The heated debate over India’s cash ban continues, with critics saying it slowed an economy that was growing, while the government says economic momentum was barely affected.

Critics say the scrapping of 86 percent of the country’s currency last November cost India its status as the world’s fastest growing economy.

According to data released this week, from January to March, growth plunged to 6.1 percent – lower than China’s 6.9 percent growth in the same period.

Overall growth for the last financial year, which began in April 2016 and ended in March 2017, however, stood at 7.1 percent.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has tried to distance the disappointing economic numbers from the currency ban, citing other factors.

“There was some slowdown visible, given the global and domestic situation, even prior to demonetization in the last year,” he told reporters.

The slowdown affected almost all sectors of the economy, with farming, manufacturing and services all taking a hit. With people scrambling to get access to new notes, consumption slowed sharply, impacting both small shopkeepers and large businesses.

The government, however, is encouraged by forecasts that the economy is expected to recover swiftly on the back of monsoon rains, which are expected to be plentiful, and a slew of major reform measures.

As economists estimated growth this year will rebound to 7.4 percent, the government pointed out that India’s economy is still among the world’s top performers. Jaitley said given the global scenario, “7 to 8 percent growth, which at the moment is the Indian normal, is fairly reasonable and by global standards very good.”

There are widespread expectations of a major economic boost from India’s most ambitious tax reform action since independence – the launch of a nationwide tax that will replace a plethora of levies starting July 1.

The World Bank said this week the reform would lower the cost of doing business for firms and reduce logistics costs.

In the coming year, “we actually have very strong fundamentals of the Indian economy, GDP growth being up, exports have revived and there has been continued reform momentum,” said Frederico Gil Sander, a senior economist at the World Bank in New Delhi.

And while demonetization undoubtedly left its imprint on India by slowing down the economy, the government is optimistic there will be long-term gains because the move would help clean up an economy where many businesses and professionals evade taxes, resulting in the generation of what is known as “black money.”

“The message has gone loud and clear and it continues to this day that it is no longer safe to deal in cash,” said Jaitley.

Skeptics say only improved tax collections in the coming years will demonstrate whether that is true, or whether tax evasion remains a challenge in a country where cash transactions are the norm in large sectors of the economy.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday he was confident that Congress would raise the federal debt limit  “before there’s an issue” with U.S. creditworthiness, and he pledged that the Trump administration’s tax reform plans would be paid for.

“We’re going to get it increased,” Mnuchin told Fox Business Network about the debt limit. “The credit of the United States is the utmost. I’ve said to Congress they should do it as quickly as they can. But we are very focused on working with them and I’m confident we’ll get there before there’s an issue.”

Mnuchin said last week that he wanted a “clean” debt ceiling increase before the start of Congress’ summer recess in early August.

Mnuchin said that it “makes no sense” to view the Trump administration’s tax reform plans through a “static” budget analysis that does not account for economic growth effects. He has previously pledged that increased economic growth would generate more revenue to offset lower tax rates.

“We’re about creating economic growth, we’re about broadening the base and we’re going to make sure that this is tax reform, not just tax cuts, and that they’re paid for,” Mnuchin said.
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President Donald Trump is moving the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, signed by nearly 200 other nations.

Trump said Thursday that the Paris agreement hurts U.S. economic growth, costs millions of American jobs and puts U.S. firms at a disadvantage. However, his decision contrasted with the views of hundreds of American business leaders who urged him to continue participating in the climate agreement.

While the president said Washington would stop implementing the Paris accord immediately, he added that he would begin negotiations aimed at rejoining the Paris accord or a similar agreement on terms more advantageous to the United States.  

“We will see if we can make a deal that’s fair,” Trump said. An audience at the White House Rose Garden warmly applauded his announcement.

Among the many corporations that opposed the move to bow out of the Paris Agreement were Mars, Nike, Levi Strauss and Starbucks. Their top corporate officers signed a letter to Trump several months ago, arguing that failing to build a low-carbon economy would put U.S. “prosperity at risk.”

WATCH: Trump: US ‘Will Cease All Implementation’ of Paris Climate Accord

Trump: ‘Fortune’ at stake

Trump said the climate agreement, as presently written, would cost U.S. businesses “a vast fortune” and lead to the loss of 7 million jobs by 2025.

Tesla founder Elon Musk tried to persuade the president to stay in the accord and said Wednesday that he would quit the White House business advisory council if Washington left the Paris Agreement.

GE chief Jeff Immelt has written that customers, partners and countries are demanding technology that generates electric power while improving energy efficiency and cutting costs.

Oil companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil recently argued that the Paris Agreement gives their firms a more predictable future, and therefore more manageable one. The oil companies and some coal firms also say remaining part of the accord helps maintain U.S. influence over future talks.  

Earlier this week, more than 60 percent of Exxon shareholders voted to require that the firm do more analysis and disclosure of the likely impact of tougher climate policies on company revenue. Previous efforts to force such disclosures failed to get a majority of votes from shareholders.  

Some other business, Republican and conservative groups agreed with Trump’s action. The Heritage Foundation, for example, said the accord produces “devastating” economic costs and “zero” environmental benefits.
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When General Motors CEO Mary Barra introduced the Chevrolet Bolt at the CES gadget show last year, she took a shot at Tesla.

Buyers can be confident because Chevy has 3,000 U.S. dealers to service the new electric vehicle, she said. The implication was that Tesla, with just 69 service centers nationwide, can make no such promise.

The uncharacteristic insult from Barra was designed to highlight the difference between 108-year-old GM and Tesla, a disruptive teenager. It also acknowledged a budding rivalry that could help determine whether Detroit or Silicon Valley sets the course for the future of the auto industry.

The tale of the tape favors GM. It has made billions in profits since returning to the public markets in 2010. GM got the Bolt, a $36,000 car that goes 238 miles per charge, to market before Tesla’s Model 3. Tesla, the 14-year-old company led by flamboyant CEO Elon Musk, has never posted an annual profit.

Yet, as both CEOs face shareholders for annual meetings Tuesday, it is Barra who must explain to skeptical investors why GM’s future is as bright as Tesla’s.

GM’s stock is trading around the $33 price of its initial public offering seven years ago. During that time, Tesla shares have soared more than tenfold to $335. Wall Street now values Tesla at about $55 billion, compared to around $50 billion for GM.

