A British university student has created a range of watercolor paints made from discarded cosmetics. An example, she says, of how the so-called ‘circular economy’ can help improve the environment. It could also be a way for cosmetics companies and retailers to reduce waste and make more money. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Month: May 2018
The U.S. oil export infrastructure is straining to keep up as the country’s crude oil exports hit new highs and China snaps up more of it than ever before.
U.S. crude production has surged to a record 10.7 million barrels a day, driven largely by growth from the Permian shale patch in West Texas, which pumps more than 3 million barrels per day.
However, the infrastructure to move it abroad is lagging, even as U.S. prices are well below the Brent benchmark, a discount that sits just off three-year highs at $8.09 per barrel.
U.S. crude exports peaked at 2.6 million bpd two weeks ago, but are expected to keep rising.
What is US export capacity?
No definitive data are available on how much crude the United States can export, though analysts estimate a nationwide capacity of 3.5 million to 4 million bpd. Most terminal operators and companies do not disclose capacity, and the U.S. Energy Department does not track it.
“So far, export capacity is keeping pace, but we are walking a tightrope,” said Bernadette Johnson, vice president at Drilling Info.
That capacity may begin to be tested next month, as Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner, bought a record 16 million barrels, or about 533,000 bpd of U.S. crude, to load in June, two sources with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday.
For the last six months of available data, ending in February, the United States exported about 332,000 bpd to China.
Terminals designed for imports
Analysts are concerned about how quickly the crude terminals at Gulf Coast ports, many initially designed for imports, can shift to handling exports. Only the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port can handle supertanker exports, but it only started testing in February. The supertankers, known as VLCCs or very large crude carriers, can handle about 2 million barrels of oil, the amount preferred by Asian buyers with bigger ports.
“There’s only one dock on the Gulf Coast that can handle a VLCC deepwater, and that’s LOOP. And the LOOP has only started to export,” said Sandy Fielden, director of research in commodities and energy at Morningstar.
Port of Corpus Christi in Texas is developing its Harbor Island port, which will accommodate 120 VLCCs per year, said Jarl Pedersen, chief commercial officer at the port, with a targeted completion of late 2020.
Kpler, a cargo tracking service, Thursday estimated that up to 4.8 million bpd can be moved from the top crude-exporting ports of Corpus Christi, Houston, Port Arthur and New Orleans. Their estimate in October was 3.2 million bpd.
PIRA Energy Group put the U.S. overall crude export capacity at 3.5 million bpd, while Morningstar’s estimate is 3.8 million bpd at most.
Pipelines lacking, too
In addition to port constraints, inadequate pipeline space has created a glut of supply in West Texas, pushing the principle cash grade there to a $13 discount to benchmark U.S. crude futures this month, the biggest in 3½ years.
“The constraint is really the pipeline coming down from the Permian to Corpus Christi,” Pedersen said. However, the ship channel still needs to be deepened, a $320 million project in development with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
There is 3.4 million bpd of pipeline capacity, while total output from tight oil and legacy production from vertical wells in the Permian is at more than 4.2 million bpd, according to energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
“The combined volumes mean that the infrastructure is crammed full — there’s little or no room for incremental volumes,” R.T. Dukes, head of U.S. Lower 48 oil supply at Wood Mackenzie said in a note.
About 300,000 bpd of new pipeline capacity is to come on by the end of January, but “it’s really from next summer that we’ll see big new capacity,” Dukes said.
In the second half of 2019, another 1.25 million bpd will be added, lifting total capacity up to 5 million bpd, he said.
“That’s when the big discount of WTI at Midland will narrow,” Dukes said.
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Lava entered the ocean from a third flow Thursday, marking the third week of a Hawaii volcano eruption that has opened up nearly two dozen vents in rural communities, destroyed dozens of buildings and shot miles-high plumes of ash into the sky.
Low lava fountains were erupting from a nearly continuous 2-mile-long (3.22-kilometer) portion of the series of fissures that have opened in the ground, scientists said Thursday. The fountains were feeding channelized lava flows down to the coast. The eastern-most channel split, creating three ocean entries.
Since the eruption began May 3, Hawaii County has ordered about 2,000 people to evacuate from Leilani Estates and surrounding neighborhoods.
