German authorities have arrested the chief executive of Volkswagen’s Audi division, Rupert Stadler.

He was arrested Monday as part of an investigation about cars Audi sold in Europe that are believed to have been equipped with software that turned emissions controls off during regular driving.

Last week, Munich prosecutors raided Stadler’s home on suspicion of fraud and improprieties of documents.

Volkswagen Audi said “the presumption of innocence remains in place for Mr. Stadler.”

Volkswagen has pleaded guilty to emissions test cheating in the United States.

CEO Martin Winterkorn was charged in the United States, but he will unlikely face those charges since Germany does not extradite its nationals to countries outside the European Union.
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Nothing brings people together more naturally and more easily than food. This was the idea behind a project called #TacoTrucksAtEveryMosque. But the food truck owners who initiated the project don’t want to only serve delicious food – their goal is to unite Latinos and Muslims — and fight the stereotypes and offensive rhetoric that often surround them. Genia Dulot has the story from Los Angeles.
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Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has intensified his war on graft by announcing that all public servants will undergo a compulsory lifestyle audit to account for their sources of wealth.

This latest announcement follows financial scandals that have rocked the country with revelations that millions of dollars were lost in various government agencies through corrupt deals that involved government officials.

Kenyatta offered himself to be the first leader to undergo the audit that seeks to identify corrupt public officials, saying the lifestyle audits would control the misuse of public funds. He said public servants would be required to explain their sources of wealth with an aim of weeding out those found to have plundered government funds.

“You have to tell us, this is the house you have, this is your salary, how were you able to afford it? This car that you bought, (don’t try to put it under your wife’s name or son’s name, we will still know it is yours), where did you get it? You must explain and I will be the first person to undergo the lifestyle audit,” he said.

Scandals uncovered

In the past month, various corruption scandals involving tenders and suppliers in government agencies have been unearthed. The corruption scandals as revealed have exposed the theft of hundreds of millions of shillings by state officials from several government bodies.

So far, more than 40 government officials, including businesspeople, have been arrested over the recent  scandals.

Kenyatta has continued to express his frustration about the graft, which seems to have spiraled out of control since he came into office in 2013.

“This issue of people stealing what belongs to Kenyans, I swear to God it has to come to an end in Kenya,” Kenyatta said.

Establishing accountability

The president said the lifestyle audit will be key among other measures also put in place by the government to curb the vice.

Earlier in the week, Kenyatta issued an executive order requiring all government entities and publicly owned institutions to publish full details of tenders and awards beginning July 1, 2018.

“For example, if this road is being built, we want to know: Who won the tender for the construction? How much was the tender? Who came in second and third? Why was the first person awarded instead of these two? All these reasons, we need to know. Kenyans need to know so that it is out there, that this company was awarded this tender, belongs to a certain person, these are the directors, these are the shareholders. There will be no more hiding,” he said.

On June 1, Kenyatta ordered that all heads of procurement and accounting units be vetted again. He said the vetting would include subjecting the officers to polygraph tests to determine integrity.

Kenya scored 28 points out of 100 on the 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International. The Corruption Index in Kenya averaged 22.62 points from 1996 until 2017.
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After two consecutive years of decline, remittances, the money migrant workers send home, increased in 2017 according to figures released by the World Bank. Remittances are a significant financial contribution to the well-being of families of migrant workers and to the sustainable development of their countries of origin. The U.N. recognizes their importance every year on June 16, designated International Day of Family Remittances. VOA’s Cristina Caicedo Smit reports on this vital lifeline.
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Seventy percent of Canadians say they will start looking for ways to avoid buying U.S.-made goods in a threat to ratchet up a trade dispute between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump, an Ipsos Poll showed Friday.

The poll also found a majority of Americans and Canadians are united in support of Trudeau and opposition to Trump in their countries’ standoff over the renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Amid the spat, Trump pulled out of a joint communique with six other countries last weekend during a Quebec summit meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies and called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak.”

Trump was reacting to Trudeau’s having called U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs insulting to Canada. Trudeau has said little about the matter since a Trump Twitter assault. 

Despite the tensions, 85 percent of Canadians and 72 percent of Americans said they support being in NAFTA, and 44 percent of respondents in both countries said renegotiation of the deal would be a good thing for their country.

While the poll showed support for a boycott of U.S. goods in Canada, pulling it off could be difficult in a country that reveres U.S. popular culture and consumer goods over all others.

Canada is the largest market for U.S. goods.

Trudeau over Trump

The poll showed 72 percent of Canadians and 57 percent of Americans approved of the way Trudeau had handled the situation, while 14 percent of Canadians and 37 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s behavior.

More than eight in 10 Canadians and seven in 10 Americans worry the situation has damaged bilateral relations.

Canada has vowed to retaliate against U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum with tariffs against a range of U.S. goods, a move supported by 79 percent of Canadians, according to the poll.

By contrast, Americans opposed escalating the situation.

Thirty-one percent of Americans said they favored even stronger tariffs, and 61 percent said other elected U.S. officials should denounce Trump’s statements.

Canadian respondents also signaled approval of the united front their politicians have shown, with 88 percent saying they welcomed the support of politicians from other parties for the Liberal government’s decision to push back on tariffs.

While Canadian consumers appeared ready to boycott U.S. goods, 57 percent of Canadians and 52 percent of Americans said Canada should not overreact to Trump’s comments because it was just political posturing.

The Ipsos Poll of 1,001 Canadians and 1,005 Americans — including 368 Democrats, 305 Republicans and 202 independents — was conducted June 13-14. It has a credibility interval of 3.4 percentage points.
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A set of retaliatory tariffs released by China on Friday includes a plan to tax American lobster exports, potentially jeopardizing one of the biggest markets for the premium seafood. 

Chinese officials announced the planned lobster tariff along with hundreds of other tariffs amid the country’s escalating trade fight with the United States. China said it wants to place new duties on items such as farm products, autos and seafood starting July 6.

The announcement could have major ramifications for the U.S. seafood industry and for the economy of the state of Maine, which is home to most of the country’s lobster fishery. China’s interest in U.S. lobster has grown exponentially in recent years, and selling to China has become a major focus of the lobster industry.

“Hopefully cooler heads can prevail and we can get a solution,” said Matt Jacobson, executive director of the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative. “It’s a year-round customer in China. This isn’t good news at all.”

A Chinese government website on Friday posted a list of seafood products that will be subject to the tariffs, and it included live, fresh and frozen lobster. The website stated that the items would be taxed at 25 percent.

The announcement came in response to President Donald Trump’s own increase in tariffs on Chinese imports in America. The Republican president announced a 25 percent tariff on up to $50 billion worth of Chinese goods on Friday.

