Coffee
FILE PHOTO:A man enters the Lloyd’s of London building in the City of London financial district in London, Britain, April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
April 26, 2019
By Carolyn Cohn and Jonathan Saul
LONDON (Reuters) – Lloyd’s of London, the world’s oldest insurer of seafaring vessels, is facing its own perfect storm. Old-fashioned business practices, exposure to natural disasters, competition from rival centers and Brexit are all threatening Lloyd’s reputation as the place to insure anything from ships to sculptures to soccer stars’ legs. Stung by combined losses of 3 billion pounds ($3.9 billion) over the last two years, John Neal, the new chief executive of an insurance market founded in a London coffee house in 1688, is under growing pressure to drag Lloyd’s into the 21st century. Following a six-month review, Neal will unveil a new strategy next week expected to include a push to automate arcane processes, a shift away from risky catastrophe insurance, a hard look at the middlemen who drive up the cost of doing business at Lloyd’s and ways to attract new sources of capital.
It is also looking to improve inclusion at a time when the culture at Lloyd’s is in the spotlight following a report by Bloomberg News about sexual harassment and day-time drinking.
But in a market where shipwrecks are still recorded by some insurers with a quill and paperwork is lugged around Lloyd’s futuristic 14-storey building in slipcases, some brokers and underwriters are resisting innovation. “Lloyd’s has to change, it’s like an old man dancing – a bit awkward and embarrassing,” said one insurance company chief executive, who declined to be named. “We do not have a great track record in modernization.” All of Lloyd’s brokers are meant to shift to an electronic platform by June, but many are complaining about the cost and increased transparency – which risks hurting their fees. Underwriters are meant to move 50 percent of their business to the platform by the middle of the year but several are behind, and much of their business has been deemed outside the scope of the automation drive. “Recent performance has not been acceptable and the work we began last year has placed the market on a much firmer footing,” Neal, who joined as CEO in October, told Reuters.
“The focus now turns to the changes we must make to ensure Lloyd’s succeeds in the future – by supercharging innovation, simplifying the process for capital to access Lloyd’s, automating claims processes, lowering costs by making an electronic exchange, and creating a culture of inclusivity.”
‘DEFINITELY A THREAT’ Lloyd’s is not an insurance company in itself but a group of 99 syndicates, or members, who price and underwrite policies and spread the risk among themselves. More than 150 brokers act as middlemen with clients, along with another group of intermediaries known as managing general agents.
Once mostly wealthy individuals, members now include small underwriters and listed firms such as Beazley and Hiscox, as well as global insurers specializing in business lines such as shipping, aviation and property. The problem for Lloyd’s is that while it still has global cachet and a strong A credit rating, investors from hedge funds to private equity firms looking for higher yields are piling into rival centers such as Bermuda, New York and Singapore. While Lloyd’s reputation for specialization and innovation has pushed it to the forefront of new areas such as insurance against hacking, cheaper centers are muscling in on its turf. Bermuda, for example, has developed a specialism in catastrophe bonds and other insurance-linked securities.
“It definitely is a threat and it will happen in a number of areas,” said industry veteran Andrew Bathurst, director of PWS Gulf, an insurance broker in London and Dubai. “Lloyd’s is aware that overseas underwriters are looking at those classes of business and weighing up whether to underwrite them.”
“If we should see some more losses, particularly on the older accounts, then Lloyd’s will come under pressure and then there will be more incentive to look outside,” said Bathurst, who has been a Lloyd’s underwriter and CEO of a Lloyd’s broker. SLOW TECH Automating claims processes to cut costs in a market where most business is still done face-to-face is one of the areas highlighted in a Lloyd’s leaflet hinting at its new strategy. Lloyd’s has an expense ratio – costs divided by net premiums – of 40 percent, according to ratings agency AM Best. Sources say this is some 10 points higher than commercial insurers like Germany’s Allianz or AIG in the United States. “The market needs to modernize. It does not make sense to have business placed by paper when we have the technology,” said Ian Fantozzi, chief operating officer at Beazley, which manages seven Lloyd’s syndicates.
