Month: December 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump has touted progress on slashing federal regulations, which he says cost America trillions with no benefit. Speaking Thursday from the White House, the president said his administration had exceeded its goal of removing two federal regulations for every new one, by removing 22 for every new one. Opponents have criticized some of the deregulation, especially dismantling of the net neutrality rules that guarantee equal access to the internet. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. …

An 800-foot-tall (244-meter) centerpiece is coming to Detroit’s resurgent downtown as the city continues to build momentum about three years after exiting the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The 58-story building dominating the local skyline will rise on the site of the iconic J.L. Hudson department store, whose 1983 closing epitomized Detroit’s economic downfall. “When we lost Hudson’s, it symbolized how far Detroit had fallen,” Bedrock Detroit real estate founder Dan Gilbert said Thursday during a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new building. “When it was imploded in 1998 it was a very sad day for a lot of people.” One of four projects But the bad times for downtown appear to be largely over. Bedrock Detroit’s $900 million, two-building project will include a 58-story residential tower and 12-floor building for retail and conference space. Up to 450 residential units can be built in the tower. It is one of four projects representing a $2.1 billion investment in downtown by the Detroit-based commercial real estate firm. Altogether, the projects are expected to create up to 24,000 jobs in a city that desperately needs them and generate $673 million in new tax revenue. Mayor Mike Duggan’s office has spearheaded redevelopment programs targeting a number of city neighborhoods, but Detroit’s growth is most evident in greater downtown, where office space now is limited and available apartments are tough to come by. A ribbon-cutting was held in August for an $860 million sports complex just north of downtown. The 20,000-seat Little Caesars Arena …

With the ceremonial flourish of oversized golden scissors slicing a giant piece of red tape, U.S. President Donald Trump symbolically cut through decades of regulations on Thursday.  “So, this is what we have now,” the former reality television program host said, gesturing toward a 190-centimeter-high pile of what was said to be 185,000 sheets of paper. “This is where we were in 1960,” he added, referencing a smaller stack of an estimated 20,000 pages of federal regulations. “When we’re finished, which won’t be in too long a period of time, we will be less than where we were in 1960, and we will have a great regulatory climate,” the president added at the event in the White House Roosevelt Room. Trump decried that an “ever-growing maze of regulations, rules and restrictions has cost our country trillions and trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, countless American factories, and devastated many industries.” The event took place just after the Federal Communications Commission, in a 3-2 vote, repealed a rule of the previous Obama administration calling for  “net neutrality,” the principle that all internet providers treat all web traffic equally.  Lawsuits filed The deregulatory zeal has generated a backlash.  The state of California has filed seven lawsuits challenging part of the administration’s deregulatory efforts dealing with the environment, education and public health.  The administration’s “rule rollbacks risk the health and well-being of Americans and are, in many cases, illegal,” according to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.  In his remarks Thursday, Trump touted his executive order, signed …

Pakistan’s economy has been on a steady downward slide with no end in sight, some experts say, with the currency dropping, foreign exchange reserves dwindling, the trade deficit spiking and the benchmark stock index at an 18-month low. The civilian government is at odds with the powerful military, creating an uncertain political landscape that keeps investors on the sidelines. The ousted prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, is on trial for corruption, and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has fled the country after also being charged with graft, raising questions about the prospects of turning things around. The International Monetary Fund isn’t happy about all the red ink and has questioned how Pakistan could pay back funds for a massive hydroelectric project that China has offered to build. Islamabad has pulled out of the project, at least for now. Rupee’s value The U.N. Economic and Social Survey for Asia and Pacific’s (UNESCAP) 2017 report warned this week that Pakistan’s intervention in the exchange market to stabilize the rupee, which plunged more than 5 percent against the U.S. dollar in three days, might become unsustainable. Cabinet minister Ahsan Iqbal tried Wednesday to dispel the negativity as he defended Dar’s economic and financial policies. “Pakistan is not drowning; it is heading toward stability and progress,” Iqbal said. But the economic gurus in Pakistan don’t trust the platitudes, and neither do the markets. “It was inevitable. It had to go like that way,” Ashfaque Hasan Khan, a former economic adviser to the Ministry of Finance, told VOA Deewa. “Finance …

