With a new sanctions package under international consideration following North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test last week, analysts say China still appears reluctant to support an oil cutoff, a measure that could trigger destabilization of the Kim Jong Un regime.

Speaking at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council called after Pyongyang on Sunday tested what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb that can fit onto an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Monday that the U.S. is running out of patience with Kim, who is “begging for war.” She said only the strongest sanctions would allow a resolution of the growing nuclear threat through diplomacy.

Haley said the 15 Security Council members would negotiate a new draft resolution of tougher sanctions this week and push for a vote next Monday.

It has been just more than a month since the Security Council adopted a sanctions resolution in the wake of the regime’s two long-range ICBM tests, conducted in July, aiming to slash a third of Pyongyang’s $3 billion annual export revenue by banning coal, iron, lead and seafood. What remains untapped that has the potential to stifle Pyongyang’s nuclear pursuits is cutting off its supplies of oil and other fuels.

Draft resolution

The U.S. draft resolution of new U.N. sanctions, obtained by VOA Wednesday, calls for a ban on the sale of oil, as well as refined petroleum products and natural gas liquids, to North Korea.

Support from China and Russia is critical to impose an oil embargo on North Korea. The two countries are not only permanent members of the Security Council but also major energy exporters to the reclusive country.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday resisted the idea of blocking oil shipments to the North as a punishment for the regime’s continued development of nuclear weapons and as a way to force the country back to the negotiating table.

Beijing, from which Pyongyang imports nearly all of its oil and gas, has yet to indicate its position on such a measure, only reiterating its support of peaceful negotiations.

“The leverage [the Chinese] have on crude oil is immense,” Joseph DeTrani, former special envoy for Six-Party Talks with North Korea, told VOA’s Korean Service.

DeTrani said the consequence of severing China’s oil supplies to North Korea would be disastrous — the crumbling of an already fragile North Korean economy followed by the implosion and destabilization of the regime.

Despite China’s strained relations with Pyongyang in recent years, the odds of Beijing publicly backing oil sanctions seem remote, he added.

“China doesn’t have a great relationship with North Korea … but they do have a peace and friendship treaty that goes back to 1961,” said the former envoy, in reference to The Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. “China doesn’t want to make North Korea a total enemy. They want to have some leverage. They don’t want to totally alienate the leadership in Pyongyang.”

Fine line for China

Richard Bush, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, said Beijing walks a fine line between taking punitive measures against Pyongyang for its provocative acts and providing enough resources to the regime, allowing it to survive.

As Bush puts it, China wants to prove that it is “a real tiger” to Kim, who has ignored its advice to show restraint and proceeded with various weapons tests.

But at the same time, China worries that imposing a blockade on oil to North Korea could put the country in danger of collapse. China, which shares a border with North Korea, not only fears a refugee crisis if the regime fails, but also values North Korea as a strategic buffer between China and South Korea, where the U.S. maintains a large military presence.

It is likely China would try to create some flexibility when considering new sanctions, such as setting a ceiling for North Korea’s annual oil imports or pushing forward a graduated approach to restrictions on crude oil, Bush suggested.

“This would be in the hope that flexibility on the part of the international community would lead to flexibility on North Korea’s part,” he added. “But I don’t think that’s going to work.

“China doesn’t want to be seen as sort of totally being dictated to by the United States. It wants to preserve its own freedom of action and flexibility, but at the same time be responsive to the concern of the international community about where North Korea is going. So I would look for some sort of intermediate position,” Bush said.

With the latest nuclear test producing an estimated explosive yield of 120 kilotons,10 times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb test a year ago, the Chinese are concerned about the level of threat North Korea poses to their country, said Yun Sun, a China expert at the Stimson Center in Washington.

Nevertheless, there has been no indication from China that it is willing to cut off its oil supply to North Korea at this time, Sun said, adding it could instead move to place oil exports under a “humanitarian” exception during U.N. Security Council negotiations.

“So if China categorically put oil supply and put the food assistance to North Korea under the humanitarian catalog, then I think it will be very tricky for countries to demand China to cut the supply because the Chinese will argue that those are for humanitarian purpose,” Sun said.

Margaret Besheer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
…

With child labor soaring in Lebanon following the outbreak of war in Syria, the United Nations published Wednesday the first guide in Arabic to help farmers and officials seeking to protect them from risks like sexual abuse and injury.

Children as young as 5, largely Syrian refugees and poor Lebanese, are missing out on school and harming their health by working on farms, especially in remote, rural regions like the Beqaa, it said.

“Abuse and exploitation is widespread,” Frank Hagemann, the International Labor Organization’s deputy director for Arab states told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

More than 9 million, or almost one in 10 children in the Middle East and North Africa, are child laborers, mostly working in agriculture, ILO  data show.

“It has been fueled by the refugee influx, by the need of refugee families to earn a livelihood, by their economic misery,” Hagemann said.

Lebanon has more than 1 million Syrian refugees, including nearly 500,000 children, after a government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2011 led to civil war, and Islamic State militants used the chaos to seize territory in Syria and Iraq.

The guide, co-written with the Food and Agriculture Organization, includes information on the risks child laborers face — for example, sexual abuse, contamination from pesticides and missing out on their right to education.
…

One of China’s biggest textile mills is planning its first North American factory in a small town in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas.

Forrest City, located near the Mississippi River, is where the Chinese textile giant Shandong Ruyi plans a $410 million investment to spin yarn at a factory where local workers once built Japanese televisions.

Mayor Larry Bryant says the company is already working on training at the local community college.

“I think everybody is happy,” Bryant said. “Everybody is waiting. If they would tell people tomorrow to come out to fill out applications, they would have thousands.”

Ruyi’s project will consume 200,000 bales of Arkansas cotton annually, nearly all the cotton the state grows each year. So Arkansas Economic Development Commission Executive Director Mike Preston expects a surge of new planting.

“That’s going to turn around and put money back in their pockets and the people they employ as well as anyone in between, people who are baling the cotton, transporting and bringing it to facility and anyone transporting out,” he said. “So the supply chain on a company like this, a project like this is exponential.”

Some Chinese investors in the U.S. face challenges from labor unions amid claims of workplace culture clashes.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who has brought nearly $2 billion worth of Chinese investment to his state, says there are always cultural differences to work through.

“There are things we can learn from China entrepreneurship and China workers, how they do things and say, ‘Hey, it’s a great idea that we ought to adopt here.’ And vice versa,” Hutchinson said. “I think you will see that China’s business leaders will see some very good practices that we have that they may want to adopt. I see this as a great win for both sides whenever we have those exchanges.”

The owner of a local barbecue restaurants expects the new Chinese bosses to receive a warm welcome in Forrest City.

“It can’t do anything but help, not only my business, but all the businesses,” said Pierre Evans, owner of Delta Q Barbecue. “That influx of income and influx of money is going to be a big impact to a small community like this.”

Local leaders are especially encouraged by the company’s promise to create 800 jobs and offer wages of more than $15 an hour. That’s nearly double the minimum wage in a community that has been struggling economically for decades.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump is making a new push Wednesday for a tax overhaul, visiting the midwestern state of North Dakota to call for lower corporate and individual tax rates.

Trump is pressing Congress to approve tax reforms in the coming months, with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin predicting that changes can be completed by the end of the year.

But tax legislation is one of several complicated issues Congress is facing and Republican and Democratic lawmakers have sharply divergent ideas of how to change the country’s complex tax code.

Trump plans to meet with workers at an oil refinery in North Dakota, a largely rural state along the northern U.S. border with Canada. The White House said Trump would make the case that one of the country’s last major tax overhauls, in 1986, also occurred under a Republican president like Trump, Ronald Reagan, with support from Democratic lawmakers.

North Dakota Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp is traveling with the president on Air Force One to her state, and Trump is hoping she will join at least a handful of other Democrats to support a tax overhaul. With Trump’s national voter approval rates mired in the 30-percent range, Democratic lawmakers in Washington have shunned Trump’s legislative initiatives, mostly notably his efforts to dismantle national health care policies championed by former president Barack Obama.

Specific tax changes

Trump’s tax pitch is the second he has made in a week on trips to states he won in last year’s contentious election against Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State. But like his speech in Missouri last week, Trump is expected to steer clear of specific tax changes he wants.

Trump has continued to call for a national corporate tax rate cut from 35 to 15 percent, a figure most U.S. economists say is unreachable without adding a new tax of some sort to offset the lost revenue the government needs to operate.

As he prepared for the North Dakota trip, Trump again made the inaccurate claim the United States is “the highest taxed nation in the world.” Numerous studies of tax rates around the globe show that by various measures, U.S. taxation is relatively low compared to that in other developed countries.

The World Economic Forum said U.S. business taxes do not rate among the world’s top 27 countries, all of which have total rates above 50 percent. The top U.S. rate, including additional state corporate taxes, totals nearly 39 percent, but corporations often pay far less after deducting their business expenses.

Trump met with top Republican congressional leaders Tuesday about taxes, telling them, “If we’re going to keep momentum going and allow the economy to truly take off as it should, it is vital that we reduce crushing tax burden on our companies and on our workers.

“This is more than just tax reform. This is tax cutting,” Trump said. “We’re going to cut taxes, we’re going to reduce taxes, for people, for individuals, for middle income families. We’re going to reduce taxes for companies.”

Trump has feuded with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell in recent months over the Senate’s failure to overhaul U.S. health care policies.

But McConnell praised Trump’s commitment to the tax overhaul, saying he was “very engaged on this issue.”

 
…

One of China’s biggest textile mills is planning its first North American factory in a small town in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas. VOA’s Ping Zhang went to have a look at local expectations and the promise of new jobs.
…

The second round of talks on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement ended Tuesday amid resistance to discussing Mexico’s low wages and large differences over dispute resolution mechanisms.

The head negotiators for all three countries at the talks in Mexico City said progress had been made, but U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer said some areas were going to be challenging.

