Month: December 2017

Less than a month after a military intervention forced longtime leader Robert Mugabe to step down, new leaders of the ruling ZANU-PF party have big plans for Zimbabwe.

Retired General Sibusiso Moyo announced the military takeover on November 15 and has been appointed to serve as foreign minister. He sees opportunities to revive Zimbabwe’s struggling economy.

“Our primary interest at the moment is economic development and emancipation of our people,” Moyo told VOA’s Zimbabwe Service. Zimbabwe’s long-ailing economy will recover, according to Moyo, through direct foreign investment, tourism and exports to worldwide markets.

ZANU-PF hopes to jump-start the economy by collaborating with Zimbabweans in the diaspora and creating a more appealing environment for investment. “We are opening up to all our friends,” Moyo said.

‘Zimbabwe isn’t poor’

The ruling party is right to focus on Zimbabwe’s economy as it defines its post-Mugabe platform, according to Chipo Dendere, a visiting assistant professor of political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts. But to truly open up, the country must come to terms with endemic corruption. 

“Zimbabwe isn’t poor,” Dendere told VOA, speaking over the phone from Harare. In fact, the country is endowed with valuable minerals such as gold, diamonds and platinum. But, Dendere said, the wealth has been stolen. During Mugabe’s regime, he and his allies stole more than $2 billion in diamond revenue, according to Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), a group tracking mismanagement of global natural resources. 

So far, the government seems to be putting pressure on officials to bring back money, according to Dendere. But with so many people who have stolen, it’s unclear how the government will serve a greater good without violating human rights or falling into partisan traps.

“If the government fails to deal with the economic challenges, then Zimbabwe is going to be in great disarray,” Dendere said. Fixing Zimbabwe’s economy begins with addressing its many infrastructure problems, such as pothole-ridden roads and an aging and leaky water system.

Real change?

Some, including Dendere, remain skeptical that ZANU-PF will enact real change. “It’s one thing to be excited about a new government. But I think people need to be cognizant of the fact that the people that are in power right now … are the same people that have been in power for the last 37 years,” Dendere said.

The government has not, in fact, changed, Moyo conceded, but it will do things differently with new personalities in power.

Dendere, meanwhile, questions what’s new. The ideology for the ruling party is unlikely to change, she said, based on language used at the party congress this month.

Still, Moyo sees opportunities for dialogue and improvement. “We are not a government of a party. We are a government of all the people of Zimbabwe. And therefore, when there are issues which need dialogue, they must be discussed in house,” Moyo said.

For Dendere, aspects of ZANU-PF’s legacy are, in fact, worthwhile. “This is the legacy that brought us independence, the end of colonialism. But it’s also the legacy that gave a lot of power to one party and the centralization and consolidation of power around the president and the people that are closest to him.”

Space for opposition

Zimbabwe is due to hold elections next year. ZANU-PF will have more than half a year to consolidate power and win over citizens who had become disenchanted with Mugabe’s rule. But Dendere said opposition parties would be more competitive than ever in 2018 if they could hone their messaging.

The MDC Alliance represents eight opposition parties. They’ve struggled to convey a compelling message, Dendere said, because ZANU-PF has co-opted their old mantra: Mugabe must go. Now, they need to find a voice of their own.
…

Nearly two-thirds of Americans have a favorable view of the U.S. economy, according to a new poll, even as they give President Donald Trump negative reviews for his handling of the world’s largest economy and an array of other issues.

In its latest poll, Quinnipiac University said 63 percent of voters consider the U.S. economy to be “excellent” or “good,” while 34 percent say it is “not so good” or “poor.”

Three-fourths of voters described their own financial situation as “excellent” or “good,” while a quarter had a negative view of their personal financial situation.

The pollster said voters, by a 51 to 44 percent margin, disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. By a narrow margin, 45 to 43 percent, voters say that former President Barack Obama deserves more credit than Trump for the favorable state of the U.S. economy. The current 4.1 percent jobless rate is at a 17-year low and stock market indexes are at all-time highs.

Overall, Quinnipiac said voters, by a 59-37 margin, disapprove of Trump’s White House performance 11 months into his presidency, almost identical to Gallup’s 59-36 negative reading on Trump’s tenure.

By wide margins, the pollster said Americans do not think Trump is honest. They believe he does not have good leadership skills, does not care about average Americans, is not level-headed and does not share their values. But Quinnipiac said that by a 57-40 margin, Americans view Trump as a strong person, and by a 52-45 edge, that he is intelligent.

The poll gives Trump negative reviews for his handling of foreign policy, terrorism, immigration, health care and tax policy, even as Congress is set to approve a $1.5 trillion tax cut over the next decade, Trump’s first major legislative victory.

Quinnipiac said that by a 50-46 edge, voters think Trump should resign in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations more than a dozen women made against him during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Trump has repeatedly said the accusations are unfounded and the White House has said voters were aware of the allegations when they cast their ballots and decided to elect him anyway.
…

Nepali migrant workers are trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and exploitation due to a failure by authorities to crack down on recruitment firms that charge illegally high fees for jobs abroad, human rights group Amnesty International said on Monday.