Hawaii officials have said they may need to evacuate 1,000 more people if lava crosses key highways and isolates communities in the mostly rural part of the island where the Kilauea volcano is erupting.
A blocked highway would cut people off from the only route to grocery stores, schools and hospitals.
The U.S. Marine Corps said Thursday that it has sent two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters from a base near Honolulu to help if more evacuations become necessary. Each helicopter can carry 50 passengers.
20 vents, 50 buildings
The volcano has opened more than 20 vents in the ground that have released lava, sulfur dioxide and steam. The lava has been pouring down the flank of the volcano and into the ocean miles away.
Lava has destroyed 50 buildings, including about two dozen homes. One person was seriously injured after being hit by a flying piece of lava.
There continues to be intermittent explosions at the summit that have been sending plumes of ash into the sky. On Wednesday, the volcano belched a plume that reached about 7,000 feet (2,133 meters), scientists said. Right before the explosion, there was a 3.9 magnitude earthquake at the summit.
“We are kind of in this steady state,” said Wendy Stovall, a scientist at the U.S. Geographical Survey. There’s no indication about whether lava volume will increase or decrease, she said. The continued explosions are expected to “last a little while longer.”
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Brazil’s government said late Thursday that a deal had been reached with truckers to suspend a 4-day-old strike that caused fuel shortages, cut into food deliveries, backed up exports and threatened airline flights.
Eliseu Padilha, chief of staff for President Michel Temer, told reporters in Brasilia that several unions that represent truckers agreed to suspend the strike for 15 days to give all parties time to negotiate a solution to rising fuel prices that drivers say have cut deeply into their earnings.
The deal came after a full day of negotiations with several of the largest transportation unions.
Diumar Bueno, president of the National Confederation of Autonomous Transporters, told the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that he hoped the agreement would lead to drivers quickly dismantling roadblocks on highways and streets.
But it wasn’t immediately clear how many of the thousands of truckers, who by the nature of their jobs operate with a good bit of independence, would heed calls to stop the strike.
Road transport
Brazil’s economy runs largely on road transport, and the strike to protest rising diesel prices was beginning to have serious consequences, with highway police reporting blocked roads in nearly all of Brazil’s states.
The airport in the capital of Brasilia allowed landings only by planes that carried enough fuel to take off again. The stop-gap measure hadn’t resulted in any flight cancelations, but it was unclear how long it could continue before companies would have to ground planes. The civil aviation authority and airport authorities said they were monitoring fuel supplies carefully.
Long lines formed at gas stations, and some ran out of some kinds of fuel. In Rio de Janeiro, only about two-thirds of the city’s buses were running Thursday, according to Rio Onibus, which represents the companies that run the various lines.
Local media reported food shortages and rationing in some supermarkets, and an association of supermarkets in Brazil’s south warned that perishable food would run out in days if the strike did not end. The association said stores on average have a 15-day supply of dry goods, but fresh food would run out or spoil before then.
The Brazilian Association of Meat Industry Exporters said dozens of meatpacking plants were idling because of the strike, and 1,200 containers carrying beef for export were not being loaded on ships each day. Brazil is one of the largest exporters of meat in the world.
Truckers complain that rising diesel prices have cut deeply into their income and are demanding relief from the government. Diesel prices are being pushed up by rising world oil prices and Brazil’s falling real currency.
Truckers reject Petrobras move
Truckers rejected the Wednesday decision by the state oil company Petrobras to reduce diesel prices at refineries by 10 percent. The company said the measure would last for 15 days and give the government time to negotiate an end to the strike.
“The government thinks truckers are illiterate and can’t count,” said Vicente Reis, who has been driving for 20 years. “In 2018, there has already been about a 25 percent increase in fuel prices. And now they want a 15-day freeze with (a reduction of) 10 percent. Truckers know how to count, Mr. President.”
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Two dying Ebola patients were spirited out of a Congo hospital by their relatives on motorcycles, then taken to a prayer meeting with 50 other people, potentially exposing them all to the deadly virus, a senior aid worker said Thursday.
Both patients were vomiting and infectious and died hours after the prayer session in the river port city of Mbandaka, Dr. Jean-Clement Cabrol, emergency medical coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), said.
Democratic Republic of Congo is racing to contain an outbreak of the disease, which spreads through contact with infected bodily fluids including vomit and sweat.