“There’s no secret that the labor provisions will be contentious and that it’s our objective to have provisions that raise wage rates in Mexico,” Lighthizer said. “I think that’s in the interest of Mexicans and in the interest of the United States.”

He also said that while the U.S. had proposed eliminating the current dispute resolution mechanism, “we haven’t had any detailed negotiations” on the system, which is known as Chapter 19.

Text was coming together for most chapters of the treaty, however, including small and medium enterprises, competitiveness, digital trade, services and the environment.

“The strategy is to conclude in the short term those things that can be concluded” and then tackle the thornier issues, Mexican Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo said.

Regarding energy, Guajardo said “there are no points of difference or controversy.” He said the main question was whether it should have its own chapter or be spread across all chapters.

But those close to the talks said relatively few concrete proposals appear to have been made on contentious issues like dispute-resolution mechanisms, seasonal farm tariffs and regional content rules.

The United States wants to eliminate the Chapter 19 private arbitration panels, while Canada wants to keep them. The panels can overrule tariffs, making it harder for the United States to unilaterally block products.

“It is clear that there are differing positions on Chapter 19,” Guajardo said.

Produce growers, many of whom have operations in all three countries, said they like the current dispute resolution system. They said changing it might force them to adjudicate disputes in courts in one of the three countries, a prospect they don’t relish.

“I think industries across all three countries have found Chapter 19 to be an effective, timely method for dealing with disputes,” said the head of the United Fresh Produce Association, Thomas Stenzel. Repealing it “could certainly make it a much more complicated, legalistic process.”

The U.S. also wants to tighten labor standards and local content rules in products like autos. But business groups want to keep wages out of the talks. Lighthizer declined to go into detail on either of those topics.

“I think mandating wages becomes very difficult across multiple countries,” said Stenzel. “Within the trade agreement itself we believe that the workers’ standards of fair treatment, addressing forced labor, child labor, those issues, is appropriate. But when it comes to wages we don’t feel that that is as appropriate in the trade agreement.”

Mexico has drawn plants and investments by capitalizing on low wages and weak union rules, and Mexican business and labor leaders appear to be resistant to any attempt to tighten labor standards or ensure that Mexican wages rise.

Mexican and Canadian auto unions have said in a report that Mexican autoworkers earn about $3.95 an hour, which is about one-ninth of average wages north of the border.

The United States also wants to increase minimum levels of regional content in products like autos, so that fewer parts are imported from Asia or Europe, assembled in Mexico and labelled “made in North America.”

As for seasonal anti-dumping tariffs, Stenzel said growers don’t like the idea though that proposal appears not to have been formalized yet. Such measures seek to protect producers like tomato growers in Florida against surges in Mexican imports. Stenzel and other big producers fear it could be extended to apply to other crops.

The five days of talks in Mexico City were held in around two dozen working groups. The first round of talks took place in Washington in mid-August and the next round will be held Sept. 23-27 in Ottawa, Canada.
…

Leaders of BRICS, an acronym for the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa combined, on Monday expressed concerns over Pakistan-based militant groups and cited them as a problem for regional security.

The economic bloc called for the supporters of these groups to be held accountable.

The call for action comes two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump put Pakistan on notice to stop harboring Afghan militant groups that use Pakistani soil to plan and launch attacks against Afghan and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

BRICS members condemned terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and called for an “immediate cessation of violence” in the country.

“We, in this regard, express concern on the security situation in the region and violence caused by the Taliban, ISIL/DAISH, Al-Qaida and its affiliates, including Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, TTP and Hizb ut-Tahrir,” read a joint declaration issued by the economic bloc during its annual summit in China’s Xiamen.

“We reaffirm that those responsible for committing, organizing, or supporting terrorist acts must be held accountable,” the declaration added.

While the BRICS statement has not named Islamabad directly, many of the groups cited in the declaration find safe haven in the country.

Washington and Kabul have long accused Islamabad of turning a blind eye to the issue of safe havens for Afghan militant groups.

Trump last month blamed Pakistan for “housing” terrorist groups that are fighting Afghan and American forces in Afghanistan. He vowed not to be “silent about Pakistan’s safe havens” for the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.

New Delhi also has accused Pakistan-based religious groups of supporting militancy in Indian Kashmir.

Analysts say the new charges put additional pressure on Pakistan for its alleged support of regional militant groups that are fighting in Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir.

“The BRICS summit’s decision that Laskar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are a threat to the region will certainly have an impact on Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts,” Rasul Baksh Raees, a political analyst in Pakistan, told VOA.

Possible change in China’s stance

Experts believe the BRICS statement also indicates a change in China’s traditional stance toward militant groups in the region.

“This has now become a necessity, as China and Russia are looking into the matter very seriously and it’s becoming evident that China might not support Pakistan the way it has done in the past,” Pakistani analyst Raza Rumi told VOA.

Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, believes the BRICS statement is a serious development.

“This is a big deal because China has agreed to single out, on the global stage, terror groups that it typically blocks from getting sanctioned on the global stage,” Kugelman said.

He believes China has economic interests in the region and “needs stability in Pakistan as it builds out its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [CPEC] in that country.”

“In fact, Beijing has a strong interest in Pakistan cracking down on all terror groups, not just some,” Kugelman underscored.
…

As a parade of motorists rolled down their windows on the edges of a Houston Home Depot parking lot offering cash, the crowd of day laborers had slowly thinned to about a dozen by mid-morning.

The workers who were already gone were off to tear out soggy carpeting, carry ruined sofas to the curb and saw apart mold-infested drywall. Those who still remained knew they were hot commodities and weren’t going to settle for low offers.

The owner of a car dealership shook his head and drove off after his $10-an-hour proposal to clean flooded vehicles drew no takers. A pickup driver who promised $50 for two hours to rip out wet carpeting and move furniture was told the job was too short to be worthwhile.

Day laborers — many of them immigrants and many of them in the country illegally — will continue to be in high demand as workers who clear debris make way for plumbers, electricians, drywall installers and carpenters. Employers are generally small, unregulated contractors or individual homeowners, resulting in a lack of oversight that creates potential for workers to be unpaid or work in dangerous conditions.

Houston’s day laborers are generally settling for $120 to $150 to clear homes of Harvey’s debris for eight hours. As noon struck Friday, three workers took a job for $100 for up to five hours rather than let the whole day slip. It didn’t hurt that the contractor provided tools, distributed bottles of cold water and dangled the prospect of more steady work clearing other houses.

“Now we’ll be busy for the rest of the year,” said the contractor, Nicolas Garcia, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico who has had his own business for 15 years. “Now that this disaster happened, we have to step it up.”

Garcia, 55, is working about 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston in the Southbelt/Ellington area, a middle-class residential neighborhood whose main streets are lined with fast-food restaurants, strip malls and churches. Waters reached 5 feet in some streets on Aug. 27, forcing families with young children to escape on neighbors’ boats and inflatable swimming pool toys.

The contractor led a caravan of workers to a four-bedroom house that was in better shape than others. Sharon Eldridge, a 63-year-old renter who lives alone, landed in about a foot of water when she stepped out of bed Sunday. Her furniture and clothes were ruined, but she didn’t have to evacuate.

Armando Rivera, a 36-year-old Honduran who is living in the country illegally and raising four children with his wife, said it was painful to see so many people die and lose their home, but the storm would jolt the local construction economy.

“When there is work, you can live a good life,” he said as he took a break from knifing Eldridge’s water-logged beige carpeting into pieces small enough to carry outside.

Construction workers were scarce even before Harvey struck. The Associated General Contractors of America, a trade group, said Tuesday that a survey of 1,608 members showed 58 percent struggled to fill carpentry jobs and 53 percent were having trouble finding electricians and bricklayers. Texas’ shortages were more acute.

Nationwide unemployment in construction was 4.7 percent in August, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier. Ken Simonson, chief economist for the contractor trade group, said the latest indicator was the lowest for any August since the government began keeping track in 2000.

“From what I’m reading, we’ve never seen so many homes either destroyed or at least rendered uninhabitable at once,” Simonson said. “I doubt there is enough labor with the skills.”

A sharp increase in immigration arrests under President Donald Trump may further limit the labor pool. The Houston office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made about 10,000 arrests this year, second-highest in the country after Dallas. The region has about 600,000 immigrants in the country illegally, third-largest behind New York and Los Angeles.

Laborers who gathered at Home Depot stores for Harvey work — some on their fourth of fifth major storm — swapped stories about exploitation that either they or someone they knew had suffered. Jose Pineda, a Nicaraguan who entered the country illegally in 2005 through the Arizona desert, said he had injured his arm with a saw and was shorted $380 but decided not to complain. Arturo Garcia, a legal resident from Mexico, knows three people who got hernias on the job and had to pay for surgery out of pocket because they were uninsured.

Storm recoveries pose heightened danger. A 2009 study by researchers at University of California, Los Angeles and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network found that day laborers working on storm recovery during Hurricane Katrina were commonly exposed to mold, worked on roofs without safeguards against falling and were exposed to chemicals and asbestos.

Pineda, 40, joined three other laborers at a three-bedroom house with soaked red carpet, moldy leather chairs, a television and other furniture strewn about as if a tornado hit. The owner balked in the Home Deport parking lot when workers asked for $120 each to clear the house and bargained them down to $100.

When Pineda saw the home and experienced its overwhelming stench, he realized it would take much longer than the owner promised and insisted on $150. The workers left when the owner refused.

“They didn’t realize that everything in the house was ruined,” said the owner, who identified himself only by his first name, Guy. “We just don’t have the money to pay them.”

 
…

Chinese millennials with a dim view of their career and marriage prospects can wallow in despair with a range of teas such as “achieved-absolutely-nothing black tea,” and “my-ex’s-life-is-better-than-mine fruit tea.”

While the drink names at the Sung chain of tea stalls are tongue-in-cheek, the sentiment they reflect is serious: A significant number of young Chinese with high expectations have become discouraged and embrace an attitude known on social media as “sang,” after a Chinese character associated with the word “funeral” that describes being dispirited.

