The speaker of Brazil’s lower house vowed Wednesday to fight any changes President Michel Temer makes to a labor reform bill passed by the Senate, highlighting new tension between longtime political allies.

The speaker, Rodrigo Maia, would replace Temer if Congress allows the Supreme Court to move ahead with a corruption charge against the president, a vote that Maia has said he wants to have this week.

The bill, a business-friendly measure modernizing labor laws dating from the 1940s, passed by a wide margin in the Senate on Tuesday following approval in the lower house and will be sent to Temer to be signed into law.

Given that any changes in the Senate would have sent the bill back to the lower house for fresh debate, Temer assured senators Tuesday that he would use a decree to tweak the legislation as they suggested after he signed it into law.

Maia rejected any such arrangement.

“The lower house will not accept any change to the law. Any [presidential decree] will not be recognized by the House,” the speaker said in a Twitter post.

Graft scheme

Prosecutors charged Temer last month in a graft scheme involving JBS SA, the world’s biggest meatpacker. Executives said the president took bribes from the company in exchange for resolving tax matters and facilitating loans from state-run banks.

Temer has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The presidential press office said in a statement that Maia has remained loyal to Temer since becoming speaker last year.

“The presidential palace rebuffs the attempts to create a false crisis between the executive and legislative power without connection to facts and reality,” the statement said.

Under Brazilian law, two-thirds of the lower house of Congress must vote to allow a criminal charge against a sitting president to move to the Supreme Court. The vote could happen Friday or possibly be delayed until early August, after a congressional recess.
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Zambia’s parliament has imposed a 90-day state of emergency, after the president last week declared the need for one. The situation is likely to deepen the political crisis in the country, and analysts say it also could scare away much needed investors to the copper-dependent, landlocked nation.

The president called for the state of emergency after a fire destroyed the capital’s main market earlier this month. He described the fire as an arson attack by “a few unpatriotic citizens” and said, in a speech to the nation, that this and other fires were “premeditated acts, which if left unchecked could have serious socio-economic consequences capable of drawing the country backwards.”

Parliament unanimously passed the measure Tuesday. No opposition lawmakers voted, as 48 of them were suspended last month for boycotting a speech by President Edgar Lungu. Their leader, Hakainde Hichilema, has been in jail since April, facing a treason charge. The few opposition who remained Tuesday boycotted the vote.

Opposition spokesman Charles Kakoma says his opposition United Party for National Development would have voted against the measure, which he says limits citizens’ essential freedoms. Additionally, he says he fears it will scare away visitors.

“People obviously, investors and even tourists will be scared to come to a country that has just declared a threatened state of emergency,” he told VOA. “They are not sure about their investments, and about their safety once they are in Zambia.”

Falling copper prices and an energy crisis had already sent Zambia’s economic growth downward in 2015. That was well before the disputed 2016 poll that pitted Lungu against Hichilema and led to today’s bitter political landscape.

Martyn Davies, managing director of emerging markets and Africa at Deloitte, says local business owners expressed heightened concern to him during his recent visit to Zambia. He notes, though, that Zambia has never quite lived up to its promise.

“The country always had this perennial word which is used for many countries in the region, ‘potential,’” he told VOA from Johannesburg. “The potential doesn’t quite trickle down, didn’t quite result into real strong robust growth and real trickle down economics, i.e. creating a competitive private sector.

“And I think this is something which a small economy — a small, arguably vulnerable economy like Zambia, landlocked as it is, dependent on a single economy source — you have to be stable. You can’t have these sort of swings in policy and fiery political rhetoric. That just undermines the confidence of capital, both domestic and foreign, in your economy,” said Davies.

Analyst Nicole Beardsworth, of the Johannesburg-based Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, notes that parliament enacted Article 31 of the constitution, the milder “Declaration Relating to Threatened Emergency,” instead of Article 30, “Declaration of Public Emergency.” She says the effect is the same, however, and Lungu’s soft-pedaling of the situation could be making things worse.

“He’s trying to play a very dangerous game, which is he is imposing legislation that curbs, or has the potential to curb, the freedoms of Zambians,” she told VOA. “But he is trying to sell it as not being a state of emergency, and not legislation that will curb the freedom of Zambians. I don’t think that anyone really believes him in the statements that he made where he said Zambia is a democracy and people’s rights and freedoms will be respected. Because to be quite honest, his behavior over the last 18 months has proven that to not be the case.”

A spokesman for Zambia’s president told VOA last week that the emergency measure is not intended to curb liberties, but to keep Zambians safe.

Lungu now has three months to apply his new powers to solve the case of the fire that gutted the country’s busiest market and destroyed the livelihoods of some 1,900 traders. Officials have estimated it will take one year and cost $20 million to rebuild.

 
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Iraq says it will offer new oil and gas exploration rights as it looks to boost energy revenues to fund its war against the Islamic State group and shore up its finances amid low oil prices.

 

Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi said late Tuesday that his ministry plans to put nine border exploration blocks up for bidding by international energy companies. Five are shared with Iran, three with Kuwait and one is in the Persian Gulf.

 

He did not provide a timetable.

 

Iraq has the world’s fourth largest oil reserves. This year, it added 10 billion barrels, bringing its total reserves up to 153.1 billion. Low oil prices have taken a heavy toll, as some 95 percent of the country’s revenues come from the energy sector.

 

 
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When Janet Yellen delivers her testimony on the Federal Reserve’s semiannual report to Congress on Wednesday, investors may listen as much for clues to her own future – and the Fed’s – as they will to what she says about interest rate policy.

