Among the countless Puerto Rico neighborhoods battered by Hurricane Maria is one named after another storm: Villa Hugo. The illegal shantytown emerged on a public wetland after 1989’s Hurricane Hugo left thousands homeless.

About 6,000 squatters landed here, near the El Yunque National Forest, and built makeshift homes on 40 acres that span a low-lying valley and its adjacent mountainside. Wood and concrete dwellings, their facades scrawled with invented addresses, sit on cinder blocks. After Maria, many are missing roofs; some have collapsed altogether.

Amid the rubble, 59-year-old Joe Quirindongo sat in the sun one recent day on a wooden platform — the only remaining piece of his home. Soft-spoken with weathered skin and a buzzcut, Quirindongo pondered his limited options.

“I know this isn’t a good place for a house,” said Quirindongo, who survives on U.S. government assistance. “Sometimes I would like to go to another place, but I can’t afford anything.”

Villa Hugo reflects a much larger crisis in this impoverished U.S. territory, where so-called “informal” homes are estimated to house about half the population of 3.4 million.

Some residents built on land they never owned. Others illegally subdivided properties, often so family members could build on their lots.

Most have no title to their homes, which are constructed without permits and usually not up to building codes. The houses range in quality and size, from one-room shacks to sizable family homes. Many have plumbing and power, though not always through official means.

The concentration of illegal housing presents a vexing dilemma for local and federal authorities already overwhelmed by the task of rebuilding an economically depressed island after its worst natural disaster in nine decades.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló has stressed the need to “build back better,” a sentiment echoed by U.S. disaster relief and housing officials. But rebuilding to modern standards or relocating squatters to new homes would take an investment far beyond reimbursing residents for lost property value. 

It’s an outlay Puerto Rico’s government says it can’t afford, and which U.S. officials say is beyond the scope of their funding and mission. Yet the alternative — as Villa Hugo shows — is to encourage rebuilding of the kind of substandard housing that made the island so vulnerable to Maria in the first place.

“It’s definitely a housing crisis,” said Fernando Gil, Puerto Rico’s housing secretary. “It was already out there before, and the hurricane exacerbates it.”

In Puerto Rico, housing is by far the largest category of storm destruction, estimated by the island government at about $37 billion, with only a small portion covered by insurance.

That’s more than twice the government’s estimate for catastrophic electric grid damage, which was made far worse by the shoddy state of utility infrastructure before the storm.

Puerto Rico officials did not respond to questions about how the territory estimated the damage to illegally built homes.

Maria destroyed or significantly damaged more than a third of about 1.2 million occupied homes on the island, the government estimates. Most of those victims had no hazard insurance — which is only required for mortgage-holders in Puerto Rico — and no flood insurance. Just 344,000 homes on the island have mortgages, according U.S. Census Bureau data.

Officials at the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) acknowledged the unique challenges of delivering critical housing aid to Puerto Rico. Among them: calculating the damage to illegal, often substandard homes; persuading storm victims to follow through on application processes that have frustrated many into giving up; and allocating billions in disaster aid that still won’t be nearly enough solve the island’s housing crisis.

By far the most money for Puerto Rico housing aid is expected to come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

HUD spokeswoman Caitlin Thompson declined to comment on how the agency would spend billions of dollars in disaster relief funds to rebuild housing, or how it planned to help owners of informally built homes. Two HUD officials overseeing the agency’s Puerto Rico relief efforts, Todd Richardson and Stan Gimont, also declined to comment.

But the disaster aid package currently under consideration by the U.S. Congress would provide far less housing aid than Puerto Rico officials say they need. Governor Rosselló is seeking $46 billion in aid from HUD, an amount that dwarfs previous allocations for even the most destructive U.S. storms.

That’s nearly half the island’s total relief request of $94 billion.

The U.S. House of Representatives instead passed a package of $81 billion, with $26 billion for HUD, that still needs Senate and White House approval. The money would be divided between regions struck by several 2017 hurricanes — including Maria, Harvey in Texas and Irma in Florida — as well as the recent California wildfires. Congress could also decide to approve additional aid later.

‘My mother is scared’

A generation ago, Maria Vega Lastra, now 61, was among the estimated 28,000 people displaced by Hurricane Hugo. Neighbors helped her build a new home in what would become Villa Hugo, in the town of Canóvanas.

Her daughter, 34-year-old Amadaliz Diaz, still recalls her older brother grinning as he sawed wood for the frame of their self-built, one-floor house, with a porch and three bedrooms.

Now, Vega Lastra’s roof has holes in it, and her waterlogged wooden floorboards buckle with each step.

Vega Lastra has been staying with her daughter, who lives in Tampa, as the family waits on applications for FEMA aid. The agency initially denied her application in December, saying it could not contact her by phone, Diaz said.

Vega Lastra is returning to her home this week, uncertain if its condition has gotten worse. Her daughter bought her an air mattress to take with her.

“My mother is scared,” Diaz said. “I hope the government helps her. I work, but I have three kids to take care of.” The island’s housing crisis long predated the storm.

According to Federal Housing Finance Agency data, Puerto Rico’s index of new home prices fell 25 percent over the last decade, amid a severe recession that culminated last May in the largest government bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

Legal home construction, meanwhile, plummeted from nearly 16,000 new units in 2004 to less than 2,500 last year, according to consultancy Estudios Tecnicos, an economic data firm.

A 2007 study by environmental consultant Interviron Services Inc., commissioned by the Puerto Rico Builders Association, found that 55 percent of residential and commercial construction was informal. That would work out to nearly 700,000 homes.

That figure might be high, said David Carrasquillo, president of the Puerto Rico Planning Society, a trade group representing community planners. But even a “every conservative” estimate would yield at least 260,000 illegally built houses, he said.

Generations of Puerto Rican governments never made serious efforts to enforce building codes to stop new illegal housing, current and former island officials said in interviews. Past administrations had little political or economic incentive to force people out of neighborhoods like Villa Hugo.

Former Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon, in office during Hurricane Hugo, said he tried to help informal homeowners without policing them. 

“Our policy was not to relocate, but rather improve those places,” Hernandez Colon said in an interview.

Subsequent administrations advocated similar policies; none made meaningful headway, partly because of Puerto Rico’s constant political turnover.

Today, informal communities provide a stark contrast to San Juan’s glittering resorts and bustling business districts. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz pointed to poor barrios like those near the city’s Martín Peña Channel, hidden behind the skyscrapers of the financial hub known as the Golden Mile.

“It’s not something I’m proud of, but we hide our poverty here,” Cruz said in an interview.

Recovery dilemma 

The task of rebuilding Puerto Rico’s housing stock ultimately falls to the territory government, which has no ability to pay for it after racking up $120 billion in bond and pension debt in the years before the storm. 

That leaves the island dependent on U.S. relief from FEMA, the SBA and HUD.

The SBA offers low-interest home repair loans of up to $200,000. FEMA provides homeowners with emergency grants, relocation assistance and other help. HUD is focused on long-term rebuilding efforts, working directly with local agencies to subsidize reconstruction through grants. 

FEMA’s cap for disaster aid to individuals is $33,300, and actual awards are often much lower. Normally, FEMA eligibility for housing aid requires proving property ownership, but the agency says it will help owners of informal homes if they can prove residency.

How exactly to help gets complicated. For example, someone who builds their own home with no permits on land they own is more likely to be treated as a homeowner, said Justo Hernandez, FEMA’s deputy federal coordinating officer. Squatters who built on land they didn’t own, however, would likely only be given money to cover lost items and relocate to a rental, he said.

Several Villa Hugo residents said they received money from FEMA, but many didn’t know what it was for and complained it wasn’t enough.

Lourdes Rios Romero, 59, plans to appeal the $6,000 grant she got for repairs to her flooded home, citing a much higher contractor’s quote. Neighbor Miguel Rosario Lopez, a 62-year-old retiree, showed a statement from FEMA saying he was eligible for $916.22, “to perform essential repairs that will allow you to live in your home.”

Without money for major changes, most homeowners said they planned to combine the aid they might get from FEMA with what little money they could raise to rebuild in the same spot.

FEMA does not police illegal building. Code enforcement is left to the same local authorities who have allowed illegal construction to persist for years.

Quirindongo is planning to buy materials to rebuild his Villa Hugo home himself with about $4,000 from FEMA. It will be the third time he has done so, having lost one home to a 2011 flood, another to a fire.

“I just want to have something that I can say, ‘This is mine,’” Quirindongo said.

Giving up

Many others appear to have given up on FEMA aid because the agency’s application process is entangled with a separate process for awarding SBA loans to rebuild homes.

FEMA is legally bound to assess whether applicants might qualify for SBA loans before awarding them FEMA grants. If an applicant passes FEMA’s cursory eligibility assessment, they are automatically referred to SBA for a more thorough screening.

Applicants are not required to follow through on the SBA process — but they cannot qualify for FEMA aid unless they do.

FEMA only provides a grant when the SBA denies the applicant a loan.

