A British scientist is proposing a new approach to fighting the spread of malaria, a treatable mosquito-borne disease that kills hundreds of thousands each year, the vast majority of them young children in Africa. As Faith Lapidus reports, he is developing an antimalarial drug designed not for humans, but for mosquitoes.
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Russia says it may block Facebook if the social media company does not put its Russian user database on servers in Russian territory. The warning Wednesday by the head of the country’s state media regulator Roskomnadzor comes just days after a Russian move to block Telegram, the encrypted messaging app. VOA’s Iuliia Alieva has more in this report narrated by Anna Rice
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The European Union and Mexico reached an agreement Saturday on a new free trade deal, a coup for both parties in the face of increased protectionism from the United States under President Donald Trump.
Since its plans for a trade alliance with the United States were frozen after Trump’s election victory, the EU has focused instead on trying to champion open markets and seal accords with other like-minded countries.
The agreement in principle with Mexico follows a deal struck last year with Japan and comes ahead of talks next week with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
“With this agreement, Mexico joins Canada, Japan and Singapore in the growing list of partners willing to work with the EU in defending open, fair and rules-based trade,” said European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
For Mexico, a deal with the EU is part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on the United States, the destination of 80 percent of its exports. That has become more urgent, given Trump’s push to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The EU and Mexico wanted to update a trade deal agreed to 21 years ago that largely covers industrial goods. The new deal adds farm products, more services, investment and government procurement, and include provisions on labor and environmental standards and fighting corruption.
The European Commission said that, under the deal struck Saturday, practically all trade in goods with Mexico will be duty-free, including for farm products such as Mexican chicken and asparagus and European dairy produce.
The deal will for example cut Mexican tariffs of up to 20 percent on cheeses such as gorgonzola and increase EU pork exports, the Commission said.
It will also allow Mexican companies to bid for government contracts in Europe and EU companies for those in Mexico, including at the state level.
Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said both sides had achieved a major update of their original accord.
“It needed to be more ambitious in the agricultural sector, it needed to be more ambitious in services, it needed to be more ambitious in many of the elements that in the end we managed to agree on after two years of work,” he said.
Guajardo said the deal would grant his country better access for products including orange juice, tuna, asparagus, honey, egg white albumin, as well as “equitable access” for meat products.
It is also set to recognize “geographical indications” for certain food and drink, a key EU demand.
Such indications protect agricultural produce, for example, dictating that the term “champagne” can only be used for sparkling wine from northern France.
It was not clear, however, how the divisive issue of “manchego” cheese had been settled. The EU says the term should only apply to sheep’s milk cheese from central Spain, but Mexico has its own “manchego” made from cow’s milk.
Negotiators from both sides will continue to work on technical details to produce a final text by the end of the year.
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Each year on April 22, many people stop to think about the health of the world environment, as as if it were a New Year’s Day for nature, many make resolutions to treat the world around them more responsibly.
The day first celebrated in 1970 is approaching a half-century of existence with a movement that started in the United States and spread around the world. People celebrate the day with environmental action such as natural area cleanups, public demonstrations, tree plantings and, in 2016, the signing of the international Paris climate agreement, which aims to keep climate change in check.
The theme for 2018 is plastic pollution. Experts say a large mass of discarded plastic that has gathered in the Pacific Ocean, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles — more than 155 million hectares (600,000 square miles), or twice the size of the U.S. state of Texas.
The patch developed in less than 100 years, as plastics have been in common use only since the 1950s. It is one of several masses of refuse found in the world’s oceans, brought together by weather patterns and water currents. Experts say many types of plastic that do not biodegrade can remain in the environment for up to 2,000 years.
This year’s Earth Day focuses on getting rid of single-use plastics, promoting the using of alternative materials, recycling and developing more responsible behaviors concerning the use of plastics.
The environmental group behind Earth Day, the Earth Day Network, estimates that 1 billion people around the world recognize Earth Day in some way.
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The International Monetary Fund’s policymaking committee said Saturday that a strong world economy was threatened by increasing tension over trade and countries’ heavy debt burden. Longer-term prospects are clouded, it said, by sluggish growth in productivity and aging populations in wealthy nations.
In a statement at the end of three days of meetings, the lending agency urged countries to take advantage of the broadest-based economic expansion in a decade to cut government debt and to enact reforms that will make their economies more efficient.
The IMF expects the world economy to grow 3.9 percent this year and next, which would be the strongest since 2011. But an intensifying dispute between the U.S. and China over Beijing’s aggressive attempt to challenge U.S. technological dominance has raised the prospect of a trade war that could drag down worldwide growth.
“Trade tensions are not to the benefit of anyone,” said Lesetja Kganyago, who leads the policymaking committee and is governor of the South African Reserve Bank.
The U.S. has resisted pressure to back off President Donald Trump’s protectionist “America First” trade policies.
