Tesla co-founder Elon Musk and Mexico’s tequila producers could be headed for a collision after the agave-based drink’s industry group opposed the flamboyant billionaire’s efforts to trademark an alcoholic drink dubbed “Teslaquila.”

One of the world’s richest people and chief executive of Tesla, Musk is known for ambitious and cutting-edge projects ranging from auto electrification and rocket-building to high-speed transit tunnels.

Now it seems that Musk could be setting his sights on disrupting the multibillion-dollar tequila industry.

On Oct. 12, he tweeted “Teslaquila coming soon” and an accompanying “visual approximation” of a red and white label with the Tesla logo and a caption that stated “100 percent Puro de Agave.”

Not so fast, said Mexico’s Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT).

It argued that the “name ‘Teslaquila’ evokes the word Tequila … (and) Tequila is a protected word.”

The CRT keeps tabs on producers to assure they adhere to strict denomination of origin rules, which dictate the spirit must be made in the Mexican states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan, Nayarit or Tamaulipas, among other requirements.

According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website, Tesla has filed an application to trademark “Teslaquila” as a “distilled agave liquor” and “distilled blue agave liquor.”

Similar applications have been filed in Mexico, the European Union and Jamaica.

“If it wants to make Teslaquila viable as a tequila it would have to associate itself with an authorized tequila producer, comply with certain standards and request authorization from Mexico’s Industrial Property Institute,” said the CRT in a statement.

“Otherwise it would be making unauthorized use of the denomination of origin for tequila,” it said, adding that the proposed name “Teslaquila” could make consumers confuse the drink with tequila.

Tesla did not respond to several requests for comment.

Other high-profile celebrities have cashed in on tequila’s new-found international appeal, as the sprit moves into the ranks of top-shelf liquors and sheds its image as a fiery booze drunk by desperadoes and frat boys.

Last year, Diageo Plc bought actor George Clooney’s high-end tequila brand Casamigos for up to $1 billion.

Other recent deals in the industry include Bacardi Ltd’s January deal to buy fine tequila maker Patron Spirits International for $5.1 billion.

After years of speculation, Mexico’s Beckmann family launched an initial public offering of Jose Cuervo in 2017, raising more than $900 million.
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For North Korean factory managers, a visit by leader Kim Jong Un is the highest of honors and quite possibly the most stressful event imaginable.

The chief engineer at the Songdowon General Foodstuffs Factory had looked forward to the visit for nearly a decade. His factory churns out tons of cookies, crackers, candies and bakery goods, plus dozens of varieties of soft drinks sold around the country. In its showroom, Kwon Yong Chol proudly showed off one of his best-sellers, a nutrient soup made with spirulina, a blue-green microalgae “superfood.”

“Ever since construction began everyone here had wanted the leader to visit, and this year he did. His visit was the biggest thing that could happen to us,” Kwon, smiling broadly, said of Kim Jong Un’s visit in July. “He ate our instant noodles. He said they were delicious.”

Not all managers have been so fortunate.

There’s a lot on the line for North Korea these days. And Kim means business.

International spotlight  

Though the international spotlight has been on his denuclearization talks with Washington, the North Korean leader has a lot riding domestically on his promises to boost the country’s economy and standard of living. His announcement in April that North Korea had sufficiently developed its nuclear weapons and would now focus on building its economy marked a sharp turn in official policy, setting the stage for his rapid-fire meetings with the leaders of China, South Korea and the United States.

It also set in motion an ambitious campaign of “on-the-spot guidance” trips to rally party officials, factory managers and military troops.

After the announcement of the “new strategic line” and his first round of summits, including his meeting in June with President Donald Trump, Kim embarked on nearly 20 inspection tours around the country in July and another 10 in August, all but one of them to non-military locations. The military inspection rounds are instead being handled by the country’s premier, Pak Pong Ju, who has gone on 18 inspection tours from July, mostly to military facilities.

On-the-spot guidance tours are a tradition Kim inherited from his father and grandfather, the late “eternal General-Secretary” Kim Jong Il and “eternal President” Kim Il Sung.

They date to the late 1940s, when Kim Il Sung began gradually institutionalizing the visits to demonstrate his hands-on leadership and, as invariably portrayed by the North’s media, his deep care and concern for the well-being of the people.

Factories, farms and important industrial facilities are the usual destinations. But Kim Jong Un’s focus on them this year marks a break from excursions in 2017 to nuclear weapons facilities and missile sites.

Reflecting the gravity of his current mission, Kim has shown little patience for cadres who come up short.

On his July tour in the northern part of the country he lambasted officials at a factory that produces backpacks for students, saying their attitude was “very wrong” and “has no revolutionary spirit.” He then dressed down officials at a power plant that has been under construction for 17 years, criticized people in charge of a hotel project for taking too long to finish plastering its walls and slammed the authorities responsible for building a recreational campsite.

“Looking round the bathroom of the camp, he pointed out its very bad condition, saying bathtubs for hot spring therapy are dirty, gloomy and unsanitary for their poor management,” said an official report of the visit.

Tours top the news

Most inspection tours, however, go like Kim’s two-hour visit to the Songdowon processed foods factory.

With a gaggle of cameramen in tow — the tours are always top news in North Korea’s media — the site’s senior manager generally serves as the guide. Members of Kim’s entourage frantically take notes as he suggests tweaks of this or that and offers praise or encouragement.

Many factories put up red and gold plaques to commemorate the event. Some have special wall displays made afterward that show the exact path the leader took in little LED lights that can be turned on at the press of a button.

At Kwon’s factory, which has 300 employees and is located on the outskirts of the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, Kim advised managers to improve operations on an “automated, unmanned and germ-free basis, holding aloft the banner of self-reliance.”

Before the obligatory group photo session, the North’s official news agency reported, Kim voiced “his expectation and conviction” the factory would produce more quality foods “and thus more fully demonstrate the honor of being a factory loved by the people.”

But Kim also had a broader point to make.

He told the factory management that they must be prepared to work in a more competitive environment, to modernize and cut the fat. These are special times and they, and basically all managers throughout the country, need to step up their game.

“The Respected Marshal Kim Jong Un pays much more attention to the quality of a product,” Kwon said. “When he came to this factory he gave instructions to maintain a high level of hygiene because food is closely associated with the health of the people, and to keep the highest level of quality of products that people like. He said we must produce products that are world class, and produce a lot of foods that people like.”

Kwon said the pressure isn’t just coming from above.

“The people demand more quality,” he said. “When people look at the product, they must feel like they want to have it. So we are designing things in line with that. We have to satisfy the demands of the people.”
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A recent proliferation of craft gins and new distilleries has taken over South Africa’s bar scene. But this is not your average gin, distillers say: South African gin is infused with unique local flavors — like fynbos, rooibos, marula, sceletium and other distinctive South African botanicals — that they feel will take the world’s taste buds by storm. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Gin Town, AKA Johannesburg.
…

This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them.

Takashi Odajima picked up a cracked and faded photograph and dusted it off with his sleeve. He smiled a little sadly at the image from long ago, back when he was a baby boy.

In the photo, he sits on his uncle’s lap as his family poses at a nearby dock, squid heaped in the background. In another, his uncle dries rows of squid, carefully folded like shirts over a clothesline on the roof of their house.

Odajima’s family has lived for generations in Hakodate, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. It’s a city steeped in squid, a place where restaurants outside the local fish market advertise the start of the squid-fishing season with colorful banners.

When Odajima’s father returned home from World War II, he supported his family by driving a truck for a local seafood company. He was paid in salt, a valuable commodity at the time.

Using the salt, his family began making and selling shio-kara, a fermented squid dish that derives its name from its taste: “salty-spicy.” Because it keeps for days without refrigeration, it was an important source of protein for Japan’s starving population after the war.

Seven decades later, most Japanese bars still serve it as an appetizer, and small bottles are sold in supermarkets as a condiment to be eaten with rice.

“Someone once asked me what squid means to people in Hakodate, and I told him that it was our soul. I was half-joking at the time,” Odajima, 66, said. “But squid was always the main dish, long before we started eating rice.”

Out of more than a dozen types of squid eaten here, the Japanese flying squid, or Todarodes pacificus, is so central to the national cuisine, it’s sometimes referred to as maika, or the true squid.

But now, fluctuations in ocean temperatures and years of overfishing and lax regulatory oversight have drastically depleted populations of the translucent squid in waters around Japan. As recently as 2011, fishermen in Japan were hauling in more than 200,000 tons of flying squid a year. That number had fallen by three-quarters to 53,000 tons last year, the lowest harvest since Japan’s national fisheries cooperative started keeping records more than 30 years ago. Japanese researchers say they expect catches of flying squid to be even smaller this year.

That such a ubiquitous creature could disappear has shaken a country whose identity is intertwined with fish and fishing, a nation where sushi chefs are treated like rock stars and fishermen are the heroes of countless TV shows. The shortage of flying squid, an icon of the working and middle classes, has dealt a hard blow to the livelihoods of not only fishermen, but everyone from suppliers to traders at Tokyo’s famous fish market.

The fate of the flying squid is a microcosm of a global phenomenon that has seen marine life fleeing waters that have undergone the fastest warming on record. Reuters has spent more than a year scouring decades of maritime temperature readings, fishery records and other little-used data to create a portrait of the planet’s hidden climate change — in the rarely explored depths of the seas that cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface.

Fish have always followed changing conditions, sometimes with devastating effects for people, as the starvation in Norwegian fishing villages in past centuries when the herring failed to appear one season will attest. But what is happening today is different: The accelerating rise in sea temperatures, which scientists primarily attribute to the burning of fossil fuels, is causing a lasting shift in fisheries.

In Japan, average market prices of the once-humble squid have nearly doubled in the past two years, quickly putting the dish out of reach for many blue-collar and middle-class Japanese families that grew up eating it.

A Town’s Identity Threatened

Here in Hakodate, the squid shortage threatens the very culture and shared history of the town. One of the country’s first ports to open for trade with the outside world in the 19th century, it has the look of a Japanese San Francisco, with gingerbread Victorians and tram lines that slope down to the waterfront.

Odajima’s earliest memory is of his mother buying squid from a neighbor’s cart piled high with the morning’s catch. Now, fishermen barely have enough squid to sell to traders, much less to neighbors. A festival celebrating the start of the squid season in a nearby town has been canceled two years in a row.

Odajima still works in the family compound, a collection of deteriorating buildings near the Hakodate docks. Walking through a cluttered storage shed, he shows off the factory floor where he keeps his family treasure: dozens of 60-year-old barrels made of Japanese cedar. He’s one of the last local manufacturers still using wooden barrels to ferment and age his product.

Odajima also refuses to use cheaper imported squid, saying it would harm the brand’s locally sourced appeal.

But with costs skyrocketing, he isn’t sure about the future of his family business. His 30-year-old son quit his office job to help out after Odajima failed to find new workers. “I wanted to be able to hand it to him in better shape,” he said, “but now…”

One morning in June, Odajima joined a huddle of men at the docks for one of the first squid auctions for the season.

They looked over three neat piles of white Styrofoam boxes, comforting one another that it was still early in the squid season.

“Shit, they’re all tiny,” one buyer said. His friend walked away without waiting for the bidding to start.

At exactly 6.20 a.m., men in green jackets tipped their hats and began the auction. Once an event that used to attract dozens of buyers and take as long as an hour, this one took less than two minutes.

A gruff buyer supplying local restaurants that cater mostly to tourists strode to the front of the pack and bought all 11 boxes without looking. The rest of the group, including Odajima, hung back and shook their heads.

In the month of June, just 31 tons of fresh squid ended up at Hakodate’s main market, 70 percent less than the previous year. A typical squid caught in the Sea of Japan now weighs a third less than it did 10 years ago, according to surveys by Takafumi Shikata, a researcher at the Ishikawa Prefecture Fisheries Research Center.

An Early Warning on Squid

The squid shortage has become so dire, anxious bankers with outstanding loans to those in the industry have started showing up at the annual seminars held by Yasunori Sakurai, one of Japan’s foremost experts on cephalopods.

Sakurai, the chair of the Hakodate Cephalopod Research Center, began warning fishermen and other researchers about the effects of climate change on Japan’s squid population nearly two decades ago.

