Month: November 2017

The European Union has approved economic sanctions, including an arms embargo on Venezuela. EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels announced the measures on Monday in response to regional elections last month, which they say worsened the country’s crisis. The weapons ban is intended to prevent the government of President Nicolas Maduro from purchasing military equipment that could be used for repression or surveillance. The sanctions also include setting up a system for asset freezes and travel restriction on some past and present Venezuelan officials close to Maduro. Spain has long pushed for sanctions on those close to Maduro, but the EU has been divided over whom to target. In Monday’s statement, ministers said they would focus on security forces, government ministers and institutions accused of human rights violations, and the disrespect of democratic principles or the rule of law. Last Thursday, the U.S. imposed financial sanctions on 10 current and former Venezuelan officials because of corruption and abuse of power allegations related to Maduro’s crackdown on the opposition. The EU also stressed that it would not recognize Venezuela’s pro-Maduro Constituent Assembly, whose 545 members took office in August and sidelined the opposition-led National Assembly. The EU said its creation has only served to “further erode democratic and independent institutions.” …

Flying drones are nothing new in the skies, but online retailers have been investing in them as a way to deliver goods faster and to those in hard-to-reach rural areas. But the automation doesn’t stop there. Arash Arabasadi reports. …

While climate change is being discussed this week in Germany, it’s being felt by farmers and ranchers around the world. But it’s hitting subsistence farmers in places like Uganda particularly hard. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

Two became three as a scheduled Monday morning meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was expanded to include Japan’s Shinzo Abe. The change underscored the growing three-way relationship concerning regional security, especially regarding how to respond to North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, as well as countering China’s increasingly assertive maritime territorial claims. “The key for us is to ensure very close trilateral cooperation so as to bring peace and stability on the ground,” said the Japanese leader, who has been displaying a united front against North Korea with Trump. “We’ve got the same values and the same focus on ensuring that the North Korean regime comes to its senses and stops its reckless provocation and threats of conflict in our region,” Turnbull said. “Peace and stability have underpinned the prosperity of billions of people over many decades, and we’re going to work together to ensure we maintain it.” ​Show of military force A massive naval drill involving three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups is underway in western Pacific waters as a show of force. The U.S. naval vessels and aircraft have been joined by elements of the South Korean navy and Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. Trump says he will make “a major statement” on North Korea and trade when he returns to Washington following his 12-day, five-nation trip to Asia. “We’ve made a lot of big progress on trade,” Trump said at the start of his meeting with Turnbull and …

The United Nations says Asia Pacific countries need to address issues surrounding the rights of migrant workers as international talks move toward a Global Compact on migrant labor. The Global Compact’s rise, with a final agreement set for 2018, was a result of the migrant crisis faced by the European Union with the influx of refugees and migrants from North Africa since 2015. The U.N.’s Special Representative on migrant labor, Louise Arbour, says states can no longer ignore the issues of labor migration in a globalized economy. “It has become increasingly clear that globalization has opened up more opportunities for people to migrate and that it has been in everybody’s interest not to curtail migration, actually, but to facilitate safe, orderly, regular migration,” Arbour told VOA. Arbour, a Canadian lawyer and jurist, is overseeing the international consultations setting the framework for the draft document to be negotiated among U.N. member states. ​40 countries involved Talks in Bangkok included representatives from more than 40 countries, including officials, academics and civil society, providing input into the final document. The meeting called for migrant labor to have access to regular and safe migration opportunities, to be protected by labor laws as well as social protection. U.N. Under Secretary General Shamshad Akhtar told the conference migrant rights were overlooked with their contributions “going unrecognized.” “Migrants are often poorly paid, concentrated in labor work, employed in low skill jobs and in the informal sector requiring difficult and sometimes dangerous physical labor,” Akhtar said. “Addressing these …

Venezuela’s foreign debt renegotiation committee will meet with creditors at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Monday at the government’s “White Palace” in downtown Caracas, the finance minister said on Saturday. “Once again, we invite investors to register their participation in this meeting,” Simon Zerpa, who is also the finance boss of state oil company PDVSA but is on a U.S. sanctions list for alleged corruption, said in a Tweet. Foreign investor sources had said Zerpa and committee head Tareck El Aissami, who is Venezuela’s vice president but also on a U.S. blacklist for alleged drug traffickers, would probably sit out the meeting to allay any fears about meeting them. But Saturday’s exhortation by Zerpa, and the location of the meeting right opposite the Miraflores presidential palace, appear to indicate the meeting will not be a low-profile affair. Socialist leader Nicolas Maduro’s move a week ago to summon bondholders for talks about “restructuring” and “refinancing” some $60 billion in bonds has spooked markets worried Venezuela is heading for a default amid U.S. financial sanctions. President Donald Trump’s measures against the Maduro administration, which it accuses of being a “dictatorship” that has impoverished Venezuela’s 30 million people through corruption and incompetence, effectively bar U.S. banks from rolling over the country’s debt into new bonds. Venezuela did, however, appear to be honoring its most recent debt payment: a $1.2 billion payment due on a bond from state oil company PDVSA. Two investors told Reuters they had finally received payment, albeit delayed. It is …