Wages sent back by an estimated four million Nepalis – mainly employed working in construction or as domestic workers in the Middle East, Malaysia and South Korea – make up more than a quarter of the poor Himalayan nation’s gross domestic product.

Nepal permits recruitment agencies to charge 10,000 rupees ($100) from each migrant as a service charge for finding them work with foreign firms, who pay for workers’ travel and visa.

But a survey of over 400 Nepali migrants by Amnesty found workers are not only forced up to 12 times more the permitted amount to agencies, but also that most are forced to borrow the money from unscrupulous money lenders at high interest rates.

“Migrant workers all too often end up trapped in the soul-destroying situation of working abroad for years simply to pay off the huge, often illegal fees they were charged to take the job,” said Amnesty International’s James Lynch.

“The Nepali government’s weak enforcement of the law is playing straight into the hands of extortionists and loan sharks. Tackling this exploitative industry is a matter of urgency,” Lynch added in a statement.

The London-based human rights group said almost two-thirds of the migrant workers, who responded to a telephone survey conducted in Nepal and Malaysia, had paid excessive, illegal recruitment fees to hiring firms.

Workers’ calculations about how to repay these loans were often derailed by unpaid wages or other forms of labor exploitation overseas. More than half of respondents said they received lower monthly salaries than promised by the agencies.

Bhuban K.C., a senior official in Nepal’s labor ministry, said authorities had launched awareness programs for potential migrants to ensure they are not cheated by agencies, adding that compensation was being provided to victims.

Nepal was working with India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka which also send migrant workers to the Middle East and Malaysia to ensure that the workers’ interests are protected, he added.

“We are raising our voice internationally to ensure that migrants are not cheated. What we are doing may not be adequate, but we are concerned about our workers welfare,” K.C. told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Amnesty said the Nepali government must do more to enforce laws penalizing exploitative recruitment agencies and urged overseas companies – who use the agencies to source workers – to check abuse within their supply chains.

“Companies who employ migrant workers in the Gulf and Malaysia directly or through their suppliers or subcontractors also have a responsibility,” said Lynch. “Until they take action, they are reinforcing the debt trap that is destroying so many lives in Nepal.”
…

How do you explain the abstract concepts of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies?

With adorable, digital kittens of course.

CryptoKitties, an online game and marketplace featuring virtual kittens, has become an entry point for curious outsiders looking to dabble in cryptocurrencies – decentralized digital monies that rely on blockchain technology to enable peer-to-peer transactions.

Company reps say their main goal is to teach people how to use blockchains; open, distributed ledgers of cryptocurrency transactions. Bitcoin is the most famous cryptocurrency and blockchain protocol, but there are others.

“As part of launching this project, we were really trying to educate people who haven’t perhaps bought Ethereum before, people who aren’t in the crypto space.” said Elsa Wilk, marketing director at Axiom Zen, the Canadian tech consultancy that created CryptoKitties.

That may have been the initial idea. But marry cute kittens and a buzzy, emerging tech phenomenon and kitten chaos ensued.

CryptoKitties’ cheerful, user-friendly interface has caused its popularity to surge among blockchain products and services. To date, there have been over $16 million USD in transactions resulting from the purchase, breeding and sale of digital kittens.

“Using something like cats is a very unintimidating, friendly, cuddly way to be introduced to a very hard, technical subject like the blockchain,” said Wilk. “We really took the approach of making the blockchain more approachable.”

How it works

CryptoKitties is built on the Ethereum blockchain. Purchases are made using the Ether cryptocurrency, which can be purchased with real money through a digital currency exchange like Coinbase. To begin buying and selling CryptoKitties, users first set up a digital wallet with MetaMask, an Ether wallet and browser for applications built on the Ethereum blockchain.

Kittens cost anywhere from .004 ether (about $3 USD) to upwards of 100,000 ether (a whopping $79.3 million USD). Wilk said the objective of the game is to make more kitties, but one of the company’s ultimate goals was to test whether a blockchain platform could support the buying and trading of unique, digital cats – what Wilk calls “crypto collectibles.”

At launch, the company released about 250 “Gen Zero” kittens, that is, those with no “parents.” Thereafter, a new kitten is released every 15 minutes. According to Wilk, the number of original kittens that will ever be released is approximately 50,000.

Critics of CryptoKitties contend that because the game is only partially decentralized, it is not a true representation of an Ethereum “DApp” or decentralized application. Despite being built on the open-source Ethereum platform, CryptoKitties’ interactions exist within a centralized database and are beholden to policies established by Axiom Zen.

“We really wanted to test the technology, to be able to put cats on the blockchain. We had to develop a new protocol in the process of doing this,” said Wilk.

The game’s popularity has also stalled traffic on the Ethereum network and created delays in the rate of Ethereum transactions processed. All blockchain transactions must first be “mined” or processed by a computer within a blockchain’s decentralized network.

“Because we’re building something that has never really been done before, just the sheer volume of traffic that we received initially caused some scaling problems,” said Wilk.

Still, for Wilk and Axiom Zen, CryptoKitties so far has been a success.

