Author: Uponbiz

Three of the eight countries to which Washington granted waivers to import Iranian oil have now cut their shipments from Iran to zero, a U.S. special representative said on Tuesday.

While the United States has set a target of driving Iranian oil exports to zero, it granted temporary import waivers to China, India, Greece, Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey and South Korea.

“In November, we granted eight oil waivers to avoid a spike in the price of oil. I can confirm today three of those importers are now at zero,” Brian Hook, the envoy on Iran, told reporters.

Hook did not identify the three countries.

“There are better market conditions for us to accelerate our path to zero. We are not looking to grant any waivers or exceptions to our sanctions regime,” Hook said.

A senior Trump administration official told reporters on Monday that the U.S. government was considering additional sanctions against Iran that would target areas of its economy that have not been hit before.

The administration aimed to follow through with new sanctions around the anniversary of U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement last May withdrawing the United States from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and several world powers, the official said.

The accord sought to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb in return for the removal of sanctions that had crippled its economy. Trump ordered U.S. sanctions to be reimposed on Iran.
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Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday the United States would continue to pressure Venezuela’s oil industry and those who support it with economic sanctions, citing world oil prices as low enough to allow for the measures.

Oil prices hit their highest point since November on Tuesday, with Brent crude approaching $70 a barrel, based in part on fears that U.S. sanctions against OPEC members Iran and Venezuela would result in a cut to global supplies.

“We recognize the importance of energy to the United States,” Pence told reporters. “But the price of oil around the world has been quite low for some time, quite competitive for some time, and we’re just going to continue to stand firm and bring even more pressure on this regime,” he said.

A White House official said while oil prices have crept up from historic lows recently, prices are still under last year’s highs.

Pence’s comments stood in contrast to concerns that President Donald Trump has voiced about oil prices. As recently as last week, Trump called for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to boost production, saying on Twitter that the price of oil was “getting too high.”

Pence, who is helping lead the White House campaign to dislodge Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power, made his remarks in a meeting with family members of six executives jailed in Venezuela since 2017. The executives worked for Citgo Petroleum, the U.S. refinery division of Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA.

The United States and most other Western countries have backed Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who declared himself interim president in January, arguing that Maduro’s 2018 reelection was illegitimate. Maduro has called Guaido a puppet of the United States.

The United States slapped stiff sanctions on PDVSA in January, aimed at cutting Maduro’s government off from oil revenues.

Trump is considering expanding the measures with sanctions on foreign companies that do business with Venezuela, his national security adviser John Bolton said on Friday.

“We’re going to continue to bring pressure on the oil industry. We’re going to continue to bring pressure on countries in this hemisphere who are supporting the dictatorship in Venezuela,” Pence said.

Pence also said the Trump administration was considering new measures to punish Cuba, which has close ties with Maduro.

“We’re looking at strong action against Cuba which continues to provide personnel and support for the dictatorship in Venezuela,” he said.

‘Worried for Their Life’

Pence expressed sympathy to the family members of the six Citgo executives – five U.S. citizens and one legal permanent resident – who were arrested in Caracas during corporate meetings and accused of embezzlement and money laundering.

Pence said the men had been “illegally detained” and that 16 court hearings had been canceled as the men languished in basement cells without enough food or medical treatment. He said the Trump administration was working for the prisoners’ release.

“We are just worried for their life and we just want them home as soon as possible,” said Carlos Anez, who told Pence his father had worked for Citgo for more than 20 years before he was detained.
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Senior Brazilian officials charged with steering pension reform through Congress presented a united front on Tuesday, insisting on an end to the political finger-pointing in recent weeks that threw the government’s signature reform bill into doubt.

Brazilian stocks hit a nearly three-month low last week on growing signs of political infighting and skepticism that President Jair Bolsonaro was fully committed to the political consensus-building needed to get lawmakers to pass his pension reform bill.

But the message on Tuesday from Vice President Hamilton Mourao, Labor and Pensions Secretary Rogerio Marinho and the government’s leader in the lower house, Vitor Hugo, was that the government is listening and willing to work with Congress.

“We have high expectations that parliament will approve pension reform in the coming months, and then it’s onto tax reform,” Mourao said at an event in Rio de Janeiro.

Vitor Hugo said “a page had been turned” from the tension of last week, adding that Bolsonaro and his top ministers are getting more involved in the negotiations with lawmakers to build the political support needed to get passage approved.

Still, Brazil’s benchmark Bovespa stock index slipped nearly 1%  on Tuesday tracking losses.

The government’s plan targets over 1 trillion reais ($260 billion) in savings over the next decade from a radical overhaul of the social security system. Economists insist this is needed to shore up the public finances, revive the economy and boost investor confidence in Brazil.

But the proposal is likely to be watered down as lawmakers extract concessions and exemptions. Military personnel have already secured pay raises that almost fully make up for losses from later retirement ages and more required contributions.

Marinho said that the government continues to analyze benefits for rural and disabled Brazilians, two points that have provoked the strongest opposition in Congress.

A lawmaker survey run by transparency group Atlas Politico on Tuesday showed that the government currently has the support of 171 of the 308 lawmakers needed for the bill’s passage in the lower house, which would send the proposal to the Senate.
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The safety of workers making clothing for global brands like Adidas and H&M could be at risk if Bangladesh’s Supreme Court moves on Sunday to shut down a factory inspection mechanism set up by European fashion labels, campaigners said Tuesday.

