Cuba earned more than $3 billion from tourism in 2016 and expects to better that this year despite President Donald Trump’s tightening of restrictions on U.S. travel to the Caribbean island, a government official said on Wednesday.

“In 2016, revenue reached more than $3 billion in all activity linked to tourism in the country,” Jose Alonso, the Tourism Ministry’s business director, told state-run media.

“We think that, given the growth the country is seeing at the moment, we will beat that figure this year,” Alonso said.

Tourism revenue totaled $2.6 billion in 2015.

The number of foreign visitors to Cuba was up 22 percent in the first half of 2017 compared with the same period last year, according to Alonso, who said that put it on track to reach its target for a record 4.2 million visits this year.

Tourism has been one of the few bright spots recently in Cuba’s economy, as it struggles with a decline in exports and subsidized oil shipments from its key ally Venezuela.

A surge in American visitors has helped boost the sector since the 2014 U.S.-Cuban detente under the Obama administration and its easing of U.S. travel restrictions, even as a longtime ban on tourism remained in effect.

But Trump earlier this month ordered a renewed tightening of travel restrictions, saying he was canceling former President Barack Obama’s “terrible and misguided deal” with Havana.

Many details of the policy change are still unknown. But independent travel to Cuba from the United States, by solo travelers and families, will likely be much more restricted.

Alonso said he was confident “an important number of Americans” would still be able to visit the island. But an announcement by Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N) on Wednesday that it was reducing its number of flights to Cuba cast shadow over his upbeat comments.

“There is not a clear path to sustainability serving these markets, particularly with the continuing prohibition in U.S. law on tourism to Cuba for American citizens,” Southwest said in a statement.

Southwest joined other U.S. airlines that have cut flights to Cuba over past months or pulled out of the market altogether.
…

For Shalini Gera, a rights lawyer in India’s Chhattisgarh state, it was the searing testimony of tribal activist Soni Sori that drew her attention to atrocities in the mineral-rich state.

Sori, who was arrested in 2011 on charges of aiding Maoist rebels in the state, accused the police of torturing and sexually assaulting her while in prison. Her crime?

Defending the right of indigenous people to live in an area rich in minerals in what is one of India’s poorest states.

Police officials, who have since been moved to other locations, deny any mistreatment.

Stirred by Sori’s call for justice, Gera and a couple of other lawyers left Delhi to set up office in the state’s restive Bastar region in 2013. It wasn’t long before they were targets.

The lawyers said they were followed, had objects thrown into their home, and were accused of helping Maoist rebels. They say they were harassed for defending villagers and indigenous people.

They were finally evicted by a fearful landlord last year, and relocated to Bilaspur about 400 km (250 miles) away, where they continued to pursue their cases.

Mineral-rich, rights-poor

The lawyers have angered plenty of people in high places.

A top police official recently said they should be crushed on the highway for going against the state to protect villagers.

“Parts of Chhattisgarh are like a war zone,” said Sudha Bharadwaj, a lawyer in Bilaspur who backed Gera and set up a legal aid group, Janhit, for farmers and indigenous people.

“There is violence against people who insist on their rights and we are perceived as anti-development for helping them,” said Bharadwaj, 55, who took up law at the age of 40 to help local people.

One of India’s least developed states, Chhattisgarh sits atop some of India’s biggest reserves of coal, iron ore, bauxite, dolomite, limestone, tin and gold, and accounts for nearly a fifth of the total value of minerals produced in India.

At least 25 conflicts are raging in the state — over coal and iron ore, power projects and steel plants — and they affect 70,000 people, according to research firm Land Conflict Watch.

The race for resources to spur India’s economic growth has pitted some of its most vulnerable people against the state, stalling industrial projects worth billions of dollars.

There are at least 332 land conflicts nationwide, affecting more than 3.5 million people, according to Land Conflict Watch.

Nowhere are these conflicts more violent and bloody than in Chhattisgarh, part of the “Red Corridor” stretching across eastern and central India that has witnessed a Maoist rebellion for more than three decades.

The rebels, who say they are fighting for the land rights and empowerment of indigenous people, accuse the government of plundering mineral resources while ignoring the villagers.

Adivasis, or “original dwellers,” and lower-caste Dalits make up more than 40 percent of the state’s 28 million population and traditionally lived in its forests and hills.

After the opening of the economy in the early 1990s, tracts of forest land were handed to companies including Adani Group, Jindal Power, Essar and Tata Steel for mines and power plants.

Backed by the state, an anti-insurgency militia called Salwa Judum — meaning “Peace March” or “Purification March” — began cracking down on the Maoist rebels from 2005 to free up land.

A pitched battle ensued, in which hundreds were killed and tens of thousands displaced amid accusations of mass rape, illegal detentions, torture and extra-judicial killings.

Activists are caught “between two sets of guns” in the conflict between Maoist combatants and government security forces, Human Rights Watch said in a 2012 report.

“The original inhabitants are seen as road blocks that they have to get out of the way to do more mining, build more plants, more industry,” said Bharadwaj.

Murder, treason

The fight for land and the environment is “a new battleground for human rights,” according to British-based watchdog Global Witness, with India chalking up at least six deaths in 2015 related to land conflicts.

In Chhattisgarh, villagers spoke of giving up land at gunpoint while activists faced charges from murder to treason.

Lingaram Kodopi, a tribal activist, fled to Delhi after being shot in the leg in 2011.

Binayak Sen, a physician, was convicted of treason and sedition in 2010 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Ramesh Agrawal, who received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2014 for leading a protest that shut down a proposed coal mine, was wounded by masked gunmen in 2012.

Sori was attacked again last year with chemicals.

Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar was among those charged last year in the killing of an indigenous man in Bastar shortly after she published a book on the conflict.

“People opposing the state are not treated as citizens. The state sees it fit to tackle them only through the military,” said Gera, a co-founder of Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group. “Would there be less violence if there were no resources? Perhaps.”

‘Iron fist’

Laws that protect the rights of farmers and indigenous people — including a 1996 law on tribal areas and the 2006 Forest Rights Act giving traditional forest dwellers access to forest resources — are poorly implemented, activists say.

Meanwhile, state officials say resource-based industries are needed to spur growth and generate jobs for the state.

“We have settled forest rights where requested. If there is any complaint of rights violation, we look into it,” said Subodh Kumar Singh, a senior official in the mines department. “There may be a few displacements, but the people are resettled. The industries are bringing good development.”

The Supreme Court in 2011 called Salwa Judum “illegal” and ordered its disbandment. The top court said it was dismayed the only option for the state was “to rule with an iron fist.”

But a battle is still raging.

Among the cases that Bharadwaj is handling is that of Janki Sidar, who is fighting the unauthorized takeover of her land.

The case is 14 years old. Bharadwaj is her 10th lawyer.

“It is necessary for us — doctors, lawyers, journalists — to be involved,” said Bharadwaj. “We have to help them confront the power of the state and industry. We have to become their amplifiers to carry their voices to the outside world.”
…

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a Chinese billionaire accused of bribing United Nations diplomats to gain their approval of a U.N. conference center he wanted to build.