Treasury Steven Mnuchin urged the IMF to do more to address what the Trump administration says are unfair trade practices and called on the World Bank to steer cheap loans away from China and toward poorer countries.
Unfair trade policies “impede stronger U.S. and global growth, acting as a persistent drag on the global economy,” Mnuchin said.
He appealed for the IMF to go beyond its traditional role as an emergency lender for countries in financial distress and said it should more closely monitor the practices of countries that persistently run large trade surpluses.
“The IMF must step up to the plate on this issue, providing a more robust voice,” Mnuchin said. “We urge the IMF to speak out more forcefully on the issue of external imbalances.”
The World Bank, he said, must not back away from shifting its lending from fast-growing developing countries such as China to poorer nations. In a speech prepared for the bank’s policy committee, Mnuchin urged the bank to aim its resources at “poorer borrowers and away from countries better able to finance their own development objectives.”
Many have used the finance meetings to protest Trump’s protectionist trade policies, which mark a reversal of seven decades of U.S. support for ever-freer global commerce.
“We strongly reject moves toward protectionism and away from the rules-based international trade order,” said Már Guðmundsson, governor of the Central Bank of Iceland. “Unilateral trade restrictions will only inflict harm on the global economy.”
While finance officials struggled to find common ground with Washington on trade, they agreed on the importance of coordinating other policies in an effort to sustain the strongest global economic expansion since the 2008 financial crisis.
“We have to keep this group working together,” said Nicolas Dujovne, Argentina’s treasury minister.
In addition to wrangling over trade, finance officials from the Group of 20 powerful economies focused on geopolitical risks and rising interest rates, two threats to growth. Dujovne, whose country is chairing the G-20 this year, met with reporters Friday to summarize talks held as a prelude to the IMF-World Bank meetings.
The U.S. has rattled financial markets with a series of provocative moves in recent weeks.
Last month, it imposed taxes on imported steel and aluminum, and later proposed tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese products as a punishment for Beijing’s aggressive efforts to obtain U.S. technology. China countered by targeting $50 billion in U.S. exports. Trump then ordered his trade representative to go after up to $100 billion more in Chinese products.
Finance leaders repeatedly sounded warnings about a potential trade war.
“The larger threat is posed by increasing trade tensions and the possibility that we enter a sequence of unilateral, tit-for-tat measures, all of which generate uncertainties for global trade and GDP growth,” Roberto Azevêdo, director-general of the World Trade Organization, told the IMF’s policy committee.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the steel and aluminum tariffs could lead to retaliation by other countries and “a significant risk that the situation could escalate.” He said “tensions between the U.S. and China have taken a worrying turn.”
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday that he was contemplating a visit to China for discussions on issues that have global leaders concerned about a potentially damaging trade war.
“I am not going to make any comment on timing, nor do I have anything confirmed, but a trip is under consideration,” Mnuchin said at a Washington news conference during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings.
Mnuchin said he discussed the possible trip and potential trade opportunities with the new head of China’s central bank.
Tensions have escalated between the U.S. and China over Beijing’s attempts to challenge America’s technological prowess, raising the prospects of a trade war that could hinder global economic growth.
Mnuchin said he had spoken with a number of his counterparts who have been forced to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” trade policies, including U.S. tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel and on up to $150 million in Chinese goods. Some of the leaders, he said, were focused on exemptions from the tariffs.
He said he emphasized that the U.S. was not trying to construct protectionist trade barriers with the tariffs. Instead, he said, “we are looking for reciprocal treatment.”
Mnuchin also said he wanted the IMF to do more to address what the Trump administration believes are unfair trade practices. He also called on the World Bank to redirect low-interest loans from China to more impoverished countries.
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China has strongly refuted suggestions its multibillion-dollar economic corridor now under construction with Pakistan has “hidden” military designs as well.
Beijing has pledged to invest about $63 billion in Pakistan by 2030 to develop ports, highways, motorways, railways, airports, power plants and other infrastructure in the neighboring country, traditionally a strong ally.
The Chinese have also expanded and operationalized the Pakistani deep water port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, which is at the heart of the massive bilateral cooperation, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. The strategically located port is currently being operated by a Chinese state-run company .
China has positioned CPEC as the flagship project of its $1-trillion global Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, championed by President Xi Jinping.
“I want to make it very clear, BRI initiative and with CPEC under it, it’s purely a commercial development project. We don’t have any kind of military or strategic design for that,” said Yao Jing, Chinese ambassador to Islamabad. He made the remarks in an exclusive interview with VOA.
Within five years of finalizing and launching CPEC, Jing said that 22 “early harvest” projects out of the 43 total projects under CPEC have been completed or are under construction, with a total investment of around $19 billion, the largest influx of foreign investment in Pakistan’s 70-year-old history. The projects have already brought 60,000 local jobs and effectively addressed the country’s once crippling energy crisis.