FEMA said it has referred about 520,000 people out of 1.1 million total applicants so far to the SBA. But as of Monday, only 59,000 followed through with SBA applications. Of those, some 12,000 later withdrew, SBA data shows.

“As soon as people see SBA they say, ‘I give up, I don’t want a loan — I can’t afford a loan,’” FEMA’s Hernandez said.

SBA spokeswoman Carol Chastang said the agency is working with FEMA to educate flood victims on available benefits and the application process, including sending staffers to applicants’ homes.

330,000 vacant homes

Before the storm hit, Puerto Rico already had about 330,000 vacant homes, according to Census Bureau 2016 estimates, resulting from years of population decline as citizens migrated to the mainland United States and elsewhere. Puerto Ricans are American citizens and can move to the mainland at will.

Puerto Rico and federal officials have considered rehabilitating the vacant housing for short- and long-term use, along with building new homes and buying out homeowners in illegally built  neighborhoods, according to Gil and federal officials.

Rosselló, the Puerto Rican governor, has said the rebuilding plan must include a fleet of properly built new homes. Gil, the housing secretary, said the administration would like to build as many as 70,000 properties.

HUD officials declined to comment on whether the agency would finance new housing. Its Community Development Block Grant program allows for local governments to design their own solutions and seek HUD approval for funding.

The cost of constructing enough new, code-compliant properties to house people displaced by Maria could far exceed the available federal aid. Making them affordable also presents a problem.

Puerto Rico’s subsidized “social interest housing,” geared toward low-income buyers, typically provides units that sell in the mid-$100,000 range, with prices capped by the government.

That’s beyond the means of many displaced storm victims.

Gil offered little detail on a solution beyond saying it will include a mix of new development, buyout programs for owners of illegally built homes and other options.

The answer will come down to how much Washington is willing to pay, he said. He invoked the island’s territorial status and colonial history as a root cause of its poor infrastructure and housing stock before the storm.

“It is precisely because we have been neglected by the federal government that the island’s infrastructure is so weak,” he said.

Many Puerto Rico officials continue to advocate for bringing relief and legitimacy to squatter communities like Villa Hugo, rather than trying to relocate their residents.

Canóvanas Mayor Lornna Soto has been negotiating with island officials to provide property titles to Villa Hugo’s population.

The vast majority still don’t have them.

“It’s long overdue to recognize that they are not going anywhere and their communities need to be rebuilt with proper services,” Soto said.

Diaz said she supports her mother’s decision to return to Villa Hugo, regardless of what aid the government ultimately provides.

“I grew up there,” Diaz said. “Everyone knows us there.”
…

Asia’s benchmark stock indexes collapsed Tuesday, as Monday’s massive selloffs on Wall Street rolled across the globe. 

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index lost as much seven percent of its value at one point during the trading session, before closing at 21,610 points, a loss of nearly five percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index followed suit, dropping just over five percent in its worst trading day since August 2015. 

The benchmark indexes Australia and South Korea also suffered serious losses.

In early Europe trading London’s FTSE 100 was down 3.5 percent at 7,081 points.

Asian markets were caught in the ripple effect of Monday’s 1,175-point loss on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, marking the biggest point decline in history. The S&P (Standard and Poor’s) 500 also had a bad day, losing just over four percent to finish at 2,648 points. 

The stock market has now lost about a trillion dollars in value since Friday, when the Dow lost 666 points. That drop followed a solid jobs report that showed the U.S. economy adding 200 thousand jobs and wages rising at the fastest pace in a decade. The tighter labor market and rising wages prompted investor fears of higher inflation and the possibility that the U.S. Federal Reserve would raise interest rates faster and higher than they have in recent years. 

Analysts who spoke with VOA had been expecting a stock market “correction” (a decline of about 10% from recent highs) as a result of the record run up in stock prices this year.
…

As U.S. stocks plunged on Monday, President Donald Trump was speaking at an event in Ohio but noticeably not taking credit for the market despite doing so repeatedly when stocks were rising.

The stark contrast was a sign that Trump may be absorbing a tough message, underscored by former White House advisers, that American presidents traditionally have avoided commenting directly on Wall Street’s fickle trends.

Gene Sperling, a top economic adviser to Democratic former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, said Trump erred in recent months by focusing so heavily on the stock market.

“Even though the stock market tripled under Bill Clinton, his view was that you should always focus your policies and your public messages on bread-and-butter kitchen table issues … and that focusing on the stock market would take your eye off the real economy,” Sperling said.

White House spokesman Raj Shah, in an adjustment to the administration’s message on stocks, told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Trump’s speaking event in Ohio, “Look, markets do fluctuate in the short term. We all know that … But the fundamentals of this economy are very strong and they’re headed in the right direction.”

Throughout a speech at a factory in Blue Ash, Ohio, Trump made no mention of stock markets. That departed sharply from past practice.

In his State of the Union address last week, Trump said, “The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion and more in value in just this short period of time.”

‘Tremendous Benefits’

On Jan. 7, he wrote on Twitter, “The Stock Market has been creating tremendous benefits for our country in the form of not only Record Setting Stock Prices, but present and future Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Seven TRILLION dollars of value created since our big election win!”

Three days before that, he tweeted, “Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.” He had sent similar tweets for months.

The Republican president told Reuters in a Jan. 17 interview he has been getting kudos from people grateful for increased 401(k) retirement plan values and he believed the rise would not have happened if his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election.

“If the Democrats won the election, the stock market would have gone down 50 percent from where it was, and now look at the percentage increase. It’s a record increase,” Trump said.

Once the markets closed, the White House issued a statement saying Trump’s focus is “on our long-term economic fundamentals, which remain exceptionally strong, with strengthening U.S. economic growth, historically low unemployment, and increasing wages for American workers.”

“The president’s tax cuts and regulatory reforms will further enhance the U.S. economy and continue to increase prosperity for the American people,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

The benchmark Dow Jones industrial average soared 42 percent between Election Day 2016, when Trump won the presidency, and its historic peak a week ago above 26,400.

On Monday, the Dow fell to below 24,000 but regained some of its midday losses to close at 24,345. In the past five trading days, the index has erased all its gains since late November.

The benchmark S&P 500 has pulled back more than 6 percent from a Jan. 26 record high.

The “Trump rally,” as some traders have dubbed it, has coincided with a sweeping tax code overhaul approved in December, which slashed corporate taxes, and a deregulation push.

The S&P 500 rose 34 percent from Trump’s election to its recent high.

But stocks have been climbing since March 2009, when Obama inherited a serious financial crisis and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. At that time, the Dow was trading at around 6,500.

Trump has also criticized his predecessor Obama’s effect on markets. In November 2012, Trump tweeted, “The stock market and U.S. dollar are both plunging today. Welcome to @BarackObama’s second term.”

The S&P 500 rose 126 percent from Obama’s 2008 election to his final day in office in 2017.

Former Obama press secretary Jay Carney on Monday tweeted, “Good time to recall that in the previous administration, we NEVER boasted about the stock market — even though the Dow more than doubled on Obama’s watch — because we knew two things: 1) the stock market is not the economy; and 2) if you claim the rise, you own the fall.”

Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and a former economic adviser to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, said, “The president shouldn’t comment about the stock market. Indeed if anyone is going to make major pronouncements about economic data, it should be the Treasury secretary or the agency releasing the data, so if they get it wrong you can get rid of them. You don’t want the president owning those things.”
…

Federal officials will take another look at the historic Alaska community of Nome as a possible port serving ships heading for the Arctic.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it has signed an agreement with the city of Nome to examine whether benefits justify costs of navigation improvements, said Bruce Sexauer, chief of civil works for the Corps’ Alaska District.

“The study will look at economic and social reasons to see if expanding the port is in the federal interest,” he said.

The study process generally takes three years and could culminate in a Corps’ recommendation to Congress to authorize port improvements, Sexauer said.

Alaska lacks deep-water ports along most of its west and northwest coast. The nearest permanent U.S. Coast Guard station is Kodiak more than 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) away.

Arctic marine traffic continues to grow and Nome, though south of the Arctic Circle, is well situated south of the Pacific chokepoint to the Arctic, the Bering Strait, Sexauer said.

A joint federal-state study started in 2008 looked at alternatives for Arctic ports in the Bering and Chukchi seas. Nome became the top choice because of infrastructure already in place, including an airport that handles jets, a hospital and fuel supply facilities.

“It just needed to be bigger and deeper,” Sexauer said

However, economic justification for the port diminished in late 2015 when Royal Dutch Shell PLC drilled a dry hole in the Chukchi Sea and suspended its U.S. Arctic offshore drilling program.

“The benefits for a project at Nome went away, at least the oil and gas benefits,” Sexauer said. The Corps paused its study with the state and officially terminated it last month, Sexauer said.

The study with the city will again look at how a Nome port would aid marine traffic for petroleum development, mining and regional delivery of fuel and other products.

Federal law changed in 2016 to allow the Corps to also consider social benefits, such as support of search and rescue operations, national security and aid to communities to help them be sustainable.