“Sang” culture, which revels in often-ironic defeatism, is fueled by internet celebrities, through music and the popularity of certain mobile games and TV shows, as well as sad-faced emojis and pessimistic slogans.

It’s a reaction to cut-throat competition for good jobs in an economy that isn’t as robust as it was a few years ago and when home-ownership — long seen as a near-requirement for marriage in China — is increasingly unattainable in major cities as apartment prices have soared.

“I wanted to fight for socialism today but the weather is so freaking cold that I’m only able to lay on the bed to play on my mobile phone,” 27-year-old Zhao Zengliang, a “sang” internet personality, wrote in one post. “It would be great if I could just wake up to retirement tomorrow,” she said in another.

Such ironic humor is lost on China’s ruling Communist Party.

In August, Sung Tea was called out for peddling “mental opium” by the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, which described sang culture in an editorial as “an extreme, pessimistic and hopeless attitude that’s worth our concern and discussion.”

“Stand up, and be brave. Refuse to drink ‘sung tea,’ choose to walk the right path, and live the fighting spirit of our era,” it said.

China’s State Council Information Office did not reply to a request for comment for this story.

Despondency among a segment of educated young people is a genuine concern for President Xi Jinping and his government, which prizes stability.

The intensifying censorship clampdown on media and cyberspace in the run-up to autumn’s Communist Party congress, held once every five years, extends even to negativity, with regulations issued in early June calling for “positive energy” in online audiovisual content.

Later that month, some young netizens were frustrated when Bojack Horseman, an animated American TV series about a half-man/half-horse former sitcom star, and popular among the “sang” generation for his self-loathing and cynicism, was pulled from Chinese streaming site iQiyi.

“Screw positive energy,” Vincent, a 27-year old Weibo user, commented under a post announcing the news.

A spokesperson at iQiyi said the decision to remove Bojack Horseman was due to “internal process issues” but declined to give further details.

Social media and online gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd has even gone on the counterattack against “sang” culture. It has launched an ad campaign around the Chinese word “ran” — which literally means burning and conveys a sense of optimism — with slogans such as “every adventure is a chance to be reborn.”

Only-child blues

Undermining “sang” may take some doing.

“Sang” is also a rebellion against the striving of contemporary urban China, no matter the cost or hopes of achieving a goal. Tied to that is intense social and family pressure to succeed, which typically comes with the expectation that as members of the one-child generation people will support aging parents and grandparents.

Zhao’s online posts, often tinged with dark humor, have attracted almost 50,000 fans on microblogging site Weibo. Zhao turned the subject into a book last year: A Life Where You Can’t Strive for Success All The Time.

While China’s roughly 380 million millennials — or those aged about 18 to 35 — have opportunities that earlier generations would have found unimaginable, they also have expectations that are becoming harder to meet.

The average starting salary for college graduates dropped by 16 percent this year to 4,014 yuan ($608) per month amid intensifying competition for jobs as a record 8 million graduate from Chinese universities — nearly ten times the number in 1997.

Even among elite “sea turtles” — those who return after studying overseas, often at great expense — nearly half of 2017 graduates earned less than 6,000 yuan per month, a Zhaopin.com survey found, with 70 percent of respondents saying their pay is “far below” expectations.

Home-ownership is a nearly universal aspiration in China, but it is increasingly difficult to get on the property ladder in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

An average two-bedroom home in Beijing’s resale market costs around 6 million yuan ($909,835) after prices surged 36.7 percent in 2016, according to Fang.com, China’s biggest real estate website. That’s about 70 times the average per capita disposable income in the city; the ratio is less than 25 times for New York City.

Median per person rent in Beijing, where most of the estimated 8 million renters are millennials, according to Ziroom.com, has risen 33 percent in the past five years to 2,748 yuan a month in June, equivalent to 58 percent of median income in the city, a survey by E-House China R&D Institute found. The costs often mean that young Chinese workers have to live on the edges of cities, with long, stressful journeys to work.

Financial pressures also contribute to young Chinese waiting longer to get married.

In Nanjing, a major eastern city, the median age for first marriages rose to 31.6 last year, from 29.9 in 2012, official data showed.

Rising expectations

“Sang” contrasts with the optimism of those who entered adulthood during the years of China’s double-digit economic growth in previous decades. That generation was motivated by career prospects and life quality expectations that their parents and grandparents, who had learned to “eat bitter” during tougher times, could only dream of.

“Our media and society have shoved too many success stories down our throat,” said Zhao.

“‘Sang’ is a quiet protest against society’s relentless push for achieving the traditional notion of success. It is about admitting that you just can’t make it,” she told Reuters.

It is also a symptom of the lack of channels for frustrated young adults to vent frustration, a survey of 200 Chinese university students by researchers at state think tank Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) found in June.

“The internet itself is a channel for them to release pressure but, due to censorship, it’s impossible to do so by openly venting,” Xiao Ziyang, a CASS researcher, told Reuters.

“It’s necessary for the government to exercise public opinion control to prevent social problems.”

Sung Tea founder Xiang Huanzhong, 29, said he expects pressure on young Chinese adults only to grow, citing the aging of the population as a particular burden for the young.

Xiang has capitalized on the trend with products named after popular “sang” phrases. The chain has single locations in 12 cities after opening its first permanent tea stall in July in Beijing, where a best-selling “sitting-around-and-waiting-to-die” matcha milk tea costs 18 yuan.

Xiang said he chose tame names for his products so as not to attract censure from authorities, leaning toward the self-deprecating.

He took issue with the People’s Daily’s critical editorial.

“It didn’t try to seriously understand at all,” he said.

Wang Hanqi, 21, a student at Nanjing Audit University, sought out Sung Tea after hearing about it on social media.

“I’m a bit disappointed that the names for the tea are not ‘sang’ enough,” he said in an interview outside the Beijing stall.
…

Security guard Eric Leon watches the Knightscope K5 security robot as it glides through the mall, charming shoppers with its blinking blue and white lights. The brawny automaton records video and sounds alerts. According to its maker, it deters mischief just by making the rounds.

Leon, the all-too-human guard, feels pretty sure that the robot will someday take his job.

“He doesn’t complain,” Leon says. “He’s quiet. No lunch break. He’s starting exactly at 10.”

Even in the technology hotbed stretching from Silicon Valley to San Francisco, a security robot can captivate passers-by. But the K5 is only one of a growing menagerie of automated novelties in a region where you can eat a delivered pizza made via automation and drink beers at a bar served by an airborne robot. This summer, the San Francisco Chronicle published a tech tourism guide listing a dozen or so places where tourists can observe robots and automation in action.

Yet San Francisco is also where workers were the first to embrace mandatory sick leave and fully paid parental leave. Voters approved a $15 hourly minimum wage in 2014, a requirement that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law for the entire state in 2016. And now one official is pushing a statewide “tax” on robots that automate jobs and put people out of work.

It’s too soon to say if the effort will prevail, let alone whether less-progressive jurisdictions might follow suit. The tussle points to the tensions that can flare when people embrace both technological innovation and a strong brand of social consciousness.

Such frictions seem destined to escalate as automation makes further inroads into the workplace. One city supervisor, Norman Yee, has proposed barring food delivery robots from city streets, arguing that public sidewalks should be solely for people.

“I’m a people person,” Yee says, “so I tend to err on the side of things that should be beneficial and safe for people.” 

Future for workers

Jane Kim, the city supervisor who is pushing the robot tax, says it’s important to think now about how people will earn a living as more U.S. jobs are lost to automation. After speaking with experts on the subject, she decided to launch a statewide campaign with the hope of bringing revenue-raising ideas to the state legislature or directly to voters.

“I really do think automation is going to be one of the biggest issues around income inequality,” Kim says.

It makes sense, she adds, that the city at the center of tech disruption take up the charge to manage that disruption.

“It’s not inherently a bad thing, but it will concentrate wealth, and it’s going to drive further inequity if you don’t prepare for it now,” she says.

“Preposterous” is what William Santana Li, CEO of security robot maker Knightscope calls the supervisor’s idea. His company created the K5 robot monitoring the Westfield Valley Fair mall in San Jose.

The private security industry, Li says, suffers from high turnover and low pay. As he sees it, having robots handle menial tasks allows human guards to assume greater responsibilities — like managing a platoon of K5 robots — and likely earn more pay in the process.

Li acknowledges that such jobs would require further training and some technological know-how. But he says people ultimately stand to benefit. Besides, Li says, it’s wrong to think that robots are intended to take people’s jobs.

“We’re working on 160 contracts right now, and I can maybe name two that are literally talking about, `How can I get rid of that particular human position?”‘

Spurring new jobs

The question of whether — or how quickly — workers will be displaced by automation ignites fierce debate. It’s enough to worry Bill Gates, who suggested in an interview early this year a robot tax as a way to slow the speed of automation and give people time to prepare. The Microsoft co-founder hasn’t spoken publicly about it since.

A report last year from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that 9 percent of jobs in the United States — or about 13 million — could be automated. Other economists argue that the impact will be much less drastic.

The spread of automation should also generate its own jobs, analysts say, offsetting some of those being eliminated. Workers will be needed, for example, to build and maintain robots and develop the software to run them.

Technological innovation has in the past created jobs in another way, too: Work involving new technologies is higher-skilled and typically higher-paying. Analysts say that much of the extra income those workers earn tends to be spent on additional goods and services, thereby creating more jobs.

“There are going to be a wider array of jobs that will support the automation economy,” said J.P. Gownder, an analyst at the research firm Forrester. “A lot of what we’re going to be doing is working side by side with robots.”

What about people who lose jobs to automation but can’t transition to more technologically demanding work?

Lawmakers in Hawaii have voted to explore the idea of a universal basic income to guarantee wages to servers, cooks and cleaners whose jobs may be replaced by machines. Kim, the San Francisco supervisor, is weighing the idea of using revenue from a robot tax to supplement the low wages of people whose jobs can’t be automated, like home health care aides.

