Tens of millions of jobs are now at risk from the coronavirus pandemic, with entire industries being shut down to keep the virus from spreading. Governments across Europe are spending billions on wage subsidies in a desperate effort to save jobs and cushion the economic blow.

A spike in unemployment is a triple threat to a country’s economy: consumer spending and tax revenues drop, while social welfare costs skyrocket.

The International Labour Organization estimates that almost 25 million jobs could be lost worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Governments across Europe are using public money to try to secure jobs through the crisis by paying or reimbursing companies that have seen their revenues dry up. Their goal: to keep employees on the payroll so they can resume working when businesses re-open.

Here are some of the plans to help individuals that have been announced so far.

France

As the number of cases of the virus began to rise, the French government extended its system of chômage partiel, or partial unemployment.

When a company is forced to reduce or suspend work, it can apply for state funding of 70 percent of an employee’s gross salary, to a maximum of €6,927 per month.

As of March 24, 730,000 workers were being paid under this scheme. The finance ministry has already set aside €8.5 billion in funding but that amount is expected to rise.

With schools and crèches (nurseries) closed, the French government is also giving paid leave to parents who cannot work from home and who are responsible for children younger than 16.

The annual winter embargo on evicting tenants from residential properties has also been extended to May 31.

Germany

Berlin has expanded its short-time allowance, or Kurzarbeitergeld, to include companies that cut working hours as a result of the coronavirus.

It pays at the same level as unemployment benefits: Up to 67 percent of net wages lost due to shorter hours, to a maximum of €6,700 per month.

Tenants who are unable to pay their rent will be protected from eviction until September 30, although back rent will be owed when the economic situation improves.

United Kingdom

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme will see the UK government reimburse companies for 80 percent of gross salaries up to a maximum of £2,500 (€2,714) per month.

This can be backdated to March 1, with the system in place initially for three months.

Finance Minister Rishi Sunak said he was “placing no limit on the amount of funding available for the scheme”.

Ireland

A new temporary wage subsidy will allow affected companies to recoup up to 70 percent of salaries from the Irish government to maintain current employment levels, with a maximum of €410 per week (€1,777 net per month).

Special arrangements have been made for the childcare sector, which include the state paying all the wages of crèche workers as well as contributing to other running costs. The aim is for parents to be able to stop paying fees and still be guaranteed a place when the crèche reopens.

Italy

As part of the economic package adopted on March 16, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s government extended a series of “social shock absorbers”. 

They include paying up to 80 percent of an employee’s salary for a period of nine weeks to a maximum of €1,130 net per month.

Self-employed people have also been awarded a one-off payment of €600.

Spain

The existing provision for temporary layoffs, known as ERTE, has been expanded to cover businesses affected by the virus. Up to 70 percent of salaries will be paid, with a maximum of €1,412 per month.

The Spanish government has also ordered utility companies to maintain services to all “vulnerable” households, even if they are unable to pay their bills.

Trouble ahead

These temporary packages come at a steep cost to the taxpayer but, if successful, they will help economies recover more quickly when the outbreak recedes.

Economists are nonetheless warning of a deep recession to come. A key economic survey published by IHS Markit on Tuesday showed the largest collapse in eurozone business activity on record.

And despite the quick moves to shore up economies, some warn it may not be enough.

So far, “policymakers’ efforts to date have failed to brighten the darkening picture”, said IHS Markit chief business economist Chris Williamson, in a statement accompanying the survey results.

Bell, of BMO Global Asset Management, wrote in an economic update on Tuesday that government measures “will do no more than blunt the blow to economies and families”.

Source: France 24

Cambodian authorities last week seized a Cameroon-registered ship that is suspected of having taken part in ship-to-ship transfers to North Korea of oil and other banned goods, RFA has learned.

In a statement Sunday, the General Commissariat of National Police said the MT-Courageous was found to be illegally anchored in Cambodian waters between Koh Tang and Koh Poulo Wai, uninhabited islands in the Gulf of Siam southwest of the country. The ship had previously been expelled from Taiwan.

According to the police statement, the tanker has 16 crew members and had been anchored there since Thursday to await new orders from its owner before it was seized on Friday.

The statement also said that the Courageous had violated UNSC resolutions 2375 and 2397 for transferring cargo with North Korean ships.

