07/25/2017 | Page 2 of 2

Global Use of Trade Restrictions Slows, WTO Says

By Uponbiz | 07/25/2017 | No Comments | Business

More steps to free up trade globally have been taken since Donald Trump was elected than measures to restrict it, the World Trade Organization said, despite concerns his administration would introduce a raft of punitive rules to protect U.S. jobs.

The WTO’s global monitoring report, debated at a trade policy review on Monday, covers October 2016 to May 2017.

“The report shows an encouraging decrease in the rate of new trade-restrictive measures put in place — hitting the lowest monthly average since the financial crisis,” WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo said in a statement.

The semi-annual report, largely coinciding with the period since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, showed that the 164 WTO members put 74 new restrictive measures in place, including tariffs, customs regulations and quantitative restrictions, with an impact of $49 billion of trade.

At the same time, they took 80 steps to help trade, such as cutting tariffs or simplifying customs procedures, affecting a much bigger $183 billion of trade.

Restrictions peaked in 2011

Trade-restrictive steps peaked at 22 per month in 2011, roughly twice the level in the period of the latest report.

During the period under review, the United States introduced new restrictions including a provisional duty on Canadian softwood lumber, suspecting it of being unfairly priced.

It also brought in “Buy America” provisions to ensure that, subject to some conditions, state loan funds are not used for water infrastructure projects unless all the steel used in the project was produced in the United States, the WTO report said.

Liberalized trade

Trump had also liberalized trade by scrapping broadband privacy rules, allowing Internet service providers to commericalize user data without explicit permission from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, the report said.

China, routinely the WTO member most often accused of unfair pricing and illegal subsidies, had introduced new restrictions with a cybersecurity law, requiring data generated in China to be stored in China, and a film production law, requiring Chinese movies get two-thirds of the screen time at Chinese cinemas.

But it also eased approval requirements for foreign-owned banks to invest in Chinese banks and to supply some investment banking services in China, the WTO report said.
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Thailand Freezes Former PM Yingluck’s Bank Accounts in Rice Subsidy Case

By Uponbiz | 07/25/2017 | No Comments | Business

Thailand’s justice ministry froze some of former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s bank accounts, the ministry and her legal team said on Monday, in relation to a $1 billion fine imposed by the ruling junta over her administration’s rice-subsidy program.

She has filed a court petition to revoke the freezing of her bank accounts and to grant an injunction to suspend asset seizures, saying they were unlawful.

Yingluck, whose government was ousted by the junta in a 2014 coup, will deliver a closing statement in a separate criminal case over the rice subsidies next week.

The program, which helped Yingluck sail to victory in a 2011 election, bought rice from farmers at above-market rates and distorted global prices but proved popular with rural voters.

Finance Ministry permanent secretary Somchai Sujjapongse told reporters on Monday that government committees submitted details of 12 bank accounts which belong to Yingluck to the Legal Execution Department, which then took action.

Yingluck received a formal notice about her frozen accounts from the department on Monday, her legal team said.

Yingluck declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

Her supporters have accused the courts of bias in frequently ruling against Yingluck and her family members.

The rice scheme was a policy engineered by Yingluck’s brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled in a 2006 coup and lives abroad, to avoid a two-year prison sentence from 2008 for graft in a land purchase case.

Thaksin won the hearts of voters in the populous northeast and the north but made enemies among the powerful, military-backed Bangkok elite.

In 2015, a military-appointed legislature banned Yingluck from politics for five years after finding her guilty of mismanaging the rice scheme.

The Supreme Court will give its verdict in the criminal case against Yingluck on Aug. 25.

Yingluck, who says the trial against her is politically motivated, faces up to 10 years in prison if she is found guilty of negligence over her role in the scheme.
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Next James Bond Film Set for November 2019, No Word on 007 Star

By Uponent | 07/25/2017 | No Comments | Entertainment

James Bond is returning to movie theaters in November 2019, producers said Monday, but they did not say who will play Britain’s most famous fictional spy.

Eon Productions and MGM studios said in a statement that the 25th Bond film will be released in U.S. theaters on Nov. 8, 2019, with a slightly earlier release in Britain.

They gave no title, casting or other details.

Britain’s Daniel Craig has played Bond in the last four films, including 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre. The 2015 film took some $880 million at the global box office, according to film tracker BoxOfficeMojo.com.

His reprisal of the role for a fifth time has been the subject of much speculation after the actor said in 2015 that he would rather slash his wrists than play Bond again.

Callum McDougall, the executive producer of the Bond film franchise, told Britain’s BBC Radio last year that Craig, 49, was “absolutely the first choice. … We would love Daniel to return as Bond.”