The flying squid gains its name from the way it can spread its mantle like a parachute to draw in and eject water, using propulsion to fly above the waves. The squid spend their short life — just over a year — migrating thousands of miles between the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean, mating, then returning to lay eggs in the same area where they were born.

Sakurai blames climate change for recent fluctuations in ocean temperatures — a cold snap in waters where the squid spawn and steadily warming waters in the Sea of Japan where they migrate. These changes mean that fewer eggs laid in the colder-than-average waters in the East China Sea survive, and those that do hatch are swimming northward to avoid unnaturally warm waters in the Sea of Japan.

The Sea of Japan has warmed 1.7 degrees Celsius (around 3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past century, making it one of the fastest-warming areas in the seas surrounding the archipelago.

Based on predictions by Sakurai’s former students now at Japan’s Fisheries Research and Education Agency, surface temperatures in these waters may rise an additional 3.7 degrees Celsius over the next century.

These changes have taken a toll on squid.

“It’s something that’s always been eaten on the side, and now it’s just gone. Everyone is asking why,” Sakurai said.

Others, like retired regulator and researcher Masayuki Komatsu, argue that although Japanese officials and fishermen are loath to admit it, the country’s rampant overfishing and lax regulatory oversight are also to blame for the shortage.

“They all blame it on climate change, and that’s the end of the discussion for them,” said Komatsu, who served as a senior official in Japan’s fisheries agency until 2004.

Since Japan started setting catch limits for the flying squid 20 years ago, fishermen have never come close to hitting the limit of the quotas. This year, the fisheries agency said it will allow fishermen to catch 97,000 tons of squid, a third less than the government’s limit for last year, but nearly double what fishermen actually caught during the same period.

The ministry acknowledges that flying squid, particularly those born in winter months, are rapidly declining. But officials say the catch limits are appropriate given the scientific evidence available. They say it is especially hard to study the elusive creature, which travels long distances over a short lifespan and is more susceptible to environmental changes than many other marine species.

“It isn’t scientific to simply say that because squid isn’t being caught, we need to lower the catch limits, when we don’t have the scientific backing to justify that,” said Yujiro Akatsuka, assistant director of the agency’s resources management promotion office.

A Fishing Town on the Rocks

Ripped curtains and fraying bits of cardboard cover windows of the empty storefronts along the main shopping street in Sakata, a town on the northwestern coast of Japan that once thrived as a major trading hub for rice and later as a fishing port. Old signs for grocery stores, camera shops and beauty parlors are barely visible through a thicket of vines.

Wooden warehouses that once stored the region’s rice are one of the few reminders of the town’s prosperous past. They were turned into souvenir stores after the buildings were featured in a popular television drama series.

On an early summer day, the docks were deserted except for a group of young Indonesian men living in shared rooms next to the port. They’re Japan’s answer to an aging industry, part of an army of young foreign men brought into the country to take fishing jobs spurned by Japanese men.

Shigeru Saito was 15 when he boarded his first fishing boat.

By the time he was 27, he was at the helm of his own ship. He never questioned his path. Both his father and grandfather, born on a small island off Sakata’s coast, had been fishermen.

Now 60, Saito has steered dozens of ships all over Japan.

When Saito started fishing, Japan had a fleet of more than 400 ships harvesting squid. He now captains one of the 65 remaining ships specially kitted with powerful light bulbs that lure squid from dark waters.

Until recently, his crew could return to port in two weeks after the start of the squid-fishing season in early June with their ship’s hold full of flying squid. Now, it takes them almost 50 days to catch that much.

“We’re having to travel farther and farther north to chase squid, but there are limits,” he said, pausing his round of checks to sit in the captain’s room of his ship, the Hoseimaru No. 58, where he sleeps in a tiny cot under boxes of equipment.

As competition intensifies for an ever-dwindling catch, fishermen have begun blaming trawlers from China, South Korea and Taiwan for overfishing in nearby waters. In recent years, fishermen from North Korea have also joined the competition.

Japan says North Koreans are illegally poaching squid in the Yamato Shallows, a particularly abundant area in the Sea of Japan.

Saito’s fishing lines got tangled in a net set by a North Korean boat there last year. Cautious about any confrontation with North Koreans, he and other Japanese fishermen abandoned the area early in the squid season.

“We can’t fish in these conditions,” he said.

Young Japanese men like Saito’s son are reluctant to join the industry, with its long months away from home and physically grueling labor. His crew is already half Indonesian. Soon, he said, only the captain will need to be Japanese.

In the last decade, the number of fishermen in Japan has declined by more than a third to fewer than 160,000. Of those left, an average fisherman earns about $20,000, not even half of Japan’s national median income.

“My son is a salaryman in the city,” Saito said. “I couldn’t recommend this to him – how could I? We’re away a third of the year,” and, with North Korean poachers on the prowl, “the waters are more dangerous now.”

The next day, men set up folding chairs and tents on Sakata’s dock for a ceremony marking the start of the fishing season. Saito joined other captains in the front row, bowing his head with his baseball cap in his hands. Young Indonesian men fidgeted in the back of the crowd. Melodic chants of Buddhist monks filled the salty air.

“We know we are powerless before the might of nature,” one monk said as the captains fixed their eyes on the ground. “We cannot go against the power of the sea. But we pray for a bountiful harvest and safe passage over the seas.”

Anxiety in Tokyo

Several weeks had passed since Japan’s squid-fishing fleet left port. But in Tokyo, near the Tsukiji fish market, Atsushi Kobayashi was waiting anxiously. The specialist wholesaler still hadn’t received a single shipment of flying squid from northern Japan. His driver sat on the concrete curb next to Kobayashi’s truck smoking in the midday sun.

In the past, each week Kobayashi would unload three to four shipments of 1,200 squid, to be dispatched to high-end sushi restaurants around Tokyo.

“Last year, the fishing season ended in November because the squid disappeared” — two months earlier than usual. He unlocked his phone to message another customer that he had nothing to sell that day.

Elsewhere in Tsukiji, the largest wholesale seafood exchange in the world, hundreds of other family-run fish traders were also awaiting this season’s catch. But by the time cases of squid finally began to arrive later in the summer, many of the traders were preparing to close their stalls to abandon the 80-year-old market.

In October, hundreds of fishmongers moved to a gleaming new market on the waterfront that cost more than $5 billion. But others, their businesses already failing from a drop in consumer demand, higher operational costs and a lack of interest from the families’ younger generation, didn’t make the move.

Those who left felt a powerful sense of loss about a place that has been a colorful symbol of the country’s fishing industry.

Masako Arai was one of them. Her husband’s family started their wholesale fish trading business 95 years ago, first in Nihonbashi, where the previous market was destroyed in a massive earthquake and fire in 1923, and later in Tsukiji.

“Our families have lived here and protected this place for generations,” the 75-year-old grandmother said.

Near Arai’s store were empty spaces where families had tended shop for generations; more than a hundred businesses have closed in the past five years. Nearly a third of the remaining 500 fish traders at the market were losing money.

“It feels like we’re always on shifting sand, and we don’t know what the future holds,” Arai said.

Nor do the chefs who create Japan’s signature cuisine.

Kazuo Nagayama has visited Tsukiji most mornings for the past 50 years to buy fresh fish. Once back at his sushi bar in the Nihonbashi district, he changes into his white uniform to write out the day’s menu with an ink brush.

For the past few years, the 76-year-old chef has found it harder to list local fish he deems decent enough to serve to his customers. On this summer day, the first item on his handwritten menu was yellowfin tuna shipped from Boston.

“I’m worried that people won’t know what it’s like to taste truly delicious fish,” he said. “Fishermen feel they have no future, and fisherfolk are disappearing. Our culture surrounding fishing is disappearing, and our culinary culture is also fading.”

Nagayama doesn’t allow anyone else to handle fish behind the counter, where customers pay up to $300 each for the chef’s nightly omakase course. Although his tiny bar is usually fully booked, he doesn’t see a future for it — he has no children and no heir.

“We’ll have to close in the next four to five years,” he said. “I’ll be the last one here.”

‘Everyone’s Raising Prices’

At Nabaya, a dark bar across the street from his Tokyo office, Hiroshi Nonoyama sipped a beer after another long day at work.

“It’s all depressing news, not a great topic of conversation over drinks,” he said. Nonoyama manages a trade group overseeing 79 companies that manufacture everything from squid-flavored potato chips to squid jerky. They’ve been some of the hardest hit by the recent run of poor harvests, Nonoyama said.

“A lot of these guys are old school. They haven’t diversified beyond using flying squid, you see? And when that becomes too expensive? Boom!” he said, crashing his hand on the bar counter.

Already this year, two of his companies had gone out of business because of the rising cost of squid.

“I only heard about one of them because I got a call from the tax office about unpaid taxes,” he said, sighing. The owner, who had employed 70 workers for half a century, was now on the run from his creditors.

“Everyone’s raising prices, but how much are customers willing to pay?” Nonoyama asked.

It’s the same question that Odajima, the Hakodate squid merchant, asks himself every day. He has nearly doubled prices in the past two years to 700 yen per bottle.

“Buyers are telling me that if I raise prices again, they won’t be able to sell it as a side dish or condiment — consumers just won’t buy it,” he said.

His factory’s yearly output is almost half of what it was 10 years ago. Looking for ways to survive, Odajima is now courting boutique supermarkets and upscale restaurants.

Recently, Odajima flew to Tokyo to pitch his product. By the time he arrived at Ginza Six, a shimmering luxury mall in the city’s posh shopping district, he was already sweating in his oversized pinstripe suit. He adjusted his tie and patted down his freshly cut hair in front of Imadeya, a premium liquor store on the basement floor of the mall.

Two Chinese women sampled glasses of Japanese wine under a pair of Edison bulbs at the shop counter. Shohei Okawa, the store’s 36-year-old manager, waited patiently as Odajima pulled several jars of shio-kara out of a cooler he had carried on the plane from Hakodate. Folded copies of Tokyo’s subway map peeked out of his large duffel bag.

“As you know, prices are getting higher, particularly for squid,” he said, suddenly sounding formal and looking anxious.

“Which is part of the reason why we’d love to sell in a higher-end store like yours.”

“What other stores carry this in Tokyo?” Okawa asked. “And is this rare? Is it authentic?”

Odajima quickly added that his product was handmade with no artificial coloring.

Satisfied, Okawa said he would send in orders for a few cases.

Outside, leaning against the mall’s glass façade, Odajima was happy — for the moment, at least.

“I wonder what my father would think, selling it at a place like this,” he said. “It’s a little unbelievable. We had so much squid we didn’t know what to do with it. Now, it’s become a delicacy.”
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Millions of smallholder farmers in South and Southeast Asia are missing out on new, resilient seeds that could improve their yields in the face of climate change, according to an index published Monday.

The 24 top seed companies fail to reach four-fifths of the region’s 170 million smallholder farmers for reasons such as poor infrastructure, high prices and lack of training, the Access to Seeds Index found.

Access to seeds bred to better withstand changing weather conditions such as higher temperatures is vital as farmers battle loss of productivity due to climate change, said Ido Verhagen, head of the Access to Seeds Foundation, which published the index.

“We see increasing demands for new varieties, because [farmers] are affected by climate change,” Verhagen told Reuters.

“If we want to feed a growing population, if we want to tackle climate change, if we want to go towards a more sustainable food system, we have to start with seeds,” he said.

Smallholder farmers managing between one to 10 hectares of land provide up to 80 percent of the food supply in Asia, said the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

But traditional methods of preserving seeds from harvests are not always sufficient to cope with a changing climate.

About 340 million people were hungry in 2017 in South and Southeast Asia, a number that has barely changed since 2015, according to latest figures from the United Nations.

“The question is how to get markets to provide the varieties [of seeds] that farmers want, at prices that they’re able to pay,” said Shawn McGuire, agricultural officer at the FAO.

Some smaller companies are leading the way in helping smallholders access more resilient seeds, Verhagen said, such as Thailand-based East-West Seed which topped the index ahead of global giants Bayer and Syngenta, which ranked second and third.

East-West Seed has built a successful business focusing purely on smallholders, he said, while Indian companies Acsen HyVeg and Namdhari, ranked sixth and seventh respectively, have also reached small-scale farmers with seeds.

The index, funded by the Dutch government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ranks companies based on seven areas including strategies to help small farmers and supporting conservation.
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The communities said to be favored to become homes to a pair of big, new East Coast bases for Amazon are both riverfront stretches of major metropolitan areas with ample transportation and space for workers.