The Fed chair is likely to repeat a message she has been sending about rates: That further gradual increases will follow the three rate hikes the Fed has made since December. She is expected to say that even though inflation has slowed further below the Fed’s target level, the job market appears healthy enough to justify slightly higher borrowing costs.

But lawmakers may prod Yellen about her own plans and about the potential reshaping of the Fed itself resulting from a forthcoming influx of new board members selected by President Donald Trump. During last year’s presidential campaign, Trump was critical of the central bank for its low-rate policies, which he said were helping Democrats, and for its efforts to enact tougher regulations on banks in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

On Monday, the administration announced that it had chosen Randal Quarles, a Treasury Department official under two Republican presidents, to serve as vice chairman for supervision, the Fed’s top bank regulatory post.

Including the post Quarles would fill, the Fed has three vacancies on the seven-member board. Trump has yet to announce his other choices, though at least one person –  Marvin Goodfriend, an economist, a former staffer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and now a professor at Carnegie Mellon University – is considered a leading candidate for one of the spots.  All of Trump’s nominations will require Senate approval.

Yellen so far has deflected questions about whether she would accept a second four-term term as chairman if Trump asked her to remain after her term ends in February. But lawmakers may try to glean some insight into her own wishes and about how the Fed could potentially change under the influence of Trump’s nominees.

On Wednesday, Yellen will address the House Financial Services Committee and on Thursday the Senate Banking Committee. She will be testifying on the Fed’s Monetary Policy Report, with one wrinkle this time: For the first time, the Fed released the report five days before Yellen’s testimony. In the past, the two had occurred the same day.

The central bank explained the change by saying Fed officials wanted to give lawmakers more time to review the semiannual monetary report before Yellen addressed questions about it.

The report said the Fed “expects that the ongoing strength of the economy will warrant gradual increases in the federal funds rate,” referring to its benchmark short-term rate.

The Fed had slashed that rate to a record low near zero in December 2008 to combat the worst economic downturn since the 1930s – and kept it there for seven years until nudging it up modestly in December 2015. It then left the rate unchanged for another year until raising it again in December of last year, followed by increases in March and June this year. Even so, the rate remains in a still-low range between 1 percent and 1.25 percent.

The Fed’s report noted that officials had affirmed at their June meeting that they foresee a total of three rate increases in 2017, if the economy performs as they expect. If so, that would mean one additional increase before year’s end. The Fed also expects to raise rates three times in 2018 if economic conditions evolve as they expect.

This week, Yellen will surely face questions about sticking to that pace, given that while job growth has been solid, inflation has slowed this year rather than edging closer to the Fed’s 2 percent target.

In a speech Tuesday, Lael Brainard, a Fed board member who has often argued for a go-slow approach to rate hikes, said she wanted to “monitor inflation developments carefully and to move cautiously on further increases” in the Fed’s key rate.

Brainard suggested that she would support a move soon to begin paring the Fed’s $4.5 trillion balance sheet, which swelled to five times its previous size after the Fed bought Treasury and mortgage bonds to hold down long-term borrowing rates in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

At its June meeting, the Fed signaled that it could begin shrinking its balance sheet later this year, a step that could put gradual upward pressure on longer-term rates for such items as home mortgages.
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Japanese car parts company Takata on Tuesday recalled another 2.7 million air bags that it previously thought were safe.

The recall affects certain Ford, Mazda and Nissan cars from the 2005 through 2012 model years.

Takata’s air bags are inflated by a chemical — ammonium nitrate — in emergency situations, but it can deteriorate in conditions of high humidity and heat. The company added a desiccant to stop the chemical inflators from degrading and thought they had then been made safe.

However, tests by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board showed that Takata air bags were still subject to inflating without warning, expanding with great force and sending metal parts flying. Previous problems with Takata air bags have killed at least 17 people and injured more than 180.

Takata, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, has already recalled 42 million cars to replace the defective inflators, the largest automobile-related recall in U.S. history. But the latest recall raised doubts about the safety of other Takata inflators. The company has agreed to recall all original equipment inflators without a drying agent in phases by the end of 2018. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave Takata until the end of 2019 to prove that inflators with the drying agents are safe, or they must be recalled as well.

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said federal regulators have to act faster to determine whether all Takata air bag inflators are safe.

“We certainly can’t afford to wait until the December 2019 deadline. … If even more are found to be defective, it will take us from being the biggest recall ever to something that could become mind-boggling,” Nelson said.
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Three years ago, at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, Nigerian soldiers stopped all fishing activities in the country’s section of Lake Chad. Militants had infiltrated the ranks of the fishermen, the army said, and were using the guise to fund arms purchases and launch surprise attacks on innocent people.

The local fishermen’s union said it understood the army’s actions but pushed for an easing of the ban, because its members had no other way to earn a living in the largely dry and remote area.

Relief came to the local fishermen over the weekend, when the Nigerian Army commander in charge of the area, Major General Ibrahimn Attahiru, addressed the fishermen and said they could return to work based on some guidelines the army had reached with their leaders.

Fishermen support changes

The president of the Lake Chad Fishermen Association, Alhaji Abubakar Gamande, confirmed the development in an interview Monday with VOA’s Hausa Service and pledged that fishermen will follow the new rules.

“Based on what happened in the past, we will not continue to operate as we used to, where everyone did as he deemed fit,” he said. “We and the army will watch the activities of the fishermen and anyone whose work requires entering the lake. We will not let him operate as he wishes. We will screen all our members. We have to know where they are coming from and where they are going.”

In normal times, the fishermen can still make a decent living off Lake Chad despite the lake’s radical shrinkage over the past 50 years, which scientists believe is a result of overuse and shifting rainfall patterns brought on by climate change.