The Health Ministry said late Thursday that a new case had been confirmed in the town of Bikoro and another in the nearby village of Iboko, where the epidemic is thought to have started.
This brought the total number of confirmed cases to 31, it said in a statement, out of 52 suspected cases.
Ninth outbreak in Congo
Congo’s ninth recorded outbreak of the disease is thought to have killed at least 22 people so far, according to government figures released Wednesday, fewer than the last estimate of 27, after some of those deaths turned out not to be Ebola.
“The escape was organized by the families, with six motorcycles as the patients were very ill and couldn’t walk,” Cabrol told a news briefing in Geneva after returning from the affected region. “They were taken to a prayer room with 50 people to pray.
“They were found at two in the morning, one of them dead and one was dying. So that’s 50-60 contacts right there. The patients were in the active phase of the disease, vomiting.” The patients got out of the isolation ward Monday.
Earlier reports did not give details of the escape or where they went afterward. A third patient who left the ward survived.
Health officials started trying to trace the motorcycle drivers and other people who came into contact with the patients as soon as the escape was reported, Dr. Peter Salama, head of emergency response at the World Health Organization (WHO), told Reuters on Thursday.
“From the moment that they escaped, the (health) ministry, WHO and partners have been following very closely every contact,” he said.
‘Hard to predict’
WHO’s three-month budget for the crisis has been doubled to $57 million to carry out a complex operation in a remote, forested area, Salama said.
“All it takes is one sick person to travel down the Congo River and we can have outbreaks seeded in many different locations … that can happen at any moment. It’s very hard to predict,” he said, referring to the river linking the trading hub of Mbandaka to the capital Kinshasa, whose population is 10 million.
“It is going to be at least weeks and more likely months before we get this outbreak fully under control,” Salama said.
There have been major advances in medical treatment of the virus since it ravaged West Africa in 2014-2016, including the use of an experimental vaccine to protect medical staff.
But local skepticism about the dangers and the need to isolate infected patients continue to complicate efforts to contain it. In past outbreaks, mourning relatives have caught the hemorrhagic disease by touching the highly contagious bodies of dead loved ones, sometimes by laying hands on them to say goodbye.
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A jury has decided Samsung must pay Apple $539 million in damages for illegally copying some of the iPhone’s features to lure people into buying its competing products.
The verdict reached Thursday is the latest twist in a legal battle that began in 2011. Apple contends Samsung wouldn’t have emerged as the world’s leading seller of smartphones if it hadn’t ripped off the technology powering the pioneering iPhone in developing a line of similar devices running on Google’s Android software.
Patents infringed
Previous rulings had determined that Samsung infringed on some of Apple’s patents, but the amount of damages owed has been in legal limbo. Another jury convened for a 2012 trial had determined Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion, but U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh reduced that amount to $548 million.
The issue escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court , which determined in 2016 that a lower court needed to re-examine $399 million of the $548 million. That ruling was based on the concept that the damages shouldn’t be based on all the profits that the South Korean electronics giant rung up from products that copied the iPhone because its infringement may only have violated a few patents.
$1 billion or $28 million?
Apple had argued it was owed more than $1 billon while Samsung contended the $399 million should be slashed to $28 million. The revised damages figure represents a victory for Apple, even though it isn’t as much as the Cupertino, California, company had sought.
“Today’s decision flies in the face of a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in favor of Samsung on the scope of design patent damages,” Samsung said in a statement. “We will consider all options to obtain an outcome that does not hinder creativity and fair competition for all companies and consumers.”
An eight-person jury came up with the new amount following a one-week trial and four days of deliberation in a San Jose, California, federal courthouse.
Apple expressed gratitude to the jury for agreeing “that Samsung should pay for copying our products.”
“This case has always been about more than money,” a company statement said. “Apple ignited the smartphone revolution with iPhone and it is a fact that Samsung blatantly copied our design.”
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A pill could soon radio signals from inside your gut to help doctors diagnose diseases from ulcers to cancer to inflammation, according to a new study.
Scientists have developed a small, ingestible capsule that mixes synthetic biology and electronics to detect bleeding in the digestive tract.
The system can be adapted for a range of medical, environmental and other uses, the researchers say.
The biological part of the pill uses bacteria engineered to glow when exposed to heme, the iron-containing molecule in blood.