Despite efforts to paint themselves as technology companies, automakers can’t shake their giant, capital-intensive global manufacturing operations. The huge investment needed to build vehicles yields low profit margins compared with tech companies that make software or cell phones, says Michael Ramsey, an analyst with Gartner. GM’s net profit margin in 2016 was 5.7 percent. By comparison, Alphabet Inc., parent of Google, had a 22 percent margin.

Although it’s an automaker, Tesla started in the tech bucket and remains there in the eyes of investors and buyers, Ramsey says.

Tesla’s electric cars are the envy of the industry, and its semi-autonomous technology is among the most advanced on the road. Musk says Tesla’s California assembly plant – which used to be GM’s – will soon be among the most efficient in the world. And it’s branching into areas with potential for bigger returns, including solar panels, energy storage and trucking.

Tesla is absurdly overvalued if based on the past, but that’s irrelevant. A stock price represents risk-adjusted future cash flows,” Musk tweeted in April.

Still, Musk can’t risk any missteps as Tesla pivots from a niche manufacturer of 84,000 high-priced cars per year. The Model 3 sedan, Tesla’s first mainstream car, is due out later this year, but previous launches have been plagued with delays. Tesla has yet to prove it can build high-volume vehicles with quality and reliability, as GM does. Musk aims to make 500,000 vehicles per year in 2018; GM made more than 10 million cars and trucks last year.

GM, too, is stretching into new areas. Its Maven car-sharing service has 35,000 members in 17 North American cities, and it’s providing cars for ride-hailing services. GM is developing autonomous cars with Cruise Automation, a software company purchased last year. Its SuperCruise semi-autonomous driving system, due out this year, is designed to be safer than Tesla’s.

And GM isn’t the only automaker with a stagnant stock price. Of the seven best-selling carmakers in the U.S., only Toyota and Fiat Chrysler have seen significant growth in seven years. Ford, Honda and Hyundai all have lost value.

“Investors and the financial markets are much more interested in investing in the potential of what might be huge than in the reality of what’s already profitable and likely to remain so for years to come,” says Sam Abuelsamid, a senior analyst with Navigant Research.

Abuelsamid says GM could better trumpet its technology achievements. For instance, it scarcely markets the Bolt. By contrast, Musk builds hype with nightclub-like events for Tesla owners and Twitter banter with 8.8 million followers.

“The only way you can get people to perceive you in the same light as a company like Tesla is to demonstrate it,” Abuelsamid says.

Musk is crucial to Tesla’s success. The risk-taking billionaire founded PayPal and rocket company SpaceX before taking over Tesla. He espouses big ideas like Hyperloop high-speed transportation and colonizing Mars.

Barra, on the other hand, is a methodical engineer who rarely strays from script. She has only 29,500 Twitter followers. She’s a GM lifer who earned a company-paid MBA from Stanford; Musk left a Stanford graduate physics program after just two days to form a publishing startup.

“Mary is like a normal high-level performing executive,” Ramsey says. “Elon Musk is like an almost unrivaled superstar, even in comparison to Silicon Valley executives.”

Still, the big changes in the auto industry are in the early stages. Electric vehicles make up less than 1 percent of global auto sales and fully self-driving cars are years away. The economy can falter and company fortunes can shift. Already this year, sales in the U.S. and China are slowing, and GM pulled out of the European and Indian markets because they weren’t profitable.

GM knows the ups and downs of auto sales, but Tesla will have to learn to manage them. If the Model 3 is late and Tesla sales fall, its stock price could drop and reduce Tesla’s access to cheap capital, Ramsey says.

“I don’t think they’re completely immune to economic cycles,” he says. “That will be when we really know if Tesla can maintain this out-of-whack share value with their fundamentals.”
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Canada’s defense minister repeated a threat Wednesday to cancel the purchase of 18 fighter jets from Boeing Co. because of the company’s trade complaint against Canadian plane maker Bombardier.

Harjit Sajjan said Boeing’s action against Bombardier is “unfounded” and not the behavior of a “trusted partner.” He said buying the Super Hornet fighter jets “requires a trusted industry partner.”

Sajjan urged Boeing to withdraw the complaint. Canada’s foreign minister has also threatened to block the order.

“Our government — and I stress this — our government is disappointed in the action of one of our leading industry partners,” he said. 

Complaint could mean duties

Chicago-based Boeing’s trade complaint prompted a U.S. Commerce Department anti-dumping investigation that could result in duties being imposed on Bombardier’s new larger C Series passenger aircraft. Boeing insists the plane receives Canadian government subsidies that give it an advantage internationally.

Canada’s threat is coming amid increasing trade disputes with the U.S. 

Scott Day, a spokesman for Boeing, noted that Sajjan also recognized Boeing as a strong partner in the past and for the future. Day defended the company’s trade action. 

“This is a commercial matter that Boeing is seeking to address through the normal course for resolving such issues,” Day said in an email. 

Boeing petitioned the U.S. Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate subsidies of Montreal-based Bombardier’s C Series aircraft. Boeing says Bombardier has received more than US $3 billion in government subsidies that let it engage in “predatory pricing.”

Brazil has also launched a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization over Canadian subsidies to Bombardier. Sao Paolo-based Embraer is a fierce rival of Bombardier.

Government investment

The Quebec government invested US $1 billion in exchange for a 49.5 percent stake in the C Series last year. Canada’s federal government also recently provided a US $275 million loan to Bombardier, which struggled to win orders for its new medium-size plane. But Bombardier won a 75-plane order for the C Series from U.S.-based Delta Air Lines in 2016. Bombardier said its planes never competed with Boeing in the sale to Delta.

The Canadian government said late last year it would enter into discussions on buying 18 Super Hornet jet fighters from Boeing on an interim basis and hold an open competition to buy more planes over the next five years. Canada remains part of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. 

 
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Major investors put U.S. industry on notice Wednesday that climate change matters, even as reports emerged that President Donald Trump plans to withdraw the United States from an international pact to fight global warming.

A number of large institutional fund firms including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, supported a shareholder resolution calling on ExxonMobil to share more information about how new technologies and climate change regulations could impact the business of the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. The proposal won the support of 62.3 percent of votes cast.