Local authorities back in control

But Boko Haram’s takeover of northeastern Nigeria severely disrupted a fishing industry that draws traders from Nigeria’s Lake Chad neighbors  Chad, Cameroon and Niger  and enables many locals to support themselves. By early 2015, the well-armed militants had seized effective control of the areas along the lake, and there was little the fishermen could do to stop Boko Haram activity.

Local authorities are now back in control, following a 30-month regional offensive by the army and a multi-national task force that includes soldiers from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin.

Gamande was full of praise for the army, which he said has worked tirelessly to restore peace to the area.

Quiet on new rules

Asked how the new rules will prevent Boko Haram activity, the union leader said he cannot reveal all the details for security reasons.

“On our own part as a union we have laid down guidelines that enable us to know who comes for fishing, those who buy, and those who come to sell,” Gamande said.

“We will do all we can to ensure that what happened in the past will never happen again. Enough is enough.”
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The former chief executive officer of the failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox pleaded not guilty to charges that he stole hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the virtual currency.

French-born Mark Karpeles appeared Tuesday in Tokyo District Court at the start of his trial on embezzlement and data manipulation charges.  Prosecutors have accused the 32-year-old of manipulating Mt. Gox’s data and moving millions of Bitcoins into his personal account before the exchange shut down in February 2014.

Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy after losing about 850,000 bitcoins, then worth close to half a billion U.S. dollars.  The exchange blamed the loss on hackers who exploited a security flaw.  The company later claimed it found about 200,000 of the missing bitcoins in another location.

The collapse of Mt. Gox, which handled much of the world’s Bitcoin trading activity, angered investors and damaged the reputation of the alternative currency.  The scandal prompted Japanese lawmakers to enact laws regulating the use of bitcoins and other digital-based currencies.
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U.S. President Donald Trump plans to nominate former Treasury official Randal Quarles to be the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, the White House said on Monday.

If confirmed by the Senate, Quarles would be the first vice chair of supervision at the Fed, a role created after the 2008 financial crisis but never filled during the Obama administration.

Quarles is viewed as an industry-friendly figure who will likely listen to banks that have complained about the impact of regulations implemented since the financial meltdown. His nomination has been widely expected since April.

Former Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo effectively ran banking supervision until he stepped down in February, overseeing a strict implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and administering rigorous “stress tests” annually to banks on how prepared they are to withstand unexpected shocks.

Quarles currently runs a private investment firm that he founded, the Cynosure Group, from Salt Lake City, Utah. He was previously a partner at private equity firm the Carlyle Group.

He was also under secretary for domestic finance at the Treasury under President George W. Bush and was the U.S. executive director of the International Monetary Fund.

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in March 2016, Quarles and Lawrence Goodman, another former U.S. Treasury official, argued against breaking up big banks because it would risk damaging the wider economy. He has also talked about refining Obama-era financial rules, introduced after the financial crisis.

Quarles will be a central figure in pushing the Trump administration’s plans to loosen the leash put on Wall Street banks following the crisis.

Trump laid out his plans last month but he needs officials at key regulatory posts to carry out his agenda. He has gradually been nominating heads of financial agencies, but only Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton have been approved by Congress.

Other agencies are either awaiting presidential picks or are operating under “acting” chiefs. Others have leaders appointed by Trump’s Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama.
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President Donald Trump’s administration is postponing and plans to drop a program to provide visas for foreign entrepreneurs who launch companies in the United States.

The visa program, proposed last year by former President Barack Obama, was intended to give entrepreneurs who are not eligible for other types of visas permission to live in the U.S. for 30 months to get their enterprises up and running.

Leading figures in the technology industry had lobbied strongly for the visa program as a way for immigrants to come to the U.S. to start companies, contribute to the economy and create more jobs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has estimated that nearly 3,000 entrepreneurs would be eligible for such visas each year.

The so-called startup visa program was to have taken effect next week, but DHS will issue a notice Tuesday postponing implementation of the International Entrepreneur Rule until March 14, 2018.

A draft of the notice posted online by the Federal Register said DHS plans to rescind the rule, but is requesting public comments before issuing a final decision.

The program would permit non-U.S. citizens to stay in the country for renewable 30-month terms if they have $250,000 in capital investments or win $100,000 in government grants to support their proposals.

The president of the National Venture Capital Association, Bobby Franklin, said Monday the administration’s decision was “extremely disappointing.”

“At a time when countries around the world are doing all they can to attract and retain talented individuals to come to their shores to build and grow innovative companies,” Franklin said, “the Trump administration is signaling its intent to do the exact opposite.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the DHS, has said it decided to delay the rule to ensure it is consistent with an executive order Trump issued during his first days in office, limiting federal officials’ authority to grant permission for foreign nationals to remain in the U.S., except on a case-by-case basis.
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Tanzanian President John Magufuli said on Monday he has signed into law new mining bills which require the government to own at least a 16 percent stake in mining projects.

The laws, which also increase royalties tax on gold and other minerals, were passed by parliament last week despite opposition from the mining industry body.

Magufuli reiterated on Monday that no new mining licenses would be issued until Tanzania “puts things in order” and that the government would review all existing mining licenses with foreign investors.

“We must benefit from our God-given minerals and that is why we must safeguard our natural resource wealth to ensure we do not end up with empty mining pits,” Magufuli told a rally in his home village in Chato district, northwestern Tanzania.

The president has sent shock-waves through the mining community with a series of actions since his election in 2015, which he says are aimed at distributing revenue to the Tanzanian people.

The new mining laws, which were fast-tracked through parliament, raise royalties tax for gold, copper, silver and platinum exports to six percent from four percent.

