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FILE PHOTO – U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 4, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
April 11, 2019
By Susan Cornwell
LEESBURG, Va. (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Democrats are accusing Republican President Donald Trump of aggravating a crisis situation at the southern U.S. border, saying he has not used funds available to help deal with a surge of migrants and exacerbated the problem with his attempts to crack down.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that bipartisan immigration reform, which has eluded Congress and the White House for years, is still the solution. It is in fact “inevitable,” Pelosi said on the sidelines of a Democratic party meeting in Leesburg, Virginia.
In Washington, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, also called for bipartisan discussions on immigration. But he focused on toughening U.S. asylum law, a move that Democrats likely would oppose.
Democrats have not proposed a comprehensive immigration bill since taking the majority in the House this year. Republicans still hold the Senate.
Instead, Democrats last month proposed legislation offering a pathway to citizenship for more than 2 million undocumented immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children. Known as Dreamers, they face possible deportation.
The House Democratic bill would also help immigrants from countries hit by civil conflicts or natural disasters who have temporary protected status, known as TPS.
U.S. officers arrested or denied entry to over 103,000 people along the border with Mexico in March, a 35 percent increase over the prior month and more than twice as many as the same period last year, according to data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection this week.
The steady increase in migrant arrivals, which has been building over the past several months, is driven by a growing number of children and families, especially from Central America.
Trump has threatened to close the border, saying the United States is “full.” He has urged the building of a wall on the southern border since before he became president in 2016. Recently his ire has been directed at his own officials, Congress, and Latin American countries, who he says have not done enough to stop their citizens from traveling to the United States.
Pelosi, asked Thursday what should be done at the border, said the bipartisan legislation Trump signed to end a government shutdown in February included money for judges and humanitarian aid “to bring order to the border,” but Trump has not used the funds.
Although a bipartisan effort at comprehensive immigration reform by Democrats and Trump last year failed, Pelosi said such an overhaul still had a chance.
“I’m not giving up on the president on this,” Pelosi said. “I still say to him, ‘We’ve got to have comprehensive immigration reform’.”
Representative Pramila Jayapal, speaking to reporters later, said the Trump administration had manufactured a crisis at the border in part by “stripping away” legal routes to immigration, such as by stopping asylum seekers at legal ports of entry.
Trying to curb the flow of Central American asylum seekers, the administration has been sending more people back to Mexico to wait for their asylum claims to be heard by U.S. courts.
Representative David Cicilline said the Trump administration had exacerbated a challenging border situation by not spending money that was appropriated for border facilities and personnel, as well as by cutting off aid to Central American countries for sending migrants to the United States.
Cicilline, who runs the House Democrats’ policy and communications committee, denied Democrats were simply “looking on helplessly” at the problems.
“But the administration has responsibility in all these areas. And we can appropriate funding and we can pass legislation but ultimately they are responsible for executing the immigration laws in this country,” he said.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Source: OANN
U.S. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is pictured EPA headquarters in Washington, DC, U.S. April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Timothy Gardner
April 11, 2019
By Timothy Gardner and Valerie Volcovici
(Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a proposal to speed state-level permitting decisions for energy infrastructure projects soon, the agency’s chief told Reuters on Thursday, blasting states that have blocked coal terminals and gas pipelines on environmental grounds.
President Donald Trump is seeking to boost domestic fossil fuels production over the objections of Democrats and environmentalists concerned about pollution and climate change. On Wednesday he issued a pair of executive orders targeting the power of states to delay energy projects.
“We started working on it in advance, so we hope to have something out soon,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview. He was unable to provide a precise timeline.
Based on Trump’s orders, Wheeler’s EPA has been tasked with clarifying a section of the U.S. Clean Water Act that has allowed states like New York and Washington to delay projects in recent years.
New York has used the section to delay pipelines that would bring natural gas to New England, for example, and Washington state has stopped coal export terminals that would open the Asian market for struggling coal companies in Wyoming and other landlocked western states.
“They are trying to make international environmental policy,” Wheeler said of Washington state, whose governor, Democrat Jay Inslee, is running for president on a climate change-focused platform. “They’re trying to dictate to the world how much coal is used.”
Wheeler said New York, which amid strong public pressure denied a clean water act permit for construction of a natural gas pipeline to New England, is forcing that region “to use Russian-produced natural gas.”
“We are importing Russian natural gas which is not produced in an environmentally conscious manner. If the states that are blocking the pipelines were truly concerned about the environment, they would look to where the natural gas would be coming from… I think it’s very short-sighted,” he said.
Wheeler said the EPA would not prevent a state from vetoing a project, but would clarify the parameters they should be able to consider, and the length of time they have to do so.
He also said that California is playing politics in its fight with the EPA to preserve its more stringent vehicle emission standards as the national standard.
CLIMATE: NOT A PRIORITY
Wheeler said he believes climate change is a problem, but that it had been overblown by former President Barack Obama’s administration – at the expense of other bigger issues like water quality.
“Yes, climate is an issue and we are working to address it, but I think water is a bigger issue,” he said.
Wheeler dismissed the findings of a report released earlier this week by EPA scientists in the journal Nature Climate Change that detailed the scale and urgency of climate change.
He said while he encouraged EPA scientists to carry out and publish research, he stressed the recent paper “did not reflect EPA policy.”
Environmental groups say the EPA’s replacement of an Obama-era rule limiting carbon emissions from power plants would likely lead to increased emissions by allowing older, more polluting coal plants to operate longer.
Asked whether the replacement – the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which gives states responsibility for regulating emissions – is stringent enough, Wheeler said it adheres to the parameters of federal law.
“I think what is effective regulation is one that follows the law and one that will be held up in court,” he said.