Hiscox has also embraced technological change but Lloyd’s has struggled to persuade some underwriters and brokers to adopt an electronic processing platform launched in July 2016. While some say the system is easy to use, others complain it is unwieldy and creates, rather than reduces, workload. Former Lloyd’s CEO Inga Beale made it compulsory last year for syndicates to shift their business to the platform because underwriters had moved only 10 percent voluntarily.
Underwriters who miss the targets face charges while brokers could be deregistered – a rare event in the market. For smaller brokers and underwriters, however, the upfront costs of adapting to the system are high. Persuading them to change is like “herding cats”, according to one market source. One senior broker said the system was not ideal because different syndicates work and use it in different ways. The system is suited to simple, commoditized policies, rather than the complex business with lots of conditions and clauses for which Lloyd’s is known, the insurance CEO said.
Smaller brokers are also wary of the increased transparency provided by the system, which would expose their charging structures and could put pressure on their fees, said one City of London source familiar with Lloyd’s. Charles Manchester, chairman of the Managing General Agents’ Association, also said there was no great demand from brokers. POWER SHIFT? Despite the inertia, Lloyd’s will be reluctant to push too hard by imposing sanctions for non-compliance at such a sensitive time for the industry, which is grappling with lower premiums globally, City of London sources said. “There is a growing worry that this could compel many brokers to leave,” said a second City source familiar with Lloyd’s. “In the past, British banks would insist on using Lloyd’s of London to write insurance. That balance of power is shifting and other centers could emerge, such as New York.” The risk to Lloyd’s and other insurance companies in London was highlighted in a 2017 report by Boston Consulting Group and industry association London Market Group. It said the market faced competition from emerging markets and Bermuda, Singapore and Switzerland, helped by lower costs of capital and expense.
London’s share of global reinsurance premiums fell to 12.3 percent in 2015, from 13.4 percent in 2013, and 15 percent in 2010. Premiums from emerging markets fell to $9.3 billion in 2015 from $10.5 billion in 2013, the report said. London is still the largest center for commercial insurance and reinsurance, but Singapore, Bermuda and Switzerland grew by 4 percent, 1 percent and 0.6 percent respectively each year from 2013 to 2015, while London shrank 0.3 percent, the report said.
Lloyd’s is also facing a threat from European competition due to Britain’s impending departure from the European Union. Lloyd’s has opened a subsidiary in Brussels to cope with Brexit but it operates under a complex structure which some market sources worry will not prove popular. “Lloyd’s of London is beginning to fracture. With the fallout from Brexit, more companies have started to look around the world and ask whether they need to be in London,” the second City of London source said. “Underwriters in France and Germany are now starting to look at writing their business locally,” the source said.
(Additional reporting by Simon Jessop; editing by David Clarke)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California, U.S. October 19,2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake
April 25, 2019
(Reuters) – Starbucks Corp beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly sales at established cafes on Thursday, as higher prices and customer orders powered a strong growth in the United States, its largest market.
Shares of the company rose 2 percent in extended trading.
The world’s biggest coffee chain said sales at cafes open at least 13 months in its Americas unit rose 4 percent in the second quarter ended March 31, beating the 3.58 percent rise expected by analysts, according to IBES data by Refinitiv.
Total net revenue rose 4.5 percent to $6.31 billion, but was slightly below the estimate of $6.32 billion.
(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal and Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
Source: OANN
Mariam Nabatanzi’s son carries a meal at their family home in Kasawo village, Mukono district, east of Kampala, Uganda March 7, 2019. REUTERS/James Akena
April 25, 2019
By Elias Biryabarema
KASAWO, Uganda (Reuters) – Mariam Nabatanzi gave birth to twins a year after she was married off at the age of 12. Five more sets of twins followed – along with four sets of triplets and five sets of quadruplets.
Three years ago, however, the 39-year-old Ugandan was abandoned by her husband, leaving her to support their surviving 38 children alone.
It was just the latest setback in a life marred by tragedy for Nabatanzi, who lives with her children in four cramped houses made of cement blocks and topped with corrugated iron in a village surrounded by coffee fields 50 km (31 miles) north of Kampala.
After her first sets of twins were born, Nabatanzi went to a doctor who told her she had unusually large ovaries. He advised her that birth control like pills might cause health problems.