They also give the government the right to tear up and renegotiate contracts for natural resources like gas or minerals, and remove the right to international arbitration.

“I would like to thank parliament for making the legislative changes. I signed the bills into law the same day Parliament concluded its session on July 5,” Magufuli said.

Passage of the new legislation also followed months of  wrangling between the government and the country’s biggest gold miner, London-listed Acacia Mining Plc, over mining contracts after Magufuli decided in March to ban exports of gold and copper concentrates to push for the construction of a domestic mineral smelter.

Magufuli said on Monday that talks between Tanzania and Barrick Gold Corp., Acacia’s majority owner, would begin in two days to try to resolve allegations of tax evasion against Acacia.

Tanzania accused Acacia of tax evasion in 2016 in a case that is ongoing.

Acacia, which denies all allegations, said on July 4 it was seeking an adjudicator to resolve its dispute with the Tanzanian government.

Tanzania is also pushing for the mandatory listing of mining companies on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) by August as part of measures aimed at increasing transparency and spreading wealth from the country’s natural resources.

Other major foreign-owned mining companies in Tanzania include AngloGold Ashanti and Petra Diamonds.
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Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted pictures of the first Model 3 sedan to roll off the assembly line.

Tesla board member Ira Ehrenpreis was the first to put down a $1,000 deposit on the Model 3 and gifted the car to Musk for his 46th birthday, Musk said in a tweet.

Musk has high hopes for the $35,000 Model 3, aimed at the mass market, and expects the rollout to help the company deliver five times its current annual sales volume.

Tesla’s shares have taken a beating in the last few weeks, as investors have become increasingly concerned that demand for the company’s existing Model S sedan is weakening.

Musk said in May that some “confused” Tesla buyers considered the new Model 3 as an upgrade to the Model S, hurting orders for the older car.

Registrations for Tesla’s vehicles in California, its largest market, fell 24 percent in April from a year ago, according to data from research firm IHS Markit.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that new registrations of Tesla cars fell to zero in Hong Kong after authorities slashed a tax break for electric vehicles in April.

Last week, Musk said production of the Model 3 would increase exponentially — from 100 cars in August, more than 1,500 in September to 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in December.
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China’s biggest shipping company, state-owned COSCO Shipping Holdings Co., is creating the world’s No. 3 container shipping giant by acquiring rival Orient Overseas (International) Ltd.

Shares in both companies surged Monday following the announcement of the $6.3 billion deal.

A wave of consolidation has created huge competitors in a global shipping industry that is struggling with sluggish trade and depressed prices.

On Monday, COSCO’s shares traded in Hong Kong jumped 4.7 percent while Orient Overseas’ shares soared 19.5 percent.

On its own, COSCO ranks No. 4 globally with 317 ships and 8.4 percent of container traffic, according to Alphaline, an industry database. Adding Orient Overseas would give it market share of 11.7 percent, moving it ahead of Marseilles, France-based CMA CGM Group.

The No. 1 shipper is Denmark’s AP Moeller-Maersk with 643 ships and 16.4 percent of container traffic.

Orient Overseas, with 103 ships, is controlled by the family of former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa.

The transaction is subject to antitrust review by Chinese, European and U.S. authorities, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The filing said COSCO will pay $10.07 per share (HK$78.67), a premium of 38 percent over Orient’s Friday share price on the Hong Kong Exchange. The total price tag for the deal will be $6.3 billion (HK$49.2 billion).

AP Moeller-Maersk acquired Hamburg Sud of Germany in December. CMA CGM bought Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines last year.

Orient Overseas reported a loss of $219.2 million last year. It blamed a glut of capacity, slow growth and rising fuel prices as well as freight rates that sometimes dipped below those seen in 2009 during the financial crisis.
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For a farmer in Brazil’s Amazon, Manoel Freire Camurca was doing pretty well for himself until a local power broker burned down his house and took the surrounding fields he had poured his life into.

Camurca’s eviction eight months ago happened as officials were finalizing his claim to 500 hectares of land in southwestern Amazonas state where he had spent nearly three decades growing corn, sugar and beans.

“I lost everything,” 61-year-old Camurca told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, wiping away tears. “I went into town and when I came back everything was burned and destroyed.”

Half a dozen other small farmers in his village suffered the same fate after a large rancher said he was the rightful owner of the land.

Camurca’s story highlights an increasingly violent environment in parts of rural Brazil which government officials say is fueled by unclear property title deeds, local corruption and a system where competing state agencies work on land regularization.

‘Death in the Countryside’

At least 36 people died in land conflicts in the first five months of this year, according to the Brazil-based Pastoral Land Commission watchdog.

One government official said 2017 had so far been the most violent year for land fights this century.

“Land conflicts in the Amazon have gotten worse,” said Ronaldo Santos, an official with the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), a government body responsible for managing and demarcating rural land.

“Big farm operators have the power to dispense injustice,” Santos told the Thomson Reuters Foundation following a public meeting with hundreds of angry farmers embroiled in land conflicts in Amazonas in northwestern Brazil.  “We have assassinations and death in the countryside.”

Conflicting Titles

Recent violence has led officials from different government agencies and privately owned land registration agents known as cartorios to trade blame over who is responsible for the conflicts.

Across Brazil, land must be registered by cartorios. They maintain property records and transfer deeds in specific regions. There is no single, centralized system for checking who owns what nationwide.

Inherited from Portuguese colonialists, the cartorio system is confusing and widely abused by wealthy land owners, government officials told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

They said unclear property ownership makes it easier for large ranchers to displace small farmers like Camurca.

“The cartorios hold the biggest responsibility for legalizing grilagem [land grabs],” said Miguel Emile, a senior official with Terra Legal, a government program for regularizing small farmers’ land titles in the Amazon.

