Housing foreclosure activity in the United States dropped to the lowest level since 2005 last month, according to a business research group.

ATTOM Data Solutions tracks default notices, auctions and bank repossessions across the nation and says the number of actions dropped 23 percent from a year ago. That means more than 77,000 homeowners missed payments, and banks took some kind of action to encourage the repayment of their loans.

Severe problems in the U.S. housing market, and sales of securities backed by sometimes-faulty mortgages, played a key role in the financial crisis, which is one reason that investors and economists watch the housing market closely.

Seattle, a city in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, did the best in this study, with the number of foreclosure notices dropping 38 percent from the same time a year ago. Atlantic City, New Jersey, had the worst foreclosure problem in this study, with one out of every 237 housing units getting a notice of some kind.
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China’s President Xi Jinping initiated the ambitious Belt and Road development plan but it has become a world plan not tied to his presidency, the Commerce Ministry said Wednesday, days before Xi hosts a global forum on the initiative.

The forum in Beijing next week will draw heads of state to discuss Xi’s plan to expand trade links between Asia, Africa and Europe through billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.

Representatives from more than 100 countries will attend China’s biggest diplomatic event of the year, though only one leader from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, is set to join.

China says that between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $304.9 billion along inland and maritime corridors of the plan, also known as the New Silk Road. But some of the projects could be in development for years.

Judging by recent precedent in China’s political system, Xi is slated to step down from the presidency in early 2023 at the end of his second five-year term.

Asked what guarantee the world had that the initiative would go on after Xi’s second term, Vice Minister of Commerce Qian Keming told a news briefing that its vitality lay in countries’ hopes for development and not in the idea of “who proposed it or what term in office there is later.”

“The Belt and Road initiative was proposed by President Xi in 2013, but this initiative is not an individual proposal, or merely left at a proposal level. Rather it is an initiative that has been widely received by the whole world. It is jointly owned by everyone,” Qian said.

China has repeatedly rebuffed concern that the plan is part of a grand strategy to expand its economic interests for selfish gain and to seek global dominance, saying that anyone can join the plan to boost common prosperity.

Xi has used the initiative to help portray China as an open economy, distinct from a rising wave of global protectionism.

However, the government has faced criticism from foreign business groups and governments alike, who say it has done little to remove discriminatory policies and market barriers that favor Chinese companies.

Foreign business groups have questioned whether multinational companies would be able to compete with Chinese firms through the plan in transparent bidding processes.

Zhang Xingfu, an official from the Commerce Ministry’s cooperation department, played down such concerns.

“Chinese enterprises conducting investment and cooperative business in countries along the Belt and Road initiative will … actively participate in project bidding, and cooperate and compete with international enterprises in the same industries on the same platform,” Zhang said.
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In August, 2014, planners in the northeastern Chinese city of Hunchun argued in state media that it should be included in the “One Belt, One Road” project, Beijing’s vision laid out the previous year of a new Silk Road across Asia to Europe.

In 2015, the official Xinhua news agency ran stories about how Hunchun was accelerating its “OBOR” plans, and early in 2016, China’s cabinet released a list of Chinese cities included in “OBOR:” Hunchun was on the map.

The fact that the list came about slowly, and that some cities felt moved to lobby to be included, underlines how the pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping is as amorphous as it is ambitious.

The challenge of defining exactly what OBOR means will come to the fore later this month, when heads of state and senior officials from around the world gather in Beijing for the first major summit dedicated to the project.

“Frankly, I don’t really know what the belt and the road are. The reason being that I think Beijing doesn’t know either,” said Tom Miller of Gavekal Dragonomics, who recently wrote a book on the New Silk Road.

Reality is complicated

In theory, incentives for cities, companies and countries to be involved are strong: hundreds of billions of dollars are expected to be spent on roads, railways, pipelines, ports and industrial zones stretching from Sri Lanka to Djibouti.

But as Hunchun shows, the reality of OBOR can be complicated and requires buy-in from other countries.

The city’s position at the apex of Russia, North Korea and China is a blessing and a curse. While Russia is gradually opening up to more trade, North Korea has stalled.

Tantalizingly close to the sea but without a sea port after Russia’s annexation in 1860, local businesses said they wanted to ship more goods via Rason, a nearby North Korean port earmarked as an export hub to China, Japan, South Korea and beyond.

That would open a shipping route to southern China, but with sanctions in place against Pyongyang, global tensions rising over its arms programme and Rason developing slowly, expectations of progress are low.

“We currently transport goods by rail to southern China. We’d like to ship from Rason, but at present that’s not happening,” said Wang Hai, general manager of Guanghai Import and Export Trading Company in Hunchun, a small firm with 12 staff, both Chinese and Russian. “Hunchun is a hub for northeast Asia, so in theory it should play a big role in ‘One Belt, One Road,’ but for now it hasn’t been able to get its act together.”

Russia more promising?

North Korea remains largely shut to the outside world, and China, while remaining its main economic and diplomatic backer, has signed up for tough U.N. sanctions against it.

But China said on Tuesday that North Korea would be sending a delegation to the upcoming OBOR summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also attend, reflecting his country’s importance in China’s OBOR strategy; in Hunchun, some enterprises are already seeing benefits from mutual trade.

Xingyang Seafood, for example, imports 90 percent of its seafood from Russia and 10 percent from North Korea, said chairman Zhao Yang.

“The main advantage of being in Hunchun is that we are close to Russia,” Yang told Reuters. The company is headquartered in northern China’s Shandong province, but in 2015 it opened a branch in Hunchun to exploit its proximity to Russia.

“How does North Korea help us? It doesn’t help us at all, they have hardly any seafood left there.”

Trade with Russia

Hunchun’s spokesman Hao Qiang declined to comment about the city’s relationship with North Korea, because of the “current political situation,” and would not say how many North Koreans were working in the city. “But we can talk about Hunchun’s trade with Russia, the city’s clean air and successful tree-planting initiatives,” he said.

In addition to oil and gas export opportunities between Russia and China, Putin has spoken of roads and bridges being built to strengthen links.

Russia has struggled, however, to lure enough people to sparsely populated regions bordering China’s northeast, and there are concerns among Russians of creeping colonization if too much land is leased to the Chinese.

“They [Chinese] will live there, their relatives will come, they will deepen their roots there, they will take Russian women as wives,” firebrand opposition politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky said in 2015, when proposals to lease Russian land to Chinese farmers were put forward. “We will only have problems. I see no advantages.”

For Hunchun, OBOR is the latest in a series of development programs aimed at revitalizing Jilin province and China’s northeast.

Benefits of investments are clear

In the 1990s, the United Nations backed the Tumen River Area Development Project, which became the Greater Tumen Initiative linking China, Mongolia, South Korea and Russia.

The benefits of large-scale state investment are clear. From 25th place among smaller cities in Jilin in terms of economic growth, Hunchun now stands third. Foreign trade has doubled since 2011, according to city statistics.

Whether OBOR can add value over the longer term is uncertain, Peter Cai wrote in a report for the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank.

“If the Chinese government fails to connect its domestic projects with overseas components, OBOR will be little different from other domestic infrastructure programs, greatly diminishing its economic and strategic value.”
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Mexico is embarking on a strategy to combat illegal pipeline thefts that includes going after those who purchase and deal in stolen fuel as well as the thieves, the country’s treasury secretary said Tuesday.

Jose Antonio Meade said it’s a problem that costs Mexico somewhere between 15 billion and 20 billion pesos a year, or $780 million to $1 billion, and one that requires a holistic approach to solve.

Mexico’s government wants to reduce the siphoning of gasoline and diesel from illegal pipeline taps by attacking “not only the supply but also the demand,” Meade said, according to a transcript of remarks during a Q&A session released by the Treasury Department.

Besides quick-response actions against thieves, authorities must work to make the illicit business less profitable and make those who buy it face consequences, he said.

Armed gangs add to problem

The topic is front-and-center in Mexico these days after gun battles between the army and suspected thieves killed four soldiers and six gunmen last week in the central state of Puebla. Armed gangs have gotten involved in the business of fuel thefts, and gunmen were said to have used civilians as human shields in one of the clashes.

Fuel thieves are also suspected of being behind a shocking crime in Puebla on May 2, when eight assailants raped a woman and her 14-year-old daughter, killed her toddler son, beat her husband, stole the family’s pickup truck and left on them on a highway at night. In March, three state detectives were abducted and killed by a fuel theft gang allegedly with the help of the local mayor and police officers.

Meade said those who “tear at the social fabric, who in a very cowardly fashion hide behind … women and children,” cause problems for communities and are “terribly dangerous.”

Corrupt workers a concern

Meade acknowledged it’s “very likely” that corrupt workers at state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, are involved in facilitating pipeline thefts. He said officials are working with the company to identify them.

