This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them.

Norway has built the world’s biggest salmon-farming industry. But it wants to go bigger. With their lucrative oil fields now in decline, Norwegians have ambitious plans for aquaculture to power their economy far into the future.

Climate change could make those dreams harder to realize.

Salmon feed is based on fishmeal, produced by grinding up wild-caught fish. With warming waters and ocean acidification pushing underwater ecosystems to the breaking point, Big Aquaculture is seeking ways to feed fish that aren’t hostage to increasingly unpredictable seas.

“Feed has a couple of bottlenecks: We’re still using marine resources, for example fishmeal and fish oil, to then put into fish. This is not necessarily sustainable in the long term,” said Georg Baunach, co-founder of Hatch, an accelerator focused on supporting aquaculture startups. “And that’s why we need innovation in feed.”

Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and scientists are racing to identify alternatives, turning the Norwegian cities of Bergen and Stavanger into a Silicon Valley of the Sea. Spending on research and development in Norway’s aquaculture sector increased by 30 percent to 2.3 billion kroner, or $275 million, between 2013 and 2015, according to official data quoted by Hatch, as startups and research institutes raced to develop disruptive new technologies.

The innovators aren’t short of ideas. At Norway’s biggest oil refinery, a startup called CO2Bio is harnessing greenhouse gases to culture algae that can then be harvested as a sustainable source of fish feed.

At the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, the Aquafly project is investigating whether black soldier flies fed on waste products from the food industry or the seaweed growing off Norway’s coast could be another viable feed ingredient.

“The insects are also part of this whole circular economy, where instead of throwing away things you would reuse and recycle and upcycle,” said Nina Liland, one of the Aquafly researchers. “Potentially you could use food waste from households to produce insects that could be used for fish feeds: That would be an optimal scenario.”

Various companies are working on projects to recycle more of the vast amounts of waste dumped into the sea by Norway’s aquaculture industry into products such as biogas or fertilizer.

Researchers are also looking for ways to combat the sea lice parasites that thrive in salmon cages, which are a major brake on the industry’s plans to expand.

Time may not be on the fish farmers’ side. With climate change projected to intensify in the coming decades, the challenge will be to turn promising new ideas into viable projects fast enough to shield their dreams of a prosperous future from the growing turmoil at sea.
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President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping will meet to discuss trade issues on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires this week. The head of the U.S. National Economic Council says there’s a good possibility a deal can be achieved to cool down the ongoing U.S.– Sino trade war, but warns the Trump administration will consider additional tariffs if no deal is struck. Patsy Widakuswara reports from the White House.
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U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to cut subsidies for General Motors after the largest U.S. automaker said it would halt production at five plants in North America and cut nearly 15,000 jobs.

“The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get! We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including … for electric cars,” Trump said on Twitter.

Trump has made boosting auto jobs a key priority during his almost two years in office and has often attacked automakers on Twitter for not doing enough to boost U.S. employment.

GM electric vehicles are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit under federal law, but it is not clear how the administration could restrict those credits or if Trump had other subsidies in mind. GM shares extended earlier declines and were down 3.6 percent after Trump’s tweets.

GM declined to immediately comment.

GM Chief Executive Mary Barra spoke to Trump over the weekend to discuss the cuts and was at the White House on Monday to meet with economic adviser Larry Kudlow.

Trump also criticized GM for not closing facilities in Mexico or China.

“General Motors made a big China bet years ago when they built plants there (and in Mexico) – don’t think that bet is going to pay off. I am here to protect America’s Workers!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

GM currently builds just one vehicle in China that it exports to the United States — the Buick Envision — and has sold about 22,000 through September. GM sold nearly 2.7 million vehicles in China through September, nearly all of them built in China for the market.

White House spokesman Sarah Sanders told reporters Tuesday that the president is looking at options.

“The president wants to see American companies build cars here in America, not build them overseas and he is hopeful that GM will continue to do that here,” she said.

GM has been lobbying Congress, along with Tesla, to lift the current cap on electric vehicles eligible for tax credits, but any action by Congress before 2019 is a long-shot, congressional aides said.

Under current law, once a manufacturer sells 200,000 electric vehicles, the tax credit phases out over time starting in the following quarter. GM has said it expects to hit the 200,000-vehicle threshold by the end of the year.

GM announced Monday it will halt production at one Canadian plant and four U.S. factories, including the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant that builds the plug-in hybrid electric Chevrolet Volt. GM is ending production of six vehicles, including the Volt, as it cuts more than 6,500 factory jobs.

GM will continue to build the electric Chevrolet Bolt in Michigan.

Trump told GM on Monday it “better” find a new product for Lordstown Assembly plant in Ohio that will halt production in March. GM has said sagging demand for small cars largely prompted the cuts, but also cited factors including higher costs from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum.

GM said it also plans to close two unnamed plants outside North America by the end of 2019.
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could reach a new trade deal between the world’s two largest economies when they meet in Argentina this weekend, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Tuesday.

“The president said there is a good possibility that we can make a deal and he is open to it,” he said of Trump. But he cautioned that obstacles remain.

Kudlow said the two leaders must resolve the issues of “fairness and reciprocity” at the center of the dispute.

“China should change its practices and come into the community of responsible trading nations,” he said. “Their responses have disappointed because … we can’t find much change in their approach.”

The U.S. and China over several months have imposed tit-for-tat tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of imports arriving from each other’s shores.

On Monday, Trump voiced doubts that a deal would be reached when he meets with Xi Saturday night in Buenos Aires on the sidelines of the G-20 summit of the world’s largest economies.

Trump has threatened to impose more tariffs on Chinese exports if the two sides cannot reach what he considers fairer trading between the two countries.

Kudlow said “certain conditions have to be met. … Intellectual property theft must be solved. Forced technology transfers must be solved.”

He said Trump is “not going away” if no deal is reached.

“I hope they understand that,” he added.
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British and Dutch regulators have fined ride-hailing company Uber $1.2 million for what it said were inadequate security measures that left personal data at risk for a cyber attack.

The fines are linked to a 2016 hack of Uber data that allowed attackers to download information about 32 million users, including 2.7 million accounts in Britain.