But there are plenty of differences between New York’s Long Island City and Crystal City in northern Virginia.

Set within eyeshot of the nation’s capital, Crystal City is a thicket of 1980s-era office towers trying to plug into new economic energy after thousands of federal jobs moved elsewhere.

Rapidly growing Long Island City is an old manufacturing area already being reinvented as a hub for 21st-century industry, creativity and urbane living.

Seattle-based Amazon, which set out last year to situate one additional headquarters but now may reportedly open two, has declined to comment on its plans. But people familiar with the talks said this week that Long Island City and Crystal City have emerged as front runners for the “HQ2” project and its total of 50,000 jobs.

A look at two communities said to be at the top of Amazon’s list.

Long Island City

It’s already the fastest-developing neighborhood in the nation’s most populous city, and Amazon could pump up the volume in this buzzy part of Queens.

If chosen, the neighborhood stands to burnish New York City’s reputation as a tech capital. Landing Amazon would also cement Long Island City’s transformation from a faded manufacturing zone to a vibrant, of-the-moment enclave of waterfront skyscrapers, modernized warehouses and artsy-tech ambience across the East River from midtown Manhattan.

“I joke that we’re experiencing explosive growth 30 years in the making,” says Elizabeth Lusskin, president of the Long Island City Partnership, a neighborhood development group.

But Long Island City also has been straining to handle its growth.

Days before the potential Amazon news emerged, the city announced a $180 million plan to address Long Island City’s packed schools, street design and a sewage system that groans in heavy rain. But those projects will just catch up with current needs, says area City Councilman Jimmy van Bramer.

“I know that there are a lot of people cheerleading for this, but HQ2 has to work for Queens and the people of Queens. It can’t just be good for Amazon,” says van Bramer, a Democrat.

Once a bustling factory and freight-moving area, Long Island City saw many of its plants and warehouses closed as manufacturing shriveled in New York City.

The neighborhood’s rebirth began in the 1980s, when officials broached redeveloping a swath of the waterfront, while artists were drawn by warehouse spaces, affordable rents and a building that is now the MoMA PS1 museum. Silvercup Studios — where such TV shows as “Sex and the City,” “30 Rock” and “The Sopranos” have been filmed — opened in 1983.

Long Island City gained a new commercial stature, and the start of a high-rise skyline, when the banking giant now called Citi opened an office tower there in 1989. But the area’s growth lately has been driven by residential building.

Some 9,150 new apartments and homes have been built since 2010, more than in any other New York City neighborhood, according to the city Planning Department . Thousands more units are in the works.

New York has striven for nearly a decade to position itself as a tech hotspot.

Venture capitalists poured $5.8 billion into New York-area startups last quarter, more than any other region except the San Francisco area, according to the consulting and accounting firm PwC . Established tech giants, including Google and Facebook, have been expanding their New York footprints.

Still, landing HQ2 would represent “incredible validation of just how far New York has come,” says Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future think tank.

Waiting for a subway, Long Island City community board chairwoman Denise Keehan-Smith could envision Amazon benefiting the neighborhood.

“But I think we have to be careful about it,” she said.

Crystal City

If any place in America can absorb 25,000 Amazon jobs without disruption, it may well be Crystal City, Virginia, where nearly that many jobs have vanished over the last 15 years.

The neighborhood in Arlington County is bounded by the Potomac River and the nation’s capital on one side, by the Pentagon on another and Reagan National Airport on a third.

Despite its prime location and abundant transportation options, the neighborhood has been hit by a massive outflow of jobs. The Patent and Trademark Office began moving more than 7,000 jobs out of Crystal City in 2003. In 2005, the Defense Department announced plans to move roughly 17,000 jobs elsewhere as part of a base realignment.

Arlington County has worked hard to bring in new employers, and had some success. The Public Broadcasting Service moved its headquarters to Crystal City in 2006.

Still, large swaths of the neighborhood remain vacant. Among other challenges, the area has fought to overcome a reputation for outdated architecture.

Crystal City is populated by 70s and80s-era office buildings. The buildings are connected by a network of tunnels populated with food-court style dining options, hair salons and newsstands. The tunnels leave the ground-level outdoor streetscape sometimes looking empty.

Brookings Institution urban planner Jenny Schuetz suggested the buildings may require an upgrade, or even replacement. But she noted that while people often associate tech companies with converted lofts or state-of-the art workspaces, many big Silicon Valley tech companies actually work out of `80s-era office buildings.

For all the talk about antiquated architecture, people who’ve actually worked in Crystal City appreciate its convenience and its worker-friendly features, including the tunnels.

“I loved it here,” said Christine Gentry of Greenbelt, Maryland, as she ate breakfast in a largely empty food court. She works for the Patent and Trademark Office and preferred the days when her office was in Crystal City.

“Everything is accessible here,” she said. “When it was raining or snowing or sleeting, I never had to go out.”

Perhaps no place better illustrates the vibe of Crystal City than the region’s only revolving restaurant, the Skydome atop the Doubletree Crystal City. Diners enjoy a panoramic view of the D.C. skyline, completing a full rotation every 47 minutes.

Sam Getachew, the hotel’s food and beverage manager, said the restaurant fits the neighborhood’s retro atmosphere.

“It’s huge draw,” Getchew said. “People come for the curiosity of it.”

The only downside, he said, is that “when customers get up to go to the restroom, they don’t know where they are when they come back.”

 
…

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit strategy came under attack from all sides on Monday, increasing the risk that her plan for leaving the EU will be voted down by parliament and thrust the United Kingdom towards a potentially chaotic “no-deal” Brexit.

Less than five months before Britain is due to leave the European Union on March 29, negotiators are still haggling over a backup plan for the land border between British-ruled Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, if they fail to clinch a deal.

May’s compromise Brexit plan, which seeks to leave the EU but keep closer trade ties, is facing opposition from Brexiteers, pro-Europeans, the Northern Irish party that props up her government, and even some of her own ministers.

Asked if there was any chance May’s plan could pass parliament, former education minister Justine Greening, who supported staying in the European Union, said “no.”

“I think it’s the worst of all worlds,” Greening she told BBC radio. “It leaves us with less influence, less controls over the rules we have to follow.”

Sterling plunged to a 1-1/2 week low of $1.2841 as the dollar strengthened broadly and doubts grew over May’s ability to clinch a Brexit deal and get it passed.

Traders cited a report by the Independent newspaper that May had been forced to cancel an emergency cabinet meeting to approve a draft deal. A government source later said no cabinet meeting had ever been scheduled for Monday.

The Brexit deal — or the lack of one — will shape Britain’s prosperity for generations to come.

Economists polled by Reuters last week said there remains a one-in-four chance that London and Brussels will fail to reach a deal on the terms of departure.

Brexit ever?

Both sides need an agreement to keep trade flowing between the world’s biggest trading bloc and the fifth largest global economy. The other 27 members of the EU combined have about five times the economic might of Britain.

But May has struggled to untangle nearly 46 years of membership without damaging trade or upsetting the lawmakers who will ultimately decide the fate of any deal she can secure.

While May has for months faced fierce opposition from Brexit-supporting lawmakers, who say she has betrayed the referendum result by seeking such close ties with the EU, she is now facing increasing pressure from pro-Europeans too.

Jo Johnson, the younger brother of leading Brexiteer and former foreign minister Boris, resigned from May’s government last Friday, calling in a withering critique for another referendum to prevent her Brexit plans unleashing Britain’s biggest crisis since World War II.

If a deal is voted down by parliament, the United Kingdom will face an uncertain future: leaving abruptly without a deal, the collapse of May’s government, an election, or, as some opponents of Brexit hope, a new referendum.

Brexiteers say leaving without a deal might be damaging in the short term but that in the longer term it would be better than signing up to obey rules from the EU for decades to come.

It is unlikely that there will be a breakthrough in negotiations this month, with any deal probably pushed back into December, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said on Monday.

“We are waiting for new news from London… We have time, but not so much. For this month, it’s very difficult to make real progress, but before Christmas I’m hoping that it will be possible,” Reynders told reporters before a meeting of national ministers on Brexit in Brussels.

EU leaders had previously penciled in a summit for November to sign off on a deal with London as long as there was decisive progress. However, Brussels and London cannot agree how to guarantee there is no return of border controls on the frontier between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
…

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called Monday for a new public works spending program to stimulate the economy amid growing concerns about global risks. 

The spending, which is expected in the first half of next fiscal year starting in April, will focus on strengthening infrastructure to withstand earthquakes and frequent flooding, according to a presentation made at the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP). 

Some of Japan’s top government advisers also called for stimulus to offset a decline in consumption expected after an increase in the nationwide sales tax in October next year. 

The rush to approve public works spending and other measures to support consumption highlights growing concern among policymakers about the economy. 

“The prime minister asked me to take firm measures to ensure that our economic recovery continues,” Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said at the end of the CEFP meeting. “He also said the public works spending program expected at the end of this year should be compiled with this point in mind.” 

Japan’s economy is forecast to contract in July-September, and a recent slump in machinery orders suggests any rebound in the following quarters is likely to be weak if exports and business investment lose momentum. 

Government ministers will compile a preliminary public works plan by the end of this month and then submit a final version of the plan by year’s end, according to documents used at the CEFP meeting. 

Urgent matter

Members of the CEFP did not say how large the spending program should be or how the government should fund the package. At the meeting, Abe said compiling the package has become an urgent matter, according to a government official. 

Japan’s government is considering a 10 trillion-yen ($87.77 billion) stimulus package to offset the impact of a sales tax hike next year, sources told Reuters last week, as concerns about consumer spending and the global economy grow. 

Increasing spending on public works started to gain support after a strong earthquake in September caused a blackout in the northern island of Hokkaido and a series of typhoons damaged transport infrastructure in western Japan. 

The advisers on the CEFP are academics and business leaders who are considered close to Abe, so their recommendations often influence policy decisions. 

The CEFP met earlier Monday to debate consumer prices and fiscal policy, which is where the advisers made their recommendations. 

The advisers did not lay out the specific steps the government should take to stimulate consumption, but government officials have previously said they are considering shopping vouchers for low-income earners and more spending on public works. 

The nationwide sales tax is scheduled to rise to 10 percent in October 2019 from 8 percent currently. The government already plans to exempt food and some daily goods from the tax hike to soften the blow, but there is still a lot of concern that the tax hike will wreck consumer spending and sentiment. The economy was tipped into a recession the last time the tax was raised in 2014. 

Advisers at the CEFP meeting also threw their support behind the government’s plan to encourage mobile phone carriers to lower smartphone fees, saying they hoped the move would increase households’ disposable incomes. 
…

A majority of OPEC and allied oil exporters support a cut in the global supply of crude, Oman Oil Minister Mohammed bin Hamad al-Rumhi said on Sunday.

“Many of us share this view,” the minister said when asked about the need for a cut. Asked if it could amount to 500,000 or one million barrels per day, he replied: “I think it is unfair for me to throw numbers now.”

He was speaking in Abu Dhabi where an oil market monitoring committee was held on Sunday, attended by top exporters Saudi Arabia and Russia.

“We need a consensus,” he said, indicating that non-OPEC Russia would need to approve any decision. Oman is also not a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Saudi Arabia is discussing a proposal to cut oil output by up to 1 million barrels per day by OPEC and its allies, two sources close to the discussions told Reuters on Sunday.
…

India-based motorcycle brand Royal Enfield expects sales in its new North American business to almost triple this year and is aiming to dominate the market for middleweight bikes into which Harley-Davidson Inc has just shifted in a bid to revive sales.

Enfield, originally a classic UK brand but manufactured by India’s Eicher Motors Ltd in southern India since the early 1970s, has thwarted Harley’s efforts to make inroads in India, the world’s biggest two-wheeler market with some 17 million in sales annually.

Both companies are dwarfed in the lightweight categories by India’s Hero Motor Corp, Japan’s Honda and Bajaj Auto , and so far Enfield’s presence outside India in the more specialized market in medium-sized and large cruisers has been minimal.

Its arrival in North America three years ago signaled another headache for Harley, although sales of its iconic “Bullet” and “Classic” motorcycles have been stuck in the hundreds.

