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FILE PHOTO: A worker sells subsidized food commodities at a government-run supermarket in Cairo, Egypt, February 14, 2016. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
March 28, 2019
By Nadine Awadalla
CAIRO (Reuters) – Many of the Egyptians crammed into a tent in a Cairo suburb have been told they are about to be kicked off the government’s food subsidy program because they are too wealthy.
The reason may be a good job, a newish car, a big phone or electricity bill or expensive school fees.
Some people have traveled across the country to reach the tent – the only place where they have the opportunity to convince officials in person that there has been a mistake.
If they fail, they will no longer be able to use a smart card that gives them access to subsidized rice, pasta and other food staples.
Pensioner Gamal Abdel Shakour, one of hundreds of people gathered in and around the tent during a recent visit by Reuters, said he’d been wrongly identified as spending more than 800 Egyptian pounds on his monthly phone bill.
“How can I be spending more than 800 pounds on my cellphone when my entire pension is roughly 650 pounds? Am I not going to eat?” said Shakour.
Changes to food support are highly sensitive in Egypt, where a decision to cut bread subsidies led to deadly riots across the country in 1977.
The latest effort to reform the 86 billion Egyptian pounds ($4.95 billion) a year food subsidy program does not touch bread, the country’s most important staple, and so far has only targeted one section of society – the better off.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has also cracked down on dissent, including public gatherings, making a repeat of the events more than 40 years ago unlikely.
But complaints over the implementation of the scheme are an early sign that Sisi’s bid to rein in generous state subsidies used by more than 60 million Egyptians may not be easy.
The officials involved in the latest reforms relocated from an office in a smarter part of the capital after the crowds made locals nervous.
The changes to the subsidy program that caused bread riots in 1977 were agreed as part of former President Anwar Sadat’s IMF loan deal. Sisi’s government has also turned to the IMF. In 2016, it signed a $12 billion loan.
The lender has specified that food subsidies should only reach those most in need. The loan program also involved raising fuel and electricity prices and a currency float.
This has contributed to soaring inflation that has eroded consumer spending power. Cheap food has helped ease the pain.
“With another round of steep energy subsidy cuts to be implemented this summer, the authorities would be mindful of not going overboard and risking food or hunger riots,” Naeem Brokerage head of research Allen Sandeep said.
The government has said there will be two more phases of the subsidy card reform, but it has not said who will be targeted.
CHAIRMEN AND GENERALS
The supply ministry made the first phase of changes to the program in November when it removed people who were dead or living overseas and then said in February its next target would be those with higher incomes.
“We’re talking about board chairmen, board members, head judges and generals, people like that,” Supply Minister Ali al- Moselhy told Reuters.
The holders of around 400,000 subsidy cards received the notice at the bottom of their food receipts in March to say they would be removed from the program in April, a spokesman for the ministry said.
Along with the 800-pound cellphone bill limit, anyone who spends 30,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,727.12) per child on school fees annually, uses an average of 650 KW of electricity per month, drives a car made in 2014 or later or has a high-paying job, would be automatically removed.
The ministry said it would accept complaints until the middle of April and they should be filed online. Many people were so worried that they wanted to do it in person instead.
“I don’t even have an electricity meter, how did they know my name and remove me for electricity consumption?” said Mahmoud Hassan, an older man from Cairo in the tent.
One woman in the queue that snaked around the outer wall was complaining about Sisi’s policies.
“Instead of spending his money on the poor, he keeps spending it on his men,” she said.
“They keep spending until the people will come and beat them with their shoes.”
“MORE NEEDY PEOPLE”
Sisi came to power after ousting former Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013.
He hoped to repair the business environment and attract money back to Egypt after a 2011 uprising and the political turmoil that followed drove investors and tourists away.
The three-year IMF loan, which will be completed in the second half of 2019, unlocked badly needed funds that were tied to strict economic reforms.
While the government has yet to spell out the next phases of the food subsidy reform, the IMF has stressed that it should be aimed at helping the less well off.
“The food subsidy program remains poorly targeted and inefficient,” IMF staff wrote in a regular review of Egypt’s economy in January last year.
“Improving targeting could free up resources and reduce poverty among the low and middle income groups.”
The government has also been careful to say that the reforms are not aimed at shrinking the food subsidy bill, rather at targeting those most in need.
“We are here to provide social justice and social peace … We have to maintain our subsidy budget and manage it in a precise manner and to tell people, ‘please there are real needs for people who are more needy’,” Moselhy said on television.