The news raised alarms around the Maine lobster industry, as China’s an emerging market for U.S. lobster, which has gained popularity with the growing middle class. Maine lobster was worth more than $430 million at the docks last year, and the industry is a critical piece of the state’s economy, history and heritage.

The U.S. isn’t the only country in the lobster trade. Canada also harvests the same species of lobster and is a major trading partner with China.

“Anything that affects the supply chain is obviously not a great thing,” said Kristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “The lobstermen obviously are concerned with trade and where they go.”

The value of China’s American lobster imports grew from $108.3 million in 2016 to $142.4 million last year. The country barely imported any American lobster a decade ago.

China and the U.S. are major seafood trading partners beyond just lobster, and the new tariffs would apply to dozens of products that China imports from the U.S., including salmon, tuna and crab. The U.S. imported more than $2.7 billion in Chinese seafood last year, and the U.S. exported more than $1.3 billion to China.
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President Donald Trump just imposed tariffs on hundreds of Chinese products — from X-ray tubes to incinerators. And Beijing is striking back by targeting U.S. soybeans, beef, seafood and other products.

The punch-and-counterpunch announced Friday in Washington and Beijing moved the world’s two largest economies perilously near a trade war that would inflate prices for consumers, disrupt the flow of goods and perhaps slow a global economy that has been enjoying its healthiest expansion in a decade.

“Everybody loses in a trade war,” says Philip Levy, senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former White House economic adviser. “You get consumers who are worse off. You get producers who are worse off, farmers who are worse off and you don’t even achieve your goal.”

What’s more, the China tariffs come just as the United States is sparring with close allies like the European Union, Canada and Mexico in a separate conflict over trade in steel and aluminum.

What did Trump do?

The White House on Friday announced plans to slap 25 percent tariffs on more than 1,100 Chinese products, worth $50 billion a year in imports. The administration had originally proposed the tariffs in April, starting with a list of 1,333 Chinese products lines. After receiving public feedback, it removed 515 from the blacklist and added 284 others.

Starting July 6, the U.S. will tax the 818 products, worth $34 billion a year in imports, that remained from the original list. It won’t target the 284 additions, worth $16 billion, until after it collects public feedback.

How is China responding?

Beijing immediately said it would retaliate with penalties of the same scale on American goods — and it spelled out details to impose tariffs on 545 U.S. exports, including farm products, autos and seafood.

“The Chinese side doesn’t want to fight a trade war, but facing the shortsightedness of the U.S. side, China has to fight back strongly,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement. “We will immediately introduce the same scale and equal taxation measures, and all economic and trade achievements reached by the two sides will be invalidated.”

American soybean farmers, who send about 60 percent of their exports China, are especially worried about Beijing’s retaliation. Soybean prices were already falling before Friday’s announcement.

“Prices will likely drop further should the tariffs be imposed,” says Bill Shipley, president of the Iowa Soybean Association. “This will further pressure agricultural families and businesses already struggling with below break-even commodity prices.”

How will consumers and businesses be affected?

Tariffs are a tax. So they drive up the price of targeted imports. The reduced foreign competition means that domestic producers can raise their prices, too.

The Trump administration has sought to protect consumers from a direct impact from the tariffs. The tariffs target mainly Chinese industrial machinery, aerospace parts and communications technology; they spare such consumer goods as smartphones, toys and clothes that Americans purchase by the truckload from China. Televisions and pharmaceuticals were removed from the original tariff list.

Still, these tariffs will impose higher costs on U.S. companies that use the equipment. And over time, those costs could be passed on to consumers. The impact won’t be as visible as it would be if consumer products were taxed directly. 

By contrast, the Trump administration earlier this year imposed steep tariffs on imported washing machines. By May, the cost of laundry equipment had jumped 17 percent from two months earlier, according to government data.

What’s the dispute about?

The United States accuses China of using predatory tactics in a breakneck effort to supplant American technological supremacy. Among these are outright cyber-theft. Beijing forces U.S. and other foreign companies to hand over technology as a price of admission to the vast Chinese market. And it uses Chinese government money to outbid private companies for U.S. technology at above-market prices.

U.S. officials say they fear that Beijing’s long-range development strategy, dubbed “Made in China 2025,” will hamper competition and hurt American competitors. It calls for creating Chinese global competitors in such areas as information technology, robotics, aerospace equipment, maritime engineering equipment, electric vehicles, biopharmaceuticals and medical devices. 

Foreign business groups have complained for a decade that Beijing is squeezing them out of promising economic fields. They say “Made in China 2025” appears to leave them little or no place in those industries.

But it isn’t always clear whether the United States is seeking to curb China’s sharp-elbowed practices or to keep it from emerging as a legitimate rival.

Haven’t the two nations tried to work things out?

Yes. And for a time last month it looked as if they’d reached a truce. After a meeting in Washington, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared the trade war “on hold” and the tariffs suspended. Mnuchin said so after China pledged to buy more from the U.S., especially energy and agricultural products and to shrink America’s gaping trade gap with China — $336 billion last year. But critics dismissed that agreement as vague. And Trump backed away and returned to the tariff threat.

Erin Ennis of the U.S.-China Business Council says she suspects Beijing will wait to see whether the United States actually puts the U.S. tariffs into effect July 6 before it starts taxing U.S. goods. That could buy time for last-ditch negotiations.

Isn’t the US tied up in other trade disputes?

Oh, yes. Trump just enraged the EU, Canada and Mexico by imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Worse, he argued that the imported metals posed a threat to U.S. national security — an insult to the longstanding American allies that they roundly rejected. He has also threatened to tax auto imports, also on national security grounds. 

Critics say Trump’s decision to pick fights with America’s friends weakens his hand against China. 

Trade analysts say it would be wiser for the United States to enlist its allies to challenge China’s drive to grab technology, rather than go it alone with unilateral tariffs. After all, companies from the advanced economies of the U.S., Europe and Japan share the same gripes.

China is adept at playing countries and companies off against one another, Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown University law professor, testified last week before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission. If one complains, China can lock it out of the market and do business with a more compliant competitor. Better to present a united front. 
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President Donald Trump has approved a plan to impose punishing tariffs on tens of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods as early as Friday, a move that could put his trade policies on a collision course with his push to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons.

Trump has long vowed to fulfill his campaign pledge to clamp down on what he considers unfair Chinese trading practices. But his calls for billions in tariffs could complicate his efforts to maintain China’s support in his negotiations with North Korea.

Trump met Thursday with several Cabinet members and trade advisers and was expected to impose tariffs on at least $35 billion to $40 billion of Chinese imports, according to an industry official and an administration official familiar with the plans. The amount of goods could reach $55 billion, said the industry official. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the matter ahead of a formal announcement.