Officials are also looking at gas stations that may be selling stolen fuel, as well as the mass transportation sector. To that end, authorities raided 13 gas stations last month after detecting irregular fuel-buying patterns, Meade said.

“There was even a gas station that had been shut down (by authorities) for a year but was continuing to sell gasoline, which of course was stolen,” he said.

Looking for help from Senate

The secretary said authorities are looking into technology that would allow them to better track illegal pipeline taps and “mark” gasoline to help identify fuel that has been stolen.

Meade also noted legislation passed in the Chamber of Deputies and pending in the Senate would make it easier to prosecute fuel theft.

“The theft is illegal, but possession of stolen gasoline … since we don’t catch them physically and flagrantly stealing, we often find it impossible to take legal action,” he said.

Stolen fuel part of local economy

The Puebla state Public Security Department reported Tuesday that in a series of raids it seized over 21,000 liters (5,600 gallons) of fuel and 12 vehicles apparently involved in thefts.

Some communities in Puebla and elsewhere have come to base much of their economies on selling fuel stolen from the thousands of taps that are drilled into state-owned pipelines each year. It can also be dangerous — on Sunday one such illegal tap exploded into flames.

Meade said Puebla is the state with the highest incidence of fuel theft, followed by Guanajuato and Veracruz.
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Four U.S. states filed a lawsuit Tuesday over President Donald Trump’s decision to restart the sale of coal leases on federal lands, saying the Obama-era block of the leasing program was reversed without studying what’s best for the environment and for taxpayers.

The attorneys general of California, New Mexico, New York and Washington, all Democrats, said bringing back the federal coal lease program without an environmental review risks worsening the effects of climate change on those states while shortchanging them for the coal taken from public lands.

“Climate change has to be considered when we are talking about compensating states and New Mexico citizens for their resources,” said Cholla Khoury, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas’ director of consumer and environmental protection.

The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management administers 306 coal leases in 10 states, producing more than 4 billion tons of coal over the past decade. Most of that coal — 85 percent — comes from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

Production and combustion of coal from federal lands accounted for about 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014.

The Obama administration blocked the sale of new leases in 2016 to conduct an environmental study and a review of the royalties that mining companies pay the U.S. government for coal that’s extracted. Federal officials and members of Congress said the current royalty rates were shortchanging taxpayers.

In January, Interior officials said they were considering raising those royalty rates to offset the effects of climate change from burning the coal.

In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to amend or withdraw the coal leasing program moratorium.

The next day, Zinke did so, saying the Obama administration’s environmental review would cost “many millions of dollars” and that improvements to the program can be made without a full-scale environmental review.

The lawsuit by the four attorneys general, which was filed in Great Falls, Montana, says the reversal was made “with no justification other than an objection to the time and cost of complying with the law.”

Lifting the moratorium without properly considering the environmental effects or ensuring that the program is providing fair market value for the publicly owned coal violates federal laws, they allege.

“They didn’t follow the law,” Khoury said. “You can’t make piecemeal changes without doing this assessment to fully understand all parts of this program.”

Interior Department officials did not return telephone and email messages seeking comment.
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Indian airline IndiGo said it plans to start flying smaller planes to second-tier towns and cities later this year, in a shift in strategy for the carrier that has prided itself on the simplicity of running only one type of jet.

IndiGo, which has a fleet of 131 Airbus A320 aircraft, said on Tuesday it has placed a provisional order for 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft from European turboprop maker ATR, worth over $1.3 billion at list price.

IndiGo joins national carrier Air India and SpiceJet which have finalized plans under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheme to make it cheaper for people to fly within India. The scheme subsidizes part of the cost for airlines to fly to smaller towns.

“We should see increased business activity in small towns and cities which will increase demand for air travel in these regions,” IndiGo’s President Aditya Ghosh said after the company reported a 25 percent fall in quarterly net profit.

InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, owner of IndiGo, said net profit fell to 4.4 billion rupees ($68 million) in the quarter ended March 31, from 5.84 billion rupees a year ago, as fuel costs jumped 71 percent over the same period.

The company said it expects available seat kilometer, a key measure of an airline’s capacity, to increase by 22 percent in the April-June quarter.

IndiGo, which has maintained its efficiency by operating only one type of aircraft, said it plans to set up a separate unit to manage the ATR fleet to reduce the complexity of flying two different types of aircraft.

Functions such as flight operations, in-flight services, route planning and revenue management will be managed by a separate team, whereas administrative functions like human resources, finance and legal would be controlled by IndiGo.

“It would avoid adding complexity to mainline operations,” Ghosh said during an analyst call, adding that it would also result in synergies in corporate overheads and ground handling.

The company said it expects to have up to seven ATR aircraft by March 2018 if it reaches an agreement to buy the planes.

IndiGo also expects to add 39 new aircraft in the current fiscal year that started on April 1, of which 28 will be A320neos, taking the total to 170 A320 aircraft.

The carrier has faced operational issues with some A320neo aircraft due to problems with engines built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

Ghosh said IndiGo expects Pratt & Whitney to provide a solution to one part of the problem by the fourth quarter of 2018 and the engine maker is working on a new design solution that will be retro-fitted later.

Pratt & Whitney has also carried out hardware and software changes on all of IndiGo’s A320neos which should address part of the issue, he said.

IndiGo has ordered a total of 430 A320neo aircraft in the past two years, making it one of Airbus’s biggest customers.
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Move over Ellen DeGeneres, there’s a new most-tweeted tweet.

And it’s not from another celebrity, famous athlete or politician, but rather a 16-year-old kid from Reno, Nevada named Carter Wilkerson who has a deep love for chicken nuggets from U.S. fast food chain Wendy’s.

It all started in April when Wilkerson tweeted at Wendy’s asking them how many retweets he would need to get free nuggets for a year.

Wendy’s reply was simple “18 million.”

To that, Wilkerson said “consider it done” and tweeted screenshots of his conversation with Wendy’s.

It went viral, and on Tuesday his tweet had been retweeted 3.441 million times, surpassing DeGeneres’ famous, and former world-record holding Oscars tweet, which had 3.430 million retweets.

While not 18 million, Wendy’s gave Wilkerson his free nuggets and $100,000 for him to give to charity.

“We didn’t expect Carter’s response, and we couldn’t anticipate the overwhelming support he has received,” said a spokesman for Wendy’s.
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The saleswomen in L’Occitane en Provence’s new Havana store make $12.50 a month. The acacia eau de toilette they sell costs $95.20 a bottle. Rejuvenating face cream is $162.40 an ounce.

A few doors down, a Canon EOS camera goes for $7,542.01. A Bulgari watch, $10,200.

In the heart of the capital of a nation founded on ideals of social equality, the business arm of the Cuban military has transformed a century-old shopping arcade into a temple to conspicuous capitalism.

With the first Cuban branches of L’Occitane, Mont Blanc and Lacoste, the Manzana de Gomez mall has become a sociocultural phenomenon since its opening a few weeks ago, with Cubans wandering wide-eyed through its polished-stone passages.

Older Cubans are stunned at the sight of goods worth more than a lifetime’s state salary. Teenagers and young adults pose for Facebook photos in front of store windows, throwing victory signs in echoes of the images sent by relatives in Miami, who pose grinning alongside 50-inch TV sets and luxury convertibles.

The Cuban armed forces’ business arm has become the nation’s biggest retailer, importer and hotelier since Gen. Raul Castro became president in 2008.

Gaviota, the military’s tourism company, is in the midst of a hotel building spree. The military corporation Cimex, created two decades ago, counts retail stories, auto-rental businesses and even a recording studio among its holdings. The military retail chain TRD has hundreds of shops across Cuba that sell everything from soap to home electronics at prices often several times those in nearby countries.

The military-run Mariel port west of Havana has seen double-digit growth fueled largely by demand in the tourism sector and the armed forces last year took over the bank that does business with foreign companies, assuming control of most of Cuba’s day-to-day international financial transactions.

On a recent weekday, Oswell Mendez and the members of his hip-hop dance group De Freak posed for their Facebook page in the center of the Manzana, on the spot where a bust of early 20th century Cuban Communist leader Julio Antonio Mella sat before it was removed in the building’s multi-year renovation.

“This is a high-end spot, really nice,” said Mendez, 24. “It’s something we haven’t seen before.”

The five-story Manzana sits off the Prado, the broad, tree-lined boulevard that divides the colonial heart of the city. The upper floors are a five-star hotel opening in early June that is owned by the military’s tourism arm, Gaviota, and run by Swiss luxury chain Kempinski. Along the bisecting galleries of the Manzana’s ground floor, TRD Caribe and Cimex – host the luxury brands along with Cuban stores selling lesser-known but still pricey products aimed at Cuba’s small but growing upper-middle class, like $6 mini-bottles of shampoo and sets of plates for more than $100.