The files included full names, mobile phone numbers, email addresses and some user passwords. Information about 3.7 million drivers, 82,000 of them in Britain, was also downloaded.

Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office said the hack was the result of “a series of avoidable data security flaws.”

“This was not only a serious failure of data security on Uber’s part, but a complete disregard for the customers and drivers whose personal information was stolen,” ICO Director of Investigations Steve Eckersley said. “At the time, no steps were taken to inform anyone affected by the breach, or to offer help and support. That left them vulnerable.”

Uber said in a statement it is “pleased to close this chapter on the data incident from 2016.”

“As we shared with European authorities during their investigations, we’ve made a number of technical improvements to the security of our systems both in the immediate wake of the incident as well as in the years since,” the company said.
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Fishing communities along Africa’s coastline are at a greater risk of extinction as countries eye oceans for tourism, industrial fishing and exploration revenue to jumpstart their “blue economies,” U.N. experts and activists said on Monday.

The continent’s 38 coastal and island states have in recent years moved to tap ocean resources through commercial fishing, marine tourism and sea-bed mining, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

“There is a great risk and a great danger that those communities will be marginalized,” said Joseph Zelasney, a fishery officer at U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“The resources that they depend on will be decimated,” he added at a side event at the Blue Economy Conference organized by Kenya, Canada and Japan in Nairobi.

The world’s poorest continent hosts a blue economy estimated at $1 trillion but loses $42 billion a year to illegal fishing and logging of mangroves along the coast, according to UNECA estimates.

Seismic waves generated by prospectors to search for minerals, oil and gases along the ocean floor have scared away fish stocks, said Dawda Saine of the Confederation of African Artisanal Fishing in Gambia.

“Noise and vibration drives fishes away, which means they (fishermen) have to go further to fish,” Saine said.

Pollution from a vibrant tourism sector and foreign trawlers have reduced stocks along the Indian Ocean, Salim Mohamed, a fisherman from Malindi in Kenya, said.

“We suffer as artisanal fishers but all local regulation just look at us as the polluter and doesn’t go beyond that,” he said.

The continent’s fish stocks are also being depleted by industrial trawlers which comb the oceans to feed European and Asian markets, experts say, posing a threat to livelihoods and food security for communities living along the coast.

Growth of blue economies in Africa could also take away common rights to land and water along the coastline and transfer them to corporations and a few individuals, said Andre Standing, advisor with the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements.

Most of the land and beaches along Africa’s thousands of miles of coastline is untitled, making it a good target for illegal acquisition, activists said.

“There is a great worry that we could see privatization of areas that were previously open to these communities,” Standing told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We need to have a radical vision that values communities and livelihoods or they will become extinct.”
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Apple is launching a new program designed to address the technology industry’s scarcity of women in executive and computer programming jobs.

 

Under the initiative announced Monday, female entrepreneurs and programmers will attend two-week tutorial sessions at the company’s Cupertino, California, headquarters.

 

The camps will be held every three months beginning in January. For each round, Apple will accept up to 20 app makers founded or led by a woman. The app maker must have at least one female programmer in its ranks to qualify. Apple will cover travel expenses for up to three workers from each accepted company.

Like other major tech companies, Apple has been trying to lessen its dependence on men in high-paying programming jobs. Women filled just 23 percent of Apple’s technology jobs in 2017, according to the company’s latest breakdown. That’s only a slight improvement from 20 percent in 2014, despite the company’s pledge to diversify its workforce.

 

The idea behind the new camp is to keep women interested and immersed in the field, said Esther Hare, Apple’s senior director of world developer marketing.

 

It’s not clear how much of a dent Apple’s new program will have. Google also offers training for girls and women pursuing careers in technology, but its program hasn’t done much to diversify the workforce so far. Women were hired for nearly 25 percent of Google’s technology jobs in 2017, up from nearly 21 percent in 2014, according to the company.

Apple and other technology companies maintain that one of the main reasons so many men are on their payrolls is because women traditionally haven’t specialized in the mathematical and science curriculum needed to program.

 

But industry critics have accused the technology companies of discriminating again women through a male-dominated hierarchy that has ruled the industry for decades.

 

Apple isn’t saying how much it is spending on the initiative, though beyond travel expenses, the company will be relying on its current employees to lead the sessions.
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United Technologies is breaking itself into three independent companies now that it has sealed its $23 billion acquisition of aviation electronics maker Rockwell Collins.

The company’s announcement Monday was the latest by a sprawling industrial conglomerate deciding it will be more efficient and focused as smaller, separate entities.

“Our decision to separate United Technologies is a pivotal moment in our history and will best position each independent company to drive sustained growth, lead its industry in innovation and customer focus, and maximize value creation,” said United Technologies CEO Gregory Hayes.

The three companies will be United Technologies, which will house its aerospace and defense industry supplier businesses; Otis, the maker of elevators, escalators and moving walkways; and the Carrier air conditioning and building systems business.

The separation is expected to be completed in 2020, United Technologies said.

On Friday, United Technologies said it received final regulatory approval for its deal for Rockwell Collins, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based maker of flight deck avionics, cabin electronics and cabin interiors. The newly minted combined aerospace business would have had sales of about $39 billion last year, United Technologies said.

Hayes will stay on as CEO of the aerospace business. The company did not name leaders for the separated Otis and Carrier businesses.

Founded in 1934, United Technologies is based in Farmington, Connecticut, and currently employs about 205,000 people. It did not say if any jobs would be lost in the breakup.

The company got embroiled in politics in 2016 when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized plans to close a Carrier plant in Indianapolis and shift production to Mexico. Weeks after Trump won the election, Carrier announced an agreement brokered by the president-elect to spare about 800 jobs in Indianapolis, where the company has pledged to keep nearly 1,100 jobs. That’s down from the approximately 1,600 factory, office and engineering jobs at the facility.
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Argentina is on the verge of signing a deal with the United States that would allow two-way trade of fresh beef for the first time in nearly two decades, the South American country’s international trade secretary, Marisa Bircher, said.