Stage set for retaliation

If the president presses forward as expected, it could set the stage for a series of trade actions against China and lead to retaliation from Beijing. Trump has already slapped tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and European allies, and his proposed tariffs against China risk starting a trade war involving the world’s two biggest economies.

The decision on the Chinese tariffs comes in the aftermath of Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president has coordinated closely with China on efforts to get Pyongyang to eliminate its nuclear arsenal. But he signaled that whatever the implications, “I have to do what I have to do” to address the trade imbalance.

Trump, in his press conference in Singapore on Tuesday, said the U.S. has a “tremendous deficit in trade with China and we have to do something about it. We can’t continue to let that happen.” The U.S. trade deficit with China was $336 billion in 2017.

Administration officials have signaled support for imposing the tariffs in a dispute over allegations that Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology, according to officials briefed on the plans. China has targeted $50 billion in U.S. products for potential retaliation.

​Pompeo in China

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised the trade issue directly with China Thursday, when he met in Beijing with President Xi Jinping and other officials, the State Department said. Officials would not say whether Pompeo explicitly informed the Chinese that the tariffs would be coming imminently.

“I stressed how important it is for President Trump to rectify that situation so that trade becomes more balanced, more reciprocal and more fair, with the opportunity to have American workers be treated fairly,” Pompeo said Thursday during a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Wall Street has viewed the escalating trade tensions with wariness, fearful that they could strangle the economic growth achieved during Trump’s watch and undermine the benefits of the tax cuts he signed into law last year.

“If you end up with a tariff battle, you will end up with price inflation, and you could end up with consumer debt. Those are all historic ingredients for an economic slowdown,” Gary Cohn, Trump’s former top economic adviser, said at an event sponsored by The Washington Post.

Bannon: Trump economic message

But Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House and campaign adviser, said the crackdown on China’s trade practices was “the central part of Trump’s economic nationalist message. His fundamental commitment to the ‘deplorables’ on the campaign trail was that he was going to bring manufacturing jobs back, particularly from Asia.”

In the trade fight, Bannon said, Trump has converted three major tools that “the American elites considered off the table” — namely, the use of tariffs, the technology investigation of China and penalties on Chinese telecom giant ZTE.

“That’s what has gotten us to the situation today where the Chinese are actually at the table,” Bannon said. “It’s really not just tariffs, it’s tariffs on a scale never before considered.”

Chinese counterpunch

The Chinese have threatened to counterpunch if the president goes ahead with the plan. Chinese officials have said they would drop agreements reached last month to buy more U.S. soybeans, natural gas and other products.

“We made clear that if the U.S. rolls out trade sanctions, including the imposition of tariffs, all outcomes reached by the two sides in terms of trade and economy will not come into effect,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Thursday.

Beijing has also drawn up a list of $50 billion in U.S. products that would face retaliatory tariffs, including beef and soybeans, a shot at Trump’s supporters in rural America.

Scott Kennedy, a specialist on the Chinese economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Chinese threat was real and helped along by recent strains exhibited among the U.S. and allies.

“I don’t think they would cower or immediately run to the negotiating table to throw themselves at the mercy of Donald Trump,” Kennedy said. “They see the U.S. is isolated and the president as easily distracted.”

Ron Moore, who farms 1,800 acres of corn and soybeans in Roseville, Illinois, said soybean prices have started dropping ahead of what looks like a trade war between the two economic powerhouses. 

“We have to plan for the worst-case scenario and hope for the best,” said Moore, who is chairman of the American Soybean Association. “If you look back at President Trump’s history, he’s been wildly successful negotiating as a businessman. But it’s different when you’re dealing with other governments.”

The U.S. and China have been holding ongoing negotiations over the trade dispute. The United States has criticized China for the aggressive tactics it uses to develop advanced technologies, including robots and electric cars, under its “Made in China 2025” program. The U.S. tariffs are designed specifically to punish China for forcing American companies to hand over technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market.

The administration is also working on proposed Chinese investment restrictions by June 30. So far, Trump has yet to signal any interest in backing away. 
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AT&T Inc may close its $85 billion deal to buy Time Warner Inc under an agreement reached on Thursday with the U.S. government, which might still appeal a case seen as a turning point for the media industry.

AT&T said it could close the deal by Friday. The government has not ruled out an appeal and has 60 days to file.

AT&T agreed to temporarily manage Time Warner’s Turner networks separately from DirecTV, including setting prices and managing personnel, as part of the deal approved by Judge Richard Leon late Thursday.

The conditions agreed to by AT&T would remain in effect until Feb. 28, 2019, the conclusion of the case or an appeal.

Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Tuesday that the deal to marry AT&T’s wireless and satellite businesses with Time Warner’s movies and television shows was legal under antitrust law. The Justice Department had argued the deal would harm consumers.

U.S. President Donald Trump, a frequent critic of Time Warner’s CNN coverage, denounced the deal when it was announced in October 2016.

The fact that Turner, which includes CNN, will be run separately from DirecTV makes a stay unnecessary, said Seth Bloom, a veteran of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division who is now in private practice.

In its lawsuit aimed at stopping the deal, filed in November 2017, the Justice Department said that AT&T’s ownership of both DirecTV and Time Warner, especially its Turner subsidiary, would give AT&T unfair leverage against rival pay TV providers that relied on content like CNN and HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

“This is clearly leaving open the door for the DOJ (Justice Department) to appeal,” Bloom said. “If Turner is run separately, they don’t really need a stay.”

The AT&T ruling is expected to trigger a wave of mergers in the media sector, which has been upended by companies like Netflix Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google.

The first to come was Comcast Corp’s $65 billion bid on Wednesday for the entertainment assets of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.

AT&T had been worried about closing its deal ahead of a June 21 deadline if the government won a stay pending an appeal. Any stay could take the deal beyond a June 21 deadline for completing the merger, which could allow Time Warner to walk away or renegotiate the proposed transaction with AT&T.

The government may have a difficult time winning on appeal because of the way Judge Leon wrote his opinion, four antitrust experts said.

“I don’t think this would be overturned. It is so rooted in the facts that I would be surprised if an appellate court overturned such a fact-laden opinion,” said Michael Carrier, who teaches law at Rutgers.

In a scathing opinion after a six-week trial, Leon found little to support the government’s arguments that the deal would harm consumers, calling the evidence for one argument against the deal “gossamer thin” and another “poppycock.”

The merger, including debt, would be the fourth largest deal ever attempted in the global telecom, media and entertainment space, according to Thomson Reuters data. It would also be the 12th largest deal in any sector, the data showed.
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Nyet. Non. Nein. No. That’s the answer the Supreme Court gave Thursday to the question of whether federal courts in the United States must accept statements from foreign governments about their own laws as binding.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for a unanimous court that a “federal court should accord respectful consideration to a foreign government’s submission,” but is not required to treat it as conclusive.

