YCLOAK

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Veterans inspired by relationships

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

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

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

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

Another challenge

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

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

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

Quality, taste is key

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

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

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

Famous investor

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

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

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

 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
…

Saffron has long been one of the world’s most expensive spices. The saffron crocus that produces the spice grows mostly in parts of Europe, Iran and India. Now, a U.S. company seeking to “cultivate peace” is attracting attention to this historic spice and trying to develop new markets for saffron grown in Afghanistan. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Chicago.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has told “confidants,” including the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, that he plans to leave a landmark international agreement on climate change, the Axios news website reported Saturday, citing three sources with direct knowledge.

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

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

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

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

Six against one

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

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

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

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