U.S. President Donald Trump has not “set in stone” any decisions on escalating tariffs on Chinese goods and may withdraw some duties if there are promising policy discussions with China, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Wednesday.

Kudlow said on CNBC that the meeting agenda between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of November in Buenos Aires has not yet been worked out, but “we may have a very good meeting in Argentina with President Xi.”

Asked about whether Trump would proceed with tariffs if the meeting fails to ease trade tensions, Kudlow said: “I would say nothing is set in stone right now. By the way, the president on one of the cable shows, did say – it didn’t get picked up – that if some kind of amicable deal with China were to happen, then a lot of tariffs might be pulled back.”

Kudlow, who heads the White House’s National Economic Council, added that Trump wasn’t making a promise, but giving a “very important hypothetical.”

Bloomberg reported on Monday that the Trump administration was preparing to announce tariffs on the remaining Chinese imports, about $257 billion worth, if the meeting fails to ease the U.S.-China trade war, citing unnamed sources.

Trump has long threatened to impose tariffs on all $500 billion-plus goods imports from China if Beijing fails to meet his demands for sweeping changes to its policies on intellectual property, technology transfers, industrial subsidies and local market access.

Kudlow said there was no specific trigger point for a decision to impose more tariffs on Chinese goods. “The policy talks determine this, not an arbitrary timetable. If the policy talks go well, then we’ll have a much better situation. If the policy talks don’t, it may deteriorate,” Kudlow said.

He said Trump said in a recent interview that if there are “promising policy discussions, I don’t know about a full fledged deal, but if things go well, maybe some tariffs get withdrawn and maybe not.”

Kudlow did not specify the interview to which he was referring.

In an interview on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” show on Monday, Trump did not specifically mention the potential withdrawal of tariffs, but said he expects “a great deal” with China.
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President Donald Trump’s proposal to replace an Obama-era policy to fight climate change with a weaker plan allowing states to write their own rules on emissions from coal-fired power plants was criticized by coastal states, but applauded by coal interests on Wednesday.

Under the proposed Affordable Clean Energy plan that acting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler issued in August, the federal government would set carbon emission guidelines, but states would have the leeway to set less stringent standards on coal plants, taking into account the age and upgrade costs of facilities.

The heads of environmental and energy agencies from 14 mostly coastal states, including California, New York and North Carolina, told the EPA in joint comments on the Trump plan that it would result in minimal reductions of greenhouse gases, and possibly result in increased emissions, relative to having no federal program on the pollution.

“We urge EPA to abandon this proposal and instead to maintain or update the (Obama era) Clean Power Plan,” which the states said would fulfill EPA’s obligations under federal clean air law and support the efforts of states to mitigate the effects of climate change. Some states including New York and Virginia have threatened to sue the EPA if the plan becomes law.

The comment period on the plan ends on Wednesday night and a final rule from the EPA is expected later this year.

Coal and some utility interests lauded the Trump plan.

“The proposed ACE rule is a welcome return to federal restraint after years of punitive overreach,” said Hal Quinn, the president and CEO of the National Mining Association, an industry group.

The coal industry had said President Barack Obama’s climate regulations represented a “war on coal,” but Trump’s promises to reduce regulations have not led to a revival, as the industry struggles with competition from an abundance of cheap natural gas. 

Ongoing closings of coal-fired plants have pushed U.S. coal consumption by utilities this year to the lowest since 1983, according to the Energy Information Administration.

In August, the EPA projected the plan would result in $400 million a year in economic benefits and reduce retail power prices by up to 0.5 percent by 2025. The EPA also forecast that under the rule, coal production would rise by up to 5.8 percent by 2025.

The Obama-era plan, which had been put on hold by the U.S. Supreme Court, set overall carbon-reduction goals for each state.
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Cuba’s foreign trade and investment minister said on Wednesday the country had signed nearly 200 investment projects worth $5.5 billion since it slashed taxes and made other adjustments to its investment law in 2014.

Cuba began a major effort to attract foreign investment as socialist ally Venezuela’s economy went into crisis and has ratcheted it up as export revenues decline and the Trump administration backtracks on a detente begun under then-U.S. President Barack Obama.

“Foreign investment in Cuba is growing despite the recent strengthening of the U.S. economic, trade and financial blockade, though it is below what we want,” the minister, Rodrigo Malmierca, said at an investment forum in Havana.

Even as the forum unfolded, debate on an annual resolution condemning U.S. sanctions got under way at the U.N. General Assembly in New York and the Trump administration said that on Thursday it would announce new sanctions aimed at Cuba’s military and security services.

Malmierca said 40 new projects were signed over the last year valued at $1.5 billion.

Many agreements are in the tourism sector and are often simple management and marketing accords. Others are in manufacturing, oil exploration and, to a lesser extent, areas such as pharmaceuticals, agriculture and logistics.

Cuba says it wants a minimum $2.5 billion per year in direct foreign investment to dig its way out of years of crisis and stagnation.

While $5.5 billion in deals may have been signed since 2014, the government has said only around $500 million has actually been invested annually, including foreign government credits and donations.

Diplomats and business officials report that many projects are hard pressed to obtain financing and the Communist-run country’s bureaucracy also slows deals from getting off the ground.

For example, since 2014 five golf resorts valued at close to $2.5 billion were signed with British, Chinese and Spanish investors, but ground has yet to be broken on any of them, according to foreign business officials and diplomats with knowledge of the projects.

Malmierca said the country was working to overcome numerous obstacles for investors, such as lengthy delays for project approval, lack of experience among Cuban negotiators and Cuba’s dual monetary system with fixed exchange rates.

Under then-leader Fidel Castro, foreign investment was first nationalized, then, after the fall of former benefactor the Soviet Union it was viewed as an unfortunate necessity. Today it is lauded as an integral part of the country’s development strategy.
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Fitch Ratings changed its outlook on Mexico’s long-term foreign-currency debt issues Wednesday from “stable” to “negative,” citing the potential policies of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The leftist Lopez Obrador has tried to smooth anxieties in the business community, but upset many on Monday by cancelling a partly built, $13 billion new airport on the outskirts of Mexico City.

The private sector had strongly backed the airport project, but Lopez Obrador called it wasteful. Instead he plans to upgrade existing commercial and military airports. He made the decision based on a public referendum that was poorly organized and drew only about 1 percent of the country’s voters.

Alfredo Coutino, Latin America director at Moody’s Analytics, said the decision to cancel the airport project “added not only volatility but also uncertainty to the economy’s future, because it signals that policymaking in the new administration can be based more on such kind of subjective consultation and less on technical or fundamentals consistent with the country’s needs.”

“The cancellation has certainly introduced an element of uncertainty in markets and investors,” Coutino wrote, “which could start affecting confidence and credibility.”

Fitch confirmed its BBB+ investment-grade rating for Mexican government debt, but said Wednesday “there are risks that the follow-through on previously approved reforms, for example in the energy sector, could stall.”

Lopez Obrador has said he will review private concessionary oil exploration contracts granted under current President Enrique Pena Nieto’s energy reform, but won’t cancel them if they were fairly granted. The fear is that future exploration contracts may be delayed or cancelled.

Lopez Obrador won’t take office until December1, but has already announced major policy decisions.

Some of his policy announcements – like fiscal restraint, respect for the independence of the central banks and a pledge to avoid new debt – earned praise from investors.

But Fitch noted the decision to cancel the airport “sends a negative signal to investors.”

Lopez Obrador has also pledged to have the state-owned oil company, Pemex, build more refineries to lower imports of gasoline.

Fitch wrote that this type of proposal will “would entail higher borrowing and larger contingent liabilities to the government.”