The victory, on such a wide margin, was hailed by climate activists as a turning point in their decades-long campaign to get oil and gas companies to communicate how they would adapt to a low-carbon economy.

Major investors see major risk

With major investors now seeing climate change as a major risk, activists said U.S. corporations will have to be more transparent about the impact of a warming planet even if the United States withdraws from the 2015 Paris climate accord, as Trump promised during his presidential campaign.

“Economic forces are outrunning any other considerations,” said Anne Simpson, investment director for sustainability at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, one of the sponsors of the resolution.

She credited big investors in Exxon for the change, since at least some of them switched their votes after last year when a similar measure won just 38 percent support.

“We have seen a sea change in their viewpoint,” she said.

Many top investors now consider their votes on shareholder proposals “on merit, rather than considering it a test of loyalty to management,” she said.

Among Exxon’s top investors, Vanguard Group and BlackRock opposed last year’s call for climate change reporting. A spokeswoman for Vanguard, which has about 7 percent of Exxon’s shares, declined to comment on its voting this year.

A person familiar with the matter said funds run by BlackRock, which holds about 6 percent of Exxon shares, voted in favor of the climate resolution.

Filings showing their exact votes are not due for months.

But both fund firms and others have taken steps since last year to make it easier to support climate resolutions.

Doug Holt, a spokesman for Exxon’s ninth-largest investor Northern Trust Corp, said it voted in favor of the proposal, citing its own guidelines updated in 2016.

Vote from the street

The investment firms’ approach reflects a new interest in climate matters among their own investors, who have stuffed money into so-called green mutual funds and other vehicles that use environmental factors in their stock picking.

Wall Street’s priorities have shifted the terms of debate at a number of other energy and utility companies. A majority of shareholders voting at Occidental Petroleum Corp and PPL Corp called for similar reports on the risks of climate change. Votes on two more of the measures are scheduled for June 7 at Devon Energy and at Hess.

Michael Crosby, involved in corporate outreach for the Midwest Capuchin Franciscans, a religious order, said Wednesday’s vote was a rejection of Exxon’s arguments it already provides enough detail on its outlook.

“The Street is saying, you have to give better evidence,” Crosby said.

Exxon and the Paris deal

After the measure passed, Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said its board would reconsider its climate communications.

The activists now face the task of maintaining alliances with leaders like Woods who opposed their resolutions but who in some cases support the 195-nation Paris agreement. Exxon said in a March 22 letter to the White House that the Paris deal is “an effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change.”

Trump had at least one ally at Exxon’s meeting in Dallas, Steven Milloy of Potomac, Maryland, who urged other investors to support his resolution that would make it harder to file proposals like the one on climate change.

Milloy said management should show less concern for climate issues, which he called misplaced, and cited Trump as a model.

“For the first time we have a president who actively opposes climate hysteria,” Milloy said.

According to Exxon, Milloy’s proposal received support from 1.6 percent of votes cast.
…

The head of a New York-based advocacy group has called on President Donald Trump and his older daughter to help secure the release of three men who reported labor violations at a Chinese company that makes shoes bearing the Ivanka Trump brand.

“We appeal to President Trump, Ivanka Trump herself, and to her related brand company to advocate and press for the release of our activists,” Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, the men’s employer, said Wednesday.

The Ivanka Trump brand has declined to comment.  The White House and Ivanka Trump’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.  Calls to provincial police in China were not answered. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was unaware of the situation and declined to make further comments.

Hua Haifeng and two other labor activists, Li Zhao and Su Heng, had been covertly investigating labor conditions at two Chinese factories that make shoes for Trump and other brands, in the cities of Ganzhou and Dongguan. They disclosed preliminary findings to China Labor Watch, indicating workers at the factories had been subject to extremely long hours.

Hua was arrested in Jiangxi province on suspicion of illegally using eavesdropping equipment; he and the other two men disappeared Saturday and were last seen in Ganzhou, in southern Jiangxi province, China Labor Watch reported Tuesday.

The arrest and disappearances came amid Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on the country’s advocacy groups and civil society. In the past year, dozens of human rights activists have been detained in China.

The global human rights group Amnesty International called for the release of the three men if they are being held only for investigating possible labor abuses at the factories, which are owned by Huajian International.

“Activists exposing potential human rights abuses deserve protection, not persecution,” said Amnesty International spokesman William Nee. “The trio appear to be the latest to fall foul of the Chinese authorities’ aggressive campaign against human rights activists who have any ties to overseas organizations, using the pretense of ‘national security.’ ”

The relationship between the Trump family and China has received widespread attention since last year’s presidential campaign.  While Trump has accused China of taking coveted manufacturing jobs from the U.S., the Trump family has sought to benefit financially from the Chinese market.

Trump recently obtained more than 75 trademarks in China. The family of Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, is attempting to raise money from Chinese investors for a real estate venture.
…

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said Tuesday that he would sign deals for U.S. goods and services worth $15 billion to $17 billion during his visit to Washington, mainly for high-technology products and for services.

“Vietnam will increase the import of high technologies and services from the United States, and on the occasion of this visit, many important deals will be made,” Phuc told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce dinner.

Phuc, who is due to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday at the end of a three-day visit to the United States, did not provide further details of the transactions.

GE Power Chief Executive Officer Steve Bolze told the dinner that General Electric Co. would sign deals worth about $6 billion with Vietnam, but also offered no details.

Phuc’s comments came after U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed concern about the rapid growth of the U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam, saying this was a new challenge for the two countries and that he was looking to Phuc to help address it.

“Over the last decade, our bilateral trade deficit has risen from about $7 billion to nearly $32 billion,” Lighthizer said. “This concerning growth in our trade deficit presents new challenges and shows us that there is considerable potential to improve further our important trade relationship.”

Reducing deficits

Lighthizer and other Trump administration trade officials have pledged to work to reduce U.S. bilateral deficits with major trading partners. The $32 billion deficit with Vietnam last year — the sixth-largest U.S. trade deficit — reflects growing imports of Vietnamese semiconductors and other electronics products in addition to more traditional sectors such as footwear, apparel and furniture.

The trade issue has become a potential irritant in a relationship where Washington and Hanoi have stepped up security cooperation in recent years, given shared concerns about China’s increasingly assertive behavior in East Asia.