Based in Milwaukee, also the home town of Harley, Enfield sold between 700 and 800 motorcycles in the year ended March, and expects to sell nearly 2,000 in the current fiscal year, according to its North America president, Rod Copes.

“Our goal, over the next three to five and 10 years, is to be the largest middleweight motorcycle player, not just globally but also in North America. We want to get up to, where we are selling more than 10,000 to 15,000 motorcycles a year,” Copes told Reuters.

The bikemaker has been able to capitalize on demand by helping younger riders own a cruiser bike, along the lines of Harley’s but at a more affordable price point.

Enfield bikes come with a starting price tag of $4,000, which will rise to the $8,000 range following its new launches early next year. Harley’s entry level bike prices start at $6,899 and go up to $43,889.

“The U.S. motorcycle market is flipped upside down and the only segment that is growing is the middle-weight. I think we are beginning to see a little bit of a trend and a change in the industry itself, away from maybe the bigger, the better to smaller is funner,” Copes added.

Harley has been the historical market leader in the heavyweight motorcycle space in the United States and has been expanding into the middleweight motorcycle market with the launch of Street 500, Street 750 and the Street Rod range.

While Harley’s shipments have been dropping in the United States as its mainstay customer base is aging, it still managed to ship 144,893 motorcycles in the United States in fiscal 2017, according to its annual SEC filing.

The company does not break down those numbers into bike categories but analysts say almost all of those were heavyweight cruisers.
…

Vietnam’s new carrier Bamboo Airways expects to finally get an aviation license next week and start flying within weeks, the chairman of its parent firm said on Thursday.

The airline had to delay its maiden flight on Oct. 10 because it didn’t receive a license in time.

“Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has approved the proposal from the Ministry of Transport to issue the license to the airline,” Trinh Van Quyet, chairman of FLC Group, told Reuters by phone.

“We will launch our first flight within 45 days after receiving the license,” Quyet said. “Receiving the license would allow Bamboo to start services.”

Bamboo Airways would be Vietnam’s fifth airline after Vietnam Airlines, budget operator Jetstar Pacific Airlines, budget carrier Vietjet Aviation and Vietnam Air Services Co.

Bamboo Airways signed a provisional deal to buy 20 Boeing 787-9 wide-body jets worth $5.6 billion at list prices in July, as well as a memorandum of understanding with Airbus for up to 24 A320neo narrow-bodies in March.

Last week, Vietjet signed a $6.5 billion agreement to buy 50 Airbus A321neo jets, part of aggressive investment in the airline’s fleet, which has provided lucrative business for both European aerospace group Airbus and U.S. rival Boeing.

 
…

Tesla said Thursday that its new board chair replacing Elon Musk will be Robyn Denholm of Australia’s Telstra.

The appointment to the full-time position takes effect immediately though Denholm will leave Telstra, Australia’s biggest telecoms company, after a six-month notice period. Denholm already is on Tesla’s board.

Musk agreed to vacate his post as board chairman as part of a settlement with U.S. regulators of a lawsuit alleging he duped investors with misleading statements about a proposed buyout of the company.

The settlement in late September with the Securities and Exchange Commission allowed Musk to remain CEO of Tesla but required him to relinquish his role as chairman for at least three years.

Apart from appointing a new chairman, Tesla was required to appoint two new independent members to its board. The aim is to provide stronger oversight to match Tesla’s growing stature and market value.

The charismatic, visionary Musk has strived to turn Tesla into a profitable, mass-market producer of environmentally-friendly electric cars. But his impulsive streak caused him trouble when he tweeted in August that he had “funding secured” for taking Tesla private.
…

Stocks rallied Wednesday as investors were relieved to see that the U.S. midterm elections went largely as they expected they would. Big-name technology and consumer and health care companies soared as the S&P 500 index closed at its highest level in four weeks.

Democrats won control of the House of Representatives while Republicans kept a majority in the Senate, as most polls had suggested. It’s not clear how the divided Congress will work with Republican President Donald Trump, but if the possibilities for compromise and big agenda items seem limited, Wall Street is fine with that because it means politics is that much less likely to crowd out the performance of the strong U.S. economy.

“The market likes when what it expects to happen happens,” said JJ Kinahan, chief markets strategist for TD Ameritrade. “We haven’t had that happen in a little while, when you think about major events like Brexit or the presidential election.”

The S&P 500 index climbed 58.44 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,813.89. The index has risen six out of the last seven days to recover most of the losses it suffered in October.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 545.29 points, or 2.1 percent, o 26,180.30. The Nasdaq composite climbed 194.79 points, or 2.6 percent, to 7,570.75. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks added 26.06 points, or 1.7 percent, to 1,582.16. Three-fourths of the stocks on the New York Stock Exchange traded higher.

Historically markets have performed well after midterm elections and with split control of Congress.

Stocks are off to a strong start in November, and the S&P 500 is up 3.8 percent so far this month. That follows a swoon in October that knocked the S&P 500 down nearly 7 percent as investors worried about rising interest rates and the U.S.-China trade dispute.

High-growth stocks took an especially brutal beating last month. Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, said it will be worth watching to see if investors are willing to buy those stocks again or if they continue to prefer slower-growing, more “defensive” companies like utilities and household goods makers.

On Wednesday investors bet on growth. Amazon jumped 6.9 percent to $1,755.49 and Microsoft gained 3.9 percent to $111.96, while Google’s parent company, Alphabet, picked up 3.6 percent to $1,108.24.

Steady, “defensive” stocks lagged the rest of the stock market. Those companies, which include utilities and household goods makers, tend to do well when stocks are in turmoil, but they’re less appealing when investors are betting on economic growth.

Industrial companies made strong gains, but they didn’t do as well as the rest of the market. While some investors hope that Trump and Congressional leadership will pass an infrastructure stimulus bill, they’ve had those hopes dashed more than once since he took office.

It’s not clear how the elections will affect the Trump policy Wall Street might be most concerned about: the trade dispute with China. Trump has imposed taxes of up to 25 percent on $250 billion of Chinese imports and threatened additional tariffs on top of those. Beijing has responded with tariffs on $110 billion of American goods.

A primary concern in Asia is the potential for trade tensions to hobble growth for export-reliant economies.

Economists at S&P Global, Oxford Economics and the Bank of America all agreed that government gridlock will likely result from the Democrats winning control of the House. But they don’t think a stalemate will automatically hinder economic growth.

It’s more likely that government will play less of a role in spurring economic growth in 2019 and 2020. As a result, the health of the global economy, interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, and spending by U.S. consumers and companies will have a bigger impact on determining the pace of growth.

The Federal Reserve is also meeting Wednesday and Thursday. It’s not expected to raise interest rates this month, but investors believe it will do so in December.

Banks also didn’t rise as much other stocks. Republicans had discussed a new round of tax cuts if they maintained full control over Congress, which would have expanded the government’s deficits further and required it to issue more debt. Government bond yields spiked overnight after a batch of strong early results for some GOP candidates, but then headed lower as Democrats’ fortunes improved, making a new tax cut package unlikely.

Democrats’ victory in the House also means that Rep. Maxine Waters will likely become chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the nation’s banking system and its regulators. Waters has called for more regulation of banks, and has been vocal about Trump political appointees moving to roll back regulations on banks and other financial services companies.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose slightly, to 3.22 percent. It spiked as high as 3.25 percent Tuesday night.

The U.S. dollar also weakened. The ICE US dollar index fell 0.2 percent. The U.S. currency fell to 113.34 yen from 113.40 yen, and the euro climbed to $1.1455 from $1.1413.

Major indexes in Europe climbed. The French CAC 40 jumped 1.2 percent, while Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 1.1 percent. The DAX in Germany rose 0.8 percent.

October is historically a rough month for stocks, though markets usually rise after midterm elections regardless of how the political landscape may change because Wall Street is glad to have more certainty.

Democrats’ win in the House means Republicans won’t be able to take another shot at repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which extended health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. Voters in Idaho and Nebraska all voted to expand Medicaid, and the winning gubernatorial candidates in Maine and Kansas also favor expanding Medicaid benefits. Voting on a Medicaid expansion proposition in Utah was too close to call.

Health insurers, hospital operators and Medicaid program operators all jumped. UnitedHealth gained 4.2 percent to $274.63 and hospital company HCA added 4.7 percent to $141.65. Molina, a provider of Medicaid-related services, surged 10.5 percent to $137.32.

Marijuana stocks jumped after Michigan voted to legalize recreational marijuana and Utah and Missouri voters approved medical marijuana measures. The stocks rose even further after the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who promoted more aggressive enforcement of those laws. Tilray vaulted 30.6 percent to $139.60 and Canopy Growth rose 8.2 percent to $46.07.

Oil prices continued to fall. U.S. crude lost 0.9 percent to $61.67, and Brent crude, the standard for international oil prices, dipped 0.1 percent to $72.07 a barrel in London.

Wholesale gasoline lost 2.8 percent to $1.65 a gallon and heating oil rose 2.2 percent to $2.24 a gallon. Natural gas was unchanged at $3.56 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Gold rose 0.2 percent to $1,228.70 an ounce. Silver picked up 0.5 percent to $14.57 an ounce. Copper added 0.8 percent to $2.75 a pound.

In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.3 percent while South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.5 percent. But Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged 0.1 percent higher.
…

Global stocks were higher Wednesday after the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections met investors’ expectations.

Despite Democratic gains in the U.S. House of Representatives, few anticipate reversals of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and the elimination of federal regulations.

Democrats captured more than the 23 seats needed to regain control of the House and Republicans extended their lead in the Senate.

Europe’s FTSE 100 Index moved 1 percent higher, to 7,117, and Asia’s Hang Seng Index climbed more than 3 percent, to 2,6147.

In afternoon trading in the U.S., the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index was nearly 1.5 percent higher, at 2,795, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 1.5 percent, to 2,629, and the NASDAQ 100 Index jumped more than 2.3 percent, to 7,150.
…

The Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump over the last two months, Chinese public records show, raising concerns about conflicts of interest in the White House.

In October, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC, bringing to 34 the total number of marks China has greenlighted this year, according to the office’s online database. The new approvals cover Ivanka-branded fashion gear including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines.

The approvals came three months after Ivanka Trump announced she was dissolving her namesake brand to focus on government work.

China also granted provisional approval for two “Trump” trademarks to DTTM Operations LLC, headquartered at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York. They cover branded restaurant, bar and hotel services, as well as clothing and shoes.

The marks will be finalized if there is no objection during a 90-day comment period.

All the trademarks were applied for in 2016.

“These trademarks were sought to broadly protect Ms. Trump’s name, and to prevent others from stealing her name and using it to sell their products,” Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s ethics attorney, said in an email. “This is a common trademark practice, which is why the trademark applications were granted.”

Both the president and his daughter have substantial intellectual property holdings in China. Critics worry that China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party, could exploit those valuable rights for political leverage.

There has also been concern that the Trump family’s global intellectual property portfolio lays the groundwork for the president and his daughter, who serves as a White House adviser, to profit from their global brands as soon as they leave office.

“Ivanka receives preliminary approval for these new Chinese trademarks while her father continues to wage a trade war with China. Since she has retained her foreign trademarks, the public will continue to have to ask whether President Trump has made foreign policy decisions in the interest of his and his family’s businesses,” wrote Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group that first published the news about Ivanka Trump brand’s new Chinese trademarks.

Lawyers for Donald Trump in Beijing declined to comment.

Companies register trademarks for a variety of reasons. They can be a sign of corporate ambition, but many companies also file defensively, particularly in China, where trademark squatting is rampant. Trademarks are classified by category and may include items that a brand does not intend to market. Some trademark lawyers also advise clients to register trademarks for merchandise made in China, even if it’s not sold there.

China has said it handles all trademark applications equally under the law.
…

This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them.

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” drifts from Karroll Tillett’s workshop, a wooden shed about half a mile from where he was born.

Tillett, known as “Frog” to everyone here, has lived most of his 75 years on the water, much of it chasing summer flounder. But the chasing got harder and harder, and now he spends his time making nets for other fishermen at his workshop, at the end of a dirt path next to his ex-wife’s house.

The house is on CB Daniels Sr. Road, one of several named after two of the fishing clans that have held sway for decades in this small coastal town. Besides CB Daniels Sr. Road, there’s ER Daniels Road and just plain Daniels Road. In Frog’s family, there’s Tink Tillett Road and Rondal Tillett Road.