The government has shown “a shocking level of unreadiness” to take over from the Bangladesh Accord — signed by about 200 major brands and unions after the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster — said four groups, including Clean Clothes Campaign.

“At this moment, the Accord is the only organization that is meaningfully and transparently making factories safer,” said Christie Miedema, a spokeswoman for the alliance of garment industry unions and advocacy organizations.

“A forced early transition could jeopardize the finalization of the vital elements of remediation,” she said, referring to Accord’s efforts to make some 1,700 factories safe before it is scheduled to hand over to government inspectors in 2021.

Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest garment producer, has said that it is capable of monitoring the country’s thousands of factories through its Remediation Coordination Cell (RCC), which is currently responsible for the safety of 745 factories.

Worker safety has come under scrutiny in Bangladesh after the Rana Plaza factory collapsed, killing about 1,100 people, and putting big brands under pressure to ensure their products are responsibly sourced.

The Supreme Court is considering an appeal by the Accord against a ruling last year which ordered it to shut down, following a petition by a factory owner who was prevented from working with Accord brands and accused of false test results.

High-risk hazards

None of 745 factories under the government’s RCC inspectors has eliminated high-risk hazards — such as lockable exits that could trap workers during a fire — identified at least three years ago, Clean Clothes Campaign said in a report Tuesday.

Farid Ahmed, an official with the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments — which manages the RCC — said it was hard for the factories that the government inspects to implement reforms quickly.

“Most of the factory owners we deal with run in rented buildings or shared buildings,” he told Reuters. “It’s difficult for all of them to agree on a structural change.”

The Clean Clothes Campaign report said that Accord had banned 114 critically unsafe factories from supplying its signatory buyers, but half of these facilities remain open under the government’s inspection program.

“There is no indication in the government’s own records that any safety improvements have been made to these factories,” it said.

Ahmed said many factories regulated by the RCC sell to individual buyers who exert less pressure over safety standards.

“There isn’t much concern from the buyers since they aren’t that big. That adds to the difficulties,” said Ahmed.
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NATO foreign ministers are gathering in Washington, D.C. this week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. President Donald Trump has been critical of the alliance, blasting other members for under-investing on defense and relying too heavily on the United States. Observers will be watching closely to see how the alliance is weathering internal storms on this anniversary.

Trump, who hosts NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for talks at the White House on Tuesday, made his views on NATO clear during the 2016 presidential campaign, shocking many on both sides of the Atlantic by calling the alliance “obsolete.”

He cited what he said was a missing focus on terrorism, while repeatedly claiming the United States was shouldering too much of the cost.

Most U.S. foreign policy experts say NATO is one of the most successful military alliances in history and is far from obsolete.

“It has showcased an ability to adapt to change in the past, from dealing with a resurgent Russia, to managing crisis in south of NATO’s flank, to as well dealing with issues like cyber, so NATO is adapting and allies are spending more on defense,” Mark Simakovsky of the Atlantic Council told VOA.

Military spending has been a core issue for Trump, who has frequently pressured European allies to increase their defense expenditures.

“Everyone’s agreed to substantially up their commitment, they are going to up it at levels they have never thought of before,” Trump told reporters during a NATO summit last year.

NATO guidelines say member states should spend at least two percent of their gross domestic product on the military each year. But only seven of the 29 member states reached that level in 2018. Some experts think the two percent rule is very important.

“You’re not giving the money to somebody else, you’re not putting it into a NATO budget somewhere, you’re spending it on yourselves,” said McCain Institute Director Kurt Volker, who formerly served as U.S. ambassador to NATO. “But it is a demonstration of your commitment to your own security, which then gives NATO the confidence that this is a country that we can help defend as well, because they are committed to defense of their own territory.”

Others agree that defense spending is important, but say the alliance is fundamentally about the members’ ability to trust each other, and Trump has damaged that trust.

“When an American president questions the value of the alliance, our enemies in Moscow and Beijing are now questioning whether or not NATO would come to the defense of some smaller NATO nations that the president has criticized as maybe not worthy of NATO’s defense,” said Simakovsky. “But I don’t think at this summit the administration is going to be announcing any departure of the United States.”

Simakovsky said the partners agreed to downgrade the Washington meeting to a foreign minister’s meeting to avert the risk of verbal attacks from Trump.
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NATO foreign ministers are gathering in Washington, D.C. this week to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. U.S. President Donald Trump has been critical of other alliance members for under-investing on defense and relying too heavily on the United States. 

We take a look at the alliance. 

What is NATO?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an alliance of 29 countries bordering the North Atlantic Ocean. It was created in 1949 as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. Its purpose is to “guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means,” according to its website. 

Who are the members? 

The initial alliance was entered into by 12 nations, including the United States, Britain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal. Seventeen others have joined the group since. Montenegro is the latest member, joining in 2017. According to Article 10 of the Washington Treaty, membership is open to any “European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.”

What is its aim? 

NATO’s main aim is security and defense of its member nations. Article 5 of the treaty states that “an armed attack against one or more” member state “shall be considered an attack against them all.”

The collective defense principal at the heart of the treaty was invoked for the first time after the 9/11 attacks on the United States. NATO responded to a U.S. request for help in the war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan. It took the lead from August 2003 to December 2014. At its peak, it deployed 130,000 troops.

Who funds NATO? 