The Port of Nome remains too shallow to handle large ships. Fuel tankers stay anchored in deep water and fuel is lightered to Nome.

Nome’s inner harbor in 2014 was just 10 feet (3 meters) deep and its outer harbor was less than 23 feet (7 meters) deep. The Corps that year looked at constructing docks up to 1,000 feet (305 meters) long and dredging to 35 feet (10.7 meters).

The Corps in late April has scheduled a planning meeting in Nome to detail the scope of the new study.
…

Digital currencies such as bitcoin demand increased oversight and may require a new federal regulatory framework, the top U.S. markets regulators will tell lawmakers at a hotly anticipated congressional hearing on Tuesday.

Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will provide testimony to the Senate Banking Committee amid growing concerns globally over the risks virtual currencies pose to investors and the financial system.

Giancarlo and Clayton will say current state-by-state licensing rules for cryptocurrency exchanges may need to be reviewed in favor of a rationalized federal framework, according to prepared testimony published on Monday.

Reporting by Michelle Price.
…

Jerome Powell has been sworn in as the 16th chairman of the Federal Reserve in a brief ceremony in the Fed’s board room. In a short video message, Powell pledged to “support continued economic growth, a healthy job market and price stability.”

Powell took the oath of office from Randal Quarles, the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision, in a ceremony that was attended by Fed staff and Fed board member Lael Brainard.

Powell succeeds Janet Yellen, the first woman to lead the nation’s central bank in its 100 year history. President Donald Trump picked Powell after deciding to break with recent tradition and not offer Yellen a second four-year term.

In his video message, Powell did not mention the current turbulence in financial markets which sent stocks plunging on Friday.
…

When Jerome Powell is sworn in Monday as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, the pride of the moment may be tempered by Powell’s recognition of the risks that lie ahead.

A ferocious sell-off on Wall Street on Friday — with stocks tumbling and bond yields rising after the January U.S. jobs report suggested higher inflation ahead — served as a blunt reminder of the challenges Powell’s Fed will face.

At his Senate confirmation hearing, Powell stressed his intention to carry on the cautious approach to interest rate hikes that his predecessor, Janet Yellen, pursued in four years as Fed chair. Yellen was able to oversee a gradual rate policy because inflation posed no threat: It ran below even the Fed’s 2 percent annual target throughout her tenure.

The Powell era could be entirely different. The job market is tighter. Wages are up. Federal debt will likely rise. Tax cuts could accelerate growth.

All of which seems likely to drive up inflation, which is what spooked investors Friday. The main question, is by how much? For weeks, investors have been demanding higher bond yields. On Friday, after the government said average pay rose year-over-year in January at the fastest pace in more than eight years, the 10-year Treasury yield reached 2.84 percent, a four-year high.

The Powell-led Fed would be pleased to see inflation finally reach its 2 percent goal. The problem would be if it were to surge well above that level. The Fed would face intense pressure to accelerate its rate hikes to tighten credit and curb inflation.

That’s where the risks come in: If the Fed tightened credit too little, inflation might surge out of control. If it tightened too much, a recession could result. Steering a safe middle ground has proved tricky for the Fed throughout its history. It has sometimes miscalculated how fast to raise rates and triggered an economic downturn.

In December, the Fed predicted that it would raise its benchmark short-term rate three times in 2018, just as in 2017. Yet some economists now foresee four increases. And those rate hikes would coincide with the Fed’s continued paring of its bond holdings — action that puts upward pressure on rates for long-term consumer and business loans.

“The next phase of managing the economy may not be as easy,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, who expects four rate increases in 2018. “The Fed may have to raise rates more quickly because the economy is stronger.”

For now, the economy that Powell’s Fed will preside over shows strength and resilience. Unemployment is at a 17-year low. The economic expansion, already the third-longest in U.S. history, appears to be improving after a long stretch of subpar growth. On the surface, it might seem that all the Powell Fed needs to do now is serve as caretaker for a high-flying economy.

But the Fed has always felt compelled to respond to threats before, not after, they arise, while there is time to prevent high inflation or an economic slowdown.

“Everything points to a more aggressive Fed under Powell,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

No less an authority than Alan Greenspan, who led the Fed for 18{ years until 2006, expressed worries last week that dangerous bubbles might be forming in the financial markets, in part because of high federal debt resulting from increased benefit spending as baby boomers retire and the $1.5 trillion in tax cuts now taking effect.

“We are dealing with a fiscally unstable long-term outlook in which inflation will take hold,” Greenspan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

The two most recent U.S. recessions were caused by bursting asset bubbles. The pricking of the dot.com bubble led to a brief recession in 2001. And the collapse of the housing bubble ignited the 2007-2009 downturn, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The current recovery began in June 2009. If it lasts until June 2019, it would tie the longest expansion on record  — the one that lasted from March 1991 to March 2001.

Though the expansion has been marked by slow economic growth, that very trait might ensure its durability: Plodding growth has kept inflation low and prevented the economy from overheating.

“I don’t think a recession is on the horizon,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands. “We have had one of the slowest periods of economic growth on record, and I think slow means it will go for a longer period.”

For that forecast to prove correct, the Powell Fed will need to manage its rate policy with exceeding care. Friday’s jobs report showing wages rising 2.9 percent over the past 12 months — the biggest such jump since the recession ended in 2009 — suggested that the Fed may be entering an era of higher inflation and a need for higher rates.

With Yellen’s departure, the seven-member Fed board will have only three members. President Donald Trump has nominated Marvin Goodfriend, an economics professor who has long urged the Fed to raise rates more quickly, for one vacancy. Goodfriend awaits Senate confirmation.

But the president hasn’t yet nominated anyone for the three other vacancies. Those selections will be critical in determining the Fed’s pace of rate hikes and in carrying out Trump’s desire to loosen bank regulations. Powell’s responsibility will be to forge a consensus among the board members and the 12 regional Fed bank presidents who help set monetary policy.

Powell will be the first Fed leader in three decades without a Ph.D. in economics. But David Jones, the author of several books on the Fed, said that Powell, with his background as an investment banker, reminded him of the longest-serving chairman, William McChesney Martin, who led the Fed from 1951 to 1970. Martin also lacked a doctorate in economics but had extensive knowledge of Wall Street.

“Powell, like Martin, understands markets, and I think he will be as plain-spoken as Martin,” Jones said, citing Martin’s famous summation of the Fed’s job: “To take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going.”

 
…

Recent losses on global financial markets, including those in the U.S., have some investors concerned about expectations for their holdings and plans for the future.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 2.5 percent Friday, its largest percentage drop since Britain’s decision in June 2016 to leave the European Union.

The Dow and the broader U.S. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ended the week roughly 4-percent lower, their biggest weekly drops since early 2016, amid fears of inflation and disappointing quarterly corporate earnings results.

Key stock indexes in Europe also fell Friday. Germany’s DAX index dropped 1.7-percent, while France’s CAC 40 Index declined 1.6-percent.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index slid nearly 1-percent and South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.7-percent.

Meanwhile, U.S. bond yields climbed and contributed to the sell-off after the U.S. government reported that wages grew last month at their fastest pace in eight years.

The wage data helped stoke investor concern that the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, will respond to higher inflation by hiking its key interest rate more quickly than anticipated.

Darrell Cronk, head of the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said an extended period of low interest rates has helped create the uncertainty.

“We’ve enjoyed low interest rates for so long, we’re having to deal with a little bit higher rates now, so the market is trying to figure out what that could mean for inflation.”

The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes rose to 2.852-percent, its highest level in more than four years. The rise in bond yields hinders stock performance in two ways: it makes corporate borrowing more expensive and it makes bonds more attractive to investors compared to riskier stocks.

Bond strategists were unwilling Friday to predict what lies ahead for interest rates this week after the markets’ unusual volatility in the past week.

Investors may get a hint of the direction of interest rates when trading resumes in Asia early Monday, and possibly more insight after the U.S. Treasury’s $66 billion in auctions of 3-, 10- and 30-year bonds from Tuesday to Thursday.
…

Over the last decades, growing economic hardships forced people in cities and villages around the world to leave their hometowns to find work in other countries. Dreaming of returning one day and enjoying a better life where they grew up, many invested most of their savings buying houses back home. But often, these houses remain empty, making many communities look like ghost towns. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Latin American tour took him Saturday to Argentina, where he talked with officials about conservation and diplomacy.

Traveling from Mexico City after meeting with the Mexican president and other senior officials on Friday, Tillerson arrived in Bariloche, a lakeside resort town in Argentina’s Nahuel Huapi National Park.

Local news reports said Tillerson met with park rangers to discuss progress made in joint U.S.-Argentine projects on science and conservation issues. He also met with a student selected for the U.S. Fulbright scholarship program.

Tillerson was scheduled to visit the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, to meet with his counterpart, Jorge Faurie.

On Monday, Tillerson is set to meet with Argentina President Mauricio Macri to discuss regional issues, including upcoming elections and the political crisis in Venezuela.