Ng Lap Seng has pleaded not guilty. He has posted $50 million bail, but is restricted to a luxury New York City apartment that he owns, where he is under guard around the clock. He is allowed to leave his apartment only to visit his doctors or his lawyers.

Ng, who is 69, is accused of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes for the center he planned to build in Macau.

Prosecutors say some of the money reached former General Assembly president John Ashe and a former diplomat from the Dominican Republic, Francis Lorenzo.

Ashe died last year in a freak accident while lifting weights at his home.

Lorenzo pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors in the case against Ng.

Ng’s lawyers contend the charges are politically motivated, aimed at trying to curb China’s influence over developing countries that might have used the Macau conference center.

If prosecutors and defense lawyers can agree on selection of a jury without delay, the judge in the case estimated the trial would last a month or perhaps longer.
…

Thirteen EU nations voiced support on Monday for a proposal to empower the bloc’s executive to negotiate with Russia over objections to a new Russian gas pipeline to Germany, despite opposition from Berlin.

At an informal debate among EU energy ministers, Germany’s partners in the 28-nation bloc spoke out against Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline plan to pump more gas directly from Russia’s Baltic coast to Germany.

EU nations are expected to vote in the autumn on the European Commission’s request for a mandate to negotiate with Russia on behalf of the bloc as a whole.

Germany, the main beneficiary of the pipeline, sees it as a purely commercial project, with Chancellor Angela Merkel last week saying she saw no role for the Commission.

The plan taps into divisions among the bloc over doing business with Russia, which covers a third of the EU’s gas needs, despite sanctions against Moscow over its military intervention in Ukraine.

In private, EU officials say they hope direct talks with Russia would delay the project past 2019, depriving Russian state gas exporter Gazprom of leverage in talks over transit fees for Ukraine, the current route for most gas supplies to Europe.

Germany, Austria and France – which have firms partnering with Gazprom on the project – declined to take the floor on Monday, EU diplomats said.

“We had 13 delegations intervening, with all of them being supportive of the Commission’s approach,” Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic told Reuters by telephone after presenting the EU executive’s case to member states. “I am definitely optimistic about getting the mandate, but I know this is just the beginning of the debate.”

The Commission found support from Italy as well as Nordic, Eastern European and Baltic states, EU sources told Reuters.

“Germany has commercial interests, but it needs to explain itself,” one senior EU official said.

With the pipeline expected to reroute Russian gas supplies around Ukraine to the north, Italy voiced concerns it would increase gas prices for customers further down the line.

Eastern European and Baltic states fear it will increase their dependence on Gazprom and undercut Ukraine.

Nordic nations, meanwhile, have security concerns over the pipeline being laid near their shores under the Baltic Sea, where Russia has bolstered its military presence.

However, many EU nations have yet to take a stand.

“It is quite toxic. Many member states are quite wary of advertising their position,” one diplomat told Reuters.

There are also differences among EU member states over what aims to pursue in potential talks with Russia.

Speaking in Paris on Monday, Ukraine’s foreign minister said the draft EU proposal did not go far enough to secure guarantees from Russia, warning Nord Stream 2 would have “dangerous consequences” for the bloc.

Adding to tensions is the threat of new U.S. sanctions on Russia that would penalize Western firms involved in Nord Stream 2: Uniper, Wintershall, Shell, OMV and Engie.

Several EU diplomats said the measures proposed by the U.S. Senate have already backfired against their stated aim of bolstering European energy security.

“It’s a divisive measure,” one senior official said. “It’s easy for the U.S. to go after Russian gas of course, they don’t use it. … We are trying to make the best of a bad thing by balancing the interest of different member states.”
…

More than half of Cuba’s arable land remains fallow nearly a decade after a government pledge to cultivate it, and food production is sluggish, according to a government report.

Cuba has yet to publish an overall figure for last year’s agricultural output. But the report released over the weekend by the National Statistics Office indicated only minor improvement in 2016 over the previous year.

The state owns 80 percent of the land and leases most of that to farmers and cooperatives. The remainder is owned by private family farmers and their cooperatives.

Despite the leasing of small parcels of land to some 200,000 would-be-farmers over the last decade, the report said just 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres) out of the 6.2 million hectares (15.3 million acres) of arable land available were under cultivation.

The Cuban government often blames bad weather, a lack of labor and capital for poor land use and production, while critics charge it is due to a lack of private property and foreign investment, rickety infrastructure and the Soviet-style bureaucracy.

President Raul Castro made increased food production and reducing the Communist-run Caribbean island’s dependence on imports his top priority after taking office in 2008 from his then ailing and now deceased brother, Fidel.

Castro began leasing land, decentralizing decision-making and introducing market mechanisms into the sector. But most of the effort has faltered and the state has backtracked on market reforms, once more assigning resources, setting prices and controlling most distribution.

Cash-strapped Cuba imports more than 60 percent of the food it consumes at a cost of around $2 billion annually, mainly for bulk cereals and grains such as rice, corn, soy and beans, as well as other items such as powdered milk and chicken.

Last year, $232 million of the imports came from the United States under an exception to the trade embargo that allows agricultural sales for cash.

The country does not produce wheat or soybeans, though experiments are underway to produce the latter. Over the last decade the government has poured millions of dollars into corn, rice, beans, meat and milk production in hopes of reducing imports, but with little success.

Unprocessed rice production was 514,000 tons in 2016, up more than 20 percent from the previous year. But that figure, representing just a third of national consumption, barely surpassed the 436,000 tons reported in 2008 and was less than the 642,000 produced five years ago.

Beans weighed in at 137,000 tons, up more than 15 percent from the previous year and compared with 117,000 in 2012, but little changed from the 2008 figure of 127,000 tons.

Corn, at 404,000 tons last year, was up some 10 percent over 2015 and the 360,000 output of 5 and 10 years ago, but again just a third of national consumption.

Pork and beef production have increased, while milk, chicken and egg production have stagnated.

Export crops, from coffee and citrus to tobacco and sugar cane, have not increased significantly, and in some cases declined.

Tonnage for root and garden vegetables has improved some 15 percent over the decade and reached 5.3 million tons last year, an increase of 200,000 tons. Bananas and plantains increased some 15 percent to a million tons in 2016 compared with an average of around 850,000 tons over the decade.
…

The American company which made cladding used London’s Grenfell Tower, where 79 people died after the building caught fire, has said it will stop global sales of the product.

U.S.-based Arconic cited “inconsistencies in building codes around the world” for stopping the sales. The company’s shares fell over 11 percent after it was linked to the blaze in London.

Hours after the announcement from Arconic, the Department for Communities and Local Government said that samples from 75 high-rises in England had failed fire safety tests.

The tests were initiated following the Grenfell Tower fire. Grenfell’s exterior insulation is thought to have been responsible for the rapid acceleration of the blaze, resulting in the deaths of at least 79 people, fire officials said.

Grenfell Tower and many of the buildings tested are all part of government-run, low-cost, public housing developments.
…

The promotion of Saudi Arabia’s top economic reformer to crown prince has cheered business leaders who believe it will open up new opportunities. But they worry about officials’ ability to implement reforms and about geopolitical tensions in the region.

The Saudi stock market jumped 7 percent in the two days after Mohammed bin Salman, previously deputy crown prince, was appointed last week to be first in line for the throne.