The seized ship’s crew were sent to the Prosecutor’s Office in Sihanoukville, where they may face legal action. Their nationalities were not made public.

“For a period of 24 hours, they didn’t communicate with us to try to request authorization to dock or request legal permits from the Cambodian maritime border authorities,” Chhay Kimkhoeun, a spokesman for the police, told RFA’ s Khmer Service Sunday.

“That tanker was in involved in activities that violated the UNSC sanctions against North Korea,” the spokesman added.

Deputy National Police Commissioner General Teng Suon confirmed that the tanker violated UNSC resolutions by participating in ship-to-ship transfers with North Korean ships. He did not say when the transfers occurred.

RFA was unable to reach the Sihanoukville court’s spokesperson Lim Bun Heng, for comment.

The United Nations Security Council has over the past decade imposed a raft of economic sanctions on North Korea to deprive Pyongyang of supplies, resources and revenue that could be funneled into its nuclear and missile programs.

Source: Radio Free Asia

As they rubber-stamped the bloc’s 46-page negotiating document, general affairs ministers from the 27-nation EU used words such as complicated, difficult, and tough with respect to the forthcoming talks aimed at trying to reach a free trade deal with the UK.

Michel Barnier was referring to a claim made on a number of occasions by London-appointed Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis that there would not be a border on the Irish sea.

However, this is a key component of the Brexit withdrawal agreement that the British Government has fully endorsed. It is crucial to preventing highly contentious border checks on land between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

When trade talks start next week, major challenges are also likely to emerge relating to fishing rights, employment standards, climate change, and a whole range of other issues.

Outside the venue of the ministers’ meeting in Brussels, workers’ unions held a demonstration. They highlighted the fact that poverty and youth unemployment levels remain very high in the EU. It is time, they said, for the remaining 27 countries to take action.

Right now, everything remains the same. It is as though the UK is still in the EU. But when the Brexit transition period ends on December 31, there will be wide-ranging consequences if a trade deal has not been reached. That is the outcome many experts are predicting. It’s anticipated Boris Johnson is set to prioritize UK-US relations above ties between London and Brussels.

The UK delegation led by negotiator David Frost is due to arrive here next Monday to begin formal talks with the EU’s team, headed up by Michel Barnier. According to analysts, the two biggest obstacles standing in the way of a possible deal are the unrealistic time frame and the influence of eurosceptic Donald Trump.

Source: Presstv

Ryanair’s chief executive Michael O’Leary has sparked outrage after he called for the profiling of Muslim men at airports, claiming that terrorists are “generally of a Muslim persuasion”.

Muslim men should be profiled and face further checks at airports because “that is where the threat is coming from,” the controversial CEO of Europe’s largest low-cost carrier said in an interview with the Times newspaper published on Saturday.

He further noted under such profiling guidelines, passengers that would be flagged as a potential threat for terrorism would “generally be males of a Muslim persuasion”.

“Who are the bombers? They are going to be single males traveling on their own… If you are traveling with a family of kids, on you go; the chances you are going to blow them all up is zero,” he said.

“You can’t say stuff, because it’s racism, but it will generally be males of a Muslim persuasion. Thirty years ago it was the Irish. If that is where the threat is coming from, deal with the threat,” he added.

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain has accused O’Leary of “Islamophobia” and “encouraging racism”.

“In Germany this week a white person killed eight people. Should we profile white people to see if they’re being fascists? He’s being very blinkered and is actually encouraging racism,” Labour MP Khalid Mahmood told the Times.

The legislator was referring to mass shootings in Germany’s southwestern city of Hanau late on Wednesday during which eight people were killed and five others wounded.

Germany has been targeted in recent years by several extremist attacks, one of which killed 12 people in the heart of Berlin in December 2016.

But far-right attacks have become a particular concern for German authorities. The increase in hate crimes in recent months has prompted the country to expand a crackdown on right-wing political violence in order to repress the disturbance.

It seems that there has been a rise in far-right attacks across Europe in recent years.

On Thursday, a Muslim prayer leader was stabbed in the neck in front of hundreds of horrified onlookers at a mosque near Regent’s Park in the British capital London.