Before his visit, Tillerson told reporters that he hoped other countries would follow Argentina’s lead on making economic reforms and generating growth.

On Friday in Mexico, Tillerson said that immigrants bring “enormous value” to the U.S., but added the U.S. government lacked “good discipline” in regulating who enters the country to live.

‘Out of normal order’

After meeting in Mexico City with Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, Tillerson told reporters the U.S. had put “many mechanisms in place” over the years to control immigration, but had “never gone back to clean this up.”

“Let’s make sure we have systems in place where we understand who’s coming into the country,” Tillerson said. He said immigration in the U.S. had “gotten out of normal order,” which is why President Donald Trump is pushing Congress to “fix these defects that have risen over the years.”

The Mexican government has repeatedly expressed opposition to Trump’s proposals to curb illegal immigration and have Mexico pay for a reinforced border wall.

Differences over the issue did not preclude Videgaray from praising the U.S. He said the Mexican government’s relationship with the Trump administration was “closer” than it was under former President Barack Obama’s administration. Videgaray acknowledged the two countries “do have some differences” but said “we are working closely and we are about results.”

Tillerson later held a closed-door meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto during a time when relations have also been strained by U.S. threats to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

NAFTA, which Trump alleges costs American jobs, was discussed at the trilateral meeting, along with energy development and drug interdiction.

Tillerson’s travels through Latin America will also take him to Peru and Colombia, with a final stop in Jamaica on February 7.
…

The window opened Friday for oil, gas, uranium and coal companies to make requests or stake claims to lands that were cut from two sprawling Utah national monuments by President Trump in December, but there doesn’t appear to be a rush to seize the opportunities.

For anyone interested in the uranium on the lands stripped from the Bears Ears National Monument, all they need to do is stake a few corner posts in the ground, pay a $212 initial fee and send paperwork to the federal government under a law first created in 1872 that harkens back to the days of the Wild West.

They can then keep rights to the hard minerals, including gold and silver, as long as they pay an annual fee of $155.

It was unclear if anyone was doing that Friday.

​Inquiries, but no claims yet

The Bureau of Land Management declined repeated requests for information about how they’re handling the lands and how many requests and claims came in.

The agency says it must comply with a complex web of other laws and management plans.

Steve Bloch, legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said he was told by the BLM Friday afternoon that inquiries were made but no claims sent in.

He said other conservation groups that have sued to block the downsized monument boundaries are watching closely to ensure no lands are disturbed in the short-term, hoping a judge will side with them and return the monuments to the original boundaries.

Two of the largest uranium companies in the U.S., Ur-Energy Inc. and Energy Fuels Resources Inc., said they have no plans to mine there. The price of uranium, which has fallen to about $22 per pound, down from more than $100 in the mid-2000s, would “discourage any investment in new claims,” said Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association.

Colorado-based Energy Fuels asked for a reduction of Bears Ears last year in a public comment, but spokesman Curtis Moore said in a statement that the company has higher priorities elsewhere. He noted the lands were open to claims for 150 years before President Barack Obama creating the national monument in 2016.

“There probably isn’t any land available for staking that would be of much interest to anyone,” Moore said.

Coal in Grand Staircase-Escalante

In Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, part of a major coal reserve that a company was preparing to mine before President Bill Clinton protected the lands in 1996, has been made available again but it appears unlikely any company will immediately jump at the chance this time.

Out-of-state demand for Utah’s coal had led to a drop in coal production to about 14 million tons in 2017, down from about 27 million tons in the mid-2000s, said Michael Vanden Berg, energy and mineral program manager at the Utah Geological Survey.

“If a new mine were to open, it would be competing with existing mines in Utah for limited demand,” Vanden Berg said.

Popovich called it “doubtful given market conditions and other factors” that companies interested in coal would put in a lease request.

Vanden Berg noted that a potential coal port in Oakland, California, could open up an Asian market and that technology could be developed to change market forces.

Oil and gas potential

There’s some potential for oil and gas at Grand Staircase, Vanden Berg said. But Kathleen Sgamma, president of an oil and gas industry group called Western Energy Alliance, said heavy oil shale in the area would require an intensive mining operation that doesn’t make sense in today’s market.

“There’s no fracking trucks at the border waiting to rush in,” Sgamma said.

President Trump downsized the Bears Ears National Monument by about 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half. It earned him cheers from Republican leaders in Utah who lobbied him to undo protections by Democratic presidents that they considered overly broad.

Bears Ears, created nearly a year ago, will be reduced to 315 square miles (815.85 square kilometers). Grand Staircase-Escalante will be reduced from nearly 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) to 1,569 square miles (4,063.71 square kilometers).

Conservation groups called it the largest elimination of protected land in American history.
…

Apple is making more money than ever, but it still doesn’t seem to be enough to keep everyone happy. Not with conspiracy theories swirling around Apple’s secret slowdown of older iPhones while a cloud of uncertainty looms over its high-priced iPhone X.

It’s a reality check for a company accustomed to an unflinchingly loyal customer base. Apple expected buyers to embrace the iPhone X as a revolutionary device worth its $1,000 price, but it appears many Apple fans aren’t impressed enough to ante up, especially with other recently released models selling for $200 to $300 less.

And not even the less expensive iPhone 8 line appears to be selling quite as well as analysts had expected, based on the numbers that came out Thursday in Apple’s fiscal first-quarter earnings report.

What’s more, consumers disillusioned with the slowdown of their devices may be even less inclined to upgrade. Apple said the slowdown was its effort to prevent unexpected crashes on phones with old batteries, and it’s now offering to replace those batteries for just $29. That $50 discount is available as part of Apple’s apology for not being more forthcoming about what it did.

“Once you get past all the enthusiasts who want the iPhone X, you get down to a lot of people who think $1,000 is a lot of money for a phone,” said analyst Bob O’Donnell of the research firm Technalysis. “We may be getting near the peak of the smartphone market, and that impacts everyone, including Apple.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the iPhone X has been selling even better than management anticipated, describing it as its top-selling model in every week since its release in early November. But Apple’s revenue forecast for the current quarter fell below analysts’ already diminished expectations, fueling fears that the early appetite for the iPhone X has quickly faded.

Those concerns are the primary reason Apple’s stock has fallen about 7 percent since hitting an all-time high two weeks ago. The shares ticked up $1.02 to $168.80 in extended trading after the quarterly report came out.
…

With an eye on general elections next year, India has announced several populist measures that include a health insurance program for 500 million people, and billions of dollars for rural development and affordable housing in its annual budget.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the measures aimed at improving “ease of living” for citizens, the vast majority of whom live in rural areas.

The announcements came amid widespread rural distress due to falling crop prices. Several farmers protests, sometimes violent, took place last year.

In a country where two thirds of the 1.3 billion people depend on agriculture, there are growing worries the anger in the countryside will pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government when it seeks reelection next year.

Saying “my government is committed to the welfare of the farmers,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley added the government would focus on building rural infrastructure such as roads and irrigation projects, as well as opening new agricultural markets to help farmers get better prices for their crops.

Jaitley promised to sharply increase the price at which government buys food grains for its stocks and said that agricultural trade, which is restricted, will be liberalized to allow farmers direct access to markets.

“We consider agriculture as an enterprise and want to help farmers to produce more from the same land parcel at lesser cost, and simultaneously realize higher prices for their produce,” he said.

Much attention was also focused on the health insurance plan unveiled by the government, which Jaitley called the “world’s largest.” It aims to give medical coverage of about $7,800 to 100 million poor families annually.

The measure is significant in a country where poor people are often forced to sell their assets, such as land and jewelry, to pay for healthcare. Government hospitals, which provide free medical facilities are inadequate and overcrowded, and private hospitals are usually unaffordable for lower income groups, who seldom have health insurance. The government also said it would build more health centers in rural areas.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the budget would spur the country’s development. “It is farmer-friendly, common-man friendly, business environment friendly and development-friendly.”

Jaitley said economic growth, which witnessed a downturn last year, was picking up and Asia’s third largest economy was “firmly on path to achieve eight percent plus growth soon.”

But even as the government is making its massive outreach to rural areas, there are worries that it also faces growing disaffection because it has been unable to meet its pledge to create millions of jobs for India’s young population. It was a key plank that catapulted Modi to power in 2014.

 
…

When Janet Yellen leaves the Federal Reserve this weekend after four years as chair, her legacy will include having shattered a social barrier: She is the first woman to have led the world’s most powerful central bank, a position that carries enormous sway over the global economy.

Yellen will be remembered, too, for her achievements in deftly guiding the Fed’s role in the U.S. economy’s slow recovery from a crushing financial crisis and recession. She picked up where her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, had left off in nurturing the nation’s recuperation from a crisis that nearly toppled the financial system.

As Jerome Powell prepares to succeed Yellen as leader of the U.S. central bank, here are five areas in which Yellen’s era at the Fed will be remembered:

Crisis management

Yellen served not just the past four years as Fed chair but for 2½ years in the 1990s as a Fed board member, then six years as president of the Fed’s San Francisco regional bank and then for four years as the Fed’s vice chair during Bernanke’s second four-year term. In all those roles, Yellen proved herself an able economic forecaster. She often detected perils before others saw reason for alarm, and she became a forceful advocate, especially during the Great Recession, for an aggressive response to economic weakness.