Doug Bloch, political director of Teamsters Joint Council 7 in Northern California and northern Nevada, said there have been no mass layoffs among hotel, trucking or food service staff resulting from automation. But that day is coming, he warns.

Part of his responsibility is to make sure that union drivers receive severance and retraining if they lose work to automation.

“All the foundations are being built for this,” he says. “The table is being set for this banquet, and we want to make sure our members have a seat at the table.”

Innovation ‘moves the world forward’

Tech companies insist their products will largely assist, and not displace, workers. Savioke, based in San Jose, makes 3-foot-tall (91 centimeter) robots — called Relay — that deliver room service at hotels where only one person might be on duty at night. This allows the clerk to stay at the front desk, said Tessa Lau, the company’s “chief robot whisperer.”

“We think of it as our robots taking over tasks but not taking over jobs,” Lau says. “If you think of a task as walking down a hall and waiting for an elevator, Relay’s really good at that.”

Similarly, friends Steve Simoni, Luke Allen and Gregory Jaworski hatched the idea of a drink-serving robot one night at a crowded bar in San Francisco. There was no table service. But there was a sea of thirsty people.

“We all wanted another round, but you have to send someone to leave the conversation and wait in line at the bar for 10 minutes and carry all the drinks back,” Allen says.

They created the Bbot, a box that slides overhead on a fixed route at the Folsom Street Foundry in San Francisco, bringing drinks ordered by smartphone and poured by a bartender — who still receives a tip. The bar is in Kim’s district in the South of Market neighborhood.

Simoni says the company is small and it couldn’t shoulder a government tax. But he’s glad policymakers are preparing for a future with more robots and automation.

“I don’t know if we need to tax companies for it, but I think it’s an important debate,” he says.

As for his trio, he says: “We’re going to side with innovation every time. Innovation is what moves the world forward.”
…

Ken Beck characterizes his life as a farmer in the U.S. right now as a gamble.

“Risky at best,” he told VOA. “There is no money in this game anymore.”

Beck says he is entering a fifth year of losing money, due in part to lower corn and soy prices, along with high input costs for fertilizer and seed.  

But he says there is something the U.S. government can do to help.

“Trade. Which is under attack right now.”

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP agreement, earlier this year erased Beck’s hope for increased demand, and ultimately a boost in prices for his corn and soybeans.

That is why he now is closely watching the U.S. government’s efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, with Canada and Mexico.

Campaign promises

Renegotiating NAFTA fulfills a campaign promise made by President Donald Trump. While much of the focus is on manufacturing jobs, the original NAFTA agreement, signed in 1994, provided a critical boost for U.S. agricultural exports, and farmers like Beck are concerned about any changes to the current agreement that could negatively affect their bottom line.  

“For a corn producer, grain producer, NAFTA’s been extremely good,” said Beck, standing not far from some of that produce which could ultimately travel south of border after it is harvested later this year.

The U.S. sent more than $2.5 billion of corn to Mexico in 2016, making the U.S. one of the top suppliers to its southern neighbor.

“They have a rising middle class there that wants to eat protein, and I produce protein,” Beck explained.

But this year, Mexican imports of both U.S. soybean and corn are down, and Beck knows his protein isn’t the only one on the market.

“Mexico for the first time in history bought corn from Argentina. Was it cheaper? No. But they are sending a signal,” he said.

Other signals that concern Beck are those from President Trump, who has threatened to withdraw from NAFTA, creating further uncertainty for U.S. farmers.

“I think everybody’s running a little bit scared because we are in uncharted territory,” he told VOA.

“If you have a shock like pulling out of TPP or not keeping the agreement going on NAFTA, it makes the markets nervous and it lowers the farmers farm income,” said Tamara Nelsen, senior director of commodities for the Illinois Farm Bureau.  

She has heard from many farmers in recent weeks, including those she met with during the 2017 Farm Progress show in Decatur Illinois — one of the largest Farm shows in the country — who tell her they are concerned about the increased rhetoric as negotiations continue.

“We hope that some of the rhetoric, like anti-trade, anti-exports for agriculture, will turn around and we’ll actually have some achievements,” said Nelsen.

Status quo

Meanwhile, Beck says he isn’t looking for dramatic changes for agriculture in NAFTA, and would be satisfied with the status quo.

“Hopefully cooler heads prevail and we can tweak this,” he said, “or do a little something, and nothing much really changes.”

Whatever happens, Nelsen says it’s important to reach a new agreement — soon. “There’s a presidential election next year in Mexico, and so if things do not move quickly, it’s possible they might make progress here in the U.S. and Canada and Mexico in the next four months, and then we might see a slide into some stalemate. So the hope is, by Ag groups and others, to keep it moving.”

Beck also hopes negotiations keep moving, because time to make money isn’t on his side at the moment.

“Decisions in the next few weeks are going to have to be made for next year already,” he noted. “If you are going to start cutting costs, where do you start?”

As Beck keeps one eye on his bank account, the other is looking at the skies above his Illinois farm as he deals with the other major unknown in his life right now — the weather.

 
…

Amanda Spartz nearly did not renew her home’s flood insurance policy after her first year in Florida. Two hurricanes came close to the Fort Lauderdale suburbs last year, but they didn’t hit and her home isn’t in a high-risk flood zone. She figured she could put the $450 annual premium, due next week, to another use.

Then Harvey hit Houston, its historic rains causing massive floods even in low-risk neighborhoods. Spartz, a business analyst, paid the bill this week.

Harvey a wake-up call

If Spartz had dropped her policy, she would not have been alone. Far fewer Americans compared with five years ago are paying for flood insurance in coastal areas of the United States where hurricanes, storms and tidal surges pose a serious threat, according to an Associated Press analysis of government data. The center for the problem is South Florida, where Spartz lives. The top U.S. official overseeing the National Flood Insurance Program told AP that he wants to double the number of Americans who buy flood insurance.

“I was talking to my husband and I said that if something like Harvey happens here, I don’t want to be on the hook,” said Spartz, who relocated from Cincinnati. “It isn’t a lot of money to save yourself the heartache if it does happen.”

What’s driving the drop in policies? Congress approved a price hike, making premiums more expensive, and maps of some high-risk areas were redrawn. Banks became lax at enforcing the requirement that any home with a federally insured mortgage in a high-risk area be covered. Memories of New Orleans underwater in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina have faded.

Without flood insurance, storm victims would have to draw on savings or go into debt, or perhaps be forced to sell.

Fewer policies in force

The number of policies in force today has fallen in 43 of the 50 states since 2012, dropping from almost 5.5 million to just less than 5 million, a decrease of 10 percent, AP’s analysis found. In low-lying Florida, where by far more flood insurance policies are sold than in any other state, the drop has been almost 16 percent. In only two states, Hawaii and South Carolina, are at least 50 percent of homes in flood hazard areas insured under the program.

AP’s analysis also showed the percentage of homes in high-risks areas that have flood insurance is sometimes frighteningly low. In Spartz’s home of Broward County, it’s only 13 percent. In Houston’s Harris County, it’s 28 percent. In New Orleans, it’s 46 percent.

Roy Wright, the director of the insurance program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, acknowledges that the decrease is alarming and says he hopes to double the number of policies in the near future. He also wants to persuade more communities to limit construction in high-risk flood zones. Congress is likely to reauthorize the insurance program before it expires Sept. 30.

​Flood insurance debate

President Donald Trump’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, said he expects changes to the flood program to be debated on Capitol Hill later this fall, after the immediate Houston recovery is underway.

“This administration’s been pretty clear that we’d like to see some responsible reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program,” he said Thursday at the White House. “I don’t think now’s the time to debate those things.”

Last year, the program collected about $3.3 billion in premiums and paid out about $3.7 billion for losses. FEMA paid out $3.5 billion per year over the past 12 years, which included Katrina.

“It is about consumer choice. It’s about consumer education. It’s about an education related to flood risk. It’s about communities galvanizing around it. It’s also about communities making choices about how they want to build going into the future so that people are at less risk. When they are at less risk, their premiums are cheaper,” Wright told the AP.

Lax enforcement

One way to compel more homeowners to buy policies would be for banks to enforce the coverage requirement for homeowners with a federally insured mortgage if they live in a Special Flood Hazard Area. Experts said that’s not happening. Many homeowners let the policy lapse after a few years, correctly thinking the bank will not check. Or a bank will sell mortgages to another bank, and paperwork on whether homes require flood insurance isn’t reviewed. About 7 out of 10 homeowners have a mortgage.

“The banks are not watching the hen house,” said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman with the Insurance Information Institute. “They sell these mortgages from a bank to another bank and to another bank, and whether that home needs flood insurance slips through the cracks.”

In Mississippi, the number of federally insured properties fell by nearly 15 percent, from about 75,000 in 2012 to 64,000 this year. The decreases were even higher in some coastal communities, including Gulfport and Long Beach, cities that took a direct hit from Katrina.

Ned Dolese, president and co-founder of Gulfport-based Coastal American Insurance Co., suspects the drop in Mississippi is largely because of a lack of government enforcement.

“There are no teeth in FEMA or the NFIP to whack you over the head if you, the consumer, don’t renew your flood policy,” he said.

Maps redrawn

FEMA periodically redraws flood-risk maps, moving some homes from mandatory-carry areas to a less-risky category. When the requirement is lifted, homeowners gamble or believe their home is no longer in danger. As Harvey proved, a lower-risk neighborhood is not a no-risk neighborhood.

After the city of Central, Louisiana, successfully petitioned FEMA last year to change its flood maps, it sent letters notifying roughly 2,000 residents that their homes no longer were inside the high-risk zone. Kyle Cutrer didn’t get flood insurance when he purchased a house in Central last summer, outside the flood zone.

Last August, a slow-moving storm dumped an estimated 7 trillion gallons of rainwater on south Louisiana, more than 60 centimeters (2 feet) of rain in some places. The deluge overtopped rivers and damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes, inundating many neighborhoods that had never seen such catastrophic flooding.