Each member country pays a certain amount into the NATO budget based on an agreed upon formula. But, the United States has been bearing nearly two-thirds of the alliance’s defense bill. The NATO charter requires member states to spend 2 percent of the nation’s wealth on defense. According to NATO’s most recent estimate, released in June 2017, six countries hit the 2 percent target: the United States, Greece, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Romania and Poland.

NATO vs. Trump

President Donald Trump has long been critical of U.S. involvement overseas. He has specifically railed against NATO members for not contributing more money to their own defense. In July, he went so far as to claim that the alliance owed the United States money.

“Many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money from many years back, where they’re delinquent, as far as I’m concerned, because the United States has had to pay for them,” he said. “So if you go back 10 or 20 years, you’ll just add it all up, it’s massive amounts of money is owed.”

But that is not how the alliance’s budget works. While not all member states are meeting their commitments, as explained above, more are expected to increase their contributions this year.

Trump has also threatened to pull out of the treaty, which experts say would be a monumental mistake.

The celebration of NATO’s 70th anniversary was downgraded to a meeting of member foreign ministers, because diplomats feared Trump would use the occasion to mount renewed attacks on the alliance. Trump is not expected to address the meeting in Washington this week. 
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Australia’s treasurer said he will unveil the government’s first balanced annual budget plan in a decade days before general elections are called.

The budget to be announced late Tuesday will be the conservatives coalition’s final major act before going to voters in May with the argument that they are better economic managers than the center-left Labor Party opposition.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 would achieve a surplus without increasing taxes.

“Tonight’s budget sets Australia up for the next decade,” Frydenberg told reporters on arrival at Parliament House.

“It builds a stronger economy and secures a better Australia for every Australian and we do that without increasing taxes,” he added.

Frydenberg also foreshadowed “congestion-busting infrastructure” to reduce commuting times in Australia’s largest and most congested cities.

The government also plans to provide tax breaks for low and middle-income earners.

Up to 4 million low-income Australians in a population of 25 million will receive one-off payments by July to help with rising energy bills.

A conservative government delivered balanced budgets for a decade before the global financial crisis hit in 2008. A newly elected Labor government then ran up a record deficit with economic stimulus spending.

Australia’s revenue has improved with rising prices for its biggest exports, coal and iron ore.

Opinion polls suggest that Labor will win the next election. Scott Morrison would become the sixth Australian prime minister since 2007 to fail to last an entire three-year term.

Parliament will sit for three days this week before it rises for the last time before elections are held on May 11 or May 18.
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President Donald Trump’s threat to shut down the southern border raised fears Monday of dire economic consequences in the U.S. and an upheaval of daily life in a stretch of the country that relies on the international flow of not just goods and services but also students, families and workers.

Politicians, business leaders and economists warned that such a move would block incoming shipments of fruits and vegetables, TVs, medical devices and other products and cut off people who commute to their jobs or school or come across to go shopping.

Let’s hope the threat is nothing but a bad April Fools’ joke,” said economist Dan Griswold at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. He said Trump’s threat would be the “height of folly,” noting that an average of 15,000 trucks and $1.6 billion in goods cross the border every day.

“If trade were interrupted, U.S. producers would suffer crippling disruptions of their supply chains, American families would see prices spike for food and cars, and U.S. exporters would be cut off from their third-largest market,” he said.

Trump brought up the possibility of closing ports of entry along the southern border Friday and revisited it in tweets over the weekend because of a surge of Central Americans migrants who are seeking asylum. Trump administration officials have said the influx is straining the immigration system to the breaking point.

Elected leaders from border communities stretching from San Diego to cities across Texas warned that havoc would ensue on both sides of the international boundary if the ports were closed. They were joined by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said such a step would inflict “severe economic harm.”

In California’s Imperial Valley, across from Mexicali, Mexico, farmers rely on workers who come across every day from Mexico to harvest fields of lettuce, carrots, onions and other winter vegetables. Shopping mall parking lots in the region are filled with cars with Mexican plates.

More than 60 percent of all Mexican winter produce consumed in the U.S. crosses into the country at Nogales, Arizona. The winter produce season is especially heavy right now, with the import of Mexican-grown watermelons, grapes and squash, said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. 

He said 11,000 to 12,000 commercial trucks cross the border at Nogales daily, laden with about 50 million pounds of produce such as eggplants, tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, cucumbers and berries.

He said a closing of the border would lead to immediate layoffs and result in shortages and price increases at grocery stores and restaurants.

“If this happens — and I certainly hope it doesn’t — I’d hate to go into a grocery store four or five days later and see what it looks like,” Jungmeyer said.

Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, said a closure would be catastrophic.

“Closing the border would cause an immediate depression in border state communities and, depending on the duration, a recession in the rest of the country,”he said.

“Our business would end,” said Marta Salas, an employee at an El Paso shop near the border that sells plastic flowers that are used on the Mexican side by families holding quinceaneras, the traditional coming-of-age celebrations.

Salas said her whole family, including relatives who attend the University of Texas at El Paso, would be affected if the border were closed.

“There are Americans who live there. I have nephews who come to UTEP, to grade school, to high school every day,” Salas said.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration said Monday as many as 2,000 U.S. inspectors who screen cargo and vehicles at ports of entry along the Mexican border may be reassigned to help handle the surge of migrants. Currently, about 750 inspectors are being reassigned.

That, too, could slow the movement of trucks and people across the border.