Given “the world’s many and diverse legal systems and the range of circumstances in which a foreign government’s views may be presented,” there is no single formula on how to treat the information a foreign government provides, Ginsburg wrote.

Ginsburg said the appropriate weight given to a government’s statement in each case will depend on the circumstances. Among the factors that U.S. courts should weigh in looking at what a foreign government has said about its own law are: the statement’s clarity, thoroughness and support as well as the transparency of the foreign legal system and the role and authority of the statement’s author.

Trade case

The ruling came in a case that involves trade with China, a class action lawsuit filed by two U.S.-based purchasers of vitamin C: Nacogdoches, Texas-based Animal Science Products and Elizabeth, New Jersey-based The Ranis Company. The companies sued vitamin C exporters in China. They alleged the exporters had violated U.S. antitrust laws by fixing the prices and amounts of vitamin C exported to the United States.

The vitamin C exporters argued that Chinese law had required their actions and that the lawsuit should therefore be dismissed. China’s Ministry of Commerce filed a brief arguing the same.

US rulings

A federal trial court said the ministry was entitled to “substantial deference” in its interpretation of its own law but didn’t find its statements conclusive. The judge ruled that Chinese law did not require the companies to fix the price or quantity of vitamin C exports, and after a jury found against the exporters, the judge awarded the U.S. companies $147 million.

The New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reversed the award and dismissed the lawsuit, saying when a foreign government participates in U.S. court proceeding and submits a statement about its laws and regulations the U.S. court is “bound to defer to those statements.” The Supreme Court disagreed.

The Trump administration had urged the court to side, as it did, with the Vitamin C purchasers.

The case is 16-1220, Animal Science Products v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co.
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Caterers in Washington tweeted a photo of maroon sashimi appetizers served to 700 guests attending the governor’s inaugural ball last year. They were told the tuna was from Montauk.

But it was an illusion. It was the dead of winter and no yellowfin had been landed in the New York town.

An Associated Press investigation traced the supply chain of national distributor Sea To Table to other parts of the world, where fishermen described working under slave-like conditions with little regard for marine life.

In a global seafood industry plagued by deceit, conscientious consumers will pay top dollar for what they believe is local, sustainably caught seafood. But even in this fast-growing niche market, companies can hide behind murky dealings, making it difficult to know the story behind any given fish.

Sea To Table said by working directly with 60 docks along U.S. coasts it could guarantee the fish was wild, domestic and traceable — sometimes to the fisherman.

The New York-based company quickly rose in the sustainable seafood movement. While it told investors it had $13 million in sales last year, it expected growth to $70 million by 2020. The distributor earned endorsement from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and garnered media attention from Bon Appetit, Forbes and many more. Its clientele included celebrity chef Rick Bayless, Roy’s seafood restaurants, universities and home delivery meal kits such as HelloFresh.

As part of their investigation, reporters staked out America’s largest fish market, followed trucks and interviewed fishermen who worked on three continents. During a bone-chilling week, they set up a time-lapse camera at Montauk harbor that showed no tuna boats docking. The AP also had a chef order $500 worth of fish sent “directly from the landing dock to your kitchen,” but the boat listed on the receipt hadn’t been there in at least two years.

Preliminary DNA tests suggested the fish likely came from the Indian Ocean or the Western Central Pacific. There are limitations with the data because using genetic markers to determine the origins of species is still an emerging science, but experts say the promising new research will eventually be used to help fight illegal activity in the industry. 

Some of Sea To Table’s partner docks on both coasts, it turned out, were not docks at all. They were wholesalers or markets, flooded with imports. 

The distributor also offered species that were farmed, out of season or illegal to catch.

“It’s sad to me that this is what’s going on,” said chef Bayless, who hosts a PBS cooking series. He had worked with Sea To Table because he liked being tied directly to fishermen — and the “wonderful stories” about their catch. “This throws quite a wrench in all of that.”

Other customers who responded to AP said they were frustrated and confused.

Sea To Table response

Sea To Table owner Sean Dimin stressed that his suppliers are prohibited from sending imports to customers and added violators would be terminated.

“We take this extremely seriously,” he said.

Dimin also said he communicated clearly with chefs that some fish labeled as freshly landed at one port were actually caught and trucked in from other states. But customers denied this, and federal officials described it as mislabeling.

The AP focused on tuna because the distributor’s supplier in Montauk, the Bob Gosman Co., was offering chefs yellowfin tuna all year round, even when federal officials said there were no landings in the entire state.

Almost nightly, Gosman’s trucks drove three hours to reach the New Fulton Fish Market, where they picked up boxes of fish bearing shipping labels from all over the world.

Owner Bryan Gosman said some of the tuna that went to Sea To Table was caught off North Carolina and then driven 700 miles to Montauk. That practice ended in March, he said, because it wasn’t profitable. While 70 percent of his yellowfin tuna is imported, he said that fish is sold to local restaurants and sushi bars and kept separate from Sea To Table’s products.

“Can things get mixed up? It could get mixed up,” he said. “Is it an intentional thing? No, not at all.”

Some of Gosman’s foreign supply came from Land, Ice and Fish, in Trinidad and Tobago.

Indonesian fishermen

The AP interviewed and reviewed complaints from more than a dozen Indonesian fishermen who said they earned $1.50 a day, working 22 hours at a time, on boats that brought yellowfin to Land, Ice and Fish’s compound. They described finning sharks and occasionally cutting off whale and dolphin heads, extracting their teeth as good luck charms.

“We were treated like slaves,” said Sulistyo, an Indonesian who worked on one of those boats and gave only one name, fearing retaliation. “They treat us like robots without any conscience.”

Though it’s nearly impossible to tell where a specific fish ends up, or what percentage of a company’s seafood is fraudulent, even one bad piece taints the entire supply chain.

Dimin said the labor and environmental abuses are “abhorrent and everything we stand against.”

For caterers serving at the ball for Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who successfully pushed through a law to combat seafood mislabeling, knowing where his fish came from was crucial.

The Montauk tuna came with a Sea To Table leaflet describing the romantic, seaside town and the quality of the fish. A salesperson did send them an email saying the fish was caught off North Carolina. But the boxes came from New York and there was no indication it had landed in another state and was trucked to Montauk. A week later, the caterer ordered Montauk tuna again. This time the invoice listed a boat whose owner later told AP he didn’t catch anything for Sea To Table at that time.

“I’m kind of in shock right now,” said Brandon LaVielle of Lavish Roots Catering. “We felt like we were supporting smaller fishing villages.”
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Leaders of the U.S. central bank raised interest rates slightly Wednesday and signaled that rates are likely to go higher as the economy continues to strengthen.