A few blocks away, working-class Cubans live in decaying apartments on streets clogged by uncollected trash. With state incomes devastated by long-term stagnation and inflation, there’s barely money for food, let alone home repairs or indulgences.

“This hurts because I can’t buy anything,” said Rodolfo Hernandez Torres, a 71-year-old retired electrical mechanic who lives on a salary of $12.50 a month. “There are people who can come here to buy things but it’s maybe one in 10. Most of the country doesn’t have the money.”

L’Occitane, Lacoste, Mont Blanc and the Cuban military’s business wing did not return requests for comment.

With its economy in recession and longstanding oil aid from Venezuela in doubt, the Cuban government appears torn between the need for market-based reforms and the fear of social inequality that would spawn popular dissatisfaction and calls for political change.

With other sectors declining, Cuba’s increasingly important tourism industry is under pressure to change its state-run hotels’ reputation for charging exorbitant prices for rooms and food far below international standards. The Manzana de Gomez Kempinski bills itself as Cuba’s first real five-star hotel, and the brand-name shops around it appear designed to reinforce that.

The hotel is earning positive early reviews but many tourists say they find the luxury mall alongside it to be repulsive.

“I was very disappointed,” said Jeannie Goldstein, who works in sports marketing in Chicago and ended a six-day trip to Cuba, her first, on Saturday.

“I came here to get away from this,” she said. “This screams wealth and America to us.”

The Prado boulevard was the scene of Cuba’s previous record for a state-sponsored display of exorbitant consumerism. Last May, the government closed the boulevard for a private runway show by French luxury label Chanel for a crowd that included actors Tilda Swinton and Vin Diesel and supermodel Gisele Bundchen.

The temporary privatization of a street for an international corporation built on exclusivity and luxury generated widespread revulsion in Cuba and an unusually angry reaction among writers and intellectuals. Cuba’s culture minister resigned two months later, with no reason given for his departure.

Many other Cubans were delighted by Chanel and adore the Manzana de Gomez, saying it’s the sign the country knows its future depends on opening itself to foreign wealth.

“These stores are for millionaires. Attracting tourists with money, that’s development, capitalism,” said Maritza Garcia, a 55-year-old airline office worker. “Everything that’s development is good. Bit by bit the country is lifting itself up. We’re a socialist country but the economy has to be a capitalist one.”
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Canada escalated a trade dispute with United States by making threats Washington called inappropriate in part because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is under pressure to secure support in a key region ahead of the country’s 2019 elections.

Washington last month slapped tariffs on timber imports, prompting Trudeau to say he was considering a ban on exports of U.S. coal through Pacific ports.

As well as lumber, the administration of President Donald Trump has targeted Canadian dairy farmers, while Boeing Corp. launched a trade challenge against Montreal-based planemaker Bombardier Inc.

All three are vital to the economy of Quebec, Canada’s second most-populous province. And Quebec is seen as vital to Trudeau’s hopes of maintaining a strong grip on power in a national election set for October 2019.

As contentious talks on renegotiating NAFTA draw closer, Trudeau has little choice but to defend dairy farmers and offer help to the lumber industry, even though that is likely to prompt fresh U.S. challenges.

“Quebec is the key,” said one senior Liberal organizer.

The predominantly French-speaking province holds 78 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons and Liberals acknowledge they need to win extra seats there to offset expected losses elsewhere in 2019.

The challenge is that they captured 40 seats in Quebec in 2015, which was far more than expected.

The Liberals say they can take another 10 to 15 seats, but only if everything goes their way. This means showing support for the dairy industry – and its influential lobby – amid fresh attacks from Washington.

No Choice?

The United States has long complained about Canada’s system of domestic protections for its dairy industry, which bars most imports and keeps prices high. Trump last month branded the industry “a disgrace.”

The system is unpopular in large parts of Canada, where people complain about high prices for milk and cheese. Trudeau, however, has little choice but to defend it.

Leger Marketing pollster Christian Bourque noted there are dairy farms in every part of Quebec.

“If you’re seen as attacking farming and the land, it’s probably easy for the farmers’ union to get Quebeckers onside.

You don’t necessarily want to forget farmers,” he said.

While observers see little risk of Trudeau being defeated outright in 2019, the danger for the Liberals is losing their majority, forcing them to rely on opposition parties to govern.

This would inevitably mean political compromises and a diluted policy agenda.

The Liberals have so far tried to maintain calm as tensions ratchet up, relying on visits from cabinet ministers and to key states to press the message that trade benefits both sides.

Bark vs Bite

The outreach efforts will continue, according to a source familiar with official strategy, adding that Ottawa will show its teeth where necessary.

“Do people honestly expect the Canadian government just to say ‘We accept these lumber duties, we will move on and pay the price?'” asked the source, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation.

In Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer dismissed talk of a trade war.

“That’s why we have dispute settlement mechanisms to do this in a responsible way,” he told reporters on Monday.

In a sign of the mounting pressures on Trudeau over lumber, former Quebec Liberal premier Jean Charest said Ottawa should consider loan guarantees to affected firms.

“It is very black and white now: either the government supports them or they will just close down,” he said in an interview.

Although giving such aid could prompt fresh U.S. challenges, insiders make clear Canada has no option.

Trudeau last week met with Quebec’s timber unions and tweeted “supporting softwood lumber producers in Quebec and across the country is a priority.”

In the short term, he faces few immediate threats. Polls show the Liberals well ahead of the opposition Conservatives and New Democrats, both of which have stand-in leaders and will not choose permanent replacements until later this year.

“He’s had an exceptionally long honeymoon, he’s still having a honeymoon, but that has a lot to do with the absence of opposition,” said pollster Nik Nanos.

Although being seen to openly favor one province or region over another can be politically fatal in Canada, Liberal sensitivity toward Quebec is clear.

When it came time to deciding on aid to Bombardier – which has received billions in subsidies from Ottawa – the Liberals made clear the only question was not if, but how much.

Party operatives also admitted relief once became clear Ottawa would not have to decide before the election on whether to allow TransCanada Corp. to build an oil pipeline across Quebec.

Environmentalists and aboriginal activists had promised protests that Quebec Liberals said they feared could hurt the party’s chances.
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What is the EB-5 Visa?

The EB-5 program allows entrepreneurs and their families to apply for green cards (permanent residence) if they 1) make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States, and 2) plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers.

How much is the necessary investment?

$1 million or $500,000 if the money is invested in a high unemployment or rural area, considered a targeted employment area (TEA). The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says approximately 97 percent of all investments by EB-5 petitioners are made in TEAs at the reduced amount of $500,000.

DHS proposed in January increasing the minimum investment amount required for the EB-5 program from $500,000 to $1.35 million for projects in TEAs; from $1 million to $1.8 million for developments in low-to-average unemployment areas.

What is purpose of program?

Congress created the EB-5 Program in 1990 to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors. Under a program initially enacted as a pilot in 1992, and regularly reauthorized since then, investors also may qualify for EB-5 classification by investing through regional centers designated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

What are regional centers?

Regional Centers are federally approved third parties that “connect foreign investors with developers in need of funding, and take a commission.” Regional centers are usually private, for-profit businesses that are approved by the USCIS.

What kinds of businesses can I invest in?

EB-5 investors must invest in a “for profit activity formed for the ongoing conduct of lawful business,” which was established after Nov. 29, 1990. If the enterprise was established before that date, it must have been restructured and expanded.

How many EB-5s are available every year?

There is a cap of about 10,000 annually. However, many EB-5 visa holders bring family members with them, and they are included in the count. So, the actual number of visas issued is much lower than that. Before the 2008 recession, DHS says the EB-5 program received fewer than an average 600 EB-5 petitions per year.

Since then, the program has received an average of more than 5,500 petitions per year. Between FY 2014 and FY 2015 alone, more than 25,000 petitions were received. As a result, demand for EB-5 visas by investors has now outpaced the annual supply, resulting in visa backlogs.

Who gets EB-5s?

In 2014, 85 percent of the 10,692 EB-5 visas issued were for Chinese nationals.

What is the future of the EB-5 program?

The EB-5 visa program has just been extended in its current form through September. What happens after that will depend on a review being conducted by the Trump administration and Congress. White House spokesman Sean Spicer says the administration is looking “over the entire visa program, all the various visa programs, and whether or not they are serving the purpose they intended to, whether or not we’re making sure we’re doing what’s in the best interests of the American worker.”

Both parties in Congress have expressed an interest in revising the program.
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Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Saturday faulted Wells Fargo & Co for failing to stop employees from signing up customers for bogus accounts even after learning it was happening.

Wells Fargo, whose largest shareholder is Berkshire, with a 10 percent stake worth roughly $27 billion, gave employees too much autonomy to engage in “cross-selling” multiple products to meet sales goals, Buffett said.

This “incentivized the wrong type of behavior,” and former Chief Executive John Stumpf, who lost his job over the scandal, was too slow to fix the problem, Buffett said.