Despite the complaints in the Cairo suburb, some poorer Egyptians support the food subsidy move. In a working class district of Cairo, one middle-aged woman was shopping for cooking oil.
“It was the first time I’ve heard… that there are people who can spend 30,000 pounds on school fees,” she said.
“What do they need our subsidy for?”
(Editing by Anna Willard)
Source: OANN
David MacLennan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cargill, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Bogota, Colombia March 26, 2019. Picture taken March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
March 27, 2019
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Food and agriculture group Cargill Inc could invest up to $1 billion in Latin America over the next five years, its chief executive said, and will maintain its operations in Venezuela despite challenges brought on by an economic crisis.
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Chile offer favorable conditions for private investors, Chief Executive David MacLennan said in an interview late on Tuesday, though he declined to provide details of possible purchases by the company in coming years.
U.S.-based Cargill recently bought Colombian poultry processors Pollos El Bucanero and Campollo and expects to invest between $200 and $300 million in the Andean country in the next two years, MacLennan said, mostly to improve efficiency and expand the capacity of two processing plants.
“We don’t have exact figures at this time, but I will say that if we have $200 or $300 million in Colombia, in this whole area in five years we could easily reach $1 billion,” MacLennan said during a visit to Bogota.
Colombia’s political stability and geographic position are attractive for investors, said MacLennan, who met with President Ivan Duque on Tuesday.
Despite a deep economic and political crisis in Venezuela, Cargill will continue to produce flour, pasta and cooking oil there, MacLennan said.
The company employs some 1,600 people in the deeply polarized country, where hunger, shortages of medical supplies and blackouts have spooked many international investors.
“We will not surrender, it’s a very important country for us,” said MacLennan. “We are very worried for our employees and their security. I think of them every day and hope for a better future.”
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Helen Murphy and Bernadette Baum)
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FILE PHOTO: A canola crop used for making cooking oil sits in full bloom on the Canadian prairies near Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada July 11, 2011. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo
March 26, 2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – China expanded its ban on Canadian canola imports on Tuesday to include shipments from Viterra Inc, the latest development in a wider trade dispute between the two countries.
Viterra is the second canola exporter to have its registration canceled, after Beijing halted shipments from top exporter Richardson International earlier this month.
The ban on Viterra, and related companies, was announced by China’s General Administration of Customs on its website and was effective immediately. It comes just days after an industry group said that Chinese importers had stopped buying the oilseed from Canada.
Canada and China are locked in a dispute over trade and telecoms technology that has ensnared the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Ltd, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, who faces U.S. criminal charges.
China’s customs authority said earlier this month it had found hazardous pests in canola imports from Canada, and revoked the export registration of Richardson International.
Richardson has said its canola meets regulatory requirements.
In its statement on Tuesday, customs said the ports of Dalian and Nanning had once again detected several pests in samples taken from cargoes shipped by Viterra Inc.
In order to prevent the introduction of harmful organisms, it had canceled the firm’s export registration, it said, adding that it will continue to strengthen inspections on all canola imports.
China accounts for about 40 percent of Canada’s canola seed, oil and meal exports, according to industry body the Canola Council of Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday that his government was optimistic it can make progress this year in talks to persuade China to resume imports of Canadian canola seed.
(Reporting by Dominique Patton, editing by Louise Heavens and Susan Fenton)
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Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha speaks during a news conference after a weekly cabinet meeting, after the general election, at Government House in Bangkok, Thailand, March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
March 26, 2019
By Chayut Setboonsarng and Panu Wongcha-um
BANGKOK (Reuters) – For five years, Thailand’s Prayuth Chan-ocha ruled undisputed as the head of a junta that had grabbed power from a democratically elected government – now, he looks poised to become a civilian prime minister himself.
It would likely be a tough transition for the imperious former army chief, who can hope to stay on despite Sunday’s inconclusive general election thanks to changes critics say his government made to skew the parliamentary system in the junta’s favor.
Prayuth will need patience and compromise to work for the first time with an opposition and coalition allies: these are not qualities associated with a leader who, after a career in the military, appears more comfortable with command and control.
His government will have to develop “some significant savvy at parliamentary wheeling and dealing to … govern without resorting to threats,” said Anthony Nelson, director at the D.C.-based advisory firm, Albright Stonebridge Group.