At the end of two days of deliberation in Washington, the Federal Reserve set the key interest rate a quarter of a percent higher, at a range between 1.75 and 2 percent. They say the labor market continues to improve, spending is rising, and inflation is rising closer to the modest 2 percent annual rate that experts say helps the economy grow predictably.

Fed officials work to maximize employment while maintaining stable prices. With that in mind, they slashed interest rates to nearly zero during the recession in 2008 to boost economic activity. Now, they judge that it is time to continue raising rates because holding rates too low for too long could spark inflation, and such rapidly rising prices could harm the economy.

“The economy is doing very well,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told journalists. “Most people who want to find jobs are finding them and unemployment and inflation are low.”

He said the Fed’s efforts to manage the economy work best when the public is told what is being done, what is being considered, and why certain decisions are made. Consequently, Powell said he will begin holding press conferences more often beginning next year. 
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German authorities fined Volkswagen nearly $1.2 billion Wednesday for its role in a diesel emissions scandal that first surfaced in the United States in 2015.

Prosecutors found the German automaker failed to properly monitor its engine development department. The lack of oversight resulted in global sales of nearly 11 million diesel vehicles with illegal emissions-controlling software.

U.S. authorities previously imposed billions of dollars in penalties on the automaker, which said Wednesday it would accept the fine announced by prosecutors in the city of Braunschweig.

Volkswagen said paying the latest fine would hopefully have “positive effects on other official proceedings being conducted in Europe” against the company and its subsidiaries.
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U.S. President Donald Trump says oil prices are too high and blames the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The 14 oil-producing nations in OPEC — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Venezuela among them — produce about 40 percent of the world’s oil, but about 60 percent of the oil traded on international markets. OPEC’s actions, whether to cut or increase production, often heavily influence the price of oil, and by extension the prices consumers and businesses pay for fuel.

OPEC’s oil chiefs struck a deal in 2016 to cut production by 1.8 million barrels a day to reduce the global glut of oil and shore up prices. Since then, oil prices have risen from below $30 a barrel to more than $70.

But that rollback in production is set to expire at the end of the year. OPEC has yet to set new production levels beyond that, but the cartel’s oil ministers are meeting again next week in Vienna.

Saudi Energy Minister Khaled al-Faleh said in April that the global market can absorb higher oil prices, a remark that drew a swift rebuke from Trump.

“With record amounts of oil all over the place, including the fully loaded ships at sea, Oil prices are artificially Very High! No good and will not be accepted!” the U.S. leader tweeted on April 20, although he has no control over what OPEC decides to do.

Early in the year, with gas prices at service stations still relatively low, Trump suggested raising the country’s gasoline tax that customers pay at service stations by 25 cents a gallon to fund road and highway repairs.

But the president has not mentioned the tax increase idea in months as gas prices have steadily risen because of higher oil prices on the world market, eating into higher take-home pay that millions of American workers gained when Congress late last year passed tax-cut legislation supported by Trump.

The average gallon of gas in the United States now costs $2.92, far more than in such oil-producing countries as Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and far less than in other countries around the world, including Europe.
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For many years, Ivory Coast has been the world’s largest producer of cocoa. Most of it leaves the country in bulk and ends up in Europe, where it gets turned into fine and expensive chocolate, fetching up to 50 times the price of the raw cocoa.

Chocolate is the world’s favorite comfort food. Two-thirds of all that sweet stuff comes out of factories in the United States and Western Europe. It is where most people consume it, too. Almost completely left out of this feast for the palate are the countries that produce the raw material for chocolate: cocoa.

A few years ago, a Dutch-Ivorian television crew went to one of Ivory Coast’s many cocoa farms and recorded the surprise on the planters’ faces when tasting chocolate for the first time: so THIS is what they do with our cocoa beans?

Very little chocolate is consumed in Africa, but this Ivorian entrepreneur is planning to change that. 

Axel Emmanuel Gbaou says he worked at a commercial bank until 2010 before he decided to go into the business of making chocolate. The taste for the sweet bars came from his mother, who had been living among Swiss missionaries, great chocolate lovers. His conviction came from doing some basic arithmetic.

Eighty percent of next year’s cocoa beans, he explains, have already been bought up by the big multinational companies that transport them raw to the chocolate factories in other parts of the world. One kilo of chocolate fetches up to 50 times more than one kilo of unprocessed cocoa beans. Axel wants some of that money to stay in Ivory Coast.

In this nondescript building close to the market in Abidjan’s Cocody district, you will find the production unit, the packaging center and sales office. Axel’s company sells its products to an ever expanding circle of customers, including the global airline Air France.

Back in the cocoa producing fields, the situation is dire. World market prices have been falling for two years. In response, the government of Ivory Coast has lowered the standard price per kilo. 

Agronomist N’dourou M’beo is quality control manager at Axel’s company. He says current cocoa prices stand at around $1.40 per kilo. That is the raw harvest that gets shipped out of the country. But after some basic treatment — roasting and winnowing — those beans fetch three times as much and they can be stored for months. This is one model the company has adopted. As a result, more work and money stay on the farm and the company has a reliable supply of quality beans.

The world is the market, but Axel’s biggest challenge lies right here in Africa. 

In the next two years, he says he wants to sell 100 million bars of chocolate on the African continent. 

That sounds like a lot, but in fact with well more than one billion inhabitants and a fast growing middle class that can afford buying a few bars at $3 each, he thinks it is perfectly doable.

 

 
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When 13-year-old Mounir fled Syria for Lebanon with his family after surviving a rocket strike that nearly killed them, he thought he would be safe. In fact, he had swapped one form of danger for another – sexual harassment and verbal abuse.

With his father unable to work for health reasons, Mounir had to earn money for his family selling sweets in the city of Tripoli – a job that kept him out on the streets until 11pm, making about 12,000 Lebanese pounds ($8) a day.

“It was very hostile – people used to call me the ‘Syrian dog’ and other things,” Mounir – not his real name – told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“I would get really hurt, sometimes I would just sit and cry. It was humiliating.”

Aid groups say more and more Syrian children like Mounir are having to work as poverty intensifies among the about 1 million refugees living in Lebanon – roughly a quarter of the country’s population.

The proportion of Syrian child refugees working in Lebanon has risen to 7 percent from 4 percent in late 2016, according to research by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) released early to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“It is sad to say that it is only going to get worse,” said Benedict Nixon, spokesman for the Council. “As long as households are not generating income, rates of child labor will

continue to increase.”

The United Nations and aid agencies warned last month that a “critical gap” in funding for Syrian refugees and host communities could lead to cuts in vital services.