The electronic side includes a tiny light detector, computer chip, battery and transmitter that sends data to a cellphone or computer.
“A major challenge for sensing in the GI tract is, the space available for a device is very limited,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology electrical engineer Phillip Nadeau.
Using very low-power electronics that Nadeau and his colleagues designed, they fit all the components into a capsule about 3 centimeters long by 1 centimeter wide.
It’s still a bit big to swallow, but Nadeau says it likely can be engineered to a third that size.
The engineered bacteria are contained in chambers covered by a membrane that lets small molecules in, but does not let the organisms out. The researchers say the bacteria can be engineered to die if they accidentally leak from the capsule; or, future models may just use the key enzymes, rather than whole bacteria.
In laboratory tests, the pill successfully distinguished pigs fed small amounts of blood from those not given blood. The capsule has not been tested on humans, but the team aims to do so in the next year or two.
Since the components are all fairly inexpensive to manufacture, researchers speculate that the cost would be in the range of tens to hundreds of dollars.
And they say the same platform could be used to detect markers of a range of illnesses, or to sense chemicals in the environment.
“It’s really exciting, and I think it’s got a lot of legs,” said Rice University bioengineer Jeff Tabor, who was not part of the research team.
But Tabor notes that the sensors may need to be much more sensitive than what was used in the pig tests. He says there may be much less blood in the guts of actual patients than what the pigs were given. Other conditions may have the same limitations.
“For many actual diseases, you might have far less of the molecule that you need to sense available to you,” he added.
The research was published in the journal Science.
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When a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, convicted a Latvian software developer last week of running an underground clearinghouse for computer hackers, U.S. prosecutors highlighted it as an example of their commitment to combating cybercrime.
“This verdict demonstrates our commitment to holding such actors accountable,” said acting U.S. Attorney Tracey Doherty-McCormick. “I commend the work of the agents and prosecutors both in the United States and in Latvia, who worked together to bring him to justice.”
Not mentioned was the role played by Trend Micro, a Japanese cybersecurity firm that collaborated with the FBI to hunt down the developer, Ruslans Bondars, and an accomplice, Jurijs Martisevs, who jointly operated Scan4You, a site that helped hackers test their malware.
In a report released after the verdict, Trend Micro offered an inside look at how it identified Scan4You in 2012, took a trove of data about the site to the FBI in 2014, and then worked closely with agents as they built a case against the two men.
Trend Micro says it has supported nearly 20 law enforcement cases around the world.
“In this case, our global threat intelligence network and team of researchers provided an invaluable resource for the FBI as it homed in on this notorious [counter antivirus] service,” said Ed Cabrera, chief security officer for Trend Micro.
The case highlights how the FBI and private cybersecurity firms, once wary of working together, have in recent years started teaming up to combat cybercrime, a problem that costs the world an estimated $600 billion a year.
“The value that the private sector brings to law enforcement investigations is almost incalculable,” said John Boles, a director at consulting firm Navigant who previously worked as an assistant FBI director and led the bureau’s global cyberoperations.
A decade ago “there was almost hesitation on both sides of the fence to cooperate, but somewhere along the line as the scales have tipped, everybody realized it’s a global issue,” Boles said.
In 2011, the FBI created the Office of the Private Sector within the Cyber Division, making private-sector collaboration a key pillar of its cybercrime-fighting strategy.
Since then, the bureau has made more than a dozen major arrests in cybercrime cases, many with help from the private sector, according to Boles. While cybercrime investigations are often initiated by the bureau, some start with a tip from the private sector.
Unusual activity
That was the case with the Scan4You investigation.
In 2012, Trend Micro researchers, while investigating a hacker group, noticed a flurry of unusual activity on their threat radar: Somebody using Latvia IP addresses kept checking the company’s web reputation system, a program that blocks malicious websites.
That led them to another discovery: regular checks of Scan4You URLs against Trend Micro’s web reputation system emanating from Latvia. The goal: to determine whether Scan4You’s scanning scripts could detect malware.
“By 2014, we had a deeper understanding [of Scan4You] and began that relationship with the FBI,” Cabrera said.
The collaboration would continue for the next three years as Trend Micro researchers and FBI agents gathered evidence about Scan4You, its operators and its users.