The election came at a sensitive time – just six weeks before the coronation of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who assumed the throne after the death of his father, who reigned for 70 years. Any government that emerges will take over after the elaborate May 4-6 coronation.
“Investors will be watching closely the next several months to see if Thailand’s political stability holds through the coronation and the formation of the next cabinet,” Nelson said.
Prayuth’s pro-army party said the former general’s leadership skills will help him adapt to a civilian role.
“He’s a highly merciful person. If he is in a civilian government, you will see him turn over a new leaf. You will see good things from him,” Anucha Nakasai, a board member of the Palang Pracharat party, told Reuters.
NUMBER CRUNCHING
Prayuth’s ambition to extend his rule through the ballot box is not assured. The results of Sunday’s poll are still unclear and although the Palang Pracharat appears to have won the popular vote, there is a chance that it will fall short of the parliamentary seats required to rule.
If Prayuth does make it, his government may be vulnerable to charges that he did so only because of a constitutional change introduced three years ago by the junta that made it very difficult for its opponents to win an election.
His legitimacy won’t be helped by suspicions that the election was manipulated to thwart a party loyal to the junta’s populist nemesis, self-exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
Prayuth will also have to make concessions to coalition partners, whose price for support may be powerful cabinet seats.
His biggest challenge, however, might be in parliament.
He can become prime minister thanks to the near-certain backing of the junta-appointed members of the 250-seat Senate that would give him the overall majority of 376 parliament seats that is required to form a government.
However, his coalition may not command a majority in the 500-strong lower House of Representatives and could be outnumbered by a “democratic front” of opposition parties, the biggest of which will be a Thaksin-linked party.
That would make the government vulnerable to confidence motions brought by the opposition. It would also be recipe for legislative log jams and political deadlock, and potentially a public backlash that triggers renewed social unrest.
The military coup of 2014 ended a decade of street protests by Thaksin’s bitter opponents, the “yellow shirts” of the urban elites and monarchists, and counter-protests by Thaksin’s “red shirt” loyalists.
“Policy-making is likely to become more public and contested,” said Nattabhorn Juengsanguansit, director at Asia Group Advisors, a government relations advisory.
“Unlike during the past five years (when) the cabinet faced little political opposition to proposals, the increased number of stakeholders empowered by the elections will invigorate a public debate on policy directions and force the Palang Pracharat and its allies to publicly defend policy choices.”
She said these factors could delay the passage of a budget and further hold up other projects such as the auction of monopoly concessions for airport duty-free shops and a multi-billion-dollar high-speed rail network.
GRUMPY GENERAL
Prayuth was born in 1954 to a military family in the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima, and his army career was forged during a turbulent period.
He was in pre-cadet school in 1973 when student protests brought down a military regime, ushering in democratic rule. Three years later, he was at the prestigious Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy when right-wing mobs massacred dozens of left-leaning student protesters leading to another military takeover.
In the military, Prayuth was known for decisiveness and devotion to the revered monarchy. He rose in the ranks to become army chief, and in 2014 staged Thailand’s 13th successful coup.
His reputation for testiness came almost immediately.
Thais became accustomed to their junta leader losing his temper in public: he once threatened to throw a podium during a press briefing, and another time mused that he could “probably just execute” a roomful of reporters.
But he did display a softer side heading into the election.
He appeared on state television cooking a chicken curry for villagers and riding a tractor with farmers, and a ballad that he wrote himself played repeatedly on the radio.
However, Joshua Kurlantzick of the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations said that Prayuth’s track record – repression of opponents, an intolerance of criticism and a failure to understand the role of the media – suggested he would struggle to adapt to “a somewhat democratic setting”.
(Writing by John Chalmers and Kay Johnson; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Source: OANN
Urquhart Castle stands on the banks of Loch Ness near Inverness, Scotland, Britain March 8, 2019. Picture taken March 8, 2019. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne
March 22, 2019
By Elisabeth O’Leary
INVERNESS, Scotland (Reuters) – Glen Mhor Hotel, a picturesque base for tourists hunting Scotland’s Loch Ness monster, is struggling to find staff for the summer season as workers from the European Union snub Brexit Britain.
While Prime Minister Theresa May battles to win support for her plans to leave the EU, a shortage of migrant workers from the bloc is already threatening Scotland’s economy and upsetting its politics.
Migration is a major source of irritation between London and Edinburgh. It is also one reason behind a new drive for Scottish independence from Britain.
