The sale of ivory just became illegal in mainland China, a move heralded by conservationists, who say the legal trade has been providing cover for its illegal counterpart, perpetuating the belief it is okay to buy and own ivory.

Max Graham, CEO of the elephant conservation group Space for Giants, welcomed the news, saying the fact that China has taken this stand means that “there’s a new conservation superpower in the world that is taking its responsibilities seriously.”

“And we’re hugely enthusiastic about this because obviously the ivory trade is a huge challenge,” he said. “But the illegal wildlife trade more generally has many challenges in Asia, particularly in China, where traditional uses of wildlife parts have been fueling the massive loss of species, rare species around the world. So to see China take this stand is very encouraging. It’s the best Christmas present that the conservation community could actually have.”

China announced the ban at the end of 2016 and put it into effect at the end of 2017, surprising those who thought it might take up to five years to go into effect. Conservationists are optimistic, although they say it is too early to predict how it will be enforced.

Save the Elephants CEO Frank Pope believes the ban could prove “transformational” for the fortunes of elephants, but he cited one caveat.

“As you squeeze the balloon of the Chinese trade, you’re going to see secondary markets popping up around the borders,” he said. “And that’s what we’re already seeing in Vietnam, in Laos, in Myanmar, and even in Hong Kong, which functions as external to China. All of these places have markets that have boomed with the restrictions, the looming restrictions in China.”

Like his conservation colleagues, Philip Muruthi, vice president of species conservation at the African Wildlife Foundation, also praised the ban and noted the importance of preventing the market from shifting to other locations and helping preserve endangered species.

“About 35,000 elephants — the number we’ve heard quoted many times — are lost each year. There are about 415,000 elephants on this continent. That means that within 20 years, if the pace is kept of that loss, we will not have elephants, and therefore, all the aspirations that African people have for using wildlife and associated habitat for development, for tourism in countries like Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and all that, those aspirations will not be met. So this is big. ”

But he said elephants will not be the only beneficiaries.

“This is not just about elephants, ” he added. “It’s also about the economy, it’s about African peoples’ well-being. It’s about our heritage. So this is a significant step that China has taken.”

Conservationists say while combating poaching is critical, one of the bigger threats to elephants in the long-term is habitat management. They urge African governments, and China, through its support, to help reduce the threats.
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A music publisher is seeking at least $1.6 billion from Spotify for alleged copyright violations, the latest lawsuit to hit the fast-growing streaming company.

Wixen Music Publishing Inc., which holds rights to songs of major artists including Neil Young, the Doors, Tom Petty and Santana, charged in a lawsuit that Spotify failed to seek licenses for significant parts of its 30 million-song catalog.

“While Spotify has become a multibillion-dollar company, songwriters and their publishers, such as Wixen, have not been able to fairly and rightfully share in Spotify’s success, as Spotify has in many cases used their music without a license and without compensation,” said the lawsuit filed last week in a federal court in Los Angeles.

The lawsuit said that Spotify initially tried to work with record labels but, “in a race to be first to market, made insufficient efforts to collect the required musical composition information.”

Wixen, which is seeking a jury trial against the Swedish company, presented a list of 10,784 songs for which it questioned Spotify’s permission to stream.

The publisher said it was seeking the maximum allowed $150,000 in damages for copyright damages for each song, meaning an award of at least $1.6 billion, along with the fees of its lawyers.

Spotify did not immediately comment on the latest suit. In May, it reached an agreement to settle a pair of two similar lawsuits under which Spotify said it would set up a $43.45 million fund to compensate songwriters.

Wixen called the settlement, which still needs final approval from a judge, “grossly insufficient” and said that it would opt out of the deal insofar as possible.

Even if unsuccessful, lawsuits amount to a headache for Spotify as the company considers going public.

Spotify, which has been valued at anywhere from $8 billion to $16 billion, has maintained its dominance as streaming rapidly grows and transforms the recorded music market.

Spotify said in July that it had 60 million users worldwide who pay for subscriptions, with 80 million more using its free tier.
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Brazil’s road to economic recovery has passed another milestone with official data showing Tuesday that the country finished 2017 with a record trade surplus 40.5 percent higher than in the previous year.

The $67 billion surplus was in line with market projections and within the $65 billion to $70 billion range forecast by the government.

Brazil’s economy is projected to grow 2 percent this year, according to an annual report by the United Nations-backed Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) released last month.

That is unspectacular but solid — and far better than the 0.2 percent expected for 2017, or the two years of its worst-ever recession preceding that.

The government’s own projections are slightly more optimistic: 3 percent in 2018 and 1.1 percent in 2017.

Economy Minister Henrique Meirelles said last month that the improvement was owed to better “fiscal control, the approval of a freeze on public spending and reforms in general.”

The country’s key interest rate is now at a record low of 7 percent, half of what it was in late 2016. Inflation is now considered a minimal risk.

Brazil’s center-right president, Michel Temer, has spearheaded austerity cuts, looser labor laws and a big privatization program to boost the economy, Latin America’s largest.