Raafat Maglad, who is in his 70s, returned to the London Central Mosque on Friday, saying he was sorry for the alleged attacker.

“I forgive him. I feel very sorry for him. What is done is done, he is not going to return,” he said, adding that as a Muslim he does not hold any hatred in his heart.

Maglad, who had his arm in a sling as he was escorted in to the mosque by security, said it was “very important” for him to attend Friday prayers.

Addressing worshipers over the loudspeaker system after prayers had ended, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan urged people to remain vigilant and reassured them that police would maintain a presence at the mosque, particularly as the holy month of Ramadan approaches.

A 29-year-old man who is believed to have been attending prayers was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of attempted murder inside the mosque.

However, concerns about the wider threat to mosques were voiced following the stabbing.

London Central Mosque is one of the country’s largest and can hold 5,000 worshipers with people from across London going there for prayers.

Although the incident has not been declared a terrorist incident, the Met’s SO15 counter terror unit is looking into it.

Less than a year ago, the mosque was affected by another stabbing incident.

Britain’s Muslim community has lost trust in the government. Fifty-two percent of all hate crimes last year were aimed at Muslims. But mosques are struggling to get government funding allocated to protecting places of worship. They receive a fraction of what other faiths are awarded.

Source: Presstv

US authorities have allowed airlines in the country to resume flying through the airspace south of Iran now that tensions between the two countries have subsided.

The US Federal Aviation Administration said on Saturday that flights can resume over much of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, adding that it had come to the conclusion that hostilities in the region had de-escalated.

The aviation watchdog enacted bans on entering parts of the airspace over Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf in early January when tensions flared up between Tehran and Washington over a series of incidents that even raised the prospects of war in the region.

Pilots and carriers were instructed to avoid the region because there was a risk that civilian aircraft could be confused with military planes operating in the area.

Concerns about the safety of flights deepened on January 8 when Iran accidentally shot down a Ukrainian airliner flying from Tehran to Kiev.

All 176 people on board were killed in the incident which came hours after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two American military bases in Iraq.

The missile attacks had come in response to US airstrikes in early January that killed a top Iranian military commander along several Iranian and Iraqi military personnel.

Iran has taken full responsibility for the downing of the Boeing 737-800 operated by Ukraine International Airlines, saying it will do it best to clarify the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Aviation bodies in Europe as well as major airlines around the world have already removed bans on flights through the Iranian and Iraqi airspace.

Source: Presstv

Ever since the dollar cemented its role as the world’s dominant currency in the 1950s, it has been clear that America’s position as the sole financial superpower gives it extraordinary influence over other countries’ economic destinies. But it is only under President Donald Trump that America has used its powers routinely and to their full extent, by engaging in financial warfare. The results have been awe-inspiring and shocking. They have in turn prompted other countries to seek to break free of American financial hegemony.

In 2018 America’s Treasury put legal measures in place that prevented Rusal, a strategically important Russian aluminium firm, from freely accessing the dollar-based financial system—with devastating effect. Overnight it was unable to deal with many counterparties. Western clearing houses refused to settle its debt securities. The price of its bonds collapsed (the restrictions were later lifted). America now has over 30 active financial- and trade-sanctions programmes. On January 10th it announced measures that the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said would “cut off billions of dollars of support to the Iranian regime”. The State Department, meanwhile, said that Iraq could lose access to its government account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That would restrict Iraq’s use of oil revenues, causing a cash crunch and flattening its economy.

America is uniquely well positioned to use financial warfare in the service of foreign policy. The dollar is used globally as a unit of account, store of value and medium of exchange. At least half of cross-border trade invoices are in dollars. That is five times America’s share of world goods imports, and three times its share of exports. The dollar is the preferred currency of central banks and capital markets, accounting for close to two-thirds of global securities issuance and foreign-exchange reserves.

The world’s financial rhythm is American: when interest rates move or risk appetite on Wall Street shifts, global markets respond. The world’s financial plumbing has Uncle Sam’s imprint on it, too. Most international transactions are ultimately cleared in dollars through New York by American “correspondent” banks. America has a tight grip on the main cross-border messaging system used by banks, swift, whose members ping each other 30m times a day. Another part of the us-centric network is chips, a clearing house that processes $1.5trn-worth of payments daily. America uses these systems to monitor activity. Denied access to this infrastructure, an organisation becomes isolated and, usually, financially crippled. Individuals and institutions across the planet are thus subject to American jurisdiction—and vulnerable to punishment.