Wells Fargo was among many topics discussed at Berkshire’s annual meeting in Omaha, where Buffett, 86, and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, 93, fielded dozens of questions from shareholders, journalists and analysts.

“If there’s a major problem, the CEO will get wind of it. At that moment, that’s the key to everything. The CEO has to act,” Buffett said. “The main problem was they didn’t act when they learned about it.”

Still, Buffett’s support of current management and board was key to ensuring the re-election of the entire board last month.

Wells Fargo spokesman Mark Folk said “we agree” with Buffett’s comments, and have taken “decisive actions” to fix the problems and “make things right for customers.”

Asked whether Berkshire’s decentralized structure could lead to a similar scandal, Buffett said “as we sit here, somebody is doing something wrong at Berkshire,” whose units employ 367,000 people. But he said Berkshire has an internal hotline to flag possible misbehavior, which gets 4,000 calls a year.

Succession and dividends

The meeting also included discussions about Berkshire’s succession plans, its controversial partnership with Brazilian firm 3G Capital, and whether it will start paying dividends or make an acquisition.

Buffett has said Berkshire could have a new chief executive within 24 hours if he died or could not continue, and that nothing had changed just because he praised fewer managers than usual in his February shareholder letter.

He said it may have been harder to single people out because “we have never had more good managers.”

But he also said it would be a “terrible mistake” if capital allocation were not the “main talent” of his successor.

Buffett did lavish much praise on top insurance executive Ajit Jain, who some investors believe could be that successor, saying “nobody could possibly replace Ajit. You can’t come close.”

On 3G, with which Berkshire controls Kraft Heinz Co and tried to merge it with Unilever NV, Buffett acknowledged a dislike for the cost-cutting for which the Brazilian firm is known.

But, he said, “it is absolutely essential to America that we become more productive,” and 3G was “very good at making a business productive with fewer people.”

Buffett also raised the possibility Berkshire could pay its first dividend since 1967, if “reasonably soon, even while I’m around,” the company had too much cash it could not reasonably deploy.

“It could be repurchases, it could be dividends,” he said.

Berkshire ended March with more than $96 billion of cash and cashlike instruments, and Munger said it could do a “$150 billion” acquisition now if it wanted.

Airlines and IBM

Buffett defended Berkshire’s foray into airlines, where it is a top investor in American Airlines Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., Southwest Airlines Co. and United Continental Holdings Inc.

He had long disdained the industry, which had gone through many bankruptcies, but said he is confident it will not resort to “suicidally competitive” pricing strategies that could spell doom.

Munger added: “You’ve got to remember railroads were a terrible business for decades and decades and decades, and then they got good.” Berkshire bought the BNSF railroad in 2010.

Buffett also admitted he was wrong to think International Business Machines Corp. “would do better” when he started amassing 81 million shares six years ago.

Berkshire recently sold about one-third of those shares even as it built a huge stake in Apple Inc., which Buffett said is more as a “consumer” company that a technology company.

He also addressed criticism that Berkshire discloses too little about businesses such as aircraft parts maker Precision Castparts Corp, which it bought last year for $32.1 billion.

“We want you to understand what you own,” he said, and “there are just a million things that are of minor importance” at Berkshire, whose market value is about $411 billion.

Buffett also noted that Berkshire reported far fewer investment gains in the first quarter, which dragged on results, but said the company now has a slight preference for taking tax losses, which could lose value if Washington lawmakers reduce the 35 percent corporate tax rate.

The annual meeting, expected to draw more than last year’s estimated 37,000 shareholders, is the main event of a weekend of events that Buffett calls “Woodstock for Capitalists.”

Buffett and Munger took questions after the traditional shareholder movie, and after Buffett had roamed a nearby exhibit hall featuring products from Berkshire companies.

He was joined at the traditional newspaper tossing contest by friends including Microsoft Corp co-founder and Berkshire director Bill Gates, and Miami Dolphins defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh.

Hundreds of shareholders lined up early outside downtown Omaha’s CenturyLink Center for the meeting. Several said they got there nearly five hours before doors opened around 6:45 a.m.

“Every year it seems I have to come earlier,” said Chris Tesari, a retired businessman from Pacific Palisades, California who said he arrived at 3:20 a.m. for his 21st meeting. “It’s a pilgrimage.”
…

Berkshire Hathaway Inc Chairman Warren Buffett fumed Saturday that health care costs are eating away at the U.S. economy like “tapeworm” and said the Republican approach to overhaul Obamacare is a tax cut for the rich.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly approved a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, a victory for Republican President Donald Trump who has called the 2010 law a “disaster.”

Speaking at Berkshire’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Omaha, Buffett said his federal income taxes last year would have gone down 17 percent had the new law been in effect.

“So it is a huge tax cut for guys like me,” he said. “And when there’s a tax cut, either the deficit goes up or they get the taxes from somebody else.”

The Republican bill would repeal most of the taxes that paid for the law formally known as the Affordable Care Act. The party’s leadership has promised that the new American Health Care Act, which faces a likely overhaul and uncertain passage in the Senate, would address growing health care costs.

Buffett said rising health care costs are crippling the competitiveness of U.S. companies abroad.

Unlike in many other countries where much of health care spending is publicly financed, employers provide health insurance coverage for nearly half of Americans and often face skyrocketing rates.

Buffett said health care costs have risen much faster in the United States than in the rest of the world and “will go up a lot more.”

“Medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness,” he said. “That is a problem this society is having trouble with and is going to have more trouble with.”

Buffett is a Democrat who vocally supported Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful bid for the presidency against Trump. The fourth richest man in the world with a net worth totaling $74.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine, Buffett has vowed to donate nearly his entire fortune to charity.

Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger added that he thinks neither political party “can think rationally” about health care because they “hate each other so much.”
…

The venture fund 500 Startups has been making a splash in Southeast Asia, most recently with Khmerload, a Cambodian entertainment news website modeled after the American media giant Buzzfeed. Binh Tran, a venture partner with the firm, sat down with Sophat Soeung of VOA’s Khmer service to talk about how entrepreneurs in developing countries could attract such investors. Here’s some of his advice for them:

Remember, Silicon Valley investors are a click away

I think first is to understand the whole startup ecosystem. All this information is at your fingertips. The world’s shrunk, and for resourceful entrepreneurs, they have this incredible amount of knowledge that they can tap into, to get themselves familiarized with how to build a company, how to launch it, how to monetize, and also understand investment. All that is available.

Not everyone can be a tech entrepreneur. It’s incredibly hard, but for the ones that are resourceful … the tools are there. And we want to be the ones to provide that dry powder to help you grow. So once you have achieved some progress and some [traction], then come talk to us.

Don’t overthink — there is no ‘right’ sector

I’m pretty sector-agnostic. … If you’re building something that is obscure to me … the fact that you can make a business out of it, you’re making some money out of it, that’s great. And if it’s technology-enabled, it’s done through software, or done through some algorithm that you created, that’s where I think I can help. That’s where I think the opportunities are.

Look for a growing user base

All ecosystems around the world are somewhat new. Even China is a decade or two [old] for venture capital. … If these companies are making money and they’re growing, that’s great. You see companies who have been more focused on revenue early on. So I think Southeast Asia has a lot of opportunity, because you do have that 4 million-new-internet-users-a-month type of growth, but the business models are not quite as risky [as those seen in Silicon Valley].

Pay more attention to operational rather than business risk

I think there’s going to be a small percentage of my portfolio that’s always reserved for the crazy, one-in-a-million-chance ideas. But for the most part, these startups should be solving basic problems. Across many sectors in Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, businesses have barely adopted Web 1.0 technologies. There’s opportunities for entrepreneurs to solve basic problems such as helping business attract, serve and support customers more efficiently.

So instead of investing in a new, risky, innovative business model as you would in Silicon Valley, the innovation these companies we’re investing into is the way they’re hiring and training employees and how they’ve mastered how to operate within highly regulated environments. These companies also deeply understand their customers’ problems and have demonstrated their ability to market to and sell to locals.

So the innovation we’re seeing is less about business model or technology innovation, but I do hope that changes.

Build your reputation, and be patient

You’ve got to do what you say you’re going to do. This is one of those things where your reputation is so important. … [Also,] realize that it’s going to take a while. It’s not easy. Don’t be caught up in the buzz or the hype — just focus on the fact that this is going to be a long, hard journey. And hopefully that sets up the right expectations.

This report originated on the VOA Khmer service.
…

Oystermen, pirates and police clashed violently more than a century ago over who could collect the Chesapeake Bay’s tasty and lucrative oysters. As the shellfish makes a comeback, a modern-day oyster war is brewing, this time between wealthy waterfront property owners and working-class fishermen.