The agreement, expected to be signed within days, would simultaneously open beef imports to both countries, Bircher told Reuters in an interview.

“We are negotiating the reopening to happen over the days ahead,” she said. “All the technical and administrative questions have been settled.”

At a time when the South American nation is seeking to boost beef sales abroad, the agreement would allow Argentina to show other prospective buyers that its meat is healthy enough to enter a country with some of the world’s toughest sanitary protocols.

The deal would also open a new market for the U.S. cattle sector, although demand for U.S. beef is low in Argentina. The country is famous for its quality steaks, some tender enough to be cut with a spoon, as demonstrated with a flourish by waiters in the iconic steak houses of Buenos Aires.

Argentina will have a 20,000-ton limit on its exports to the United States, Bircher said, while there will be no limit on U.S. beef going to Argentina.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office in Washington declined to comment. The U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. beef passed a bureaucratic hurdle needed to access Argentina last week, according to a notice posted on Wednesday on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service website.

But before any U.S. beef can be exported to Argentina, meat companies need to register their products, processing plants and labels with Argentina’s National Service for Agrifood Health and Quality, said Joe Schuele, spokesman for the U.S. Meat Export Federation, a trade group.

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service formally approved imports of fresh beef from northern Argentina in 2015, according to a document posted in the U.S. Federal Register.

​The USDA still needs to certify Argentine processing plants that would ship meat to the United States to make sure they meet safety standards, said Bill Bullard, chief executive of U.S. cattle producers’ group R-CALF USA.

“Opening the border to raw beef from Argentina is certain to put downward pressure on U.S. cattle prices, and meat packers will be able to use this cheaper, undifferentiated beef as a direct substitute for beef produced by U.S. cattle producers,” he said.

Cattle disease

Bircher said Argentina stopped exporting beef to the United States about 17 years ago due to U.S. concerns about contamination of Argentine cattle by foot-and-mouth disease. “We have eliminated that through a vaccine program in our livestock sector,” she said.

Another senior Argentine official, speaking on background, confirmed that Argentina and the United States were “close” to striking a deal. The last time the United States sent fresh beef to Argentina was in 1999, according to Argentina’s official statistics agency.

Once one of the world’s top five beef suppliers, Argentina was hobbled under the anti-farm policies of the country’s previous president, Cristina Fernandez. The country fell off the top 10 list of beef exporters during her eight-year presidency.

It is back in the top 10, according to USDA data and could get into the top five next year thanks to the free-market policies of President Mauricio Macri and a sharp weakening of the local peso currency this year.

The United States produced 11.9 million tons of beef last year and exported 1.3 million tons, according to USDA data. Argentina produced 2.8 million tons of beef and veal in 2017, exceeding its domestic consumption by 293,000 tons in 2017.

It is a delicate time for the world food system. Traditional trade routes of grains and oil seeds have been interrupted by a trade war between Washington and Beijing, and the world’s two biggest economies are now looking for new commercial partnerships to strengthen their positions.
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Brazilian construction company Odebrecht is close to reaching a final settlement with Peruvian prosecutors over their investigation into bribes paid by Odebrecht for public works contracts in Peru, a prosecutor said on Monday.

Odebrecht has admitted to paying about $30 million in bribes to win contracts in the South American country and has agreed to provide prosecutors with details on the payments, culminating in a formal plea deal intended to reduce its exposure to legal risks.

“It is true we are near to closing everything,” Rafael Vela, one of the prosecutors investigating Odebrecht, told Reuters. He declined to offer details on what the agreement would include.

Brazilian newspaper Valor reported late Sunday that Odebrecht would sign a definitive agreement this week with Peruvian authorities investigating the company.

Representatives of the Peruvian attorney’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Odebrecht office in Lima told Reuters that the company was in full talks to reach an agreement, but declined to provide further details.

“Odebrecht Peru maintains its commitment to collaborate with the justice administration and to the confidentiality of the case, so it is unable to make any comment on the matter,” it said to Reuters in an email.

Odebrecht has been at the center of a massive graft scandal that has rippled across Latin America. In 2016, it acknowledged in a leniency deal that it had bribed officials in a dozen countries to secure public works contracts, dating back over a decade. It agreed to pay a record $3.5 billion in settlements in the United States, Brazil and Switzerland.

After Brazil, Peru is the country where the Odebrecht scandal has been most disruptive. Peru’s four most recent presidents are under investigation in connection with alleged bribes paid by Odebrecht.

The investigation hit a snag in July, when the Brazilian builder raised complaints about the probe in Peru to authorities in Brazil. Sources at the time said it wanted legal protections because it felt it was being treated as a suspect and not a willing informant.
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The European Union and Iran are affirming their support for the international nuclear deal and say they aim to keep it alive despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to abandon the landmark pact.

Ahead of EU-Iran talks on civil nuclear cooperation in Brussels Monday, EU Energy Commissioner Arias Canete said the deal is “crucial for the security of Europe, of the region and the entire world.”

 

He said the agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions is working and that “we do not see any credible peaceful alternative.”

 

Iranian Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi said: “I hope that we can enjoy the niceties of this deal and not let it go unfulfilled.”

 

Should the deal break down, he said, it would be “very ominous, the situation would be unpredictable.”

 

 
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When Dan Katt opened Good City Brewing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2016 – a presidential election year – a trade war between the Trump administration and China was the furthest thing from his mind.

“I don’t think we even contemplated that that administration would exist,” he told VOA.

He also didn’t consider how one decision in particular – canning his beer for distribution instead of bottling it – would challenge his business growth. 

“We always planned to can our products. I don’t think we necessarily expected to have our single biggest expense – packaging materials – to be affected by tariffs.”

Katt’s cans are made of aluminum, and much of his supply comes from China. It’s now subject to a 10 percent tariff.

“The price of aluminum is a concern. When we buy, we buy in lots of about 215,000 cans at a time,” says Katt. “When we go back to market, which we’ll be doing very soon, we expect to see a price increase on cans.” 

The Trump administration imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to bolster U.S. producers of those metals and protect U.S. jobs in those industries. The tariffs are starting to impact many other segments of the U.S. economy, including the growing craft beer industry, that need aluminum and steel to make their products. 