Phuc’s meeting with Trump makes him the first Southeast Asian leader to visit the White House under the new administration.

It reflected calls, letters, diplomatic contacts and lower-level visits that started long before Trump took office in Washington, where Vietnam retains a lobbyist at $30,000 a month.

Vietnam was disappointed when Trump ditched the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, in which Hanoi was expected to be one of the main beneficiaries, and focused U.S. trade policy on reducing deficits.
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Mexico’s foreign minister says the country is “inevitably” set to review rules of origin when renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, giving a boost to President Donald Trump’s manufacturing push.

Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray said Tuesday at an event in Miami that NAFTA has allowed Mexican industry to enter the U.S. market with lax rules of origin. The rules dictate how much U.S. content a product assembled in Mexico must have in order to escape tariffs when being imported into the United States. Currently set at 62.5 percent for the auto industry, that number could increase.

“One part that must inevitably be reviewed is the chapter on rules of origin,” Videgaray said at the University of Miami. “Over time, the free trade agreement has sometimes been used — not always, of course, but sometimes — as a way to access the U.S. market perhaps with laxity in some ways of rules of origin.”

The Trump administration told Congress this month there would be 90 days of consultations on the renegotiation of the 23-year-old pact before beginning talks with Canada and Mexico. Annual trade of goods between Mexico and the U.S. was worth $525 billion in 2016, with the U.S. running a trade deficit of more than $63 billion.

The foreign minister said Mexico won’t entertain any talks on building a wall along the border. Videgaray maintained it is seen as an unfriendly sign and questioned its efficiency. Trump’s budget seeks $2.6 billion for border security technology, including money to design and build a wall along the southern border. Trump repeatedly promised voters during the campaign that Mexico would pay for a wall.
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A group of Senate Democrats sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, requesting information about a raft of trademark approvals from China this year that they say may violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on gifts from foreign governments.

“China’s rapid approvals after years of court battles have raised questions as to whether the trademarks will prevent you from standing up to China on behalf of American workers and their businesses,” the eight senators, led by Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal, wrote.

China’s most recent nod for a Trump trademark, covering clothing, came on May 6, bringing to 40 the number of marks China has granted or provisionally granted to the president and a related company, DTTM Operations LLC, since his inauguration. If there are no objections, provisional approvals are formally registered after 90 days. China has also rejected or partially rejected nine Trump trademarks since the inauguration.

Trademarks give the holder monopoly rights to a brand in a given market. In many jurisdictions, like China, they can also be filed defensively, to prevent squatters from using a name. Because trademarks are granted at the discretion of foreign governments and can be enormously valuable, they can be problematic for U.S. officials, who are barred by the emoluments clause of the constitution from accepting anything of value from foreign states without congressional approval.

In their letter, the senators were particularly interested in any special efforts Trump, his Chinese lawyers, or the U.S. Embassy in China, which sometimes advocates for U.S. firms, may have made to secure approval for the president’s trademarks. They cited an Associated Press report quoting one of Trump’s lawyers in China, Spring Chang, who said that “government relations are an important part of trademark strategy in China.”

Concern about favoritism is particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party. China has defended its handling of Trump’s intellectual property interests, saying it followed the law in processing his applications, though some trademark lawyers viewed the pace as unusually quick and well-coordinated. In addition, China approved one trademark for Trump-branded construction services after a 10-year legal battle that turned in his favor only after he declared his candidacy.

Alan Garten, chief legal officer of The Trump Organization, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. He has previously said that Trump’s trademark activity in China predates his election and noted that Trump has stepped away from managing his company. However, the president retains an ownership stake in his global branding and real estate empire.

In April, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, added “gratuitous Chinese trademarks” to its lawsuit against the president for alleged emoluments violations. Trump has dismissed the suit as without merit.
…

Cross-border fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan has suspended trade worth millions of dollars and stranded hundreds of trucks loaded with fruits and vegetables at the border, where the produce stands to spoil in the rising heat.

Pakistan had temporarily closed the Chaman border crossing, across from Afghanistan’s Spinboldak, after a frontier skirmish earlier this month between Afghan and Pakistani border guards left more than 10 people dead. Global economic institutions say South Asia is one of the world’s least economically connected regions, and the periodic closures of border crossings complicate things further.

Summer is peak time for fruit and vegetable production in the two countries. Under normal circumstances around this time of the year, a significant portion of Afghanistan’s grapes and pomegranates is ferried overland to Pakistan.

Pakistan’s mangoes and vegetables go the opposite direction, along with bilateral trade in many other commodities — some legal and some otherwise.

Part of the Afghan fruit produce is sold in Chaman and nearby villages; the remainder finds its way to markets across Pakistan.

It’s a long-established system that relies heavily on trust: Pakistani fruit traders send advance payments to their Afghan counterparts, who then send the fruit after it’s harvested. But so far this year, the Chaman businessmen say they have not cut the usual deals because the border closure have created the risk of coming up empty-handed.

Amant Khan, a fruit trader in Chaman, said he suffered losses last year as tensions rose between the two countries.

“This season we did not give the grape or melon dealers anything,” he said. “In fact, we decided not to do business with Afghanistan.”

For traders in Waish Mandi, a thriving Afghan market town across from Chaman, these are hard financial times, too. Hundreds of people, who used to benefit from border trade, have lost work. Unable to move their merchandise across the border, goods worth millions of dollars are stranded in truck containers.

Apart from the fruit trade, bilateral trade between Afghanistan and Pakistanonce worth $3 billion a year has dropped to $1.2 billion, said Khan Jan Alkozai, president of the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Pakistan’s own fruit exports to Central Asia via Afghanistan, which usually average 2 million pounds, also suffer because of border closures, Alkozai said.

Daro Khan, former vice president for the Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint Chamber of Commerce, said Pakistani farmers and businessman have not recovered from losses due to border closures last year.
…

A new ban imposed by India’s government on the sale of cows and buffaloes for slaughter to protect animals considered holy by many Hindus is drawing widespread protests from state governments and animal-related industries.

Many state governments criticized the ban as a blow to beef and leather exports that will leave hundreds of thousands jobless and deprive millions of Christians, Muslims and poor Hindus of a cheap source of protein.

The rules, which took effect Friday, require that cattle traders pledge that any cows or buffalos sold are not intended for slaughter.

