YCLOAK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Stereotypes everywhere

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

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

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

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

Research illustrates issue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When it’s so much that is against us, I think we are allowed sometimes to make some extreme measures even if there’s a controversy,” she said. “Let’s have the discussion.”
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Minnesota’s government and businesses will continue to engage with Cuba in the areas they can, like agricultural trade, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s partial rollback of the detente, Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith said on Thursday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Low-cost carrier Viva Air launched in Peru in May, low-cost airline Flybondi is set to launch later this year in Argentina, and Norwegian Air is set to launch long-haul, low-cost routes from Europe to Buenos Aires early next year.
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A booming plastics and packaging industry in Asia – including China – is being driven by rising incomes and consumption, with analysts saying a growing middle class will add to the rise in plastics demand across the region. But it comes along with a rising environmental alarm over plastic pollution in rivers and oceans.

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

Robust plastics industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bad for environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thailand’s difficult task

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

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

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

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

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

 Food industry

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

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

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

Dawson said government policies should focus on reducing plastics production.
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There’s good news for pesto lovers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The EU summit will also tackle migration, renewing sanctions against Russia and efforts to combat online extremism.
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Every 45 seconds or so, a neatly wrapped VanHeusen dress shirt destined for a J.C. Penney store in the United States drops off a new production line at a factory north of Vietnam’s capital.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheaper than China

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Vietnam is still a very attractive country, but companies might not invest as much as expected because they find the employees lack the skills for that added value,” Mussons said. “Companies have been too focused on reducing costs and not enough on training.”
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Military conflicts and growing threats around the world continue to underpin demand for weapons, but industry and government leaders from the United States, Europe, Russia and the Middle East say they don’t see a huge near-term spike in arms orders.

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

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

No big spurt seen

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

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

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

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

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

Trump position

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

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

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

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

Gradual increases in Europe

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

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

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

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

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