So the children kept coming.
Family sizes are at their largest in Africa. In Uganda, the fertility rate averages out at 5.6 children per woman, one of the continent’s highest, and more than double the global average of 2.4 children, according to the World Bank.
But even in Uganda, the size of Nabatanzi’s family makes her an extreme outlier.
Her last pregnancy, two and a half years ago, had complications. It was her sixth set of twins and one of them died in childbirth, her sixth child to die.
Then her husband – often absent for long stretches – abandoned her. His name is now a family curse. Nabatanzi refers to him using an expletive.
“I have grown up in tears, my man has passed me through a lot of suffering,” she said during an interview at her home, hands clasped as her eyes welled up. “All my time has been spent looking after my children and working to earn some money.”
Desperate for cash, Nabatanzi turns a hand to everything: hairdressing, event decorating, collecting and selling scrap metal, brewing local gin and selling herbal medicine. The money is swallowed up by food, medical care, clothing and school fees.
On a grimy wall in one room of her home hang proud portraits of some of her children graduating from school, gold tinsel around their necks.
“Mum is overwhelmed, the work is crushing her, we help where we can, like in cooking and washing, but she still carries the whole burden for the family. I feel for her,” said her eldest child Ivan Kibuka, 23, who had to drop out of secondary school when the money ran out.
TRAGIC STORY
Nabatanzi’s desire for a large family has its roots in tragedy.
Three days after she was born, Nabatanzi’s mother abandoned the family: her father, the newborn girl and her five siblings.
“She just left us,” said Nabatanzi sombrely, as some of her ragged children played on the dirt floor while others did chores.
After her father remarried, her stepmother poisoned the five older children with crushed glass mixed in their food. They all died. Nabatanzi escaped because she was visiting a relative, she says.
“I was seven years old then, too young to even understand what death actually meant. I was told by relatives what had happened,” she said.
She grew up wanting to have six children to rebuild her shattered family.
Providing a home for 38 children is a constant challenge.
Twelve of the children sleep on metal bunk beds with thin mattresses in one small room with grime-caked walls. In the other rooms, lucky children pile onto shared mattresses while the others sleep on the dirt floor.
Older children help look after the young ones and everyone helps with chores like cooking. A single day can require 25 kilograms of maize flour, Nabatanzi says. Fish or meat are rare treats.
A roster on a small wooden board nailed to a wall spells out washing or cooking duties.
“On Saturday we all work together,” it reads.
Having endured such a hard childhood herself, Nabatanzi’s greatest wish now is for her children to be happy.
“I started taking on adult responsibilities at an early stage,” she said. “I have not had joy, I think, since I was born.”
(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Maggie Fick/Katharine Houreld/Susan Fenton)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The logo of PTT is pictured at the 38th Bangkok International Motor Show in Bangkok, Thailand March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
April 25, 2019
By Chayut Setboonsarng and Anshuman Daga
BANGKOK/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Thailand is set to see the most funds raised from IPOs in Southeast Asia this year, with more than $5 billion expected to be garnered in the second half, sources said, as a tourist boost to the economy trumps jitters stoked by inconclusive elections.
Southeast Asia’s second largest economy is expected to see listings from the retail arm of state-owned oil company PTT Pcl, the hospitality business of tycoon Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi’s empire, and a unit of the country’s largest retailer Central Group, people familiar with the matter said.
First-time share sales from these companies and others could make it the largest haul for the country in six years, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak to the media.
Investors are focusing on the country’s stable economic growth and currency and do not see any big risk from political uncertainty. Preliminary election results show Pheu Thai, the leading anti-junta party, has won the most constituency seats, while the pro-army Palang Pracharat gained the most votes, but each is unable to form a government on its own.
Low interest rates and a hunt for high-yielding assets are driving investors to allocate money for equities, fund managers said.
“People are waiting and IPOs will sell,” said Narongchai Akrasanee, chairman of MFC Asset Management.
Tourism is a strong pillar of Thailand’s growth, with the country expecting visitor arrivals to rise by 7.5 percent this year. Thailand’s finance minister said last week that the country will introduce economic measures worth about 20 billion baht ($624 million) to boost consumption, tourism and help low-income earners.