At least one state government is planning a challenge in court. Some have said the ban infringes on states’ commercial autonomy and are calling for a nationwide protest.

Others say the ban will hurt farmers who will be forced to continue feeding aged animals, and that millions of unproductive cattle will be turned out on the streets.

The new rules also propose the setting up of a vast animal monitoring bureaucracy, including animal inspectors and veterinarians, to ensure the rules are followed. Traditionally, cattle fairs and markets allow the sale of animals headed to abattoirs to provide raw materials used in dozens of industries, including leather making, soap and fertilizer.

The state governments have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to repeal the order, which they say was issued without consultations with them. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has been pushing a Hindu nationalist agenda since it came to power in 2014.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the top elected official in southern Kerala state, wrote to Modi on Sunday describing the restrictions as a “drastic move” that would have “far-reaching consequences and would be detrimental to democracy.”

He said the move amounts to “an intrusion into the rights of the states” in India’s federal structure and violates the principles of the Indian Constitution.

The government of West Bengal state also protested the move, saying the Modi government cannot make such decisions unilaterally.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the state would not accept the imposition of such restrictions on its commercial authority. She described it as a step by the Modi government to “destroy the federal structure of the country.”

“We won’t accept the decision. It is unconstitutional. We will challenge it legally,” Banerjee told reporters Monday.

Hindus, who form 80 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people, consider cows to be sacred, and for many eating beef is taboo. In many Indian states, the slaughtering of cows and selling of beef is either restricted or banned. India has the highest number of vegetarians in the world as a result of Hinduism’s predominance, although not all Hindus are vegetarians.

While the eating of beef is not a crime in many states, slaughtering a cow carries a punishment of up to seven years in jail throughout the country. In Gujarat state, lawmakers have approved a bill increasing the punishment for killing a cow to life imprisonment.

Critics say the new rules, ostensibly to protect the way animals are treated and transported, are in keeping with demands of Hindu nationalists, who have long been pressing for a nationwide ban on the sale of beef. The past two years have also seen a rise in vigilante attacks on Muslims and lower caste Hindus involved in the cattle trade. Several deaths have occurred.

On Monday, police arrested seven people on suspicion of assaulting two Muslim men who were transporting meat in western Maharashtra state. The men were beaten and forced to chant Hindu slogans by a vigilante group on Sunday, police said.

Meanwhile, leather and meat industry groups said the ban could push them out of business.

Fauzan Alavi of the All India Meat and Livestock Exporters Association said beef exports, which had been growing rapidly, have already been affected. “Such a drastic move is bound to hit the industry,” Alavi said Sunday.

The government “has handed a death certificate to us,” said Ramesh K. Juneja of the Council of Leather Exports.

 
…

British Airways passengers continue to face delays, cancellations, and overcrowding Sunday at Heathrow Airport as the airline reels from a computer failure.

The airline said that all long-haul flights will continue Sunday, but to avoid further overcrowding, passengers will only be allowed to enter the airport terminal 90 minutes before their scheduled departure.

Passengers should still expect delays and cancelations for shorter flights, British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz said, adding that the airline was at “near-full operation” Sunday.

“I know this has been a horrible time for customers,” Cruz said, apologizing in a video statement posted online.

 
The airline was forced to cancel flights Saturday at Heathrow and Gatwick airports as officials tried to fix a global computer failure.

British Airways has not said what caused the glitch, but did report there is no evidence pointing to a cyber attack.

The failure occurred on a particularly busy weekend in Britain, where a public holiday will be observed on Monday and when many children are starting their mid-term school breaks — prompting some stranded travelers to express their frustration on Twitter.

British Airways has experienced other recent computer glitches. Passengers were hit with severe delays in July and September last year because of problems with the airline’s online check-in systems.

 
…

Saffron has long been one of the world’s most expensive spices. The saffron crocus that produces the spice grows mostly in parts of Europe, Iran and India. Now, a U.S. company seeking to “cultivate peace” is attracting attention to this historic spice and trying to develop new markets for saffron grown in Afghanistan. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Chicago.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump has told “confidants,” including the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, that he plans to leave a landmark international agreement on climate change, the Axios news website reported Saturday, citing three sources with direct knowledge.

On Saturday, Trump said in a Twitter post he would decide whether to support the Paris climate deal next week.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A source who has been in contact with people involved in the decision told Reuters that a couple of meetings were planned with chief executives of energy companies and big corporations and others about the climate agreement ahead of Trump’s expected announcement later in the week. It was unclear whether those meetings would still take place.

“I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!” Trump tweeted on the final day of a Group of Seven (G-7) summit in Italy at which he refused to bow to pressure from allies to back the 2015 agreement.

Six against one

The summit of G-7 wealthy nations pitted Trump against the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan on several issues, with European diplomats frustrated at having to revisit questions they had hoped were long settled.

Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, came under concerted pressure from the other leaders to honor the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing carbon emissions.

Although he tweeted that he would make a decision next week, his apparent reluctance to embrace the first legally binding global climate deal, signed by 195 countries, clearly annoyed German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying,” she told reporters. “There are no indications whether the United States will stay in the Paris Agreement or not.”
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Bitcoin, the controversial digital currency, recently made headlines for reaching a record high valuation of more than $2,700, but perhaps the bigger growth potential lies in blockchain. The technology behind bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies is being explored by more conventional companies and businesses. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports from New York.
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The U.S. economy expanded at a slightly faster pace than first estimated during the first quarter of this year.

The Commerce Department’s Friday report shows expansion at a 1.2 percent annual rate in January, February and March. That is nearly twice as fast as the preliminary estimate, but slower than the end of last year, and much more slowly than the 3 percent rate of expansion that the Trump administration says it will achieve.

Officials routinely revise growth estimates as more complete data becomes available.

Many experts say the economy is growing slowly because aging baby boomers are leaving the work force to retire, and productivity growth has been disappointingly slow.

The chief economist of PNC Bank, Gus Faucher, says growth is “bouncing back” in the second quarter. Faucher says he expects the U.S. economic growth will bounce around somewhat and expand at a 2.3 percent rate this year. Faucher also expects the growth rate to be about the same next year. 