Scan4You was an underground service that allowed hackers to upload their malware to see whether it could be detected by more than 35 antivirus engines. At its peak in 2016, Scan4You was the largest service of its kind, boasting more than 30,000 customers.
The service allowed cyber scofflaws to test all manner of malicious software, ranging from so-called crypters, a type of software used to conceal malicious files, to remote access trojans, programs that allow a remote operator backdoor access to a computer.
‘World’s most destructive hackers’
Among Scan4You’s customers were “some of the world’s most destructive hackers,” according Doherty-McCormick, the Virginia prosecutor.
One customer used Scan4You to test malware that was later used to steal about 40 million credit card and debit card numbers, costing one U.S. retailer $292 million, according to court documents.
A Russian hacker used Scan4You to develop Citadel, an infamous botnet used by cybercriminals to steal $500 million from bank accounts. The FBI worked with Microsoft to break up the network.
But Scan4You was not a very lucrative operation. As researchers dug deeper, they discovered that Bondars and Martisevs were affiliated with “some of the longest-running cybercriminal businesses” and “involved with one of the largest and oldest pharmaceutical spam gangs known as Eva Pharmacy,” according to Trend Micro.
Bondars, a longtime Latvian resident of Ukrainian citizenship, designed and maintained the site.
Martisevs, a Russian national living in Latvia, provided customer service and promoted the site on cybercriminal forums.
The pair’s deep involvement in an assortment of criminal activities gave them something that helped with their scanning service: cyber-cred.
“These threat actors gained the respect of many other cybercriminals who trusted them and used their malware scanning service,” the report says.
The end for Scan4You came with the 2017 arrests and extradition of Bondars and Martisevs to the United States. Shortly after their arrest, Scan4You went dark.
In March, Martisevs pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Bondars. Last week, Bondars was convicted of three counts related to his role in Scan4You.
Scan4You’s downfall has taken the biggest service of its kind out of commission, but just how big a blow to cybercrime it represents remains to be seen.
Typically, when a site like Scan4You goes offline, its users flee to copycat sites. That has yet to happen, Cabrera said.
“This is a big blow to cybercrime, helping to disrupt countless threat actors and prove there are consequences to their actions,” he said.
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U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law Thursday a measure that eases rules imposed on banks in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession.
The law relaxes regulations and oversight on banks with assets below $250 billion, leaving a handful of the largest U.S. banks that must still comply with the stringent rules and oversight.
Trump said at the signing ceremony the rules and oversight, enacted by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, were “crushing small banks.” Trump lauded the signing as a victory in his administration’s efforts to eliminate regulations to promote economic growth.
Although Trump signed the bill into law, much of Dodd-Frank remains intact. Trump signed the Republican-led measure that was passed by Congress after receiving the support of some Democrats.
Dodd-Frank was signed into law by President Barack Obama in response to a crisis that resulted in the loss of 8 million jobs, 2.5 million home foreclosures and the shuttering of 2.5 million businesses, according to Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research.
A federal report prepared by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded economic weaknesses that created the potential for the crisis were “years in the making.” But the report said “it was the collapse of the housing bubble — fueled by low interest rates, easy and available credit, scant regulation and toxic mortgages — that was the spark that ignited a string of events, which led to the full-blown crisis in the fall of 2008.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron says his country will invest $76 million in African startups, saying innovation on the continent is key to meeting challenges ranging from climate change to terrorism. He spoke Thursday at a technology fair in Paris showcasing African talent this year.
It is hard to miss the African section of Viva Tech. There are gigantic signs pointing to stands from South Africa, Morocco and Rwanda. And there are lots of African entrepreneurs.
Omar Cisse heads a Senegalese startup called InTouch, which has developed an app making it easier to conduct financial transactions by mobile phone.
“Globally, you have more than $1 billion per day of transactions on mobile money, and more than 50 percent are done in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.
Cisse says the challenges for African startups are tremendous, but so are the opportunities.
“In Africa, you have very huge potential. Everything needs to be done now, and with local people who know the realities,” he said.
Like Cisse, Cameroonian engineer Alain Nteff is breaking new ground. He and a doctor co-founded a startup called Gifted Mom, which provides health information to pregnant and nursing women via text messaging.
“I think the biggest problems today in Africa are going to be solved by business, and not by development and nonprofits,” he said.