Once upon a time, these fishing families were pioneers. In the 1970s and 1980s, they built summer flounder into a major catch for the region. The 15 brothers and sisters of the Daniels clan parlayed the business into a multinational fishing company, and three years ago they sold it to a Canadian outfit for tens of millions of dollars.

But for Frog Tillett and almost everyone else in these parts, there’s not much money to be made fishing offshore here anymore.

Forty years ago, Tillett fished for summer flounder in December and January in waters near Wanchese, then followed the fish north as the weather warmed. In recent years, however, fewer summer flounder have traveled as far south in the winter, and the most productive area has shifted north, closer to Martha’s Vineyard and the southern shore of Long Island.

Reuters has spent more than a year scouring decades of maritime temperature readings, fishery records and other little-used data to create a portrait of the planet’s hidden climate disruption — in the rarely explored depths of the seas that cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The reporting has come to a disturbing conclusion: Marine life is facing an epic dislocation.

The U.S. North Atlantic is a prime example. In recent years, at least 85 percent of the nearly 70 federally tracked species there had shifted north or deeper, or both, when compared to the norm over the past half-century, according to the Reuters analysis of U.S. fisheries data. But this great migration is not just off the coast of America. Pushed out of their traditional habitats by the dramatically rising ocean temperatures and other fallout from climate change, summer flounder are part of a global disruption of marine species that threatens livelihoods, cultures and the delicate balance of the oceans themselves.

A mirror image of the flotillas of desperate people trying to escape deadly conflicts, this is a refugee crisis going on beneath the surface of the seas. And much of it has happened in the time it took a child to be born and graduate from high school.

Tillett, threading lead weights onto the bottom of a net, remembers the days of plenty up and down the Atlantic coast, catching summer flounder up north but knowing there were plenty more back home.

“Then, all of a sudden, everything starts moving that way, and nothing is left down here.”

‘There ain’t no flounder around here no more’

Few tourists traveling on Route 64 from the North Carolina mainland to the Hatteras beaches venture into Wanchese.

It isn’t even a town, officially. The U.S. Census Bureau, however, says 1,600 people live here, many of them in one-story cinder-block homes, not the big beach houses on stilts, known euphemistically as cottages, a few miles away.

Most mornings, Danielses and Tilletts and Etheridges, another of the fishing clans, crowd the restaurant down by the marina.

Longtime flounder skipper Steve Daniels pulls up. Steve bought his first trawler in 1978 and started flounder fishing that summer. That was the year Wanchese fishermen decided there was money in the fish. In 1977, they had caught zero pounds. In 1978, they caught 12 million pounds, and in 1979, their catch approached 17 million pounds. And that doesn’t count the millions of pounds they landed during the warmer months in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey ports.

Over the years, however, the longer trips north needed to find the fish, among other factors, made the fishing increasingly unprofitable.

“There ain’t no flounder around here no more — they all up there in Rhode Island,” Steve says. “I got the hell out of it three years ago.”

In the early 1990s, summer flounder stocks were on the verge of collapse after being overfished in the 1970s and 1980s, primarily by Wanchese and other North Carolina fishermen.

Today, after years of severe limits on catches, the species is relatively healthy. Unfortunately for Wanchese, it has rebounded in an area well north of where the crews here started fishing for summer flounder.

But that hasn’t made a difference to arcane rules on summer flounder catches.

Nearly a quarter-century ago, when the fishermen of Wanchese were riding high, the U.S. government set quotas for summer flounder. It dictated that about a quarter of all the flounder caught in U.S. waters must be “landed,” or brought to shore, in North Carolina, no matter where they were caught.

Some modest changes being considered for next year could reduce North Carolina’s landings to one-fifth of the national total. But the very makeup of federal fishery-management bodies has stymied greater changes.

Summer flounder is managed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, one of three federally mandated councils that operate along the East Coast. Each council has about 20 members made up of fishermen, scientists, regulators, ecologists and a strong bloc of wholesale fish dealers. The councils’ size and the members’ competing interests make them slow to act. And often, the fishermen and especially the dealers are reluctant to shift an economic benefit from one region to another, as in the case of summer flounder, whose stock has shifted away from mid-Atlantic waters.

Kiley Dancy, a fishery management specialist with the mid-Atlantic council, says there has been much resistance to shifting the landings to states closer to where the fish are now located.

“Many would like for it to stay the same,” she says. The proposed changes, she says, “better reflect the location of the biomass” — that is, the area where the species is most likely to be found.

If adopted, the changes could take effect in late 2019 or early 2020.

In the meantime, summer flounder continue their inexorable move north. Is it, as with so many other species, because of the warming of the water?

“Absolutely. Looking at the data panorama, actually, I think this is fairly well established. I think that any intelligent conversation kind of starts with that just as a matter of fact,” says Joel Fodrie of the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina.

Rutgers University fish ecologist Malin Pinsky has been studying how fisheries have shifted around the North Atlantic for the better part of a decade. It was his work, adapting federal trawler sampling dating to 1968, that first identified where the centers of various species were located and illustrated the wholesale shift of species north.

Pinsky is well aware that fish, which can swim wherever they want, live in complex ecosystems, and attributing those shifts simply to climate change would be oversimplifying matters.

Still, he says, his work shows that temperature change is almost certainly the single largest factor. In 2013, he published a research paper that calculated that 40 percent of the northerly shift was attributed to temperature change.

“Actually, that’s impressively high … that something as simple as temperature explained a lot of the pattern, given that there’s fishing, there’s predators, there’s prey, de-oxygenation, pollution and changing currents. There’s so much going on.”

In the case of flounder, the slow rebuilding of the stock has also resulted in a more mature population than the one that existed in the 1980s, according to trawling surveys conducted by the federal government. And older and larger summer flounder tend to live farther north than younger fish, says Fodrie, the UNC professor, who’s been working these waters for the better part of 20 years.

Regulators vs. fishermen

Among the Wanchese breakfast crowd, few names elicit a lengthier string of expletives than Louis Daniel, former executive director of the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. Many fishermen feel he imposed overly strict management of the local catches when he was in charge.

Daniel, unrelated to the Daniels family, knows he is an unpopular man among commercial fishermen. “They think I wanted to put them out of business, that profit should always be put ahead of protecting the resource,” he says.

But, he says, there is little doubt that there are fewer fish in this region than there once were. And some species have clearly been affected by climate change in the region.

Consider striped bass, which he says is a perfect example of how climate change can dislocate fisheries management.

There was a time, not too long ago, when recreational anglers routinely caught striped bass along the beaches in North Carolina. But since the beginning of the century, the number of striped bass has steadily declined.

“North Carolina has not caught any striped bass in five or six years or more,” he says. “There has been nothing on the beach.”

They are, however, routinely found in Canadian waters, which was unheard of a generation ago.

In early 2010, a small population of the fish was still wintering off the Carolina coast. Steve Daniels took his trawler three miles offshore into federal waters. Over a 10-day period, he illegally caught about 12,000 pounds of striped bass, landing the fish here in Wanchese, according to the United States Attorney’s Office.

Last August, Steve pleaded guilty to the charges and agreed to pay $95,000 in restitution. He was sentenced to five years’ probation.

Gambles pay off

Through the years, the families in Wanchese haven’t been afraid to gamble on a hunch.

Mikey Daniels was in high school when a local named Willie Etheridge Jr. decided to make a go at longlining for swordfish.

“That was ’63, ’64,” he says. “We were stacking them up like cordwood. I mean, three or four hundred fish in a stack, and they did it by hand.”

On Dec. 23, 1970, however, the Food and Drug Administration announced that tests showed that swordfish flesh was tainted with extremely high levels of mercury, a toxic metal. And overnight, the swordfish boom went bust.

It took a few years, but Wanchese’s entrepreneurial fishermen got to work on summer flounder. This time it was Mikey’s father, Malcolm Daniels, who took the lead, after struggling for years. At one point, Mikey remembers, his father was so poor there was a collection in town to raise money to help the family.

Eventually, though, his father bought a 65-foot wooden boat that he converted into a trawler that could drag large nets behind it. And before long, he was buying metal shrimp boats from Texas and converting them to trawlers too.

The family also added a trucking company to drive fish to New York and Boston.

“I was 16 years old driving tractor-trailers. My brothers were too,” he says. “We would get to New York, traveling in a group, you know.

The Daniels siblings took over the Wanchese Seafood Company when their father died in 1986. By the time their mother died in 2006, the family had expanded into boats and seafood wholesalers in Virginia, Massachusetts, Alaska and Argentina. When they sold up, they all became millionaires — a rarity in Wanchese.

The Wanchese fishermen fought hard for their place in the flounder business, but they started fading this decade.

In 2013, fishermen from North Carolina accounted for 64 percent of the summer flounder landed in the state, down from 80 percent just a few years earlier.

By 2016, it was less than half. Fishermen from New Jersey and Massachusetts accounted for 35 percent that year, up from nothing a decade earlier.

A winner in New England

On a cold December day hundreds of miles north of Wanchese, snow whips through the New Bedford, Mass., fishing fleet. The wind howls and bangs through the rigging of the boats docked two or three deep along the city’s working piers.

Most of the boats are dark. But the Sao Paulo’s wheelhouse glows orange. Inside, skipper Antonio Borges is preparing to leave as soon as the weather breaks.

The 60-year-old has just returned from 11 days at sea. It could have been a three-day trip if he were allowed to land his catch in Massachusetts, but the law prohibits that.

Instead, he left New Bedford and steamed less than a day before reaching the waters south of Long Island. He dragged his nets in about 50 fathoms of water and filled his hold with summer flounder. Then he turned south for a couple of days to offload some fish in Virginia. Two days after that, he offloaded flounder at the Beaufort, N.C., docks, before turning around and heading home.

A day after tying up in New Bedford, he’s back on the boat getting ready to go to sea.

Borges is fortunate that he can even catch the summer flounder: He bought landing permits from North Carolina and Virginia fishermen. In a perfect world, he says, Massachusetts and other New England and mid-Atlantic states would have a bigger quota.

Still, Borges says he doesn’t mind. He owns a boat large enough to make those trips, even in the foulest of winter weather. And besides, he’s invested in the status quo — he paid for one of those landing permits.

So, even though his time on the seas would be much shorter, he said the distributions of landings shouldn’t change. “It’s not going to happen, and it shouldn’t happen,” he says. “Because the states that we bought the license from, we already knew that we had to go to those states and deliver the fish.”

Traveling the distance from the Northeast to North Carolina benefits fishermen like Borges in bigger boats. At 75 feet and specifically designed for fishing on the high seas, his would loom over many of the flounder trawlers that steamed out of Wanchese in the 1980s.

Plus, he says, the Wanchese fishermen established the business and the North Carolina economy is entitled to benefit from that work, even if it’s no longer feasible for the fishermen to work the waters as much as they once did, he said.

“We go to North Carolina, we bring jobs,” he says. “Wherever we go, we bring business: lumpers to unload the fish, truckers to truck the fish, fuel, food. The economy grows wherever a fishing boat goes. It brings business, and we shouldn’t change that.”

Outside, the snow turns the docks and the decks white. The Portuguese immigrant shrugs.

“Look, it is 21 degrees today. Oh my God, it’s cold. You know what? This harbor used to freeze every single winter. It would freeze for weeks on end.”

Now it doesn’t.

Borges was 18 when his father took delivery of the Sao Paulo in 1977 from a Louisiana shipyard.

Since then, he has married and had two daughters. They married and had three daughters. Now, at the tail end of his career, he reflects on what has changed.

“Forty-two years I have been doing this, 60 years old, and I still love it.”

The most notable change, he says, is that fishermen are no longer the biggest threat to fisheries.

“We were the problem, in the ’70s and ’80s. We grew so much that we became a problem, and if the laws didn’t change, yeah, we were going to catch the last fish, I guarantee you we were.

“But you know what? We’re not the problem now. Climate change is the problem now. It is climate; it is water temperature. There are southern species that are coming north, and the species that were here have moved north.”
…

Key to Jair Bolsonaro’s recent election victory was the support of Brazil’s business community, which coalesced around him because he promised to overhaul Latin America’s largest economy and address its worrying budget deficit. But the president-elect has been stingy with the details, and many wonder if he’ll stick to his recent conversion to market-friendly reforms or if the dormant nationalist in him might reappear.