A separate report shows new orders for manufactured goods declined in April. The seven-tenths of a percent decrease followed several months of gains.
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Africa loses an estimated $50 billion a year to illicit financial flows, leaving governments strapped for cash and dependent on development aid.

The continent is “hemorrhaging” money because of the failure of countries to enact strong legislation to check money flows, says Rose Acha, Cameroon’s supreme state audit minister and secretary general of the African Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions.

Instead, uncontrolled transactions are common.

“Whatever the source of your money, we don’t know, but we welcome those who want to deposit money,” said Faison Winifred of Investment Fund, a local financial institution in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde. “Why … do you discourage the person by asking where is your source of income? We encourage everybody who comes to deposit money. … There is no limit. Whatever amount you want to deposit, we like it.”

Acha says smuggling and trafficking during illegal commercial activity constitute 65 percent of Africa’s financial hemorrhage, while criminal activities — which consist of using funds for illegal purposes, like financing organized crime and terrorism — come next with 30 percent. She says corruption and tax evasion account for the remaining 5 percent of the money lost.

According to the United Nations High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows, Africa loses a staggering $50 billion annually. The panel says that is approximately double the amount of official development assistance Africa receives.

African tax and audit experts, meeting this week in Yaounde, said the worst offender is Nigeria, with an illicit outflow of $157 billion from 2003 to 2012. South Africa ranks second with $122 billion lost during that time period, and Egypt third with $37 billion.

Magagi Tanko of the supreme state audit office of Niger says that in Central and West Africa, huge sums of money are transferred illegally and public coffers are impoverished. In addition, illegal financial flows from drug trafficking have spiraled.

Exporters use under-invoicing so they can dodge taxes and bring in less foreign exchange, leaving the rest of their earnings in offshore accounts, he says.

Lagan Wort, executive secretary of the African Tax Administration, says a regional approach is key.

“Parts of the defense mechanism that African governments must employ is to build strong tax legislation and tax policy systems, including tax agreements between countries, especially inter-African countries,” Wort said.

The experts resolved to work with the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative — a joint effort by the World Bank and U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime — to recover funds, but said the process is long and cumbersome, since many banks remain secretive about their transactions.

They said many of the illicit financial flows also end up funneled through complex criminal rings, severely limiting the ability of law enforcement and tax authorities to trace offenders and eventually recover the money.
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A budget proposal by the Trump administration in March outlines a commitment to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) effort to send astronauts to Mars. About $3.7 billion is earmarked for development of the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule, crucial parts of NASA’s effort to send humans deeper into space. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh explores the effort of contractors working on the project, united by the commitment to “boldly go” further into the final frontier.
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Soon there will be no classic beauty salons in the United States. At least that’s what two Alexandria businessmen claim. Don and Jeff DeBolt, father and son, offer stylists an opportunity to become owners of “one man salons” by renting equipped salon studios. The prices start at three hundred dollars per week. Their experiment turned out to be a successful business. Today there are 300 Sola Salon Studios with over seven thousand professionals. Anush Avetisyan visited one of them.
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While world attention has focused on Kim Jong Un’s recent missile tests, a monthlong surge in gasoline prices in Pyongyang is showing no signs of letting up, a puzzling problem that if allowed to drag on could be bad news for the North Korean economy.

Prices have shot up to about $2.30 per kilogram, or about $6.44 a gallon, since mid-April, when prices were in the $1.25-30 range. That means North Korea now has some of the highest prices in the world for gasoline. For comparison, the price in April last year was about 80 cents per kilogram.

The cause and extent of the surge remains a mystery. 

Traffic unaffected

Officially, there has been no comment. There’s no obvious sign of less traffic on the streets, at least in Pyongyang, which is more affluent and developed than other North Korean cities. Taxis appear to be operating normally and have not raised their fares. 

The North’s by now pervasive market economy, which is tolerated by the ruling regime in exchange for its cut of the profits, has made fuel and the ability to transport goods and people so essential that demand for gasoline is not so sensitive to price. 

But many gas stations around the capital, if they are selling fuel at all, have been limiting who they sell it to and how much each customer can buy. The long queues and mad dashes to fill gas tanks and large plastic storage cans that marked the beginning days of the surge appear to have subsided, though stations’ operations remain irregular and unpredictable.

North Korean gas stations generally belong to chains associated with large government enterprises or sometimes the military. Gas is also sold through more informal channels, including street-side stalls and the black market. It is sold by weight in North Korea, thus the “per kilogram” rates. 

What’s behind this?

Without official confirmation or data, it’s hard to conclusively say what is happening. Prices also tend to fluctuate from station to station. 

Several possible scenarios could be in play. 

It was rumored last month that China had or was about to limit exports. That possibility, hinted at in a tabloid newspaper associated with China’s ruling party, could have set off the surge either because of an actual drop in supply or speculative buying in anticipation of a shortfall. 

The incentive to hoard remains because of rumors Beijing will implement sanctions if Pyongyang conducts a nuclear test. It is unclear how informed North Koreans are about the possibility of another test soon, but satellite imagery widely reported abroad suggests one could come at any time.

The North Korean government itself might have pulled some of supply out of the market.

Pyongyang has been known to divert fuel to higher-priority uses, such as major construction projects or high-profile political events. Gas prices can also rise in tandem with the farming cycle, when more fuel is needed for tractors and pumps. All three could apply right now. North Korea completed construction of a major high-rise residential area in the capital and held a lavish celebration and military parade last month. This is also spring planting season.

The most ominous possibility is that the regime is preparing for some sort of emergency.

But there does not seem to be any strong evidence of that or of Chinese action to cut off supplies. 

William Brown, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and non-resident fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, said rumor-inspired hoarding is the likely culprit. 

Sensitivity to sanctions

It’s unclear if prices are also rising for diesel and kerosene, used to heat and keep the lights on in city apartments and machinery working in the fields. 

An acute sensitivity to even the hint of Chinese sanctions, if that is behind the surge, would be telling. 

The Soviet Union supplied crude oil to North Korea in the 1950s through the 1980s. China joined in early 1970s and now provides virtually all of the North’s supply. Brown said that includes a 50,000-ton delivery monthly via an 18-kilometer (11-mile) cross-border pipeline that is worth about $20 million at current Chinese export prices. 

Beijing doesn’t require the North to pay and hasn’t included those shipments in official trade figures since 2014. 