Meanwhile, actors such as Idris Elba, Tom Hiddleston and Tom Hardy have all been named as potential candidates to step into the fast cars and sharply tailored suits of Bond, MI6’s secret agent 007.

With its futuristic gadgets, menacing super villains and larger-than-life explosions, the Bond series is the longest-running film franchise in history, with actors such as Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan inhabiting the role of the leading man.

The new film will be written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who wrote the last four movies in the franchise.
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Brazil Plans Federal Workers’ Buyout to Cut Deficit

By Uponbiz | 07/25/2017 | No Comments | Business

Brazil’s cash-strapped government is drawing up a voluntary redundancy plan for federal civil servants aimed at reducing its bloated payroll and saving about 1 billion reais ($318 million) a year, the Planning Ministry said on Monday.

It will also offer public employees a shorter workday in the latest effort to cut payroll costs and reduce a gaping budget deficit that cost Brazil its investment grade credit rating.

The ministry said in a statement that the plan would be announced this week.

The government’s income and spending estimates published last week show a payroll bill for this year of 284.5 billion reais. That marked the second largest outlay after social security benefits, which total an estimated 559.8 billion reais.

A two-year recession has reduced tax revenues and forced the government to freeze spending as it seeks to meet a 139 billion-real budget deficit target for 2017.

Political turbulence stirred by corruption charges against President Michel Temer has delayed approval in Congress of an unpopular overhaul of Brazil’s generous pension system that is the main cause of the budget deficit.

($1 = 3.1468 reais)
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Test-tube Immune Systems Can Speed Vaccine Development

By Uponsci | 07/25/2017 | No Comments | Science

New technology allows scientists working on new vaccines to combat infectious diseases to test their products’ effectiveness on a model immune system in a laboratory, without putting the upgraded vaccine into humans.

Researchers have begun building model immune systems using human cells, and this lab technique should make early vaccine trials quicker, safer and cheaper, according to scientists in the United States and Britain involved in this novel approach. The technology also has the potential to be used to mass produce antibodies in the lab to supplement real immune systems that are compromised, or battling pathogens like Ebola.

A report announcing the new “in vitro booster vaccination” technique was published Monday in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, a prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Rockefeller University Press. The research project involved produced antibodies that attack strains of tetanus, HIV and influenza.

Selecting specific antibodies

When a pathogen invades the body, the immune system develops antibodies specific to that pathogen. The antibodies latch onto the pathogen and either flag it for destruction, disrupt the life cycle of the pathogen, or do nothing.

Before now, when scientists tried to get immune cells in the lab to produce antibodies, the cells would do so indiscriminately, producing all sorts of antibodies, not just the relevant ones. Now scientists are able to get the antibodies they specifically desire by using nanoparticles that connect antigens, the active parts of a vaccine, with molecules that stimulate the immune system.

“We can make these cells very quickly in vitro — in a Petri dish — to become antibody-producing cells,” said a lead author of the new report, Facundo Batista. “This is quite important,” he told VOA, “because until now the only way that this has been done is though vaccinating people.”

Batista was one of a number of scientists involved in the study from the Ragon Institute, established in the Boston area by experts from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the goal of working toward development of an effective vaccine against HIV/AIDS. Others contributing to the new report were from the Francis Crick Institute in London and other institutions.

New technique saves time, money

The new laboratory technique will save time and money. After all the work of planning, funding and getting approval for a vaccine trial in humans, “you’re talking at least about three years in a best-case scenario, if you have a very promising product,” said Matthew Laurens, an associate professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of Maryland who was not associated with the study. That lengthy process will now be shortened to a matter of months.

This can eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, long and costly trials, and fewer volunteer subjects will be exposed to potentially dangerous vaccines.

The ease of testing new vaccines will also allow scientists to tinker more and better understand how vaccines work. With better understanding, they may be able to develop more sophisticated vaccines that can be effective against more pathogens — those that differ as a result of genetic variations. This will be important in the fight against rapidly evolving pathogens like HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Outside of vaccine testing, immune systems in laboratories can lead to greatly improved methods for the mass production of antibodies. Scientists have been trying to identify antibodies that can attack all strains of the Ebola virus; this new technology will improve their chances of developing an effective therapy.

Laurens, who studies malaria vaccine development at Maryland, called the research exciting.

“This would allow vaccine candidates to be tested very early and very quickly,” he told VOA, “with rapid turnaround and reporting of results to either advance a vaccine candidate or tell scientists they need to go back and look for other candidates.”
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