Nteff gets some support from the United Nations and other big donors. But funding is a challenge for many. African startups reportedly raised $560 million last year, compared with more than $22 billion raised by European ventures.
Now they are getting a $76 million windfall, announced by President Emmanuel Macron here at the tech fair.
“When the startups decide to work together to deploy ad accelerate equipment in Africa, it is good for the whole continent, because that is how to accelerate everything and provide opportunities — which by the way, is the best way to fight against terrorism, jihadism … to provide another model to these young people,” he said.
The funding comes from the Digital Africa Initiative, run by France’s AFD development agency (Agence Francaise de Developpement).
“I think the main challenge is access to funding, and the second is the coaching to grow. AFD wants them to find solutions,” said Jean-Marc Kadjo, who heads the project team.
There are plenty of exciting projects here. Reine Imanishimwe is a wood innovator from Rwanda.
“I try to use my wood in high technology. As you can see, my business card is wood, but I print it using a computer,” said Imanishimwe.
Abdou Salam Nizeyimana is also from Rwanda. He works for Zipline, an American startup that uses drones to fly blood to people and hospitals in Rwanda, cutting delivery times from hours to minutes.
“Now doctors can plan surgery right away and just say, ‘We need this type of blood,’ ” and it can be delivered in about a half hour or less, he said.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame toured the tech fair with Macron. Relations between Rwanda and France are warming, after years of tension over Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
Entrepreneur Nizeyimana is happy about that. When politics are good, he says, it is good for technology transfer and Africa’s development.
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Even though the United States is one of the richest and most technologically advanced countries in the world, about 45 million Americans live below the poverty line. In Buffalo, New York, a once-prosperous city that has fallen on hard-times, one-third of its residents live in poverty. As Olga Loginova reports, the city offers an example of what happens when a once-powerful industrial sector declines and well-paying jobs become scarce.
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Germany’s struggling Deutsche Bank is slashing thousands of jobs as it reshapes its stocks trading operation and refocuses its global investment banking business on its European base.
The bank said Thursday it would cut its workforce from 97,000 to “well below” 90,000 and that the reductions were underway.
It said headcount in the stocks trading business, mostly based in New York and London, would be reduced by about 25 percent. Those cuts will cost the bank about 800 million euros ($935 million) this year.
Deutsche Bank has struggled with high costs and troubles with regulators. The bank replaced its CEO in April after three years of annual losses and lagging progress in streamlining its operations.
New CEO Christian Sewing has said the bank would refocus on its European and German customer base and cut back on costlier and riskier operations where it doesn’t hold a leading position. Sewing said the bank was committed to its international investment banking operations but must “concentrate on what we truly do well.” The new strategy means stepping back from several decades of global expansion in which the bank sought to compete with Wall Street rivals such as Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase.
Sewing replaced John Cryan in April with a mandate to accelerate the bank’s wrenching restructuring. It has suffered billions in losses from fines and penalties related to past misconduct. But progress in cutting costs has remained elusive. Sewing on Thursday affirmed the bank’s goal to hold costs to 23 billion euros this year and 22 billion next year.
The announcement came hours before Board Chairman Paul Achleitner had to face disgruntled investors at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting. The bank’s share price has sagged and it paid only a small dividend of 11 euro cents per share last year.
Addressing an audience of several thousands in Frankfurt, Achleitner said Cryan had “set the ball rolling for fundamental change” but later displayed “shortcomings in decision-making and implementation.”
“Dear shareholders, you are right to expect the bank and its management to hit the targets it has set itself,” he said. “If there are signs those targets are in jeopardy… then we on the supervisory board have to act swiftly and decisively.”
The bank’s troubles and the turmoil surrounding Cryan’s departure have put pressure on Achleitner as well. Cryan was forced to publicly push back against a media report that Achleitner was looking for a replacement, then left to twist in the wind for days before being shown the door. Achleitner brought Cryan to the bank in 2015 and thus in principle shares responsibility for the bank’s strategy and performance since then.