Transcripts of Fed policy meetings from the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers’ collapse ignited the most dangerous phase of the financial crisis, show that Yellen helped drive the Fed to unleash just about everything in its economic arsenal, including slashing its key short-term interest rate to a record low near zero.

Bold actions

As the recession deepened and millions more Americans lost jobs, Yellen was an assertive voice backing up Bernanke in the path-breaking move by the Fed to buy enormous quantities of Treasury and mortgage bonds to try to drive down long-term borrowing rates to support the economy. Critics warned that the bond purchases, which eventually swelled the Fed’s balance sheet five-fold to $4.5 trillion, could trigger high inflation. So far, inflation has not only remained low but for six years has remained below even the Fed’s 2 percent target rate.

The Yellen-led Fed continued to support the bond purchases in the face of skepticism. Later, it rebuffed pressure to start selling off its record-high bond holdings. Finally, in October, after the Fed felt it had achieved its goal of maximum employment, it began gradually paring its bond portfolio.

Clear communications

Yellen extended an innovation of the Bernanke Fed by holding quarterly news conferences after four of the eight policy meetings each year. At these roughly hour-long sessions, Yellen usually managed to shed some light on the Fed’s thinking about its rate policy while cautioning that any future policy changes would hinge on the latest economic data. By all accounts, she avoided any major communication stumbles by telegraphing the Fed’s moves in advance to avoid catching investors off guard.

Her success in this area contrasted with a rare but memorable stumble by Bernanke: In 2013, as Fed chairman, Bernanke triggered what came to be called the “taper tantrum.” It occurred when he first raised the possibility that the Fed could start gradually tapering its bond purchases sometime in the months to follow — unexpected remarks that sent bond prices plunging.

Jobs above all

Yellen, more than her predecessors, stressed the overarching importance of increasing job growth to the greatest level possible. Maximum employment is one of the two mandates Congress lays out for the Fed. The other is to manage interest rates to promote stable prices, which the Fed has defined as inflation averaging 2 percent annually.

Yellen’s predecessors typically worried most about triggering debilitating bouts of inflation of the kind that the United States suffered in the 1970s. That meant favoring higher rates to limit borrowing and spending.

Yellen was different. She believed the U.S. economy had entered an era in which the gravest threat was not a resurgence of inflation but a prolonged period of weak job growth. She argued that the Fed could leave its key policy rate at a record low near zero for far longer than had previously been thought prudent.

The Fed’s benchmark rate remained near zero from late 2008 until December 2015, when the central bank raised it modestly. Since then, the Fed has gradually raised rates four additional times, leaving its key rate in a still-low range of 1.25 percent to 1.5 percent — well below the level usually associated with a prolonged economic expansion and a tight job market.

History’s judgment

So far, Yellen has been proved correct in her bet that rates could remain lower for longer without causing high inflation. The unemployment rate has reached a 17-year low of 4.1 percent with still-low inflation.

Yet many of Yellen’s critics remain unconvinced. They contend that her insistence on low rates has helped swell dangerous bubbles in such assets as stocks and perhaps home prices. They further warn that because the Fed took so long to begin raising rates, a Powell-led Fed could trigger market turbulence with further rate increases and end up harming the economy — possibly even triggering a recession.

Yellen’s supporters, though, argue that once again she will be proved correct and that the Fed will be able to achieve an economic soft landing: Raising rates enough to keep the economy from overheating but not so much as to derail the expansion, already the third-longest in U.S. history.

 
…

A new political dawn in Zimbabwe has sparked talk among farmers of land reform and the return of some whites who lost their land and livelihoods to President Robert Mugabe during a 37-year rule that drove the economy to collapse.

Mugabe, 93, resigned in November after the army and his ZANU-PF party turned against him, prompting optimism among some of the thousands of white farmers ousted in the early 2000s on the grounds of redressing imbalances from the colonial era.

For colonialists seized some of the best agricultural land that remained in the hands of white farmers after independence in 1980 leaving many blacks effectively landless and making land ownership one of Zimbabwe’s most sensitive political topics.

Now some white landowners hope the post-Mugabe regime may address the land issue, either through compensation or returning land, and try to resuscitate a once vibrant agricultural sector boosting an economy once seen as one of Africa’s great hopes.

“We are convinced positive signals will come quickly in terms of property rights,” Ben Purcel Gilpin, director of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which represents white and black farmers, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It would send a good signal to people outside Zimbabwe.” 

New president and long-time Mugabe ally, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has promised a raft of changes since he took office, including a return to the rule of law and respect for property rights.

Land ownership has been a key issue for decades in Zimbabwe dating back to British colonial rule in what was then Rhodesia.

At independence, white farmers owned more than 70 percent of the most fertile land and generated 80 percent of the country’s agricultural output, according to academics.

Reforms began after independence with a “willing buyer, willing seller” system aimed at redistributing land to poor black subsistence farmers. In the 1990s, compulsory acquisition of land began with some funding provided by Britain.

But for many Zimbabweans change was too slow and Mugabe approved radical land reforms that encouraged occupation of some 4,000 white-owned farms. Land went to his supporters with no knowledge of farming and thousands of white farmers fled.

The violent farm seizures saw Zimbabwe forfeit its status as the bread basket of Africa and led to a collapse of many industries that depended on agriculture. Among those were paper mills, textile firms, leather tanners and clothing companies.

As a result the country failed to generate foreign currency, resulting in the central bank printing money which led to unprecedented levels of hyper-inflation and high unemployment.

New start

Now some white farmers are starting to reclaim their land.

“White commercial farmers, like all other Zimbabweans, could apply for land from the Government and join the queue or go into joint ventures,” Mnangagwa told a former white commercial farmer during a recent visit to Namibia.

The CFU’s Gilpin – who quit farming and moved to Harare after his farm was compulsorily acquired by the government in 2005 – said sound policies from the new team could win support and help the economy.

He said compensation rather than putting people back into their properties might be the best route as many farmers are now too old to farm, some had died and others migrated.

The current situation – where resettled farmers had 99-year leases – was also untenable as the leases were not accepted by banks as collateral against borrowing.

Gilpin said this effectively made the land dead capital, as banks could not sell if farmers failed to pay back loans, so the government should instead offer farmers freehold titles.

Property rights expert Lloyd Mhishi, a senior partner in the law firm Mhishi Nkomo Legal Practice, said although Mnangagwa spoke about compensating farmers whose land was expropriated, he did not give specifics and title deeds of the former white farmers had no legal force after repossession.

Political way out

“As far as the law of the country is concerned, the title deeds that the former white commercial farmers hold do not guarantee them title,” Mhishi said in an interview.

But the lawyer said there were positive signs that the new administration realised land was a vital cog in the economy.

“I see there will be an attempt to make land useful, productive,” he said. “The land tenure side needs to be addressed to make land useful.”

Independent economist John Robertson, a former Advisor to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, said, however, that any idea of compensation should be dropped and former white commercial farmers should get back to their land and resume work.

“I’d rather see them get back their land and start farming again than paid out and emigrating. We need their skills. If people who oppose that idea could be just successful, where have they been for the past 20 years?” he said.
…

A new political dawn in Zimbabwe has sparked talk among farmers of land reform and the return of some whites who lost their land and livelihoods to President Robert Mugabe during a 37-year rule that drove the economy to collapse.

Mugabe, 93, resigned in November after the army and his ZANU-PF party turned against him, prompting optimism among some of the thousands of white farmers ousted in the early 2000s on the grounds of redressing imbalances from the colonial era.

For colonialists seized some of the best agricultural land that remained in the hands of white farmers after independence in 1980 leaving many blacks effectively landless and making land ownership one of Zimbabwe’s most sensitive political topics.

Now some white landowners hope the post-Mugabe regime may address the land issue, either through compensation or returning land, and try to resuscitate a once vibrant agricultural sector boosting an economy once seen as one of Africa’s great hopes.

“We are convinced positive signals will come quickly in terms of property rights,” Ben Purcel Gilpin, director of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which represents white and black farmers, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It would send a good signal to people outside Zimbabwe.” 

New president and long-time Mugabe ally, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has promised a raft of changes since he took office, including a return to the rule of law and respect for property rights.

Land ownership has been a key issue for decades in Zimbabwe dating back to British colonial rule in what was then Rhodesia.

At independence, white farmers owned more than 70 percent of the most fertile land and generated 80 percent of the country’s agricultural output, according to academics.

Reforms began after independence with a “willing buyer, willing seller” system aimed at redistributing land to poor black subsistence farmers. In the 1990s, compulsory acquisition of land began with some funding provided by Britain.

But for many Zimbabweans change was too slow and Mugabe approved radical land reforms that encouraged occupation of some 4,000 white-owned farms. Land went to his supporters with no knowledge of farming and thousands of white farmers fled.