EU migrants account for half the hospitality workforce in the city of Inverness, a hub for the Highlands tourist region popular with golfing Americans and whisky-sipping Europeans.
But local cleaning and cooking staff for the 75-room Glen Mhor are proving hard to find. Unemployment in Inverness stands at 3 percent compared with 4.2 percent in Britain as a whole.
With Brexit looming, the Victorian hotel’s manager, Frenchman Emmanuel Moine, is struggling to recruit.
“Last year I advertised for a chef de partie in a specialist French hospitality newspaper and I got 50 resumes in a few days,” Moine said, in an elegant hotel lounge overlooking the River Ness. “I didn’t get one from the UK.”
Potential staff from the EU are put off by the prospect of tougher immigration rules and a weaker pound reducing the amount of money they can send home in euros.
Sparsely populated Scotland is aging rapidly so labor shortages affect its economy more than the rest of Britain. Stemming the inflow of EU workers, as May’s government plans, will be “catastrophic”, Edinburgh says.
“Severe restrictions on immigration pose a genuine risk to the long-term health of our economy and our society,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says.
Home to just 5 million of Britain’s 66 million people, Scotland’s vote to remain in the EU was outweighed by the rest of the country.
Scotland’s working age population will only remain stable over the next 25 years if current migration rates persist, a University of Edinburgh study said. Migrants’ taxes and economic activity help to fund public services in areas where the population is falling.
The Scottish Fiscal Commission projected that if the UK government met its target of reducing net migration to the “tens of thousands”, the Scottish economy would shrink by around one fifth more than the rest of the UK by 2040.
Moine, Glen Mhor’s manager, says the Brexit vote had a “brutal, immediate” impact on his attempt to recruit up to 90 workers needed in the summer. He now pays his cooks 15 percent more than in 2016, the year Britain voted for Brexit.
In Britain as a whole 37 percent of workers in hospitality are non-British EU nationals, the Federation of Small Businesses says. In Scotland that number is 45 percent, and in the Highlands local hoteliers say it is about 50 percent.
SEA CHANGE
In densely populated England, many people voted for Brexit because of fears about migration. But in Scotland foreign workers help offset a birthrate at a 150-year low and keep the rural areas economically viable.
Scots rejected independence by a 10 point margin in a 2014 referendum. But many of Sturgeon’s supporters say plans to end free movement of EU citizens as part of Brexit amount to a huge change in Scotland’s circumstances that necessitates another independence vote.
Thousands of volunteers are planning a door-to-door campaign in support of independence. They hope to win over EU nationals living in Scotland who mostly rejected independence in 2014.
“We’re quite confident it will be the opposite next time around and we’ll get a pretty solid majority of EU nationals,” said Ross Greer, a pro-independence Scottish Greens lawmaker, who is involved in the campaign.
EU migration to Britain has fallen since June 2016, and net migration of EU citizens in the country fell to its lowest since 2009 in the year to September. The Scottish government estimates EU nationals in Scotland have fallen 5 percent to 223,000.
Meanwhile some workers at Glen Mhor are waiting see what Brexit actually means for them.
“This is good place to work, money is good and you can live well on the minimum. After Brexit, I don’t know what to tell you,” says Marta Ofiarska, a 41-year-old housekeeper at Glen Mhor who has been in Scotland for 13 years.
But her 21-year-old daughter went back to Poland after the 2016 Brexit vote and at least 20 of her Polish friends have left Scotland since then.
(Reporting by Elisabeth O’Leary; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra looks on as he speaks to Reuters during an interview in Singapore February 23, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su/File Photo
March 22, 2019
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand has seen two coups, dueling street demonstrations and political instability over most of the past two decades, much of it centered around the divisive figure of Thaksin Shinawatra.
Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy is preparing for a general election on Sunday, the first since a 2014 coup.
Here is a timeline of major events during the years of turmoil in the kingdom.
2001 – Telecoms tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai party sweeps elections, promising populist policies like universal healthcare, debt relief for farmers and lavish government spending, especially on the rural poor.
2003 – Thaksin launches a high-profile war on drugs during which, critics say, more than 2,500 people were summarily executed.
2005 – Thaksin’s party wins another election, increasing its share of seats in the 500-member lower House of Representatives to 377.