Part of the market’s rise was due to a decision by index compiler MSCI to consider upgrading Riyadh to emerging market status. But much of the euphoria was political; shares in companies closely linked to Prince Mohammed’s reforms were the top performers.

National Commercial Bank, the biggest lender, which is expected to play a big role handling financial transactions related to the reforms, surged 15 percent.

Miner Ma’aden soared 20 percent; Prince Mohammed has labelled mining a key sector in his drive to cut Saudi Arabia’s reliance on oil exports. Emaar the Economic City, builder of an industrial zone which the prince hopes

to develop as an export industry base, gained 16 percent.

Solid political move

Business leaders said the promotion of Prince Mohammed, 31, removed political uncertainty by confirming a smooth shift of power from an older generation of Saudi leaders to a young generation represented by the prince.

“The political transition was very smooth — we expect the reforms to continue,” Muhammad Alagil, chairman of Jarir Marketing, a top retailing chain, told Reuters.

He said Jarir, which has 47 stores, some 39 of which are in Saudi, would open at least six this year and a similar number next year, mostly inside Saudi Arabia.

Fresh opportunity

To some in business, Prince Mohammed represents fresh opportunity in the form of a $200 billion privatization program and state investment to help kick start new industries such as shipbuilding, auto parts making and tourism.

Some executives predicted the progress of these plans, which are still largely on the drawing board a year after Prince Mohammed announced them, would accelerate after his promotion.

“I didn’t see a risk of the reforms stalling or being reversed before, given the political backing behind them. But now the reforms can go ahead with more strength,” said Hesham Abo Jamee, chief executive at Alistithmar Capital.

He added that social initiatives in the reforms would help the economy by stimulating consumer spending.

For example, developing an entertainment sector, in a conservative society which has so far shunned many forms of public entertainment, would create jobs. The government plans an entertainment zone south of Riyadh with sports, cultural and recreational facilities.

Increasing the role of women in the workforce would boost family incomes and could accelerate creation of small businesses such as restaurants, Abo Jamee said.

Repatriation

Prince Mohammed is also architect of a tough austerity policy, including spending cuts and tax rises, that aims to abolish by 2020 a budget gap which totaled $79 billion in 2016.

The austerity has slowed private sector growth almost to zero.

But many in business see austerity as inevitable in an era of low oil prices and are pleased by the prince’s willingness to moderate it to avoid a worse slowdown. To mark his promotion, Riyadh retroactively restored civil servants’ allowances at a cost it estimated at around $1.5 billion.

Privately, many executives expect Prince Mohammed to persuade or pressure wealthy Saudis to repatriate some of the billions of dollars which they are believed to have transferred overseas for safe-keeping.

Other issues

It is not clear what tools he would use — moral suasion, legal action or financial incentives — but his promotion may have given him the political capital for such a sensitive step. Businesses remain worried by two other issues, however.

One is the competence of the bureaucracy to carry out the complex reforms. The government talks of partnerships between the public and private sectors to finance projects, for example, but has not released legal frameworks for such deals.

“Many of the reforms are in name only — nothing has happened. They’re struggling with the details,” said a foreign economist who advises the Saudi government.

Military intervention

The other big worry is rising tensions around Saudi Arabia — tensions in which Prince Mohammed has been closely involved in his role as defense minister for two years.

In addition to its military intervention in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is locked in a diplomatic confrontation with Iran, its allies are struggling in Syria’s civil war, and early this month it cut diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar.

For some in business, these tensions are at best a distraction for the government at a time when it needs to focus on the economy, and at worst risk a more serious regional crisis that could deter foreign investment and endanger the reforms.

 
…

Embattled Japanese auto parts manufacturer Takata said Monday it has filed for bankruptcy protection.

Takata also announced that rival Key Safety Systems is purchasing Takata for $1.5 billion. 

Takata has been overwhelmed with the costs of lawsuits and recalls related to defective airbags linked to the deaths of 16 people and scores of injuries worldwide.

The defective airbags led to a global recall of tens of millions of automobiles. The chemicals that power the airbags were found to deteriorate spontaneously with prolonged exposure to high humidity, causing the airbags to deploy far more forcefully than normal and sending metal and plastic shrapnel into drivers and passengers.

Takata has already agreed to pay a billion-dollar fine to settle with U.S. safety regulators.  Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has said that Takata engaged in a pattern of “delay, misdirection and refusal to acknowledge the truth.”

Jason Luo, president  and CEO of Key Safety Systems, said, “Although Takata has been impacted by the global airbag recall, the underlying strength of its skilled employee base, geographic reach, and exceptional steering wheels, seat belts and other safety products have not diminished.” 

The Tokyo Stock Exchange suspended trading of Takata shares Monday and said it would delist Takata stock Tuesday.
…

The global economy has picked up and prospects for the next few months are the best in a long time.

 

But the recovery is maturing and faces risks from populist rejection of free trade and from high debt that could burden consumers and companies as interest rates rise.

 

Those were key takeaways from a review of the global economy released Sunday by the Bank for International Settlements, an international organization for central banks based in Basel, Switzerland.

 

The report said that “the global economy’s performance has improved considerably and that its near-term prospects appear the best in a long time.” Global growth should reach 3.5 percent this year, according to a summary of forecasts, not quite what it was before the Great Recession but in line with long-term averages. Meanwhile, financial markets for stocks and bonds have been unusually buoyant and steady.

 

On top of that, forecasts by governments and international organizations as well as by private analysts point to “further gradual improvement” in coming months.

 

Key risks include a possible weakening of consumer spending across different economies. So far, the recovery has been largely fueled by people being willing and able to spend more. But that trend could fall victim to higher levels of debt as interest rates rise in some countries and as the amount people need to spend to service their debts takes a bigger chunk of income.

 

Countries that were slammed by collapsing real estate markets during the Great Recession seem less vulnerable now, such as the United States, the U.K., and Spain. But debt burdens are more worrisome in a range of other countries mentioned in the report, including China, Australia and Norway.

 

Another risk comes from weak business investment, typically the second stage of recovery after consumers start spending more; yet that kind of spending has lagged its pre-recession levels for reasons that aren’t always clear to economists.

 

The BIS urged governments around the world to take advantage of the economic recovery as an opportunity to make growth more resistant to trouble by implementing pro-business and pro-growth measures.

 

In particular, the report warned against a backlash against globalization, saying that trade and interconnected financial markets had led to higher standards of living and lifted large parts of the world’s population out of poverty. It called for domestic policies to address inequality and lost jobs, saying that changing technology was often to blame, not free trade. “Attempts to roll back globalization would be the wrong response to these challenges,” it said.

 

 

 
…

A second U-turn this year by Ford Motor Co. in Mexico has raised the specter of Chinese competition for local carmaking, adding to pressure on the industry after repeated threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to saddle it with punitive tariffs.

Ford announced on Tuesday it would move some production of its Focus small car to China instead of Mexico, a step that follows the U.S. automaker’s January cancellation of a planned $1.8 billion plant in the central state of San Luis Potosi.

The scrapping of the Ford plant was a bitter blow, coming after U.S. President Donald Trump had blamed the country for hollowing out U.S manufacturing on the campaign trail, and threatened to impose hefty tariffs on cars made in Mexico.