America began to flex its financial muscles after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. It imposed huge fines on foreign banks for money-laundering and sanctions-busting; in 2014 a $9bn penalty against bnp Paribas shook the French establishment. Mr Trump has taken the weaponisation of finance to a new level (see chart). He has used sanctions to throttle Iran, North Korea, Russia, Turkey (briefly), Venezuela and others. His arsenal also includes tariffs and legal assaults on companies, most strikingly Huawei, which Mr Trump accuses of spying for China. “Secondary” sanctions target other countries’ companies that trade with blacklisted states. After America pulled out of a nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, European firms fled Iran, even as the eu encouraged them to stay. swift quickly fell into line when America threatened action if it did not cut off Iranian banks after the reimposition of sanctions in 2018.

Using the dollar to extend the reach of American law and policy fits Mr Trump’s “America first” credo. Other countries view it as an abuse of power. That includes adversaries such as China and Russia; Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, talks of the dollar being used as a “political weapon”. And it includes allies, such as Britain and France, who worry that Mr Trump risks undermining America’s role as guarantor of orderliness in global commerce. It may eventually lead to the demise of America’s financial hegemony, as other countries seek to dethrone its mighty currency.

The new age of international monetary experimentation features the de-dollarisation of assets, trade workarounds using local currencies and swaps, and new bank-to-bank payment mechanisms and digital currencies. In June the Chinese and Russian presidents said they would expand settlement of bilateral trade in their own currencies. On the sidelines of a recent summit, leaders from Iran, Malaysia, Turkey and Qatar proposed using cryptocurrencies, national currencies, gold and barter for trade. Such activity marks an “inflection point”, says Tom Keatinge of rusi, a think-tank. Countries that used merely to gripe about America’s financial might are now pushing back.

Russia has gone furthest. It has designated expendable entities to engage in commerce with countries America considers rogue, in order to avoid putting important banks and firms at risk. State-backed Promsvyazbank pjsc is used for trade in arms so as to shield bigger banks like Sberbank and vtb from the threat of sanctions.

Russia has also been busy de-dollarising parts of its financial system. Since 2013 its central bank has cut the dollar share of its foreign-exchange reserves from over 40% to 24%. Since 2018 the bank’s holdings of American Treasury debt have fallen from nearly $100bn to under $10bn. Russia’s finance ministry recently announced plans to lower the dollar share of its $125bn sovereign-wealth fund. “We aren’t aiming to ditch the dollar,” Mr Putin has said. “The dollar is ditching us.”

Elvira Nabiullina, Russia’s central-bank governor, says the move was partly motivated by American sanctions (which were imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014), but also by a desire to diversify currency risk. “I see a global shift in mood,” she says. “We are gradually moving towards a more multi-currency international monetary system.” Ms Nabiullina echoes Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, who said in August that the dollar-centric system “won’t hold”.

Russia’s debt is being de-dollarised, too. New issuance is often in roubles or euros, and the government is exploring selling yuan-denominated bonds. Russian companies have shrunk their foreign debts by $260bn since 2014; of that, $200bn was dollar-denominated. Conversely, Russian firms and households retain a fondness for dollars when it comes to holding international assets: they have $80bn more than they did in 2014. Dmitry Dolgin of ing, a bank, finds this “puzzling”, but suspects it could be that the interest rates on dollar assets, higher than on euro equivalents, outweigh the perceived risk from sanctions.

Dasvidaniya, dollar

ing expects 62% of Russia’s goods and services exports to have been settled in dollars in 2019, down from 80% in 2013. Its trade with China was almost all in dollars in 2013; now less than half is. Trade with India, much of it in the sanctions-sensitive defence sector, shifted from almost all dollars to almost all roubles over that period. One reason for this shift, say Russian officials, is that it speeds trade up, since dollar payments can be delayed for weeks as financial intermediaries run sanctions checks.

Energy and commodities firms are among Russia’s most active de-dollarisers. The greenback is the global benchmark currency for oil trading, and escaping its grip is hard. “The key thing to understand is that risk management, the entire derivatives complex, is in dollars,” explains the boss of a global energy firm. “So if you want to have risk management—as an oil trader, buyer or producer—you have to have contact with the dollar system.”