President Donald Trump says the tariffs are working.

“We have taken historic action to bring back American jobs by cracking down on China’s very abusive trade practices, but that’s going to work out, taking in billions and billions of taxes from China – never happened before, but they want to make a deal and that’s good,” he told a large crowd of supporters at one of his final mid-term election rallies in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on November 5.

A U.S. Treasury Department report supports his views, showing government revenues from tariffs are up over 30 percent this year over last.

But Brian Kuehl disagrees with the president. 

“Tariffs are taxes on American citizens. When we put tariffs on steel and aluminum, it drives up the cost of steel and aluminum in the United States,” says Kuehl. He is executive director for Farmers for Free Trade, a nonpartisan group chaired by former Republican Senator Richard Lugar and Democratic Senator Max Baucus. Farmers for Free Trade is campaigning against the tariffs. 

“Farmers for Free Trade was founded to have a long-term vision about trade and speaking about trade regardless of who is in the White House,” says Kuehl, who argues that the tariffs do more harm than good to the U.S. economy.

For that reason, the group has launched a nationwide “Tariffs Hurt the Heartland” campaign. It includes an $800,000 multimedia advertising blitz as well as hosting public events across the country, profiling the negative impact of tariffs. 

During an event in Wisconsin, Dan Katt represented one of several businesses hurt by the trade dispute.

“We don’t think that the current trade war with China is going in the right direction,” says Kuehl. “We think it’s increasing costs for U.S. manufacturers, it’s increasing costs for U.S. farmers, and it’s decreasing export opportunities. We’re causing long-term damage to American agriculture and our ability to compete in foreign markets.”

A foreign market Dan Katt’s Good City Brewing doesn’t currently export to, but depends on not only for the aluminum to package his product, but also for steel used in the equipment that makes the beer.

“On a more significant level, we expect to see equipment prices – stainless steel – go up significantly,” he explained, standing in front of large shiny vats where the beer is brewed. “We do buy equipment, stainless steel, that comes through China. So that’s a concern for us as we look at continued growth and increased capacity.”

Good City Brewing is one of about 75 such companies now in Wisconsin, a state with a long history of beer production. Katt says his company will continue to grow regardless of the short-term impact of the tariffs, but he hopes the U.S. and China can reach an agreement on trade before he has no choice but to pass on the increased costs to those he needs most for his new and growing business to prosper: his customers.
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U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, a move by the Trump administration to bolster the domestic industry and protect U.S. jobs, are just starting to have a far-reaching impact on different sectors of the U.S. economy, including the growing craft beer industry. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, one thing that wasn’t in the business model for a new brewery in the Midwestern United States was the cost tariffs would have on each can of beer.
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It took Britain’s Theresa May and 27 other European Union leaders just 40 minutes to sign the Brexit deal after two years of tortuous negotiations, but the trials and tribulations of Britain’s withdrawal agreement approved Sunday in Brussels are far from over.

As they endorsed the 585-page the agreement, and a 26-page accompanying political declaration that sets out the parameters of negotiating a possible free trade deal between Britain and the European Union, powerful political foes in London plotted strategies to undo it.

There is little evidence Britain’s embattled prime minister will have sufficient support to win legislative endorsement of the deal in a House of Commons vote next month. That was clearly on the minds of European Commission officials Sunday as EU leaders gave their backing to the terms of Britain’s split from Brussels after 44 years of membership.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that Britain cannot expect to get a better deal, if its parliament rejects the agreement. “Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibilities, everybody,” he said.

“This is the deal, it’s the best deal possible and the EU will not change its fundamental position when it comes to this issue, so I do think the British parliament — because this is a wise parliament — will ratify this deal,” he added.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned British lawmakers that no better deal was on offer from the European Union, urging them to back the agreements.

“If I would live in the UK I would say yes to this, I would say that this is very much acceptable to the United Kingdom,” Rutte said, because the deal “limited the impact of Brexit while balancing the vote to leave”. In a bid to help the prime minister, he said May had “fought very hard” and now there was “an acceptable deal on the table”.

“You know I hate [Brexit], but it is a given,” he told reporters. “No one is a victor here today, nobody is winning, we are all losing.”

Opposition in Britain

Maybe it is a “given” in Brussels, but in Britain that is another matter altogether.

Both Remainers and Leavers in the British Parliament are warning that May doesn’t have the necessary support with the all the opposition parties lined up against the deal and as many as 100 lawmakers, Remainers and Leavers among them, from May’s ruling Conservatives pledging to vote against it as well.

Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader, said he would continue to oppose the deal because it “cedes huge amounts of power” to the European Union.

In Scotland, first minister and leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party Nicola Sturgeon said, “This is a bad deal, driven by the PM’s self defeating red lines and continual pandering to the right of her own party. Parliament should reject it and back a better alternative.”

She wants a second Britain-wide referendum, like a majority of Britons, according to recent opinion polls.

The agreement calls for Britain to stay in the bloc’s customs union and largely in the EU single market, without the power to influence the rules, regulations and laws it will be obliged to obey for a 21-month-long transition period following formal withdrawal on March 29. The deal would allow an extension of “up to one or two years” should the negotiations over “the future relationship” not be completed by the end of 2020.

May is campaigning to sell the agreement to the British public, hoping she she can build enough support in the wider country to pressure the House of Commons to endorse the deal. European Parliament approval is almost certain.

May’s warning

In an open letter to the British public published Sunday, May promised to campaign “with my heart and soul to win that vote and to deliver this Brexit deal.” If she is unable to do so, Britain would be plunged into what May herself has called, “deep and grave uncertainty.”

Her aides say she is banking on the “fear factor,” daring the House of Commons to vote down a deal which if rejected would leave Britain most likely crashing out of the bloc, its largest trading partner, without any agreements, which would be costly economically and would almost certainly push the country into recession.

Ominously, the Northern Ireland party, the Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 lawmakers May’s minority government relies on to remain in power, says it will vote against the deal. And DUP leader Arlene Foster warned Sunday she is ready to collapse the government to block a deal that would see Northern Ireland treated differently than the rest of Britain.