Power plants built under the joint venture, officials say, will have added more than 10,000 megawatts of electricity to the national grid by June, leading to a surplus of power.
While speaking to VOA, the Chinese diplomat urged the United States and India to “come to the CPEC project” and “witness the progress on the ground” for themselves, saying it will enable them overcome misunderstandings vis-a-vis CPEC.
“There are some kind of doubts that may be there are some things hidden in it. I think that when you have an objective lens to look at this project and to come to the ground to find this progress on the ground then you may have a better understanding of what we are doing here,” said Jing.
The Chinese envoy was responding to concerns expressed in Washington and New Delhi that Beijing could try to turn Gwadar into a military port in the future to try to dominate the Indian Ocean.
Jing explained that a state-to-state defense-related cooperation has for decades existed between the two allied nations and China through “normal channels” is determined to contribute to “military and strategic ability’ of Pakistan.
“We don’t want to make the CPEC as such a kind of platform,” the ambassador emphasized.
However, he added, it is “natural and understandable” that the project’s massive size and design has raised doubts and suspicions” about its aims.
The skepticism about Chinese intentions stems from, among other things, a massive airport being built in Gwadar, with a landing strip of 12-kilometers. China has given nearly $300 million to Pakistan for the construction of the airport.
“Basically, it is for China and Pakistan to make this project a successful economic project, then we can make it clear our intention here,” Jing said.
India is also opposed to CPEC because a portion of the project is located on territory that is claimed by both New Delhi and Islamabad. But Pakistan and China both dismiss the objections as politically-motivated.
CPEC aims to link the landlocked western Chinese region of Xinjiang to Gwadar, allowing ships carrying China’s oil imports and other goods from the Persian Gulf to use a much shorter and secure route and avoid the existing troubled route through the Strait of Malacca.
There are currently up to 10,000 Chinese nationals working on CPEC-related projects in Pakistan. Ambassador Jing said that 21 new mega-projects, including the establishment of Special Economic Zones across the country, are ready to be launched in the next stage with particular emphasis on encouraging private engagement.
In the next five to seven years, officials estimate, CPEC will have created employment for half-a-million Pakistanis. The country’s troubled economy, lately impacted by insecurity and energy crisis, has grown 5.4 percent in the previous financial year, the fastest rate in a decade, and officials forecast the expected growth in the year ending June 2018 will be six percent.
Pakistan’s deepening cooperation with China comes as the country’s diplomatic relations with the U.S. continue to deteriorate. Washington complains that Islamabad is not doing enough to eliminate terrorist groups using the country’s soil for attacks against neighboring countries, including Afghanistan.
While U.S. economic assistance has significantly reduced in recent years, the Trump administration also suspended military assistance to Pakistan in January and linked its restoration to decisive actions against terrorist groups.
Pakistan strongly rejects the allegations and says it is being scapegoated for the U.S.-led coalition’s failures in ending the war in Afghanistan. .
China is also worried about the spread of regional terrorism in the wake of a low-level Muslim separatist insurgency in its troubled Xinjiang border region. But Beijing has steadfastly supported Islamabad’s counterterrorism efforts and dismisses U.S. criticism of them.
China’s arms exports to Pakistan have in recent years exponentially increased while exports of military hardware from the country’s traditionally largest supplier, the U.S., have reportedly declined to just $21-million in 2017 from $1-billion.
“China will never leave Pakistan. I shall say we have confidence in the future of Pakistan,” said Chinese Ambassador Jing, when asked whether terrorism-related concerns might also push Beijing away from Islamabad.
China’s investment under CPEC has also encouraged hundreds of private Chinese companies and thousands of Chinese nationals to arrive in Pakistan to look for business opportunities and buy property. The influx of the foreigners has raised alarms among local businesses and sparked worries that the Chinese labor force will take away local jobs.
Jing stressed that China and Pakistan are working together to promote mutual people-to-people connectivity through enhanced education and cultural linkages to improve mutual understanding.
Ambassador Jing says there are eight Chinese universities working to promote Pakistan’s official Urdu language while 12 Pakistan-study centers are working to promote mutual understanding between the two countries. There are 22,000 Pakistanis seeking education in China.
Pakistani officials say currently, about 25,000 students are learning Chinese language in 19 universities and four Confucius Institutes affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education.
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The food industry uses plastic to wrap its products in many places around the world. Plastic manufacturers say that keeps produce and meat fresh longer, so less goes bad and is thrown away. But, according to a new European study, while the annual use of plastic packaging has grown since the 1950s, so has food waste. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Tuesday marks the start of World Immunization Week, set aside by the U.N. to remind parents with children, and even adults, to get immunized against deadly diseases. The World Health Organization, which is hosting the event is encouraging governments to invest in immunization efforts, urging advocates to make vaccines a priority, and asking people to get themselves and their families vaccinated. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports.