Last year, Vietnam was the biggest market for IPOs in Southeast Asia, with listings there raising $3.4 billion, according to data from Refinitiv.
Bankers say 2019 is set to be Thailand’s strongest year for IPOs since 2013, when they raised over $6 billion. In 2018, Thai listings raised $2.5 billion after mopping up $3.8 billion in the previous year, Refinitiv data showed.
“One positive in Thailand is that domestic investor liquidity is extremely healthy,” said Ho Cheun Hon, Credit Suisse’s Singapore-based head of Southeast Asia equity capital markets.
“Assuming the final election outcome does not impact consumer and investor sentiment negatively, we are hopeful that market conditions in the second half of the year will be constructive for the strong Thai pipeline to push through,” he said.PTT Oil & Retail, which includes gas stations, coffee shops and convenience stores, is expected to kick off its IPO process after the election results and could raise about $2 billion, sources said.
Mall operator Central Group’s retail arm is also slated for a stock market flotation later this year and could raise $1 billion-$2 billion, sources said.
Asset World Corp, the hospitality arm of TCC Group, which owns office buildings, luxury hotels and shopping arcades, plans to launch a $1 billion-$1.5 billion IPO in the second half of the year, IFR reported in January.
PTT, TCC and Central did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
While there is short-term volatility in markets, Thailand’s benchmark index is trading at close to its five-year historical PE ratio, so IPO plans should go ahead if there is more clarity in politics in the second half of 2019, said Nunmanus Piamthipmanus, SCB Asset Management’s chief investment officer.
Some investors, however, cautioned that issuers had to ensure IPOs were not overpriced.
“Competition and supply in offices, hotels and malls make these sectors challenging,” says Thidasiri Srisamith, chief investment officer at Kasikorn Asset Management.
(Reporting by Chayut Setboonsarng in BANGKOK and Anshuman Daga in SINGAPORE; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A girl broadcasts live from a phone as she holds a selfie stick with a sign of the live-streaming platform DouYu during an event celebrating the new year in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, December 31, 2018. Picture taken December 31, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
April 23, 2019
By Julia Fioretti
HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s largest live-streaming platform DouYu International Holdings Limited, backed by social media and gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, has filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO) of up to $500 million.
DouYu, which primarily focuses on the live-streaming of games, is one of several Chinese start-ups in the growing market for live-streaming in China, along with U.S.-listed rival Huya Inc and Huajiao.
The rapid growth of the live-streaming sector has seen China’s tech heavyweights – Tencent, Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu Inc – open their wallets to back a slew of firms in the hope it can boost existing services in e-commerce, social networking and gaming.
DouYu has exclusive streaming rights to 29 major tournaments in China, including League of Legends, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and DOTA2, according to the draft prospectus which was uploaded to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website overnight on Monday.
DouYu was the largest game-streaming platform by average total monthly active users (MAUs) on both mobile and PC during the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the prospectus. The company had 159.2 million MAUs in the first quarter of 2019, representing year-on-year growth of 25.7 percent.
It set a placeholder sum of $500 million for the IPO, which is used to calculate registration fees. The final IPO size could be different, though sources have previously told Reuters DouYu was looking to raise around $500 million.
DouYu’s IPO could be one of the largest this year by a Chinese company in the United States, together with that of Starbucks challenger Luckin Coffee which also filed overnight.
Chinese companies have raised $271 million through U.S. IPOs so far this year, with the biggest deal being that of Ruhnn Holding Limited which raised $125 million, Refinitiv data showed.
LOSS MAKING
China is the world’s largest game streaming market, with approximately 4.9 times the monthly active users of the U.S. market in 2018, the prospectus said.
DouYu’s active users spent an average of 54 minutes per day on the platform in the fourth quarter of 2018.
DouYu is still loss-making and reported a net loss of $127.4 million in 2018, up from $91.33 million in 2017. Revenues jumped 94 percent to $531.5 million last year.
The company significantly increased its sales and marketing expenses – which jumped 73 percent in 2018 – as well as its research and development expenses which increased 55 percent.