Nonetheless Rosneft, a state-backed producer that accounts for over 40% of Russia’s crude output, has denominated its tender contracts in euros. Surgutneftegas, another producer, still prices in dollars but has added a clause to contracts saying they can be switched to euros at its request—“a back-up plan in case Trump throws shit at the fan”, says a trader. Last March Gazprom priced a natural-gas shipment to western Europe in roubles for the first time. The cost of switching out of dollars is modest, says an executive at a global oil-trading firm: “an extra person in the finance department and a bit more currency risk.”

Will China follow the trail blazed by Russia? Mr Trump has exposed China’s profound vulnerability to the dollar-centric financial system. America’s ability to blacklist or hobble Chinese tech firms, such as Huawei, ultimately rests on punishing suppliers and other counterparties who do business with them through the dollar-based banking and payments system. An American legal case against a senior Huawei executive, who is fighting extradition from Canada, reportedly relies in part on evidence from an American-appointed overseer at hsbc, an Asia-centric bank run from London. In October America sanctioned eight cutting-edge Chinese tech firms for alleged human-rights abuses in Xinjiang province. The administration has threatened to block listings by Chinese firms in New York and restrict purchases by American investors of Chinese shares.

China’s first attempt to bypass the dollar was bungled. After the financial crisis in 2007-09 it promoted the international use of the yuan and pressed for it to become part of the imf’s “Special Drawing Rights”, in effect receiving the fund’s imprimatur as a reserve currency. China set up currency swap deals with foreign central banks (it has done over 35). There was heady talk of the yuan challenging the dollar for the top spot by 2020. Then came a stockmarket panic in 2015 and the government clumsily tightened capital controls. The yuan’s share of global payment by value has stayed at about 2% for several years. Zhou Xiaochuan, a former governor of China’s central bank, has said that yuan internationalisation, which he promoted while in office, was “a premature baby”.

America’s display of financial firepower and new technologies are changing the calculus again. China has some of the building blocks to become more autonomous. It has its own domestic payments and settlement infrastructure, called cips. Launched in 2015, it has so far complemented swift (which it uses for interbank messaging). It is tiny, processing less in 2018 than swift does each day. But it simplifies cross-border payments in yuan, giving banks lots of nodes for settlements. Reports suggest that China, India and others may be exploring a jointly run swift alternative.

A will and a Huawei

Parts of the world’s consumer-finance system are coming under China’s sway thanks to its digital-platform firms, which have globalised faster than its conventional banks. Payments through Alibaba (and its affiliate Ant Financial) are accepted by merchants in 56 countries. The Alipay logo is, in some places, as common as Visa’s. In capital markets, in 2018 China introduced a yuan-denominated crude-oil futures contract on a Shanghai exchange. Known as the “petroyuan”, it is seen by some as a potential rival to the dollar in pricing oil. China has encouraged important firms listed in America to list their shares closer to home as well. On November 26th Alibaba, China’s most valuable company, which in 2014 floated in New York rather than in Hong Kong or Shanghai, completed a $13.4bn additional listing in Hong Kong (the funds were raised in Hong Kong dollars). “As a result of the continuous innovation and changes to the Hong Kong capital market, we are able to realise what we regrettably missed out on five years ago,” said Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chief executive.

China’s central bank is reported to be working on a new digital currency, though details are sparse. Some speculate that it wants to get a head-start on America in building whatever international system emerges for managing payments in central bank-issued digital currencies. It discussed creating a common cryptocurrency with other brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa) at a recent summit. China may end up doing Bitcoin with an authoritarian twist: instead of anonymity it may want all data to be trackable and centrally stored.

That America’s geopolitical rivals want to escape the dollar’s dominance is no surprise. Perhaps more striking is that its allies are flirting with it, too. In her manifesto for 2019-24, Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the European Commission, said: “I want to strengthen the international role of the euro.” Jean-Claude Juncker, her predecessor, has called the dollar’s dominance in European energy trade an “aberration” (when just 2% of imports come from America). The commission is working on a new action plan, part of which involves encouraging eu countries to eliminate “undue reference” to the dollar in payments and trade invoicing, according to a staffer.