2006 – An anti-Thaksin protest movement, the People’s Alliance for Democracy, gains momentum after the Shinawatra family sells its telecommunications firm, Shin Corporation, to Singapore sovereign fund Temasek for 73 billion baht ($1.8 billion) tax-free using a capital gains loophole. Protesters also point to issues of conflict of interest.
In September, the military launches a coup against Thaksin while he is overseas, citing the need to end the protests.
2007 – The Thai Rak Thai party is ordered dissolved. Elections to restore democracy are won by a new party made up of Thaksin supporters, the People Power Party. Thaksin ally Samak Sundaravej becomes prime minister.
2008 – Thaksin returns to Thailand in February.
In September, a court removes Samak from office for accepting payments for a cooking show he hosted. Parliament elects Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin’s brother-in-law, as prime minister.
In October, a court finds Thaksin guilty of violating a conflict-of-interest law over land deal, sentencing him to two years in prison. Thaksin had left the country weeks before the conviction and has remained in self-exile since then.
“Yellow Shirt” protesters calling for the removal of Somchai descend on Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang airports in November, closing them for over a week. The protesters disperse after the Constitutional Court dissolves the People’s Power Party over a voter fraud case, removing Somchai as prime minister.
Members of parliament elect the Democrat Party’s Abhisit Vejjajiva as prime minister.
2009 – Pro-Thaksin demonstrators led by the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, also known as “Red Shirts”, begin protests against Abhisit’s government, calling it unelected and illegitimate.
In April, protesters storm the site of an East Asia Summit, forcing leaders from Southeast Asia, China, Japan and South Korea to flee from the venue.
2010 – The Red Shirt protests paralyze Bangkok for months until a military crackdown, in which at least 90 people are killed, the deadliest clash between protesters and security forces since 1992.
2011 – New elections are won in a landslide by another new pro-Thaksin party, Pheu Thai. Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s younger sister, becomes prime minister.
2013 – Anti-government protesters, led by a top Democrat Party leader, choke the streets of Bangkok after Yingluck’s government introduces an amnesty bill that could have led to Thaksin’s return. The protests go on for months.
2014 – A court removes Yingluck as prime minister for abuse of power. Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan becomes caretaker prime minister. Demonstrations continue amid accusations that the Pheu Thai government is taking orders from Thaksin and calls for the Shinawatra family to be purged from politics.
On May 22, army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha stages a coup and a junta, the National Council for Peace and Order, seizes control. In August, Prayuth becomes prime minister and later retires as army chief.
2016 – King Bhumibol Adulyadej dies on Oct. 13 after a 70-year reign. His son becomes King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
2017 – In April, a military-backed constitution is ratified after being passed by a referendum and later revised by King Vajiralongkorn, paving the way for an election.
The Supreme Court in August finds Yingluck guilty of negligence in management of a rice subsidy scheme and hands down a five-year prison sentence. Yingluck does not show up for the verdict and flees Thailand.
2018 – The junta lifts the ban on political activity it had imposed after taking power.
March 24, 2019 – First general election since the 2014 coup.
(Reporting by Chayut Setboonsarng and Panarat Thepgumpanat; Editing by John Chalmers, Robert Birsel)
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Eleazar Azuaje, who is in charge of looking after the water system for the apartment block, checks the water level of the main tank of the building in Caracas, Venezuela, March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
March 21, 2019
By Shaylim Valderrama
CARACAS (Reuters) – Living with a scarcity of water is becoming the norm for many Venezuelans.
Families interviewed by Reuters say they have spent months without receiving any water from the tap after power blackouts cut off supply and pipes failed due to a lack of maintenance. Faced with uncertainty of when it might return, and whether it would be enough, they are conserving as much as water as they can take from rivers or buy at shops. They are bathing, washing clothes and dishes, and cooking with just a few liters a day.
From the poorest slums, to the wealthiest neighborhoods, the shortage of water cuts across Venezuelan society as families endure the country’s deepest ever economic crisis.
A 5 liter (1.32 gallons) bottle costs about $2 at a Caracas supermarket, out of reach for many low-income people in Venezuela, where the monthly minimum wage is only around $6 each month.
“We try to save water scrubbing ourselves standing in bowls,” said Yudith Contreras, a 49-year-old lawyer, in her apartment where little water has arrived over the past two years. She has taken to getting water from streams that run down the Avila mountain above Caracas.
Contreras, who is from one of the families interviewed by Reuters in a ten-story housing complex in downtown Caracas, said her family recycles the water by using it to flush the toilet. In her kitchen and bathroom, she keeps containers of water, which she carries up the nine floors to her apartment as the elevator does not work.