The violent farm seizures saw Zimbabwe forfeit its status as the bread basket of Africa and led to a collapse of many industries that depended on agriculture. Among those were paper mills, textile firms, leather tanners and clothing companies.

As a result the country failed to generate foreign currency, resulting in the central bank printing money which led to unprecedented levels of hyper-inflation and high unemployment.

New start

Now some white farmers are starting to reclaim their land.

“White commercial farmers, like all other Zimbabweans, could apply for land from the Government and join the queue or go into joint ventures,” Mnangagwa told a former white commercial farmer during a recent visit to Namibia.

The CFU’s Gilpin – who quit farming and moved to Harare after his farm was compulsorily acquired by the government in 2005 – said sound policies from the new team could win support and help the economy.

He said compensation rather than putting people back into their properties might be the best route as many farmers are now too old to farm, some had died and others migrated.

The current situation – where resettled farmers had 99-year leases – was also untenable as the leases were not accepted by banks as collateral against borrowing.

Gilpin said this effectively made the land dead capital, as banks could not sell if farmers failed to pay back loans, so the government should instead offer farmers freehold titles.

Property rights expert Lloyd Mhishi, a senior partner in the law firm Mhishi Nkomo Legal Practice, said although Mnangagwa spoke about compensating farmers whose land was expropriated, he did not give specifics and title deeds of the former white farmers had no legal force after repossession.

Political way out

“As far as the law of the country is concerned, the title deeds that the former white commercial farmers hold do not guarantee them title,” Mhishi said in an interview.

But the lawyer said there were positive signs that the new administration realised land was a vital cog in the economy.

“I see there will be an attempt to make land useful, productive,” he said. “The land tenure side needs to be addressed to make land useful.”

Independent economist John Robertson, a former Advisor to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, said, however, that any idea of compensation should be dropped and former white commercial farmers should get back to their land and resume work.

“I’d rather see them get back their land and start farming again than paid out and emigrating. We need their skills. If people who oppose that idea could be just successful, where have they been for the past 20 years?” he said.
…

Many refugees would like to buy low-carbon stoves and lights but poor access in camps and a lack of funding is forcing them to rely on “dirty and expensive” fuels, a report said Tuesday.

Millions of refugees worldwide struggle to access energy for cooking, lighting and communication and often pay high costs for fuels like firewood, which are bad for their health.

Yet two-thirds would consider paying for clean cookstoves and more than one-third for solar household products, according to a survey by the Moving Energy Initiative (MEI), a partnership among Britain, the United Nations and charities.

“Energy providers don’t tend to think of refugees as potential energy consumers, but the opportunities to build a relationship with them are huge,” Mattia Vianello, one of the report’s authors, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Clean energy for refugees is a global priority for the U.N. refugee agency, which provides free solar power to thousands of displaced people in camps in Jordan and Kenya.

Campaigners are seeking to create a market for cleaner-burning stoves and fuels to supply millions of households worldwide that are using inefficient, dangerous methods.

Perilous smoke

When burned in open fires and traditional stoves, wood, charcoal and other solid fuels emit harmful smoke that claims millions of lives each year, according to the Clean Cooking Working Capital Fund, which promotes stoves that produce less pollution.

In Uganda, refugees collect wood from surrounding areas, “devastating” the local environment and creating tensions with locals, Raffaela Bellanca, an energy adviser with the charity Mercy Corps, said in emailed comments.

Humanitarians should work with the private sector to provide more sustainable energy to displaced people, said the report, which surveyed about 500 refugees, business owners and aid workers in Burkina Faso and Kenya.

“Refugee camps have the potential to become energy innovation hubs with a spillover effect on surrounding host communities,” Bellanca said.
…

A colorful paint job has transformed one of Mumbai’s drab hilltop slums into a tourist destination, even prompting comparisons with Italy’s picturesque Amalfi Coast.

During a recent journey on a Mumbai metro train, Dedeepya Reddy was struck by the grim appearance of a slum in Asalpha in the city’s eastern suburbs as she stared out from her air-conditioned carriage.

Reddy, a Harvard University-educated co-founder of a creative agency, was keen to brighten the lives of slum residents, while also changing the perception of slums being dirty and dangerous, and decided on a simple makeover.

Armed with dozens of cans of colorful paint, Reddy and a team of about 700 volunteers painted the walls and alleyways of the hilltop slum over two weekends last month.

Residents, at first skeptical, also got involved and helped paint quirky murals, the 31-year-old said.

“When you look at slums, you think they are shabby and dirty, and that also becomes a reflection of the people who live there,” Reddy told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We used bright colors to change how slums and their residents are viewed. It also gives residents a sense of pride and dignity about their homes.”

Up to 37 million households, or about a quarter of India’s urban population, live in informal housing including slums because of an acute shortage of affordable housing, according to social consultancy FSG.

In space-starved Mumbai, which has some of the priciest real estate in the world, the shortage is even more critical, with hundreds of migrants from rural areas cramming into the city every day to seek better prospects.

Reddy’s Chal Rang De (Let’s Color It) charity has seven other slums, similarly situated on hillocks, on its wishlist, she said.

Locals and tourists have thronged Asalpha in recent weeks, posting pictures on Instagram which have drawn comparisons to Italy’s Amalfi Coast.

Their interactions with residents are a welcome change, Reddy said.

For resident Aparna Chaudhuri, who has lived in Asalpha for about a dozen years, the paint job was welcome.

“Earlier, our house looked dull. Now it looks good,” said Chaudhuri, who picked pink for her home. “Everyone is also keeping the neighborhood clean now.”
…

As trade tensions grow between the United States and China, there is concern among foreign companies in China that a possible trade war between the two countries could leave them caught in the crossfire.

President Donald Trump has been ratcheting up trade pressure on China, and a senior administration official has said the U.S. leader would be “emphasizing the fair and reciprocal nature of trade” in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.

Already, Trump has issued what some believe could be the opening salvo in a more intense showdown over trade, recently slapping stiff import tariffs on solar panel imports and washing machines. More trade actions could be announced soon.

“If that does go forward, I have been told by certain officials [in China] that yes, definitely, there will be retaliation,” said William Zarit, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, or AmCham China. “And what we’ve been telling our interlocutors is that if there is some kind of tariff and if the Chinese do want to retaliate, they do so maturely and with precision so as to not actually adversely affect their own economy.”

Zarit spoke on Tuesday at the launch of AmCham China’s annual survey on the business climate in the world’s second-largest economy. The survey for 2017 was conducted at the time of Trump’s visit late last year and cited growing optimism among members about the outlook for growth and investment in China.

Seventy-eight percent of the respondents said that positive relations between the U.S. and China are extremely important or very important, compared with 64 percent in 2015.

Three out of every four companies surveyed, however, said they still feel unwelcome in China. One key driver of that perception – regulatory barriers for foreign companies and unfair treatment relative to local ones, the survey found.

While no one wants a trade war, the survey found that more than 60 percent are advocating for the U.S. government to take actions to help correct trade imbalances.

Zarit said some have grown weary of years of negotiations on trade and investment issues between the governments and think Washington should use pressure.

“Strictly just dialogue has not really brought much in terms of progress. So, perhaps some pressure will help get us more progress to a more balanced economic and commercial relationship,” he said.

Seeking ‘level playing field’

According to the survey, 27 percent of its business members “advocate more strongly for a level playing field” for U.S. businesses in China. Another 19 percent want the U.S. government to “apply investment reciprocity as an approach to improve market access in China.”

A third group comprising 14 percent of AmCham members wants Washington to pursue a new multilateral trade agreement that would include the U.S. replacing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.

One of Trump’s first actions in office was to pull the United States out of the TPP, but last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he hinted at a possible path back toward the TPP or something similar to the trade agreement.

Lester Ross, head of AmCham China’s policy committee, said American companies should be ready to deal with harsh measures and other forms of retaliation from Beijing.

“I don’t think any company wants to absorb or make a sacrifice for trade relations, but I think some companies will inevitably suffer some repercussions if there are trade frictions between the two countries,” he said. “They [U.S. companies] have to consider that possibility.”

Ross said retaliation from the Chinese government could include measures targeting the airline and agriculture sectors, and possibly affecting industries and communities where support for Trump was strong during the elections.

“It would be likely that they [Chinese] will target sectors that have political resonance in the United States, and particular products or commodities,” he said.

Rising friction over trade is not the only way companies doing business in China could be caught in the middle.

As part of Trump’s efforts to exert more pressure on North Korea, he previously has complained that China is not doing enough and used the threat of possible trade actions as a carrot and stick to try to get Beijing to do more.

Some analysts said the Trump administration might go slowly on trade remedies against China if Beijing does more to help Washington in resolving the North Korea problem.

But that, in turn, could distract Washington from its plans to deal with what the U.S. sees as Beijing’s unfair trade practices.

Zarit said AmCham members also want the North Korea issue to be resolved as peacefully as possible.