The effects were evident Monday: Sergio Amaya, a 24-year-old American citizen who lives in Juarez, Mexico, and attends UTEP, said it normally takes him two minutes to cross the bridge. It took an hour this time.

“The Border Patrol agent said it’s going to get worse” Amaya said.

Instead of ensuring the flow of goods across the border, the inspectors are being put to work processing migrants, taking their applications for asylum and transporting them to holding centers.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the reassignments are necessary to help manage the huge influx that is overloading the system.

“The crisis at our border is worsening, and DHS will do everything in its power to end it,” Nielsen said.

In addition to reassigning inspectors, Nielsen has asked for volunteers from non-immigration agencies within her department and sent a letter to Congress requesting resources and broader authority to deport families faster. The administration is also ramping up efforts to return asylum seekers to Mexico.

Apprehensions all along the southern border have soared in recent months, with border agents on track to make 100,000 arrests and denials of entry there in March, more than half of them families with children.

 
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The Rockefeller Foundation is changing the focus of its funding of projects to strengthen societies against modern pressures such as climate change, shifting away from preparing cities to a broader global view of the issue, its president said Monday.

The change means it will stop financial backing of the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) network — about $165 million over five years — that enabled more than 80 cities to hire chief resilience officers and develop action plans, Rajiv Shah told Reuters in an interview.

The program has succeeded in pushing cities to think about how to cope with risks such as extreme weather and pollution, he said.

“That work has been transformational in helping urban areas really address the challenges that are only going to get more intense as we go forward in time,” Shah said.

Efforts supported by 100RC have helped Jakarta manage waste, protected Bangkok riverside communities from flooding and turned Parisian schoolyards into cool oases during heat waves, he said.

The U.S.-based philanthropic foundation will provide a further $12 million this year to help the network transform into an independent organization.

The foundation also plans to keep working with U.S. city mayors to find ways to boost jobs and economic opportunities while adapting to climate change, Shah said.

“These are exceptional leaders who are taking forward and institutionalizing these efforts, with our continued support,” he said.

On Monday, 86 staff in 100RC’s four offices — New York, London, Singapore and Mexico City — were told their jobs would finish on July 31.

The end of support by the Rockefeller Foundation contrasts with a 2017 speech by its president, in which he referred to “our strong and continued commitment” to the 100RC initiative “for many, many years to come.”

In December, an independent evaluation of 100RC’s work by the Urban Institute, a U.S.-based policy research group, gave a broadly positive account of progress.

It said 100RC cities were adopting holistic planning practices widely and “de-siloing” operations to tackle social, economic and physical challenges.

It also found 100RC was among the first global initiatives to use a consistent set of tools, assistance and resources across diverse cities “for which no alternative exists.”

An open letter by 100RC President Michael Berkowitz, issued Monday, said the organization would use a July summit in Rotterdam to chart a path forward for the urban resilience movement.

“Our work will continue in new ways and we look forward to being part of this important movement for years to come,” he wrote.

Disaster recovery

On Monday, The Rockefeller Foundation also announced a $30 million grant to the Washington, D.C.-based Adrienne Arsht Center for Resilience at the Atlantic Council.

The money will support its work helping individuals, cities and communities across the globe become better able to weather more severe, growing risks such as flood, drought, conflict and food insecurity in “an uncertain, rapidly changing world.”

The council said it would look at policy frameworks, advancement of finance and risk mechanisms, and use of technology and communications tools and platforms.

Shah said the Atlantic Council had high-level relationships in political and financial circles, allowing it to team up with banks, insurance firms and others on resilience-building initiatives.

In the past decade, The Rockefeller Foundation has put nearly $500 million into climate change and resilience initiatives, ranging from 100RC to village-level renewable energy projects in India and a U.S. forest conservation effort.

It sees value in investments that “both include and go beyond the urban planning support,” and is “particularly enthusiastic about our work on post-disaster recovery,” Shah said.

Rockefeller has made strides in that area, he added, convening governments, businesses and civil society leaders to report on how Puerto Rico could rebuild after Hurricane Maria in 2017.

That included innovative financing for solar panels to be installed on community centers and hospitals to keep running in future storms.

The foundation is now exploring ways to help southern Africa recover after Cyclone Idai, aiming to help local producers and businesses restore food supplies.

It will also set up a new office to build climate resilience into key areas of its work, including food security, health care and clean power.

In 2017 and 2018, the Reuters received funding from The Rockefeller Foundation to report on efforts to build resilience to shocks and stresses worldwide.
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The boom times for the U.S. lobster industry are imperiled this year because of a shortage of a little fish that has been luring the crustaceans into traps for hundreds of years.

Members of the lobster business fear a looming bait crisis could disrupt the industry during a time when lobsters are as plentiful, valuable and in demand as ever. America’s lobster catch has climbed this decade, especially in Maine, but the fishery is dependent on herring — a schooling fish other fishermen seek in the Atlantic Ocean.

Federal regulators are imposing a steep cut in the herring fishery this year, and some areas of the East Coast are already restricted to fishing, months before the lobster season gets rolling. East Coast herring fishermen brought more than 200 million pounds of the fish to docks as recently as 2014, but this year’s catch will be limited to less than a fifth of that total.

The cut is leaving lobstermen, who have baited traps with herring for generations in Maine, scrambling for new bait sources and concerned about their ability to get lobster to customers who have come to expect easy availability in recent years.