Since then, rhetoric from the Trump administration has become more conciliatory, and Mexico and the United States have expressed confidence that the renegotiation of the NAFTA trade deal, expected to begin in August, could benefit both nations.

But the loss of the Focus business is an unwelcome reminder of competition Mexico faces from Asia at a time China’s auto exports and the quality of its cars are rising.

“For a long time, the quality of vehicles coming out of China was not to global standards. There was a gap in quality that [favored] Mexico – but that is closing,” said Philippe Houchois, an analyst covering the auto industry at investment bank Jefferies. “That is probably a threat to Mexico.”

In the past decade, global automakers have invested heavily in Chinese factories to make them capable of building cars at quality levels that make the grade in developed markets.

Ford’s decision to shift Focus production for the United States market to China from Mexico shows automakers have increasing flexibility to choose between the two countries to supply niche vehicles to American consumers or other markets.

‘Very Troubling’

Demand for small cars in the United States is waning and General Motors Co. faces a similar situation to Ford’s with its Chevrolet Cruze compact.

Were GM to go down the same path with the Cruze and shift its production out of U.S. factories, it could give more work to its Mexican plants – but might also bring its Chinese operations in Shenyang or Yantai into play.

GM did not immediately reply to a request for comment on its plans for the Cruze.

Studies show Mexican manufacturing is competitive, and business leaders believe that NAFTA talks between Mexico, the United States and Canada could ultimately yield tougher regional content rules for the region that benefit local investment.

Ford said its decision balanced cheaper Chinese labor rates against pricier shipping, but that in the end an already-planned refit of its Chinese factory saved it some $500 million over retooling both that facility and its Hermosillo plant in Mexico.

The volatile state of U.S.-Mexican trade relations also carries big risks if Trump renews his threats to impose 35-percent tariffs on cars made in Mexico.

To be sure, Trump has also threatened to levy 45-percent tariffs on Chinese goods and his Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said he found Ford’s China move “very troubling.”

Trump’s threats have battered the peso, ironically making Mexico’s goods cheaper. Uncertainty over the future of NAFTA pushed the currency to a record low in January, although it has since rebounded.

That same month, the Boston Consulting Group published an assessment of manufacturing competitiveness that gave Mexico an 11-percent lead over China.

That advantage has prompted global firms to plow billions of dollars into the Mexican auto industry, pushing output to record highs. Some officials in the automotive sector painted Ford’s move as a one-off decision.

“There’s still very dynamic investment and growth in plants,” said Alfredo Arzola, director of the automotive cluster in Guanajuato state, one of Mexico’s top carmaking hubs.

Still, there have been “significant quality improvements” in Chinese cars, consultancy J.D. Power said in a 2016 study.

Chinese car manufacturing could catch up with international standards in China by 2018 or 2019, said Jacob George, general manager of J.D. Power’s Asia Pacific Operations, citing the consultancy’s gauge of “hard quality”, or failures.

However, when measured in terms of “perceptual” quality, China was probably still some 4 to 6 years behind, he added.
…

After starting work in a hotel kitchen, Zhai Meiqin began selling furniture and built a billion-dollar conglomerate, but she took great pride in being recognized this week for driving a new phenomenon in China: philanthropy.

Zhai, one of China’s richest women and president of the privately owned HeungKong Group Ltd., said she never forgot her humble upbringing in Guangzhou in southern China, where her father was an architect and her mother worked in a store.

This made her determined to help others, and she started donating to charity shortly after setting up the business with her husband in 1990.

As their business grew, taking in real estate, financial investment and health care, Zhai broke new ground in 2005 by establishing China’s first nonprofit charitable foundation.

Since then, the HeungKong Charitable Foundation has helped an estimated 2 million people, by funding 1,500 libraries, providing loans for women to start businesses, and funding orphans, single mothers, handicapped children and the elderly.

“I realized there were a lot of poor people in China and this drove me to earn more money so I could help them,” said Zhai, 53, who was one of nine philanthropists named Thursday as winners of the 2017 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

Zhai and her husband, Liu Zhiqiang, whose HeungKong Group with 20,000 staffers has made them worth about $1.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine, are known for being leaders of the culture of philanthropy in China.

Their foundation was listed as number 001 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Zhai said at the end of 2015 there were 3,300 registered nonprofit charitable foundations in China.

Next generation

“By setting up the foundation, I wanted to encourage other people, other entrepreneurs, to also donate to charity,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from Guangzhou translated by her daughter.

“Now I want to make sure that the next generation continues this culture of philanthropy in China,” she added, with two of her four children taking an active role in her foundation.

The other philanthropists to win the Carnegie Medal — which was established in 2001 and is awarded every two years — came from around  the globe.

The list included India’s education-focused Azim Premji, Canadian-born social enterprise pioneer Jeff Skoll and American-Australian lawyer and former World Bank Group President James Wolfensohn.

The winners were chosen by a committee made up of seven people representing some of the 22 Carnegie institutions in the United States and Europe.
…

Cambodian activists fighting plans to transform Phnom Penh’s largest lake into a luxury development made a tactical decision when they took to the streets: put women on the frontline to show a “gentle” face and prevent violence.

But it was wishful thinking.

The women of Boeung Kak Lake, once home to a thriving community, have been kicked, manhandled, threatened and jailed, one of many land battles globally where women are bearing the brunt of the crackdown on protesters.

“We are mostly women because we are more gentle so we face less violence. This is our strategy,” said Im Srey Touch, a 42-year-old activist from Boeung Kak Lake.

“If we let men participate in our protests, we let them stand behind us or outside, and we stand in the front to reduce the likelihood of violence.”

​Evictions began in 2007

In fact, as the number of people killed in land conflicts around the world soars, more than half of the dead have been women, rights watchdogs say.

In Phnom Penh the conflict began in 2007 when nearly 4,000 families were stripped of their housing rights after the Cambodian government leased the Boeung Kak Lake area in the nation’s capital to make way for an upmarket mini city.

Since then, the lake has been filled with sand and most of the 4,000 families evicted, with little to no compensation, amid complaints about the social and environmental impact.

Over the years, more than a dozen activists protesting the evictions have been arrested, most of them women through whom land is passed down in many parts of Cambodia.

Whose courts?

In February, a court sentenced Tep Vanny, the most high-profile lake activist, to two and a half years in jail for inciting violence and assaulting security guards.

Rights observers say the government is using the courts and jails to muzzle activists, including those defending their land rights against government officials and their business cronies.

“It is a signal to civil society that ‘We can come after you whenever we want. The courts are ours. We can make anything we say about you stick,’“ said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Asia for New York-based nonprofit Human Rights Watch.

The government of Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) rejects such criticism and says it respects due process.

“The court makes decisions based on the constitution and, like every open society, the court provides justice to everyone no matter who they are,” said government spokesman Phay Siphan.

​Long history of land disputes

Amnesty International has criticized the Cambodian government for “bending the law to their will” to crack down on dissent. It said 42 criminal cases have been brought against the Boeung Kak Lake activists since 2011.

“Nobody believes Tep Vanny was assaulting these security guards,” said Robertson, who accused the judges of being “stooges” of the CPP.