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The European Union needs to be exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the United States in order to work with Washington on trade with China, France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Friday.
“We are close allies between the EU and the United States. We cannot live with full confidence with the risk of being hit by those measures and by those new tariffs. We cannot live with a kind of sword of Damocles hanging over our heads,” Le Maire told a press conference during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings.
“If we want to move forward … if we want to address the issue of trade, an issue of the new relationship with China, because we both want to engage China in a new multilateral order, we must first of all get rid of that threat,” he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports last month to counter what he has described as unfair international competition.
Le Maire said the EU’s exemption from the tariffs should be “full and permanent.”
The EU is seeking compensation from the United States for the tariffs through the World Trade Organization. Brussels has called for consultations with Washington as soon as possible and is drawing up a list of duties to be slapped on U.S. products.
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The Pan American Health Organization aims to get 70 million people in the Americas and the Caribbean vaccinated this week as part of the U.N.-designated World Immunization Week.
Dr. Flavia Bustreo worked for years at the World Health Organization and for GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance. She says, “Immunization and vaccines are the most powerful public health tools that we have.”
WATCH: WHO Urges Everyone: Make Vaccines a Priority
Imagine, she says, how many lives could have been saved if a vaccine for AIDS were available in the 1980s, when doctors discovered the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.
Between April 24 and April 30, the U.N. wants everyone to be aware that vaccines save millions of lives each year, from the very young to the very old. It’s encouraging governments to invest in immunization efforts, telling advocates to make vaccines a priority, and urging people to get themselves and their families vaccinated.
Only in humans
According to the WHO, close to 13 million children have lost their lives to diseases in the last 35 years — lives that might have been saved if these children had been vaccinated.
Measles is a disease that exists only in humans, not in the wild. It’s highly contagious and can cause blindness, deafness and intellectual disabilities, yet many parents are concerned that the vaccine could harm their children, even though study after study shows the vaccine is safe.
Other parents don’t vaccinate their children because they have never experienced how sick measles can make their children. In 2017, measles killed 35 people, mostly children in Europe. In Italy, there were 3,232 cases of measles from January through June, while in 2016, there were only 478 in the same time period.
While global measles deaths have decreased 84 percent worldwide in recent years — from 550,100 deaths in 2000 to 89,780 in 2016 — the WHO reports that measles is still common in some developing countries, particularly in parts of Africa and Asia.
Comeback for measles?
Measles has now been eradicated from the Americas, but with the number of parents who don’t immunize their children, there is growing concern that the highly contagious disease could make a comeback.
The WHO reports that immunization rates in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina are as low as 40 percent in some areas and continuing to decline, increasing the risk of larger outbreaks.
Bustreo says when children are not vaccinated, it affects their health and the health of others.
“We need to have vaccination coverage that is about 90 percent in order to have what we call the “herd effect” … which means you cover the children who are vaccinated, but also, because of the reduction of transmission of infections, you also cover the children that are not vaccinated,” she says.
Vaccines exist for many other deadly diseases as well. The WHO aims to vaccinate as many as 1 billion people from 27 high-risk African countries by the year 2026 against yellow fever — a mosquito-borne disease that can be fatal.
Misinformation in Brazil
On the VOA program Africa 54, Dr. Ken Redcross told viewers, “It’s fatal because it can cause liver failure. It can cause kidney failure. It can even cause what’s called a coagulopathy, which is a long word to mean that it causes a problem with our blood clotting.”
In Brazil, efforts to vaccinate up to 24 million people against the disease have fallen short because some fear the vaccine is unsafe. Officials have been trying to counter this misinformation. Red Cross says not only is the vaccine safe, it’s also highly effective. “It confers 90 percent immunity. And that’s huge as a vaccine goes,” Redcross says.
Brazilian public health authorities announced in early 2017 an outbreak of yellow fever in several eastern states of Brazil, including areas where yellow fever was not traditionally considered to be a risk. Since the end of 2017, yellow fever cases have reoccurred in several states, including areas close to the city of Sao Paulo.
Yellow fever in U.S.
On its website, the Florida Department of Health says yellow fever was a major public health concern in the U.S. and was responsible for several large outbreaks in Florida during the 1700s and 1800s.
The mosquito that transmits yellow fever is in the southern U.S. With international travel, there’s concern that yellow fever could again become a major public health concern in the U.S.
The WHO is urging countries to strengthen routine immunizations. Among its goals by the year 2020: to complete international efforts to end polio, which now exists in only three countries, thanks to a highly effective vaccine. The WHO also wants to control more vaccine-preventable diseases and develop new vaccines for HIV and other diseases that still plague the modern world.
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The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into whether AT&T, Verizon and a standards-setting group worked together to stop consumers from easily switching wireless carriers.
The companies confirmed the inquiry in separate statements late Friday in response to a report in The New York Times.