Most of DouYu’s revenues come from live-streaming through the sale of virtual gifts, accounting for 86.1 percent of its revenues, with the rest coming from advertisements and some revenue sharing with game developers and publishers, the prospectus showed.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are the underwriters for DouYu’s IPO.
(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The logo is seen next to a customer at a Luckin Coffee store in Beijing, China, February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee
April 22, 2019
(Reuters) – China’s Luckin Coffee Inc on Monday filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The coffee chain, which intends to list under the symbol “LK” on the Nasdaq, set a placeholder amount of $100 million to indicate the size of the IPO, a filing with the regulator showed. (https://bit.ly/2UtnC0g)
The size of the IPO stated in preliminary filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final IPO size could be different.
(Reporting by Bharath Manjesh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini GanguliEditing by Shinjini Ganguli)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A Nestle logo is pictured on a coffee factory in Orbe, Switzerland May 31, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
April 18, 2019
ZURICH (Reuters) – Food group Nestle confirmed it expected organic sales growth to exceed 3 percent this year after good momentum in the United States and China helped it post better-than-expected sales growth in the first three months.
Organic sales growth accelerated to 3.4 percent in the first quarter of 2019, ahead of the average estimate of 2.8 percent in an Infront Data poll of analysts.
(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Michael Shields)
Source: OANN
If heroin is coffee, fentanyl is espresso. Just as a miniscule cup of espresso can hype you up more than a whole mug of coffee, a single exposure to fentanyl can get a user vastly higher than injecting the same volume of heroin.
In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin.
In a recent study funded by the National Institutes of Health, West Virginia Universityresearchers Gordon Smith, Marie Abate and Zheng Dai found that fentanyl-related deaths are on the rise in West Virginia, even as deaths related to prescription opioids decline.
By analyzing all drug-related deaths in the state from 2005 to 2017, the research team–which included medical examiners from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources–discovered that between 2015 and 2017, deaths from fentanyl were 122 percent of what they were between 2005 and 2014.
In contrast, prescription opioids played a role in 75 percent fewer deaths between 2015 and 2017 than over the previous 10 years.
China had the world’s largest economy in the early 1800’s until the British Empire weaponized opium — history that’s not forgotten in China.
Why did fentanyl-related deaths skyrocket in 2015? One factor was a surge in illegal fentanyl imports from China. “Up until then, people who were shifting from legal prescription drugs to illegal drugs were shifting to heroin and opioids coming in from Mexico and other places. But then people started manufacturing fentanyl in China, setting up clandestine labs, staying one step ahead of drug-enforcement agencies,” said Smith, an epidemiologist in the School of Public Health.
“The big thing about fentanyl–and now carfentanil, a fentanyl analog that’s a thousand times stronger than morphine and heroin–is that it’s very easy to export. Instead of having to smuggle truckloads of heroin in, someone can send small packages through the mail,” he said.
Another contributor is fentanyl’s potency itself. Smith explained, “You might need to take–let’s say–200 Tylenol before you get into some serious trouble, but with some other pain reliever, you might only need four of them because it’s so much stronger.”
Drug users may take fentanyl or one or more of these potent fentanyl analogs without meaning to. Unbeknownst to them, it can be sold as counterfeit “prescription opioids” or blended into the heroin they buy, even from a dealer they’ve used without issue before. Accidentally drinking four ounces of espresso instead of drip coffee can make you jittery. Taking a fentanyl/heroin mix instead of unadulterated heroin can kill you.
Another problem is that the amount of fentanyl in any sample sold on the street can vary widely. For example, dealers may mix fentanyl with adulterants at the local level on their kitchen tables. If they improperly mix their product, a spoonful in one small bag may have much more fentanyl that another, even in the same batch. In addition, illegal labs in the United States can make chemical modifications to fentanyl fairly readily to produce other very potent analogs.
West Virginia’s increase is fentanyl-related deaths is part of a national trend. As the CDC reported, deaths from fentanyl overdoses spiked across the United States in 2015 and, as of 2017, continued to climb. West Virginia, however, leads the nation in fentanyl-related deaths. It also has the highest per capita rate of overdose deaths overall.