“It is one of the first, I would say, tangible use cases for a cryptocurrency project,” said Wilk, “Being able to actually take an action and have something real and tangible, I think is driving a lot of the interest that we’re seeing.”
…

A Supreme Court justice on Monday approved an agreement to compensate bank depositors for losses caused by government policies several decades ago, settling more than a million legal disputes that have hung over Brazil’s banking system since the 1980s.

Depositors who lost their savings due to economic programs applied in the 1980s and 1990s to tackle hyperinflation will have two years to sign up for the compensation deal, Justice Dias Toffoli ruled.

Those who are owed up to 5,000 reais ($1,520) will be fully reimbursed, while those with larger liabilities will get between 8 percent and 19 percent less.

Around 60 percent of the depositors covered by the agreement are owed up to 5,000 reais, according to the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban). The total value of reimbursements will depend on how many depositors opt in to the scheme.

Reuters had reported in November that banks were likely to agree on reimbursing a total of around 10 billion reais, far below initial central bank estimates of up to 342 billion reais.

Fitch Ratings said earlier this month that such an agreement would be beneficial to the nation’s banks, which have made enough provisions to cover the reimbursements.

Lenders Itaú Unibanco Holding SA, Banco Bradesco SA, Santander Brasil SA, Banco do Brasil SA and Caixa Econômica Federal have signed off on the deal. Other banks can still join.

Under former Presidents  José Sarney and Fernando Collor, Brazil pursued several unorthodox policies to fight galloping inflation, such as confiscating investments in savings accounts.

Reimbursements will be paid in up to three years in as many as five installments, adjusted for the official inflation index.

($1 = 3.2922 reais)
…

European Union environment and energy ministers on Monday agreed on renewable energy targets for 2030 ahead of negotiations next year with the European Parliament, which has called for more ambitious green energy goals.

Ministers said they would aim to source at least 27 percent of the bloc’s energy from renewables by 2030 — up from a target of 20 percent by 2020.

In October, the European Parliament called for this target to be increased to 35 percent, a level also put forward by a group of big technology, industry and power companies last week.

As part of the package of measures, ministers also agreed on the share of renewable fuels to be used in transport, while setting a cap on first-generation biofuels, which critics say compete for agricultural land with food.

EU member states set a 14 percent renewables target for fuels used in road transport by 2030, with bonuses given for the use of renewable electricity in road and rail transport.

The inclusion of rail into the renewable transport targets was criticized by the European Commission, as large parts of the European rail network are already electrified.

“The level of ambition is clearly insufficient,” Europe’s climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete told ministers during negotiations.

The European Council and the European Parliament will need to find a compromise in talks over the final legal texts on these matters next year.

The EU’s renewables targets are part of a set of proposals to implement the bloc’s climate goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, in the wake of the Paris Agreement to limit further global warming to no more than 2 degrees.

Ministers also reached a common position on a set of rules for the internal electricity market, such as the roll out of more sophisticated electricity meters to consumers and allowing grid operators to run energy storage facilities.
…

Argentina’s Congress could pass a hotly debated pension reform measure Monday, lawmakers told reporters, as stone-throwing demonstrators gathered in the capital and the country’s main union called a 24-hour general strike to protest the proposal.

Debate on the bill was suspended Thursday amid violent protests, which were put down by police firing rubber bullets and tear gas. On Friday, the government amended the proposal to include a bonus payment to the most needy retirees.

But that did not satisfy thousands of opposition demonstrators who gathered around the congressional building again Monday as lawmakers debated the proposal inside.

The protesters, some wearing balaclavas, used sling shots to fire rocks at police. Security forces answered by using water cannons and tear gas, turning the vast lawn in front of the capital complex into a battlefield.

“This bill will put millions of retirees at risk. It changes the whole pension system,” Laura Rivas, a 34-year-old teacher, told Reuters, standing back from the most violent protest areas.

The day-long strike called by Argentina’s main CGT labor group started at noon local time (1500 GMT). It was not expected to affect the nation’s transportation system until late Monday night, allowing workers to get home in the afternoon.

The bill, key to President Mauricio Macri’s efforts to lower business costs and reduce Argentina’s fiscal deficit, has already passed the Senate, leaving the lower House to give final legislative approval. Opposition lawmakers said the one-time bonus amendment did little to persuade them to vote in favor.

“It will be a one-time bonus payment made in March,” opposition lawmaker Agustin Rossi told reporters, adding that the overall bill remained inadequate to meet pensioners’ needs.

Macri is aiming to cut the fiscal deficit to 3.2 percent of gross domestic product next year from 4.2 percent this year, and reduce inflation to between 8 percent and 12 percent from more than 20 percent this year.

The pension bill would change the formula used to calculate benefits. Payments would adjust every quarter based on inflation, rather than the current system of twice-yearly adjustments linked to wage hikes and tax revenue.

Economists say the current formula means benefits go up in line with past inflation. Left unchanged, that could harm Macri’s efforts to cut the deficit.

Under the new formula, benefits would increase by 5 percentage points above inflation, according to cabinet chief Marcos Pena. The plan would take effect at a time of lower inflation expectations and would slow the pace of pension benefit increases.
…