Over the past five years, oyster production has doubled on the East Coast, driven by new farming methods, cleaner water and Americans’ growing taste for orders on the half shell. The resurgence has led to unprecedented resistance from coastal Virginians who want to maintain picturesque views from their waterfront homes and has fueled a debate over access to public waterways.

“These people can’t have it all,” said Chris Ludford, an oysterman in Virginia Beach who sells to nearby farm-to-table restaurants.  

Ludford said he faces fierce pushback along a Chesapeake Bay tributary from people with “a $2,000 painting in their house of some old bearded oysterman tonging oysters.

“But they don’t want to look out their window and see the real thing,” he said.

Views spoiled, privacy lost

 Homeowners say the growing number of oystermen — dressed in waders and often tending cages of shellfish — spoil their views and invade their privacy. Residents also worry about less access to the water and the safety of boaters and swimmers.

Low tides often expose oyster cages, usually accompanied by markers or warning signs that protrude from the surface. In some places, cages float.

“All of sudden you have people working in your backyard like it was some industrial area,” said John Korte, a retired NASA aerospace engineer in Virginia Beach who’s among residents concerned about oyster farming’s proliferation. “They may be a hundred feet away from someone’s yard.”

Ben Stagg, chief engineer at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said the state is poised to break its record of leased acreage for oyster growing. But nearly 30 percent of more than 400 new lease applications face opposition, an unprecedented number that’s led to a backlog of leases awaiting approval.

 “Occasionally I can resolve those by having the parties get together and adjust the area further offshore,” Stagg said. “But oftentimes, I can’t.”

Oysters make a comeback

There hasn’t been this much interest in oysters in Virginia since the early 1960s. Since then, disease and overfishing took hold and growers started to disappear.

Over the last few decades, breeding programs have produced more disease-resistant and faster-growing oysters. The water’s cleaner. American palettes have evolved, increasing demand.  

Farming techniques also changed. Traditionally, oysters are grown on the bottom of a calm and salty river or bay, then harvested with tongs or dredges that pull them onto boats.  

Now, fishermen are increasingly using cages to grow oysters over a two-to-three year period. The equipment keeps predators away and produces oysters with a more uniform shape and size, which restaurants prefer.

 But the cages are often placed in shallower water closer to shore — and people’s homes.  

Virginia Beach is perhaps ground zero for today’s oyster war. The state’s largest city sits at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. And oysters thrive in the city’s Lynnhaven River, a network of bays and creeks flowing past expensive homes. Lynnhaven oysters are well-known for their salty taste and size.

Solution is not easy to find

A state task force was formed to find compromise. It recommended giving residents more power to block nearby oyster leases. But the idea was rejected by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, with the majority of commissioners saying state lawmakers should step in.  

Proposals in the Statehouse have included raising the cost of an oyster farming lease from $1.50 an acre annually to $5,000. But legislators haven’t found a solution.  

Conflicts also have flared up along Maryland’s Patuxent River, the coastal lagoons of Rhode Island and on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.  

In Delaware, a group of people who mostly own vacation homes successfully blocked potential oyster farming along their part of an inland bay.

“Oftentimes, affluent and new members of the community have the point of view that they own the water in front of them, which is really not true,” said Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association. “We need to win back our social license to farm.”

Rheault said he’s seen these battles “up and down the East Coast” — even before the crop began to double five years ago.

 “The industry was there before the waterfront mansions were built,” Rheault added. “But it hasn’t been there for this generation.”

Ludford, who also works as a Virginia Beach firefighter, is relatively new to the business. He and other relatives started growing oysters in 2010 after leaving the crab industry.

Is zoning the answer?

On a recent morning, Ludford sorted through cages as he stood in the Lynnhaven River, hundreds of yards from the nearest home.  

He dragged cages into view as grass shrimp wriggled on the shells. He and two helpers retrieved more than 500 oysters, which he sold at 75 cents apiece to three restaurants — totaling about $375.

“Really, people haven’t seen an oysterman behind their houses in 50 to 60 years,” Ludford said.

Steven Corneliussen, who owns a waterfront home in Poquoson, Virginia, said he’s among a group that successfully protested new leases along his corner of the Chesapeake. He said waterways should be subject to zoning, like land.     

“That water out in front of me doesn’t belong to me,” he said. “But it doesn’t belong to them, either.” 
…

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta spoke at the annual May Day celebrations Monday in Nairobi, a day when many countries celebrate workers. But in sub-Saharan Africa, about three-fourths of those laborers work in the informal sector, without contracts or job protections, according to the International Labor Organization.

Kenyatta pledged to tackle high unemployment during his May Day speech.

One hundred meters away, 31-year-old Christine Ndunge continued her work selling sodas and snacks. She has been a street vendor at a public park in central Nairobi for several years. 

“These days getting a job is hard,” she said. “I have decided to employ myself so that I can survive. Like now, it’s a rainy season — there are not enough customers to buy drinks. I motivate myself to continue selling because there is nowhere else I can work.”

In his address Monday, Kenyatta announced that Kenya will be raising its minimum wage by 18 percent.

The crowd cheered, but analysts say policies like raising the minimum wage won’t help a majority of the workforce. 

According to the Kenyan government’s 2017 economic survey, 833,000 jobs were created last year. However, less than 20 percent of those jobs were in the formal sector.  

“There is that disconnect,” said Kwame Owino, CEO of the Institute of Economic Affairs in Kenya. “So on one side, we have unions, which are talking for people who are in the formal sector, raising wages. And when that happens in standard economics, one of the first things that happens is employment shrinks. So when that employment shrinks in the formal sector, most of these people fall back to the informal sector. We are solving the wrong problem.”

He said Kenya and other African countries need to improve conditions for entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs in Africa often struggle to raise capital. Owino said what governments can do is create new regulations making it easier for small businesses to get loans. He said policymakers can also streamline the process of registering and running a legal business and make it cheaper.

Josphat Mwendo, a trained mechanic, spent years unsuccessfully looking for a job. Finally, the 32-year-old started fixing cars for money himself. Now, he has three people he pays to help him.

“I don’t feel good because they did not speak about people like us,” he said. “I think it’s good to think about those who have employed themselves too, so that they can know their worth and also feel they are Kenyans like the rest.”

The problem is particularly acute among young people.

A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that Africans between the ages of 15 and 24 are just a third of the continent’s total working-age population, but account for nearly two-thirds of the continent’s unemployed.
…

With the U.S. economy on solid footing and unemployment at a near-decade low, the Federal Reserve remains in the midst of a campaign to gradually raise interest rates from ultra-lows. But this week, it’s all but sure to take a pause.

The Fed is widely expected to keep its key short-term rate unchanged after having raised it in March for the second time in three months. Most analysts foresee the Fed raising its key rate again at least twice more before year’s end, a testament to the durability of the U.S. economic recovery and a more stable global picture.

One reason for the Fed to stand pat this week is that even though the job market has shown steady strength, the economy itself is still growing in fits and starts. On Friday, the government estimated that the economy, as gauged by the gross domestic product, grew at a tepid 0.7 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter. It was the poorest quarterly performance in three years.

Though some temporary factors probably held back growth last quarter and may have overstated the weakness, the poor showing underscored that key pockets of the economy — consumer spending and manufacturing, for example — remain sluggish. On Monday, the government said U.S. consumer spending stalled in March for a second straight month. And the Institute for Supply Management reported a drop in factory activity.

“Given all the uncertainties they still face and especially with growth coming in so weak, the less the Fed says at this meeting, the better,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at DS Economics.

Most economists have expressed optimism that the economy is strengthening in the current April-June quarter, fueled by job growth, higher consumer confidence and stock-market records. Many think that annualized growth could accelerate to around 3 percent and that the Fed will feel more confident to resume raising rates at its June meeting.

“The Fed will probably say in their statement that they expect the economy to rebound in the second quarter,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University.

It isn’t just the Fed’s short-term rate — a benchmark for other borrowing costs throughout the economy — that will likely occupy attention at this week’s meeting. Officials will also likely discuss how and when to start paring their extraordinary large $4.5 trillion portfolio of Treasurys and mortgage bonds. The Fed amassed its portfolio — commonly called its balance sheet — in the years after the financial crisis erupted in 2008, when it bought long-term bonds to help keep mortgage and other borrowing rates low and support a frail economy. At the time, the Fed had already cut its short-term rate to a record low.

The balance sheet is now about five times its size before the financial crisis hit. The Fed stopped buying new bonds in 2014 but has kept its balance sheet high by reinvesting the proceeds of maturing bonds. The Fed’s thinking has been that reducing the balance sheet could send long-term rates up and work against its goals of fortifying the economy.

Now, as the Fed becomes more watchful about inflation pressures, the time is nearing when it will need to shrink its balance sheet, a process that could have the effect of raising some borrowing rates, at least modestly. The Fed jolted investors when it released the minutes of its March meeting, which showed that most officials thought that process “would likely be appropriate later this year.” This was sooner than many investors expected.