“If you don’t have bait, you’re not going to fish. If the price of bait goes up, you’re not going to fish,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “We have to take the big picture, and make sure our communities continue to have viable fisheries.”

The cut in the herring quota stems from a scientific assessment of the fish’s population last year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. The assessment found a below-average number of young herring are surviving in the ocean.

The loss of herring has sounded alarms among scientists and conservationists, because the fish also serve a critical role in the ocean food chain and they’re valuable as food for humans.

It’s unclear exactly what factors are causing young herring to fail to survive to maturity, said Jonathan Deroba, lead assessment scientist for herring with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. He said it’s “premature to predict the sky is falling,” though he added the herring population could be suffering from multiple stresses at once.

“We’d be foolish not to look at climate change. The abundance of haddock, which are egg predators. And fishing activity on Georges Bank disrupting herring,” Deroba said. Georges Bank is a key fishing area off New England.

Fishermen bring herring to shore mostly in Maine and Massachusetts, which are also the biggest lobster fishing states. Lobstermen also load traps with other kinds of bait, such as menhaden, and some herring is available in freezers, but fishermen said they’re concerned there won’t be enough to go around.

The New England Fishery Management Council is also considering herring catch quota for 2020 and 2021 later this year, and fishermen said they’re concerned the cuts could be maintained for those years. The loss of herring is also a heavy blow to the fishermen who harvest the species, said Jeff Kaelin, who works in government relations for Lund’s Fisheries, a herring harvester based in Cape May, New Jersey.

“It’s going to be tough on everyone,” Kaelin said, not just the people who catch the herring, but also “the lobstermen who depend on it for historic bait supply.”

The U.S. lobster fishery set an all-time record for value at docks in 2016, when the catch was worth more than $670 million. That was also the year the herring catch fell to its lowest point since 2002, though it was still more than 138 million pounds.

Lobsterman Jeffrey Peterson, who fishes out of the island town of Vinalhaven, Maine, said he’s sure he’ll be able to load his traps with bait this summer. He’s just concerned about how expensive it’ll be to do so.

“It’ll be around,” he said. “It’s just how much they gouge you for it.”
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The Eiffel Tower was plunged into darkness late on Saturday as the city of Paris switched off the lights on its best-known tourist attraction to mark this 

year’s Earth Hour. 

The 13th annual edition of the global event, organized by environmental group World Wildlife Fund to push for action on climate change and other man-made threats to the planet, called for nearly 200 major landmarks around the world to be unplugged at 8:30 p.m. local time.

They included New York’s Empire State Building, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil and the Sydney Opera House.

Ahead of the Eiffel Tower shutdown, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and Junior Environment Minister Brune Poirson appeared at the foot of the 130-year-old edifice for a public discussion on global warming and declining biodiversity. 

Earth Hour has grown steadily since the first event in 2007 and is now marked in more than 180 countries and territories, according to its organizers.
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The Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Sydney Opera House, the Brandenburg Gate, the Acropolis and many more iconic landmarks went dark at 8:30 p.m. local time, Saturday night, for Earth Hour, an annual call for local action on climate change.

Earth Hour is the brain child of the World Wildlife Fund.

“By going dark for Earth Hour, we can show steadfast commitment to protecting our families, our communities and our planet from the dangerous effects of a warming world,” said Lou Leonard, WWF senior vice president, climate and energy. “The rising demand for energy, food and water means this problem is only going to worsen, unless we act now.”

Individuals and companies around the world participated in the hour-long demonstration to show their support for the fight against climate change and the conservation of the natural world.

WWF said Earth’s “rich biodiversity, the vast web of life that connects the health of oceans, rivers and forests to the prosperity of communities and nations, is threatened.”

The fund also reports that wildlife populations monitored by WWF “have experienced an average decline of 60 percent in less than a single person’s lifetime, and many unique and precious species are at risk of vanishing forever.”

“We have to ask ourselves what we’re willing to do after the lights come back on,” Leonard said. “If we embrace bold solutions, we still have time to stabilize the climate and safeguard our communities and the diverse wildlife, ecosystems and natural resources that sustain us all.”

“We are the first generation to know we are destroying the world,” WWF said. “And we could be the last that can do anything about it.”
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Lyft Inc shares on Friday opened up 21.2 percent at $87.24 in its market debut on the Nasdaq after the company was valued at $24.3 billion in the first initial public offering (IPO) of a ride-hailing startup.

On Thursday, Lyft said it priced 32.5 million shares, slightly more that it was offering originally, at $72, the top of its already elevated $70-$72 per share target range for the IPO.

After a few minutes of trading, shares were up 18.6 percent at $85.42.

Instead of celebrating the first day of trading at the Nasdaq in New York, Lyft opted to mark the occasion at a defunct auto dealership in downtown Los Angeles.

A couple hundred people – Lyft staff, family and friends, stakeholders and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti – gathered before dawn for the kick-off event.

Lyft has recently bought the facility to turn it into a driver services center, the first of several it plans to open across the U.S. in the coming months, where drivers can get discounted services like help with taxes or charging electric vehicles.
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Influential figures in Washington are calling for the establishment of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Taiwan, even as U.S. and Chinese officials move toward a resolution of their long-running trade dispute. 