Home to 15 million people, impoverished Cambodia has a long history of disputes over land rights, many dating back to the 1970s when the communist Khmer Rouge regime destroyed property records, and all housing and land became state property.

Cambodia began to privatize land after 1989, when Hun Sen’s CPP-led government shed its communist past and courted foreign investment, paving the way for economic land concessions.

“After privatization, land prices started going up, and people were at risk of land grabbing by companies, the state and well-connected individuals,” said Naly Pilorge, director of the nonprofit Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO).

LICADHO says the lack of a publicly available land register detailing boundaries means authorities could confiscate land, claiming that affected families were living on state property.

Between 2000 and 2014, about 770,000 Cambodians were affected by land conflicts, according to charges presented by lawyers at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

“Because Cambodia is lawless … with close ties between companies, government, the military and police, it’s a recipe for violence,” Pilorge said by phone from Phnom Penh.

A broken family

Despite the court cases and jail time, the Boeung Kak Lake women persist. They protest loudly and lie on the ground when ringed and roughed up by authorities. They are arrested in groups, sometimes just two, and, once, 13 of them.

Pilorge says authorities now appear to be trying a new tack, turning their energies onto Vanny on whom it is taking its toll.

During a brief recess before her guilty verdict Feb. 23, the 37-year-old divorcee who was arrested last August described the impact of her detention on her son, 11, and daughter, 13.

“I lost my role as a mother. I have a broken family. My child is sick,” she said, adding that she could not be there for her daughter’s surgery to remove her appendix.

“During the last hearing, my daughter cried until she fainted … I am a mother but I’m in prison. I can’t take care of her,” she said.

Activists suspect authorities are using her in a bid to silence other activists ahead of local elections this month and next year’s national vote.

A lake activist who was arrested with Vanny last year, Sophea Bov, was convicted for insulting authorities and fined $20. So far Bov has refused to pay the fine, Pilorge said, but no one has come for yet although the judge could imprison her.

“She was hoping that if she refused to pay the fine, she could go to prison to be with Vanny. Imagine where they are now, to think like that,” Pilorge said. “As human beings, we grow and we become stronger with challenges … these women have been tested, and they’ve overcome a lot of obstacles.”

 
…

Soaring temperatures and a lack of rainfall across Italy have cost farmers 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) so far this year, the national agricultural association said on Friday.

The government declared a state of emergency in the gastronomic heartland around the northern cities of Parma and Piacenza, a usually lush valley that produces tomatoes, cheese, and high-quality ham.

Wine grapes growing near Venice will be harvested early, mozzarella makers near Naples have been thrown into crisis, and Sardinian shepherds have taken tractors onto main roads to call for help to save their livelihoods, the Coldiretti group said.

The group’s chairman, Roberto Moncalvo, said the climate was becoming “tropical.”

“If we want to maintain high quality in agriculture we need to organize ourselves to collect water during rainy periods, doing structural work that cannot be put off any longer,” Moncalvo said.

($1 = 0.8935 euros)
…

China is probing the loan practices of a group of big private sector conglomerates who have been on a high-profile global spending spree over the past few years.

And although the review targets only a few of the country’s most politically-connected companies, some analysts see an attempt to increase government control over the role played by the private sector in foreign markets.

“I think this is an attempt to change the direction (of) the role these Chinese companies play in the Chinese economy,” says Paul Gillis, a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. “To align them more closely with the policies of the government and to reduce the risks that actions of these private companies could end up having a shock effect on the economy as a whole.”

Chinese authorities say they launched the probe because of worries that highly leveraged overseas deals pose risks to China’s financial system. Officials have already expressed worries over mounting debt among Chinese lenders, some of which may remain hidden by China’s opaque lending networks.

Notable companies targeted

According to media reports, the list of companies under review is a relative who’s who of Chinese enterprises.

Among those reportedly targeted are Dalian Wanda, which owns the AMC Theaters chain in the United States and has been actively courting deals in Hollywood. High-flying insurance company Anbang, which owns New York’s Waldorf Astoria and Essex House hotels. Also on the list is Hainan Airlines, which bought a 25 percent stake in Hilton Hotels last year and another insurance company Fosun, which owns Cirque de Soleil and Club Med.

Over the past few years, China has seen massive amounts of capital moving overseas with companies and wealthy individuals buying assets abroad. Authorities began taking steps late last year to tighten controls. But many big conglomerates view foreign investment as a golden opportunity – given the low global interest rate environment – and worth the risk of highly-leveraged investments.

Peking University’s Gillis says it appears the Chinese government is coming to terms with how to effectively regulate private enterprises, companies that behave more aggressively than their state-owned counterparts. But he also sees the move as a further consolidation of power by President Xi Jinping, bringing companies more under the control of the central government.

“I think many of the companies had a pretty favorable treatment from prior administrations, and I think Xi Jinping is less enamored of these large private companies than some of his predecessors were.”

Expensive acquisitions by companies like Wanda and Anbang have thrust China into the global spotlight. But the news and commentary that followed the companies’ mega-deals has not always been positive.

In some cases, the deals have given China a black eye, says Fraser Howie, author of the Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise. Anbang’s attempt last year to purchase Starwood Hotels is one example, he says.

“This is high profile, global Bloomberg headline, Chinese company buys Starwood Group, next week it’s all off because the funding was never there, the due diligence could never be completed there, it made all Chinese bidders look horrible,” said Howie. “It looks dreadful for the party and for the leadership that these private entrepreneurs are running out there and yet China as a country is being impacted by it.”

Earlier this month, the head of Anbang was the latest to be swept up in the ongoing financial crackdown.

Regulating private spending?

Authorities so far have not said specifically what the targeted companies may have done wrong, if anything. Some analysts argue that the probe is just a part of a process that began six month ago to curtail the flight of capital from China.

“If cross-border M&A deals make sense, if they deliver strong returns, then there should be no problem either for bankers or those doing the buying. But, if Chinese groups overpay and get the money to do so from Chinese banks providing risky or underpriced loans, then Chinese regulators have an obligation to step in,” Peter Fuhrman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of China First Capital tells VOA in an emailed response.

Others see a deeper message about Xi Jinping’s view on the role that private companies should serve broader national goals.

Howie says the probe challenges assumptions about the role of private enterprises in China.

“If anyone ever thought these companies were truly private in the sense of being independent or beyond government reach. Clearly that was never true,” he says. “Everyone operates at the discretion of the Communist Party, even if you’ve done nothing wrong and clearly even if you are wealthy.”
…

China let through the first shipments of beef from the United States in 14 years on Friday, after the two nations agreed to resume the trade in May, state media reported.

The imports were brought in by Cofco Meat Holdings Ltd from U.S. meat processor Tyson Foods Inc., China National Radio (CNR) reported on Friday, citing Beijing Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau.

China officially allowed U.S. beef imports from Tuesday this week after the two sides settled the conditions for exports last week.

Under the new rule, boneless and bone-in beef from cattle under 30 months of age will be eligible for imports. Beef destined for China must also be from cattle that can be traced to its birth farm, according to the rule.

Chinese importers are racing to bring in American beef to meet increasing demand for premium meat in the $2.6 billion beef import market.