Even if he holds fast to the agenda set forth by his economic guru Paulo Guedes, a University of Chicago-trained economist and the man who convinced many investors to take a chance on Bolsonaro, the former army captain could face fierce opposition in Congress and from labor unions to what will be undoubtedly unpopular measures. His economic agenda will also have to compete for priority with his better-known promises to crack down on crime and corruption, and the latter are much dearer to his heart — and his base.

“It’s really unclear what Bolsonaro is when it comes to economic policy,” said Matthew Taylor, an associate professor at American University’s School of International Service. “He himself has admitted to ignorance on the economic front, but he’s also an extraordinary statist and a nationalist.”

For years, Bolsonaro, who will be inaugurated Jan. 1, supported heavy involvement of the state in the economy, and he remains an admirer of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime, which supported nationalist policies. But during the campaign, he espoused free-market principles.

It’s not clear how complete his conversion is. For instance, after Guedes told reporters that he supported privatizing all of Brazil’s dozens of state companies, Bolsonaro walked that back, saying he would sell off many but keep “strategic” ones, including big names like Petrobras and Banco do Brasil.

Amid this swirl of doubt, one thing is clear: Brazil must quickly cut its deficit or it risks heading back into crisis. A World Bank analysis concluded last year that Brazil spends more than it can afford and spends poorly.

Brazil’s central government deficit was 7 percent of gross domestic product in 2017, according to the Central Bank, and has been above 5 percent in recent years. A large portion is interest payments on debt, but even excluding those, Brazil still had a primary deficit of 1.8 percent of GDP last year — which economists say is unsustainable because it means the already high debt level will continue to grow.

The new administration will have only a narrow window to show investors that it’s serious about addressing this problem — by cutting spending or raising taxes — before they will begin to balk, making an adjustment more difficult because it could drive up borrowing costs.

Compounding the challenge, Brazil is only just beginning to emerge from a two-year-long recession, and growth remains stagnant. That means it can’t rely on big increases in tax revenues to help it plug the hole — and Bolsonaro has even promised to cut tax rates.

Guedes, who will lead the Economy Ministry, appeared to be sending just that signal hours after Bolsonaro’s victory on Oct. 28. He laid out a three-part plan to reduce Brazil’s public spending by passing a pension reform, privatizing state companies to draw down the debt and enacting other unspecified reforms that will reduce “privileges and waste.”

Pension reform will be the linchpin in reducing Brazil’s state spending for two reasons: Brazil’s government spends more on pensions than anything else, and many other parts of the budget can’t be altered because they’re mandated by the constitution.

Attempts to reform the pension system will likely face stiff resistance from labor unions and other groups since any measure will force Brazilians to work longer and receive fewer benefits. Bolsonaro, who in 27 years in Congress didn’t show any particular gift for building consensus, will have to build a broad coalition to get a reform through. His Social Liberal Party holds about 10 percent of the seats in next Congress, but so does the Workers’ Party, which is against such a reform and has vowed tough opposition.

President Michel Temer, who is known for his ability to negotiate with Congress, failed at that task. Still, Glauco Legat, the chief analyst at the brokerage Spinelli, points out that Bolsonaro’s decisive win gives him more legitimacy than Temer, who came to power after his predecessor was impeached in controversial proceedings.

Any reform will be whittled away at in order to win votes, but Monica de Bolle, director of Latin American Studies at Johns Hopkins University, says she fears Bolsonaro’s proposal will lack ambition right out of the gate since he has indicated he will leave military personnel out of it. That could also mean he will exclude other civil service sectors, which are key to taking a bite out of the problem.

“The watering down process is going to take place on the basis of an already diluted reform,” she said.

Beyond pension reform, Bolsonaro has promised to reduce the size of the state, including halving the number of ministries, and selling off state companies. Reducing the number of ministries could yield some savings, but other presidents have struggled to do that in more than name. And Bolsonaro has already taken off the table many state companies that would yield the most cash.

Instead, economists say that many of the savings lie in eliminating inefficiencies. Guedes didn’t give details, but if he’s serious about reducing waste, there’s plenty of it: The World Bank analysis highlighted Brazil’s high civil service salaries, a constitutional mandate on education spending that often results in spending for spending’s sake, overlapping social welfare programs and a proliferation of small hospitals in the public health system.

Despite the challenges, Legat said it’s important to remember that just by virtue of saying he’ll take on Brazil’s thorny issues, Bolsonaro has built momentum, which can have real-world effects.

“He brings optimism that’s very important for the economy in this moment,” he said. “This increase in confidence is reflected in real numbers.”
…

Amazon isn’t commenting on reports that it plans to split its new headquarters between facilities in two cities rather than choosing just one.

The New York Times, citing unnamed people familiar with the decision-making process, said the company is nearing deals to locate in Queens in New York City and in the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., outside Washington, D.C. The Wall Street Journal, which also reported the plan to split the headquarters between two cities, says Dallas is still a possibility as well.

Spokesman Adam Sedo said Amazon, which will also keep its original headquarters in Seattle, would not comment on “rumors and speculation.”

Amazon’s decision to set up another headquarters set off an intense competition to win the company and its promise of 50,000 new jobs. Some locations sought to stand out with stunts, but Amazon emphasized it wanted incentives like tax breaks and grants. It also wanted a city with more than 1 million people, an airport within 45 minutes, direct access to mass transit and room to expand.

The company received 238 proposals before narrowing the list to 20 in January.

The unexpected decision to evenly divide the 50,000 jobs between two cities will allow the company to recruit enough talent and also relieve pressures from demand for housing and transportation, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The New York Times said Amazon executives met last month with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state had offered possibly hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of subsidies. They also met with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, it said.

“I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,” the report cited Cuomo as saying.

Amazon has said it could spend more than $5 billion on the new headquarters over the next 17 years, about matching the size of its current home in Seattle, which has 33 buildings, 23 restaurants and 40,000 employees.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has said the new headquarters will be “a full equal” to its current home.

Amazon already employs 600,000 people. That’s expected to increase as it builds more warehouses across the country to keep up with online orders. The company recently announced that it would pay all its workers at least $15 an hour, but the employees at its second headquarters will be paid a lot more — Amazon says they’ll make an average of more than $100,000 a year.
…

Nigerian trade unions and the government agreed to a new minimum wage proposal on Tuesday, in an attempt to avert a planned nationwide strike following threats to shutdown Africa’s biggest economy, a union official said.

Unions, which have been discussing with the government a new minimum wage proposal, had planned to commence a strike on Tuesday.

Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) General Secretary Peter Ozo-Eson said a committee set up with the government was recommending 30,000 naira as the new monthly minimum wage, after a series of meetings, up from the current minimum of 18,000 naira.

He said the proposal, which was negotiated by senior government officials including Labor Minister Chris Ngige, would be recommended to President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday.

“Following … the signing of the final report recommending 30,000 naira as the recommended new national minimum wage … the strike called to commence tomorrow has been suspended,” Ozo-Eson said.

“We all need to stand ready in a state of full mobilization in case future action becomes necessary to push for the timely enactment and implementation of the new minimum wage.”

Nigeria’s main unions launched a strike in September after the wage talks broke down. Unions initially wanted the monthly minimum wage raised to about 50,000 naira ($164). But the government, which is facing dwindling revenues due to lower oil prices, declined the proposal.

Unions later suspended strikes on their fourth day, saying the government had agreed to hold talks to discuss raising the minimum wage.

Buhari had vowed to review the wage due to a fuel price hike and currency devaluation in the last two years aimed at countering the effects of a global oil price plunge that hit the country hard. Nigeria is Africa’s biggest crude producer.

Buhari plans to stand for a second term at an election next February and his economic record will come under scrutiny, given previous pledges to raise living standards, tackle corruption and improve security.
…

When Han Siyuan first decided to apply for a job as a pilot cadet in 2008, she was up against 400 female classmates in China on tests measuring everything from their command of English to the length of their legs.

Eventually, she became the only woman from her university that Shanghai-based Spring Airlines picked for training that year. She is now a captain for the Chinese budget carrier, but it has not become much easier for the women who have come after her.

Han is one of just 713 women in China who, at the end of 2017, held a license to fly civilian aircraft, compared with 55,052 men. Of Spring Airlines’ 800 pilots, only six are women.

“I’ve gotten used to living in a man’s world,” she said.

China’s proportion of female pilots — at 1.3 percent — is one of the world’s lowest, which analysts and pilots attribute to social perceptions and male-centric hiring practices by Chinese airlines.

But Chinese airlines are struggling with an acute pilot shortage amid surging travel demand, and female pilots are drawing attention to the gender imbalance.

Chinese carriers will need 128,000 new pilots over the next two decades, according to forecasts by planemaker Boeing, and the shortfall has so far prompted airlines to aggressively hire foreign captains and Chinese regulators to relax physical entry requirements for cadets.

“The mission is to start cutting down the thorns that cover this road, to make it easier for those who come after us,” said Chen Jingxian, a Shanghai-based lawyer who learned to fly in the United States and is among those urging change.

‘Token Efforts’

Such issues are not confined to China; the proportion of female pilots in South Korea and Japan, where such jobs do not conform to widespread gender stereotypes, is also less than 3 percent.

But it is a sharp contrast to the situation in India, which, like China, has a fast-growing aviation market. But thanks to aggressive recruiting and support such as day care, India has the world’s highest proportion of female commercial pilots, at 12 percent.

China’s airlines only hire cadets directly from universities or the military. They often limit recruitment drives to male applicants and very rarely take in female cohorts.

In addition, unlike in other markets, such as the United States, China does not allow people to convert private flying licenses to commercial certificates for flying airliners.

Li Haipeng, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Management Institute of China’s general aviation department, said many airlines were also dissuaded to hire women by generous maternity leave policies. That has been further aggravated by Beijing’s move in 2015 to change the one-child policy, he added.

“Male pilots do not have the issue of not being able to fly for two years after giving birth, and after the introduction of the second-child policy, airlines are not willing to recruit and train a pilot only to have her not being able to fly for about five years,” he said.

He said Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines had all made some effort to recruit female pilots, adding “nearly all other companies do not.”

China Eastern  and China Southern declined to comment while Air China did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Pilots said that hiring decisions were usually left to individual airlines and did not appear to be driven by the country’s regulator, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, whose recruitment requirements do not mention gender.

Xiamen Airlines, a China Southern subsidiary, told Reuters it offers up to 540 days of maternity leave. It started recruiting female pilots in 2008, and paused for a few years in between before resuming last year. Out of its 2,700 pilots, 18 are women while another 18 are in training.

“Allowing more women to become pilots is undoubtedly a good way to supplement (an airline’s) flying capability,” a spokesman for the carrier said.

Persuasion and Publicity

The strongest calls for change are coming mostly from Chinese female pilots, thanks to a slew of returnees who learned how to fly while living abroad in countries like the United States.

In March, the China Airline Pilots Association (ChALPA) established a female branch at an event attended by pilots from the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and local airlines, according to media reports.

Chen, the lawyer who also serves as a vice president of the ChALPA’s women’s branch, said she and others have been trying to spread the word by speaking about the issue at air shows in China.

Eventually, she said, the organization hopes to persuade Chinese airlines to adjust their recruitment and maternity policies.

Another key obstacle to tackle, she added, was the inability of general aviation pilots to shift to the commercial sector.

“It’s a systemic issue,” she said. “We hope that change can happen in three to five years, but this is not something that is up to us.”

Others like Han, who in recent months has appeared in Spring Airlines promotional videos, said she hoped the growing publicity would help to raise awareness.

“I can’t personally give people opportunities,” she said.

“But I hope that (the publicity) can slowly help open the door for companies or for girls with dreams to fly.”
…

European Union and Japanese plans to form the world’s largest free trade area cleared a significant hurdle Monday when EU lawmakers specializing in trade backed a deal that could enter force next year.

The European Parliament’s international trade committee voted 25 in favor to 10 against to clear the deal for a final vote in the parliament’s full chamber set for December 13.

An agreement would bind two economies accounting for about a third of global gross domestic product and also signal their rejection of protectionism.

Both have faced trade tensions with Washington and remain subject to U.S. tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on imports of steel and aluminum.