Could the Fed clarify its timetable for paring its balance sheet in the statement it will issue when its policy meeting ends Wednesday? It may decide against doing so, given that this meeting won’t be accompanied by a news conference with Chair Janet Yellen to explain any shifts in the Fed’s policy or thinking.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said the more likely signal the Fed could send is to reinforce the markets’ view that it intends to raise its short-term rate again next month.

“I expect two more rate hikes — one in June and then one in September,” Zandi said. “Then I expect the Fed to begin allowing its balance sheet to run off.”

Some Fed officials have suggested that they would prefer not to be raising the short-term rate at the same time that they are beginning to reduce their balance sheet. Giving investors too much to digest at once risks unsettling financial markets. In 2013, the Fed triggered a brief storm in bond markets when then-Chairman Ben Bernanke raised the possibility that the Fed would start tapering its bond purchases later that year, catching investors by surprise.

“They learned their lesson with the taper tantrum of 2013 that they need to give the markets plenty of warning of changes in their bond policies,” Sohn said.

Some analysts say they think the Fed will reveal nothing this week about its timetable for reducing its balance sheet, in part because the policy committee has yet to reach a consensus on when or how to do so.

“I have a feeling we are going to get much less information than we want,” Swonk said. “The Fed wants to move slowly, but they don’t have a consensus yet on how to proceed.”

 
…

Monday is May Day, known worldwide as the day when workers and activists march in the streets and gather in city centers to honor laborers across the globe. 

The holiday is also known as International Workers Day and as Labor Day. 

Workers and union members in the Philippines celebrated May Day by marching in the streets of Manila, the capital. Workers’ rights groups and unions have also scheduled rallies across Manila. 

Indonesian workers took to the streets of Jakarta Monday. Thousands more workers are expected to join the rally later in the day. 

France’s presidential rivals — centrist front-runner Emanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen — will hold their own dueling rallies Monday. There will also be demonstrations against both candidates. 

In the U.S., May Day’s rallying point has shifted from workers to immigrants.Tens ofthousands of people are expected to mark the day from New York to Los Angeles to protest against President Donald Trump’s focus on boosting deportations.Organizations have called for immigrant strikes in some cities to show Americans what a day without immigrants would look like.

Cuba is facing its first May Day celebration without longtime President Fidel Castro, who died in November.Monday’s observance will also be the last May Day overseen by President Raul Castro, who has promised to step down from office in February. 

Hundreds of thousands of people traditionally celebrate May Day in Havana’s Revolution Square with Cuban flags and portraits of Fidel Castro.
…

Once they acclimate to their new environment, overcoming language, social and cultural barriers, refugees in the U.S. often thrive. Some translate their experiences into assets that are valuable to their new community, as did Parvin and Yadollah Jamalreza. VOA’s June Soh visited their popular tailoring shop in Charlottesville, Virginia.
…

Growth in China’s manufacturing sector slowed in April, official data showed Sunday, pointing to an unsteady recovery in the world’s second-largest economy. 

The monthly purchasing managers’ index by the Chinese Federation of Logistics and Purchasing fell to 51.2 in April, lower than the 51.8 recorded in March. 

The index is based on a 100-point scale on which numbers above 50 indicate expansion.

National Bureau of Statistics statistician Zhao Qinghe said in the release that April’s figure was affected by sluggish growth in market demand and supply, and slower expansion in imports and exports.

April’s index still represented a ninth consecutive month of expansion. 

China saw its slowest growth in nearly three decades in 2016. China’s huge manufacturing sector is seen as an important indicator for the wider Chinese economy. It has cooled gradually over the past six years as Beijing tries to pivot it away from heavy reliance on export-based manufacturing and investment toward consumer spending.

The official full-year economic growth target for 2017 is 6.5 percent. 
…

During a recent visit to Wisconsin, President Donald Trump announced he was signing an Executive Order reviewing the visa program that brings many technical workers to the United States, known as the H1B visa. About 85,000 workers come to the United States annually using an H1B visa. More from VOA’s Kane Farabaugh
…

President Donald Trump will spend his 100th day in office talking tough on trade in one of the states that delivered his unlikely win.

The president is expected to sign an executive order Saturday that will direct his Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative to perform a comprehensive study of the nation’s trade agreements to determine whether America is being treated fairly by its trading partners and the 164-nation World Trade Organization.

It’s one of two executive orders the president will sign at a shovel factory in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland County, the kind of place that propelled his surprise victory.

Rally in Pennsylvania 

The last week has been a frenzy of activity at the White House as Trump and his team have tried to rack up accomplishments and make good on campaign promises before reaching the symbolic 100-day mark. In addition to the visit to the Ames tool factory, which has been manufacturing shovels since 1774, the president will hold one of his signature campaign rallies in Harrisburg to cap the occasion.

It’s a return to fundamentals for a president who has, in recent days, sounded wistful reflecting on his term so far.

Earlier this week, Trump announced his intention to work to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. He also said he would begin renegotiating a free trade deal with South Korea, with which the U.S. has a significant trade deficit.

Trade discussed every day

“There isn’t a day that goes by that the president doesn’t discuss some aspect of trade,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at the White House Friday.

The executive orders signed Saturday will mark Trump’s 31st and 32nd since taking office, the most of any president in his first 100 days since World War II. It’s a jarring disconnect from Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign, when he railed against his predecessor’s use of the tool, which has the benefit of not needing congressional sign-off.

The more significant of the two orders will give the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative 180 days to identify violations and abuses under the country’s trade agreements and recommend solutions.

World Trade Organization outdated 

Ross said the WTO, the Geneva-based arbiter of world trade rules, is bureaucratic and outdated and needs an overhaul. Ross downplayed the possibility that the United States would consider leaving the organization but didn’t rule it out. 

“As any multilateral organization, there’s always the potential for modifying the rules,” he said.

The administration argues that unfair competition with China and other trade partners has wiped out millions of U.S. factory jobs. Ross said dissatisfaction with trade policy is one reason voters turned to Trump.

“They’re fed up with having their jobs go offshore. They’re fed up with some of the destructive practices,” he said. “So in effect, the country said in this last election: It’s about time to fix these things. And the president heard that message.”

Trump, who campaigned on a vow to crack down on China and other trading partners, has announced several other moves on trade in recent weeks. He ordered the Commerce Department to study the causes of the United States’ massive trade deficit in goods, $734 billion last year, $347 billion with China alone. The administration is also imposing duties on Canadian softwood timber and is investigating whether steel and aluminum imports pose a threat to national security.

Ross said Friday that the WTO is too narrowly focused on limiting traditional tariffs — taxes on imports — and does little to counter less conventional barriers to trade or to police violations of intellectual property rights.

Trump has pushed a model of “reciprocal trade” agreements in which the U.S. would raise or lower tariffs on a country’s imports depending on how that country treats the U.S.
…

President Donald Trump is re-opening for oil exploration areas that President Barack Obama had closed, a move that environmental groups have promised to fight.

In an executive order Friday, the president reversed the Obama administration’s decision to prohibit oil and gas drilling in the Arctic waters off Alaska.

The order also instructs the Interior Department to review current restrictions on energy development in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. In addition, it bars the creation or expansion of marine sanctuaries and orders a review of all areas protected within the last 10 years.

Trump cites advantages

The White House says 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are buried off the U.S. coastline, but 94 percent of the area is off limits.

“Renewed offshore energy production will reduce the cost of energy, create countless new jobs and make America more secure and far more energy independent,” Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House.

The action is the latest from the Trump administration aimed at boosting domestic energy production and loosening environmental regulations.

In his first 100 days, Trump has relaxed coal mine pollution rules and ordered a review of vehicle efficiency standards and power plant greenhouse gas rules. His administration has stopped defending Obama-era pollution regulations challenged in court.

The energy industry has cheered the moves. Environmental groups have promised strong opposition.

Fragile ecosystems

Conservationists have long opposed oil drilling in the Arctic. A spill would devastate the region’s fragile ecosystems, they say, while extreme conditions raise the risks of a spill and make cleanup harder.

Fishing and tourism on the Atlantic coast and Gulf of Mexico would suffer from an accident, too, environmentalists note.

“By his actions today, President Trump has sent a clear message that he prioritizes the oil and gas industry over the needs of working Americans in our coastal communities who depend on healthy fishing and tourism economies for their livelihoods,” Environmental Defense Fund Vice President Elizabeth Thompson said in a statement.

Reviewing and rewriting the current offshore drilling plans are expected to take several years. Environmental groups plan legal challenges to the changes.

 
…

The latest economic data indicate the U.S. economy is growing at the slowest rate in three years. The GDP or gross domestic product, the broadest measure of all goods and services produced in the country, increased at a disappointing 0.7 percent annual rate, according to new government estimates released Friday.  That’s the weakest performance since 2014, as consumer spending stayed flat and business inventories remained small.  