 
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Bitcoin was heading towards a year-on-year loss on Wednesday, its 10th birthday, the first loss since last year’s bull market, when the original and biggest digital coin muscled its way to worldwide attention with months of frenzied buying.

By 1300 GMT, bitcoin was trading at $6,263 on the BitStamp exchange, leaving investors who had bought it on Halloween 2017 facing yearly losses of nearly 3 percent.

A year ago, bitcoin closed at $6,443.22 as it tore towards a record high of near $20,000, hit in December.

That run, fueled by frenzied buying by retail investors from South Korea to the United States, pushed bitcoin to calendar-year gains of over 1,300 percent.

Ten years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s still-unidentified founder, released a white paper detailing the need for an online currency that could be used for payments without the involvement of a third party, such as a bank.

Traders and market participants said the Halloween milestone was inevitable, given losses of around 70 percent from bitcoin’s peak and the continuing but incomplete shift towards investment by mainstream financial firms.

“The value mechanisms of crypto and bitcoin today are based more on underlying tech than hype and FOMO (fear of missing out),” said Josh Bramley, head trader at crypto wealth management firm Blockstars.

Growing use of blockchain – the distributed ledger technology that underpins bitcoin – is now powering valuations of the digital currency, he said, cautioning that some expectations for widespread use have not yet materialized.

Others said improvements to infrastructure such as custody services may allow mainstream investors who are wary of buying bitcoin to take positions.

“We see behind closed doors financial and non-financial institutions beavering away to create the infrastructure,” said Ben Sebley, head of brokerage at NKB Group, a blockchain advisory and investment firm.

Bitcoin has endured year-on-year losses before, according to data from CryptoCompare, most recently in 2015.

Retail investors still account for a strong proportion of trading, market players said.

Investors who bet early on bitcoin and have stuck with it have faced a roller-coaster ride in its first decade. Many told Reuters they are optimistic that they are still onto a winner.

 
…

The population of Italy’s Renaissance canal city of Venice has been on a steady decline for years. At the same time, the number of tourists keeps rising and many Venetians complain their city should not be turned into what some critics describe as a “Disneyland on water.” Their biggest complaint is about the arrival of gigantic cruise ships that dock right at Saint Mark’s Square. Big ships present a dilemma for the city and its economy.

The Venetians have long called them “monsters” because, many say, the massive cruise ships in their lagoon are not only eyesores that block the view, but also displace water due to their size and have been hurting the foundations of the city’s gorgeous Renaissance-era buildings.

Nearly 99-percent of the 18,000 Venetians who voted in an unofficial referendum organized by the No Big Ships campaign group in June last year said they wanted the vessels to stay out of the lagoon.

Fewer than six months later and under intense public pressure, the Italian government announced ships weighing more than 96,000 tons will be banned from entering St. Mark’s basin and have to dock elsewhere.

Now, questions are emerging — mainly by the cruise industry — on what the restrictions mean for the economy of Venice, and Italy in general.

Cruise lines say they have an interest in protecting the sites they seek to showcase, and are defending their presence by pointing to the economic benefits their ships bring to port cities. Cruise Lines International Association President Roberto Martinoli spoke to reporters in Rome.

He said the cruise industry represents nearly three percent of Venice’s GDP and this, he said, cannot be ignored.

Martinoli contends the ships should not be blamed for Venice’s problems and notes they represent less than 10 percent of traffic in the lagoon.

He said cruise ships are not the “giants of evil” that some say are responsible for the city’s overcrowding. Cruise passengers represent, he added, only five percent of Venice’s tourist numbers and have diminished by a quarter from their peak five years ago.

He also said the cruise industry has spent billions on environmental research and innovation projects.

It will not be easy to convince Venice residents who say the damage done by cruise ships — especially to the environment — outweighs any economic benefit from tourists who patronize the city’s cheap souvenir shops, restaurants, and museums.

At a demonstration earlier this year, Stefano Micheletti of the No Big Ships committee expressed sentiments common to many Venetians.

Micheletti said large ships must stay out of the lagoon because it is not only about the visual impact next to St. Mark’s Square or the possibility of an accident, but about the lagoon’s eco-system. Big ships must stay out, he added, because they are a cause for pollution that critics say is ruining the historic city.

 
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The future economy minister tapped by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro insisted on Tuesday that he wanted to fast-track an unpopular pension reform to help balance government finances despite mounting resistance to getting it done this year.

Paulo Guedes, whom Bolsonaro selected as a “super minister” with a portfolio combining the current ministries of finance, planning and development, has urged Congress to pass an initial version of pension reform before the Jan. 1 inauguration.

“Our pension funds are an airplane with five bombs on board that will explode at any moment,” Guedes said on Tuesday. “We’re already late on pension reform, so the sooner the better.”

He called the reform essential to controlling surging public debt in Latin America’s largest economy and making space for public investments to jump-start a sluggish economy. Markets surged in the weeks ahead of Bolsonaro’s Sunday victory on the expectation that he could pull off the tough fiscal agenda.

Brazil’s benchmark Bovespa stock index rose 3.7 percent on Tuesday, boosted by strong corporate earnings and the resolve shown by Guedes on pension reform.

Yet the University of Chicago-trained economist, who is getting his first taste of public service, met with skepticism from more seasoned politicians.

Rodrigo Maia, the speaker of the lower house of Congress, said on Tuesday that reform is urgent, but cautioned that the conditions to pass it were still far off.

Major Olimpio, a lawmaker from Bolsonaro’s own party who helped run his campaign, agreed the political climate was not ready for reform.

Even Bolsonaro’s future chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, said in a Monday radio interview that he only expects to introduce a reform plan next year.

After a meeting with Lorenzoni, Guedes said the decision on timing was ultimately a political one that the chief of staff would weigh.

“We can’t go from a victory at the ballot box to chaos in Congress,” Guedes told journalists.

On other issues, Guedes made clear he was the final word on economic matters, laying out plans to give the central bank more institutional independence and clarifying comments made by Lorenzoni about exchange-rate policy.

“You are all scared because he is a politician talking about the economy. That’s like me talking about politics. It’s not going to work,” Guedes said.

Hot Button Issues

While advisers work out the details of his economic program, Bolsonaro revisited some of his most contentious campaign promises on Monday night: looser gun laws, a ban on government advertising for media that “lie,” and urging a high-profile

judge to join his government.

In interviews with TV stations and on social media, Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old former Army captain who won 55 percent of Sunday’s vote after running on a law-and-order platform, made clear he would push through his conservative agenda.

Bolsonaro said he wants Sergio Moro, the judge who has overseen the sprawling “Car Wash” corruption trials and convicted former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of graft, to serve as his justice minister.

Barring that, he said he would nominate Moro to the Supreme Court. The next vacancy on the court is expected in 2020.

Bolsonaro had not formally invited Moro as of Tuesday afternoon, and the judge remained noncommittal on the proposal.

“In case I’m indeed offered a post, it will be subject to a balanced discussion and reflection,” Moro said in a statement.

Media Showdown

Late on Monday, Bolsonaro said in an interview with Globo TV that he would cut government advertising funds that flow to any “lying” media outlets.

During his campaign, the right-winger imitated U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy of aggressively confronting the media, taking aim at Globo TV and Brazil’s biggest newspaper, the Folha de S.Paulo.

“I am totally in favor of freedom of the press,” Bolsonaro told Globo TV. “But if it’s up to me, press that shamelessly lies will not have any government support.”

Bolsonaro was referring to the hundreds of millions of reais the Brazilian government spends in advertising each year in local media outlets, mainly for promotions of state-run firms.

The UOL news portal, owned by the Grupo Folha, which also controls the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, used Brazil’s freedom of information act as the basis for a 2015 article that showed Globo received 565 million reais in federal government spending in 2014. Folha got 14.6 million reais that year.