About 30 centimeters (1 foot) of water washed into Cutrer’s home, causing approximately $40,000 in damage. He used about $16,000 from FEMA to pay for some repairs; he paid the rest himself.

Cutrer said his real-estate agent and mortgage company had both assured him he did not need flood insurance, which would have cost him about $300 annually.

“I was told, ‘You’ll never flood. You won’t have a problem here,”’ he said. “As a first-time homebuyer, I was trying to keep that note as low as possible.”

A week after the flood, he called his insurance agent and purchased a flood policy.

“I’m not going to be able to stop the flood. But if it comes, I’ll be fine,” he said.
…

Sah Phon can live with some grief from his ancestral spirits.

The elderly villager abandoned them in Cambodia’s Stung Treng province in favor of a relocation package after learning his homeland would be swallowed by an enormous dam. But he’s confident they will forgive him.

“If we do something wrong, we pray in accordance with our traditions; for example [sacrificing] pigs and chickens for praying. And we pray so that we can be recovered,” he reasons.

Once a fisherman from Sre Kor village near the confluence of the Sre Pok and Se San rivers, Phon has watched as fish stocks have dwindled over the past few years.

Some blame the dam construction, others destructive techniques such as electro-fishing but all agree the population of fish is rapidly shrinking.

Relocation offer

So with his village set to be flooded and his primary source of income dead, Phon took a relocation offer early. He says he was the first.

The swift decision paid off. Phon struck out in a relocation lottery with a house right next to the entrance road of Kbal Romeas Thmey (New Kbal Romeas).

He built up a business selling household wares in the prime location and says he’s doing fine.

“It’s different because it has a highway — an ASEAN highway,” he boasted as his grandson hooks bait to a line — practicing the skills of his grandfather’s dying profession. “Before I could not transport any goods. Now I can. The truck can get into our home to transport goods. Whatever I need, they can reach my home.”

Phon has been lucky, but there are only so many general stores one village can support and not many others are as enthusiastic about relocation.

That includes his brother, Sah Voeurn, who like thousands of ethnic minority villagers facing eviction, is pained by the prospect of abandoning a fundamentally different way of life.

“I really don’t want to live there. The situation is difficult, there’s not enough water. It’s mountain land and it’s rocky and sandy and very difficult to do agriculture,” he said.

Behind the rows of shiny blue new roofs at the relocation villages each family has a small plot of land. On the surface, the village looks quite nice.

Inadequate compensation

Away from the prying eyes of company representatives and local officials monitoring the area, many quietly complain that opportunities to generate income are scarce, the soil is poor and personal movements are heavily restricted.

Voeurn feels so strongly against relocation that he has traveled the long journey from Sre Kor to Kbal Romeas to join a community protest — a trip made harder by multiple police checkpoints attempting to restrict access to the area.

“The government is building the dam to get more income for the government, not for the villagers,” he said on the eve on a pig sacrifice with 50 Bunong families that are holding out and trying to stop the dam

The 400-megawatt Lower Se San II, which is Cambodia’s largest dam so far with a flood plain of 335 square kilometers, hasn’t just stirred controversy because of the roughly 4,000 families it will forcibly displace.

It has far wider implications for fish stocks, conservationists argue.

More than 9 percent of the fisheries for the entire Mekong river would be lost because of the Lower Se San II, according to a report in the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Science.

Even an environmental impact assessment commissioned by the dam’s developers and approved by the Cambodian government in 2010 found the impacts on fish would be severe, as it would block migratory species.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy did not respond to multiple request to comment on the impact of the project.

With Cambodian’s energy demands predicted by some estimates to triple between 2012 and 2020 and supply already heavily reliant on imports, the government argues the more than $800-million project will supply much needed power to five provinces.

Debates rage about how this benefit stacks up economically against the loss of fish and impacts on water flow and quality.

What none of the arguments over figures can appreciate though is the value of a fundamentally different way of life, or whether affected villagers will attain a better standard of life by being dragged into the formal economy rather than living effectively off grid.

“The native people have a way of life opposite to mainstream people, native people consider nature as friend and don’t have a passion to own,” says Loek Sreyneang, a project officer at Cambodia Indigenous Youth Association.

The scores of families holding out want an audience with the government, but that has not been forthcoming.

So instead they have taken their case to the provincial court, arguing the development amounts to a systematic attack on indigenous people and thus a crime against humanity under Cambodian law.

That desperate final act will almost certainly have no impact and in weeks their houses will be underwater.

“I can feel their misery to leave from home, a fatherland which they have lived in for ages,” Loek Sreyneang lamented.
…

Homelessness is a serious problem, and there are a variety of approaches to combating it. Faith Lapidus has the story of one effort to tackle the problem in Los Angeles, one tiny house at a time.
…

U.S. home builders created more than a million units of housing in 2016. Often, older homes are demolished to make way for the new buildings, and things like doors, floors, windows and more are thrown away. Arash Arabasadi reports from Washington on one nonprofit that reclaims old materials and gives back to the community.
…

Hurricane Harvey may temporarily slow U.S. consumer spending, hurt national economic growth and boost unemployment for a while. Experts say it is very hard to accurately predict just how seriously Harvey will hurt Houston and the U.S. economy. But, as VOA’s Jim Randle reports, one expert on the Texas economy is bullish on Houston’s recovery.
…

Trade negotiators plan to take small steps forward in a second round of talks to rework the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) this weekend, trying to ignore daily threats from U.S. President Donald Trump

to tear it up if he does not get his way.

Trump has used Twitter, press conferences and speeches to attack NAFTA in recent days, a ploy Mexican and Canadian officials regard as a negotiating strategy to wring concessions, but which has heightened uncertainty over the accord.

“Hopefully we can renegotiate it, but if we can’t, we’ll terminate it and we’ll start all over again with a real deal,” Trump told cheering workers at a factory in Missouri on Wednesday, as Mexico’s foreign and trade ministers met their U.S. counterparts in Washington to keep relations on track.

Away from the diplomatic noise, trade experts from the three NAFTA nations hope to advance the revamp during the five days of talks in Mexico that start on Friday by working through areas of greater consensus before turning to trickier issues.

“We want to see positive signs of progress at the

negotiating tables,” said Moises Kalach, head of the

international negotiating arm of Mexico’s CCE business lobby, which is leading the private sector in the talks. “Hopefully we’ll get it, even if it doesn’t have to be stated publicly. Hopefully we’ll start getting closure on some issues.”

Overall, the Mexican round, which follows talks two weeks ago in Washington, is expected to define more clearly the priorities of each nation rather than yield major breakthroughs.

The emergence of detailed positions on the tougher points looks less likely in this round, officials said.

Kalach and one Mexican negotiator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saw broad agreement between the NAFTA members on how to improve conditions for small businesses, as well as in salvaging elements of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade accord that Trump ditched after taking office.

Some agreement but hurdles remain

Some consensus was forged between the three countries when the TPP was finalized in 2015 on issues including the environment, anti-corruption, labor rules and digital trade.

More divisive issues that could enter the talks range from exploring the scope to raise NAFTA content requirements for autos to the contested U.S. demand to scrap the so-called Chapter 19 dispute settlement mechanism for resolving complaints about illegal subsidies and dumping, officials say.

A key plank of the U.S. strategy is how to reduce its trade deficit with Mexico, which has sent negotiators scrambling for creative ways to rebalance trade, Kalach said.

One hope is that Mexico’s incipient oil and gas sector opening will result in more imports and infrastructure investment from U.S. companies, some of which have already entered the market, such as Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp.

Folding that reform into NAFTA in a way that would make any attempt to unwind it politically costly for a future Mexican government would give U.S. and Canadian investors more security, Kalach and the Mexican negotiator said.

The risk the reform will stall has preoccupied officials in the region because the current front-runner for Mexico’s July 2018 presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, opposed the opening of the energy industry.

“The best thing [the United States and Canada] can do is protect NAFTA because this essentially protects their investments,” said Kalach.

Throwing words around

Trump has accused Mexico and Canada of being “very difficult”, and officials from both countries say his words come as little surprise given his confrontational negotiating style.

Still, Mexico’s government has touted a back-up plan, seeing a “high risk” that NAFTA could unravel.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday shrugged off the threats and Canadian officials close to the process said they remained fully focused on the talks.

“There are always going to be words thrown about here and there but … we will continue to work seriously and respectfully to improve NAFTA to benefit not just Canadians but our American and Mexican friends as well,” Trudeau said.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer declined to comment directly on how Trump’s comments would affect the talks. However, trade experts say they are unlikely to foster a spirit of cooperation.

“I think his tweets and statements are just complicating what’s already a difficult negotiation,” said Wendy Cutler, a former deputy USTR and lead U.S. negotiator for the TPP. “I think it will embolden the naysayers in Canada and Mexico who don’t want to move in certain areas by telling the negotiators, ‘don’t move on these issues because the president has already said he probably won’t sign off on this deal’.”
…

The French government said on Thursday it would cap unfair dismissal payouts and give companies more flexibility to adapt pay and working hours to market conditions in a labor reform France’s biggest union said was disappointing.

The reform, President Emmanuel Macron’s first major policy step since his election in May, is also the first big test of his plans to reform the euro zone’s second-biggest economy.

For decades governments of the left and right have tried to reform France’s strict labor rules, but have always diluted them in the face of street protests.

The government said in a document presenting the reform that it will make it possible to adapt work time, remuneration and workplace mobility to market conditions based on agreements reached by simplified majority between employers and workers.

Workers compensation for dismissal judged in a labor court to be unfair would be set at three months of wages for two-years in the company with the amount rising progressively depending on how long a worker was with the firm, unions said.

However, normal severance pay would be increased from 20 percent of wages for each year in a company to 25 percent, Liberation reported.

The government consulted with unions for weeks as it drafted the reform, and only the hardline CGT union, the country’s second biggest, said from the start that it would hold a protest, set for Sept. 12.

France’s biggest union, the reformist CFDT, said that it would not call a strike against the reform but described the reform as a missed opportunity to improve labor relations.

