aren’t able to get a fair value for their goods because they are not able to export it anywhere.”

Another challenge

Afghanistan’s enduring instability isn’t the only challenge to getting Afghan saffron to market.

“Near to 20 years we’ve been growing saffron, there are still no certificates for our saffron product,” says Abdullah Faiz, chancellor of Heart University, which is working with Purdue University in Indiana to develop a “department of food technology,” with Afghan saffron farmers in mind.

“The department of food technology will teach and give training for the farmers to produce the saffron with hygiene quality,” says Faiz, adding that it could help increase demand for Afghan saffron in new markets.

Quality, taste is key

A lack of international certification hasn’t stood in the way of Rumi Spice, which conducts rigorous tests to make sure the saffron it is importing is clean and pure before arriving in the United States.

The quality and taste of Rumi Spice saffron is what attracted Matt Holmes as a customer.

“It’s much higher potency,” says Holmes.  “So while we pay a premium to use Rumi, it actually goes a longer way, so that’s another benefit of using a higher quality product  you can stretch how much you are using each time.”

Famous investor

“Our supply is outpacing our demand,” says Alaniz, “which is good for us because it keeps our prices low at the moment, but we hope to increase more demand here in the U.S. so we can purchase more saffron.”

“The good thing about Rumi is they have a premium product that’s fantastic to use,” says Chef Matt Homes.  “You are kind of doing double duty with the program that they have with helping farmers in Afghanistan and helping women, being a positive influence instead of just selling a product, so you really get the best of both worlds.”

These are qualities investors also are noticing.  Rumi Spice was recently featured on the U.S. reality television show “Shark Tank,” where entrepreneur Marc Cuban committed $250,000 for a 15 percent stake in the company, signaling his faith in Rumi Spice, and the future potential for saffron grown in Afghanistan.

 
…

Cross-border fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan has suspended trade worth millions of dollars and stranded hundreds of trucks loaded with fruits and vegetables at the border, where the produce stands to spoil in the rising heat.

Pakistan had temporarily closed the Chaman border crossing, across from Afghanistan’s Spin boldak, after a frontier skirmish earlier this month between Afghan and Pakistani border guards left more than 10 people dead. Global economic institutions say South Asia is one of the world’s least economically connected regions, and the periodic closures of border crossings complicate things further.

Summer is peak time for fruit and vegetable production in the two countries. Under normal circumstances around this time of the year, a significant portion of Afghanistan’s grapes and pomegranates is ferried overland to Pakistan.

Pakistan’s mangoes and vegetables go the opposite direction, along with bilateral trade in many other commodities — some legal and some otherwise.

Part of the Afghan fruit produce is sold in Chaman and nearby villages; the remainder finds its way to markets across Pakistan.

It’s a long-established system that relies heavily on trust: Pakistani fruit traders send advance payments to their Afghan counterparts, who then send the fruit after it’s harvested. But so far this year, the Chaman businessmen say they have not cut the usual deals because the border closure have created the risk of coming up empty-handed.

Amant Khan, a fruit trader in Chaman, said he suffered losses last year as tensions rose between the two countries.

“This season we did not give the grape or melon dealers anything,” he said. “In fact, we decided not to do business with Afghanistan.”

For traders in Waish Mandi, a thriving Afghan market town across from Chaman, these are hard financial times, too. Hundreds of people, who used to benefit from border trade, have lost work. Unable to move their merchandise across the border, goods worth millions of dollars are stranded in truck containers.

Apart from the fruit trade, bilateral trade between Afghanistan and Pakistanonce worth $3 billion a year has dropped to $1.2 billion, said Khan Jan Alkozai, president of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Pakistan’s own fruit exports to Central Asia via Afghanistan, which usually average 2 million pounds, also suffer because of border closures, Alkozai said.

Daro Khan, former vice president for the Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint Chamber of Commerce, said Pakistani farmers and businessman have not recovered from losses due to border closures last year.
…

A new ban imposed by India’s government on the sale of cows and buffaloes for slaughter to protect animals considered holy by many Hindus is drawing widespread protests from state governments and animal-related industries.

Many state governments criticized the ban as a blow to beef and leather exports that will leave hundreds of thousands jobless and deprive millions of Christians, Muslims and poor Hindus of a cheap source of protein.

 

The rules, which took effect Friday, require that cattle traders pledge that any cows or buffalos sold are not intended for slaughter.

 

At least one state government is planning a challenge in court. Some have said the ban infringes on states’ commercial autonomy and are calling for a nationwide protest.

 

Others say the ban will hurt farmers who will be forced to continue feeding aged animals, and that millions of unproductive cattle will be turned out on the streets.

 

The new rules also propose the setting up of a vast animal monitoring bureaucracy, including animal inspectors and veterinarians, to ensure the rules are followed. Traditionally, cattle fairs and markets allow the sale of animals headed to abattoirs to provide raw materials used in dozens of industries, including leather making, soap and fertilizer.