Globo said on Tuesday that federal government advertising represented less than 4 percent of the revenue for its flagship channel, TV Globo, without providing more detailed figures.

Grupo Folha did not reply to requests for comment.
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Facebook is reporting a slight revenue miss but stronger than expected profit in its third-quarter earnings report.

Coming three months after the company’s stock suffered its worst one-day drop in history, wiping out $119 billion of its market value, the mixed results were perhaps not the redemption Facebook hoped for.

But shares inched a bit higher after-hours, suggesting, at least, that the social media giant didn’t further spook investors. With the myriad problems Facebook has been grappling with lately, this is likely good news for the company.

Facebook had 2.27 billion monthly users at the end of the quarter, below the 2.29 billion analysts were expecting. Facebook says it changed the way it calculates users, which reduced the total slightly. The company’s user base was still up 10 percent from 2.07 billion monthly users a year ago.

Earnings were $1.76 a share and revenue was $13.73 billion, an increase of 33 percent, for the July-September period.

Analysts had expected earnings of $1.46 per share on revenue of $13.77 billion, according to FactSet.

The company warned last quarter that its revenue growth will slow down significantly for at least the rest of this year and that expenses will continue to balloon. The following day the stock plunged 19 percent. It was the biggest one-day plunge in history, and the shares not only haven’t recovered, they’ve since fallen further amid a broader decline in tech stocks .

Facebook’s investors, users, employees and executives have been grappling not just with questions over how much money the company makes and how many people use it, but its effects on users’ mental health and worries over what it’s doing to political discourse and elections around the world. Is Facebook killing us? Is it killing democracy?

The problems have been relentless for the past two years. Facebook can hardly crawl its way out of one before another comes up. It began with “fake news” and its effects on the 2016 presidential election (a notion CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially dismissed) and continued with claims of bias among conservatives that still haven’t relented.

Then there’s hate speech, hacks and a massive privacy scandal in which Facebook exposed user data to a data mining firm, along with resulting moves toward government regulation of social media.

Amid all this, there have been sophisticated attempts from Russia and Iran to interfere with elections and stir up political discord in the U.S.

Facebook’s stock climbed $2.68, or 1.8 percent, to $148.90 in after-hours trading.
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A yellow excavator, forklift and other heavy equipment made by U.S. firm Caterpillar gleam outside Cuba’s annual trade fair, reflecting once-bright hopes for increased U.S.-Cuban commerce fanned by the 2014 detente between the old Cold War foes.

But inside the pavilion where U.S. firms present their wares, only eight have stands this year, according to a Reuters count. That is down from 13 last year and several dozen in 2015-16, underscoring the decline in U.S. business interest since Donald Trump became president.

Last year, the Trump administration tightened the decades-old trade embargo on the Communist-run island once more and sharply reduced staffing at the U.S. embassy in Havana due to a series of health incidents among U.S. diplomats.

“Trump has scared everyone off,” said Eduardo Aparicio, general manager of U.S. logistics company Apacargoexpress, operating under an exemption to the embargo allowing U.S. companies to sell food and medical supplies here.

Aparicio says he is struggling to find U.S. firms keen on doing business with Cuba given fears of reprisals from the Trump administration.

“Not that many things have changed with the Trump administration, but the outlook has. It no longer feels like we are advancing,” said Jay Brickman, vice president of Florida-based shipping company Crowley Maritime Corporation, which has been shipping to Cuba for 17 years.

“If you are a corporate executive who feels like nothing is happening, then eventually you look elsewhere.”

Brickman, Aparicio and others at Cuba’s premier business event said the country’s dire financial situation was another factor in declining U.S. business interest. Cuba is battling a cash crunch amid lower aid from ally Venezuela and weaker exports.

Brickman said Cuban orders via his firm were down 10 percent this year.

U.S. companies had embraced Cuba in the wake of the detente reached by former U.S. and Cuban Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro, jostling for a foothold in an opening market of 11 million consumers.

Lawyers working with U.S. firms interested in doing business with Cuba say the larger ones are taking a long-term view and remain keen.

Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar, for example, had lobbied to sell in Cuba for years before one of its dealers, privately held Puerto Rican company Rimco, said last year it was opening a distribution center here.

“This is the beginning of a lot of things to come,” Rimco Vice President Caroline McConnie said of the machinery displayed outside the pavilion.

McConnie said Rimco would look to rent as well as sell machines in Cuba given its cash crunch, and expected to announce its first two deals soon: one to rent equipment for quarries and another to sell marine motors for tugboats.

“We will benefit from the first movers’ advantage,” she said.
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Tehran is courting Ankara in a bid to ease the impact of renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran. 

On Tuesday, Turkey, a principal importer of Iranian energy, reaffirmed its opposition to sanctions against Iran scheduled to take effect on Nov. 4.

“Taking into account the Islamic Republic of Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” the Turkish, Azeri and Iranian foreign ministers, “condemned unilateral sanctions as they negatively affect trade and commercial development among their countries,” read a statement from the three officials.

The release of the statement followed trilateral talks among the foreign ministers in Istanbul.

“Unfortunately, a law-breaking country (the United States) seeks to punish a country (Iran) that is abiding by the law,” said Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. “This method will have severe consequences for the world order,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump accuses Tehran of violating the JCPOA, an international agreement controlling Iran’s nuclear energy program and has introduced sweeping sanctions specifically targeting Iran’s energy imports.

Ankara has been in the forefront of publicly opposing the sanctions. “Iran is Turkey’s neighbor and will not enforce the sanctions,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

“Turkey does not always follow American foreign policy,” he added. “Just because you are not following American foreign policy does not mean you are against America. In the Iran case, America has always made concessions towards Turkey.”

Turkey, along with India and China, are among Iran’s biggest energy customers. All three countries are reportedly resisting U.S. efforts to comply with its imminent sanctions.

Energy-poor Turkey depends heavily on both Iranian natural gas and crude oil. However, in a move widely seen as placating Washington, for the past few months, Tupras, Turkey’s leading oil refiner, has reduced Iranian imports by as much as a half. Current imports, analyst say, are roughly equal to when the U.S. last imposed sanctions, under the Obama administration.

“Ankara is diversifying the crude oil it gets from Iran. That, it can do. However, when it comes to natural gas, that is another ballgame,” said former senior Turkish diplomat and energy expert Aydin Selcen.

“Ankara is right to say, ‘Look, we are buying most, if not all, of our gas from two sources — Russia and Iran — and it is a take-and-pay-agreement,'” Selcen explained.

“Question 1: Where will we get the same amount of natural gas, especially eastern and southeastern (Turkey)? And 2: We will have to pay (Iran) anyway, so it won’t make any difference.”

Selcen claims Ankara and Washington are already engaged in behind-the-scenes talks to resolve the impasse.

“The best Ankara can get from the U.S. at this time is to have some sort of waiver for imports of natural gas from Iran as winter is coming,” he said.

Previous Washington sanctions against Tehran saw Ankara being granted dispensations. However, initially, the Trump administration appeared to rule out any concessions. That stance, analysts say, seems to be softening.

Ankara is accused of exploiting past waivers on Iranian sanctions. Earlier this year, a New York court convicted and jailed Hakan Atilla, a senior executive of the Turkish state-owned Halkbank for violating Iranian sanctions.

U.S. Treasury authorities are considering imposing a significant fine on the bank that, analysts say, could be in the billions of dollars. Analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners said the magnitude of the penalty gives Washington powerful leverage.

“If there is a penalty for Halkbank, given the fact Turkey is refusing to abide by the Iranian sanctions most banks anticipate, there will be more sanctions on other Turkish banks, and I think it will be difficult to roll over our maturing loans and bonds,” Yesilada said.