Making no secret of her desire to move on with Brexit talks, British Prime Minister Theresa May won applause from EU leaders Thursday for efforts so far in agreeing to an outline of divorce terms. A day after she suffered a defeat in parliament in London over her blueprint for quitting the European Union, May told her peers over dinner in Brussels that she was on course to deliver Brexit. Offering her reassurance that they would formally endorse on Friday the launch of a second phase of negotiations on a free-trade pact and an initial transition period to it, leaders responded to May’s remarks by clapping and congratulating her. She told them that her priority was agreeing on a transition period after Britain leaves in March 2019 to offer businesses certainty. And she again urged the other 27 nations to speed up the talks to unravel more than 40 years of union and open discussion of trade relations, which she sees as crucial for a smooth exit. A British government official said the prime minister made “no secret of wanting to move on to the next phase and to approach it with ambition and creativity.” “I believe this is in the best interests of the UK and the European Union,” she told the EU leaders. “A particular priority should be agreement on the implementation period so we can bring greater certainty to businesses in the UK and across the 27.” Congratulations from Merkel Officials said German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated May on bringing …

Kellogg opened a new store in New York on Thursday that it hopes will become a hangout spot for millennials willing to buy cereal by the bowl and then lounge around on a bean bag chair. Cereal sales have been soft, and Kellogg Co. has tried to reach out to those in their 20s and 30s before, such as in ads pitching cereal as a late-night snack. The new store is filled with stuff it thinks millennials like: There’s a vending machine that dispenses cans of La Croix sparkling water. And a few feet away is a well-lit shelf where customers can place their bowls of cereal, add props such as vintage Kellogg trays and take pictures to post on Instagram.  Visitors of Kellogg’s NYC Cafe pay up to $7.50 for a bowl of Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes or another cereal that can be topped with sea salt, candied cashews and about 30 other ingredients. The 5,000-square-foot store in busy Union Square has couches and swing chairs where people can sit and use the free WiFi. The store also sells Pop-Tarts, coffee drinks and different flavors of milk.  Kellogg’s first store, in New York’s Times Square, closed this summer a year after opening. The Battle Creek, Michigan-based company said it was too small and the new one is more than three times larger.  The new location also has less competition from other food companies trying to create buzz with stores: The first one was next door to an M&M’s candy …

The United Nations says humanitarian needs in refugee camps in Cameroon are increasing, exceeding the means available to take care of the growing number of refugees. But some of the refugees have empowered themselves by making use of resources around them to earn a living for their families. At Gado refugee camp in eastern Cameroon,  200 refugee women have developed a fish pond by a river and are supplying fish not only to people in need in the camp but to surrounding villages. More than a hundred women sing here on the side of a river at Gado near the United Nations refugee camp. It is a day of harvest and many refugees have come to buy. Among the fish farmers is 31-year-old Christine Mboula, a Central African Refugee who has been living in the camp for two years. Her laughs are indicative of how happy she is to raise money from the sale of the fish and then carry some of her catch home for her family. Mboula says she has come to the river to collect and sell fish so as to help her family. She says the activity has kept them going. Christine says she had been jobless and poor and could not take care of her three children. She lost her husband in the fighting in C.A.R. and relied on food aid from the United Nations, which she says was never enough. Boniface Nyado, head of the World Food Program office in the eastern Cameroon town …

Severe natural gas shortages are hitting businesses and residents across China’s industrial heartland as an unprecedented government effort to clean up an environment devastated by decades of unbridled growth backfires. Factories are closing or operating at reduced capacity, business profits are shrinking as supply chains are disrupted, and people are shivering through subzero temperatures without adequate heating at home, according to interviews conducted across the region last week. The gas shortages, which have sent prices soaring nationwide, have undermined a sweeping campaign to switch millions of households and thousands of businesses from coal to natural gas in north China this winter, part of long-running efforts to clean the region’s toxic air. Much of the gasification of the region, involving more than 4 million homes, was rapidly launched by local authorities acting on their own initiatives in response to calls by the central government to control air pollution. But the plan appears to have been overly ambitious. Despite the installation of gas lines and boilers for factories and homes across the northeast, supply has been hampered by insufficient infrastructure to bring the fuel to the industrial region and store it, according to Liang Jin, an independent analyst previously with the oil and gas consultancy JLC. And in some areas, many homes have yet to get the gas boilers needed for heating. The gas plan was also implemented as China tries this winter to reduce production from polluting industries like steel and cut back on the use of diesel trucks. That has …