Japan had been part of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump rejected on his first day in office, turning Tokyo’s focus to other potential partners – such as the European Union.

The EU has also sought other partners after freezing TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) negotiations with the United States in 2016. It concluded an updated trade deal with Mexico earlier this year.

Both have since agreed to start trade talks with Washington.

The EU-Japan agreement will remove EU tariffs of 10 percent on Japanese cars and 3 percent for most car parts. It would also scrap Japanese duties of some 30 percent on EU cheese and 15 percent on wines, and open access to public tenders in Japan.

It will also open up services markets, in particular financial services, telecoms, e-commerce and transport.

The EU is mindful of protests against and criticism of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2016, which culminated in a region of Belgium threatening to destroy the deal. It finally entered force in 2017.

Critics say the EU-Japan agreement will give too much power to multinationals and could undermine environmental and labor standards, the latter because they say Japanese employees face tougher conditions and less adequate union representation.

Belgium’s regions have given their backing.

Both Brussels and Tokyo want the agreement to enter force early in 2019, before Britain leaves the EU at the end of March.

If it does, it could apply automatically to Britain during a transition period until the end of 2020 and offer comfort to the many Japanese car makers serving the EU from British bases.
…

Chinese President Xi Jinping promised on Monday to lower tariffs, broaden market access and import more from overseas at the start of a trade expo designed to demonstrate goodwill amid mounting frictions with the United States and others.

The Nov. 5-10 China International Import Expo, or CIIE, brings thousands of foreign companies together with Chinese buyers in a bid to demonstrate the importing potential of the world’s second-biggest economy.

In a speech that largely echoed previous promises, Xi said China would accelerate opening of the education, telecommunications and cultural sectors, while protecting foreign companies’ interests and punishing violations of intellectual property rights.

He also said he expects China to import $30 trillion worth of goods and $10 trillion worth of services in the next 15 years. Last year, Xi estimated that China would import $24 trillion worth of goods over the coming 15 years.

“CIIE is a major initiative by China to proactively open up its market to the world,” Xi said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has railed against China for what he sees as intellectual property theft, entry barriers to U.S. business and a gaping trade deficit.

Foreign business groups, too, have grown weary of Chinese reform promises, and while opposing Trump’s tariffs, have longed warned that China would invite retaliation if it didn’t match the openness of its trading partners.

Xi said the expo showed China’s desire to support global free trade, adding – without mentioning the United States – that countries must oppose protectionism.

He said “multilateralism and the free trade system is under attack, factors of instability and uncertainty are numerous, and risks and obstacles are increasing.”

“With the deepening development today of economic globalisation, ‘the weak falling prey to the strong’ and ‘winner takes all’ are dead-end alleys,” he said.

Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics, said the speech was meaningful, if short on fresh initiatives.

“I don’t think that there were necessarily path-breaking new reforms announced by him today, but I guess I would take this as a confirmation that China is very keen to be seen as continuing to open up further and committing to that stance,” he said.

China imported $1.84 trillion of goods in 2017, up 16 percent, or $255 billion, from a year earlier. Of that total, China imported about $130 billion of goods from the United States. The Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, said in March that China would import $8 trillion of goods in the next five years.

Focus on G20

Expectations had been low that Xi would announce bold new policies of the kind that many foreign governments and businesses have been seeking.

The European Union, which shares U.S. concerns over China’s trade practices if not Trump’s tariff strategy to address them, on Thursday called on China to take concrete steps to further open its market to foreign firms and provide a level playing field, adding that it would not sign up to any political statement at the forum.

With little in the way of fresh policies from Xi on Monday, all eyes now turn to an expected meeting between him and Trump at the G20 summit in Argentina at the end of the month.

“It seems like what (Xi) is actually doing is saving up all of his goodies to trade away with Trump as opposed to doing anything unilateral,” said Scott Kennedy, a Chinese economic expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Now everything is focused on the G20.”

Trump has said that if a deal is not made with China, he could impose tariffs on another $267 billion of Chinese imports into the United States.

On Monday, Trump said China wants to make a deal. “If we can make the right deal, a deal that’s fair, we’ll do that.

Otherwise we won’t do it,” he told supporters on a conference call.

In a sign the trade row is starting to bite, export orders to the United States recorded during China’s biggest trade show, the Canton Fair in October, dropped 30.3 percent from a year earlier by value, the fair’s organizer China Foreign Trade Center said.

Presidents or prime ministers from 17 countries were set to attend the expo, ranging from Russia and Pakistan to the Cook Islands, though none from major Western nations. Government ministers from several other countries were also coming, but no senior U.S. officials were set to attend.

Swiss President Alain Berset did not make the trip to China, despite being announced as among attendees by China’s foreign ministry last week. The Swiss government said in a statement to Reuters on Sunday that his visit had never been confirmed.

Some Western diplomats and businesses have been quietly critical of the expo, arguing it is window dressing to what they see as Beijing’s long-standing trade abuses.

Exhibitors from around 140 countries and regions will be on hand, including 404 from Japan, the most of any country. From the United States, some 136 exhibitors will attend, including Google, Dell, Ford and General Electric.

A handful of countries are being represented by a single exhibitor selling one product.

For Iraq, it’s crude oil. Iran, saffron. Jamaica will be marketing its famed blue mountain coffee and Chad is selling bauxite. Tiny São Tomé is selling package holidays.
…

Along the Iraqi banks of the Euphrates river, one question dominates the conversation. What killed the fish?

Thousands of tons of freshwater carp have washed up dead this month, leaving Iraqi fish farmers reeling from the significant loss of earnings. Carp is the country’s national dish, commonly barbecued outdoors across restaurants in Baghdad.

Agriculture officials have ruled out deliberate poisoning after rumors swirled of unspecified foul play, but the immediate causes are still unclear.

The worst-hit fish farms are in Babel province, south of Baghdad, where farmers scooped dozens of floating carp carcasses out of their cages and dumped them in the Euphrates over the weekend.

“We could not remove them all,” said Mohammed Ali Hamza Al-Jumaili, a fish farm owner in Mussayab, some 70 km (43.5 miles) south of Baghdad. “The effort of a whole year has been wasted in addition to the money we had paid for workers and feed. We have employed more workers to get dead fish out of the cages.”

As excavators were employed to remove the large volume of the dead fish, Al-Jumaili warned that prices could more than double to 10,000 Iraqi dinars ($8.43) per kilo after the losses.

“We call on the government to compensate all the fish farmers, whether those who have officially-licensed farms or those who do not, to enable them to continue fish production. Our losses were huge, as you can see.”

The agriculture ministry said in a statement on Sunday that illness among the carp spread quickly because of cramped conditions in breeding cages, and that reduced water flow along the Euphrates had also contributed.

It said that in the last 48 hours no new cases of perishing fish have been reported. The official Al-Sabah newspaper reported on Sunday that tests would be done outside the country to try to find out what killed the fish.

The incident is a dramatic sign of worsening pollution and water problems in Iraq, which is increasingly struggling to provide a sufficient supply of clean water, especially in the south of the country.

In Basra, some 300 miles (500 km) to the southeast of Baghdad, the Shatt-al-Arab river, where the Euphrates and Tigris meet, is now so polluted it threatens the lives of the more than 4 million inhabitants.

($1 = 1,186.4300 Iraqi dinars)
…

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that China would take steps to widen access to its markets as he opened a huge trade fair amid criticism from other countries about China’s economic and business practices.

Xi said China would lower tariffs, take more action to punish violations of intellectual property rights, and work to boost domestic consumption of imported goods.

Speaking at the trade expo in Shanghai, Xi pledged to “embrace the world” as China promotes the growing consumer market in the world’s second-largest economy.

He did not mention U.S. President Donald Trump by name, but alluded to Trump’s “America first” economic policies by criticizing isolationism and citing a need to defend multilateral trade.

​The United States and China are locked in a battle over trade, with Trump complaining about the trade gap between the two countries and accusing China of stealing intellectual property and imposing policies that make it more difficult for U.S. companies to access the Chinese market.

Trump has announced boosted tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods, while China has countered with $110 billion in tariffs on U.S. products. Xi and Trump are expected to meet later this month.

The European Union has also complained about China’s trade policies, including criticizing Xi for not following through on earlier reform pledges. The EU called last week for Xi to present concrete steps to opening its market.
…

When employees enter Saba — an Israeli restaurant started by award-winning chef Alon Shaya — they pass by the company’s mission statement, which emphasizes the importance of a safe and comfortable working environment. Only at the end does it really get around to food with the words: “Then, we will cook and serve and be happy.”

“The team is number one and that is who we are as a company,” said Shaya, explaining the genesis of his and his wife’s new venture, Pomegranate Hospitality , which includes restaurants in New Orleans and Denver, and the environment he hopes to create for the company’s nearly 150 employees.

Discussions about new restaurants generally revolve around the food. And at Saba the piping hot pita bread or the blue crab hummus is discussion-worthy. But long before the first plate of shakshouka was served, Shaya and his team focused on how to create an inclusive work environment different than the toxic restaurant workplaces exposed by the #MeToo movement.

Just over a year ago, Shaya was part owner and executive chef of three restaurants in the Besh Restaurant Group, headed by New Orleans chef John Besh, including his James Beard-awarding winning namesake Israeli restaurant.

Then a story in NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune detailed allegations of sexual misconduct in Besh’s company, causing Besh to step down. Shaya wasn’t personally accused of misconduct but the story detailed allegations of harassment at two of his restaurants. Shaya was quoted in the story about concerns he had over BRG’s then-lack of a human resources department. Shaya has said that’s what led to his firing — something Besh’s company disputed. A messy legal battle ensued during which Shaya lost all rights to his namesake restaurant.

Fast forward to current day: Shaya sits at Saba discussing the policies and procedures Pomegranate has put in place to ensure a safe working environment.

The interview process includes questions way beyond whether a person has waited tables before (‘What was the last gift you bought for somebody?’). Management holds 30- and 90-day chats with new employees and then every six months. The restaurants are closed Monday and Tuesday so everyone has a guaranteed two days in a row off.

Women populate high-profile roles including executive chef in New Orleans. About 60 percent of each restaurant’s staff is women. They’ve adopted ideas from other restaurants including a system used by Erin Wade at the Oakland, California-based Homeroom to deal with sexual harassment and a code of conduct for guest chefs used by Raleigh, N.C.-based restaurateur Ashley Christiansen.

Service is limited during 2:30 to 4 p.m. so the staff can sit together for a meal, often accompanied by staff presentations to their co-workers. Some topics are work-related. But employees are also encouraged to share what interests them. During a recent session, cook Timmy Harris talked to the waiters, managers, and cooks about existentialism, Southern literature and author Walker Percy.

“It kind of drives home the point that this is a place for people to develop themselves. It’s not just a restaurant. We’re not just slinging pita,” Harris said after.

Shaya said he can’t talk much about what happened while working at BRG for legal reasons but says now that he and his wife own their company they’re able to create the structure they want.

“Even in our restaurants someone will be inappropriate at some point,” Shaya said. “And I know that when that happens people are going to jump on it because people have really bought into the values.”

Experts say many issues have contributed to sexual misconduct in the restaurant industry, including a tipping structure that can inhibit servers — often women — from complaining about out-of-line customers, little training for managers and high turnover. Restaurants’ small size — often family-owned or single units — has historically meant they don’t have strong HR policies, said Juan Madera, an associate professor at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management.

Allegations of sexual misconduct at restaurants and the wider #MeToo discussion have been a “wakeup call for restaurants,” Madera said. He’s hearing from restaurant associations and others who want to figure out how to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

Raleigh, N.C.-based chef and restaurateur Ashley Christiansen, who talked with Shaya about his new venture, says a restaurant’s HR presence is as important as the food or the linen service. She says it’s difficult to measure how much progress has been made across the industry since the growth of the #MeToo movement, but she sees cause for optimism.

“I feel like it’s the thing I talk about more than food now, and I think that’s a positive thing,” she said.

Shaya says his new venture hasn’t been without problems. He’s fired one person who was cursing at another employee. But he’s also been inspired by staff members calling out someone who makes an off-color joke or not tolerating negativity.

“We’ve taken it down to the very basics of kindness, and we stick to it and I feel that we’ve attracted a lot of people who believe in that,” he said.
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Facing a blizzard of trade complaints, China is throwing an “open for business” import fair hosted by President Xi Jinping to rebrand itself as a welcoming market and positive global force. 