Washington may refrain from using duress, since strained U.S.-Turkish relations got a boost this month. A Turkish court’s release of American pastor Andrew Brunson, a key demand of Trump, is widely interpreted as a significant gesture by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

Trump is also reportedly looking to Erdogan for cooperation over the diplomatic crisis about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

“The partnership between the United States and Turkey — NATO allies since 1952 — remains important,” said Trump in a message Monday, marking Turkey’s Republic Day celebrations.

Earlier this month, the two presidents spoke by telephone, and according to Turkish media reports, they will meet in Paris next month on the sidelines of the centennial commemorations marking the end of World War I.

Expectations of a compromise on Iran sanctions are growing.

“Turkey will take some stance against Iran without saying it,” said Selcen. “Turkey is not trumpeting the fact it’s diversifying its crude oil imports from Iran. And according to experts, Turkey is taking precautions when it comes to financial institutions.”

“Perhaps we will hear one thing and see another on the ground,” he added, “but one can predict tensions with the U.S., unless there is some understanding when it comes to Turkish natural gas from Iran.”
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When massive gold deposits were discovered about a decade ago in Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe, the rural district became famous for attracting hundreds of artisanal miners from across the country every year.

Wealthy small-scale prospectors regularly offer residents generous deals for their land, locals say. To many widows selling their unused land, that kind of money can be life-changing and a source of greater autonomy.

But in recent years, widows in Chimanimani have found that taking a deal can have consequences. Many say they have been taken to tribal courts by their husbands’ families for selling portions of their land.

“I feel bruised,” said Mavis, a 63-year-old widow from Haroni village who did not want to disclose her surname.

“I lived in peace as a widow in my home until last year, when I sold an unwanted acre of my late husband’s land to korokoza,” she said, using a colloquial term for an artisanal gold miner.

He paid her $2,000 in cash. “All hell broke loose,” Mavis explained.

When her male relatives found out about the sale, they reported her to the tribal court.

“The accusations were insane. They said I bewitched my husband, even though he died way back in 1979, in the colonial war,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The cultural norms of the Ndau people, who make up the majority of the population in Chimanimani, forbid widows from owning land their husbands leave behind or selling that land unless a male family member controls the transaction.

As her uncles laid claim to her late husband’s property, Mavis joined a growing number of widows whose male family members have denied them the right to sell land they are supposed to legally inherit.

“In our village, I am the fourth widow since 2017 to be brought to (tribal court) for selling land without male approval,” she said.

Her case is still ongoing.

Tribal Justice

According to Zimbabwe’s latest census, which was conducted in 2012, there are more than half a million widows in the country.

Throughout rural areas, widows routinely find themselves harassed and exploited by in-laws claiming the property their husbands left behind, rights activists say.

O’bren Nhachi, an activist and researcher focusing on natural resources and governance, said the problem has gotten worse in Chimanimani over the past few years, as the gold rush has pushed up the value of land.

“Chimanimani was a poor backwater district until gold was discovered. Suddenly, local land prices shot up because artisanal gold diggers are paying huge sums to snap up plots,” he said. “This has brought conflict, with male family members using patriarchy as a tool to dispossess widows of potential land sales income.”

Although Zimbabwe’s constitution gives women and men equal rights to property and land, in many rural communities tradition overrides national legislation, experts say.

Tribal custom dictates that chiefs are the custodians of communal land, and responsible for allocating land to villagers.

“A woman cannot sell land unless she has obtained permission from my Committee of Seven,” said Mutape Moyo, a tribal headman in Chimanimani, referring to the group of elders — all men — who hear cases in the local customary court.

But this makes it unclear who has legal ownership of land, Nhachi said.

“The laws of the country say the state is the owner of all land. Tribal chiefs are merely ‘custodians’. Does custodian mean they are owners?”

In a country where women carry out 70 percent of the agricultural work – according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization – Nhachi said more women need to be made aware of how to legally hold onto their land if their husbands die.

He said he would like to see the government implement legal awareness programs and properly define who owns and distributes land in rural Zimbabwe.

No Recourse

Provincial administrator Edward Seenza, the head civil servant of Manicaland province, where Chimanimani is located, said that if widows lose their land in tribal courts, there are ways for them to appeal and reverse the ruling.

“If anyone is unhappy with a village head’s decision, they can speak to a chief,’ he said. “Where this does not produce the desired result, they can take their complaint to the district administrator and further up to my office.”

But activists say few rural women know they have that option. And those who do are often too poor or too scared to travel to a government office.

Seenza said that so far, not one woman has come to him to appeal a tribal court ruling.

And without legal help, widows denied the right to sell their land can be left devastated.

Rejoice, a 38-year-old widow from Chipinge district, sold her late husband’s mango orchard two years ago to a wealthy gold digger for $4,000. She needed the money to pay for medication to treat a kidney tumor.

Her father-in-law took her to tribal court.

“I was ordered to refund the buyer, in cash, with punitive interest; pay court fines for ‘disrespect’; and surrender the rest of the land to male family custodians,” said Rejoice, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.

She paid back the buyer as much as she could, but still owes him some money. And her husband’s family is still fighting for ownership of the land, she added.

The court told her that if she does not honor the ruling, she could be thrown out of her home.

“I will end up a destitute, living on the roadside,” she said. “The thought of this gives me sleepless nights.”
…

Far more men than women think their companies offer equal pay and promote the sexes equally, yet younger generations are wising up, a U.S. entertainment industry survey found on Monday.

Only a quarter of women think their employers pay them the same as men, while twice as many men believe their company has no gender pay gap, according to the survey by CNBC, a business news channel, and job-oriented social networking site LinkedIn.

About one third of women said both sexes rise up the ranks at the same rate in their workplaces, while more than half of men think the promotion rates are equal, according to responses from at least 1,000 LinkedIn members who work in entertainment.

“Men, typically we found across industries … they’re not as cognizant as their female counterparts to these issues,” said Caroline Fairchild, managing editor at LinkedIn.

Other surveys in finance and technology have revealed similar findings, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Congress outlawed pay discrimination based on gender in the federal Equal Pay Act in 1963, yet public debate over why wages still lag drastically for women has snowballed in recent years.

Last year in the United States, working women earned 82 percent of what men were paid, the Pew Research Center found.

According to the CNBC-LinkedIn survey, four in five women said the workplace holds more obstacles to advancement for women than for men, but only about half of men held the same opinion.

However the survey found that younger men were more likely than their older peers to say they were aware of the obstacles that stop women from succeeding at work, according to Fairchild.

“Perhaps the old guard of the industry is thinking a certain way, but we are seeing a perception change in what perhaps younger people in the industry are thinking,” she added.

A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco ruled in April that employers cannot use workers’ salary histories to justify gender-based pay disparities, saying that would perpetuate a wage gap that is “an embarrassing reality of our economy.”

A handful of U.S. cities and states ban employers from asking potential hires about their salary histories.

The World Economic Forum reported a global economic gap of 58 percent between the sexes for 2016 and forecast women would have to wait 217 years before they are treated equally at work.

Gender inequality in the workplace could cost the world more than $160.2 trillion in lost earnings, according to the World Bank. The figure compares the difference in lifetime income of everyone of working age and if women earned as much as men.
…

Demand for bitcoin could single-handedly derail efforts to limit global warming because the increasingly popular digital currency takes huge amounts of energy to produce, scientists said on Monday.

Producing bitcoin at a pace with growing demand could by 2033 defeat the aim of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, according to U.S. research published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Almost 200 nations agreed in Paris in 2015 on the goal to keep warming to “well below” a rise of 2°C above pre-industrial times.

But mining, the process of producing bitcoins by solving mathematical equations, uses high-powered computers and alto of electricity, the researchers said.