“You have to save water because we don’t know how long this situation will go on for,” she said.
Some residents of the building, a few blocks from the presidential Miraflores Palace, have already exhausted their water supplies. “Today I finished all that I had stored,” said David Riveros, a retired bus driver living on the first floor.
President Nicolas Maduro’s government blames the scarcity of water on a long drought and also accuses opponents of sabotaging its supply. The country’s opposition, led by Juan Guaido, who in January invoked the constitution to assume the interim presidency after declaring Maduro’s re-election a fraud, says the problem is due to little maintenance done over many years on Venezuela’s power and water networks.
Earlier this month, Venezuela was plunged deeper into chaos after a near week-long power blackout cut off the already scant water supply to most residents. Since then, Maduro has promised to place enormous water tanks on the roofs of houses and apartment blocks to alleviate the problem.
Since the nationwide blackout, the worst in decades, lines of people queuing to fill up water flowing from the Avila have multiplied, despite warnings that the water was not fit for consumption and could contain bacteria and parasites.
Yuneisy Flores, a 31-year-old homemaker whose family live on the fourth floor, washes her dishes in cartons and strains the water to remove the leftovers of food. She then uses the liquid to flush the toilet. She bathes her 3-year-old daughter in a sink to recycle the water.
In her home, three tanks and several other containers collect water when it comes intermittently. Flores, her husband, and their two little children bathe in one of the tanks, which holds some 18 liters.
“It’s hard, too hard, you can die without water,” she said. “We weren’t aware of this before. Water now is gold.”
(See related photo essay here: https://reut.rs/2FpLiOK)
(Additional reporting by Carlos Garcia Rawlins and Carlos Jasso; Writing by Angus Berwick; editing by Diane Craft)
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Women labourers work in a pearl millet field at Narayangaon, India, March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui
March 20, 2019
By Suvashree Choudhury and Alexandra Ulmer
CHINCHOLI, India (Reuters) – A few years ago, in this sweltering corner of western India, the horizon was dotted with hunched, barefoot women swinging sickles all day to cut wheat for the spring harvest.
Now, a giant green harvester clears an entire half-acre field within minutes, allowing farmers to save money and quickly sell the wheat, typically used to make Indian flat breads.
Chhaya Kharade, 36, and other women doing lighter farm work were gradually replaced by the machines that now crisscross wheat, sugar cane and onion fields surrounding Chincholi, a village 190 km (120 miles) east of India’s financial hub of Mumbai.
“I should be busy now, as the wheat harvesting is going on. But there is hardly any work for me. Almost all farmers are using machines,” Kharade said in her spartan two-room house.
Indian women, especially those working in precarious informal sectors, are at the sharp end of what economists and opposition politicians describe as a jobs crisis in India. According to the private Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), 90 percent of around 10 million jobs lost last year were held by women.
Several unemployed women interviewed by Reuters said they had soured on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who swept to power in 2014 vowing to turn India into an economic powerhouse but has struggled to create jobs.
While Modi remains the favorite in general elections that kick off next month, insufficient employment – despite India’s roughly 7 percent economic growth rate – is a major voter worry.
“Modi’s government has not done anything to create employment in this region. We would like to vote for a party that will set up factories and create jobs,” said Mumtaj Mulani, a 40-year-old woman who was plucking weeds from a pearl millet field in the area. She said she usually struggles to find work due to the spread of machines.
The dwindling female labor participation rate could have far-reaching implications for India’s economic development and the progress of women’s rights in the often deeply conservative country.
“When nearly fifty percent of the labor force is unable to live up to its potential, India is foregoing significant growth, investment, and productivity gains,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment.
“The social costs, while less tangible, are nevertheless acute,” Vaishnav added, noting research suggests women’s economic empowerment reduces inequality and ensures women have a greater voice in society.
Measuring the problem is tricky, and Modi’s government has delayed the release of controversial jobs data. [L3N2121QE]
But the official report, leaked to local newspaper Business Standard in February, shows the female labor participation rate was merely 23.3 percent in 2017-2018, down about 8 percentage points from 2011-2012.
Private estimates are gloomier. CMIE puts the figure at just 10.7 percent between May and August 2018.