So far the eu’s main initiative has involved Iran. It has tried to create a way for its banks and firms to trade with it, while shielding them from America’s wrath. But Instex, a clearing house created for this purpose by Britain, France and Germany, with the commission’s support, is crude and limited. It is essentially a barter mechanism and does not cover oil sales (it is limited to non-sanctioned humanitarian trade). It was structured to allow firms to engage in commerce without resort to the dollar or swift. But they have stayed away for fear of incurring secondary sanctions.

The stuttering performance of Instex reflects the sheer scope of America’s reach. As Adam M. Smith, a sanctions expert at Gibson Dunn, a law firm, points out, America can claim jurisdiction if a transaction has any American “nexus”, even if it is not denominated in dollars. This includes transactions that rely on banks under American jurisdiction, or where a foreign counterparty relies on American nationals to approve, facilitate or process the transaction, or where one party uses a back-end payment, accounting or email system that is stored on servers in America.

Despite this, some European officials remain optimistic. On November 29th six more eu states said they planned to join Instex. “It’s a ten-to-twenty-year thing, and hopefully not only covering Iran. You can’t undo decades of policy in a year,” says a French official. And, if Europe manages to reform the inner workings of the euro, its financial reach will expand. “We need to complete the project first: banking union, fiscal integration, genuine capital-markets union, and so on,” another French official says. European powers are likely to play a leading role in central-bank efforts to create a global electronic currency. Last year Mr Carney floated the idea of a network of central-bank digital monies that could serve as a global invoicing currency. If it happens America may not be invited.

A haven above

The true test of any reserve currency is a financial crisis. Eswar Prasad of Cornell University, the author of “The Dollar Trap”, notes that the greenback benefits during times of turmoil. The 2007-09 crisis, which originated in America, paradoxically strengthened its status as a safe haven. When global trade, saving, borrowing and reserves are largely in one currency, these strengths are mutually reinforcing. No other capital market comes close to America’s for depth and liquidity, a key factor when choosing a currency for commerce.

Yet financial supremacy depends on a heady mix of economic clout, incumbency and legitimacy. And the martial approach that America has adopted threatens the dollar’s dominance, reckons Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard University. A former American treasury secretary agrees. In 2016, while still in office, Jack Lew told an audience in Washington: “It is a mistake to think that [sanctions] are low-cost. And if they make the business environment too complicated, or unpredictable, or if they excessively interfere with the flow of funds worldwide, financial transactions may begin to move outside of the United States entirely—which could threaten the central role of the us financial system globally, not to mention the effectiveness of our sanctions in the future.” As the Trump administration continues to use sanctions aggressively, efforts to circumvent them will accelerate. America does not have a monopoly on financial ingenuity.■

Culled from The Economist

Ash spewed by a Philippine volcano is being mixed with plastic waste to make bricks in an inventive response to the country’s persistent problems of pollution and frequent natural disasters.

The Taal volcano burst into life nearly a week ago, sending towering dust columns into the sky and leaving nearby Binan city coated in fine grey powder.

Environment officials did not just clean up the mess but decided to combine the ash with sand, cement and discarded plastic to form about 5,000 bricks per day for local building projects.

“Instead of just piling up the ashfall somewhere, we are able to turn it into something useful. And it includes plastics, too,” said city environmental officer Rodelio Lee.

The Philippines faces a waste crisis, with a report last year saying it uses a “shocking” amount of single-use plastic, including nearly 60 billion throwaway sachets per year.

It is also plagued by some 20 major storms annually and regular, powerful earthquakes which together kill hundreds of people each year.

Due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” zone of seismic activity, it also has periodic volcanic eruptions.

Taal’s jets of lava and 15-kilometer (nine-mile) walls of ash have sent more than 70,000 people into evacuation centres and prompted warnings that a far bigger eruption could happen at any time.

With volcanic ash and plastic both in plentiful supply, the officials in Binan see their project as a silver lining.

“During these times, our creativity becomes apparent,” said the mayor of Binan, Arman Dimaguila.

Source: AFP

The United States and China signed an initial trade deal on Wednesday that will roll back some tariffs and boost Chinese purchases of U.S. products, defusing an 18-month row between the world’s two largest economies but leaving a number of sore spots unresolved.