Brazilian builder Odebrecht transferred $4.8 million to companies linked to Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski between 2004 and 2012, some of which was paid to a company Kuczynski controlled when he held senior government roles, according to a document the company sent to Congress. In a brief recorded message broadcast on local radio program RPP after lawmakers made the contents of the document public on Wednesday, Kuczynski denied wrongdoing but did not deny the transfers took place. Kuczynski’s office declined further comment. Odebrecht declined to comment. A source in the company who spoke on condition of anonymity said the document seen by Reuters was authentic. ​Documents contradict denials The transfers shown in the document contradicted Kuczynski’s previous denials about his ties to Odebrecht and prompted some lawmakers in the opposition-controlled Congress to call for his resignation. Odebrecht is at the center of Latin America’s biggest graft scandal and has admitted to paying about $30 million in bribes to officials in Peru over a decade, including during the 2001-2006 term of ex-President Alejandro Toledo, when Kuczynski was finance minister and prime minister. After Odebrecht’s public acknowledgement a year ago, Kuczynski repeatedly denied ever taking money from Odebrecht or having any professional connections to the company. But on Saturday Kuczynski announced on a local radio program that he once worked as a financial adviser for an Odebrecht project when he did not hold public office; he did not mention the company that paid him. ‘I have nothing to hide’ According to the …

Nebraska’s main anti-pipeline group is trying to rally opposition to the TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL project’s recently approved route through the state, tracking down landowners it says were not given a voice in the regulatory process. If it succeeds, Bold Nebraska could throw up new roadblocks to the controversial project to move Canadian oil to U.S. refineries, backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, by pressing regulators to revisit TransCanada’s application, or by suing if they refuse. The Nebraska Public Service Commission issued an approval for Keystone XL to pass through the state in late November, removing the last big regulatory obstacle for the long-delayed project. But the commission’s approval was not for the route TransCanada had singled out in its application, but for an alternative that shifts it closer to an existing pipeline right-of-way that affects scores of new landowners. Bold Nebraska  Jane Kleeb, the head of Bold Nebraska, which has been fighting the pipeline for years, held the first of a series of meetings with these new landowners Wednesday. “We hope to begin the education process with landowners so they understand this is a lifetime easement for a one-time payment,” she told Reuters. “We aim to engage at least 20 percent of the new landowners in the legal landowner group.”  About 75 landowners and other citizens crammed the meeting in the community center in the small college town of Seward to meet with Kleeb and other pipeline opponents. Lee Gloystein said he was not happy upon learning that the …

The U.S. central bank raised its key interest rate slightly Wednesday, but left the level low enough to continue stimulating economic growth. The Federal Reserve pushed up rates a quarter of a percent to a range between 1.25 and 1.5 percent. The increase leaves the benchmark rate below historic averages.       The Fed slashed rates nearly to zero during the recession in a bid to boost the economy and fight unemployment by making it cheaper to borrow the money needed to build factories, buy equipment and hire people. Janet Yellen, at her last press conference as chair of the Federal Reserve, said economic growth is “solid” as business investment and overseas demand grow. She said the impact of tax changes working their way through Congress is “uncertain” but would probably give a “modest lift” to the economy over the next few years. Fed officials are expected to continue raising interest rates gradually. The recession ended and expansion resumed in 2009. Unemployment was cut from 10 percent to the current 4.1 percent and the Fed eventually decided the recovering economy needed less assistance and started raising rates. Leaving interest rates too low for too long could overstimulate the economy and spark a sharp increase in prices.   The newest U.S. inflation data came out Wednesday, showing that prices rose 2.2 percent during the past 12 months. Outside the volatile areas of food and energy, the overall economy expanded at a 1.7 percent annual rate. That so-called “core” rate remains below the …

Revenge is sweet for the makers of France’s traditional “calisson” candies, who have won a months-long legal battle with a businessman who trademarked the product’s name in China. The lozenge-shaped sweets, made of a mixture of candied fruit and ground almonds topped with icing, are widely enjoyed in France’s southern Aix-en-Provence region. Their makers were none too pleased when Chinese entrepreneur Ye Chunlin spotted a sweet opportunity in 2015 to register the “Calisson d’Aix” name for use at home, as well as its Mandarin equivalent, “kalisong”. The trademark was set to be valid until 2026, sparking angst among Provence’s sweetmakers who worried Ye’s move could have barred them from entering the huge Chinese market. But China’s copyright office rejected Ye’s claim to the brand name in a decision seen by AFP on Wednesday, which said his request to use the label “could confuse consumers on the origin of the products”. Laure Pierrisnard, head of the union of calisson makers in Aix, hailed the news as “a real victory”. The union has fought the case for months in the name of 12 sweetmakers, accusing Ye of “opportunism.” It is not uncommon for Western brands to try to crack the Chinese market only to find that their name or trademark has been registered by a local company. An enterprising Chinese businessman in 2007 registered the brand name “IPHONE” for use in leather products, to the great displeasure of Apple, which lost a court case against him. The courts similarly backed a Chinese …