Yet West Virginia is exceptional for a more optimistic reason: its medical examiners pinpoint the cause of every drug-related death, and the relevant facts populate a statewide forensic drug database maintained at the WVU Health Sciences Center. The database includes such information as the decedent’s demographic information, cause of death, toxicology testing results, other medical conditions present and recent prescriptions for controlled substances.
This database gives scientists, healthcare providers and law enforcement officers insight into drug-misuse trends as they unfold. Abate, who directs the School of Pharmacy’s West Virginia Center for Drug and Health Information, established the database in collaboration with the West Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in 2005.
“The extent of decedent information found in this database is unique nationwide,” said Abate, who–along with Smith–received prior funding from the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the WVU Injury Control Research Center and the National Institute on Drug Abuse for research into drug misuse.
The database can help direct public-health resources to where they can do the most good–and promptly enough that they’re worthwhile. For instance, the data may suggest which towns need greater access to naloxone to treat a preponderance of overdoses. They may even help scientists decipher the chemical makeup of brand-new fentanyl analogs as soon as they hit the street.
“One of the proven ways to reduce overdoses is to decrease the number of people who are addicted and using. But with fentanyl, you could halve the number of addicts in West Virginia, and the overdose rate could still go up because the strength of the drug coming in is so much stronger and can vary widely from one day to the next,” Smith said. “This is an absolute quandary.”
He recommends more widespread naloxone distribution, including to both injection drug users and their families. It’s also important to make sure first responders–such as paramedics, firefighters and police–have adequate supplies of naloxone as usage has increased dramatically in recent years. “Multiple doses may be needed to reverse opioids toxicity,” he said, “especially if more potent or long-acting opioids are involved.”
President Trump won election because he used social media to unite his supporters, but now Big Tech has activated widespread censorship and the President has not slowed down this wave of tyranny.
Source: InfoWars
Belki Contreras walks around an abandoned bus at night in the border city of Pacaraima, Brazil April 14, 2019. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares
April 15, 2019
By Anthony Boadle
PACARAIMA, Brazil (Reuters) – Ten destitute Venezuelan migrants who fled their country’s crisis did not get far when they crossed into Brazil: they have been living for three months on an abandoned bus just across the border.
They sleep on cardboard, except for the lucky one who gets the hammock. They cook on a wood fire just outside the door of the motor-less 1983 Mercedes Benz bus.
Two children go to the local school every morning.
The penniless migrants work at odd jobs for spare change, loading the cars and pickups of Venezuelans who cross over to buy food and goods in short supply back home.
“We’ve been living in this bus for three months,” says Hildemaro Ortiz, 24, from Punta de Mata in eastern Venezuela, who hopes to move to a bigger Brazilian city once his son makes it across the border.
Ortiz and his bus-mates are part of a flood of Venezuelans pouring into the rest of Latin America, often driven by hunger and desperate to escape an economy in free-fall as food shortages and blackouts rattle their oil-rich nation.
Tens of thousands of migrants have fled the political and economic upheaval in Venezuela through Pacaraima, the only road crossing to Brazil, creating tension at the border. About 3.7 million people have left Venezuela in recent years, mostly via its western neighbor Colombia, according to the World Bank.
Ixora Sanguino, 27, sweeps the floor of the bus and folds the blankets.
“I never thought I would ever live in a bus, and least of all in another country like this,” said the mother of three who had to leave her children behind in Ciudad Bolivar.
“There is nothing in Venezuela right now,” she said.
When she first crossed the border, Sanguino slept in the street. The bus is an improvement, sheltered from tropical rain. Now she is trying to gather enough money for a bus ticket to Boa Vista, the nearest Brazilian state capital, to find work and send cash to her hungry family back home.
The occupants of the rusty metal structure, once an express bus, dream of returning to their homeland one day when things improve there, but for now survival is a daily struggle.
Rice cooks in a pot held over the fire on an improvised grill. Usually they eat rice and bones, or rice and chicken when there is enough money between them to buy meat, she said.
A Spanish priest provides a coffee and bread roll breakfast for 350 Venezuelans daily at his mission house, but migrants must arrive before 6 a.m. to get a place, she said.
The bus offers some protection from mosquitoes and the cold of night, Ortiz said. When the bugs get bad, he starts a cardboard fire to smoke them out.