The U.S. government is looking into whether AT&T, Verizon and telecommunications standards organization GSMA worked together to suppress a technology that lets people remotely switch wireless companies without having to insert a new SIM card into their phones.
The Times, citing six anonymous people familiar with the inquiry, reported that the investigation was opened after at least one device maker and one other wireless company filed complaints.
Verizon, AT&T respond
Verizon, which is based in New York, derided the accusations on the issue as “much ado about nothing” in its statement. It framed its efforts as part of attempt to “provide a better experience for the consumer.”
Dallas-based AT&T also depicted its activity as part of a push to improve wireless service for consumers and said it had already responded to the government’s request for information. The company said it “will continue to work proactively within GSMA, including with those who might disagree with the proposed standards, to move this issue forward.”
GMSA and the Justice Department declined to comment.
Merger trial
News of the probe emerge during a trial of the Justice Department’s case seeking to block AT&T’s proposed $85 billion merger with Time Warner over antitrust concerns. That battle centers mostly on the future of cable TV and digital video streaming.
Verizon and AT&T are the two leading wireless carriers, with a combined market share of about 70 percent.
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The U.S. Justice Department has opened an antitrust probe into potential coordination by AT&T, Verizon and a telecommunications standards organization to hinder consumers from easily switching wireless carriers, The
New York Times reported Friday, citing six people with knowledge of the inquiry.
The investigation was opened about five months ago after at least one device maker and one wireless carrier filed formal complaints with the Justice Department, the report said.
The department declined to comment on the report. Verizon and AT&T could not be immediately reached for comments.
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Russian companies hit by U.S. sanctions, including aluminum giant Rusal, have asked for 100 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) in liquidity support from the government, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying Friday.
The United States on April 6 imposed sanctions against several Russian entities and individuals, including Rusal and its major shareholder, Oleg Deripaska, to punish Moscow for its suspected meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other alleged “malign activity.”
Rusal, the world’s second-biggest aluminum producer, has been particularly hard hit as the sanctions have caused concern among some customers, suppliers and creditors that they could be blacklisted, too, through association with the company.
“Temporary nationalization” is an option for some sanctions-hit companies, but not Rusal, Siluanov was quoted as saying. He did not name the companies he was referring to.
A Kremlin spokesman had said Thursday that temporary nationalization was an option for helping Rusal.
According to another news agency, RIA, Rusal has requested only government support with liquidity and with demand for aluminum so far, Siluanov said.
RIA quoted the minister as saying the government was not considering state purchases of aluminum for now.
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American banking giant Wells Fargo has agreed to pay federal regulators $1 billion to settle charges that it failed to identify and avert problems related to its mortgage and auto lending operations.
The bank has admitted it sold unwanted or unnecessary automobile insurance to hundreds of thousands of its auto loan customers.
Wells Fargo, the largest mortgage lender in the U.S., has also admitted to forcing thousands of customers to pay unnecessary fees in order to lock in interest rates on their home mortgages.
The bank will pay $500 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and another $500 million to the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller, the largest fines ever imposed by either agency.
None of the money will go directly to the victims, although the bank has agreed to offer restitution.
This is the latest chapter in broad and long-running scandals that have brought the bank under intense federal scrutiny.
Wells Fargo was also rocked by a widely-reported scandal during which the bank admitted employees activated as many as 3.5 million bank and credit card accounts without customer authorization.
Citing “widespread abuses,” the Federal Reserve, the central banking system of the U.S., took an historical action earlier this year by ordering that Wells Fargo could not grow beyond $1.95 trillion in assets. The Federal Reserve also required the bank to replace several board members.
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The United Kingdom is proposing a ban on disposable plastic straws.
With Earth Day coming up this Sunday, advocates are asking everyone to follow suit and skip the straw.
Straws and stirrers are among the top 10 items found in coastal cleanups worldwide, according to the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, which has been conducting annual trash pickups for more than 30 years.
The group says the ocean is littered with 150 million metric tons of plastic trash, clogging coastlines, ensnaring wildlife and even littering land far from any human settlement.
And each year, another 8 million tons wash in, according to a recent study.
At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London on Thursday, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May announced plans to ban plastic straws, stirrers and cotton ear buds.
May called on other Commonwealth nations to do the same.
Skipping the straw will not solve the problem on its own, acknowledges Nick Mallos, director of the Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas Program.
“But they are a tangible action that all of us as individuals can take that do add up,” he said.
“It’s also about this mind shift that takes place when you start thinking about, ‘Oh, I don’t need a straw.’” Mallos added. “It cascades into other aspects of your consumer decision-making. Maybe after (skipping) the straw becomes habit, you think about the next step you might be able to take to reduce your waste footprint.”