“CFDT disappointed,” the union’s leader Laurent Berger told reporters after a meeting with the government, but he added: “Taking to the streets is not the only mode of action for unions.”
…

In the coming weeks, as Houston turns its attention to rebuilding areas devastated by Tropical Storm Harvey, people like Jay De Leon are likely to play an outsized role — if they stay around.

De Leon, 47, owns a small construction business in Houston, and he and his 10 employees do exactly the kind of demolition and refurbishing the city will need. But like a large number of construction workers in Texas, De Leon and most of his workers live in the United States illegally, and that could make things complicated.

The Pew Research Center estimated last year that 28 percent of Texas’s construction workforce is undocumented, while other studies have put the number as high as 50 percent. Construction employed 23 percent of working undocumented adults in Texas at the end of 2014, higher than any other sector, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Undocumented immigrants nervous

However, undocumented immigrants are growing increasingly nervous in Texas because of an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration that has cast a wide net.

In addition, a new Texas law that would have taken effect later this week bars cities from embracing so-called sanctuary policies, where they offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants, and allows local police to inquire about a person’s immigration status. A federal judge Wednesday temporarily blocked most of the law from taking effect.

De Leon, who has lived in the country for 20 years and has two citizen children, says the changes have spooked the city’s migrant workforce. In recent weeks, he said, one of his employees left the state and another returned to Mexico. Both feared that if they stayed they risked arrest.

Departing workers, he says, pose a problem for Houston in the wake of Harvey, which has caused flood damage to commercial buildings, houses, roads and bridges expected to run into tens of billions of dollars.

“The situation that Houston is going through now with the hurricane is going to be the trial by fire for the Republicans and the governor that approved these radical laws,” De Leon said. “They will need our migrant labor to rebuild the city. I believe that without us it will be impossible.”

Undocumented workers perform a wide range of construction jobs, from framing and dry-walling to plumbing and wiring.

Shortage of U.S. trained workers

Stan Marek, chief executive of Marek Construction in Texas, said his company doesn’t hire undocumented immigrants and has long had difficulty finding enough trained U.S. workers.

“It’s a crisis,” Marek said. “We are looking at several thousand homes that have flood damage. There is no way the existing (legal) workforce can make a dent in it.”

Marek would like to see the federal government grant emergency work authorization for undocumented workers in the rebuilding effort, he said. Otherwise, those immigrants are likely to be hired by firms that do not pay payroll taxes or provide benefits like workers’ compensation and legally mandated overtime.

It isn’t yet possible to estimate how many construction jobs will be added in Texas as it rebuilds, but in the 12 months after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Louisiana added 14,800 jobs in the sector, U.S. government data shows.

About 25 percent of the construction workers involved in the cleanup of New Orleans were undocumented, according to a study by researchers at Tulane and UC Berkeley universities. Those without papers were “especially at risk of exploitation,” the study found.

Worker exodus

The labor shortages are likely to grow worse, many builders warn. Earlier this year, a group of Hispanic contractors sent a letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott warning that the pending ban on sanctuary city policies would make it “difficult to find and retain experienced workers.”

Javier Arrias, chairman of the Hispanic Contractors Association de Tejas and one of the letter’s signers, told Reuters that “many construction workers are already moving to other states.”

Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the role undocumented workers might play in the recovery.

Elizabeth Theiss, president of Houston-based anti-immigration group Stop the Magnet, sees another option besides looking to workers in the country illegally. She says the rebuilding effort should be used to help train U.S. veterans and other citizens who need jobs.

Theiss acknowledged that reconstruction might proceed more slowly, at least initially, if immigrants without work documents are not part of the effort, but she noted that rebuilding would be slow under any scenario.

Personal hardships

Whatever role undocumented people play in rebuilding Houston, they could face hardships rebuilding their own lives.

While the Federal Emergency Management Agency provides emergency food, water and medicine to anyone, regardless of immigration status, cash assistance and other longer term aid is only available to citizens and immigrants in households where at least one family member has legal status.

Immigrant advocates are launching private fundraising drives to help fill the void.

“It is deeply tragic and un-American that so many of those working men and women who will be rebuilding Houston and the rest of the state will be doing so while facing tragedy in their own lives,” said Jose Garza, executive director of the Workers Defense Project.

De Leon said his family was lucky and did not suffer flood damage. He is now busy rounding up supplies for immigrant families stuck at shelters who are afraid to seek out more help from authorities.

In the end, he says, President Donald Trump has to know “it’s going to be impossible to rebuild Houston without the labor force of immigrants. It is illogical, what he says with his words and what really has to happen.”
…

Two weeks before Harvey’s floodwaters engulfed much of Houston, President Donald Trump quietly rolled back an order by his predecessor that would have made it easier for storm-ravaged communities to use federal emergency aid to rebuild bridges, roads and other structures so they can better withstand future disasters.

Now, with much of the nation’s fourth-largest city under water, Trump’s move has new resonance. Critics note the president’s order could force Houston and other cities to rebuild hospitals and highways in the same way and in the same flood-prone areas.

“Rebuilding while ignoring future flood events is like treating someone for lung cancer and then giving him a carton of cigarettes on the way out the door,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental and climate change law at Columbia University. “If you’re going to rebuild after a bad event, you don’t want to expose yourself to the same thing all over again.”

Trump’s action is one of several ways the president, who has called climate change a hoax, has tried to wipe away former President Barack Obama’s efforts to make the United States more resilient to threats posed by the changing climate.

Consideration of climate predictions

The order Trump revoked would have permitted the rebuilding to take into account climate scientists’ predictions of stronger storms and more frequent flooding.

Bridges and highways, for example, could be rebuilt higher, or with better drainage. The foundation of a new fire station or hospital might be elevated an extra 3 feet (1 meter).

While scientists caution against blaming specific weather events like Harvey on climate change, warmer air and warmer water linked to global warming have long been projected to make such storms wetter and more intense. Houston, for example, has experienced three floods in three years that statistically were once considered 1-in-500-year events.

The government was still in the process of implementing Obama’s 2015 order when it was rescinded. That means the old standard — rebuilding storm-ravaged facilities in the same way they had been built before — is still in place.

Trump revoked Obama’s order as part of an executive order of his own that he touted at an August 15 news conference at Trump Tower. That news conference was supposed to focus on infrastructure, but it was dominated by Trump’s comments on the previous weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump didn’t specifically mention the revocation, but he said he was making the federal permitting process for the construction of transportation and other infrastructure projects faster and more cost-efficient without harming the environment.

“It’s going to be quick, it’s going to be a very streamlined process,” Trump said.

Asked about the revocation, the White House said in a statement that Obama’s order didn’t consider potential impacts on the economy and was “applied broadly to the whole country, leaving little room or flexibility for designers to exercise professional judgment or incorporate the particular context” of a project’s location.

Construction curbs

Obama’s now-defunct order also revamped Federal Flood Risk Management Standards, calling for tighter restrictions on new construction in flood-prone areas. Republicans, including Senator John Cornyn of Texas, opposed the measure, saying it would impede land development and economic growth.

Revoking that order was only the latest step by Trump to undo Obama’s actions on climate change.

In March, Trump rescinded a 2013 order that directed federal agencies to encourage states and local communities to build new infrastructure and facilities “smarter and stronger” in anticipation of more frequent extreme weather.

Trump revoked a 2015 Obama memo directing agencies developing national security policies to consider the potential impact of climate change.

The president also disbanded two advisory groups created by Obama: the interagency Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience and the State, Local and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience.

Obama’s 2015 order was prompted in part by concerns raised by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper after severe flooding in his state two years earlier. Hickenlooper was dismayed to learn that federal disaster aid rules were preventing state officials from rebuilding “better and smarter than what we had built before.”

The “requirements essentially said you had to build it back exactly the way it was, that you couldn’t take into consideration improvements in resiliency,” Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said Tuesday. “We want to be more prepared for the next event, not less prepared.”

Bud Wright, the Federal Highway Administration’s executive director during George W. Bush’s administration, said this has long been a concern of federal officials.

He recalled a South Dakota road that was “almost perpetually flooded” but was repeatedly rebuilt to the same standard using federal aid because the state didn’t have the extra money to pay for enhancements.

“It seemed a little ridiculous that we kept doing that,” said Wright, now the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ executive director.

Big federal ‘checkbook’

But Kirk Steudle, director of Michigan’s Department of Transportation, said states can build more resilient infrastructure than what they had before a disaster by using state or nonemergency federal funds to make up the cost difference.

“That makes sense, otherwise FEMA would be the big checkbook,” he said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Everybody would be hoping for some disaster so FEMA could come in and build them a brand-new road to the 2020 standard instead of the 1970 standard.”

Even though Obama’s order has been revoked, federal officials have some wiggle room that might allow them to rebuild to higher standards, said Jessica Grannis, who manages the adaptation program at the Georgetown Climate Center.

If local building codes in place before the storm call for new construction to be more resilient to flooding, then federal money can still be used to pay the additional costs.

For example, in Houston regulations require structures to be rebuilt 1 foot (30 centimeters) above the level designated for a 1-in-100-year storm. And in the wake of prior disasters, FEMA has moved to remap floodplains, setting the line for the 1-in-100-year flood higher than it was before.
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The International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that transportation and food costs in Qatar had “edged up” because of a diplomatic rift that led four Arab countries to cut ties with the small Gulf state.

An IMF team visited the capital, Doha, this week, saying in a statement that Qatar’s government was able to soften the immediate impact of trade disruptions, but that some costs had gone up as a result of delays caused by rerouting trade. Non-oil growth is projected to shrink to 4.6 percent this year, down 1 percentage point.

In June, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and transport links with Qatar. Saudi Arabia also sealed Qatar’s only land border, a major conduit for imports.

Qatar turned to other exporters like Turkey, Iran and Morocco to fill gaps in its food imports and the construction material needed to build infrastructure for soccer’s World Cup in 2022, set to take place there. Qatar also rerouted its shipments through ports in Oman after the UAE blocked Qatar-bound shipments from using its national waters.