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Oceanographers often say we know much more about the surface of the Moon and Mars than we do about nearly 70 percent of our own planet. That is because most of the Earth is covered in water, most of it deeper than 200 meters. There are several initiatives to map the oceans’ floors and the latest comes from Japan. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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A new study by Johns Hopkins University says urban foraging, the act of finding naturally growing, edible food in urban settings in the U.S. is on the rise. But before setting out with basket and blade, experts recommend would-be foragers to take classes to determine what’s edible and what might make you sick. Fortunately, foraging classes are cropping up across the country. Faith Lapidus reports on one of them.
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Amazon, Starbucks, Vulcan and other companies have pledged a total of more than $350,000 toward an effort to repeal Seattle’s newly passed tax on large employers intended to combat homelessness.
Just days after the Seattle City Council approved the levy, the No Tax On Jobs campaign, a coalition of businesses, announced it would gather signatures to put a referendum on the November ballot to repeal it.
Amazon, Starbucks, Vulcan, Kroger and Albertsons each promised $25,000 to the effort last week, according to a report filed by the campaign. The Washington Food Industry Association pledged $30,000.
Referendum backers will have to gather 17,632 signatures of registered Seattle voters by June 14 to get the measure on the ballot.
The so-called head tax will charge businesses making at least $20 million in gross revenues about $275 per full-time worker each year. The tax would begin in 2019 and raise about $48 million a year to build affordable housing and provide emergency homeless services.
Opponents say the Seattle measure is a tax on jobs and questioned whether city officials are spending current resources effectively.
Worker and church groups and others praised the tax as a step toward building badly needed affordable housing in an affluent city where the income gap continues to widen and lower-income workers are being priced out.
The clash over who should pay to solve the city housing crisis that’s exacerbated by Seattle’s rapid economic growth featured weeks of tense exchanges, raucous meetings and a threat by Amazon, the city’s largest employer, to stop construction planning on a 17-story building near its hometown headquarters.
Amazon has resumed planning the downtown building, but the company remains “apprehensive about the future created by the council’s hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here,” said Drew Herdener, Amazon’s vice president for global corporate and operations communications.
Four council members initially pitched an annual tax of $500 per full-time employee before a compromise proposal lowered the tax rate after they could not muster six votes needed to override a potential veto by Mayor Jenny Durkan.
The mayor signed the head tax on May 16, saying “we must make urgent progress on our affordability and homelessness crisis.”
Seattle’s action came as cities around San Francisco consider business taxes to help offset issues created by the growth of tech companies.
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Starbucks Corp. on Wednesday revealed details of the employee anti-bias training program that will take place behind closed doors at 8,000 U.S. company-owned cafes on the afternoon of May 29.
Starbucks announced plans to shutter stores and corporate offices to train 175,000 employees after the controversial April 12 arrests of two black men, who were detained for hours after the manager of a Philadelphia Starbucks called police because they had not made purchases and refused to leave.
The arrests of Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, who were waiting to meet a friend, sparked protests and calls for a boycott of the coffee chain known for its diverse workforce and liberal stances on issues such as gay marriage.
Starbucks said the first training on May 29 “will serve as a step in a long-term journey to make Starbucks even more welcoming and safe for all.”
It will include videos featuring Starbucks executives such as Chief Executive Kevin Johnson, Executive Chairman and co-founder Howard Schultz, board member Mellody Hobson, hip hop artist Common, store managers and experts from the Perception Institute. Employees also will view a film called “You’re Welcome” by Stanley Nelson and participate in discussion and problem-solving sessions on identifying and avoiding bias in every day situations.
Starbucks said the long-term program is being designed and developed with input from researchers, social scientists, employees and other advisers.
Those partners include consultancy SY Partners — which worked with Starbucks to reinvent itself after a business crisis spawned by the “Great Recession”; the Perception Institute; Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; and Heather McGhee, president of public policy group Demos.
Since the Philadelphia incident, Starbucks has said it will allow people to sit in its cafes and use its restrooms without making a purchase. It also said it has outlined procedures for dealing with customers who are disruptive, using tobacco, drugs or alcohol or sleeping in its cafes.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday “a different structure” is needed in trade negotiations with China, but he did not provide further details on the kind of change he seeks.
“Our trade deal with China is moving along nicely,” Trump said in his Twitter post Wednesday morning, “but in the end we will probably have to use a different structure in that this will be too hard to get done and to verify results after completion.”
The stock market reacted negatively after Trump cast doubt on trade negotiations with China but ultimately trimmed its losses, ending the day in the positive territory and gained 52.40 points, or 0.21 percent.