 

The state governments have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to repeal the order, which they say was issued without consultations with them. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has been pushing a Hindu nationalist agenda since it came to power in 2014.

 

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the top elected official in southern Kerala state, wrote to Modi on Sunday describing the restrictions as a “drastic move” that would have “far-reaching consequences and would be detrimental to democracy.”

 

He said the move amounts to “an intrusion into the rights of the states” in India’s federal structure and violates the principles of the Indian Constitution.

 

The government of West Bengal state also protested the move, saying the Modi government cannot make such decisions unilaterally.

 

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the state would not accept the imposition of such restrictions on its commercial authority. She described it as a step by the Modi government to “destroy the federal structure of the country.”

 

“We won’t accept the decision. It is unconstitutional. We will challenge it legally,” Banerjee told reporters Monday.

 

Hindus, who form 80 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people, consider cows to be sacred, and for many eating beef is taboo. In many Indian states, the slaughtering of cows and selling of beef is either restricted or banned. India has the highest number of vegetarians in the world as a result of Hinduism’s predominance, although not all Hindus are vegetarians.

 

While the eating of beef is not a crime in many states, slaughtering a cow carries a punishment of up to seven years in jail throughout the country. In Gujarat state, lawmakers have approved a bill increasing the punishment for killing a cow to life imprisonment.

 

Critics say the new rules, ostensibly to protect the way animals are treated and transported, are in keeping with demands of Hindu nationalists, who have long been pressing for a nationwide ban on the sale of beef. The past two years have also seen a rise in vigilante attacks on Muslims and lower caste Hindus involved in the cattle trade. Several deaths have occurred.

 

On Monday, police arrested seven people on suspicion of assaulting two Muslim men who were transporting meat in western Maharashtra state. The men were beaten and forced to chant Hindu slogans by a vigilante group on Sunday, police said.

 

Meanwhile, leather and meat industry groups said the ban could push them out of business.

 

Fauzan Alavi of the All India Meat and Livestock Exporters Association said beef exports, which had been growing rapidly, have already been affected. “Such a drastic move is bound to hit the industry,” Alavi said Sunday.

 

The government “has handed a death certificate to us,” said Ramesh K. Juneja of the Council of Leather Exports.

 

 
…

British Airways passengers continue to face delays, cancellations, and overcrowding Sunday at Heathrow Airport as the airline reels from a computer failure.

The airline said that all long-haul flights will continue Sunday, but to avoid further overcrowding, passengers will only be allowed to enter the airport terminal 90 minutes before their scheduled departure.

Passengers should still expect delays and cancelations for shorter flights, British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz said, adding that the airline was at “near-full operation” Sunday.

“I know this has been a horrible time for customers,” Cruz said, apologizing in a video statement posted online.

 
The airline was forced to cancel flights Saturday at Heathrow and Gatwick airports as officials tried to fix a global computer failure.

British Airways has not said what caused the glitch, but did report there is no evidence pointing to a cyber attack.

The failure occurred on a particularly busy weekend in Britain, where a public holiday will be observed on Monday and when many children are starting their mid-term school breaks — prompting some stranded travelers to express their frustration on Twitter.

British Airways has experienced other recent computer glitches. Passengers were hit with severe delays in July and September last year because of problems with the airline’s online check-in systems.

 
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Saffron has long been one of the world’s most expensive spices. The saffron crocus that produces the spice grows mostly in parts of Europe, Iran and India. Now, a U.S. company seeking to “cultivate peace” is attracting attention to this historic spice and trying to develop new markets for saffron grown in Afghanistan. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Chicago.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has told “confidants,” including the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, that he plans to leave a landmark international agreement on climate change, the Axios news website reported Saturday, citing three sources with direct knowledge.

On Saturday, Trump said in a Twitter post he would decide whether to support the Paris climate deal next week.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A source who has been in contact with people involved in the decision told Reuters that a couple of meetings were planned with chief executives of energy companies and big corporations and others about the climate agreement ahead of Trump’s expected announcement later in the week. It was unclear whether those meetings would still take place.

“I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!” Trump tweeted on the final day of a Group of Seven (G-7) summit in Italy at which he refused to bow to pressure from allies to back the 2015 agreement.

Six against one

The summit of G-7 wealthy nations pitted Trump against the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan on several issues, with European diplomats frustrated at having to revisit questions they had hoped were long settled.

Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, came under concerted pressure from the other leaders to honor the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing carbon emissions.

Although he tweeted that he would make a decision next week, his apparent reluctance to embrace the first legally binding global climate deal, signed by 195 countries, clearly annoyed German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying,” she told reporters. “There are no indications whether the United States will stay in the Paris Agreement or not.”
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