There are an estimated 5 million landless families in Brazil, according to a 2016 Canadian study. Government officials say they are working to speed-up property allocations for the rural poor who often live on land they do not formally own.

But even lands demarcated and distributed by government officials from INCRA and Terra Legal must be registered at private cartorios to be fully legal, Emile said.

Small farmers often cannot afford cartorio services, he said, and the system itself faces widespread abuse.

Wealthy ranchers can bribe cartorios to register someone else’s land, Emile told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A common scam involves elites legally buying a small piece of property and then having a cartorio register a far larger surrounding area in their name, he said.

As a result of this type of fraud in Para, a neighboring Amazon state, four times more land has been privately registered than the state’s total area, said Jeremy Campbell, an expert on land rights in Brazil at Roger Williams University in the United States.

Trading Blame

Cartorios, however, say they are not responsible for most of the problem, blaming government agencies for weak Amazon property rights and the resulting violence.

“Grilagem is not done by cartorios,” said one cartorio in Amazonas who spoke on condition of anonymity.

His office, which is responsible for maintaining local land records, is full of yellowed, time-worn books of property deeds, along with some digitized documents.

Corruption in government agencies, including INCRA, is a major driver of land scams, the cartorio said, as property owners can bribe officials to hand them swaths of state land.

The government is moving to geocode new property registrations so the land is digitally registered through satellite maps but this process has been slow, he added.

Proving Ownership

Forced evictions in Camurca’s village of Bom Lugar in Boca do Acre municipality exemplify the problems with Brazil’s rural property system.

INCRA had provided Camurca with a certification of possession, known locally as a “posse title.” But the farmer said he couldn’t register this as a formal title with a cartorio as the process of property demarcation had not been finalized.

This meant that despite a government agency granting Camurca rights to the land where he had lived since 1988 he still did not formally own it.

The rancher who Camurca says was behind the burning of his house could not be reached for comment.

The federal prosecutor for Amazonas state said he was investigating house burnings and displacement across Boca do Acre.

Amazonas senior security official, Sergio Fontes, said the violence affecting Camurca and thousands of others across Brazil’s largest state was due to poor management by officials.

“INCRA should resolve the farmers’ disputes with ranchers before distributing lands, otherwise all these problems happen,” Fontes told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “[Officials] have to take responsibility for who was placed there.”

Travel support for this story was provided by the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ).
…

Top French company bosses who have for years lamented their country’s slow pace of reforms at an annual summer gathering in Provence offered glowing praise this year for the first steps taken by newly elected President Emmanuel Macron.

Sixty days after Macron became France’s youngest ever president, the CEOs gathered in the southern town of Aix-en-Provence said they had sensed a radical change in the country’s image abroad.

“The whole world admires France today. There is renewed confidence, optimism about the country,” Patrick Pouyanne, the head of oil major Total, France’s largest company, told reporters.

“What I expect from this government is that it maintains this confidence, this optimism so the French start spending more and companies start investing.”

Although Macron’s government has yet to pass any concrete measures, it outlined its action plan in policy speeches last week, and has begun talks with unions to pass an extensive reform of French labor regulations.

“I think this new president and his government are making an extremely positive start,” Isabelle Kocher of gas utility ENGIE told Reuters at the summit often referred to as a “mini-Davos”.

“They are changing France’s image abroad, I see it everywhere I go, it’s really striking and has happened very quickly,” she said.

“France went from being labeled the sick man of Europe to being seen as the savior of Europe,” a politician who sits on the board of several French companies told Reuters at one of the cafes lining the town’s sunny streets.

Tax cut debates

Even the government’s announcement earlier this week that some tax cuts would be delayed — including exemptions to a wealth tax and the introduction of a flat tax on capital income of 30 percent — did not draw much criticism.

“There are some debates about the government’s tax measures, if they’ll be done now or if it’ll wait because it has no money,” UBS’s head of French operations Jean-Frederic de Leusse told Reuters.

On Sunday, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire seemed to suggest the delays were still the subject of discussions in government.

But when pressed, French CEOs who had in previous gatherings complained loudly about a tax burden which was the EU’s heaviest last year, refused to blame the government.

“Let’s not start criticizing,” Total’s Pouyanne said. “Let’s give them a bit of time. If there were a magic potion, it would have been used a long time ago.”

The CEO of the country’s flagship airline, Air France-KLM, concurred.

“Like all decision-makers, the government has to deal with contradicting demands. Respecting a certain number of European rules, so that our partners can take us more seriously, is important,” Jean-Marc Janaillac told Reuters.

“If the price we have to pay is a slightly delayed timeframe, that doesn’t seem to be a major inconvenience for me compared to its advantages,” he added.

France’s top central bankers agreed the government was right to prioritize deficit reduction over tax cuts so that France can, for the first time in a decade, bring its deficit below the European Union’s 3 percent of GDP ceiling.

ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said France’s respect for the rules would help discussions the government hopes to launch about common budget measures in the euro zone.

“We’re all for tax cuts, but let’s not equate reform with immediate, unfunded tax cuts,” Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau told the conference on Sunday.

“We’ve already paid a heavy price for this kind of liability on the future.”

 
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In 28 years in India’s pharmaceuticals sector, Rajiv Desai has never been busier.

Most of the last six months on his desk calendar is marked green, indicating visits to the 12 plants of Lupin, India’s No. 2 drugmaker, where Desai is a senior quality control executive. Only one day is red — a day off.

That’s what is needed these days to satisfy the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that standards are being met.

“In this sector, you’re only as good as your last inspection,” Desai said in his office in suburban Mumbai.