Globally, conflict and climate-induced disaster have driven more children into working in agriculture, which accounts for 71 percent of all child labor according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Households in Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon, for example, are prone to resort to child labour to ensure the survival of their family,” the FAO said in a statement released on Tuesday to mark World Day Against Child Labor.

“Breaking Point”

Tanya Chapuisat, spokeswoman for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, said Syrian families in Lebanon often had no choice but to send their children to work.

“Families are at their breaking point when it comes to debt, and so to be able to get their basic needs they are sending kids to work,” she said.

Mounir’s mother Hasnaa says she feels intense guilt but has no choice but to send Mounir and his 17-year-old brother out to work rather, depriving them of an education.

The rent alone on the small garage where the family lives is 280,000 Lebanese pounds a month.

“It feels like nothing is enough. Everything we have goes into paying for rent,” she said.

More than three quarters of the refugees in Lebanon are living below the poverty line and struggling to survive on less than $4 per day, according to UNICEF, and less than half the Syrian children in the country attend school.

Mounir knows his life is not like most 13-year-olds’.

“A kid should be living a life of dignity and respect with no humiliation,” he said.

Clutching his hands, he recalled the times when men on the street would approach him for sex.

“They tried to do bad things. I would not accept,” he said, as he stared down at the ground.

“This has happened more than once to me on the street. They were all men. Of course I was scared of this. They would ask me to come with them and I would tell them I didn’t want to go.”

Even at 13, he said he was often the oldest on the streets, where children as young as five worked alongside him.

Last month he found work closer to home at a barber shop, where he earns 30,000 Lebanese pounds a week sweeping and helping the owner – though he still works 10-hour days.

His favorite subject at school before Syria’s seven-year war cut his education short was math, and he dreams of going back to learn how to read and write.

“I want to become a mechanic. I like fixing things like motors,” he said with a big, dimpled smile.

($1 = 1,505.0000 Lebanese pounds)
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The savannah scrubland where Chief João Ponce once hunted deer and wild boar in Brazil has given way to neat rows of soy and corn that a tractor sprays with herbicide. In the next field, silver grain silos shimmer in the hot sun.

Ponce is head of the Uirapuru indigenous community which has allowed local farmers to produce crops on one-third of its 44,500-acre (18,000-hectare) reservation in southwestern Mato Grosso state.

The one-tenth or less share of the harvests has helped the Pareci natives to buy cars and smartphones, replace hammocks with beds and equip their thatched huts with widescreen TVs, freezers and broadband Internet antennas.

“We’re surrounded by farmers. We can’t live off hunting anymore. The animals are gone,” he said, sitting in a hammock in his thatched hut.

But the partnership with non-native farmers, fueled by an insatiable demand for Brazilian soy in China and other markets, is illegal and has alarmed environmentalists.

Brazil’s environmental regulator Ibama last week fined six native communities and a dozen farmers on reservation land for using genetically modified crops (GMO) and engaging in large-scale mechanized agriculture. Both are banned on reservation land.

The unprecedented fines totaling 129 million reais ($33 million) mark an unexpected escalation in a dispute between rival federal agencies, environmentalists, farmers and native advocacy groups over Indian tribes getting into commercial agriculture in Brazil’s rapidly expanding farm belt.

“We are not targeting the Indian. He has been besieged, co-opted. He’s a victim, and the environment of the reservations is being hurt by this pressure for land,” said René de Oliveira, the agency’s main enforcer.

He said the use of GMO soy was the worst crime because nobody knows the environmental impact such crops can have on the biodiversity of protected areas like reservations.

The crackdown could mean trouble for major grain trading firms such as ADM, Cargill and Bunge if they are caught buying soy grown on native land.

“The companies can be fined, because the Indians are not allowed to grow GMO crops and traders are not allowed to buy from reservations,” Oliveira said.

Cargill said in an emailed statement that it only bought products originating from properties in compliance with Brazilian law and verified their status before any commercial transaction. ADM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bunge directed a request to soy processor association Abiove.

Five grain trading houses, including Cargill and Bunge, were recently fined 24.6 million reais for buying crops grown on illegally deforested land in the Amazon.

Local farmers said it was very hard to trace the origin of grains because traders only need to ask for the seller’s tax ID and not the location or size of the plantation.

That has made it easier for tribes looking to cash in on an agribusiness boom, turning their coveted savannah into fertile farmland with the know-how of white farmers.

Ibama fined communities of the Pareci, Nambikwara and Manoki tribes and embargoed 40,000 acres of their land that were being used for large-scale GMO plantations in the municipalities of Campo Novo do Parecis and Conquista do Oeste, or “Conquest of the West,” near the border with Bolivia.

The tribes are pressing to change environmental and Indian laws so that they can keep their plantations and sell their harvests legally. The issue has put Ibama at odds with the Indian affairs agency Funai, which wants to allow the tribes to become farmers.

“We want to be able to sell to Bunge, Amaggi, Cargill, Dreyfus, so we can buy our own machinery. But without licensing that shows the origin, our soy has to go out clandestinely,” said Arnaldo Zunizakae, who manages farming on the vast Pareci reservation of 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares).

Demand for Land

China’s appetite for Brazilian soybeans has driven up land values in Mato Grosso, the country’s biggest soy state. Eager for more access to reservation lands, farm and mining lobbies in Brasilia are exploiting divisions between Ibama and Funai.

Fault lines have also opened within the tribes between traditionalists and opportunists at odds over how to manage ancestral lands and preserve native customs and culture.

Brazilian law prohibits the arrangement under which the tribes have allowed farmers to develop industrial-scale production of commodity crops in return for a share of the harvest. The farmers cover the costs and hire crop dusters to spray fields with herbicide for GMO crops.

Funai said in an email that it was seeking a formula that allowed native peoples to choose their own development path. But federal prosecutors dealing with native issues said GMO crops or partnerships with non-natives would not be permitted.

“We won’t be able to sow this year’s crop. Conventional crops are more costly to store and harder to sell. We’d be pushed back into primitive 20th century agriculture,” said Zunizakae, climbing combine harvester bought by his tribe.

Unexpected Allies

The neighboring Nambikwara tribe has taken to blocking the road through its reservation to press for the right to engage in commercial agriculture. With their faces painted, Nambikwaras have demanded a toll from truck drivers moving soy for export.

The grains are trucked to barges on the Madeira river and loaded onto ships in the Amazon for China and other countries.

Brazil’s powerful farm lobby, a traditional foe of native communities in disputes over their ancestral lands, seized on the cause of the Indians involved in commercial agriculture.

“I totally support the Indian’s right to employ his free initiative to overcome poverty and not depend on handouts from the government,” said Nilson Leitão, a congressman from Mato Grosso and leaders of the farm states caucus.