More than 3,000 companies from 130 countries selling everything from Egyptian dates to factory machinery are attending the China International Import Expo, opening Monday in the commercial hub of Shanghai. Its VIP guest list includes prime ministers and other leaders from Russia, Pakistan and Vietnam. 

The United States, fighting a tariff war with Beijing, has no plans to send a high-level envoy. 

Xi’s government is emphasizing the promise of China’s growing consumer market to help defuse complaints Beijing abuses the global trading system by reneging on promises to open its industries. 

“This says, look, we’re not a global parasite that is creating massive deficits, we are buying goods,” said Kerry Brown, a Chinese politics specialist at King’s College London. 

The event also is part of efforts to develop a trading network centered on China and increase its influence in a Western-dominated global system. 

President Donald Trump and his “America First” trade policies that threaten to raise import barriers to the world’s biggest consumer market loom in the background. 

Exporters, especially developing countries, want closer relations with China to help “insulate themselves from what is happening with Trump and the U.S.,” said Gareth Leather of Capital Economics. 

China has cut tariffs and announced other measures this year to boost imports, which rose 15.9 percent in 2017 to $1.8 trillion. But none addresses the U.S. complaints about its technology policy that prompted Trump to impose penalty tariffs of up to 25 percent on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports. Beijing has responded with tariff hikes on $110 billion worth of American imports. 

Chinese ambitions

Chinese leaders have rejected pressure to roll back plans such as “Made in China 2025,” which calls for state-led creation of global champions in robotics and other fields, ambitions that some American officials worry will undermine U.S. industrial leadership. 

To keep the economy growing, China needs to nurture its consumer market, and that requires more imports. 

But foreign companies say regulators are still trying to squeeze them out of promising industries and that they face pressure to hand over technology. 

The Shanghai expo “will be of little consequence to U.S. and other companies unless its pageantry is matched by meaningful and measurable changes in China trade practices,” Kenneth Jarrett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, said in an email. 

Some companies might get a brief sales boost, “but its long-run impact will be defined by China’s willingness to end many of its unfair trade practices,” said Jarrett. 

Europe, Japan and other trading partners have been leery of Trump’s tactics but echo U.S. complaints. 

They say Beijing improperly hampers access to finance, logistics and other service industries. European leaders are frustrated that Beijing bars foreign acquisitions of most assets while its own companies are on a global buying spree. 

Writing in a Chinese business magazine, the French and German ambassadors to Beijing appealed for changes including an end to requirements that foreign companies operate in joint ventures with state-owned partners. They called for an overhaul of rules they say hinder companies from profiting from and protecting their technology. 

“We encourage China to address these issues through concrete and systematic measures that go beyond tariff adjustments,” Ambassadors Jean-Maurice Ripert of France and Clemens von Goetze of Germany wrote in the magazine Caixin. 

China already is the No. 1 trading partner for all its Asian neighbors, though a big share of the iron ore, industrial components and other goods it buys are turned into smartphones, TV sets and other goods for export. 

Better access to some goods

Tariff cuts announced over the past year were aimed at giving Chinese consumers better access to foreign goods. Chinese leaders emphasize those include anti-cancer drugs and other medical products. But many are specialty goods such as high-end baby strollers, avocados and mineral water that don’t compete with Chinese suppliers. 

The Shanghai expo also gives Beijing a chance to repair its image following complaints about its “Belt and Road Initiative” to expand trade by building ports, railways and other infrastructure across a vast arc of 65 countries from the South Pacific through Asia to Africa and Europe. 

Governments including Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand have scrapped or scaled back projects because of high costs or complaints that too little work goes to local companies. Sri Lanka, Kenya and other nations have run into trouble repaying Chinese loans. 

“It’s become too associated with debt and China getting what it wants,” said Brown. “They are trying to get out this more positive message that China is open for business.”  
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A hungry American economy powered by a strong U.S. dollar saw record imports in September, driving the U.S. trade deficit to its highest level in seven months, the government reported Friday. 

And amid President Donald Trump’s trade war with Beijing, the U.S. trade deficit with China swelled again, as crucial soybean exports — a sore spot for Republicans in next week’s midterm elections — continued to suffer. 

With rising wages and low unemployment, Americans purchased more foreign-made telecommunications equipment, computers, mobile phones, aircraft engines, clothing and toys, the Commerce Department said. 

The U.S. trade deficit posted its fourth straight monthly increase, rising 1.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted $54 billion, significantly overshooting analyst forecasts, as imports hit $266.6 billion, the highest level ever recorded. Exports also rose to $212.6 billion. 

The U.S. trade gap has increased a steep 10.1 percent so far this year. 

The expanding trade gap should weigh on GDP calculations in the third quarter, although many estimates may already have factored in the trade drag. 

Record imports from China

Trade with China, a central target of Trump’s aggressive economic agenda, was a clear culprit, as the deficit in goods with the world’s second-largest economy jumped $3 billion to $37.4 billion, seasonally adjusted. 

Goods imports from China hit a record of $47.7 billion, seasonally adjusted, an increase of $3.5 billion from August. 

The trade report showed American producers sold more gold, petroleum products and civilian aircraft, but exports of soybeans fell $700 billion from August, also largely the result of the trade spat with China. 

U.S. imports rose faster than exports on robust spending by companies and consumers — driving the U.S. goods deficit to its highest level ever recorded at $76.3 billion. 

U.S. goods imports also were the highest ever, at $217.6 billion. 

Analysts say recent tax cuts and fiscal stimulus should support demand that outstrips domestic production, keeping imports high and allowing the trade gap to widen further. 

Excluding oil and aircraft, U.S. exports fell at an annual rate of 8.6 percent, something Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics called “grim.” 

Trump said Thursday that he had spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about trade confrontation, and the leaders are expected to meet late this month at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina. 

That will be a chance for the two to work toward ending a deadlock, which has imposed steep tariffs on hundreds of millions of dollars in two-way trade. 

No high hopes

However, senior White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow poured cold water on expectations for a breakthrough. 

“Look, there’s no massive movement to deal with trade,” Kudlow told CNBC on Friday. 

Markets, manufacturers and importers are bracing for a stiff increase in U.S. duties on Chinese goods, which are due to rise to 25 percent on January 1. 

Trump has slapped tariffs on more than $250 billion in imports from China, alleging massive state intervention and technological theft, and has sought leverage in talks by threatening to put duties on all Chinese imports. 

Wall Street interrupted this week’s rally, closing down sharply on fears the U.S.-China trade war could worsen. 

“The risks from a trade war remain our biggest concern in light of recent events,” Oxford Economics said in a research note. 
…

U.S. employers added a stellar 250,000 jobs last month and boosted average pay by the most in nearly a decade in an effort to attract and keep workers.

The Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, the last major economic data before the Nov. 6 election, also shows the unemployment rate remained at a five-decade low of 3.7 percent.

The influx of new job-seekers lifted the proportion of Americans with jobs to the highest level since January 2009.

Consumers are the most confident they have been in 18 years and are spending freely and propelling brisk economic growth. The U.S. economy is in its 10th year of expansion, the second-longest such period on record, and October marks the 100th straight month of hiring, a record streak.

 
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Washington ratcheted up pressure on Venezuela’s leftist President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday with new measures aimed at disrupting the South American country’s gold exports, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said.

Bolton promised a tough stance by the Trump administration toward “dictators and despots near our shores” and singled out Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua in a speech in Miami, which is home to large numbers of migrants from Cuba and Venezuela.

He spoke days before U.S. elections next week that include close races for a Senate seat and the governorship in Florida.

His remarks were likely to be well received by those Cuban-Americans and other Hispanics in Florida who favor stronger U.S. pressure on Cuba’s Communist government and other leftist governments in Latin America.

In his prepared remarks for the speech, Bolton said President Donald Trump had signed an executive order to ban U.S. persons from dealing with entities and individuals involved with “corrupt or deceptive” gold sales from Venezuela.

“Many of you in the audience today have personally suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of the regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, only to survive, fight back, conquer, and overcome,” Bolton said in his prepared remarks.

“The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere – Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua – has finally met its match,” he said.

Bolton spoke at Freedom Tower – a building where Cuban refugees were welcomed in the 1960s following Fidel Castro’s revolution – a day after Trump campaigned in Florida for Republican candidates in tight Senate and gubernatorial races.

Florida has traditionally been a swing state and former President Barack Obama was scheduled to rally Democrats in Miami on Friday ahead of the Nov. 6 elections.

Trump has taken a harder line on Cuba after Obama sought to set aside decades of hostility between Washington and Havana. He has rolled back parts of Obama’s 2014 detente by tightening rules on Americans traveling to the Caribbean island and restricting U.S. companies from doing business there.

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department added more than two dozen entities to a list of Cuban organizations associated with country’s military and intelligence services, Bolton said in his prepared remarks. U.S. persons and companies are banned from doing business with the restricted companies.

Bolton said Cuba is aiding Maduro’s government in Venezuela, referring to the close ties between the two countries since Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, came to power in 1999.

‘Robust sanctions’

Almost 2 million Venezuelans have fled their country since 2015, driven out by food and medicine shortages, hyperinflation, and violent crime. Thousands have made their way to south Florida.

Maduro, who denies limiting political freedoms, has said he is the victim of an “economic war” led by U.S.-backed adversaries.

Venezuela exported 23.62 tonnes of gold worth $900 million to Turkey in the first nine months of this year, compared with zero in the same period last year, official Turkish data showed – an illustration of how the South American country is shifting its pattern of trade following a wave of U.S. sanctions that

began last year.

Bolton also singled out Nicaragua for criticism over leftist President Daniel Ortega’s crackdown on political opponents, saying its government “will feel the full weight of America’s robust sanctions regime.”

Colombian President Ivan Duque and Brazil’s president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, are “likeminded leaders,” Bolton said, adding the United States would partner with them and leaders in Mexico, Argentina and other Latin American nations to boost security and the economy in the region.

Also on Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted its 27th annual resolution calling for an end to the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba after a failed attempt by Washington to amend the text to push Cuba to improve its human rights record.
…

U.S. stocks rose on Thursday, as robust earnings reports supported a third day of recovery from a bruising selloff in October, but a drop in Apple’s shares ahead of results kept technology stocks under pressure.

Chemicals producer DowDuPont Inc rose 6.6 percent after quarterly profit topped estimates and the company announced a $3 billion share buyback.

NXP Semiconductors climbed 8.6 percent after the chipmaker topped profit and revenue estimates, while American International Group Inc gained 4.7 percent after the insurer posted a smaller-than-quarterly loss.

Markets also got a lift after U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet he had a “very good” talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade and North Korea and that the two planned to meet at the upcoming G-20 summit.

The rebound comes after the benchmark S&P 500 in October posted its worst monthly performance since September 2011, battered by worries over rising borrowing costs, global trade disputes and a possible slowdown in U.S. corporate profits.

“Over the past few days, we’ve seen the pressure valve taken off the selling which certainly helps from a sentiment perspective,” said Michael Antonelli, managing director, institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee.

The S&P technology index slipped 0.1 percent after two days of solid gains, with Apple, last among the major technology names to report earnings, falling 0.2 percent ahead of earnings after markets close.

Netflix, Facebook and Alphabet also fell, pushing the communication services index down 0.3 percent.

Shares in Spotify Technology fell about 10 percent after the paid music streaming service reported quarterly revenue and margins in line with expectations and a modest rise in premium subscribers.

S&P 500 companies are on pace to have posted a 26.3 percent rise in third-quarter earnings with more than half of the constituents having reported, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Despite the big overall profit increase, some high-profile companies have issued disappointing reports.

At 10:12 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 147.40 points, or 0.59 percent, at 25,263.16, the S&P 500 was up 12.40 points, or 0.46 percent, at 2,724.14. The Nasdaq Composite was up 23.57 points, or 0.32 percent, at 7,329.47.

Eight of the 11 major S&P sectors were higher, with a 2 percent jump in the materials index leading the gainers after DowDuPont’s results.

Health insurer Cigna Corp rose 3.1 percent after beating quarterly profit estimates and raising its full-year earnings forecast on tight cost controls.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.99-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.28-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded 6 new 52-week highs and 2 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 12 new highs and 29 new lows.
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