If Pyongyang had to start paying for that 50,000-ton freebie, the profit from sales of what it refines domestically would drop and it would have less money to spend on other things. The resulting scarcity of dollars would hurt the value of North Korea’s currency, leading to inflation. 

In any case, Brown said, the volatility of gasoline prices underscores the North’s dependence on markets that have expanded dramatically since Kim Jong Un took power more than five years ago. The rise of markets has led to better productivity and use of scarce goods, like gasoline, helping economic growth.

But, he added, it is at the same time “the bane of a socialist government.”

“Real money in private pockets, after all, is power,” he said. 
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Moody’s Investors Service downgraded China’s credit rating Wednesday – from Aa3 (Double A-3) to A1 – saying it expects China’s economy to erode in coming years as growth slows and its debt burden continues to rise. The downgrade comes as the government faces new financial challenges after years of credit-fueled stimulus.

Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at foreign exchange firm Oanda, said the credit downgrade comes as no surprise. “Because talk of Chinese debt and concerns about the size of Chinese debt has been going on for the last few years.  They seem to be very reliant on these high levels of growth, which has been slowing,” according to Erlam.

China’s economy, the second largest in the world, grew 6.7 percent in 2016, down from 6.9 percent the previous year, the slowest pace since 1990. Erlam says the next few years could be challenging.

“They’ve [the Chinese government] talked about wanting to move away from an investment and export-led economy and focus more on domestic consumption and look at a more sustainable model. But, as we’ve seen over the last couple of years, as soon as it runs into any difficulties – it seems to revert back to where it was a couple of years ago and start spending more money on infrastructure.”

Moody’s expects the government’s direct debt burden to rise to 40 percent of GDP by 2018 and closer to 45 percent by the end of the decade. That’s still well below the 60 percent debt to GDP warning line for the European Union.

China’s Finance Ministry said the downgrade overestimates the risks of rising debt and claims it was based on “inappropriate methodology.” The downgrade is likely to increase the cost of borrowing, but analysts say the one-notch downgrade remains comfortably within the investment grade rating range.

Triple A is the highest rating for creditworthiness, followed by Double A, then Single A. C represents the weakest creditworthiness and means default is imminent.  

China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell more than 1 percent after the credit downgrade while the value of the yuan slipped briefly 0.1 percent against the U.S. dollar.
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According to a recent analysis, in about 15 years, depending on the country, up to 38 percent of jobs performed by humans may be turned over to robots. Experts who gathered last week at a robotic expo in Paris say we have to prepare for the new reality if we want to avoid disruptive social changes. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The U.S. government has filed a civil lawsuit against automaker Fiat Chrysler, saying the company has used illegal software to fake emission results on its diesel vehicles.

The civil complaint filed Tuesday follows initial accusations from the Environmental Protection Agency released in January.

The software reportedly hid emissions of nitrogen oxide, allowing the vehicles to appear to comply with regulations set forth in the Clean Air Act, while still emitting more of the gas than is allowed.

At issue are the 2014 to 2016 models of Grand Cherokees and Dodge Ram 1500 pickup trucks with three-liter diesel engines sold in the United States, around 104,000 vehicles in total, the EPA said.

In 2015, Volkswagen was caught using a similar device to cheat emissions standards. Volkwagen, however, admitted to having cheated, while Fiat Chrysler denies wrongdoing. The VW scandal eventually led to approximately $20 billion worth of fines levied against the company and indictments of seven company executives.

Fiat Chrysler did not immediately comment Tuesday, but its shares fell 2.9 percent.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is proposing major changes in the way Washington’s $4.1 trillion budget is spent, with more money for the military, border security, and veterans. The just-published budget for next year also slashes money for programs that benefit the poor.

Trump’s top budget official Mick Mulvaney says for the first time the budget looks at spending from the point of view of the taxpayers, rather than the people who get government help.

The director of the Office of Management and Budget says the budget translates Trump’s campaign promises and priorities into practical plans. Mulvaney says the approach will balance the budget in 10 years, and boost economic growth to three percent.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary and World Bank Economist Larry Summers, calls the budget’s economic assumptions “ludicrously optimistic.” In an opinion article in the Washington Post he says the impact on low income Americans will be “dire.”

A president’s budget has to be approved by Congress, so the final form may be quite different from what the chief executive submits. Democrats oppose many of Trump’s plans, and the president’s Republican allies in Congress are divided on some budget issues.

Cuts in social programs

The Trump budget includes $3.6 trillion in cuts over 10 years, with some of the largest reductions in programs that help the poor pay for health care and buy food. A nutrition program known as “food stamps” currently serves more than 40 million people.

The budget proposal also follows Trump’s campaign promises to not to cut Social Security, a government-run old age pension program, or Medicare, which helps the elderly pay for doctors, hospitals and medicine.

Critics of Mr. Trump’s budget, including a group called “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” says these popular and expensive programs make up just more than half of government spending during the next 10 years. They say it is difficult to balance the budget without trimming spending on Social Security and Medicare.

Mulvaney explained the cuts in social programs as a desire to get people who are relying on federal programs when they should not be to go back to work.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has said the Trump plan “guts investment in jobs and hollows out our economy,” and instead should be focused on investments in jobs, education, clean energy and medical research.

 
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Google already monitors your online shopping – but now it’s also keeping an eye on what you’re buying in real-world stores as part of its latest effort to sell more digital advertising.

The offline tracking scans most credit and debit card transactions to help Google automatically inform merchants when their digital ads translate into sales at a brick-and-mortar store.

Google believes the data will show a cause-and-effect relationship between online ads and offline sales. If it works, that could help persuade merchants to boost their digital marketing budgets.

Google windfall

The Mountain View, California, company already runs the world’s biggest online ad network, one that raked in $79 billion in revenue last year. That puts it in the best position to capture any additional marketing dollars spent on computers and mobile devices.

Google plans to unveil the store-sales measurement tool Tuesday in San Francisco at an annual conference it hosts for its advertisers.

The gathering gives Google a prime opportunity to woo advertisers – one that it surely welcomes, given that it’s still trying to overcome a marketing boycott of its YouTube video site . The boycott began two months ago over concerns that Google hadn’t prevented major brand advertising from appearing alongside extremist video clips promoting hate and violence.