Often dubbed “the pharmacy of the world,” India is home to the most FDA-approved plants outside of the United States and supplies about 40 percent of the $70 billion worth of generic drugs sold in the country.

Damaged reputation

But sanctions and bans have badly damaged India’s reputation and slowed growth in the $16 billion sector. Drug exports fell in the fiscal year ending in March 2017.

More than 40 plants have been banned by the FDA for issues ranging from data fraud to hygiene since India’s then-largest drugmaker Ranbaxy was pulled up for serious violations in 2008.

Drug companies have spent millions of dollars on training, new equipment and foreign consultants. Yet the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance of the top 20 firms says its members still need at least five more years to get manufacturing standards and data reliability up to scratch.

The case of Lupin shows why.

In the next few months, the FDA is expected to clear Lupin’s Goa plant of problems found in 2015, Desai said.

However, the agency also published a notice last week citing issues with data storage at its plant in Pithampur, central India.

If companies want to continue to sell into the world’s biggest health care market, they must keep constant vigilance.

Asked about Lupin’s case, the FDA said in a statement it did not “comment on compliance matters,” but said generally: “India’s regulatory infrastructure must keep pace to ensure that relevant quality and safety standards are met.”

Form 483

India has its own standards body, the Central Drug Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), which maintains that its quality controls are stringent enough to ensure drugs are safe.

The FDA has taken matters into its own hands and gradually expanded in India to more than a dozen full-time staff.

Inspections are frequent and increasingly unannounced. If the agency finds problems, it issues a Form 483, a notice outlining the violations, which if not resolved can lead to a warning letter and in worst case, a ban.

Violations range from hygiene, such as rat traps and dirty laboratories, to inadequate controls on systems that store data, leaving it open to tampering.

None of the violations the FDA has cited in India have explicitly said the drugs are unsafe, and when companies are banned by the FDA they can sell into other markets, including in the developing world, until the bans are lifted.

There are also no studies showing that the drugs have harmed anyone in the world. But by definition, the notices are issued when the FDA finds conditions that might harm public health.

​Don’t tell anyone

Industry watchers say Lupin, which specializes in oral contraceptives and drugs for diabetes and hypertension, is doing better than most. So far none of its infractions have extended to a ban.

On a recent visit by Reuters to its Goa plant, blue-uniformed employees could be seen working on giant machines, then making notes in hardbound registers. These are being phased out as Lupin transitions to more secure e-files.

Employees are often videotaped to ensure they follow standard operating procedure. Manufacturers have cut back to focus on quality over quantity: five years ago, Lupin was making 1 billion pills a month at one of its Goa plants. Now it makes 450 million.

Both the company and employees needed to be willing to acknowledge errors, Desai said. The first impulse in the past was often “don’t tell anyone,” he said.

“We’re humans after all, not robots. We make mistakes,” said Amol Kolatkar, a production head at the Goa site.

As recently as three years ago, training was a formality, Desai said. Now, when an error is traced to an employee, the entire team undergoes fresh training.

“I have worked at a pharma company before, but this is the first time I went through such a training,” said another Lupin quality control officer, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The quality control role is key.

“They (Lupin) have had a practice where company quality heads report directly to Nilesh Gupta (the managing director),” said Amey Chalke, an analyst at HDFC Securities. “Some other companies have also started doing that now.”

The companies also have to be willing to spend big. Lachman, PwC and Boston Consulting conduct mock audits at the Goa plant every three to six months, at a cost of up to $400 an hour.

“These days the FDA is giving us 483 on small, small things,” a third quality control officer said. “So we are always auditing.”
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Canadian lender Desjardins is considering no longer funding energy pipelines, a spokesman said Saturday, citing concerns about the impact such projects may have on the environment.

Desjardins, the largest association of credit unions in North America, Friday temporarily suspended lending for such projects and may make the decision permanent, spokesman Jacques Bouchard told Reuters by telephone.

He said the lender would make a final decision in September.

Following ING

Desjardins, a backer of Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd’s high-profile expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline, has been evaluating its policy for such lending for months, Bouchard said.

If it makes the decision permanent, that would likely mean Desjardins would not help finance other major Canadian pipelines projects, including TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL and Energy East and Enbridge Inc’s Line 3.

Such a move would follow that of Dutch lender ING Groep NV, which has a long-standing policy of not funding projects directly related to oil sands, and is the latest sign that pipelines could have a harder time getting funding as banks face increasing pressure to back away.

Patrick Bonin, a campaigner with the environmental group Greenpeace, praised Desjardins for temporarily halting pipeline funding, but called on the lender to make it permanent and reconsider its C$145 million ($113 million) commitment to Trans Mountain.

Indigenous, environmental groups

Desjardins is among 24 financial institutions that agreed to lend money to a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan Canada, majority owned by Kinder Morgan Inc of Houston, according to regulatory filings.

A coalition of more than 20 indigenous and environmental groups, including Greenpeace, in June called on 28 major banks to pull funding for Trans Mountain, citing the risk of pipeline spills and their potential contribution to climate change.

ING, which was targeted by the coalition, said it will not fund any of the major Canadian pipelines.

The same month, Sweden’s largest national pension fund, AP7, sold investments in six companies that it says violate the Paris climate agreement, including TransCanada, in a decision environmentalists believe is the first of its kind.
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The G-20 summit of the world’s richest economies wrapped up Saturday against a backdrop of angry protests, and a pledge by leaders to fight protectionism in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy and Brexit. The U.S. leader took center stage at the two-day gathering, and his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin was the major headline. VOA Europe correspondent Luis Ramirez reports from Hamburg.
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Visiting Poland this week, U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to boost exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Central Europe and take on Russia’s stranglehold on energy supplies.