He is impatient to move to bustling cities to the south.
“If only this bus had an engine, we would have been on our way to Manaus by now,” he said.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Additional reporting by Pilar Olivares and Leonardo Benasatto; Editing by Brad Haynes and Susan Thomas)
Source: OANN
A golf patron carries two shopping bags full of Masters products during first round play of the 2019 Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S., April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
April 13, 2019
By Steve Keating
AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) – There was a time when getting your hands on Masters merchandise was nearly as difficult and rewarding as winning a Green Jacket.
There is still only one place in the world to purchase official Masters souvenirs and that is inside Augusta National at their Harrods-like merchandise store which is only open during Masters week, the 64 cash registers manned by a smiling, uniformed staff from dawn to dusk.
There’s just one catch. To get in the store means having to first secure a Masters badge, one of the most coveted and hardest tickets to land in all of sport. For Thursday’s opening round, asking prices were as high as $7500 on resale sites.
Yet there is no longer a need to stand in that long line with hundreds of other souvenir hunters as the queue snakes its way through a maze of lanes that would rival any major airport security screening area.
Now with a cell phone (forbidden to spectators at Augusta National) and a no-price-is-too-high attitude, you too can be the owner of a Masters green polo shirt with its iconic yellow silhouette logo — and you won’t even have to leave your couch.
A Masters coffee mug, dog bowl or crystal glasses are all just a click or two away as enterprising websites skirt Augusta National’s monopoly by offering everything you can get inside the merchandise store at hugely inflated prices.
Sites like www.mmogolf.com and www.golfshopplus.com will take your order and have people on site at Augusta National fill it, guaranteeing your purchase is official merchandise complete with tags.
Aaron Behar, an owner of http://www.mmogolf.com, describes the operation as a “professional shopping service”.
The intensely protective membership at Augusta National may call it something different but for more than 10 years, the two have peacefully co-exsisted, unlike the club’s ongoing issues with ticket scalpers and resale sites.
“We are a shopping service and I want to make clear we are in no way affliated with Augusta Natioinal,” Behar told Reuters. “We only provide a service and obtain merchandise for personal and corporate clients.
“We do this for a number of tournaments but the Masters is a very exclusive product, one you can only get if you are there.
“We are simply a shopping service.”
Not surprisingly, there is a considerable mark up attached to muling merchandise out of Augusta National.
Bahr, like most patrons, gets his tickets off resale sites and as his costs go up, as they have this year, so do his prices.
A golf shirt that cost $95 in the store goes for $230 on the resale shopping sites while $35 T-shirts go for $60 and a green coffee mug that sells for $15 inside Augusta will fetch $60 outside the walls.
While Bahr has turned Masters merchandise resales into a business, there are no shortage of freelancers out there looking to cash in on the iconic brand.
On Kijiji and eBay, you can find everything from Masters golf balls to frosted plastic beer cups retrieved from garbage bins going for $3.99.
If you are having a Masters party, Goldbelly.com will ship the famous Augusta Pimento Cheese sandwich to your door with a two-pound pack costing $59.
Like everything at Augusta National, the club does not discuss money. That would be unseemly for one of the world’s most exclusive organisations but some golf industry experts estimate the merchandise store generates between $35-45 million in sales.
Everyone who passes through the Augusta gates must saunter past the store on way to the first tee and few can make the journey without pulling out a credit card.
While there is a growing secondary market for Masters merchandise, the vast majority of purchases are still made by golf fans who simply want a memento of their bucket list achievement.
Bill Henberson waited 30 years in the Masters lottery for a chance to attend golf’s first major, and marked the occasion by schlepping home three shirts, hats for grandchildren, a flag and a puzzle.
A group of four men said between them they had dropped roughly $2,100 on gifts for kids, friends — and themselves. Of course, with the 20 hats they had tucked into their shopping bags, there was more than enough gear to go around.
Another visitor walked away with T-shirts, hats, flags, magnets and cups, not bothering to look at the final cost.
“It’s the only time my husband doesn’t complain about spending,” Henberson’s daughter Jaima noted wryly.
(Additional reporting Amy Tennery. Editing by Ian Chadband)
Source: OANN
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