And a senior Labour lawmaker Tony Lloyd said there was a “coalition of the willing” in the Parliament ready to reject May’s deal and support a softer Brexit. So, if the deal is voted down, what then? A vote against could trigger a general election, a second Brexit referendum or even more negotiations, despite Brussels’ threat there can be no other deal.

 
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U.S. stocks closed lower after a shortened session Friday, bumping the benchmark S&P 500 index into a correction, or drop of 10 percent below its most recent all-time high in September. 

 

Energy companies led the market slide as the price of U.S. crude oil tumbled to its lowest level in more than a year, reflecting worries among traders that a slowing global economy could hurt demand for oil. 

 

“Oil is really falling sharply, continuing its downward descent, and that appears to be giving investors a lot of concern that there’s slowing global growth,” said Jeff Kravetz, regional investment director at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management. “You have that, and then you have the recent sell-off in tech and in retail, and then throw on there trade tensions and rising rates.” 

 

Losses in technology and internet companies and banks outweighed gains in health care and household goods stocks. Several big retailers declined as investors monitored Black Friday for signs of a strong holiday shopping season. 

 

Trading volume was lighter than usual, with the markets open for only a half day after the Thanksgiving holiday. 

 

The S&P 500 index fell 17.37 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,632.56. The index is now down 10.2 percent from its last all-time high set Sept. 20. The last time the index entered a correction was in February. 

 

The latest correction came as investors worry that corporate profits, a key driver of stock market gains, could weaken next year. 

 

“The market is repricing and trying to assess where we’re going to be in the early part of 2019,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. 

 

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 178.74 points, or 0.7 percent, to 24,285.95. The Nasdaq composite dropped 33.27 points, or 0.5 percent, to 6,938.98. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks picked up 0.40 point, or 0.03 percent, to 1,488.68. 

 

Crude oil prices fell for the seventh straight week on worries that a slowing global economy could hurt demand, even as oil production has been increasing.  

The benchmark U.S. crude contract slid 7.7 percent to settle at $50.42 per barrel in New York. That is the lowest since October 2017. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 6.1 percent to close at $58.80 per barrel in London. 

 

Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members have recently signaled a willingness to consider production cuts at the oil cartel’s meeting next month. Such cuts would prop up oil prices. The U.S. has been increasing pressure on Saudi Arabia and OPEC to not cut production. 

 

The slide in oil prices weighed on energy stocks. Concho Resources, a developer and explorer of oil and natural gas properties, slumped 6.3 percent to $126.96. 

 

Tesla fell 3.7 percent to $325.83 after the electric auto maker said it intends to cut prices for its Model X and Model S cars in China to make them more affordable. 

 

Traders had their eye on retailers as Black Friday, the traditional start to the crucial holiday shopping season, began. Shares in L Brands, operator of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, added 2 percent to $29.97. Other retailers put investors in a selling mood. Kohl’s fell 3.7 percent to $63.83, while Target lost 2.8 percent to $67.35. Macy’s dropped 1.8 percent to $32.01. 

 

Rockwell Collins climbed 9.2 percent to $141.63 after Chinese regulators conditionally approved the sale of the maker of communications and aviation electronics systems to United Technologies Corp. 

 

Investors will be watching next week when Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump meet at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina for signs that the two leaders can find common ground to begin unwinding the spiraling trade dispute. 

 

The dispute between the U.S. and China has weighed on the market, stoking traders’ worries that billions in escalating tariffs imposed by both countries on each other’s goods will hurt corporate earnings at a time when the global economy appears to be slowing.  

“If you can get President Trump and President Xi to even just come closer with their rhetoric and make a bit of progress on the trade front, that could be the catalyst for markets to move higher,” Kravetz said. 

 

It may take more than a meeting to work out deep-seated issues between Washington and Beijing, which resumed talks over their trade dispute earlier this month. According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has asked its allies to stop using telecommunications equipment from Huawei, which is Chinese-owned. The report cited people familiar with the matter. 

 

Bond prices fell Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.05 percent from 3.04 percent late Wednesday. 

 

The dollar fell to 112.88 yen from 112.97 yen late Thursday. The euro weakened to $1.1330 from $1.1406. The pound eased to $1.2810 from $1.2876. 

 

Gold declined 0.4 percent to $1,223.20 an ounce. Silver dropped 1.8 percent to $14.24 an ounce. Copper slid 1 percent to $2.77 a pound. 

 

In other commodities trading, wholesale gasoline plunged 7.9 percent to $1.39 a gallon. Heating oil lost 4.8 percent to $1.88 a gallon. Natural gas fell 3.2 percent to $4.31 per 1,000 cubic feet. 

 

Major indexes in Europe finished mostly higher after shaking off an early slide. 

 

Traders were weighing the latest developments in the negotiations for Britain’s exit from the European Union. Both sides were finalizing the terms of the divorce Friday and expected to sign off on the deal Sunday, though it’s unclear whether the British Parliament will pass the deal. 

 

The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares slipped 0.1 percent. Germany’s DAX index rose 0.5 percent, while France’s CAC 40 gained 0.2 percent. 

 

Earlier in Asia, South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.6 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 0.4 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 bucked the trend, gaining 0.4 percent. Shares fell in Taiwan and rose in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday. 
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It would have been easy to turn on their computers at home over plates of leftover turkey and take advantage of the Black Friday deals most retailers now offer online.  

  

But across the country, thousands of shoppers flocked to stores on Thanksgiving or woke up before dawn the next day to take part in this most famous ritual of American consumerism. 

 

Shoppers spent their holiday lined up outside the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., by 4 p.m., and the crowd had swelled to 3,000 people by the time doors opened an hour later. In Ohio, a group of very determined women booked a hotel room Thursday night to be closer to the stores. In New York City, one woman went straight from a dance club to a department store in the middle of the night.  

  

Many shoppers said Black Friday is as much about the spectacle as it is about doorbuster deals.  

  

Kati Anderson said she stopped at Cumberland Mall in Atlanta on Friday morning for discounted clothes as well as “the people watching.” Her friend, Katie Nasworthy, said she went to the mall instead of shopping online because she likes to see the Christmas decorations. 