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Recently, the world was stunned to learn that an island of mostly plastic trash, floating in the Pacific Ocean, grew to the size of France, Germany and Spain combined. Because plastics take centuries to decompose, could civilization someday choke in it? Scientists at Britain’s University of Portsmouth say they may have found a way to speed up the decomposition of plastics. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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U.S. news reports say Wells Fargo will be fined as much as $1 billion for illegally selling customers car insurance policies they did not want or need, and for charging unnecessary fees in connection with mortgages.
This would be the largest fine ever imposed by federal bank regulators and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The fine is part of a settlement regulators negotiated with the bank.
Wells Fargo and federal officials have not commented on the reports.
The San Francisco-based lender admitted selling the unwanted insurance policies to hundreds of thousands of car loan customers. In many cases, the borrowers could not afford both the insurance and car payments and their cars were repossessed.
Many U.S. banks have enjoyed looser federal regulations under President Donald Trump’s pro-business administration.
But Trump denied reports that Wells Fargo would not be punished, tweeting in December that fines and penalties against the bank would, if anything, be substantially increased.
“I will cut regs but make penalties severe when caught cheating,” he wrote.
Wells Fargo previously paid a $185 million fine for opening bank and credit card accounts in its customers’ names without telling them.
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NASA’s latest nail-biting drama was far from orbit as the Senate narrowly confirmed President Donald Trump’s choice of a tea party congressman to run the space agency in an unprecedented party-line vote.
In a 50-49 vote Thursday, Oklahoma Representative James Bridenstine, a Navy Reserve pilot, was confirmed as NASA’s 13th administrator, an agency that usually is kept away from partisanship. His three predecessors — two nominated by Republicans — were all approved unanimously. Before that, one NASA chief served under three presidents, two Republicans and a Democrat.
The two days of voting were as tense as a launch countdown.
A procedural vote Wednesday initially ended in a 49-49 tie — Vice President Mike Pence, who normally breaks a tie, was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida — before Arizona Republican Jeff Flake switched from opposition to support, using his vote as leverage to address an unrelated issue.
Thursday’s vote included the drama of another delayed but approving vote by Flake, a last-minute no vote by Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth — who wheeled onto the floor with her 10-day-old baby in tow — and the possibility of a tie-breaker by Pence, who was back in town.
NASA is a couple years away from launching a new giant rocket and crew capsule to replace the space shuttle fleet that was retired in 2011.
“I look forward to working with the outstanding team at NASA to achieve the president’s vision for American leadership in space,” Bridenstine said in a NASA release after the vote.
Sharply different views
Democrats opposing Bridenstine said his outspoken divisiveness, earlier rejection of mainstream climate change science and lack of space experience made him unqualified. Republicans praised him as a qualified war hero.
“His record of behavior in the Congress is as divisive as any in Washington, including his attacks on members of this body from his own party,” Florida Democrat Bill Nelson said.
Senator Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, cited past Bridenstine comments that rejected mainstream climate science, invoking the movie “Apollo 13.”
“Houston, we have a problem,” Markey said. “NASA’s science, NASA’s mission and American leadership will be in jeopardy under Congressman Bridenstine’s leadership.”
During his confirmation hearing, Bridenstine said he acknowledged that global warming was real and man-made, but wouldn’t say that it was mostly human-caused, as the overwhelming majority of scientists and scientific literature have done. And Bridenstine told Nelson, “I want to make sure that NASA remains, as you said, apolitical.”
Texas Republican Ted Cruz praised the NASA nominee as “a war hero.”
“NASA needs a strong leader and it will have that strong leader in Jim Bridenstine,” Cruz said.
Sean O’Keefe, who was NASA chief under President George W. Bush and was confirmed unanimously, said the close vote “is a consequence of an erosion of comity in the Congress, particularly in the Senate. Political fights will always break out, but now most policy choices are more likely to emerge based on the party with the majority than the power of the idea.”
Alan Ladwig, a top NASA political appointee under Democrats, said this was a case of both party politics and a divisive nominee who doesn’t accept science.
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The biggest danger from the U.S.-China trade dispute is the threat to global confidence and investment, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Thursday.
The IMF chief said the tariffs threatened by the world’s two largest economies would have a modest direct impact on the global economy but could produce uncertainty that choked off investment, one of the key drivers of rising global growth.
“The actual impact on growth is not very substantial, when you measure in terms of GDP,” Lagarde said of the tariffs, adding that the “erosion of confidence” would be worse.
“When investors do not know under what terms they will be trading, when they don’t know how to organize their supply chain, they are reluctant to invest,” she told a news conference in Washington where world financial leaders gathered for the start of the IMF and World Bank spring meetings.
In its World Economic Outlook released on Tuesday, the IMF cited 2016 research showing that tariffs or other barriers leading to a 10 percent increase in import prices in all countries would lower global output by about 1.75 percent after five years and by close to 2 percent in the long term.
In Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry warned that the Trump administration’s tariff threats and other measures to try to force trade concessions from Beijing was a “miscalculated step” and would have little effect on Chinese industries.
In the latest escalations in the trade row, Washington said this week that it had banned U.S. companies from selling parts to Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE for seven years, while China on Tuesday announced hefty anti-dumping tariffs on imports of U.S. sorghum and measures on synthetic rubber imports from the United States, European Union and Singapore.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s office also is planning to soon release a second list of Chinese imports targeted for an additional $100 billion of U.S. tariffs, tripling the amount of Chinese goods under a tariff threat.
Lagarde said the trade tensions would be a major topic of discussion among finance ministers and central bank governors at the IMF and World Bank meetings.
“My suspicion is that there will be many bilateral discussions to be had between the various parties involved,” Lagarde said, adding that the issue would also be discussed in larger sessions involving the Fund’s 189 member countries.
“Investment and trade are two key engines that are finally picking up. We don’t want to damage that,” Lagarde said.
If the tariffs go into effect, the hit to business confidence would be worldwide because supply chains are globally interconnected, she added.
Russian aluminum giant Rusal is stockpiling large quantities of aluminum at one of its plants in Siberia because U.S. sanctions imposed this month have prevented it from selling the metal to customers, five sources close to the company said.
With the firm’s own storage space filling up with unsold aluminum, Rusal executives in Sayanogorsk, in southern Siberia, have had to rent out additional space to accommodate the surplus stock, one of the sources told Reuters.
“Aluminum sales have broken down. And now the surplus aluminum is being warehoused in production areas of the factory itself,” said someone who works on the grounds of one of Rusal’s two plants in Sayanogorsk.
Several people connected to Rusal said that Oleg Deripaska, the company’s main shareholder who along with the company was included on a U.S. sanctions blacklist, visited Sayanogorsk this week for a closed-door meeting with staff.
Asked if the firm was stockpiling aluminum in Sayanogorsk, a Rusal spokeswoman declined to comment.
Rusal and Deripaska were included on a U.S. sanctions blacklist this month, scaring off many of its customers, suppliers and creditors who fear they too could be hit by sanctions through association with the company.
A number of traders and customers of Rusal’s aluminum have stopped buying the firm’s products, citing the sanctions risk, and Rusal has stopped shipping some of its products for export, according to a logistics firm and a railway operator that used to carry much of its aluminum.
While shipments have stalled, Rusal cannot readily reduce its production of aluminum because the electrolysis pots that are at the heart of the manufacturing process can be irreparably damaged if they are shut down.
At Rusal’s two plants in Sayanogorsk — which together accounted last year for about a quarter of the firm’s production — aluminum is now stacking up in ad hoc stockpiles dotted around the factory grounds, the sources said.
An employee with a Rusal subsidiary described how the unsold aluminum ingots were being stored in garages in the plant. He said his company had just agreed to rent out space to Rusal so it could store more of the ingots.
A contractor at the Sayanogorsk plants said the stockpiled ingots, stacked on pallets, were building up fast. He said two days’ worth of production would fill up a five-car train, but already a week had gone by with aluminum piling up.
“Can you imagine a week?” he said. “There’s a hell of a lot there, a hell of a lot. It’s being stockpiled, it’s not being shipped.”
An electrician working for Rusal said the ingots were being squeezed into all available space.
“The storage is not quite full,” said the electrician, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal company affairs. “Something is still being loaded all the same, some stuff is being shipped.”
Deripaska, who started his metals industry career in Sayanogorsk in the 1990s, visited the town this week and held a closed-door meeting with staff, according to several people with links to Rusal.
Deripaska himself was included on the U.S. sanctions blacklist, along with Rusal and other businesses where he has a controlling stake.
Washington said it took the measure against Deripaska and others because, it said, they were profiting from a Russian state engaged in “malign activities” around the world.
Since the sanctions were imposed on April 6, Rusal’s share price has slumped, the value of its bonds has plummeted and partners around the world have distanced themselves from Deripaska and his business empire.
U.S. customers cannot do business with Rusal any more under the sanctions, while major Japanese trading houses asked Rusal to stop shipping refined aluminum and other products and are scrambling to secure metal elsewhere, industry sources said.
Rusal is encountering problems at the other end of its production cycle too, with the sanctions affecting the overseas operations that supply it with the raw materials it uses to produce metal.
Rio Tinto, which supplies bauxite to some of Rusal’s refineries and buys refined alumina, said it will declare force majeure on some contracts.
Further besieging Rusal, creditors and bond-holders are trying to offload the firm’s liabilities because many financial market players believe that to handle Rusal debt could leave them too susceptible to U.S. sanctions.
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The World Health Organization says the first-ever vaccine for dengue needs to be dealt with in “a much safer way,” meaning that the shot should mostly be given to people who have previously been infected with the disease.