But Temer remains unpopular with voters, clouding the political outlook ahead of presidential election this year.

The front-runners for the election are leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and rightwing former army officer Jair Bolsonaro. Neither man is much welcomed by investors.
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Coal mining deaths surged in the U.S. in 2017, one year after they hit a record low.

The nation’s coal mines recorded 15 deaths last year, including eight in West Virginia. Kentucky had two deaths, and there were one each in Alabama, Colorado, Montana, Pennsylvania and Wyoming. In 2016 there were eight U.S. coal mine deaths.

West Virginia has led the nation in coal mining deaths in six of the past eight years. That includes 2010, when 29 miners were killed in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia.

In September, President Donald Trump appointed retired coal company executive David Zatezalo as the new chief of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Most of the deaths this year occurred before his appointment. The Wheeling resident retired in 2014 as chairman of Rhino Resources.

Zatezalo was narrowly approved by the Senate in November. His appointment was opposed by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who said he was not convinced Zatezalo was suited to oversee the federal agency that implements and enforces mine safety laws and standards.

Last month the Trump administration brought up for review standards implemented by Barack Obama’s administration that lowered the allowable limits for miners’ exposure to coal dust. MSHA indicated it is reconsidering rules meant to protect underground miners from breathing coal and rock dust — the cause of black lung — and diesel exhaust, which can cause cancer.

Eight coal mining deaths this year involved hauling vehicles and two others involved machinery. None were attributed to an explosion of gas or dust, which was to blame for the Upper Big Branch disaster.

The number of coal mining fatalities was under 20 for the fourth straight year after reaching exactly 20 in 2011, 2012 and 2013. By comparison, in 1966, the mining industry counted 233 deaths. A century ago there were 2,226.

MSHA has attributed low numbers in previous years to far fewer coal mining jobs and tougher enforcement of mining safety rules. Zatezalo, who said in October that his first priority was preventing people from getting hurt, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment left with MSHA on Tuesday.

There have been 13 fatalities in 2017 in non-coal mines that produce gravel, sand, limestone and mineable metals. There also were 17 such deaths in 2015 and 30 in 2014.

Coal production

Appalachia has been especially hit hard by the closing of dozens of mines in recent years, but there was a turnaround in production in 2017.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s weekly estimates, U.S. coal production increased 8.9 percent in the 52 weeks ending Dec. 23, the latest available. Production in West Virginia increased 16 percent, including 25 percent in coal-rich southern West Virginia.

Wyoming, the top coal-producing state, saw a 10.7 percent increase and Pennsylvania had an 11.6 percent hike.

There were about 92,000 working miners in the United States in 2011, compared with about 52,000 in 2016, the lowest figure since the Energy Information Administration began collecting data in 1978. The 2017 numbers are not yet available.
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2017 was the safest year on record for the commercial airline industry, two new reports said.

No major airline experienced a plane crash anywhere in the world, the Dutch aviation consultancy To70 reported Monday.

“2017 was much better than could reasonably [and statistically] be expected, and was again better than last year’s remarkable performance,” said To70 researcher Adrian Young.

Young said air travel is the safest way to travel, with an estimated fatal accident rate for large commercial passenger flights of 0.06 per million flights, or one fatal accident for every 16 million flights — even as global air traffic in 2017 grew by 3 percent over the previous year.

Accidents involving military planes, cargo flights and small turboprop planes were not part of the study.

A second report by the Aviation Safety Network said 10 civil passenger and cargo plane crashes killed 44 people last year.

Experts cited improved technology and safety systems aboard passenger jets, which they noted have just about eliminated midair collisions and crashes into mountains.

The network’s study also said engineers and crews were spotting more safety problems before planes take off.

President Donald Trump appeared to take credit Tuesday for 2017 being fatality-free for commercial flights:

But The Associated Press pointed out there were no new major airline safety regulations introduced by the Trump administration in 2017.

It also said the White House had dragged its feet on implementing an Obama administration proposal to ban rechargeable lithium batteries from passenger planes. Tests have shown the batteries can explode and start fires.

The president’s plan to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system has also not moved forward.

But a White House spokesman said Tuesday that the president had “raised the bar for our nation’s aviation safety and security.”

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said the last deadly passenger airline crash in the U.S. occurred in 2009, and the last fatal commuter plane crash was in Hawaii in 2013.

Airplane crash statistics were first compiled in 1946.
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Airlines recorded zero accident deaths in commercial passenger jets last year, according to a Dutch consulting firm and an aviation safety group that tracks crashes, making 2017 the safest year on record for commercial air travel.

Dutch aviation consulting firm To70 and the Aviation Safety Network both reported Monday there were no commercial passenger jet fatalities in 2017. “2017 was the safest year for aviation ever,” said Adrian Young of To70.

To70 estimated that the fatal accident rate for large commercial passenger flights is 0.06 per million flights, or one fatal accident for every 16 million flights.