Trump said on Tuesday he was neither pleased nor satisfied with how the recent trade talks with China went, but added, “They’re a start.”
After two days of trade talks between the two countries in Washington last week, China agreed to “substantially reduce” the $375 billion annual trade surplus it has over the U.S. by buying more American goods, but there was no mention of any specific import and export targets in the statement agreed to by the two countries.
On Capitol Hill, concerns appear to be mounting on Trump’s approach to trade talks with China.
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas cautioned Wednesday that the United States needs to remain “steely-eyed” and make sure “China isn’t playing us for fools.”
Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan warned, “It’s important we not only talk tough about China, but actually be tough with China.”
“I am really concerned about the president’s hemming and hawing over the last few days when it comes to China. I’m worried that President Xi [Jinping] is crafting a much better deal than President Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Tuesday.
On trade with China, Schumer added that he is “closer to the president’s view” than he was to the views of former Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and a longtime critic of China, said Wednesday that the U.S. needs a “structural rebalance” of trade with China, not a “dollar rebalance.”
In a Twitter post, Rubio said he has urged Trump to “follow his initial instincts on China,” and he also asked Trump to “listen to those who understand that a short-term trade deal that sounds good but poses long-term danger is a bad deal.”
According to U.S. media reports, infighting between free-trade advocates and protectionists within Trump’s trade team has led to contradicting policy pronouncements and public statements on trade negotiations with China.
For example, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States would hold off on imposing tariffs on China. But U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said hours later the tariffs were still on the table. Earlier this month, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, known for his protectionist views, reportedly feuded with Mnuchin on his approach to trade talks during their trip to Beijing.
The recent rounds of trade talks are aimed at avoiding a full-blown trade war between the United States and China.
In April, Trump imposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods, and the Chinese retaliated with tariffs of their own. Trump announced he had instructed the U.S. trade representative to consider whether tariffs on another $100 billion worth of Chinese goods would be appropriate following China’s announcement.
Michael Bowman contributed to this report.
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This week marks six months since Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa took office, after Robert Mugabe gave in to military pressure and resigned.
During the weekend, the 75-year-old Mnangagwa told supporters that since he took over, a lot had improved.
He says Zimbabwe’s annual foreign direct investment had been around $400 or 500 million, but for the past five months it has gone to more than $15 billion committed to investment in the country, with international companies and countries such as Canada, South Africa, China, Britain and the United States coming to invest in power generation and water.
Last Tuesday, the British gave $100 million to aid toward trying to eliminate Zimbabwe’s cash crisis, Mnangagwa said.
The country’s methane gas reserves have improved as well, he added.
“After about three and half years, we should be able to produce eight million liters of fuel per day,” Mnangagwa said. “The country only consumes five million [liters] per day — three million surplus per day. Zimbabwe will prosper, it is going to develop. Zimbabwe will shine not only in SADC [Southern African Development Community], but also in Africa because Zimbabwe is in good hands. Our political party ZANU-PF is a revolutionary party, it caters for the interests of the people.”
Chido Masasai, an unemployed former media student, says Zimbabwe’s people have yet to see the money the president is talking about. She says there is still a shortage of cash, and the black market continues to operate.
What she does see is a greater expression of political views — a significant change from the Mugabe era when authorities regularly harassed the president’s critics and opponents.
“But in terms of freedom of expression, a lot more people are liberal with their views and opinions. You find that there are a lot of political parties that have come into the fore,” Masasai said.
Harare-based economist John Robertson says it is too early for Zimbabwe’s economy to fully recover from Mugabe’s populist policies, which drove away most foreign investment.
“The economy is still in great difficulty, but remember that the difficulties we face were built slowly into the system by 38 years of very badly chosen economic policies, and I think that the media is largely responsible in increasing the expectations of the population beyond what was reasonably possible within a short period of time,” he said.
Robertson added that Mnangagwa might make major policy changes, such as compensating white farmers for land that was confiscated during the Mugabe years, and ensuring that black farmers can get bank loans instead of depending on government handouts.
“I think this is why the president is waiting for the elections,” he said. “Behind him he would have increased amounts of courage to make changes that will prove unpopular to the people who thought they achieved what they were expecting.”
The president is expected to announce a date for the elections soon, which could place in July or August.
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