“America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier,” Trump told reporters after talks with his Polish counterpart Thursday.

Up to now, that supplier has been Russia. It supplied around a third of Europe’s gas demand in 2016, with an even greater share in many of the former Soviet states in Central and Eastern Europe.

Watch: US, Russia on Collision Course in Competition for European Gas Market

Natural gas and dominance

Russian state-owned firm Gazprom shut off pipelines to Ukraine in 2015, depriving Kyiv of a major source of revenue and disrupting supplies to Eastern Europe.

“It’s a key pillar of Russian foreign policy: of using gas and energy as a means of asserting dominance over Central Europe,” said Marek Matraszek, founder of the lobby firm CEC Government Relations, who played a major role in the Polish government’s acquisition of U.S.-built F-16 fighter planes.

The first shipment of American liquefied natural gas arrived at the port of Swinoujscie on Poland’s Baltic coast last month. The port facility and liquefaction plant were finished in 2015, aimed at diversifying the country’s energy sources and enabling Poland to become a hub supplying imported gas across Central and Eastern Europe.

With that in mind, the Three Seas Initiative Summit in Warsaw Thursday brought together leaders from a dozen Eastern European nations, plus Trump. He pledged the United States will never use energy as a political tool. 

Russia’s pipeline

Energy analyst Grzegorz Malecki, a former head of Poland’s Foreign Intelligence Agency says Russia will be watching with interest.

“If this new source of gas supplies is moved forward and the infrastructure built, it may cause Russia to change its approach. The Polish government is probably counting on it. Russia may change its politics towards Poland regarding energy,” Malecki told VOA in an interview this week.

Russia has plans of its own to boost exports. Initially scheduled to open in 2019, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would double its capacity to export gas directly to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine. Eastern European states want the project blocked.

“If we want to have United States’ LNG supplies in Central Europe, we also want to see the United States getting tough on Nord Stream 2, which means getting tough on Russia,” Matraszek said.

American LNG and the Nord Stream 2 project are on a collision course, with Poland stuck in the middle, Malecki said.

“It’s hard to hide the fact that these two projects compete with each other. The odds are that there will be a clash of these energy giants in Europe,” he said.

Three-hundred kilometers west along the Baltic coast from where the existing Nord Stream pipeline comes ashore in Germany, Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin held their first face-to-face meeting at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg Friday.

If the American LNG deal goes through, it could have a broader impact on U.S.-Russia relations, said John Hannah of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“I think it could all happen relatively quickly and in a way that will give us much stronger leverage over Putin and the Russians to begin pushing back against some of the more aggressive activities that we’ve seen, not only in Europe but against the United States as well,” Hannah said.

Trump remains upbeat about his relationship with Putin, but the evolving energy policies in Europe will likely remain a source of friction.
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Visiting Poland this week, US President Donald Trump pledged to boost exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Central Europe, challenging Russia’s dominance of the market. Many European countries accuse Moscow of using energy as a political tool. As Henry Ridgwell reports from Warsaw, analysts say the United States and Russia are on a collision course over energy supplies to the region.
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Job creation in the U.S. appears to have picked up speed, with employers adding 222,000 jobs last month. But the unemployment rate ticked higher as more Americans resumed their job search. That’s probably a good thing, according to some economists who say the bigger challenge is how to speed up wage growth. Mil Arcega reports.
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A jump in first-quarter trade between China and North Korea was “unexpected” and masks a declining trend, a state-run Chinese newspaper said Friday, after U.S. President Donald Trump denounced China’s trade with its isolated neighbor.

Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40 percent in the first quarter, Trump said via Twitter Wednesday, casting doubt on China’s assertion it is working to press North Korea to rein in its nuclear and missile programs.

37.4 percent blip

Data released in April by Beijing showed China’s trade with North Korea grew 37.4 percent in the first quarter over the corresponding 2016 period, the Global Times said, adding that subsequent data showed declining trade in April and May.

“First quarter data cannot speak for the whole year,” the paper said in an editorial that carried the headline “China-NK Q1 trade data must be read fairly.”

“The trade volume for 2017 is unlikely to grow significantly from last year,” it said.

Sanctions implemented

While the first-quarter rise was “somewhat unexpected,” the newspaper said China had been strictly implementing U.N. sanctions against North Korea, and that a ban on imports of its coal had taken a toll on two-way trade.

The newspaper said trade between China and North Korea had declined during the previous three years.

China has not imported North Korean coal since it banned imports of the fuel Feb. 18, the General Administration of Customs said in April.

The Global Times, published by the official People’s Daily, reiterated that sanctions should not affect normal trade activities with North Korea, especially those concerning people’s livelihoods.

“America’s public opinion mistakenly depicts U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile activities as a total embargo,” it said, citing a four-fold increase in China’s grain exports to North Korea in the first quarter. “Beijing will never export materials to Pyongyang that could be used for nuclear and missile activities.”
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Britain will lose its status as Europe’s top financial center unless it keeps borders open to specialist staff, improves infrastructure and expands links with emerging economies, TheCityUK said in a report published Thursday.

The report from Britain’s most powerful financial lobby group said continental Europe might eventually become the preferred destination for banks, insurers and asset managers as they relocate business there to retain access to the EU single market.

Although companies may begin by initially shifting a small number of jobs to Europe, this may accelerate when property leases expire, they carry out business reviews, or the cost of capital becomes uneconomical.

“Shifts out of the U.K. may gradually erode the ‘cluster effect’ of the financial ecosystem, with the threat of a tipping point in the ecosystem being reached,” the group said in an 83-page document outlining how the industry can thrive over the next decade.