Beijing and Washington touted the “Phase 1” agreement as a step forward after months of start-and-stop talks, and investors greeted the news with relief. Even so, there was skepticism the U.S.-China trade relationship was now firmly on the mend.

The deal fails to address structural economic issues that led to the trade conflict, does not fully eliminate the tariffs that have slowed the global economy, and sets hard-to-achieve purchase targets, analysts and industry leaders said.

While acknowledging the need for further negotiations with China to solve a host of other problems, President Donald Trump hailed the agreement as a win for the U.S. economy and his administration’s trade policies.

“Together, we are righting the wrongs of the past and delivering a future of economic justice and security for American workers, farmers and families,” Trump said in rambling remarks at the White House alongside U.S. and Chinese officials.

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He read a letter from President Xi Jinping in which the Chinese leader praised the deal as a sign the two countries could resolve their differences with dialogue.

The centerpiece of the deal is a pledge by China to purchase at least an additional $200 billion worth of U.S. farm products and other goods and services over two years, above a baseline of $186 billion in purchases in 2017, the White House said.

Commitments include $54 billion in additional energy purchases, $78 billion in additional manufacturing purchases, $32 billion more in farm products, and $38 billion in services, according to a deal document released by the White House.

Liu said Chinese companies would buy $40 billion in U.S. agricultural products annually over the next two years “based on market conditions.” Beijing had balked at committing to buy set amounts of U.S. farm goods earlier, and has inked new soybean contracts with Brazil since the trade war started.

Key world stock market indexes climbed to record highs on hopes the deal would reduce tensions, before closing below those highs, while oil prices slid on doubts the pact will spur world economic growth and boost crude demand.

Soybean futures, which traded 0.4% lower throughout much of the deal signing ceremony, sank even further after Liu’s remarks, a sign that farmers and traders were dubious about the purchase goals.

The deal does not end retaliatory tariffs on American farm exports, makes farmers “increasingly reliant” on Chinese state-controlled purchases, and does not address “big structural changes,” Michelle Erickson-Jones, a wheat farmer and spokeswoman for Farmers for Free Trade, said in a statement.

Trump and his economic advisers had pledged to attack Beijing’s long-standing practice of propping up state-owned companies and flooding international markets with low-priced goods as the trade war heated up.

Although the deal could be a boost to U.S. farmers, automakers and heavy equipment manufacturers, some analysts question China’s ability to divert imports from other trading partners to the United States.

“I find a radical shift in Chinese spending unlikely. I have low expectations for meeting stated goals,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Group in Minneapolis. “But I do think the whole negotiation has moved the football forward for both the U.S. and China.”

Trump, who has embraced an “America First” policy aimed at rebalancing global trade in favor of U.S. companies and workers, said China had pledged action to confront the problem of pirated or counterfeited goods and said the deal included strong protection of intellectual property rights.

U.S. Speaker of the House of Representative Nancy Pelosi said Trump’s China strategy had “inflicted deep, long-term damage to American agriculture and rattled our economy in exchange for more of the promises that Beijing has been breaking for years,” in a statement.

Earlier, top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Fox News the agreement would add 0.5 percentage point to U.S. gross domestic product growth in both 2020 and 2021.

Aviation industry sources said Boeing Co was expected to win a major order for wide-body jets from China, including its 787 or 777-9 models, or a mixture of both. Such a deal could ease pressure on the 787 Dreamliner, which has suffered from a broad downturn in demand for large jets, forcing the planemaker to trim production late last year.

CCTV, China’s state-run television outlet, said the deal would satisfy China’s increasingly demanding consumers by supplying products like dairy, poultry, beef, pork, and processed meat from the United States.

Source REUTERS

The German government on Tuesday agreed to pump 62 billion euros into modernising its rail network system, as part of a wider plan to incite commuters to opt for greener public transport options.

“We’ve just signed the most important programme of modernisation ever in Germany,” said Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer, adding that “this is the decade for railway”.

Besides the massive sum stumped up by the state, equivalent to $69 billion, German rail operator Deutsche Bahn will also plow an additional 24 billion euros into the renewal programme.

The investments will go towards “replacing obsolete installations”, improving access to disabled passengers as well as renovating rail bridges, said Scheuer.