“We have a lot of issues with Beijing, and a lot of opportunities with Taiwan,” said Edwin J. Feulner in an interview with VOA. Feulner is the founder and former president of the Heritage Foundation, an influential think tank in Washington known for its conservative views and ties with the Republican Party. 

Feulner thinks trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing will most likely conclude within 60 days, at which point a full-force push for a bilateral trade agreement with Taiwan could begin. Those talks would be “more or less independent of what’s going on with bilateral negotiations with Beijing,” he said. 

WATCH: Feulner: Taiwan Not Seen by Administration as ‘Bargaining Chip’

Feulner predicted “huge bipartisan support on Capitol Hill” for such an agreement. “Both Republican and Democrat, both House and Senate members, are overwhelmingly positive that a free China can exist, and can be there in the world community today,” he said.  

WATCH: Feulner: ‘We Intend to Strengthen Our Friends’ 

However, any such deal could be expected to anger authorities in Beijing, who see Taiwan as a renegade Chinese province and adamantly oppose any initiatives that treat the island as an independent country or entity.   

The international community has seen how Beijing tries to make Taiwan pay for any inroads it makes toward international recognition, said Scott W. Harold, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a global policy research group. But Beijing’s problem, he said, “is that they’ve dialed the pain up so high, so often, that it’s hard to see what more they can do.”  

On Wednesday, Feulner invited Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen to participate by Skype in a conference at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Tsai, on a stopover in Hawaii after visiting three Indo-Pacific nations that still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, told the audience her government was enthusiastic about the prospect of bilateral trade talks with the U.S. 

“If we can have a breakthrough in trade with the U.S., this will be very helpful in terms of encouraging many other trading partners to do the same,” she said, adding that a trade deal with the United States would reduce Taipei’s reliance on China “as they increase their political influence in Taiwan, primarily using economic actors.” 

Tsai expressed hope that talks with Washington will include discussion about Taiwan’s role in the global high-tech supply chain “amid concerns of technology theft and control over 5G networks” by Beijing. 

Two prominent members of the U.S. Congress joined Feulner in welcoming Tsai to the U.S. and expressed their support for a bilateral free-trade agreement. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, a Republican and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the pursuit of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Taiwan “imperative.” 

Common values

Rep. Ted Yoho of Florida, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the most senior Republican on its subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation, told Tsai and the audience that “trade is important between our nations, but more important than that is our common belief in the values we hold, the democracies that we have together. That in itself is the thing that really binds us together.” 

Steve Yates, former U.S. government official and longtime observer of U.S.-Taiwan relations, told VOA that President Donald Trump has “unhesitatingly signed” a series of resolutions and bills in support of closer ties between Washington and Taipei. To him, this signals it might be time “for the administration and Congress to be able to cross that bridge and get some results.” 
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Britons desperately wanting some clarity in the country’s interminable Brexit saga were disappointed Wednesday when lawmakers plunged the country’s proposed exit from the European Union, after half-a-century of membership, into further disarray, failing to find a majority for any way forward after a series of so-called indicative votes.

The hope had been a majority might emerge from the eight different options they voted on, which included staying in the EU, leaving with no withdrawal agreement, remaining in the bloc’s customs union and/or single market or holding a second Brexit referendum.

“Parliament Finally Has Its Say: No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.” Britain’s Guardian newspaper announced on its front-page Thursday.

“In summary: the Commons has now overwhelmingly rejected every single type of Brexit, and no Brexit,” tweeted Michel Deacon, the Daily Telegraph’s parliamentary sketch-writer. The option of leaving without a deal was defeated by a huge margin. So, too, was a motion that would see Brexit cancelled altogether.

It wasn’t what the organizers of the indicative votes in the House of Commons had hoped would be the upshot. Backed by the opposition parties and pro-EU Conservative rebels they seized control of the parliamentary agenda from the government, the first time in 140 years that Downing Street hasn’t called the shots on what can be debated and when on the floor of the House of Commons.

“This is going well. Putting the Commons in charge was clearly a brilliant idea,” tweeted Andrew Neil, the arch-Brexiter presenter of a BBC politics show. The EU’s chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said Britain’s intentions had become more mysterious than those of the mythological sphinxes guarding ancient tombs.

More confusion

To add to the confusion in London, just before the indicative voting, an  exhausted Prime Minister Theresa May told her Conservative lawmakers she would relinquish the party leadership and resign as prime minister, but only if her contentious Brexit withdrawal agreement, which parliament has twice rejected, is passed.

May’s announcement was a last-ditch bid to persuade Conservative Brexiters to back her withdrawal agreement, a deal they disapprove of because it would keep Britain closely aligned with the European Union and obedient to its rules while a longer-term trade relationship is negotiated.

A hardcore of Conservative Eurosceptics and ten lawmakers from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, who May has to rely on because her government is a minority one, have adamantly refused to back her deal. They say the plan poses a risk to the integrity of the union of the United Kingdom. The DUP believes if it took effect, it would cause trade differences between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and create in effect a “border down the Irish Sea.”

There were no signs Thursday that May will be able to persuade enough holdouts to vote for her deal, if it is put before the Commons for a third time, leaving Britain on course to crash out of the EU without a deal on April 12, unless the British government requests, for the second time, a Brexit postponement.

EU negotiators have indicated they might be open to another delay, but only if it is a lengthy one of a year or more.

It remains unclear how the political deadlock in London can be broken. The idea of leaving without a transition deal has strong opposition in the Commons and would likely be blocked by a majority of lawmakers.