The Aviation Safety Network also reported there were no commercial passenger jet deaths in 2017, but 10 fatal airliner accidents resulting in 44 fatalities onboard and 35 persons on the ground, including cargo planes and commercial passenger turbo prop aircraft.

That figure includes 12 people killed on Dec. 31 when a Nature Air Cessna 208B Grand Caravan aircraft crashed minutes after takeoff into a mountainous area off the beach town of Punta Islita, Costa Rica.

In comparison, there were 16 accidents and 303 deaths in 2016 among airliners.

The deadliest incident last year occurred in January when a Turkish cargo jet smashed into a village in Kyrgyzstan as it tried to land at a nearby airport in dense fog, killing 35 on the ground and all four onboard.

The Aviation Safety Network said 2017 was “the safest year ever, both by the number of fatal accidents as well as in terms of fatalities.”

Over the last two decades aviation deaths around the world have been steadily falling. As recently as 2005, there were 1,015 deaths aboard commercial passenger flights worldwide, the Aviation Safety Network said.

The United States last recorded a fatal airline passenger jet crash in February 2009, when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed short of the runway in Clarence Center, New York, killing 49 onboard and one person on the ground.

In 2016, 412 people were killed in the United States in aviation accidents — nearly all in general aviation accidents and none on commercial passenger airlines.

The last fatal passenger jet airliner accident worldwide took place in November 2016 near Medellin, Colombia and the last commercial passenger aircraft crash to kill more than 100 people occurred in October 2015 in Egypt.
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Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani may have to step back from some of his core economic policies in the face of nationwide protests by tens of thousands of people frustrated by high unemployment and stagnant living standards

The protests, during which at least 10 people have been killed, are fuelled by disappointment that the lifting of sanctions on Iran in January 2016 has failed to deliver an economic boom.

Instead, the non-oil part of the economy has continued to struggle, with unemployment officially put at around 12.5 percent — in reality, much higher for Iran’s millions of young  people — and inflation running at nearly 10 percent.

“There is a crisis of expectations in Iran,” said Tame  Badawi, a research fellow at the Istanbul-based Al-Sharq Forum. “It is a deep sense of economic frustration.”

Need for more jobs

To ease that discontent, Rouhani may need to spend more government money on creating jobs, restrain inflation by supporting the rial exchange rate and do more to eradicate the widespread corruption which angers the protesters.

But all of those actions would involve policy change. Rouhani has been pursuing a conservative budget policy to bring Iran’s volatile state finances under control, part of his effort to create an attractive environment for foreign investors. Meanwhile, fighting corruption would risk a backlash from powerful interests hurt by a crackdown.

Mehrdad Emadi, an Iranian economist who is head of energy risk analysis at the Betamatrix consultancy in London, said Rouhani faced a “Herculean challenge” fighting corruption in particular. But he suggested Rouhani might have no choice 

“People are more and more desperate,” he said. “In this situation, there will be periodic outbreaks of dissent.”

Sanctions

After taking power in 2013, Rouhani quickly reversed the spendthrift fiscal and monetary policies of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, curbing a system of cash handouts for lower- and middle-income Iranians.

Last month he proposed another conservative budget to parliament for the Iranian year starting next March 21. The $104 billion budget was up about 6 percent from the plan for the current year — a cut in real terms at current inflation rates.

Such austerity has become increasingly unpopular among the public as the economy has struggled despite the end of sanctions. Many foreign banks and companies remain reluctant to do business with Iran, partly because U.S. President Donald Trump’s hard line on Tehran has deterred trade and investment.

Emadi said a study to which he contributed found Iranians were dissatisfied with the economy for five main reasons: unemployment, weak purchasing power, corruption, a weak rial, and unequal distribution of wealth among Iran’s regions. The study showed their perceptions of the first three areas have worsened this year, he said. In some areas of southeast Iran, unemployment among young people has reached 45 percent and the job market is shrinking, he added.

The rial has sunk to 42,900 against the U.S. dollar from 36,000 a year ago. Rouhani’s administration might support the currency by spending more of Iran’s foreign reserves, but this would risk deterring foreign investment; the International Monetary Fund warned against such a policy last month.

Emadi blamed much of the economy’s poor performance on a deep-rooted structural issue: the influence of paramilitary bodies such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as religious institutions on business.

Those interests, which according to some estimates control over 60 percent of assets in Iran, generally do not pay taxes and stifle competition from small private companies, blocking job creation, he said.

Emadi said Rouhani’s administration was addressing this problem, pressing institutions to open their books to tax audits and demanding more transparency in the business world.

No quick fix

But Badawi predicted the government would find it hard to secure any quick improvement in the economy. While it may announce a stimulus package to create jobs, it is unlikely to backtrack on cash handouts, and problems such as diversifying the economy and repairing a debt-burdened banking system can only be solved in the long term, he said.

“My guess is that nothing significant will change. The government will try to be open with people, to propose initiatives, but there are structural problems — diversification, the banking problem and relations with the rest of world, especially Trump.”
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