“We also hope that our needs for addressing the structural imbalances in the relationship are not sacrificed in the process,” he said.

 
…

French consumer fraud authorities are investigating a promotional campaign for Nutella that prompted scuffles in several supermarkets – and even a police intervention.

The Finance Ministry’s fraud agency said Tuesday it will examine whether the campaign by the Intermarche supermarket chain violated pricing regulations. An official with the agency would not give further details.

Intermarche drew big crowds at several stores last week after announcing sales of the chocolate and hazelnut spread for just 1.41 euros ($1.74), some 70 percent below the regular price.

Video circulated online of ensuing scuffles in some stores, drawing worldwide attention – and questions from authorities.

Nutella manufacturer Ferrero has distanced itself, saying Intermarche is entirely responsible.

The investigation comes as the government prepares to present a draft law this week aimed at stricter and clearer regulation for big retailers.
…

President Donald Trump will herald a robust economy and push for bipartisan congressional action on immigration in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, as he seeks to rally a deeply divided nation and boost his own sagging standing with Americans.

The speech marks the ceremonial kickoff of Trump’s second year in office and is traditionally a president’s biggest platform to speak to the nation. However, Trump has redefined presidential communications with his high-octane, filter-free Twitter account and there’s no guarantee that the carefully crafted speech will resonate beyond his next tweet.

Still, White House officials are hopeful the president can use the prime-time address to Congress and millions of Americans watching at home to take credit for a soaring economy. Though the trajectory of lower unemployment and higher growth began under his predecessor, Trump argues that the tax overhaul he signed into law late last year has boosted business confidence and will lead companies to reinvest in the United States.

Considering the strength of the economy, Trump will step before lawmakers Tuesday night in a remarkably weak position. His approval rating has hovered in the 30s for much of his presidency and at the close of 2017, just 3 in 10 Americans said the United States was heading in the right direction, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In the same survey, 67 percent of Americans said the country was more divided because of Trump.

It’s unlikely Trump will be able to rely on a robust legislative agenda to reverse those numbers in 2018. Congress has struggled with the basic function of funding the government, prompting a brief government shutdown earlier this month that was resolved only with a short-term fix that pushed the spending deadline to Feb. 8.

Against the backdrop of the spending fight, Republicans and Democrats are also wrestling with the future of some 700,000 young immigrants living in the United States illegally.

Trump has vowed to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation, but is also calling for changes to legal immigration that are controversial with both parties.

“We’re going to get something done, we hope bipartisan,” Trump told reporters Monday, before giving his speech a practice run-through in the White House map room. “The Republicans really don’t have the votes to get it done in any other way. So it has to be bipartisan.”

Though Democrats are eager to reach a resolution for the young immigrants, the party is hardly in the mood to compromise with Trump ahead of the midterm elections. Lawmakers see Trump’s unpopularity as a key to their success in November, and are eager to mobilize Democratic voters itching to deliver the president and his party a defeat at the ballot box.

Seeking to set the tone for their election-year strategy, party leaders have tapped Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy, the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, to deliver a post-speech rebuttal aimed at casting Democrats, not Trump, as champions of the middle class.

Democrats are also looking to make their mark in other ways. A handful of lawmakers are planning to boycott the president’s remarks. And several Democratic women plan to wear black to protest sexual harassment, an issue that has tarnished several lawmakers in both parties. Trump himself has been accused of assault or harassment by more than a dozen women, accusations he has denied. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that the president’s lawyer arranged a payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, to prevent her from talking about her alleged encounter with the future president.

First lady Melania Trump, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight following those allegations, will attend Tuesday’s address, according to the White House. She’ll be joined in the audience by several guests whose stories amplify the president’s agenda, including an Ohio welder who the White House says will benefit from the new tax law and the parents of two Long Island teenagers who were believed to have been killed by MS-13 gang members.

 
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade chief on Monday dismissed Canadian proposals for unblocking NAFTA modernization talks but pledged to stay at the table, easing concerns about a potentially imminent U.S. withdrawal from the trilateral pact.

Trump, who described the 1994 pact as a disaster that has drained manufacturing jobs to Mexico, has frequently threatened abandon it unless it can be renegotiated to bring back jobs to the United States.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said after a sixth round of NAFTA modernization talks in Montreal that Trump’s views on the pact are unchanged, and cautioned that talks are still moving too slowly on U.S. priorities.

“We finally began to discuss the core issues, so this round was a step forward,” Lighthizer said. “But we are progressing very slowly. We owe it to our citizens, who are operating in a state of uncertainty, to move much faster.”

But Lighthizer’s Mexican and Canadian counterparts said that enough progress was made in Montreal to be optimistic about concluding the pact “soon,” with nine days of talks in Mexico City scheduled to start Feb. 26.

“For the next round, we will still have substantial challenges to overcome. Yet the progress made so far puts us on the right track to create landing zones to conclude the negotiation soon,” said Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo.

Officials are now openly speculating that the bid to salvage the $1.2-trillion free trade pact will continue well beyond an end-March deadline set to avoid Mexican presidential elections.

Canadian proposals dismissed

Heading into Montreal last week, some officials had feared the United States might be prepared to pull the plug on the pact amid frustration over slow progress.

The mood lightened after Canada presented a series of suggested compromises to address U.S. demands for reform.

But Lighthizer criticized Canadian proposals to meet U.S. demands for higher North American content in autos, saying it would in fact reduce regional autos jobs and allow more Chinese-made parts into vehicles made in the region.

He also dismissed a suggestion on settling disputes between investors and member states as “unacceptable” and “a poison pill” and said a recent Canadian challenge against U.S. trade practices at the World Trade Organization “constitutes a massive attack on all of our trade laws.”

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, who stood stony faced as Lighthizer made his remarks, later told reporters that “the negotiating process is … always dramatic.”

A Canadian government source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, noted Lighthizer had not speculated about withdrawal and said the U.S. official had been more positive in private than during previous rounds.

Officials said the negotiating teams had closed a chapter on anti-corruption measures and were close to wrapping up sections on telecommunications, sanitary measures for the agriculture industry and technical barriers to trade.

Challenging demands

But the three sides are still far apart over U.S. demands to boost regional auto content requirements to 85 percent from the current 62.5 percent and require 50 percent U.S. content in North American-built vehicles.

Other challenges are Washington’s demands that NAFTA largely eliminate trade and investment dispute-settlement systems and contain a “sunset” clause to force renegotiations every five years.

Critical comments by Trump, Lighthizer and others have unsettled markets that fret about the potential damage to a highly integrated North American economy if the United States gives six months’ notice it is leaving.

The Mexican round next month is an extra set of talks that officials added to help tackle the many remaining challenges.

Negotiators are supposed to finish in Washington in March with the eighth and final round.

Although some officials have privately speculated about freezing the talks at the start of April, Guajardo told reporters that “we cannot afford to suspend this process.”
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Executive branch government employees in Argentina will get no pay raises this year and one out of every four “political positions” appointed by ministers will be cut, President Mauricio Macri said on Monday, deepening his austerity drive.

The clampdown on political positions, including advisers appointed by government ministers, is viewed as an attack on a patronage system that has been in place for decades.

The firings, expected to save $77 million a year, are symbolic of Macri’s drive to regain market confidence.

“Austerity has to be part of politics,” Macri said in a televised address.

He spent the first two years of his administration dismantling the trade and currency controls set up by his predecessor, Cristina Fernandez, who had expanded the role of government in the economy.

He was elected in 2015 with a mandate to free the markets and improve Argentinas business climate.

Macri, expected to seek re-election next year, denounced “the corruption and clientelism” of past administrations. Included in the measures announced on Monday, family members of ministers were banned from holding government jobs.

Macri scored a series of business-friendly legislative wins late last year after his coalition swept mid-term elections. But passage of his pension reform bill last month triggered violent protests and a decline in the president’s approval ratings.

The government wants to foster the idea that politically appointed officials share the burden of the fiscal adjustment.

“It also wants to convey the message that this administration really is different from its predecessors,” said Ignacio Labaqui, analyst for consultancy Medley Global Advisors.

Pressured by the country’s powerful labor unions, the government canceled a special session of Congress planned for February to debate Macri’s proposed labor reform.

The bill includes amnesty for companies that register workers who had been paid off the books. It aims to curb litigation by workers and would lighten social security taxes paid by employers. The private sector has long argued for more flexibility in labor regulations.

 
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Mozambique’s Attorney General has filed a legal complaint against officials and state-owned companies involved in securing $2 billion in loans that were not approved by parliament or disclosed publicly, her office said on Monday.

Investigations into the debt found that the deals violated Mozambique’s constitution, the AG’s office said in a statement.

The alleged infringements included failure to comply with the procedures and limits established by law in the issuance of guarantees by the state, it said.

“Thus, on January 26, the [office] submitted a complaint to the Administrative Court on the financial accountability of public managers and state-owned companies involved in the management of financing, supply and service contracts,” the statement read.

It did not name any of the managers or the companies.

The Administrative Court is responsible for ruling on the legality of public expenditure.