“Currently, the emissions from transportation, housing and food are considered the main contributors to ongoing climate change,” said study co-author Katie Taladay in a statement. “This research illustrates that bitcoin should be added to this list.”

Mining is a lucrative business, with one bitcoin currently selling for about $6,300 (4,900 British pounds).

In 2017, bitcoin production and usage emitted an estimated 69 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, the researchers said.

That year, bitcoin was involved in less than half of 1 percent of the world’s cashless transactions, they said.

As the currency becomes more common, researchers said it could use enough electricity to emit about 230 gigatons of carbon within a decade and a half. One gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons of carbon.

“No matter how you slice it, that thing is using a lot of electricity. That means bad business for the environment,” Camilo Mora, another co-author, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Bitcoin mining, however, is becoming more energy efficient, said Katrina Kelly-Pitou, research associate at the University of Pittsburgh.

She said bitcoin miners are moving away from sites such as China, with coal-generated electricity, to more environmentally friendly utilities in Iceland and the United States.
…

In Arabic, Annisa means an unmarried woman. And in Kenya, Annisa has become the first taxi-hailing service run by women. The new service targets women who don’t feel comfortable or safe being alone with male drivers. It also gives more women an opportunity to become cab drivers. Faiza Elmasry has the story narrated by Faith Lapidus.
…

The leaders of Japan and India are reaffirming their ties amid growing worries about trade and regional stability.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived Saturday, was meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a resort area near Mount Fuji on Sunday. Modi is also visiting a nearby plant of major Japanese robot maker Fanuc.

Relations with China are a major issue shared by Modi and Abe, as their cooperation may balance China’s growing regional influence and military assertiveness.

“The India-Japan partnership has been fundamentally transformed and it has been strengthened as a ‘special strategic and global partnership,'” Modi told Kyodo News service. “There are no negatives but only opportunities in this relationship which are waiting to be seized.”

Modi chose Japan among the first nations to visit after taking power four years ago. He has been urging countries in the Indo-Pacific region to unite against protectionism and cross-border tensions.

In another sign of closer relations, India and Japan are also set to hold their first joint military exercises involving ground forces, starting next month.

Abe has just returned from China, where he met President Xi Jinping and agreed the two nations were “sharing more common interests and concerns.”

President Donald Trump’s policies that have targeted mostly China with tariffs, but also Japan and other nations, accusing them of unfair trade practices, are working to prod India and Japan to promote their economic ties.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said the leaders had lunch at a hotel in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo, and exchanged a wide range of views on pursuing “a free and open” Indo-Pacific region. Abe told Modi about his recent trip to China, and both sides agreed on the need to cooperate closely on getting North Korea to drop nuclear weapons development, the ministry said in a statement.

Japan’s investment in India still has room to grow. Japan is helping India build a super-fast railway system.

Abe has made bolstering and opening the nation’s economy central to his policies called “Abenomics,” and has encouraged trade, foreign investment and tourism.

Although Japan has long seen the U.S. as its main ally, especially in defense, Abe is courting other ties. He has also been vocal about free trade, which runs counter to Trump’s moves to raise tariffs.

Earlier this year, Japan signed a landmark deal with the European Union that will eliminate nearly all tariffs on products they trade. European and Japanese leaders pledged to strengthen their partnership in defense, climate change and human exchange, to send what they called a clear message against protectionism.

Abe and Modi will hold a more formal summit Monday in Tokyo.

 
…

There is no risk of contagion from Italy’s budget crisis in the European Union but the euro zone is not prepared enough to face a new economic crisis, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told daily Le Parisien on Sunday.

The European Commission rejected Italy’s draft 2019 budget earlier this week for breaking EU rules on public spending, and asked Rome to submit a new one within three weeks or face disciplinary action.

“We do not see any contagion in Europe. The European Commission has reached out to Italy, I hope Italy will seize this hand,” he said in an interview.

“But is the eurozone sufficiently armed to face a new economic or financial crisis? My answer is no. It is urgent to do what we have proposed to our partners in order to have a solid banking union and a euro zone investment budget.”

Eurozone officials have said that Rome’s unprecedented standoff with Brussels seems certain to delay the reform process and probably dilute it for good.

Le Maire also said French banks with branches in Italy had issued corporate and household loans totaling 280 billion euros ($319 billion).

“This sum is manageable but substantial,” he said.

 
…

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has held plenty of grand opening ceremonies in his 15 years at Turkey’s helm. On Monday he will unveil one of his prized jewels — Istanbul New Airport —

a megaproject that has been dogged by concerns about labor rights, environmental issues and Turkey’s weakening economy.

Erdogan is opening what he claims will eventually become the world’s largest air transport hub on the 95th anniversary of Turkey’s establishment as a republic. It’s a symbolic launch, as only limited flights will begin days later and a full move won’t take place until the end of the year.

Tens of thousands of workers have been scrambling to finish the airport to meet Erdogan’s Oct. 29 deadline. Protests in September over poor working conditions and dozens of construction deaths have highlighted the human cost of the project.

Istanbul New Airport, on shores of the Black Sea, will serve 90 million passengers annually in its first phase. At its completion in ten years, it will occupy nearly 19,000 acres and serve up to 200 million travelers a year with six runways. That’s almost double the traffic at world’s biggest airport currently, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson.

“This airport is going to be the most important hub between Asia and Europe,” Kadri Samsunlu, head of the 5-company consortium Istanbul Grand Airport, told reporters Thursday.

The airport’s interiors nod to Turkish and Islamic designs and its tulip-shaped air traffic control tower won the 2016 International Architecture Award. It also uses mobile applications and artificial intelligence for customers, is energy efficient and boasts a high-tech security system.

All aviation operations will move there at the end of December when Istanbul’s main international airport, named after Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is closed down. Ataturk Airport now handles 64 million people a year. On the Asian side of the city, Sabiha Gokcen Airport handled 31 million passengers last year. It will remain open.

Erdogan is expected to announce the official name of the new airport, part of his plan to transform Turkey into a global player.

Turkish Airlines will launch its first flights out of the new airport to three local destinations: Ankara, Antalya and Izmir. It will also fly to Baku and Ercan in northern Cyprus.

Nihat Demir, head of a construction workers’ union, said the rush to meet Erdogan’s deadline has been a major cause of the accidents and deaths at the site that employs 36,000 people.

“The airport has become a cemetery,” he told The Associated Press, describing the pressure to finish as relentless and blaming long working hours for leading to “carelessness, accidents and deaths.”

The Dev-Yapi-Is union has identified 37 worker deaths at the site and claimed more than 100 dead remain unidentified.

Turkey’s Ministry of Labor has denied media reports about hundreds of airport construction deaths, saying in February that 27 workers had died at the site due to “health problems and traffic accidents.” It has not commented since then.

Airport workers in September began a strike against poor working conditions, including unpaid salaries, bedbugs, unsafe food and inadequate transport to the site. Security forces rounded up hundreds of workers and formally arrested nearly 30, among them union leaders. The company said it was working to improve conditions.

Megaprojects in northern Istanbul like the airport, the third bridge connecting Istanbul’s Asian and European shores and Erdogan’s yet-to-start plans for a man-made canal parallel to the Bosporus strait are also impacting the environment. The environmental group Northern Forests Defense said the new airport has destroyed forests, wetlands and coastal sand dunes and threatens biodiversity.

These projects are spurring additional construction of transportation networks, housing and business centers in already overpopulated Istanbul, where more than 15 million people live. Samsunlu, the airport executive, said an “airport city” for innovation and technology would also be built.

The five Turkish companies that won the $29 billion tender in 2013 under the “build-operate-transfer” model have been financing the project through capital and bank loans. IGA will operate the airport for 25 years.