Deutsche Bahn chief Richard Lutz also vowed to improve punctuality of trains — a key turn-off for commuters, even though he also called for patience in view of the disruptions that rail upgrading will undoubtedly bring.

Getting more people to switch to trains instead of the more polluting cars or planes is a central plank of a government climate package aimed at helping Germany lower its emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

As part of the package, train fares are going down while air travel prices are set to rise with higher taxes to be imposed.

Source: AFP

Boeing Corp. has released hundreds of internal messages that contained harshly critical comments about the development of the 737 MAX, including one that said the plane was “designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”

The messages, disclosed on Thursday, show attempts to duck regulatory scrutiny with employees disparaging the plane, the company, the Federal Aviation Administration and foreign aviation regulators.

In an instant messaging exchange on February 8, 2018 — when the plane was in the air and eight months before the first of two fatal crashes, an employee asks another: “Would you put your family on a MAX simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.”

The second employee responds, “No.”

The 737 MAX has been grounded since March after an Ethiopian Airlines flight nose-dived, just five months after a similar Lion Air crash. The two disasters killed 346.

In particular, some of the communications reveal efforts by Boeing to avoid making pilot simulator training – an expensive and time-consuming process — a requirement for the 737 MAX.

The aircraft manufacturer changed tack just this week, saying it would recommend pilots do simulator training before they resume flying the 737 MAX – a major shift from its long-held position that computer-based training was sufficient as the plane was similar to its predecessor, the 737 NG.

The release of the messages, which highlight an aggressive culture of cost-cutting and disrespect towards the FAA, is set to deepen the crisis at Boeing which is struggling to get its best-selling plane back in the air and restore public confidence.

The FAA said, however, that the messages do not raise new safety concerns although “the tone and content of some of the language contained in the documents is disappointing.”

Boeing said the communications “do not reflect the company we are and need to be, and they are completely unacceptable.”

Pearly gates closed

The disclosure, which Boeing said was in the interest of transparency with the FAA, prompted renewed outrage from US lawmakers and puts more pressure on Boeing’s new CEO David Calhoun to overhaul the company’s corporate culture when he takes the reins on Monday.

House Transportation Committee Chairman, Peter DeFazio, who has been investigating the 737MAX, said the messages “paint a deeply disturbing picture of the lengths Boeing was, apparently, willing to go to in order to evade scrutiny from regulators, flight crews, and the flying public, even as its own employees were sounding alarms internally.”

Senator Roger Wicker, who chairs the commerce committee leading the Senate’s probe into Boeing, also said the latest documents “raise questions about the efficacy of the FAA’s oversight of the certification process.”

The US Justice Department has an active criminal investigation underway into matters related to the 737 MAX aircraft.

Some of the messages pointed to problems with the simulators. Boeing said on Thursday it is confident “all of Boeing’s MAX simulators are functioning effectively” after repeated testing since the messages were written.

The messages, however, show Boeing was doing all it could to lobby aviation regulators to avoid the need for airlines to train pilots in a simulator on the differences between the 737 MAX and the 737 NG.

“I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required to transition from NG to MAX,” Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot said in a March 2017 email.

“Boeing will not allow that to happen. We’ll go face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement.”

Before the grounding, pilot training on the differences consisted of a one-hour lesson on an iPad and no time in the simulator, according to the union representing pilots at American Airlines.

Shukor Yusof, the head of Malaysia-based aviation consultancy Endau Analytics, said Boeing should get credit for disclosing the “destructive diatribes.”

“Initially the flying public will understandably have reservations but the aircraft – having been completely and responsibly resurrected – will likely be one of the safest planes around,” he said.

In other emails and instant messages, employees spoke of their frustration with the company’s culture, complaining about the drive to find the cheapest suppliers and “impossible schedules.”

“I don’t know how to fix these things…it’s systemic. It’s culture. It’s the fact we have a senior leadership team that understand very little about the business and yet are driving us to certain objectives,” said an employee in an email dated June 2018.

And in a May 2018 message, an unnamed Boeing employee said: “I still haven’t been forgiven by god for the covering up I did last year.”

Without referencing what was covered up, the employee added, “Can’t do it one more time. The Pearly gates will be closed…”

(Source: Reuters)