An independent audit of the debt showed in June last year that questions remained on how the $2 billion was used and roughly a quarter of the money remained unaccounted for.

The Attorney General also recommended among other issues a review of legislation related to state businesses and scrutiny and monitoring of projects benefiting from state guarantees.
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Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc said Sunday it would return about 46.3 billion yen ($425 million) of the virtual money it lost to hackers two days ago in one of the biggest-ever thefts of digital money.

That amounts to nearly 90 percent of the 58 billion yen worth of NEM coins the company lost in an attack Friday that forced it to suspend withdrawals of all cryptocurrencies except bitcoin.

Coincheck said in a statement it would repay the roughly 260,000 owners of NEM coins in Japanese yen, though it was still working on timing and method.

Theft and security

The theft underscores security and regulatory concerns about bitcoin and other virtual currencies even as a global boom in them shows little signs of fizzling.

Two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) sent a notice to the country’s roughly 30 firms that operate virtual currency exchanges to warn of further possible cyber-attacks, urging them to step up security.

The financial watchdog is also considering administrative punishment for Coincheck under the financial settlements law, one of the sources said.

Japan started to require cryptocurrency exchange operators to register with the government in April 2017. Pre-existing operators such as Coincheck have been allowed to continue offering services while awaiting approval. Coincheck’s application, submitted in September, is still pending.

Coincheck told a late-Friday news conference that its NEM coins were stored in a “hot wallet” instead of the more secure “cold wallet,” outside the internet. Asked why, company President Koichiro Wada cited technical difficulties and a shortage of staff capable of dealing with them.

Shades of Mt. Gox

In 2014, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, which once handled 80 percent of the world’s bitcoin trades, filed for bankruptcy after losing around half a billion dollars worth of bitcoins. More recently, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Youbit last month shut down and filed for bankruptcy after being hacked twice last year.

World leaders meeting in Davos last week issued fresh warnings about the dangers of cryptocurrencies, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin relating Washington’s concern about the money being used for illicit activity.
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Officials trying to settle differences over how to update the North American Free Trade Agreement have made some progress and hope politicians decide the talks should continue, Steve Verheul, Canada’s chief negotiator, told Reuters on Saturday.

The United States, Canada and Mexico are due to finish the sixth of seven planned rounds of NAFTA discussions on Monday, with several major issues far from being resolved.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who describes the $1.2 trillion pact as a disaster, has frequently threatened to walk away from it unless major changes are made.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo will hold a news conference later Monday to announce the next steps.

Asked whether he thought the three ministers would decide there is enough momentum to continue with the next round, Verheul said: “Well, that’s our hope.”

Later in the day, he told reporters: “We’re moving in a slightly more positive direction. We’ll take that encouragement where we can.”

On balance, a ‘positive’

A Mexican official, who asked not to be named, said “we don’t foresee a negative reaction to the round. We believe the balance will be positive.”

Work is moving ahead on less contentious parts of NAFTA, the Mexican official and a Canadian source close to the talks said Saturday, and the three nations have closed a chapter on measures to fight corruption.

Canada and Mexico initially dismissed some of the main U.S. demands as unworkable but later made it clear they were ready to be more flexible.

During the sixth round, Canada raised what it called creative ways of meeting U.S. demands for higher North American content in autos, a sunset clause that would allow one party to quit the treaty after five years, and major changes to existing conflict resolution mechanisms.

“I think we have demonstrated we have engaged on most of the big issues,” Verheul said in his remarks to Reuters. “We’ve made progress on some of the smaller ones, so I think [it was] not a bad week.”

The Mexican official said that Canada’s proposals on rules of origin for autos, the sunset clause and conflict resolution mechanism were “positive, inasmuch as they are an attempt to move things forward.”

Speaking separately, a second Canadian government source said Ottawa was cautiously optimistic about the round, given that the U.S. side had not summarily rejected the proposals for compromise.

But the source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said much would depend on Lighthizer’s reaction on Monday.

Fear for pact’s future

Markets and industries are worried about the possible collapse of the $1.2 trillion pact.

“It’s unclear to us that anything that anyone does here will be enough … which is concerning for agriculture,” said Brian Innes, president of the Canadian Agri-food Trade Alliance.

“Our position with all the political parties is that the negotiations must go on,” said Juan Pablo Castanon, president of the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, the umbrella group representing Mexican private sector interests at the talks.

“We want free trade, but not at any cost,” he said.

The talks were initially scheduled to wrap up by the end of March to avoid clashing with Mexico’s presidential election in July. Guajardo told Reuters on Friday that the process could be extended if need be.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist front-runner in the presidential race, said on Friday that the renegotiation should wait until after the election so that the next government, which he aims to lead, would get a say in the treaty’s future.
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In a surprise move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reversed itself Friday and stopped the approval process for the proposed Pebble Mine copper and gold mine project in southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay region.

“It is my judgment at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement.

President Donald Trump has championed increased domestic mining, and the EPA’s decision to halt the Pebble Mine’s approval process comes as a surprise.

“Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection,” Pruitt said.

The Obama administration blocked the proposed mine in 2014 over environmental concerns. Last year, Pruitt reversed that decision, allowing the Canadian company behind the mine project to apply for a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Pebble Limited Partnership, comprising Canadian miners Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd and First Quantum Minerals Ltd, is planning to mine 1.2 billion tons of material, including 287 million pounds of copper.

Environmentalists, commercial and sport fishermen, many Alaska Native tribal organizations and even some Republican politicians have all criticized the project, which would be built on land near Lake Clark National Park.

Alaska Governor Bill Walker, an independent, applauded the decision and thanked Pruitt “for listening to my input and that of thousands of Alaskans” who oppose the mine.

Pruitt indicated the mine could ultimately be approved.

“This decision neither deters nor derails the application process of Pebble Limited Partnership’s proposed project,” he said.

“The project proponents continue to enjoy the protection of due process and the right to proceed. However, their permit application must clear a high bar, because EPA believes the risk to Bristol Bay may be unacceptable,” he said.
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President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy on trade aims to reverse decades of lopsided exchange by withdrawing from international trade deals, renegotiating others and raising tariffs on foreign-made goods destined for the U.S. But, in a connected global economy, analysts warn the U.S. could find itself increasingly isolated as other countries rush forward to embrace new trade deals. Mil Arcega reports.
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Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation three weeks ago praised Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke after he announced nearly all federal waters off the state’s coast could be offered for petroleum lease sales.

But after hearing from critics who do not want drilling in their home waters, U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young are backtracking.

In a letter Friday to Zinke, the delegation requested that most Alaska waters from the state’s Panhandle to the Bering Strait be removed from the proposed five-year drilling plan.

Instead, they urged lease sales in only three areas: Cook Inlet, where petroleum platforms have extracted oil and natural gas for decades, and the Arctic waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

“We believe the strongest near-term offshore program in Alaska is one that focuses on the Chukchi, Beaufort and Cook Inlet,” they wrote. “Such a program will maximize agency resources and reflect the areas with the broadest support for development among Alaskans.”

Zinke announced the proposed lease sale plan Jan. 4. He said revisions could be made after public comment.

Immediate opposition

The proposal excluded only one area of Alaska: the North Aleutian Basin, home to Bristol Bay and the world’s largest run of sockeye salmon.

The proposal drew immediate opposition from governors in East and West Coast states. After Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, met with Zinke, the secretary announced that drilling would be “off the table” for waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean off Florida.

Subsistence resources

In Alaska, proposed lease sales in the Bering Sea drew strong condemnation from the Bering Sea Elders Group, an association of Alaska Native elders appointed from 39 tribes, and Kawerak Inc., a regional nonprofit organization, which said oil and gas activities pose a serious threat to marine life.

“These basins are where tribes from our region have harvested subsistence resources for millennia and where local people from our region fish and crab commercially,” Kawerak said in an announcement.

Drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, home to polar bears, walrus and ice seals that support the subsistence economies of coastal villages, is strongly opposed by environmental groups. They say the harsh climate makes spills inevitable and that cleanup of a major spill would be impossible in waters choked by or covered in sea ice.

Oil estimates

However, federal regulators say the Beaufort Sea, off Alaska’s north coast, holds an estimated 8.9 billion barrels of oil and the Chukchi, off Alaska’s northwest coast, holds an estimated 15.4 billion barrels.

Royal Dutch Shell spent $2.1 billion on Chukchi Sea leases in 2008, invested another $5 billion overall in U.S. Arctic waters, and pulled out after drilling a dry hole in 2015.

Murkowski, Sullivan and Young contend drilling in Arctic waters can be done safely. They said they strongly support the inclusion of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas for lease sales between 2019 and 2024, while at the same time urging “meaningful consultation” with communities.
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President Donald Trump has warned that the United States will no longer tolerate unfair trade practices and will always put America first in future trade deals. Giving the closing speech at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos on Friday, Trump lauded the performance of the U.S. economy under his leadership. The speech, however, was overshadowed by further controversy over alleged links between the president’s campaign team and Russia. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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