 

“It doesn’t really feel like Christmas until now,” said Kim Bryant, shopping in suburban Denver with her daughter and her daughter’s friend, who had lined up at 5:40 a.m., then sprinted inside when the doors opened at 6 a.m.  

  

Brick-and-mortar stores have worked hard to prove they can counter the competition from online behemoth Amazon. From Macy’s to Target and Walmart, retailers are blending their online and store shopping experience with new tools like digital maps on smartphones and more options for shoppers to buy online and pick up at stores. And customers, frustrated with long checkout lines, can check out at Walmart and other stores with a salesperson in store aisles.  

  

Consumers nearly doubled their online orders that they picked up at stores from Wednesday to Thanksgiving, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks online spending. 

 

Priscilla Page, 28, punched her order number into a kiosk near the entrance of a Walmart in Louisville, Ky. She found a good deal online for a gift for her boyfriend, then arrived at the store to retrieve it.  

  

“I’ve never Black Friday-shopped before,” she said, as employees delivered her bag minutes later. “I’m not the most patient person ever. Crowds, lines, waiting, it’s not really my thing. This was a lot easier.” 

 

The holiday shopping season presents a big test for a U.S. economy, whose overall growth so far this year has relied on a burst of consumer spending. Americans upped their spending during the first half of 2018 at the strongest pace in four years, yet retail sales gains have tapered off recently. The sales totals over the next month will be a good indicator of whether consumers simply paused to catch their breath or feel less optimistic about the economy in 2019. 

The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, is expecting holiday retail sales to increase as much as 4.8 percent over 2017 for a total of $720.89 billion. The sales growth would be a slowdown from last year’s 5.3 percent but yet remain healthy.   

The retail economy is also tilting steeply toward online shopping. Over the past 12 months, purchases at non-store retailers such as Amazon have jumped 12.1 percent as sales at traditional department stores have slumped 0.3 percent. Adobe Analytics reported Thursday that Thanksgiving reached a record $3.7 billion in online retail sales, up 28 percent from the same period a year ago. For Black Friday, online spending was on track to hit more than $6.4 billion, according to Adobe.  

  

Target reported that shoppers bought big-ticket items like TVs, iPads and Apple Watches. Among the most popular toy deals were from Lego, L.O.L. Surprise from MGA Entertainment, and Mattel’s Barbie. It said gamers picked up video game consoles like Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. 

 

Others reported stumbling onto more obscure savings. At a Cincinnati mall, Bethany Carrington scored a $29 all-in-one trimmer for her husband’s nose hair needs and, for $17, “the biggest Mr. Potato Head I’ve ever seen.”  

  

Black Friday itself has morphed from a single day when people got up early to score doorbusters into a whole month of deals. Plenty of major stores including Macy’s, Walmart and Target started their deals on Thanksgiving evening. But some families are sticking by their Black Friday traditions. 

 

“We boycotted Thursday shopping; that’s the day for family. But the experience on Friday is just for fun,” said Michelle Wise, shopping at Park Meadows Mall in Denver with her daughters Ashleigh, 16, and Avery, 14.  

  

By midday Friday, there had not been widespread reports of the deal-inspired chaos that has become central to Black Friday lore — fistfights over discounted televisions or stampedes toward coveted sale items.  

  

Two men at an Alabama mall got into a fight, and one of the men opened fire, shooting the other man and a 12-year-old bystander, both of whom were taken to the hospital with injuries. Police shot and killed the gunman. Authorities have not said whether the incident was related to Black Friday shopping or stemmed from an unrelated dispute.  

  

Candice Clark arrived at the Walmart in Louisville with her daughter Desiree Douthitt, 19, looked around and remarked at how calm it all seemed. They have long been devotees of Black Friday deals and for years braved the crowds and chaos. Clark’s son, about 10 years ago, got hit in the head with a griddle as shoppers wrestled over it. They saw one woman flash a Taser and threaten to use it on anyone who came between her and her desired fondue pot.  

  

They’ve watched over the years as the traditional madness of the day has dissipated as shopping transitioned to online and stores stretched their sales from a one-day sprint to a days-long marathon. 

 

“It seems pretty normal in here,” said Roy Heller, as he arrived at the Louisville Walmart, a little leery of Black Friday shopping, but pleasantly surprised to find that he didn’t even have to stand in line.  

  

He had tried to buy his son a toy robot on Amazon, but it was sold out. Friday morning, he frantically searched the internet and found one single robot left, at a Walmart 25 miles from his home. He bought it online and arrived an hour later to pick it up.  

  

Employees delivered his bag, he held it up and declared: “I got the last one in Louisville!” 
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China will go along with changes meant to update global trade rules so long as they protect Beijing’s status as a developing country, a Cabinet official said Friday.

The deputy commerce minister, Wang Shouwen, said any changes also must address protectionism and abuse of export controls and security reviews — a reference to Beijing’s trade clash with U.S. President Donald Trump.

China agreed in June to work with the European Union to propose changes to the World Trade Organization to address technology policy, subsidies and state industry — all areas in which Beijing faces complaints. U.S. officials complain the global trade referee is too bureaucratic and slow to adapt to changing business conditions.

Wang said each country’s “development model” must be respected — a reference to China’s state-dominated economy, which has provoked repeated complaints Beijing is violating its market-opening obligations.

Beijing has accused Trump of wrecking the global trading system by going outside the WTO to hike tariffs on Chinese imports. Trump says that was necessary because the global body is unable to respond to complaints about Chinese technology theft, subsidies and state-led industry development.

China is “willing to assume obligations” that are “compatible with our own level of development,” Wang said at a news conference.

“We will not allow other members to deprive China of the special and differential treatment that developing members deserve,” he said.

Wang gave no details of changes Beijing might support. But he said they also must address agricultural subsidies — a frequent complaint by developing countries against industrialized economies — and “discrimination against state enterprises,” a reference to restrictions on Chinese government companies abroad.