The IMF said Qatar’s banking sector remained sound and that the impact of the severed ties was mitigated by liquidity injections by the Qatar Central Bank and increased public sector deposits. The international lender said Qatar was prepared for any withdrawal of nonresident deposits.

The four countries accused Qatar of sponsoring terrorism and backing extremist groups. Qatar denied the accusations and said the moves were aimed at pressuring the country to fall in lockstep with policies formulated in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

The IMF warned the rift could have a wider impact across the Gulf Cooperation Council, which consists of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

“Over the longer term, the diplomatic rift could weaken confidence and reduce investment and growth, both in Qatar and possibly in other GCC countries as well,” the statement said.
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With the animals sent to safety before Harvey hit, the owners of CityVet in Houston kept watch on their empty practice by security camera, hoping not to see floodwaters rush in.

But they lost the video stream Monday morning, apparently when power to the building near Houston’s Galleria failed. So, it was impossible to assess if any damage was occurring, said Paul Kline, a veterinarian based in and watching from Dallas. To his relief, the video came back Tuesday and “we could see cars going by on the street outside — a good sign,” Kline said. By Wednesday, with the rains gone, he could see the practice had escaped the flooding in the area.

Plenty of small-business owners spent a long five days, waiting to see if the rainfall that totaled more than 50 inches in some places would flood their businesses. Harvey’s winds and rains damaged or destroyed many small businesses in the storm’s path along the Gulf Coast.

It was a tornado spawned by Harvey that destroyed the office of Kenneth Bryant’s used-car dealership in Katy, Texas, just west of Houston. The winds Saturday morning picked up the office and slammed it into the building next door.

“I lost everything in there: titles to vehicles, keys, paperwork, computers,” said Bryant, whose business was not insured. Two of the 10 cars in his inventory were destroyed.

There was more bad news Wednesday: The remaining cars had been flooded. Bryant won’t know how severely they were damaged until he is able to unlock them.

“Where do we go from here? I don’t know. It’s going to be such a long road ahead,” Bryant said.

Lost sales, revenue, profits

For many companies, damage to their premises was just the start. Some lost inventory that would cost them future sales. Workers were stranded or dealing with the devastation of their homes. Companies that couldn’t operate were losing revenue and profits every day.

Fiyyaz Pirani estimates that his Houston-based company, Medology, lost $100,000 in new business. It’s been operating with six staffers instead of its usual 60 since the storm began, and accommodating only existing customers.

“We had a couple of employees who sustained a lot of damage to their homes, and some people are in shelters,” he said.

The company, which helps patients get low-cost lab tests and other services, moved back to its regular location Tuesday from temporary quarters, with generator power but no air conditioning. Staffers were working around some puddles of water at their top-floor office.

Eleanor Rem had several inches of water in her Houston home, which also houses her business. Rem, who helps children with dyslexia learn to read, opted not to try what might have been a difficult evacuation with an 88-year-old relative.

The rains that flooded her street, backyard and driveway on Monday began creeping into her home. She and her husband got their first-floor furniture upstairs, but the carpet was soaked. Rem said she was constantly checking to see how bad the damage was.

“We’re pretty exhausted. You’re kind of nervous to go to sleep,” she said Wednesday. She expects she won’t be able to work for several weeks, in part because her students may not be able to get to her home.

‘Cross your fingers and hope for the best’

Other business owners who tried to keep an eye on their companies by watching the video from surveillance cameras ran into the same problems as the veterinary practice.

With all three of Clint Hall’s Beef Jerky Outlet stores near Houston in danger of flooding, he watched from his home in Cypress. The Galveston Island store got a foot of water as the rains continued Monday and Tuesday, but he could see the Tomball location was safe. The League City shop lost power and its cameras Saturday, so Hall had to rely on the owner of a nearby pizzeria for periodic updates. When the rains finally stopped, it had suffered one minor leak.

It was a hard five days. As Hall watched his cameras, he said, “we’re doing as well as we can.” He planned to open at least two of the stores Wednesday.

Lindsey Rose King spent five days not knowing whether the inventory for Mostess, her home decor gift box company, was safe. The warehouse where it’s all stored — cloth napkins and tablecloths, bottles of spices and cocktail mixes and other items — is in the Galleria section. The warehouse owners had to evacuate their home and couldn’t monitor the situation.

“It’s nerve-wracking. If that inventory gets wet, that’s my whole business,” King said. But Wednesday morning, the email came: Although the building did get some water, King’s merchandise was safe and dry.

Merin Guthrie worried about the possibility that water had seeped into the old loft building near downtown Houston that houses Kit, her clothing design business. Her studio is on the second floor, but friends in similar buildings said they had water coming in through their windows. Even if her fabric, samples and sewing equipment were dry, there was a threat of mold.

She got into the building Wednesday morning, found that water had indeed gotten in, but that her supplies and equipment were OK.

“You have to cross your fingers and hope for the best,” Guthrie said.
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The Peruvian attorney general’s office has opened a criminal probe into opposition leader Keiko Fujimori for allegedly laundering money for scandal-plagued Brazilian builder Odebrecht, Fujimori’s attorney said on Tuesday.

The twice-defeated right-wing presidential candidate and eldest daughter of Peru’s imprisoned former leader Alberto Fujimori denied that she or her political party ever took money from Odebrecht.

“I’m certain the investigation will confirm that Odebrecht did not give us any money,” Fujimori said on Twitter. “I’ve always collaborated with all investigations and this will not be an exception.”

Fujimori’s lawyer, Edward Garcia, told Reuters the preliminary probe was opened in connection with notes that mention Fujimori by name that were taken by Odebrecht’s jailed former chief executive, Marcelo Odebrecht.

The attorney general’s office, which declined to comment, said on Monday it had received the contents of notes made on the cellphone of Odebrecht, but did not detail them.

Fujimori is already the subject of a money-laundering investigation related to 2016 campaign donations, but a probe in connection with Odebrecht might do more to hurt support for her and her Popular Force party, which controls a majority of seats in Congress.

Odebrecht is at the center of Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal and is reviled by many in Peru since admitting late last year to having bribed local officials over a decade-long period.

News website IDL Reporteros has published what it says are  notes taken by Odebrecht and confiscated by Brazilian authorities that include the phrase: “Raise Keiko to 500 and pay her a visit.”

Prosecutor German Juarez will lead the investigation into Fujimori, Garcia said.

Juarez recently persuaded local courts to jail former President Ollanta Humala for up to 18 months before trial while he is investigated for accusations of taking undeclared campaign donations from Odebrecht.

Humala narrowly defeated Fujimori during her first presidential bid in 2011. He is now sharing a prison with her father, who is serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations and graft.
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South Texas ranchers are scrambling to relocate cattle from massive flooding spawned by Tropical Storm Harvey, with many hauling livestock up to the north of the state while others rush to move the animals to higher ground nearby.

About 1.2 million cattle are located in a 54-county disaster area drenched by Harvey, which made landfall as a hurricane last weekend. With more torrential rain in the forecast, ranchers are expressing worry that some animals could perish despite efforts to save them.

State is top producer of cattle, cotton   

Texas leads U.S. states in cattle and cotton production. An estimated $150 million worth of cotton has been lost as the storms ripped the bolls off plants and left white fiber strewn across fields.

Texas Gulf Coast export terminals that handle about a quarter of U.S. wheat exports also remained shuttered.

Of immediate concern to ranchers were cattle stranded by high water infested with venomous snakes, fire ants and alligators, said Hollis “Peanut” Gilfillian, a cattle rancher in Winnie, Texas, about 60 miles (96 km) east of hard-hit Houston.

“We’re in gator country … period,” said Gilfillian, adding that nearly every pond on the ranches in his area contain alligators.

“It’s not unusual to see an alligator in my backyard or road ditch,” he said, but added, “There’s plenty other animals that they (alligators) would much rather eat, such as fish, as opposed to trying to go after cattle.”

Ranchers had tried to prepare for the storm last week by moving cattle to the nearest hills or trucking them to safety in the north of the state, cattle industry groups said.

Chuck Kiker, who raises cattle on his farm near Beaumont, about 60 miles (96 km) northeast of Houston, opted to leave his animals in place but was caught off guard by the storm’s severity.

“You can’t move animals at this point, so you’re kind of stuck because of high water everywhere. There’s really no place to move them,” he said.

Disaster area declared

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared 54 counties a disaster area. About 27 percent of the state’s 4.46 million-head beef cow herd is in those 54 counties, according to Texas A&M University livestock economist David Anderson.

“Given that it’s August, I’m not sure that we would’ve seen a lot of the calves already sold. So you’ve a lot of young calves out there too that are in that disaster area,” Anderson said.

Grain terminals closed

Longer-term concerns for the cattle include foot rot from standing in water or muddy fields for long periods and the risk of disease from mosquitoes.

Heavy rains and flooding closed bulk grain terminals along the Texas Gulf Coast owned by major exporters including Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, although the companies say the facilities were not severely damaged.

BNSF Railway and Union Pacific suspended service to the flood-ravaged region, depriving exporters of a fresh supply of grain. The U.S. Coast Guard closed Texas Gulf ports including Houston, Galveston and Corpus Christi.

“With additional flooding likely during the next few days, normal train flows in the area may not resume for an extended period,” BNSF said in a customer service advisory.

Cotton blown away

On cotton farms, more than 300,000 bales have likely been lost, between cotton yet to be harvested and bales sitting on fields awaiting ginning, according to John Robinson, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University.

The loss, though a small part of the total U.S. cotton crop of about 20 million bales a year, was devastating for individual farmers.

“The cotton that was where the hurricane hit was affected by the winds, it was blown right off the plant. Some of those fields are obliterated,” Robinson said.

“Some of the cotton will still be on the plant but strung out like someone papered your field with toilet paper,” he said.

Record crop lost

South Texas and Coastal Bend cotton farmers were expecting a record crop this year. Thirteen of the counties in the disaster area are major cotton producers.