In November, the vaccine’s manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, said people who had never been sickened by dengue before were at risk of developing a more serious disease after getting the shot.
After a two-day meeting this week, WHO’s independent vaccines group said it now had proof the vaccine should only be used “exclusively or almost exclusively in people who have already been infected with dengue.”
The U.N. health agency said a test should be developed so doctors would be able to quickly tell if people had previously been sickened by dengue – but the group acknowledged doing that so isn’t straightforward.
“We see significant obstacles in using the vaccine this way, but we are confident this also spurs the development of a rapid diagnostic test,” said Dr. Joachim Hombach, executive secretary of WHO’s expert group, during a news conference Thursday.
Sanofi said last year that doctors should consider whether people might have been previously infected with dengue before deciding whether they should risk getting immunized. The company said it expected to take a 100 million euro ($118 million) loss based on that news.
People who catch dengue more than once can be at risk of a hemorrhagic version of the disease. The mosquito-spread virus is found in tropical and sub-tropical climates across Latin and South America, Asia, Africa and elsewhere. It causes a flu-like disease that can cause joint pain, nausea, vomiting and a rash. In severe cases, dengue can result in breathing problems, hemorrhaging and organ failure.
About half the world’s population is at risk of dengue; WHO estimates that about 96 million people are sickened by the viral infection every year.
Following Sanofi’s announcement last year, the Philippines halted its dengue immunization program, the world’s first national vaccination program for dengue. The government also demanded a refund of more than 3 billion pesos ($59 million) from Sanofi and is considering further legal action.
In February, the Philippines said the vaccine was potentially linked to the deaths of three people: all of them died of dengue despite having received the vaccine.
The country imposed a symbolic fine of $2,000 on Sanofi and suspended the vaccine’s approval, charging that the drugmaker broke rules on how the shot was registered and marketed.
More than 730,000 children aged 9 and above in the Philippines have received at least one dose of the dengue vaccine, usually delivered in three doses.
There is no specific treatment for dengue and there are no other licensed vaccines on the market.
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Russia demanded compensation from the U.S. for its worldwide tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel Thursday, becoming the third influential member of the World Trade Organization to do so.
China, the European Union and India have also objected, arguing the tariffs are a “safeguard” measure to protect U.S. domestic products from imports, which require compensation for major exporting countries.
The Trump administration has rejected that argument and says the tariffs are for national security reasons and are therefore allowed under international law.
The U.S. has agreed to negotiate with China and has informed the EU and India it is willing to discuss any other issue, while maintaining their compensation claims are unwarranted.
It is unclear what Moscow’s demand means in practice because it did not challenge the tariffs through a WTO appeals mechanism through which the organization’s 164 members can negotiate solutions to trade disputes.
China is the only country that has pursued that course and India has asked to be present at negotiations with the U.S. on the issue.
U.S. allies Australia, Canada, the EU, Mexico and South Korea have received temporary exemptions from the tariffs, pending negotiations with the U.S.
Global diamond giant De Beers is rolling out an app to help small-scale, artisanal diamond miners in Sierra Leone certify that gems they pry from the soil are legal, the Anglo American unit said on Thursday.
The initiative is the latest attempt by the industry to clean up its image and expunge the scourge of “blood diamonds” blamed for financing conflict, chaos and criminality in poor African countries, such as Sierra Leone and Liberia.
More widely, small-scale mining is often tainted by alleged links to insurgents or child labor, casting a cloud over supply chains for commodities such as cobalt, which is produced mainly in the conflict-prone Democratic Republic of Congo, and gold.
Called Gemfair, the De Beers’ pilot app project is a partnership with Diamond Development Initiative (DDI), an NGO, and will target several small-scale mine sites in Sierra Leone in a meeting of high technology and pre-industrial mining methods.
Miners enrolled in the project must be licensed, adhere to certain environmental standards, work sites that are free of violence and meet other requirements.
The app is on a tablet and has a software application that shows the GPS location where the diamonds have been extracted, allowing for a record of the production process. The software can work online or offline in remote areas.
The miners are also provided with digital scales to weigh their diamonds and a tamper-proof bag where they can be deposited and then passed safely through the supply chain.
“The app we developed to address some of the key challenges in logging and validating, to allow artisanal production to be traced from the mine site all the way through to export,” Feriel Zerouki, De Beers’ vice-president for ethical initiatives, told Reuters in an interview.
According to DDI, up to 20 percent of global gem-quality diamond supplies are produced by artisanal miners, who typically wash gravel by hand in conditions that are often unhygienic and dangerous.
Illicit diamonds were linked to funding civil wars and insurgencies in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Angola and the issue was popularized by the 2006 movie “Blood Diamond” starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
The main initiative to keep such gems from reaching the market is a regulatory program called the Kimberley Process but its focus is on conflict diamonds and does not directly address issues of poverty and exploitation.
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