Beijing’s insistence that it is a developing country and entitled to special protections despite having grown into the second-largest global economy and a major manufacturer rankles its trading partners. That might dampen chances of reaching agreement on WTO reforms that would satisfy the United States, Europe and other governments.

Other governments dislike Trump’s tactics but echo U.S. complaints about Chinese market barriers and technology policy.

Washington and Beijing have imposed penalty tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods in their dispute over U.S. complaints that China steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology.

The United States, Europe and other governments also object to Chinese plans including “Made in China 2025” for state-led creation of competitors in robotics and other technology. American officials worry those might erode U.S. industrial leadership.

The EU filed a WTO challenge in June to Chinese rules on technology licensing that it said improperly discriminate against foreign companies.

Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are due to meet this month in Buenos Aires during a gathering of the Group of 20 major economies. Private sector analysts say there is little chance that meeting by itself will produce a settlement.

Wang, the commerce official, gave no details of Xi’s possible negotiating stance. But he said China hopes G-20 members can have an “effective discussion” about WTO reform.

“China hopes the G-20 meeting can support the multilateral trading system (and) oppose unilateralism and trade protectionism,” he said.

Wang warned that an issue that “endangers the WTO’s existence” is the status of judges to mediate disputes. The Trump administration has blocked the appointment of judges to the WTO’s appeal body, leaving only three members on the seven-seat panel.

That is a dispute “between the United States and all other WTO members,” said Wang. “We believe this should be resolved as soon as possible.”

 
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Cities in Russia, Japan and Azerbaijan are about to find out which one of them gets to host the 2025 World Expo, an event expected to draw millions of visitors and showcase the local economy and culture.

The 170 member states of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions are voting Friday on whether to award the Expo to Yekaterinburg, Osaka or Baku.

Past world’s fairs brought the world such wonders as the Eiffel Tower, the Ferris Wheel and Seattle’s Space Needle — and today’s version is aimed at finding solutions to challenges facing humanity.

World Expos are held every five years; Milan hosted the last one in 2015, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is set to host the next one in 2020 . Cities also hold specialized exhibitions in the interim years. No U.S. city has hosted a world’s fair since the 1980s.

They can last up to six months and cost millions of dollars to host, but can help put a city on the global map by bringing in international visitors and attention.

Yekaterinburg is trying for a second time after an earlier failure to win the expo, and Russian President Vladimir Putin presented the bid Friday via video message — before a Russian singer tried to rev up the crowd with song and dance. This time the Russian city, on the boundary between Europe and Asia in Russia’s Ural Mountains, is promising an expo demonstrating technological innovation and how to balance it with quality of life. Russia’s fourth-largest city, it was one of several Russian sites that hosted World Cup matches this year.

Osaka is pitching itself as the safe, reliable choice — notably because it already held the 1970 Expo, while the other cities are lesser known and would be first-time hosts. It’s proposing an expo on a man-made island on the theme of “Society 5.0” and how to leverage robotics and artificial intelligence for the public good.

Leaders in Osaka, Japan’s third-largest city and the largest in western Japan, are hoping the expo will revitalize a city that has lost much of its luster to Tokyo, the nation’s political and economic capital. They have plans to transform the site into a casino resort after the expo, though there is opposition from residents to bringing casino gambling to town.

Baku has the advantage of having lots of oil money thanks to its Caspian Sea reserves. Its expo would highlight ways to improve human health and redefine human roles in an automating world — and the proposed venue would be designed to evoke the geometry of Azerbaijani carpets. The ex-Soviet, Caspian Sea city of 2.2 million has recently hosted a series of international events, including the Eurovision Song Contest and F1 Grand Prix. It is set to host some UEFA Euro 2020 matches.
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Some of Amazon’s workers in Europe are protesting against what they call unfair work conditions, in a move meant to disrupt operations on Black Friday.

Amazon Spain said around 90 percent of workers at a logistics depot in near Madrid joined a walkout Friday. Only two people were at the loading bay, spokesman Douglas Harper said.

However, he said Amazon had diverted cargo deliveries to its other 22 depots in the country.

On a picket line, 38-year-old employee Eduardo Hernandez said the walkout intended to hurt the company financially.

“It is one of the days that Amazon has most sales, and these are days when we can hurt more and make ourselves be heard because the company has not listened to us and does not want to reach any agreement,” said Hernandez, who has worked for five years at Amazon.

Unions in Britain said they would stage protests at five sites to complain about safety conditions. Amazon said the safety record at its warehouses is above the industry average. Protests were also reported or due in France and Germany.

While Black Friday discounts have traditionally been a U.S. retail event, companies have increasingly been offering discounts in other countries, too.
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Zimbabwe’s finance minister has unveiled the country’s 2019 budget. Mthuli Ncube says the plan should help restore the economy of the southern African nation after years of recession.

“Madam Speaker, ma’am, in conclusion, this budget should mark a turning point towards realizing the country’s vision 2030, as austerity will lead us to prosperity,” Ncube said. “To quote the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, “We are rich not by what we possess, but by what we can do without.” I now commend the 2019 national budget to this august house. I thank you.”

Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said the budget marked a step toward Zimbabwe attaining its vision of an “upper middle income country by 2030.”

He said Zimbabwe was working toward retiring its ever ballooning debt, which now stands at about $10 billion.

Independent economic analyst Trust Chikohora commended Ncube for removing the tax on sanitary items, removing the duty on goods used by physically disabled people, and raising the tax threshold for workers; but, he said prices can’t be stabilized until Zimbabwe stops using bond notes.

“So in spite of all the positive things he might have done, the elephant in the room, which is going to destabilize the economy, is the mismatch between the bonneted and the foreign currency, which will continue to result in increased prices,” Ncube said.

Zimbabwe has been printing bond notes for the past two years, since abandoning its dollar in 2009, after years of hyperinflation. The country has been without an official currency and relied on U.S. dollars, the British pound and South African rand to conduct transactions.

In the past three years, however, all three currencies have been hard to find, paralyzing the economy and forcing the country to rely on the bond notes that were supposed to trade at par with the U.S. dollar.

On the black market, a dollar is now worth more than three bond notes.