Emirates Airlines agreed to buy 40 Boeing 787-10s in a deal worth more than $15 billion. The purchase was announced Sunday at the Dubai Air Show by the largest airline in the Middle East. Deliveries of the wide-body, twin-engine planes are set to begin in 2022. Boeing’s website says the aircraft typically carries 330 passengers with a range of 11,900 kilometers.   The manufacturer says the 787 is 25 percent more fuel-efficient than the aircraft it replaces. Also, Azerbaijan Airlines announced a $1.9 billion deal for more 787s, five to carry passengers and two more to haul freight. …

West Virginia could produce profitable niche crops grown on reclaimed mine sites. At least that’s what Nathan Hall, president of Reclaim Appalachia envisions. Hall spoke about uses for reclaimed sites at the West Virginia Good Jobs Conference last Tuesday at Tamarack. The goal of the conference is to bring together entrepreneurs, funders, local community leaders and government agencies to trade ideas, provide mentorship and support entrepreneurs in southern West Virginia. Reclaim’s first operational site is next to the Buck Harless Wood Products Industrial Park in Holden, a property owned by the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority. Former miners Reclaim and Refresh Appalachia have partnered to develop an active commercial agroforestry site, which is on about 50 acres of land that was mined and reclaimed in the late 1990s, managing crops including blackberries, hazelnuts, lavender and pawpaws. The site also has animals including chickens, hogs, goats and honeybees, which are managed with “rotational grazing techniques.” Hall said he first started work on the Mingo County site early last year. The business has five full time crew members and one crew chief. Of those six employees, four are former coal miners. According to Reclaim’s website, the organization intends to replicate the model on more mined properties and on a larger scale. “With any post surface mine landscape, this model works well,” Hall said. “It’s especially suited to areas where it’s not feasible to turn into a big shopping center or a golf course.” Long-term approach Hall said the model is designed to be …

Ranchers in the Midwestern U.S. state of Nebraska are raising beef for tables in China, reopening trade suspended more than a decade ago during concerns over mad cow disease. From Nebraska, VOA reporter Abby Sun tells us how U.S. beef producers are changing to meet Chinese food-safety requirements. …

Luber Faneitte has lung cancer but there’s no medicine to treat it. She cannot make ends meet. Crime is rampant in her neighborhood. And she fears that if Venezuela defaults on its $150 billion debt, which is considered likely, things will get worse. Faneitte, 56, lives on the 18th story of a decrepit building in downtown Caracas. In her fridge there is only water. Meat is a luxury of the past because of inflation that the International Monetary Fund projects will hit 2,300 percent in 2018. “We get by on grain, and that is just when we can get it. We make a kilo last two or three days,” Faneitte told AFP. She is on disability from her job as a civil servant and survives on a pittance, equivalent to $8.70 per month. She depends on food the government sells once a month at subsidized prices to offset the shortages of just about everything. Last time she brought home two kilos (4.4 pounds) of beans, a kilo of rice, two liters (quarts) of cooking oil, a kilo of powdered milk and four kilos of flour. But it went fast. Faneitte lives with a daughter and four grandkids. They all depend on her income. Cendas, an NGO that monitors the cost of living in this oil-rich but now destitute nation, says that in September it took six times the minimum wage to provide for the average family. Although she has nothing to cook, Faneitte leaves the gas stove running to save …