Cofco’s imports, the first to have landed in China, will be sold on Cofco’s e-commerce platform Womai.com, according to CNR.

Arrivals of U.S. beef could erode sales of Australian beef in China’s lucrative premium meat market, as U.S. beef is expected to be cheaper because of low grain prices in the nation.
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Demeaning images in advertising of women doing domestic chores or scantily clad act as stubborn obstacles to gender equality, the head of U.N. Women said Thursday, urging the global ad industry to become a weapon for good.

Advertising has the power to create positive portrayals of women and eliminate stereotypes, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of the United Nations’ agency on women, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Mlambo-Ngcuka spoke from France, where she is calling on advertising leaders who are attending the industry’s annual Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity to eliminate stereotypes and commit to gender equality.

“People are more likely to see adverts in their lives than read books,” she said. “It’s a waste if we are not using this opportunity for good.”

​Stereotypes everywhere

Stereotypes of women permeate the globe, she said, be it in nations such as Iceland with high gender equality or those with very little in the way of equal rights, like Yemen.

“Of the many things that we’ve tried to do to obtain gender equality, we are not getting the kind of traction and success that we are looking for, because of the underlying stereotypes and social norms in existence in society,” she said.

“Adverts create a role model that people look up to, even mimic and try to be like,” said the veteran South African politician.

“If they see men in powerful positions most of the time and do not see women and people who look like them … then they think this is not for them.”

Research illustrates issue

Research by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media illustrates the issue, said Philip Thomas, chief executive of the annual advertising event in Cannes, who also participated in the interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

One in 10 female characters in advertising is shown in sexually revealing clothing, six times the number of male characters, he said.

Of characters portrayed as intelligent, such as doctors or scientists, men are 62 percent more likely than women to play those roles, he said. Women are 48 percent more likely to be shown in the kitchen, he said.

Creative teams at advertising agencies are predominantly male, and just 11 percent of creative directors around the world are female, he said.

The industry can make an effort to mentor women, employ and promote more female creative teams and reward work that promotes positive images, he said.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said she welcomed efforts such as one in Berlin, where the city’s ruling coalition has agreed on a ban on degrading or sexist advertising.

An expert committee will examine and prevent discriminatory advertising on both privately and publicly owned advertising billboards and hoardings.

Opposition parties in Berlin say such a ban infringes on free speech.

“When it’s so much that is against us, I think we are allowed sometimes to make some extreme measures even if there’s a controversy,” she said. “Let’s have the discussion.”
…

Minnesota’s government and businesses will continue to engage with Cuba in the areas they can, like agricultural trade, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s partial rollback of the detente, Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith said on Thursday.

The first U.S. state representative to make an official visit to Communist-run Cuba since Trump’s announcement on Friday, Smith said authorities there were worried about the setback to bilateral relations.

Leading a bipartisan trade delegation from Minnesota, she said she was therefore glad to carry the message that there was still plenty of support for continuing to normalize relations.

“There is no denying the actions Trump took last Friday are a real setback,” Smith, a Democrat, said in an interview in the gardens of Havana’s iconic Hotel Nacional. “But the important thing to me is that there is bipartisan support at the federal level for normalizing and modernizing our relationship.”

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, in May led a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, to introduce legislation to lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.

Minnesota is one of the largest U.S. farming states, and Smith’s delegation included its agriculture commissioner and the head of its corn growers association. The delegation hopes to improve ties with and promote exports to Cuba.

U.S. farm groups have been particularly critical of the decision by Trump, a Republican, to retreat from Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s opening toward Cuba, saying it could derail huge growth in agricultural exports that totaled $221 million last year.

U.S. law exempts food from a decades-old embargo on U.S. trade with Cuba, although cumbersome rules on executing transactions have made deals difficult and costly.

While Trump’s new Cuba policy does not directly target agriculture, it damages improved relations, the farm groups say.

Trump ordered tighter restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and a clampdown on U.S. business dealings with the island’s military, which manages much of the economy.

The Minnesota delegation met this week with officials of the Cuban ministries of foreign affairs and agriculture, while also visiting a cooperative and local food markets.

But the tour did not include the usual trip to the Mariel port and special development zone, which Cuba hopes will attract foreign investment and become a major shipping hub in the Caribbean. It is controlled by a military-affiliated company.

“In Minnesota we don’t have a lot of cocoa or coffee or pineapples, but we do have a lot of corn and beans,” Smith said. “We need each others’ products.”

Cuba invited the Minnesota delegation to a trade show later in the year, Smith said, while Minnesota invited Cuban officials to visit.

“I am very hopeful all of those things will lead us to a place where we can move forward.”
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JetSmart, a low-cost airline set to launch this year in Chile, said on Thursday it will offer one-way tickets for less than $2, as the nation’s passenger air market becomes increasingly competitive.

“We will have 30,000 tickets for 1,000 pesos ($1.50) per one-way trip plus taxes, to fly within Chile … in 2017,” JetSmart, owned by Indigo Partners, an airline-focused U.S. investment fund Indigo Partners, said on its website.

Indigo Partners has already carved out a niche in ultra-low-cost airlines and owns Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris and part of Denver-based Frontier Airlines.

Indigo is known for unbundled, or a la carte, fares that carry cheap base prices but charge additional fees for extras, such as carry-on bags too big to fit under the seat and advance seat assignments.

In February, Indigo announced that JetSmart would operate three Airbus A320s in Chile in 2017, and another six in 2018.

While the company will focus on domestic routes, it will eye opportunities for regional expansion once established in Chile, Indigo managing partner Bill Franke said at the time.

Chile’s airline market is dominated by LATAM Airlines, Latin America’s largest carrier, with a smaller share taken by established low-cost carrier Sky.

LATAM, which has been facing increasing pressure from low-cost airlines throughout the region, is rolling out a partial low-cost model this year.

Low-cost carrier Viva Air launched in Peru in May, low-cost airline Flybondi is set to launch later this year in Argentina, and Norwegian Air is set to launch long-haul, low-cost routes from Europe to Buenos Aires early next year.
…

A booming plastics and packaging industry in Asia – including China – is being driven by rising incomes and consumption, with analysts saying a growing middle class will add to the rise in plastics demand across the region. But it comes along with a rising environmental alarm over plastic pollution in rivers and oceans.

Online plastics industry websites paint a picture of growth and trade and investment worth billions of dollars to Asian economies.

Robust plastics industry

China has been a regional leader in plastics production rising over the past six decades to capture more than a 20 percent share of global plastics production. Southeast Asia accounts for a further 20 percent of global output.

Economists at Australia’s ANZ Bank say global plastics consumption has roughly tripled over the past 20 years.

“In developing markets, population growth, rising disposable incomes, urbanization, and changing lifestyles will drive this demand even further, particularly for plastic packaging, building and construction, automotive and health care industries,” they said in a recent report.

Vietnam has reported an average growth of 18 percent in the plastics industry, with bags a leading export.

Within the 10 member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) plastics and plastic products netted the region almost $40 billion in export revenues in 2013.

Thailand is a regional leader in plastics per capita consumption of plastics at 40 kilograms. Malaysia reports 35 kilograms per person and Indonesia is at 17 kilograms per person.