Before becoming finance minister in September, Ncube had indicated he would prefer dropping the notes and adopting the South African rand, but he did not mention replacing them in his presentation.  
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Once-admired auto executive Carlos Ghosn’s fall from grace deepened Thursday when directors of Nissan Motor Co. voted unanimously to fire the recently jailed businessman from his post as board chairman.

Dismissed along with Ghosn was another director, Greg Kelly, whom the board accused of working with Ghosn to understate their incomes on formal declarations and use company assets for personal purposes.

An internal investigation presented to the board found that Kelly had “been determined to be the mastermind of this matter, together with” Ghosn, the company said in a statement.  The board also said that Nissan’s longstanding partnership with the French automaker Renault “remains unchanged.”

While he has been fired as chairman, the company said, it will require a vote of shareholders to remove Ghosn from the board altogether.

The financial world was stunned on Monday when it was announced that Ghosn had been detained by Japanese authorities on suspicion of having failed to report millions of dollars in income.  He could face up to 10 years in prison.

Ghosn also served as board chairman of Renault and another Japanese automaker, Mitsubishi.  The news of his arrest drove down share prices in all three.

Nissan said this week that its internal probe of Ghosn and Kelly was prompted by a report from a whistleblower. It said the investigation showed Ghosn had underreported his income to the Tokyo Stock Exchange by more than $40 million over five years.

The Brazilian-born Ghosn, who is of Lebanese descent and a French citizen, was the rare foreign top executive in Japan.

Ghosn was sent to Nissan in the late 1990s by Renault SA of France, after it bought a controlling stake of Nissan. He is credited with rescuing Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy.

In 2016, Ghosn also took control of Mitsubishi, after Nissan bought a one-third stake in the company, following Mitsubishi’s mileage-cheating scandal.

Together, the three automakers comprise the biggest global car-making alliance, manufacturing one of every nine cars sold around the world.  The three companies employ more than 470,000 people in nearly 200 countries.

Before Ghosn’s arrest, Satoru Takada, an analyst at TIW, a Tokyo-based research and consulting firm, said his detention would “rock the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance as he is the keystone of the alliance.”

(VOA’s Ken Bredemeier and Fern Robinson contributed to this story.)
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Lebanon is marking 75 years of independence with a military parade Thursday in Beirut, but many anxious Lebanese feel they have little to celebrate: the country’s corruption-plagued economy is dangerously close to collapse and political bickering over shares in a new Cabinet is threatening to scuttle pledges worth $11 billion by international donors.

The World Bank issued a stark warning last week, with one official saying that unless a government is formed soon to carry out badly needed reforms, “the Lebanon we know will fizzle away.”

It’s been more than six months since Lebanon held its first national elections in nine years but the prime minister-designate, Saad Hariri, still hasn’t formed a government to undertake the reforms necessary to unlock the donors’ funds.

 

The vote, in which the Shi’ite militant Hezbollah group and its allies made significant gains, did little to pull Lebanon out of a political impasse. Anger against politicians’ apparent indifference, worsening public services and distress over down-spiraling finances and gloomy predictions are building up.

 

Last Friday, heavy rains caused Beirut’s sewage system to burst, turning the city’s famous Mediterranean coastal avenue into a river of filthy, foul-smelling black water that engulfed motorists along the otherwise scenic route. On the same day, the military had closed a main artery for drills ahead of the Independence Day parade, paralyzing traffic for hours. Flights from Beirut’s international airport were missed and a woman reportedly went into labor on the road. The army later apologized.

 

Despite a population of over 4.5 million that is among the most educated in the region, Lebanon still has a primitive infrastructure, widespread electricity and water cuts and a longstanding waste crisis that over the past few years saw trash piling in the streets for weeks at a time.

 

“There is no independence [to celebrate] because corruption is eating us up,” said Mohammed al-Rayyes, a shop owner in Beirut’s Hamra district. “The coming days are going to be very difficult.”

 

The tiny Arab country has coped with multiple political and security crises over the past decades and also suffered from the seven-year civil war in neighboring Syria, a conflict that has occasionally spilled over the border and brought more than 1 million refugees into Lebanon, putting even more pressure on its dysfunctional infrastructure.

 

A soaring debt of $84 billion and unemployment believed to be around 36 percent are compounding concerns that the country will finally cave in.

 

“It is a shame because so much time is being wasted,” Ferid Belhaj, the World Bank’s vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, said during a meeting with a group of journalists last week.

 

For years, he said, Lebanese officials have been promising to work on solving the electricity crisis, which costs the country about $2 billion a year and has been the main factor in accumulating Lebanon’s debt.       

 

Of immediate concern is the future of $11 billion in loans and grants pledged by international donors at a meeting in Paris in April, which Lebanon risks losing if no Cabinet is in place soon to unlock the funds and approve reforms that were set as conditions by the donors and which have been delayed for years. In April, Hariri pledged to reduce the budget deficit by 5 percent over the next five years.

 

The crisis has prompted some Lebanese to change their deposits from the local currency, which has been pegged to the U.S. dollars since 1997, to U.S. dollars for fear the Lebanese pound might collapse. Riad Salameh, the Central Bank governor, has been repeatedly reassuring the markets, saying the local currency is stable.

 

Mohamad Shukeir, head of the Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, told the local MTV station that 2,200 businesses closed doors so far this year.

 

Aftershocks of rising tension between the United States and Iran are also felt in Beirut, with Tehran ally Hezbollah being blamed by opponents for preventing Western-backed Hariri from forming a national unity government.

 

Hezbollah has demanded that six Sunni lawmakers allied with the Shiite group and opposed to Hariri be included in his Cabinet — something that Hariri, the country’s top Sunni Muslim leader, categorically rejects.

 

Despite the dangers, political bickering is not likely to end soon and the debt is mounting.

 

 “The level of debt that we have in Lebanon requires us to act very quickly,” said economist Kamel Wazne.  “Any delay will expose us to financial collapse.”

 

Belhaj of the World Bank said that reforms would act as a buffer to the crisis. But in their absence, “the crisis can be very nasty.”

 

“If we don’t go about these reforms fast, the Lebanon that we know will fizzle away,” he said.

  
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