The prospect of allowing commercial farming on reservations galls environmentalists and anthropologists who warn it will destroy native cultures and lead to exploittion of the Indians.

Not so, say Pareci elders, who point to advances made by their 1,800-strong tribe due to agricultural income, including better schools, health care and university grants for Parecis.

“If it were not for this, we would be dying,” said Chief Narciso Kazoizax, wearing a jaguar skin over his shoulders and a headdress of red and blue macaw feathers. Eighty percent of his tribe speak their native Aruak language, a sure sign of a strong culture, he said.

Infant mortality among the Parecis has fallen dramatically from 24 deaths in 2015 to only one last year and the community has been able to afford expensive surgeries that Funai’s medical service can no longer provide.

“We do have a better life thanks to the plantations,” said Zeferino, a shaman who sat weaving a basket as he watched Liverpool defeat Roma in the European soccer Champions League.

“We don’t want to become rich like white men. We just want to survive better,” he said with a smile, revealing perfect dentures.
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A campaign by Colombia to eradicate child labor discovered nearly 5,000 children working in the past three months, including hundreds from economically stricken Venezuela, the government said on Tuesday.

While child labor rates have fallen in recent years, overall about 850,000 children aged 5 to 17 are estimated to be working and not attending school full-time or at all, government figures show.

Of the 5,000 cases of child labor found, more than a third were uncovered by government mobile units on farms and streets, while under half were reported through a free telephone hotline, according to Colombia’s child protection agency (ICBF).

Under Colombian law, children under 15 are not allowed to work and no child can be employed in a hazardous job that poses a risk to health or life.

“We have found children working in markets, in public spaces, at the traffic lights, in rural areas,” Karen Abudinen head of ICBF, told media on Tuesday.

The ICBF has identified 350 Venezuelan children who were victims of child labour in Colombia since March, particularly in those provinces sharing a border with Venezuela, Abudinen said.

In Colombia’s northern border city of Cucuta, Venezuelan teenagers can be seen working as street vendors, and young children beg with their parents on sidewalks.

About 672,000 Venezuelans have crossed into Colombia, legally and illegally, since 2015, according to Colombian authorities, fleeing economic turmoil and severe shortages of food and medicine.

Those migrating to Colombia without passports and work visas are vulnerable to labor exploitation, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Colombia has said.

Along with poverty, driving child labor rates are local cultural attitudes. Work is seen as building character, as a normal part of development and as a responsibility children have to contribute to the home. Abudinen called it “a cultural problem that we can’t ignore.”

The concerted public awareness campaign against child labor began in February, which also aims to encourage people to come forward and report cases of children working.

“Child labor is a factory of inequality because a child who works does not have the same opportunities as those who are studying,” Abudinen said in a statement.

Globally, 152 million children aged 5 to 17 are victims of forced labor, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).

Children toil in homes, mines, fields and factories, carrying heavy loads, working long hours and suffering exposure to pesticides and other toxic substances, it said.

“Their very lives can be at risk,” the ILO said in a statement on Tuesday.

The ILO said latest figures show from 2012 through 2016 that almost no progress was made on reducing child labor among the youngest aged 5 to 11, and the number of young children in hazardous work has increased.
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Ivan Duque, the frontrunner to win Colombia’s presidential election on Sunday, said tax cuts he is proposing would bolster investment in the Andean nation by a third over the next four years and help stimulate sluggish economic growth.

The right-wing 41-year-old lawyer and former senator, running almost 20 points ahead of leftist rival Gustavo Petro in polls, told Reuters in an interview late on Monday that he hopes to attract fresh investment to help lift economic growth to as much as 5 percent from 1.8 percent last year.

Petro, a former mayor of Bogota and one-time rebel from the now-defunct M19 insurgency, has spooked investors with plans to overhaul Colombia’s market-oriented economic model and gradually abandon dependence on the production of oil and coal.

Business-friendly Duque, on the other hand, has pledged to maintain crude and coal production, reduce taxes on businesses and raise government finances by cutting tax evasion.

“First of all, I want growth triggered by a high rate of investment, more than 30 percent of gross domestic product,” Duque said at his campaign headquarters.

“I know it’s ambitious, but that has to be a goal we set, domestic investment and foreign investment.”

Total investment reached 23.1 percent of GDP last year, up 0.6 percent from the previous year, according to the DANE statistics department.

Duque, who is backed by powerful former president Alvaro Uribe, said he would seek investment from infrastructure, agriculture, the service industry and tourism.

“Investors can have absolute clarity that my goal is for them to come to the country and that their investments translate into an improvement in the living conditions of Colombians,” he said, adding that he would guarantee the rule of law and clear investment rules.

The additional investment and a crackdown on tax evasion would help compensate for cuts in business duties, Duque said.

He also plans to reduce government spending and make it more efficient.

He said he believed his administration could cut value added tax and income tax evasion by 50 percent, allowing overall tax rates to come down and in turn attract more investment.

Duque, who worked at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington until 2014, said he would abide by the so-called fiscal rule, which obliges the government to reduce the fiscal deficit, as well as cut debt levels in the $320 billion economy, Latin America’s fourth largest.

Colombia registered a fiscal deficit of 3.6 percent of GDP in 2017 and is expected to see it fall to 3.1 percent this year.
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Tourists reached out to feel the heat from the still-smoldering lava, tossed sticks to see them burst into flames or watched a guide toast marshmallows on hot rocks as they hiked on Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano, which days earlier had spewed lava.  

From the peak of Pacaya they had a clear view of the nearby Volcano of Fire, which erupted June 3, emitting a fast-moving avalanche of super-heated muck that killed at least 110 people and left about 200 missing.

“I would encourage people to come and see the beauty of the place; there’s nothing necessarily to fear,” said Maximilian Penn, a chef from New York gazing at the breathtaking view. “It’s just important to have an understanding of what’s going on here. It’s a dangerous place, so you should have respect.” 

Volcano tourism is the life blood of villages like San Francisco de Sales, perched near Pacaya’s peak, and for locals it is a question of learning to live with a generous monster. Pacaya is the main tourist draw as it is more accessible while also offering a clear view of the Volcano of Fire. 

Silvia Sazo, one of the few female tour guides at Pacaya, saw her own home destroyed by a 2010 eruption. Her family rebuilt in the same place, and there are still spots on the ground near her house where vapor and heat stream from the ground. 

“You can put eggs, corn and chayotes in the ground, and they cook,” she said. “We don’t have anywhere else to live. … This is our way of life.”

The Pacaya volcano began having effusive eruptions in 2006 while the deadly blast of ash and rock from the Volcano of Fire was an explosive eruption. 

Although locals don’t use the scientific terms, they know the difference: Explosive eruptions of ash, gas and rock can easily kill, while effusive eruptions — lava flows — can be interesting for tourists to look at. Some volcanos have both types, and Pacaya had an explosive blast in 2010 that killed a reporter and two locals. 