Analysts say that’s bound to be a disappointment to U.S. President Donald Trump who predicted strong economic growth on day one, once he took over the White House. 

“Remember candidate Trump talked about GDP of about 5 percent and paraphrasing, perhaps something much, much stronger,” said Bankrate.com senior analyst Mark Hamrick. 

“Most economists believe the track for the U.S. economy for the intermediate future is going to be very familiar to what has been seen over the last number of years, and that’s somewhere between one and probably 2.5 percent on an annual basis.”

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.1 percent pace in the fourth quarter of 2016.  But economists say first quarter estimates tend to be notoriously low for a number of reasons.  

“In some years it’s been because of bad weather that kept people in their homes, keeping them from purchasing things but it’s also believed to be somewhat flawed statistically — meaning that what’s actually happening in the economy isn’t being perfectly captured by government statistics,” Hamrick tells VOA.  “It ends up being an estimate and most of them are not perfect”.

Most economists say the first quarter estimate should not be seen as a true measure of U.S. economic health. 

Other indicators suggest a more positive outlook. The U.S. unemployment rate is near a 10-year low at 4.5 percent, consumer and business sentiment are rising and major U.S. stock indexes are near record highs.
…

Qualcomm slashed its profit expectations Friday by as much as a third after saying that Apple is refusing to pay royalties on technology used in the iPhone.

Its shares hit a low for 2017.

Apple Inc. sued Qualcomm earlier this year, saying that the San Diego chipmaker has abused its control over essential technology and charged excessive licensing fees. Qualcomm said Friday that Apple now says it won’t pay any fees until the dispute is resolved. Apple confirmed Friday that it has suspended payments until the court can determine what is owed.

“We’ve been trying to reach a licensing agreement with Qualcomm for more than five years but they have refused to negotiate fair terms,” Apple said. “As we’ve said before, Qualcomm’s demands are unreasonable and they have been charging higher rates based on our innovation, not their own.”

Qualcomm said it will continue to vigorously defend itself in order to “receive fair value for our technological contributions to the industry.”

But the effect on Qualcomm, whose shares have already slid 15 percent since the lawsuit was filed by Apple in January, was immediate.

Qualcomm now expects earnings per share between 75 and 85 cents for the April to June quarter. Its previous forecast was for earnings per share between 90 cents and $1.15.

Revenue is now expected to be between $4.8 billion and $5.6 billion, down from its previous forecast between $5.3 billion and $6.1 billion.

Shares of Qualcomm Inc. tumbled almost 4 percent at the opening bell to $51.22.
…

Employers can legally pay women less than men for the same work based on differences in the workers’ previous salaries, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower-court ruling that said pay differences based exclusively on prior salaries were discriminatory under the federal Equal Pay Act.

That’s because women’s earlier salaries are likely to be lower than men’s because of gender bias, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Seng said in a 2015 decision.

1982 law cited

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit cited a 1982 ruling by the court that said employers could use previous salary information as long as they applied it reasonably and had a business policy that justified it.

“This decision is a step in the wrong direction if we’re trying to really ensure that women have work opportunities of equal pay,” said Deborah Rhode, who teaches gender equity law at Stanford Law School. “You can’t allow prior discriminatory salary setting to justify future ones or you perpetuate the discrimination.”

Activists held rallies around the country earlier this month on Equal Pay Day to highlight the wage gap between men and women. Women made about 80 cents for every dollar men earned in 2015, according to U.S. government data.

The 9th Circuit ruling came in a lawsuit by a California school employee, Aileen Rizo, who learned in 2012 while having lunch with her colleagues that her male counterparts were making more than she was.

Attorney: Logic hard to accept

Her lawyer, Dan Siegel, said he had not yet decided the next step, but he could see the case going to the U.S. Supreme Court because other appeals courts have decided differently.

“The logic of the decision is hard to accept,” he said. “You’re OK’ing a system that perpetuates the inequity in compensation for women.”

Fresno County public schools hired Rizo as a math consultant in 2009 for $63,000 a year. The county had a standard policy that added 5 percent to her previous pay as a middle school math teacher in Arizona. But that was not enough to meet the minimum salary for her position, so the county bumped her up.

Equal Pay Act of 1963

The Equal Pay Act, signed into law by President John F. Kennedy in 1963, forbids employers from paying women less than men based on sex for equal work performed under similar working conditions. But it creates exemptions when pay is based on seniority, merit, quantity or quality of work or “any other factor other than sex.”

The county argued that basing starting salaries primarily on previous pay prevents subjective determinations of a new employee’s value. The 5 percent bump encourages candidates to leave their positions to work for the county, it said.

The 9th Circuit sent the case back to Seng to consider that and other justifications the county provided for using previous salaries.
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Working to dismantle his predecessor’s environmental legacy, President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Friday that could lead to the expansion of drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.

With one day before he reaches his 100th day in office, Trump will order his interior secretary to review an Obama-era plan that dictates which locations are open to offshore drilling, with the goal of the new administration to expand operations.

It’s part of Trump’s promise to unleash the nation’s energy reserves in an effort to reduce reliance on foreign oil and to spur jobs, regardless of fierce opposition from environmental activists, who say offshore drilling harms whales, walruses and other wildlife and exacerbates global warming.

Zinke: Safeguards remain

“This order will cement our nation’s position as a global energy leader and foster energy security for the benefit of American people, without removing any of the stringent environmental safeguards that are currently in place,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters at a White House briefing Thursday evening.

Zinke said the order, combined with other steps Trump has taken during his first months in office, “puts us on track for American energy independence.”

The executive order will reverse part of a December effort by President Barack Obama to deem the bulk of U.S.-owned waters in the Arctic Ocean and certain areas in the Atlantic as indefinitely off limits to oil and gas leasing.

It will also direct Zinke to conduct a review of the locations available for offshore drilling under a five-year plan signed by Obama in November. The plan blocked new oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. It also blocked the planned sale of new oil and gas drilling rights in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska, but allowed drilling to go forward in Alaska’s Cook Inlet southwest of Anchorage.

The order could open to oil and gas exploration areas off Virginia and North and South Carolina, where drilling has been blocked for decades.

Zinke said that leases scheduled under the existing plan will remain in effect during the review, which he estimated will take several years.

Monuments, sanctuaries under review

The order will also direct Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to conduct a review of marine monuments and sanctuaries designated over the last 10 years.

Citing his department’s data, Zinke said the Interior Department oversees some 1.7 billion acres on the outer continental shelf, which contains an estimated 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas. Under current restrictions, about 94 percent of that outer continental shelf is off-limits to drilling.

Zinke, who will also be tasked with reviewing other drilling restrictions, acknowledged environmental concerns as valid, but he argued that the benefits of drilling outweigh concerns.

Environmentalists protest

Environmental activists, meanwhile, railed against the expected signing, which comes seven years after the devastating 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Diana Best of Greenpeace said that opening new areas to offshore oil and gas drilling would lock the U.S. “into decades of harmful pollution, devastating spills like the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, and a fossil fuel economy with no future.

“Scientific consensus is that the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves — including the oil and gas off U.S. coasts — must remain undeveloped if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” she said.

Jacqueline Savitz of the ocean advocacy group Oceana warned the order would lead to “corner-cutting and set us up for another havoc-wreaking environmental disaster” in places like the Outer Banks or in remote Barrow, Alaska, “where there’s no proven way to remove oil from sea ice.”

“We need smart, tough standards to ensure that energy companies are not operating out of control,” she said, adding: “In their absence, America’s future promises more oil spills and industrialized coastlines.”
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United Airlines reached an out-of-court settlement Thursday with a doctor who was dragged off one of its flights after he refused to give up his seat.

The airline and Dr. David Dao’s lawyers agreed not to disclose the amount of money he will receive.

United put out a brief statement saying it reached an “amicable resolution of the unfortunate incident.”

United changes policy

The airline said earlier Thursday that from now on, no passenger would be forced to give up his seat except in cases of safety and security.

Those who volunteer to surrender their seats when a flight is overbooked would get up to $10,000 in compensation.

“Every customer deserves to be treated with the highest levels of service and the deepest sense of dignity and respect,” United chief Oscar Munoz said. “Two weeks ago, we failed to meet that standard and we profoundly apologize.”

Chicago aviation police dragged Dao up the aisle of the packed plane when United needed to make room for airline employees.

Three other passengers volunteered to give up their seats, but Dao was picked out at random and refused to leave, saying he had to get home to treat patients.

Congress gets involved

His nose was broken, some teeth were knocked out, and he suffered a concussion. Cellphone video captured the scene. Dao, with blood streaming down his face, could be heard screaming with other shocked passengers.

The incident prompted calls in Congress  to bring back government airline regulation.