Bad for environment

But the plastics and food packaging industries have a dark side. Plastic pollution in rivers and oceans has at times creating floating islands, and with floating debris and micro-plastics ingested by marine life.

In February, United Nations Environment “declared war on plastics pollution”, launching an “unprecedented” campaign targeting sources of marine litter, micro-plastics in cosmetics and excessive waste of single-use plastics by 2022.

A research paper published in the Nature Communications journal by the Ocean Cleanup – a Dutch Foundation, said between 1.15 and 2.41 million metric tons of plastic waste entered the oceans each year. “The top 20 polluting rivers, mostly in Asia, account for 67 percent of the global total,” the journal read.

China’s Yangtze River reported “considerably higher plastic concentrations” than any other sampled river worldwide” dumping 330,000 metric tons of plastic into the East China Sea. India’s Ganges river is also of major concern to environmentalists.

The U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently warned unless steps are taken to curb the pollution, plastics could outweigh fish by 2050.

Environmentalists estimate more than eight million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean, impacting ecosystems, killing around one million sea birds, some 100,000 sea mammals and millions of fish.

A U.N. Oceans Conference in early June called on nations to take steps on plastics consumption with China, Thailand, and Indonesia and the Philippines committing to reduce plastics consumption.

Thailand’s difficult task

Penchom Saetang, director of Thai–based Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH), said reducing Thai consumption of plastics will be a challenge.

“In my opinion, it’s very difficult because the Thai people are very familiar with the easy going way, easy to use plastics because in Thailand, Thailand is a country that consumers – we have a lot of food and we need plastic bags in every aspect of consumption. So to decrease the plastic is very, very difficult”, Penchom told VOA.

The government in Bangkok has sent out a 20 year strategy for tackling the problem.

But Greenpeace Thailand director, Tara Buakamsri, said although the Thai government has set out a plastic debris management plan, they should now focus on specific goals.

“On the one hand they are looking at a very holistic approach on how to deal with plastic waste. In the other hand they are missing something that is very important – they don’t have a specific target for reduction. It has to set a very ambitious target for this but they maybe it’s something I see missing from the plan,” Tara said.

 Food industry

New Zealand based environmental activist Anna Dawson spent three months in the Philippines in 2016. She cycled 2,000 kilometers on a bamboo bike scouring and cleaning beaches of plastics and supporting local communities to reduce plastics use.

Dawson says the food industry should be a target to reduce plastics use.

“The change has to start with food and how we go about eating food – that was probably from the beach cleanups the most clear statistic that came through whether it be compostable packaging or just encouraging people to eat more fresh fruit and veggies – market shopping instead of supermarket shopping,” Dawson told VOA.

Dawson said government policies should focus on reducing plastics production.
…

There’s good news for pesto lovers.

The airport in Genoa, Italy, home of the famous sauce, is allowing passengers to take pesto with them on flights, providing they make a small donation of less than a dollar to the Flying Angels charity, which helps provide money for sick children to be flown overseas for treatment. Travelers giving donations will get a special sticker to put on their jar of pesto.

Since June 1, when the program started, some 500 jars of the basil, cheese, pine nut and olive oil sauce have already been allowed to pass through security, airport officials said.

 

“We consider it an amazing result”, airport press officer Nur El Gawohary told The Independent.

There are a few rules. Passengers can only take a 500-gram jar or two 250-gram jars, they must be flying directly from Genoa, and the pesto must be from Genoa.

Jars are scanned by a special X-ray machine before being allowed on board.

Airport officials say the idea came to them after having seized hundred of jars of pesto from travelers trying to take a little taste of Genoa back with them.

“Every year we were confiscating hundreds of pesto jars at security control, and throwing them away,” El Gawohary says. “It was a waste of food and an annoyance for our passengers. So we started to think about how we could allow people traveling with hand baggage only to take pesto with them.”
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European Union leaders open a two-day summit in Brussels Thursday to address everything from Britain’s planned exit from the regional economic bloc to the resurging economy.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s remarks at the two-day meeting are expected to include reassurances about the futures of the three million citizens of other EU countries currently living in Britain.

Together with the future of more than 1 million British citizens living elsewhere in the EU, the issue is one of the major topics the two sides must agree on as part of negotiations that began earlier this week.

After May speaks Thursday night, the rest of the leaders will meet without her to discuss their side of the Brexit process that was triggered by a British referendum one year ago and is set to finish by the end of March 2019.

The EU summit will also tackle migration, renewing sanctions against Russia and efforts to combat online extremism.
…

Every 45 seconds or so, a neatly wrapped VanHeusen dress shirt destined for a J.C. Penney store in the United States drops off a new production line at a factory north of Vietnam’s capital.

Next door, rice paddies the size of 40 football fields have been filled for the $320 million textile mill which Hong Kong based TAL Group plans to build so it won’t need to import cloth for the shirts.

As elsewhere in Vietnam, there has been no sign of an impact on investment plans since U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal which had been expected to benefit Vietnam more than any country.

In fact, foreign direct investment rose 6 percent year-on-year to $6.15 billion in the first five months of 2017.

Cheap labor is an obvious lure for foreign investors. TAL’s chief executive, Roger Lee, said Vietnam also scores highly on middle management, work ethic and government policy.

Though the removal of U.S. import tariffs under a TPP pact would have been a bonus, Lee said he had no second thoughts about investment plans after Trump pulled out of the deal soon after taking office.

“Vietnam is a very compelling proposition,” said Lee.

The wage for garment workers is $250 a month in Vietnam, compared to $700 in China, where TAL recently shut a factory for cost reasons.

The removal of tariffs of up to about 30 percent would have made clothing firms particular beneficiaries of the TPP deal, which had been forecast to add 28 percent to Vietnam’s exports and 11 percent to its gross domestic product over a decade.

Other clothing firms were also not discouraged by the scrapping of the deal. Lawsgroup’s chief executive, Bosco Law, told Reuters it was now seeking to expand from its three factories with 10,000 workers.

Vietnam’s trade surplus over the United States – the sixth biggest last year – has come under scrutiny as a result of Trump’s “America First” policy to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. But it hasn’t discouraged investment.

“We have started working for a couple of American manufacturing companies that contacted us after the TPP’s demise and that are willing to relocate part of their operations from China,” said Oscar Mussons, Senior Associate at Dezan Shira and Associates professional services firm.

Cheaper than China

Vietnam has been a big winner as Chinese manufacturing costs have risen and China itself is now one of the three biggest investors in Vietnam.

The TPP deal would have further improved access to U.S. and other markets for manufacturers based there, but also bound Vietnam to reforms meaning everything from opening up food import markets to strengthening labour rights.

Investment and Planning Minister Nguyen Chi Dung told Reuters that Vietnam planned to go ahead with its commitments under TPP anyway – both to strengthen the economy and because of other trade deals, such as one with the European Union. The 11 remaining TPP members are also still trying to keep it alive.

Dung said Vietnam had a target of $10 billion a year in foreign direct investment over the next five years — compared to nearly $16 billion in 2016 alone — as it sought a change in the type of investment it wants to draw.

“Before we focused on quantity, now we switch to quality,” Dung said. “Higher technology, higher added value, less use of energy, less use of raw materials, less cheap labor.”