But there is always danger with both types, including the emission of toxic gases, notes John Stix, a professor at the earth and planetary sciences department at McGill University in Canada.

“I think anyone who visits an active volcano needs to appreciate that there is some risk involved, and the risk increases as one gets closer to the active vent or crater,” Stix wrote.

Which, in far less scientific terms, is what locals say.

“We don’t worry about the lava, we worry about the crater” from which explosive eruptions come, said Sazo.

Residents who depend on Pacaya for their livelihood have learned to respect and read the volcano, like park maintenance worker Juan Francisco Alfaro, who lives in the nearby hamlet of Patrocinio. 

“We are always alert. You don’t wait, you go if there is an explosive eruption,” Alfaro said. 

Many carefully watch the color of the plumes coming from the crater: White is OK, but black means danger. 

“We have a lot of respect for it,” Alfaro said. “One sees what happened to San Miguel Los Lotes,” which was destroyed by the Volcano of Fire eruption.

Jose Quezada, who has guided tours for 18 years, estimates half the people in San Francisco de Sales earn a living from volcano tourism. 

“Over time, we have learned to live with the volcano,” he said. “You don’t fool around with the volcano.”

Each day, Quezada gets reports from residents who have hiked up the mountain earlier in the day about where it is safe to take tour groups. Going to the summit and peering into the crater is no longer allowed. 

“If there is a change in the volcano, a change in its activity, we return immediately,” he said. 

Tourists come to Pacaya for the altitude, cool weather, stunning views and singular experience of seeing the force of nature. 

The altitude — the volcanos are the only geographic features rising off the steamy plains — is one reason why many people live in villages like San Francisco de Sales. It is perfect for growing coffee, but after a plant disease wiped out coffee trees, people recently began planting avocados. 

“Coffee is no longer profitable after we got coffee rust,” said farmer Roberto Mijango. “We’re only getting paid $18 for a 100-pound (46-kilogram) sack of coffee berries. The fertilizer costs more than that.”

But the 3- and 4-year-old avocado trees won’t bear enough fruit to support the farmers for another few years. So without the tourism income, the villages around Pacaya would be impoverished.  

Samuel Dandoy, a tourist from a town in Belgium near the French border, stood near the top of Pacaya on Friday looking at the lava flow. 

“I really came for the volcanos in Guatemala,” said Dandoy. “I feel amazed. It’s really impressive.”

Dandoy and his traveling companion, Camille Bourbeau of Montreal, lived through the ash that fell on Antigua from the Volcano of Fire. 

The two joined relief efforts, making sandwiches and distributing them to victims and rescuers. 

“I couldn’t just sit there, I had to do something,” said Bourbeau. “I volunteered a bit. I made sandwiches for them. I went to give the supplies that were donated, so I felt I tried to help.”
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The European Central Bank will on Thursday weigh when and how to end its bond-buying stimulus program — an exit that will have far-reaching consequences across the economy, from long-suffering savers to Europe’s indebted governments.

 

The bank, which sets monetary policy for the 19 countries that use the euro, has been buying 30 billion euros ($35.5 billion) a month in government and corporate bonds from banks. The purchases are slated to run at least through September, and longer if necessary.

 

Analysts say that decisions on the exit path, which could include several intermediate steps, might come Thursday or at the July 26 meeting. Scenarios include reducing the purchases past September, and then stopping them at the end of the year.

 

An end to the stimulus would be part of a major shift in the global economy. The ECB would be joining the U.S. Federal Reserve in withdrawing the massive monetary stimulus deployed to combat the Great Recession and its aftermath. The Fed is expected to raise rates at its meeting Wednesday.

 

The ECB’s bond purchases, which started in March 2015, pump newly printed money into the economy, which in theory should help raise inflation toward the bank’s goal of just under 2 percent. Inflation was an annual 1.9 percent in May, but the bank needs to be able to say that inflation will stay in line with its target even after the stimulus is withdrawn.

 

Market participants pricked up their ears last week when top ECB official Peter Praet said Thursday’s meeting would be an occasion to consider when to wind down the program. Praet supervises economics at the ECB as a member of its six-member executive board and in that capacity proposes monetary policy moves for debate and decision by the 25-member governing council. That gives his words extra weight.

 

The impact of the ECB’s bond-buying stimulus has been felt across the economy.

 

It has pushed up the prices of assets like stocks, bonds and real estate but also lowered returns for savers. It has helped keep borrowing costs low for European governments as the ECB purchases have driven bond prices up and yields down. Yields and prices move in opposite directions.

 

For example, the Italian government, which is burdened with the second-highest debt load in the eurozone after Greece at 132 percent of gross domestic product, pays only 2.79 percent annually to borrow for 10 years. That’s less than the 2.96 percent yield on 10-year U.S. Treasurys.

 

The ECB meeting will be held in Riga, Latvia, as one of the ECB’s occasional road meetings away from its Frankfurt headquarters to underline its role as a pan-European institution. A bribery investigation is expected to keep the head of the host central bank, Ilmars Rimsevics, from attending the meeting and news conference with ECB President Mario Draghi.

The ECB is continuing its slow progress toward withdrawing the stimulus despite turbulence in Italy, where the new populist government has questioned the spending and debt restrictions required of euro members. Concerns over Italian politics caused big swings in the country’s financial markets for several days last month, before easing.

 

Analysts Joerg Kraemer and Michael Schubert at Commerzbank said that the ECB may soon have to end its stimulus program anyway as it risks running out of bonds that are eligible for purchase. The ECB has limited itself to no more than one-third of any member country’s outstanding bonds to avoid becoming the dominant creditor of member states.

 

With the purchases widely expected to be stopped at the end of this year, they said, attention would now turn to how long the bank would wait after the bond-purchase exit before starting to raise its interest rate benchmarks.

 

“The ECB probably wants to ensure that the end of bond purchases does not unleash speculation about interest rate hikes,” they wrote in a research note. “The ECB Council… might declare that rates will not be increased for ‘at least’ six months after the end of purchases.”

 

Currently the short-term interest rate benchmark is zero, and the rate on deposits left by commercial banks at the ECB is negative 0.4 percent. The negative rate is a penalty aimed at pushing banks to lend that money instead of hoard it.

 

 
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The separatist campaign in Indian-administered Kashmir broke out into major violence in 1989. More than 60,000 people are estimated to have died and 10,000 to have disappeared in the disputed Himalayan region. That has pushed their families into poverty. For the region’s youth, earning a living has been a challenge, especially educated young women. However, one group of young entrepreneurs is taking matters into their own hands. Yusuf Jameel has more, in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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