Frustration on EU side

EU negotiators, out of exasperation, could decide to raise the stakes and decline another Brexit postponement, hoping to force the Commons to stop Brexit altogether, say some analysts. But it is unlikely they would risk such a high stakes gamble, fearing that might push Britain into crashing out by accident as much as by design.

European Council President, Donald Tusk, said last week in Brussels that the European Union will work with Britain for as long as it takes and on Wednesday he urged European lawmakers to be open to a long delay in Britain’s departure.

That leaves Britain trapped — paralyzed by a deadlocked House of Commons, itself a reflection of a country split down the middle over staying a member of the EU or quitting. With all avenues seemingly leading to dead-ends, there is more talk now in the British parliament of the need to hold an general election, hoping that returns a parliament that is not so undecided.

Behind-the-scenes Cabinet ministers and Conservative party officials are war-gaming calling an election three years ahead of schedule. David Davies, a pro-Brexit Conservative MP who quit as Brexit minister, says “a general election is a lot more likely now.” He added: “I don’t say it’s going to happen, but clearly if a government can’t get through on the one issue which we were really elected to deal with at the last election it puts us all in a very difficult situation.”

The problem in calling a snap election is the British public doesn’t want another one so soon after the Conservatives called another early poll two years ago, according to opinion surveys, with just 12 percent backing the idea.

The other problem for the Conservatives is that they would be fighting an election with a leader who has announced she intends to step down soon and heading a party that’s even more deeply and rancorously divided than the main opposition Labour party.

In the division lobbies on Wednesday some Conservative lawmakers on different sides of the Brexit question were spotted cursing each other and one clash prompted the intervention of colleagues, who feared a brawl might break out.

Commons in charge

Organizers of Wednesday’s indicative voting are placing some hopes that the Commons can still break the deadlock. They say clarity could be reached on Monday when lawmakers are due for another session of indicative voting, this time on the options that attracted the most support.

Labour’s Stephen Doughty said they never expected the votes on Wednesday to reveal a majority for one option. The whole idea was to narrow down the alternatives that have the most support and for parliament then to reconsider.

The two closest votes Wednesday were for staying in the EU’s customs union and another for a second referendum confirming any Brexit departure. Both attracted more votes than May’s deal has got the two occasions it was voted on in parliament. Campaigners for a second referendum appear buoyed.

They believe Britons have shifted their attitudes on Brexit since the 2016 referendum, pointing to a new polling study by veteran pollster John Curtice, which indicates voters are becoming increasingly doubtful about Brexit. The study suggests two and half years after the plebiscite, leaving the European Union may not now reflect majority thinking.

 
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Iceland’s budget carrier WOW Air said it had ceased operations and cancelled all flights on Thursday, potentially stranding thousands of passengers.

The collapse of the troubled airline, which transports more than a third of those traveling to Iceland, comes after buyout talks with rival Icelandair collapsed earlier this week.

“All WOW Air flights have been cancelled. Passengers are advised to check available flights with other airlines,” the carrier said in a statement.

“Some airlines may offer flights at a reduced rate, so-called rescue fares, in light of the circumstances. Information on those airlines will be published, when it becomes available.”

WOW Air, founded in 2011, exploited Iceland’s location in the middle of the North Atlantic to offer a low-cost service between Europe and North America as well as tapping into a tourist boom to the volcanic island.

However it had flown into financial trouble in recent years due to heightened competition and rising fuel prices, and had been searching for an investor for months.

On Monday WOW Air said it was in talks to restructure its debt with its creditors after Icelandair ended brief negotiations over buying a stake in the no-frills airline.

WOW Air was left needing $42 million to save the company, according to the Frettabladid newspaper.

The privately-owned airline has undergone major restructuring after posting a pre-tax loss of almost $42 million for the first nine months of 2018.

It has reduced its fleet from 20 to 11 aircraft, eliminating several destinations, including those to the US, and cutting 111 full-time jobs.

A report by a governmental work group has warned that a WOW Air bankruptcy would lead to a drop in Iceland’s gross domestic product, a drop in the value of the krona and rising inflation.

 
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Nearly one in three people living in West and Central Africa fear losing their homes and land in the next five years, according to a survey of 33 countries, making it the region where people feel most insecure about their property.

More than two in five respondents from Burkina Faso and Liberia worry their home could be taken away from them, revealed Prindex, a global property rights index which gauges citizens’ views.

In West Africa, “a history of governments and investors seizing land for large projects has made people more insecure,” said Malcolm Childress, executive director of the Global Land Alliance, a Washington-based think tank that compiles the index.

Insecurity can lead to people struggling to plan for their futures, holding back entire economies, Childress said.

“In countries like Rwanda, however, which are mapping and registering customary land, that uncertainty is much lower,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that only 8 percent of the country’s respondents feared losing their homes.

In Southeast Asia and Latin America, which Childress said had strong institutions documenting land, only 21 percent and 19 percent of people, respectively, reported feeling insecure about their property.

The survey, conducted by U.S. polling firm Gallup and launched in Washington, D.C., at a World Bank conference on Tuesday, is the largest ever effort documenting how secure people feel about their homes and land at a global level.

A lack of formal documentation and poor implementation of land laws threaten tenure in many countries, experts say, with more than 5 billion people lacking proof of ownership, according to the Lima-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy.