Financial observers say lending has fueled much of Turkey’s growth and its construction boom, leaving the private sector with a huge $200 billion debt. With inflation and unemployment in Turkey at double digits and a national currency that has lost as much as 40 percent of its value against the dollar this year, economists say Turkey is clearly facing an economic downturn.

Despite those dark financial clouds, the airport consortium hopes the world’s growing aviation industry will generate both jobs and billions of dollars in returns.

“Istanbul New Airport will remain ambitious for growth and we will carry on mastering the challenge to be the biggest and the best. That’s our motto,” Samsunlu said.

 
…

Stock markets around the world tumbled Friday while U.S. Treasury prices rose along with demand for safer bets as better-than-expected U.S. economic data did little to ease anxiety over disappointing corporate profits and trade wars.

Wall Street closed above its session lows, but earnings reports from Amazon.com and Alphabet, issued late Thursday, rekindled a rush to dump technology and other growth sectors.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe shed 1.19 percent. The global index went 13.7 percent below its Jan. 26 record close and clocked its fifth straight week of consecutive losses for the first time since May 2013.

With equities whip-sawing each day in reaction to the last big earnings beat or miss, investors braced for more volatility through the remainder of the U.S. earnings season and ahead of the Nov. 6 U.S. midterm congressional elections.

“Once the elections and earnings are out of the way we’ll have a calmer market but not necessarily a big move up,” said Ernesto Ramos, portfolio manager for BMO Global Asset Management in Chicago.

“Investors are anxious about 2019 earnings. They know 2018 is going to be phenomenal,” he said. “There’s been a lot of panic selling. One of the things you don’t want to do is buy or sell based on emotion. … The volatility is incredible.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 296.24 points, or 1.19 percent, to 24,688.31; the S&P 500 lost 46.88 points, or 1.73 percent, to 2,658.69; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 151.12 points, or 2.07 percent, to 7,167.21.

There was some support from data that showed third-quarter U.S. economic growth slowing less than expected as a tariff-related drop in soybean exports was partially offset by the strongest consumer spending in nearly four years.

But while U.S. Treasury yields initially rose after the data, stock market volatility caused them to reverse course and fall to a three-week low.

Benchmark 10-year notes last rose 15/32 in price to yield 3.0793 percent, from 3.136 percent late Thursday.

The U.S. dollar slid alongside stocks after rising to a two-month high in morning trade after the GDP data.

The dollar index fell 0.35 percent, with the euro up 0.28 percent to $1.1406.

Doubt grew about whether the U.K. and the European Union can clinch a Brexit deal. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported Friday that Brexit talks were on hold because Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet was not close enough to agreement on how to proceed.

The Japanese yen strengthened 0.52 percent versus the greenback at 111.83 per dollar, while sterling was last trading at $1.2834, up 0.15 percent on the day.

European and Asian stocks had led the way lower. The pan-European STOXX 600 index lost 0.77 percent and MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped one percent, hitting its lowest level since February 2017.

Bear markets — a price drop of 20 percent or more from recent peaks — have increased across indexes and individual stocks since the start of this year.

Oil prices rose Friday, supported by expectations that sanctions on Iran would tighten global supplies, but futures posted a weekly drop as a slump in stock markets and concerns about trade wars clouded the fuel demand outlook.

U.S. crude settled at $67.59 per barrel, up 0.4 percent, and Brent settled up 1 percent to $77.62 on the day.

Spot gold added 0.2 percent to $1,233.95 an ounce.
…

U.S. stock market indexes fell sharply in Friday’s early trading, but saw losses ease later in the day. 

At one point the S&P 500 and the Dow were down by two percent or more, while the NASDAQ was off by 3.5 percent at one point. 

Investors worried about faltering growth, rising interest rates, trade tensions, and weak profit outlook for major tech firms, including Amazon and Google’s parent company.

By afternoon, losses moderated with the S&P off by 1.3 percent, the Dow down six-tenths of a percent, and the NASDAQ sliding 1.9 percent. 

Key European indexes dropped about one percent.Earlier in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was off a bit more than one percent, while Japan’s Nikkei moved down four-tenths of a percent.

The market turbulence comes at the same time as U.S. unemployment is low, and reports show growth and consumer confidence are strong.
…

The U.S. economy grew at a robust annual rate of 3.5 percent in the July-September quarter as the strongest burst of consumer spending in nearly four years helped offset a sharp drag from trade. 

The Commerce Department said Friday that the third quarter’s gross domestic product, the country’s total output of goods and services, followed an even stronger 4.2 percent rate of growth in the second quarter. The two quarters marked the strongest consecutive quarters of growth since 2014.

The result was slightly higher than many economists had been projecting. It was certain to be cited by President Donald Trump as evidence his economic policies are working. But some private economists worry that the recent stock market declines could be a warning signal of a coming slowdown.

The GDP report along with next week’s unemployment report for October are the last major looks at the economy before voters go to the polls in the mid-term elections.

For this year, economists are projecting the momentum built up should result in growth of 3 percent, the best annual showing in 13 years. But they believe the impact of Trump’s trade war with China and rising interest rates will slow growth in 2019 to around 2.4 percent, with a further decline to under 2 percent in 2020.

“I think we will see a significant slowdown, in part because economic growth has been raised to an artificially high level by the tax cuts,” said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at SS Economics in Los Angeles.

Trump in recent weeks has accelerated his attacks on the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates, contending that the higher rates by slowing the economy will work against his efforts to speed up growth through the $1.5 trillion tax cut package Trump got Congress to pass last year.

“Every time we do something great, he raises interest rates,” Trump said in an interview this week with the Wall Street Journal in which he again said he viewed the Fed as the “biggest risk” facing the economy “because I think interest rates are being raised too quickly.”

The central bank has raised rates three times this year and signaled it will raise rates one more time this year and expect to raise rates three times in 2019. Those moves are being made to ensure that tight labor markets, with unemployment at a 49-year low of 3.7 percent, and strong growth don’t trigger unwanted inflation.

The GDP report Friday was the government’s first of three reviews of overall economic activity for the July-September period.

The report showed that consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, surged at an annual rate of 4 percent in the third quarter, even better than the 3.8 percent gain in the second quarter and the best showing since last 2014.

Trade, which had boosted second quarter growth by 1.2 percentage points, shaved 1.8 percentage points off growth in the third quarter. Exports, which had surged at a 9.3 percent rate in the second quarter, fell at a 3.5 percent rate in the third quarter. Analysts had forecast this turn-around, saying it reflected the surge in exports of goods such as soybeans in the spring as producers tried to beat the higher tariffs being imposed by China in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs.

Another big swing factor in the third quarter was business restocking of their shelves. Inventories had trimmed 1 percentage point off growth in the second quarter but boosted growth by 2 percentage points in the third quarter.

Housing continued to be a drag, falling for a third straight quarter. Business investment, which had surged at an 8.7 percent rage in the second quarter, slowed to a small 0.8 percent gain the third quarter.
…

Top trade officials from 12 countries and the European Union on Thursday vowed to reform World Trade Organization rules in the face of U.S. actions that threaten to paralyze the body and address some of Washington’s complaints about Chinese subsidies.

The officials, meeting in the Canadian capital Ottawa, said they shared a “common resolve for rapid and concerted action” to address challenges to the WTO.

“The current situation at the WTO is no longer sustainable. Our resolve for change must be matched with action,” the officials said in a communique issued after their daylong meeting ended.

The United States and China, which are locked in an escalating tariff war that is threatening the WTO’s foundations, were not invited to the meeting to discuss reform ideas, but Canadian Trade Minister Jim Carr said he would report outcomes to them and try to persuade them to join the reform effort.