For an interactive graphic on India’s female labor force participation rate, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2FbrbDK
DOUBLE WHAMMY: NOTE BAN AND GST
To be sure, the loss of jobs to machines is a global issue, but Indian women have a more limited range of alternative work than their male counterparts. And in family-focused India, women across economic lines often quit work after getting married or having children.
Also, as some families’ earnings rise, more women can afford to become caregivers.
Still, when compared to nations with similar income levels, India’s female labor participation rate is “a distinct outlier,” according to Vaishnav.
Economists say Modi’s two signature economic policies – a ban on high-value banknotes in 2016 and the implementation of a national sales tax rate (GST) in 2017 – have hurt women more than men because they are more likely to be employed in vulnerable, informal workplaces.
Demonetisation thrust the informal, cash-based economy into turmoil. A year later, many small businesses went under, unable to deal with GST’s complexities or rate increases.
“If there are fewer jobs available, who will move out? The women will move out, because they get lower wages. The men will go compete for the few jobs,” said CMIE’s CEO Mahesh Vyas.
In Dharavi, a Mumbai slum that is one of Asia’s largest, 33 year-old Farzana Begum has struggled to provide for her five children since the workshop she stitched buttons for shut shop in the wake of GST.
“I have stopped all extra spending on clothes and good food,” said Begum. “If you ask anyone in Dharavi, everyone has seen a fall in income, lost their jobs or seen factories close after GST.”
Her dismay was echoed on the other side of the country, in a village near the eastern city of Kolkata, where Nuren Nesa’s earnings from embroidering saris fell from 700 rupees a week to 300 after demonetisation. Following GST, work ground to a halt and her embroidery machine is gathering dust.
“Modi’s note ban and GST measures have destroyed our source of income,” said Nesa, 41, who withdrew her son from university because tuition fees grew out of reach.
“I will vote for the leader who will help us out with proper work and income,” she added.
As the battle for women’s votes heats up, Modi has pointed to programs to provide toilets and subsidized cooking gas cylinders as evidence his administration cares for women. This month, the main opposition party, Congress, vowed to reserve a third of federal government jobs for women if elected.
HARD WORK TO HIRE WOMEN?
Some business owners say they receive few applications from women.
“We do not find too many women in the segment we service, even though we would like to hire more women because they are more sincere, there is less attrition and they can multi-task,” said Vineet Pandey, who owns Mumbai-based housekeeping firms Kaarya Facilities & Services and Hecqo.com.
Indian women sometimes do not take jobs far from home due to fears for their safety.
Call centers or factories run by multinationals often attract women workers by providing transport after late shifts, but working at many other jobs entails commutes on packed trains and buses through India’s teeming and cities.
One businessman who employees roughly 1,000 men at his chemical factory in southern India, says hiring women would mean providing separate bathrooms and transport at night.
He argues bypassing men would also stoke tensions in India, where economic transformations and an influx of technology are testing the social fabric.
“In the rural areas, it is a more patriarchal society, if we give jobs to women and not men, there will be complaints from men,” said the businessman, who asked to remain anonymous.
“It is to maintain harmony.”
In any case, it is a moot point for now. His plant, struggling with high costs of power and transport, is not hiring.
For an interactive graphic on the regional female labor force participation rate, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2O4rinC
(Reporting by Suvashree Choudhury in Mumbai and Alexandra Ulmer in Hivare, Additional reporting by Rajendra Jadhav in Hivare and Subrata Nag Choudhury in Kolkata, Graphics by Tanvi Mehta in Bengaluru, Writing by Alexandra Ulmer, Editing by Euan Rocha and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
Source: OANN
Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are cooking up an alien atmosphere right here on Earth.
In a new study, JPL scientists used a high-temperature “oven” to heat a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 Celsius), about the temperature of molten lava. The aim was to simulate conditions that might be found in the atmospheres of a special class of exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) called “hot Jupiters.”
Hot Jupiters are gas giants that orbit very close to their parent star, unlike any of the planets in our solar system. While Earth takes 365 days to orbit the Sun, hot Jupiters orbit their stars in less than 10 days. Their close proximity to a star means their temperatures can range from 1,000 to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (530 to 2,800 degrees Celsius) or even hotter. By comparison, a hot day on the surface of Mercury (which takes 88 days to orbit the Sun) reaches about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius).
“Though it is impossible to exactly simulate in the laboratory these harsh exoplanet environments, we can come very close,” said JPL principal scientist Murthy Gudipati, who leads the group that conducted the new study, published last month in the Astrophysical Journal.