“The South Texas Cotton and Grain Association has preliminary crop losses projected at $150 million. That’s just devastating to all of farmers down there,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement.

Monday’s Intercontinental Commodity Exchange benchmark cotton price spiked 2.5 percent as a portion of the unharvested crop in Texas was destroyed or damaged by rain and high winds, traders said.

“The cooperative’s growers still have a lot of cotton in the field, maybe like 50 percent still out there. A lot of that will be lost because of the wind and rain,” said Jimmy Roppolo, general manager of United Agricultural Cooperative Inc in El Campo, Texas.

“It was the best cotton crop we ever raised. We really needed it this year to make up for other years,” Roppolo said.

 
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Food and beverage companies face the risk of forced labor in countries where they obtain sugarcane but most fall short in efforts to tackle the problem that threatens millions of workers, according to a study released on Tuesday.

Most of 10 companies studied offered only limited details of how they assess and monitor risks of forced labor in specific countries, and most of grievance procedures for workers are weak, said KnowTheChain (KTC), a partnership founded by U.S.-based Humanity United.

Sugarcane, a major agricultural commodity, can be found in a list of household foods and beverages from cereals to sauces and is often harvested by rural migrant workers with machetes who work long hours for low wages in hazardous conditions.

KTC said there is often little law enforcement and those workers are vulnerable to becoming victims of forced labor, especially by recruiters who deceive them about work and wages in other regions or countries.

“It is possible that the sugar in the cereal you ate for breakfast or the soda you drank at lunch was produced with forced labor,” said Kilian Moote, KnowTheChain project director, in a statement.

“Agricultural workers, particularly migrants, are at most risk of abuse.”

Sugarcane produced by forced labor has been found in Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Myanmar and Pakistan, according to a list published in 2016 by the U.S. government.

Risk Assessment?

Verite, a KTC partner, also found reports of debt bondage of sugarcane workers in India and found sugarcane workers in Guatemala at a high risk of trafficking.

Globally, about 21 million people are victims of forced labor, made to work for free after falling into debt or forced to work due to deception, coercion or threat of violence, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).

In Brazil, the world’s largest producer of sugarcane, roughly a half million people work cutting the crop, according to industry statistics.

The companies studied were Coca-Cola, Fomento Economico Mexicano S.A.B (FEMSA), Monster Beverage, PepsiCo, The Hershey Co., Mondelēz International, Nestlé, Archer Daniels Midland, Associated British Foods (ABF) and Wilmar International.

PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and ABF were the only four companies to undertake forced labor risk assessments of sugarcane supply chains in specific countries, the study said.

Coca-Cola has committed to conduct 28 country-level studies on child labor, forced labor, and land rights for its sugar supply chains by 2020, it said.

Most companies were lacking in revealing details of their risk assessment, monitoring and grievance procedures, it said.

“Few companies disclose information explaining how they address forced labor risks in specific countries, and, where they do, the information is typically focused on understanding and assessing risks, with limited information on concrete follow-up steps,” the researchers said.

Asked for a response, a Coca-Cola spokesman said the company provided detailed information to KTC.

“We believe the report speaks for itself,” a spokesman said, citing Coca-Cola’s policies on human and workplace rights posted on its website.

Contacted by email, none of other nine companies responded immediately to requests for comment.

The study compared policies and practices and used a questionnaire, to which eight of the 10 companies responded. ADM supplied only limited answers and Monster Beverage, a U.S. maker of energy drinks, did not respond, it said.

Coco-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé listed the countries they sourced from most, while Hershey, Mondelēz and Monster Beverage disclosed just one of their sugarcane-sourcing countries, it said.

ADM and Monster Beverage disclosed nothing about if or how they monitor working conditions in their sugarcane supply chains, it said.
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Japan leads the world in the number of robots per person that are used in the workplace. Instead of being wary, people apparently like them. VOA’s Deborah Block takes us to a hotel and a beer factory where droids are doing just about everything.
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There are two ways to deal with climate change: stop or slow it through controlling emissions, or adapt to it. Chances are we’re going to have to do both. In the dry areas of Texas and California, researchers are getting started on the adapting part. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Peru expects a “very ambitious” free trade deal with Australia that covers goods, services and investments to be implemented as early as next year, Peru’s deputy trade minister said on Monday.

The two countries resumed free trade talks in Australia on Monday following a first round of negotiations in July in which “a lot of progress was made,” said Deputy Trade Minister Edgar Vasquez.

“This is going to be an agreement that we should be able to implement as soon as possible, starting in 2018,” Vasquez said by telephone in Lima. “That’s what we’d like to happen and what we think is viable.”

Peru and Australia are important global producers of minerals and their bilateral trade is relatively small.

Forging a free trade deal so quickly would mark one of the first steps toward reducing trade barriers in the Pacific region after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which Australia and Peru had signed onto.

The remaining signatories to the TPP are in Australia this week discussing ways to salvage the deal. The 11 countries, which include Japan, Canada and Mexico, have a combined gross domestic product of $12.4 trillion.

Vasquez said the experience of negotiating the TPP had put Peru and Australia on solid footing for quickly hashing out a bilateral agreement.

“We also both have very open economies, so we’re really going to see a broad inclusion of sectors that will benefit from it – goods as well as services and investments,” Vasquez said.

Peru’s trade ministry said last month that rules of origin, migration and e-commerce were also under discussion and that Peru was eager to increase agricultural exports to Australia while spurring trade of mining and other professional services.

Australian trade officials were not immediately available for comment.

Peru’s exports to Australia amounted to $260 million last year, according to Peru’s trade ministry.
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Kenya has become the latest African country to ban the use of polythene plastic bags, imposing stiff fines and even jail time for anyone found using, importing or manufacturing the bags.

In one of the biggest garbage dumping sites in Nairobi, it was business as usual Monday. Loads of plastic bags full of garbage were brought in, a testament to their widespread use in the capital.

But no more, says the government.

A new law went into effect Monday making the manufacture, sale and use of polythene plastic bags illegal. Offenders can get slapped with penalties up to a four-year jail term and a $40,000 fine.

The National Environment Management Authority, with the help security agencies, has been going around Nairobi to urge retailers and manufacturers to heed the new ban.

Geoffrey Wahungu is the director general of NEMA. He is promoting the “take-bag scheme,” basically calling on consumers to bring their own cloth bags or baskets from home.

“I hope soon we’ll start seeing people who are carrying out these recycling materials, or alternative bags, which are eco-friendly. All this is creating much more employment than is being lost,” he said.

Economic impact

Two plastic bag importers unsuccessfully challenged the ban before the High Court Friday. Kenya produces plastic bags for local use and export in the region. The National Association of Manufacturers has argued that the ban will cost more than 60,000 jobs and hurt more than 170 companies.

NEMA gave six months’ notice of the new ban, but it still appears to have taken many in Kenya by surprise.

Some large retailers have already switched to paper, but small traders are feeling the pinch.

Simon Njenga runs a grocery kiosk. He says he lost customers Monday.

He says “the ban pains me a lot because a customer wants to purchase vegetables, but he doesn’t have a bag and I can’t give him one, so they leave my kiosk without buying. The government has to bring back the plastic bags. My livelihood depends on it.”

Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Cameroon have announced similar bans on plastic bags, although the bans aren’t widely enforced. Rwanda is the only African country so far to both declare a ban and push people to follow the law.

Kenyan Environment Minister Judy Wakhungu told Reuters news agency that manufacturers and importers will be the ones initially targeted for enforcement of the ban.

Experts argue that polythene bags are bad for the environment and public health. The thin plastic bags have been blamed for polluting cities and shorelines and killing animals who eat them.

NEMA says the single-use polythene bags “never fully biodegrade, remaining in the environment as small or even microscopic particles, essentially forever.”

 
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Fall armyworm has spread to Cameroon.  The pest has attacked crops in at least 24 African countries.  In Cameroon, the Ministry of Agriculture says it is particularly concerned about the impact of the fall armyworm infestation in the north and the east of the country. 

Minister-delegate Ananga Messina says fall armyworm has infested six of the central African state’s 10 regions.

She says the armyworms have been a serious threat to food security in Cameroon because cereals like maize, sorghum, rice and legume plants like cow-pea, peanuts and beans are increasingly being attacked every day.  She says the situation is particularly worrisome on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria where the population and 100,000 Nigerian refugees are already suffering from food scarcity due to the Boko Haram conflict.

The Ministry of Agriculture says nearly two million people are currently in need of food assistance in northern Cameroon.

Messina told VOA about half of Cameroon’s 23 million inhabitants and millions of livestock risk hunger in the months ahead.  She said the armyworms have extended to Cameroon’s eastern border, putting neighboring Central African Republic at risk, a country gripped by a severe humanitarian crisis after years of conflict.  

Cameroon has launched a task force to manage the infestation.

Some farmers have been using chemicals to kill the pests, but agriculture technician Anicet Mvondo says that is not the best approach.

“The problem is that the insecticide is not good for the health of the farmer,” said Mvondo. “It is not good for the environment.  It kills other organisms in the environment.  Using insecticides is not a good way.  We should try to look for other solutions because these insects on the field are also eaten by other organisms.”

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports fall armyworm was first detected in four countries in West Africa in early 2016.  It has since spread to at least 20 other countries. 

Experts say the fall armyworms can reproduce rapidly and can fly long distances in moth form, though it remains unknown how the pest spread to West Africa from South America.

The FAO is leading the regional response efforts in Africa, and it says it is drawing from lessons learned in the America’s on sustainable fall armyworm management.  FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa, David Phiri says methods like regular monitoring and hand-picking of worm larvae can be effective.

“Fall armyworm has a lot of natural enemies and we should enhance their use to control the fall armyworm … So the message is that fall armyworm has come here to stay and also that use of chemical pesticides should be reduced to a minimum,” said Phiri.

Staple crops like maize, sorghum, rice and sugarcane have been hit hard in Africa, though the fall armyworm can ravage more than 80 other plant species.  Losses for Africa are estimated at at least $13 billion.
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