That is where Vietnam has a greater challenge. It lags competitors for top skills. The proportion of secondary school leavers going on to further studies is a third higher in China and over three times higher in South Korea.

“Vietnam is still a very attractive country, but companies might not invest as much as expected because they find the employees lack the skills for that added value,” Mussons said. “Companies have been too focused on reducing costs and not enough on training.”
…

Military conflicts and growing threats around the world continue to underpin demand for weapons, but industry and government leaders from the United States, Europe, Russia and the Middle East say they don’t see a huge near-term spike in arms orders.

Executives report being busier than ever at this year’s Paris Airshow, the oldest and biggest aerospace expo in the world, which featured aerial acrobatics by Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 fighter jet.

But they caution that foreign arms sales take years to complete, and NATO governments must get through lengthy budget and bureaucratic processes before they can raise military spending to meet a NATO target for members to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense.

No big spurt seen

“We’re seeing some growth, but I like to be pragmatic. I’m not seeing a big tick up in defense spending across the board,” Leanne Caret, who heads Boeing’s defense business, told Reuters in an interview. Her division generates about 40 percent of its revenues overseas, a big change from just several years ago.

Boeing officials expect steady gains in weapons sales, but warn against expectations for any kind of “gold rush” despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to boost military spending, saying there may be more of a shift in what platforms and weapons programs are in demand.

Recent increases in tensions between Russia and the United States have raised concerns about another arms race, but top officials in both countries agree that there will not be a mad rush to bulk up on weapons.

Moscow’s top arms trade official, Dmitry Shugaev, told reporters at the show that Russian weapon makers remained competitive despite Western sanctions, but the cyclical nature of the business and budget constraints are dampening prospects for a big surge in global arms sales.

He also expressed skepticism that NATO members would rapidly increase their military budgets, despite pledging to move toward the 2 percent goal.

Trump position

Trump’s public declarations that NATO members are not pulling their weight may have had some impact. Lockheed Martin’s Aeronautics business leader, Orlando Carvalho, said national security budgets and military systems’ demand outside the United States are beginning to increase, “especially with the focus that the president has put on NATO.”

In 2016, total world military expenditure rose 0.4 percent to $1.69 trillion, according the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The European Union’s economic and financial affairs commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, also cited that risk, warning that European countries needed to match political pledges to boost military spending with actual resource commitments.

“There is now a window of opportunity for investing more in European defense … but as with all windows, a window closes if you don’t go through it,” he said.

Gradual increases in Europe

Germany and other European countries are boosting military spending, concerned about terrorism and Russia’s increasingly assertive military stance after its annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, but the increases are likely to be more gradual than dramatic.

In the missile defense arena, Western concerns about rapid advances in technology by North Korea, China and Iran, as well as Russia’s increased military activities, are driving orders for a range of defensive systems, according to U.S. and European executives.

“The threat is absolutely increasing and it’s increasing rapidly,” said Tim Cahill, vice president of air and missile defense systems at Lockheed. “In every region around the world, the level of interest in integrated air and missile defense has been going up in the last few months.”

Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems, said he was meeting with officials from countries that had not shown any interest in missile defense systems just four or five years ago.

“Back then, they didn’t see a ballistic missile threat, or they didn’t see Russia as a threat, but now that has changed,” he said.
…

Webster Allen Two Hawk Jr. had not had a drink in six weeks – one of the conditions for getting a bed at the Rapid City, South Dakota rescue mission. But the 55-year-old Sicangu Lakota artist had received some bad news that cold day in March: All of his artwork had been stolen.

In his distress, Two Hawk got drunk with friends in a downtown park. When he returned to the mission to sleep, he was turned away.

“So, my brother sat down by some of those big electrical boxes near Memorial Park, probably to get a break from the wind,” said Castle LaCroix Kelly. “And that’s where they found him the next morning. Frozen to death in the snow,” she said.

South Dakota is home to nine federally recognized tribes, and its reservations are among the poorest in the country. Tribal members flock to Rapid City in search of jobs, but often end up on the streets.

The Black Hills Regional Homeless Coalition makes annual counts of Rapid City’s homeless population to gauge funding needs. This year, it counted more than 240, most of them Native American. But the numbers likely are much higher.

“We are unable to count those who are in jail, detox, living in hotels, doubled up, or ‘couch surfing.’ All of those situations are still situations of homelessness, and those individuals are living in situations that are far from appropriate, safe or ‘housed,’” said Anna Quinn, executive director of the HOPE Center, a faith-based group serving Rapid City’s homeless.

Mean streets

Shane Boudreaux, Sigangu Lakota, has been homeless several times, and knows firsthand how rough the streets can be.

In 2002, the National Coalition of the Homeless rated Rapid City the third most dangerous U.S. city for the homeless—especially Native Americans. Cut off from family and culture, they are vulnerable to alcohol, drugs and violence. Sometimes they are harassed by the locals. And sometimes their lives are cut short.

“One of my friends died here just a few weeks ago,” said Boudreaux. “They found him floating in Rapid Creek. Police said he was riding his bike and must have hit a railing and fallen off the bridge into the water.”

Homeless women are particularly at risk, said one Lakota woman who asked not to be named.

“I’ve been raped. I’ve had things thrown at me. I’ve had my purse ripped off my shoulder. I’ve been left behind by my boyfriend after getting beaten. I’ve been called names.”

She said she doesn’t believe authorities take these crimes seriously, and said local police are harder on Native Americans than other groups.

A 2015 study on race disparities in Rapid City policing showed more Native Americans are arrested than other group in the city, and that police were more likely to use force against Native Americans than any other race.

Rapid City Police Chief Karl Jegeris admitted to age-old tensions between Native Americans and the city’s population, but denied that his officers are heavy-handed.

“I think that in comparison to other cities that I’ve been to, I would say we’re a much safer city for our homeless population. We have a specialized street crimes unit that patrols downtown and park areas. We get to know the homeless on a first name basis and get along very well with them generally,” he said. “But there are certainly exceptions.”

When Native American homeless are arrested, Jegeris said, it is usually for low-level crimes, such as drinking in public or disorderly conduct. But more serious conflicts sometimes arise.

“Due to historic and generational trauma issues, there is a lot of distrust in the Native American community, especially toward authority figures,” he said. “And unfortunately, law enforcement is the most visible sign of government authority. So, we run into conflict somewhat regularly when we are just trying to help ensure general safety for that person.”

Investing in tribes

Rapid City is looking to expand services and shelters for the homeless. But the National American Indian Housing Council (NAIHC) believes the fundamental problem is the shortage of suitable housing on reservations.

“It’s a lot harder to get capital investment in these communities,” said NAIHC executive director Tony Waters. “Building homes on reservations is more expensive because of the lack of infrastructure in these areas. So, the budget cuts we’ve seen proposed by the administration this year certainly would be bad news for Indian Country.”

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides tribes with $650 million in housing grants, under obligation by historic treaties. President Donald Trump has proposed cutting that amount by $50 million, which Waters said would devastate communities already living in poverty.

Back in Rapid City, Anna Quinn worries about the fate of programs like the HOPE Center.

“Any reduction in budget would also be detrimental to those who are working so hard to help the homeless get out of their situations,” she said.
…