Survey respondents cited being asked by their landlord to leave the property as well as family disagreements as the main reasons for feeling insecure.

The index also found that 12 percent more women than men felt they might lose their property in the event of divorce or death of a spouse.

That gap shows “there is a long way to go in meeting the aspiration of equal economic rights for women worldwide,” said Anna Locke from the Overseas Development Institute, a British think tank that is involved in the index.

The survey for the first time sampled respondents in Britain, where 11 percent of people feared losing their home, mainly due to a lack of money or other resources.

More than 50,000 people were questioned about ownership or tenure in 33 countries most of them from Africa, Latin America and Asia. Over the next year, the poll will be extended to 140 countries.

Prindex is an initiative of the Omidyar Network — with which the Thomson Reuters Foundation has a partnership on land rights coverage — and the U.K.’s Department for International Development.
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Than Ei lived in the Thilawa area near Yangon for years, growing vegetables in her backyard and sending her two children to school with money from her husband’s construction job.

Then came the government order to move. Than Ei’s family was among 68 households relocated in 2013 to make way for the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the first such industrial area in Myanmar, about 23km (15 miles) southeast of Yangon.

Authorities said each family would get a home a few miles away, or a plot of land and money to build a house, as well as jobs in the new factories, with good wages.

But six years on, Than Ei and others who moved say their incomes are lower than before, and they have only limited access to services. Many families sold their homes and left the area after they ran out of money, Than Ei said.

“There is no land to grow vegetables or to keep chickens, and we are not close to transport or the market anymore,” Than Ei said outside her one-room home in Myaing Thar Yar village.

“My husband only got a job as a security guard two years after (the move). We had to take out a loan until then, which we are still paying off.”

For developing nations like Myanmar – which emerged from decades of economic isolation in 2011 when the military stepped back from direct control – SEZs are seen as a way to attract much-needed foreign investment and create jobs.

Authorities say Thilawa SEZ is being built according to international environmental and social safeguards, which includes getting the consent of residents and offering adequate compensation.

But for those whose lives have been uprooted by the country’s economic ambitions, the reality is different, said Mike Griffiths, a researcher at the Myanmar Social Policy and Poverty Research Group, a think tank based in Yangon.

“They not only have lower levels of income, but are more likely to have higher expenditure, higher rates of debt and lower employment rates,” he wrote in a report last year on the relocated households. “The picture is of extreme vulnerability.”

Risky Model

The model for economic growth that Myanmar and other countries in the region hope to emulate is that of China, which in the 1980s set up about half a dozen major SEZs to boost its market reforms.

Experts say SEZs have contributed significantly to China’s economic growth, with the World Bank estimating in 2015 that they accounted for nearly a quarter of the country’s GDP.

Spurred by China’s example, governments from sub-Saharan Africa to southeast Asia have adopted SEZs, but analysts say they have a mixed record of success.

“The model has passed its use-by-date, and officials have been slow to catch on,” said Charlie Thame, a professor of political science at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.

“Even from an economic point of view they are fraught with risk, mostly borne by host states.”

In poorer nations, SEZs “overwhelmingly fail to provide decent jobs or generate beneficial effects to local economies,” he said, and domestic legislation and international investment frameworks largely fail to protect those affected.

No Consultation

When completed, the Thilawa SEZ will cover some 2,400 hectares (9 sq. miles) of land. Dozens of manufacturers, largely making goods for export, are already operating there.

Thilawa is the only operational SEZ in the country, with the Dawei SEZ in the southern region of Tanintharyi on hold after some initial construction. A third SEZ is planned, with Chinese investment, in Kyauk Pyu in Rakhine state.

The site in Thilawa had been earmarked for industrial use under the junta government in 1996, but the original plans fell through.

When authorities announced the start of development for the SEZ six years ago, they said since the land already belonged to the government, villagers living on it were only eligible to be compensated for their crops.

None of the residents made to move were consulted on the economic or social impacts of the development, said Mya Hlaing, a member of the Thilawa Social Development Group, which was set up to represent the villagers.

“We were also promised training and jobs, but very few have got jobs – and even then, only as cleaners and security guards,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A spokesman for Myanmar Japan Thilawa Development, which operates Zone 1 of the SEZ, said the land acquisition was carried out by government authorities, and that those affected had been offered several job opportunities.

Myanmar authorities did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Backlash

About 600km away in southern Myanmar, development of the Dawei SEZ has been suspended since 2013, after it sparked community protests and hit funding difficulties.

The project is a joint venture of the Thai and Myanmar governments, and includes a 140-km road to the Thai border, a port, a power plant, a reservoir and an industrial estate.

Most residents affected by the initial phase of construction refused to move into the nearly 500 homes that had been built a couple of miles away.

“We were not told what types of factories would be built or what their impact would be,” said Mar Lar, who sold some of her land in the southern Htein Gyi village but still lives in her own home.

Residents in Dawei fear construction on the stalled project will resume soon, even as a backlash against SEZs is growing.

Protests broke out in Vietnam last year over planned new SEZs.

In India, the Supreme Court has asked why land acquired for SEZs is not being used, and the Myanmar government has scaled back its Kyauk Pyu project with China over fears of a debt trap.

But back in Thilawa, the second phase of construction is about to kick off and will see the relocation of more than 800 families, said Aye Khaing Win, a community leader.

“The government says the SEZ has done many good things, but we have lost our land. We have not benefited,” he said.
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