Some lawmakers demanded outlawing the practice of overbooking flights, in which airlines sell more seats than are available to ensure a full plane.
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Lawmakers are nearing agreement on sweeping spending legislation to keep the lights on in government, after the White House backed off a threat to withhold payments that help lower-income Americans pay their medical bills.

It was the latest concession by the White House, which had earlier dropped a demand for money for President Donald Trump’s border wall. Even with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, the Trump administration is learning that Democrats retain significant leverage when their votes are needed on must-pass legislation.

A temporary funding bill expires Friday at midnight, and GOP leaders late Wednesday unveiled another short-term spending bill to prevent a government shutdown this weekend, something Republicans are determined to avoid.

There appears little chance of that as lawmakers worked to resolve final stumbling blocks on issues like the environment, though a short-term extension of existing funding levels is likely.

“The fundamental issue is keeping the government open, that’s our focus,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., a top member of the vote-counting team in the House.

At the same time, House Republicans had a breakthrough on their moribund health care legislation as a key group of conservatives, the House Freedom Caucus, announced it would support a revised version of the bill. Freedom Caucus opposition was a key ingredient in the legislation’s collapse a month ago, a humiliating episode for Republicans that called into question their ability to govern given that they’ve been promising for seven years to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Yet whether the Freedom Caucus support would be enough remained uncertain. One key moderate, GOP Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, dismissed the Freedom Caucus about-face as “a matter of blame-shifting and face-saving” for a bill going nowhere. Even if the legislation passes the House it will face major hurdles in the Senate and is certain to be extensively revised if it survives at all.

The changes in the bill would let states escape requirements under Obama’s health care law that insurers charge healthy and seriously ill customers the same rates, and cover a list of specified services like maternity care. Conservatives embraced the revisions as a way to lower people’s health care expenses, but moderates saw them as diminishing coverage.

Despite some optimism among House leaders for a quick vote on the health bill, the outcome was difficult to predict. The White House has been exerting intense pressure on House GOP leaders to deliver any tangible legislative accomplishments ahead of Trump’s 100-day mark, something that has yet to occur aside from Senate confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The massive spending measure, which would wrap together 11 unfinished spending bills into a single “omnibus” bill, represents the first real bipartisan legislation of Trump’s presidency.

Democratic votes are needed to pass the measure over tea party opposition in the House and to provide enough support to clear a filibuster hurdle in the Senate, which has led negotiators to strip away controversial policy riders and ignore an $18 billion roster of unpopular spending cuts submitted by White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.

The outlines of a potential agreement remained fuzzy, but aides familiar with the talks said Trump would emerge with border security funding that’s unrelated to the wall and a $15 billion down payment for military readiness accounts on top of $578 billion in already-negotiated Pentagon funding. Democrats won funding for medical research, Pell Grants and foreign aid.

But negotiators rejected Trump’s demands for $1 billion to begin construction of his promised wall along the length of the 2,000-mile (3218.54-kilometer) U.S.-Mexico border. And after a dispute between Mulvaney and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the administration agreed to keep funding cost-sharing payments under Obamacare that go to reimburse health insurers for reducing deductibles and co-payments for lower-income people.

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Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

AP-WF-04-27-17 0724GMT

 
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“At the beginning of my fishing career, all the world told me that the trade was for men,” says Chrifa Nimri, “but now all my colleagues respect and call me captain.”

The 69-year-old Tunisian fisherwoman is one of a very small female minority in a very male-dominated profession – commercial fishing.

Around the world, the dangerous work of hauling in the catch at sea is overwhelmingly performed by men. But if you expand the definition of fishing to include processers and marketers of seafood, workers in small-scale and artisanal fisheries, and collectors of clams and other shellfish, women account for a substantial part of the global industry.

No women on board

Sara Skamser has worked in or around commercial fishing for nearly her entire adult life. In her early 20s, she arrived on the Oregon coast and collected her first paychecks salmon fishing and crabbing in local waters. Then Skamser asked for jobs on bigger boats home-ported in Newport — better pay and bigger adventure and all. But, she recalls, none of those skippers would hire her.

“No. They said no.” She mimics them. “’Uh, I know you could do the job. Gosh, you’re probably stronger than me. Uhhh, but I don’t think my wife would like it.’ Or, ‘Uhhh. I would feel terrible if you got hurt on my boat.'”

This was in the early 1980s. To this day in the Pacific Northwest, women hold fewer than 4 percent of the commercial fishery licenses issued by the U.S. states. Elsewhere in the world, social norms helped to keep the gender disparity in place. For example, in Mexico, Peru, Senegal and Vietnam, which all have major marine fisheries, 4 percent or fewer of the workers on fishing boats are women.

Changes on shore

But pull back the lens a little bit and there’s evidence of change. Skamser provided one of many oral histories that formed the basis of a research project on the role of women in the northwestern U.S. commercial fishing industry. Grad student Sarah Calhoun and Professor Flaxen Conway of Oregon State University along with the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center researcher Suzanne Russell in Seattle analyzed the results, which were published in the journal Marine Policy.

Conway, a sociologist, says they found women are playing a larger role on the regulatory and business side.

“I think if you look at the scientists, you look at the processing, you look at the marketing. … Once you broaden that out to fisheries in general, then I would absolutely say there are more women in science positions and management positions than there have been in my career, in my 27-year-long career.”

“We’re seeing an increase on the business side more so than ever before,” added social scientist Russell. “Women always worked the business side of things, but now with the complexity and all the reporting, trading and bycatch requirements, it’s pretty intense.”

One of Conway’s takeaways was that the traditional, behind-the-scenes role of a fisherman’s wife has become an increasingly complex and critical job. “Whether it’s regulation, safety, marketing, research, it’s all caring for that fishing family business and making those products get to the table that we enjoy.”

An international look

A separate research team cast a wider net – examining women’s contributions to the fishing industry in Mexico, Peru, Senegal, South Africa and Vietnam. Sarah Harper of the University of British Columbia led that study, whose results appeared in the latest edition of the journal Coastal Management.

“In terms of going out on fishing boats, I think it is still predominantly male-dominated. But certainly when we look at some of the small scale fisheries, the collection of shellfish and fish from shore, women are much more involved and definitely underestimated and undercounted in this area.”

Harper says subsistence fishing by women to feed their families is easily overlooked. So, she says, is who goes crabbing in Vietnam or fishing from boats in lagoons.

When harvest by women is overlooked, Harper says that makes it harder for governments to accurately gauge the pressure on a seafood resource and sustainably manage a fishery.

“When you’re looking at managing fisheries and potentially trying to rebuild fisheries and implement conservation measures, you really need to know who is fishing and where.  If there are fisheries that only men are focused on in certain regions and we’re only focused on those, we’re not getting the whole picture.”

Harper says she is encouraged to see United Nations bodies take an interest in gender equality in fisheries and be more gender-inclusive when making policy and management recommendations.

Hooking new opportunities

Sara Skamser is still involved in the industry, but not on a fishing vessel. She makes her voice heard on several local advisory boards, and founded a successful fishing net and gear company called Foulweather Trawl with her husband in Oregon. She also deals with some of the fishermen who wouldn’t hire her decades ago.

“Bottom line of all of that is that I invoice those people now and occasionally there’s a large invoice. I just look at ’em. I give them the look. Like, ‘Uh, huh. Probably should’ve hired me. You would’ve gotten that for free,'” she says with a chuckle.

There are online forums dedicated to women in fishing and elevating their profile.  One in particular on Facebook called “Chix Who Fish” celebrates victories such as getting a boot maker and a foul weather gear maker to add product lines tailored to the shapes of women’s bodies.

American “chicks” who fish have no use for gender-neutral titles by the way, according to Flaxen Conway. “They don’t want to be called a woman fisherman. They just want to be called a fisherman.”
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After reports that President Donald Trump was considering an executive order to withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, the White House said Wednesday that Trump agreed not to take such action after phone calls with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

Since launching his bid for president, Trump has repeatedly criticized the nation’s trade deals, especially NAFTA, saying the agreement signed in 1994 has been a “disaster” and allowed many U.S. jobs to shift to Mexico.

“President Trump agreed to not terminate NAFTA at this time, and the leaders agreed to proceed swiftly, according to their required internal procedures, to enable renegotiation of the NAFTA deal to the benefit of all three countries,” the White House said.

The statement further said Trump is honored to work with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, and that he believes the renegotiation process will make the three countries stronger.

A Mexican government statement confirmed the phone call between Trump and Peña Nieto, saying the leaders agreed on the convenience of maintaining NAFTA and working with Canada to bring about successful negotiations for the benefit of the three nations.

Earlier Wednesday, a Canadian foreign ministry spokesman said Canada is “ready to come to the table at any time.”

Trump targeted Canada this week for what he said was unfair trade practices, and ordered a new 20 percent tariff on Canadian lumber exports.

Many Mexican officials have called NAFTA a disappointment, saying it has brought slow economic growth despite increased investment in factories and industry.

 
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