Carr acknowledged that no WTO reforms could proceed without a buy-in from the world’s two largest economies.

“They should listen because we’re making good arguments,” Carr told a news conference after the meeting, adding that the group’s proposals would ultimately serve U.S. and Chinese interests.

The officials from Canada, the European Union, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and seven other countries agreed to meet again in January 2019 to review progress from their discussions.

They were short on specifics of their proposals, but called for urgent action to unblock the appointment of new judges to the Appellate Body of the WTO’s dispute settlement system, which they said puts the functioning of the entire body at risk, causing rules enforcement to grind to a halt by the spring of 2019.

The statement did not refer directly to U.S. actions to block such appointments over longstanding complaints that many past appellate rulings have exceeded the judges’ authority, unfairly favoring China and some other members.

“Our number one priority is getting dispute settlement back on track. What good is there to have rules if they cannot be enforced?” said one participating minister who spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the 23-year-old trade body, with roots that date back to the end of World War II, if it does not “shape up” and treat the United States more fairly.

At the Ottawa meetings, Carr said “there was no blaming, there was no shaming” of the United States and the group agreed to consider “alternative” ways to settle disputes, including mediation.

The trade officials also said they recognize “the need to address market distortions caused by subsidies and other instruments,” a reference to complaints by the United States and some other Western economies that current WTO anti-subsidy rules fail to capture all the ways China’s government supports its industries and state enterprises.

The statement said the officials were concerned with WTO members’ track record in complying with subsidy notification requirements and called for stronger monitoring and transparency of countries’ trade policies.

The member group also vowed to “reinvigorate” the WTO’s long-stalled negotiating function, calling for talks to curb fisheries subsidies to be completed in 2019.

Mexico’s Deputy Economy Minister Juan Carlos Baker said world leaders would have a chance to press the United States, China and other nations twice next month — at an Asia-Pacific summit and a meeting of leaders of the G-20 group of nations.

“We are going to waste no opportunity whatsoever in terms of political events. … I am sure that we will use these occasions to speak about what we’re doing,” he said in an interview.
…

Major U.S. stock indexes made strong gains in Thursday’s trading after some upbeat profit reports by major companies. 

The Nasdaq composite posted its biggest daily gain since March, as Microsoft’s upbeat earnings spurred a rebound in technology names and investors snapped up oversold shares. The Nasdaq added 209.94 points, or 2.95 percent, to 7,318.34, a day after it confirmed a correction and registered its biggest decline since 2011.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 401.13 points, or 1.63 percent, to 24,984.55, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 gained 49.47 points, or 1.86 percent, to 2,705.57. Both moved back into positive territory for the year. 

In Europe, France’s key index jumped 1.6 percent, while German and British stock prices made smaller gains. 

Variety of gainers

The latest round of good U.S. results came from a variety of companies, including Ford Motor Co., Visa Inc., Whirlpool Corp. and Twitter Inc., and offered relief after the earnings season began slowly and stumbled further on sluggish outlooks from manufacturers and chipmakers. 

Stocks have sold off recently amid worries about rising interest rates, growing trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies, China’s slowing economy and the fading impact of the recent U.S. tax cut on company profits. 

In a further sign that economic growth is moderating, U.S. business spending on equipment appeared to have remained slow in September and the goods trade deficit grew as rising imports outpaced a rebound in exports. 

Lower prices

But the recent sell-off has also made stocks a bit cheaper. The S&P 500’s valuation fell to a 2½-year low of 15.3 times profit estimates for the next 12 months from 15.8, according to trading and data business Refinitiv.

Results from S&P 500 companies have pushed up third-quarter profit growth estimates to 23.6 percent from 21.8 percent in the last 10 days. But forecasts have trimmed fourth-quarter growth estimates to 19.4 percent from 19.9 percent, according to I/B/E/S data from Refinitiv. 

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
…

Another torrent of selling gripped Wall Street on Wednesday, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting more than 600 points and extending a losing streak for the benchmark S&P 500 index to a sixth day.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite bore the brunt of the sell-off, leaving it more than 10 percent below its August peak, what Wall Street calls a “correction.” The Dow and S&P 500 erased their gains for the year.

Technology stocks and media and communications companies accounted for much of the selling. AT&T sank after reporting weak subscriber numbers, and chipmaker Texas Instruments fell sharply after reporting slumping demand.

Banks, health care and industrial companies also took heavy losses, outweighing gains by utilities and other high-dividend stocks.

Disappointing quarterly results and outlooks continued to weigh on the market, stoking investors’ jitters over future growth in corporate profits. Bond prices continued to rise, sending yields lower, as traders sought safe-haven investments.

“Investors are on pins and needles,” said Erik Davidson, chief investment officer at Wells Fargo Private Bank. “There has definitely been a change in sentiment for investors starting with the volatility we had last week. The sentiment and the outlook seem to be turning more negative, or at the very least, less rosy.”

The S&P 500 lost 84.59 points, or 3.1 percent, to 2,656.10. The index is now off about 9.4 percent from its Sept. 20 peak.

The Dow tumbled 608.01 points, or 2.4 percent, to 24,583.42. The tech-heavy Nasdaq slid 329.14 points, or 4.4 percent, to 7,108.40. That’s the Nasdaq’s biggest drop since August 2011.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks gave up 57.89 points, or 3.8 percent, to 1,468.70.

Bond prices rose, sending the yield on the 10-year Treasury note down to 3.11 percent from 3.16 percent late Tuesday.
…

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Wednesday the kingdom will continue with reforms and spending on infrastructure, predicting the economy will grow by 2.5 percent this year.

Speaking at an investment conference in Riyadh, the crown prince also said he expected economic growth next year to be higher.

Higher oil prices has helped Saudi Arabia’s economy grow in the second quarter at its fastest pace for over a year, according to official data.

Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, expanded 1.6 percent from a year earlier in the April-June quarter. That was up from 1.2 percent in the first quarter and the fastest growth since the fourth quarter of 2016.

The pick-up was mainly due to the government sector, where growth jumped to 4.0 percent from 2.7 percent as authorities boosted spending, the data showed.

The crown prince also said the kingdom would press ahead with a war on terrorism.

 
…

Julius Wakam worked in auto manufacturing for 11 years before being laid off in 2008. Today, the married father of three has a job at a hardware store to make ends meet until he can secure another well-paying position in his field.

Like many workers in America’s so-called Rust Belt, Wakam lost his manufacturing job not only to an influx of robots, but also because the jobs were shipped overseas where labor is cheaper.

“For me and my co-workers, they shipped the jobs overseas to Mexico, Brazil, China and a few went to India,” Wakam says.

Today, the Rust Belt is perhaps best-known for its declining industry, aging and shuttered factories, and falling population, primarily in the Midwest and Great Lakes region.

But the Midwest region was once known for the booming steel production and heavy industry that powered the nation for several generations. And it could be in a position to do so again.

“Probably the greatest driver of our opportunity in a changed economy from the factory era is this innovation infrastructure where we have 20-plus of the largest research universities on earth,” says John Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center. “That’s more than any other region. The West Coast has 13. The East Coast has 15. No place in Europe has this concentration of large scale universities that produce thousands upon thousands of STEM, MBAs, engineers and medical talent.”

The Midwest is also home to more than 200 of the nation’s Fortune 500 companies. Austin says America’s Heartland has the horsepower to grow new jobs and industries.

“The Rust Belt can be and is becoming a center of innovation, new business and job creation in all of the arenas that are emerging,” he says. “The emerging sectors, the work of tomorrow, not just the work of the past where we kind of ruled the world and created the great agro-industrial economy that powered America after World War II for several generations.”