The team started with a simple chemical mixture of mostly hydrogen gas and 0.3 percent carbon monoxide gas. These molecules are extremely common in the universe and in early solar systems, and they could reasonably compose the atmosphere of a hot Jupiter. Then the team heated the mixture to between 620 and 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit (330 and 1,230 Celsius).
The team also exposed the laboratory brew to a high dose of ultraviolet radiation — similar to what a hot Jupiter would experience orbiting so close to its parent star. The UV light proved to be a potent ingredient. It was largely responsible for some of the study’s more surprising results about the chemistry that might be taking place in these toasty atmospheres.
Hot Jupiters are large by planet standards, and they radiate more light than cooler planets. Such factors have allowed astronomers to gather more information about their atmospheres than most other types of exoplanets. Those observations reveal that many hot Jupiter atmospheres are opaque at high altitudes. Although clouds might explain the opacity, they become less and less sustainable as the pressure decreases, and the opacity has been observed where the atmospheric pressure is very low.
Scientists have been looking for potential explanations other than clouds, and aerosols — solid particles suspended in the atmosphere — could be one. However, according to the JPL researchers, scientists were previously unaware of how aerosols might develop in hot Jupiter atmospheres. In the new experiment, adding UV light to the hot chemical mix did the trick.
“This result changes the way we interpret those hazy hot Jupiter atmospheres,” said Benjamin Fleury, a JPL research scientist and lead author of the study. “Going forward, we want to study the properties of these aerosols. We want to better understand how they form, how they absorb light and how they respond to changes in the environment. All that information can help astronomers understand what they’re seeing when they observe these planets.”
The study yielded another surprise: The chemical reactions produced significant amounts of carbon dioxide and water. While water vapor has been found in hot Jupiter atmospheres, scientists for the most part expect this precious molecule to form only when there is more oxygen than carbon. The new study shows that water can form when carbon and oxygen are present in equal amounts. (Carbon monoxide contains one carbon atom and one oxygen atom.) And while some carbon dioxide (one carbon and two oxygen atoms) formed without the addition of UV radiation, the reactions accelerated with the addition of simulated starlight.
“These new results are immediately useful for interpreting what we see in hot Jupiter atmospheres,” said JPL exoplanet scientist Mark Swain, a study coauthor. “We’ve assumed that temperature dominates the chemistry in these atmospheres, but this shows we need to look at how radiation plays a role.”
With next-generation tools like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2021, scientists might produce the first detailed chemical profiles of exoplanet atmospheres, and it’s possible that some of those first subjects will be hot Jupiters. These studies will help scientists learn how other solar systems form and how similar or different they are to our own.
For the JPL researchers, the work has just begun. Unlike a typical oven, theirs seals the gas in tightly to prevent leaks or contamination, and it allows the researchers to control the pressure of the gas as the temperature rises. With this hardware, they can now simulate exoplanet atmospheres at even higher temperatures: close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,600 degrees Celsius).
“It’s been an ongoing challenge figuring out how to design and operate this system successfully, since most standard components such as glass or aluminum melt at these temperatures,” said JPL research scientist Bryana Henderson, a coauthor of the study. “We’re still learning how to push these boundaries while safely handling these chemical processes in the lab. But at the end of the day, the exciting results that come out of these experiments is worth all the extra effort.”
Alex Jones exposes the massive push around the globe to use corporate media to smear pro-liberty movements.
Source: InfoWars
Late Sen. John McCain was President Donald Trump's "kryptonite in life" and he's still his "kryptonite in death," Meghan McCain said Monday while pushing back against the president after he attacked her father on Twitter over the weekend.
"Listen, he spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it: he will never be a great man," McCain, a co-host of ABC's "The View," said during the program, while commenting that rather than spending time with his family and friends, the president spends it on waging attacks.
"All of us have love and families, and when my father was alive, up until adulthood, we would spend our time together cooking, hiking, fishing, really celebrating life, and I think it's because he almost died," McCain said. "And I just thought, 'your life is spent on the weekend not with your family, not with your friends, but you're obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to.' That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now."
McCain died in 2018 after a year-long battle with brain cancer. Over the weekend, Trump attacked him for his ties to a dossier linking the president with Russia, and about his vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. He also said that McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for five years, was "last in his class" at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Meghan McCain over the weekend tweeted to Trump that "no one will ever love you the way they loved my father."
Source: NewsMax Politics
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