Securing a favorable deal for financial services from the Brexit negotiations is one of the biggest challenges for the British government because it is its largest export sector and biggest source of corporate tax.

Britain’s finance industry could lose up to 38 billion pounds ($49 billion) in revenue in a so-called “hard Brexit” that would restrict its access to the EU single market, according to some estimates.

The report said the government must ensure businesses can recruit people to fill skill gaps and must simplify the process of getting a visa.

Brexit has already made it harder to attract people to Britain, and the government is introducing policies making immigration more restrictive and expensive, the report said.

It said the cost of hiring an employee on a five-year visa has risen by 250 percent to 7,000 pounds over the last year and the minimum salary a business may recruit staff for a visa has risen by almost half since 2015.

Aside from Brexit, the report also looks at broader issues that threaten the competitiveness of the city of London as financial services hub, including a need to invest in transport networks and technology.

It calls for government and financial services to work together closely to develop international trade policies and to improve the country’s digital and physical infrastructure, including speeding up travel times between airports and different financial centers around Britain.

One financial services industry veteran who had independent access to the report said it lacked urgency and there was too little on the impact of Britain leaving the EU given that “Brexit is a catastrophe for the city.”

Mark Hoban, a former financial services minister who chaired the report, said that Brexit was only one of several challenges facing financial services.

“The challenges facing financial services are much more than just about Brexit. It is about emerging financial centers and also, to a degree, about unmet needs in the U.K. as well,” Hoban told Reuters. “There is a very clear appetite to tackle these issues at various levels of government.”
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Bolstering flood defenses and moving families away from risky areas are high on the agenda for Argentina’s Santa Fe as the river port city looks to grow its economy and improve its infrastructure under a new urban plan.

The inland city of around 400,000 in Argentina’s Pampas region also aims to cut violent crime, boost social inclusion and kick-start projects including a new airport, as it tries to create jobs and become better connected, said Santa Fe’s chief resilience officer, Andrea Valsagna.

Like many Latin American cities, as Santa Fe has expanded, new residents have settled in low-lying areas, she noted.

“The challenge is to organize the growth of the city in a way that reduces the risk of floods,” said Valsagna by telephone from Santa Fe in northeast Argentina.

The new resilience strategy will help position the city to “deal with the problems climate change is generating in the region,” she said, adding that heavy rains and flooding are likely to increase.

Santa Fe lies near the junction of two major waterways — the Parana and Salado rivers — and suffered serious floods in 2003 and 2007, which forced mass evacuations.

The city now has early warning systems in place, and relies on costly infrastructure made up of 40 miles (64 km) of defenses and pumps that help minimize flood risk from the rivers.

The new strategy — released under the 100 Resilient Cities initiative, a global network of cities working to tackle modern-day shocks and stresses — said Santa Fe had taken steps to reduce its vulnerability, but work was needed to bolster flood defenses, drainage systems and other critical infrastructure.

Santa Fe is one of Argentina’s oldest cities, with over 70 percent of its territory made up of rivers, lakes and marshes.

An effort to relocate nearly 4,000 people living in 1,500 homes situated in flood-prone areas and curb informal settlement must consider how to integrate communities, and provide education and job opportunities, said Valsagna.

“The problem of families in low-lying or informal settlements is multi-dimensional, and you can’t just think about the housing problem,” she said of the city which suffers from a shortage of accommodation.

“It’s very difficult to generate alternatives for many of these families — they have a history in these places … they have their links with work, schools, health,” she said.

Crime and waste

Major infrastructure projects, such as the proposed new airport for the regional capital and relocation of its river port, would broaden opportunities for economic growth and jobs, besides improving transport links, said Valsagna.

Santa Fe is expected to funnel 10 percent of its municipal budget into ways of making the city more resilient. City authorities are also talking to regional development banks, the private sector and the national government about funding the port and the airport, she said.

Reducing crime is another big challenge for Santa Fe, where homicides reached 22 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2014. Young men from poor, underserved neighborhoods are most at risk, while police corruption and a weak justice system compound the issue.

Valsagna said a new observatory would analyze crime in the city, which is seeking ways to bring more jobs and services to inhabitants of its poorest areas.

Other goals are to improve drainage and waste services in the city where more than 600 families, including children, make a living out of informal rubbish collection and are exposed to health risks and poor sanitation, said the report.

Santa Fe wants to halve their number within the next five years by offering alternative sources of income.

Santa Fe Mayor Jose Manuel Corral noted in the report that cities around the world are facing complex challenges.

“We believe that a resilience approach will allow us to tackle this complexity, putting the focus on the capacity of communities to face crises, prepare themselves for acute impacts but also to deal with and overcome chronic stresses,” he wrote.
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The global economic recovery “remains on track,” according to the International Monetary Fund, but other experts say advanced economies are in for a period of slow growth.

The IMF study is published as leaders from the G-20, the world’s major economies, are gathering in Hamburg, Germany to discuss growth, trade and other issues. The global lender urges nations to “work together” on economic issues because “there is no time for standing still.”

The study’s authors say the U.S. economy hit a “soft patch” earlier this year, while some European and Asian economies grew a bit faster than expected, with an upturn in manufacturing and trade.  

These experts also warn that weak productivity growth, uneven distribution of economic gains, and aging workforces, limit growth, particularly in advanced economies.  

A separate study by Fitch Ratings says advanced economies are likely to grow at a rate below 2 percent over the next several years. 

Fitch writes that while the U.S. average growth rate over many years is “just below 3 percent,” the outlook is just 1.8 percent. The study’s authors blame the aging of the workforce for the slow pace of expansion. 
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