Austin says some Rust Belt cities have already turned the corner from being single industry towns to more diverse, economic regions. He cites places like Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Columbus, Ohio, and Minneapolis-St. Paul as examples of metropolitan areas that have built robust economies partially powered by technology and medical innovation.

However, money is key to that transformation and it’s been slow in coming. Rust Belt innovations tend to be commercialized on the East or West Coast. And that’s where most of the Midwest’s investment dollars end up as well.

Half of all investment money comes from the Midwest, but only 5 percent of total venture capital is invested in the Midwest, according to Austin, who says that dynamic must change for the Rust Belt to reach its full potential.

“We are working to create a Midwest/Great Lakes regional fund that would help more of the wealth and investment dollars from the region, and the big dollars on the coast, find good investments and create more jobs and businesses locally,” Austin says.

There is a place for laid-off workers like Julius Wakam in the Midwest’s emerging new economy. In many cases workers go back to school to learn how to program the robots that supplanted them in the factories where they once worked.

“Someone has to program the robots, someone has to maintain and repair the robots,” says James Sawyer, president of Macomb Community College. “So that’s kind of the transformation that’s gone on. The loading jobs no longer exist, but someone, a skilled worker, needs to take care of the robots that replaced that human element.”

The Michigan-based community college offers workforce training programs that can last 12-to-18 weeks.

“The majority of our workforce programs tend to focus in the advance manufacturing arena,” says Sawyer. “So these are things like robotics, control systems, integration of automation, those types of programs have been very popular in the recent past. And that’s very indicative of the transformation currently going on in manufacturing. So we’re supplying the workers to help do that transformation.”

At the time he was laid off, Julius Wakam was already pursuing an engineering degree at the University of Michigan Dearborn. He completed his degree and then signed up for a workforce training program at Macomb Community College to make himself more marketable.

“That is a program that America really, really needs with the robots taking over,” says Wakam.

Although the job search continues, Wakam says he’s gotten more interest from potential employers since completing Macomb’s workforce training program. He plans to keep looking until he lands a job that utilizes his training and skills.

“To get back to where I was before, the kind of money I was making, that’s what I’m talking about,” he says. “It’s been very rough, but I’m a child of hope. I’m never, never, never going to give up hope and I’m going to keep fighting until I get there.”
…

The top Republican lawmaker on tax policy in the U.S. House of Representatives said Tuesday that he was working with the White House and Treasury to develop a new 10 percent middle-class tax cut plan that

President Donald Trump began touting over the weekend.

Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, who chairs the tax-writing House

Ways and Means Committee, said the plan would be crafted in “coming weeks” and would advance in Congress if Republicans retained control of the House and Senate in midterm elections on Nov. 6.

“President Trump believes American families deserve to keep more of what they work so hard to earn. We agree,” Brady said in a statement.

In what is widely seen by lobbyists as the latest Republican campaign message on taxes, Trump told reporters on Tuesday at the White House that the plan would emerge soon.

“This will be on top of the tax reduction that the middle class has already gotten. And we’re putting in a resolution, probably this week,” the president said.

Surprised

Trump’s comments came a day after congressional and administrative staff appeared to be caught off guard by word of a new tax cut, which surfaced on Saturday.

The White House on Tuesday described the new tax cut as an agenda item for 2019 and suggested it could be offset by cuts in spending.

Republicans are in a pitched battle to retain control of the House and Senate against an energized Democratic voting base that has made contests competitive even in some Republican strongholds.

“What President Trump is doing on the [campaign] trail is he’s just describing what he wants to be in the tax bill that moves next year,” Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett told MSNBC on Tuesday. “You could expect in our budget, and also in our approach to legislation next year, that we’re going to be pursuing a big reduction in government spending.”

Trump signed steep tax cuts for businesses and individuals into law last December as part of a sprawling Republican tax overhaul. Stung by criticism that their tax plan shortchanged families by having individual tax cuts expire after 2025, House Republicans voted last month to make the individual cuts

permanent in a legislative package dubbed “Tax Reform 2.0.”

“Because of the fact that the economy is doing so well, we feel like we can give up some more. I couldn’t have gotten that extra 10 percent when we originally passed the [tax] plan. We maxed out,” Trump said.
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A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program finds extreme weather conditions in Syria have caused the lowest production of wheat and barley for nearly three decades in this war-torn country.

Still, the Syrian government has managed to pacify most of country after more than seven years of brutal, murderous conflict that has reportedly killed more than 350,000 people. Because of improved security, more people are returning to their places of origin.

But the report says despite improved access to agricultural land in some areas, erratic weather has caused a sharp decline in crop production this year, compared to last. It says large areas of rainfed cereals have failed because of a long dry period early in the season. This was followed by unseasonably late heavy rains and high temperatures, which seriously diminished irrigated cereal yields.

Spokesman for the World Food Program, Herve Verhoosel, told VOA this extremely bad harvest will impact badly upon a population that already is short of food.

“We are talking about a third of the production compared to three years ago, then probably everybody will be affected either by the higher price of cereals on the market or by lack of cereal. Then that will probably affect everybody because they will not have the cereal, or they will need to pay more to have them,” Verhoosel said.

The report finds market access and trade has improved considerably throughout the country. It says humanitarian access to people in hard to reach places is much better.  And, with the military gains made by Syrian forces, there no longer are any besieged areas.

Though access to food has generally improved, the report finds about one-quarter of households still suffer from chronic hunger. Data show about 44 percent of households have reduced the number of meals they eat each day and when food is scarce, 35 percent of adults will first feed their children.

 
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Coffee drinkers in the nation’s capital can now order that tall pumpkin spice iced skim latte in sign language.

Starbucks has opened its first U.S. “signing store” to better serve hard of hearing customers. The store in Washington is just blocks from Gallaudet University, one of the nation’s oldest universities serving deaf and hard of hearing students.

Marlee Matlin, the only deaf actor to win an Academy Award, posted an Instagram video of herself ordering a drink early Tuesday. “The sign for the week is COFFEE,” she wrote.

Starbucks announced in July that it would hire 20 to 25 deaf or hard of hearing baristas to work at the store.

The store is modeled after a similar Starbucks signing store which opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2016.

 
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Foreigners sold a net 4.01 billion riyal ($1.07 billion) in Saudi stocks in the week ending Oct. 18, exchange data showed on Sunday – one of the biggest selloff since the market opened to direct foreign buying in mid-2015.

The selloff came during a week when investors were rattled by Saudi Arabia’s deteriorating relations with foreign powers following the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Riyadh said on Saturday that Khashoggi died in a fight inside its Istanbul consulate, its first acknowledgment of his death after denying for two weeks that it was involved in his disappearance.

A breakdown of the data showed foreigners sold 5 billion riyals worth of stocks and bought 991.3 million worth.

The Saudi stock market is down about 4 percent since Khashoggi’s disappeared. The market had started to weaken before the incident as foreign funds slowed their buying after MSCI’s announcement in June that the kingdom will be included in its global emerging market benchmark next year.

As of Sunday, the Saudi index was up 5 percent so far this year, but down 5 percent this quarter.

($1 = 3.7518 riyals)
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A global financial body says governments worldwide must establish rules for virtual currencies like bitcoin to stop criminals from using them to launder money or finance terrorism.

The Financial Action Task Force said Friday that from next year it will start assessing whether countries are doing enough to fight criminal use of virtual currencies.

Countries that don’t could risk being effectively put on a “gray list” by the FATF, which can scare away investors.

Marshall Billingslea, an assistant U.S. Treasury secretary who holds the FATF’s rotating leadership, said, “We’ve made clear today that every jurisdiction must establish” virtual currency rules. “It’s no longer optional.”

The FATF described how the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have used virtual currencies.

Financial regulators worldwide have struggled to deal with the rise of electronic alternatives to traditional money.
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