Afghanistan has received an inaugural consignment of wheat from India through an Iranian port, opening a new trade and transit route for the landlocked nation that bypasses neighboring Pakistan. The strategic sea route, officials say, will help improve trade and transit connectivity between Kabul and New Delhi. It will also potentially give India access to Central Asian markets through Afghanistan, because rival Pakistan does not allow Indian goods to be transported through its territory . The shipment of almost 15,000 tons of wheat dispatched from India’s western port of Kandla on October 29 reached the Iranian port of Chabahar on November 1. It was then loaded on trucks and brought by road to the Afghan province of Nimroz, which borders Iran.   Speaking at a special ceremony to receive the historic consignment Saturday in the border town of Zaranj, India’s ambassador to Kabul, Manpreet Vohra, said the shipment has demonstrated the viability of the new route. He added that India, Afghanistan and Iran agreed to operationalize the Chabahar port only a year-and-a-half ago. “The ease and the speed with which this project is already working is evident from the fact that as we are receiving the first trucks of wheat here in Zaranj, the second ship from Kandla has already docked in Chabahar,” Vohra announced. He said there will be seven shipments between now and February and a total of 110,000 tons of wheat will come to Afghanistan through Chabahar. Vohra added the shipments are part of a promised 1.1 …

U.S. President Donald Trump heaped praise on Vietnam Saturday, saying the southeast Asian nation is “one of the great miracles of the world.” Trump’s remarks were made at a state banquet in the capital of Hanoi, the latest event on his five-country Asian tour. Trump, who arrived in Hanoi Saturday, told dignitaries he toured parts of the country, which he said “is really something to behold.” After the nearly 20-year Vietnam War that killed millions of people, the country’s economy has been among the world’s fastest growing since 1990. Its gross domestic product has grown nearly 6.5-percent annually in the 2000s, according to the World Bank. On Sunday Trump is to have meetings with Vietnamese President Tran dai Quang and other leaders. Prior to his arrival in Hanoi, Trump was in the central Vietnamese city of Danang, where he attended the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Enroute to Hanoi aboard Air Force One, Trump reiterated to reporters traveling with him that he discussed with APEC leaders bilateral agreements that have resulted in trade imbalances he says are disadvantageous to the U.S. “It’s disgraceful. And I don’t blame any of those countries. I blame the people we had representing us who didn’t know what they were doing because they should have never let that happen.” At the close of the APEC meeting, the 21 member nations issued a statement expressing support for free trade and closer regional ties, without any mention of Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine. WATCH: Leaders of US and …

Chinese consumers are spending billions of dollars shopping online for anything from diapers to diamonds on “Singles Day,” a day of promotions that has grown into the world’s biggest e-commerce event.   China’s biggest e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group, said sales by retailers on its platforms had topped $19 billion by midafternoon Saturday in a count that started at midnight.   Its main rival, online retailer JD.com, which tracks sales starting from Nov. 1 through to the actual day, had topped $16.7 billion.   Starting at midnight, diamonds, Chilean frozen salmon, tires, diapers, beer, shoes, handbags, and appliances were shipped out from JD.com’s distribution centers on trucks bound for deliveries across China.   Singles Day was begun by Chinese college students in the 1990s as a version of Valentine’s Day for people without romantic partners. …

Just when things were starting to look up for Lebanon’s economy, a new political crisis threatens to send it crashing down again. Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s abrupt resignation Nov. 4 could unravel the first steps in years toward injecting some cash and confidence into Lebanon’s anemic economy. Already, the crisis is putting at risk multibillion-dollar plans to rebuild decaying road and electrical and communication networks and get the oil and gas sector moving.  Since then, the news has only gotten worse. Saudi Arabia, which feels it has been humiliated by Hezbollah’s expanding influence in Syria and Iraq, says it will not accept it as a participant in any government in Lebanon.   Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates all ordered their citizens out of Lebanon this week, and the Lebanese are wondering and worried about what’s to come.   “We don’t know how things will escalate,” said Rida Shayto, an associate director at the pharmaceutical manufacturer Algorithm, which does half its sales to the Gulf. Remittances at risk The developments have stunned the Mediterranean country, which once looked to Saudi Arabia as a pillar to its own stability. The kingdom brokered the Taif agreement in 1989 that ushered in peace for Lebanon after 15 years of civil war. The kingdom has plowed decades of investment into Lebanon, opened markets to trade and allowed generations of talented and ambitious Lebanese to work in its oil-based economy.   The concern now is that the kingdom and other Gulf nations …

Despite President Donald Trump’s tough talk on trade at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, international business leaders say they are excited by the prospects of greater cooperation among the 21 member countries of APEC. Many believe the annual economic leaders forum, established nearly three decades ago, will become more influential in the future and lead to greater and more balanced trade between East and West. Mil Arcega has more. …

Kurdish refugee Hakki Akdeniz left Turkey in 1999 and came to New York City. At times he was homeless and often wondered where his next meal would come from. But as Saleh Damiger reports, he has more than turned his life around. …

Afghan farmers and traders in the western city of Herat are hoping saffron cultivation can help wean them off their addiction to opium production. Faith Lapidus reports. …