Google is also introducing several other features designed to help merchants drive more traffic to their physical stores and to gain a better understanding on how digital ads appearing across a variety of devices are affecting their sales.

Smarter ad tracking

Most of the new analytics twists draw upon Google’s inroads in “machine learning” – a way of “training” computers to behave more like humans – to interpret the data. Google’s search engine and Chrome web browser are a rich source of data about people’s interests and online activities that it can feed into machine-learning systems.

In the case of the store sales measure tool, Google’s computers are connecting the dots between what people look at after clicking on an online ad and then what they purchase with their credit and debit cards.

For instance, if someone searching for a pair of running shoes online clicked on an ad from a sporting goods store but didn’t buy anything, an advertiser might initially conclude that the ad was a waste of money. But Google says its new tool will now be able to tell if the same person bought the shoes a few days later at one of the advertiser’s brick-and-mortar stores.

Digital dossiers

Google says it has access to roughly 70 percent of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with other companies that track that data. That means Google still won’t be able to document every purchase made using plastic – and it still has no way of knowing when people buy something with cash.

The digital dossiers that Google has compiled on the more than one billion people who use its search engine and other services, including Gmail, YouTube and Android, worry privacy watchdogs. Google gives its users the option to limit the company’s tracking and control what types of ads they are shown.

Google says its computers can collect identifying data triggered by online clicks and match it with other identifying information compiled by merchants and the issuers of credit and debit cards to figure out when a digital ad contributes to an offline purchase.

Shoppers remain anonymous, meaning they aren’t identified by their names, according to Google. And the company says it doesn’t share any of its anonymized information with its advertisers; instead, it targets ads at individuals who fit demographic profiles sought by advertisers.

 
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President Donald Trump is proposing to balance the federal budget within 10 years by slashing many social programs, including some that help the poor pay for food and medical care, called food stamps and Medicaid.

Officials have outlined some new details of the president’s first spending plan. A president’s budget has to be approved by Congress, so the final form is often quite different from what the chief executive proposes. Democrats oppose many of Trump’s plans, and the president’s Republican allies in Congress are divided on some budget issues.  

In his campaign, Trump promised not to cut Social Security, a government-run old-age pension program, or Medicare, which helps elderly people pay for doctors, hospitals and medicine. That means deeper cuts to some other programs.  

Critics of Trump’s budget, including a group called “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” says these popular and expensive programs make up just over half of government spending over the next 10 years. They say it is difficult to balance the budget without trimming this spending. They also say administration officials have based the budget on “unrealistic and rosy economic growth projections.”
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Gambia’s government used a court order Monday to seize assets belonging to exiled former President Yahya Jammeh.

They include nearly 90 bank accounts and 14 companies linked to Jammeh.

Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou says Jammeh stole $50 million in public funds before fleeing Gambia for Equatorial Guinea in January.

Jammeh and his associates have been unavailable for comment since he left the country.

Jammeh ruled Gambia for 22 years before losing December’s presidential election to Adama Barrow. He contested the results for several weeks before giving up and fleeing the country.

His long-ruling political party lost April’s parliamentary elections to the opposition United Democratic Party.

Along with allegations of looting public funds, investigators in Gambia are also probing a number of disappearances under the Jammeh government.

 
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Several hundred middle school and high school students from Senegal and surrounding countries spent last week in Dakar building robots. Organizers of the annual robotics competition say the goal is to encourage African governments and private donors to invest more in science and math education throughout the continent.

The hum of tiny machines fills a fenced-off obstacle course, as small robots compete to gather mock natural resources such as diamonds and gold.

The robots were built by teams of young people gathered in Dakar for the annual Pan-African Robotics Competition.

‘Made in Africa’

The event’s founder, Sidy Ndao, says this year’s theme is “Made in Africa,” and focuses on how robotics developed in Africa could help local economies.

“We have noticed that most countries that have developed in the likes of the United States have based their development on manufacturing and industrialization, and African countries on the other hand are left behind in this race,” Ndao said. “So we thought it would be a good idea to inspire the kids to tell them about the importance of manufacturing, the importance of industry, and the importance of creation and product development.”

During the week, the students were split into three groups.

The first group worked on robots that could automate warehouses. The second created machines that could mine natural resources, and the third group was tasked to come up with a new African product and describe how to build it.

Building a robot a team effort

Seventeen-year-old Rokyaha Cisse from Senegal helped her team develop a robot that sends sound waves into the ground to detect the presence of metals and then start digging.

Cisse says it is very interesting and fun, and they are learning new things, as well as having their first opportunity to handle robots.

As part of a younger team, Aboubacar Savage from Gambia said their robot communicates with computers.

“It is a robot that whatever you draw into the computer, it translates it and draws it in real life,” Savage said. “It is kind of hard. And there is so much competition, but we are trying. I have learned how to assemble a robot. I have learned how to program into a computer.”

The event’s founder, Ndao, is originally from Senegal, but is now a professor at the University of Nebraska’s Lincoln College of Engineering in the United States.

“I have realized how much the kids love robotics and how much they love science,” Ndao said “You can tell because when it is time for lunch, we have to convince them to actually leave, and then [when] it is time to go home, nobody wants to leave.”

Outsourced jobs cost Africa billions

A winning team was named in each category, but Ndao hopes the real winners will be science and technology in Africa.

The organizers of the Next Einstein Forum, which held its annual global gathering last year in Senegal, said Africa is currently missing out on $4 billion a year by having to outsource jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to expatriates.

Ndao said African governments and private investors need to urgently invest more on education in those fields, in particular at the university level.
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The European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, said on Sunday he was confident an agreement between Athens and its creditors could be found at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday in Brussels.

Athens needs funds to repay 7.5 billion euros ($8.4 billion) of debt maturing in July.

“We are very close to an overall agreement,” Moscovici told France Inter radio.

“Greece has assumed its responsibilities,” he said, referring to measures on pension cuts, tax hikes and reforms adopted on Thursday by the Greek Parliament.

“I now wish that we, the partners of Greece, also take our responsibilities,” he said.

Moscovici said his optimism over a deal was partly linked to the fact Germany was now aware of the need to find a structural solution to Greece’s problems.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed during a call on Wednesday that a deal was “feasible” by Monday.
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