Several Democrats challenging Trump in the 2020 election have made climate change a top-tier issue, embracing aggressive policy platforms like the Green New Deal calling for an end of fossil fuels use.
Asked whether he was concerned that the EPA may be out of synch with polls showing an overwhelming number of young people believe climate change should be a priority issue, Wheeler was dismissive.
“I do fear that because so many people only talked about climate change. You’re right, there could very well be a new generation coming up saying that’s the only environmental issue – and it’s not,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and David Shepardson; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Former energy lobbyist David Bernhardt waits to testify before a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on his nomination of to be Interior secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 28, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
April 11, 2019
(Reuters) – U.S. senators on Thursday voted to confirm former energy lobbyist David Bernhardt as Secretary of the Department of Interior.
With voting still ongoing, Bernhardt had secured 53 votes in favor of his confirmation versus 39 opposed.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Gazprom marketing department is seen in front of the office located on the Champs Elysees in Paris ,January 5, 2009. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
April 11, 2019
By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Olesya Astakhova
LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of a project to build a Russian liquefied natural gas plant partly because Gazprom suddenly added another partner with links to an ally of President Vladimir Putin, according to five sources.
After three years work on the Baltic Coast project, Shell discovered that Gazprom was bringing in a company linked to Arkady Rotenberg, who is on a U.S. sanctions blacklist.
The sudden change in the line-up of partners was one of the key factors contributing to Shell’s Wednesday announcement that it was pulling out of the project, according to three sources close to Shell and two other sources familiar with the project.
Asked to comment on the reasons for withdrawing, a Shell spokesman said it had nothing to add to a previous statement that said its exit followed Gazprom’s announcement last month of its final concept for the project. Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said the company was not commenting.
According to the two sources close to Shell, Gazprom did not consult with Shell about bringing in the firm, which is called RusGazDobycha, but instead presented it with the plan as a fait accompli.
With RusGazDobycha’s arrival also came changes to the configuration of the project itself, which Shell did not feel comfortable with, all of the sources said.
It became untenable for Shell to stay in the project “and that was clear from the moment that Gazprom announced it was going to build the plant together with RusGazDobycha,” said one of the sources familiar with the project.
A RusGazDobycha official did not respond to a request for comment. Asked if the presidential administration had any role in RusGazDobycha’s entry into the project, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a question for the companies involved.
The sudden shift in the project underlines the unpredictability of doing business in Russia — even for a firm like Shell with a long pedigree of successful cooperation. It also shows how Rotenberg’s business empire, focused mainly on construction and engineering, is expanding into the energy sector.
Shell said that its other joint projects in Russia — chief among them the Gazprom-led Sakhalin-2 LNG plant — would be unaffected by its exit from the Baltic LNG project.
But Shell’s involvement in Sakhalin expires this month. Unless the Russian government decides to extend the Sakhalin deal, Shell’s portfolio of Russian projects will be left looking thin.
The Russian government has given no indication as to whether it would extend Shell’s Sakhalin contract.
“DIGGING YOUR OWN GRAVE”
One of the problems for Shell was that Rotenberg, a long-standing friend of Putin and his former judo training partner, was under sanctions and that created sanctions risks for Shell too, according to one of the sources close to Shell and the second source familiar with the project.
For Shell, partnering with a Rotenberg-linked firm was tantamount to “digging yourself your own sanctions grave,” said that source.
But the other sources said the primary issue for Shell was the change in the configuration of the LNG project.
RusGazDobycha is 100 percent-owned by a firm called National Gas Group (NGG), according to the Spark database, which collates official data from the tax agency and the state statistics agency.
Until November 2016, Rotenberg had a 51 percent stake in NGG, the database shows. The majority owner of NGG now is Artyom Obolensky, who is also chairman of the board of SMP Bank, controlled by Arkady Rotenberg and his brother Boris.
A representative of Arkady Rotenberg, asked about the Baltic LNG project, said Rotenberg “has no interests in this business.”
The brothers were both added to the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions blacklist in March 2014.
The sanctions designation stated that the brothers had amassed enormous amounts of wealth during the years of Putin’s rule, and that they had received high-price contracts to carry out work for Gazprom and the 2014 Winter Olympic games in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.
(Additional reporting by Maria Grabar, Vladimir Soldatkin Gleb Stolyarov and Polina Nikolskaya; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Anna Willard)
Source: OANN
President Donald Trump’s executive order to expedite oil and natural gas pipelines could spark another legal battle against Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration.
Trump pulled no punches against New York when he signed executive orders to expedite pipeline projects Wednesday afternoon. The move sparked a sharp rebuke from Cuomo, who threatened to fight “tooth and nail” against permitting reforms.
“We need help with New York,” Trump said Wednesday at an International Union of Operating Engineers’ training center near Houston.
“New York is hurting the country because they’re not allowing us to get those pipelines through, and that’s why they’re paying so much for their heating and all of the things that energy and our energy produces,” Trump said. “So hopefully they can come on board and get in line with what’s happening.”
The orders are aimed at expediting oil and gas pipeline approvals, including asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update guidance regarding state permitting authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA).
Globalists and the left are united in their anti-American stance on energy.
The goal here is to keep some states, like New York and Washington, from using CWA permitting to kill major energy projects. Trump specifically called out New York’s blocking of the Constitution natural gas pipeline.
“And also, in New York, they’re paying tremendous amounts of money more for energy to heat their homes because New York State blocked a permit to build the Constitution Pipeline,” Trump said.
New York and the Constitution pipeline’s developers have been locked in a legal battle for the last three years after the state denied the project a CWA permit. The pipeline will bring natural gas from producers in Pennsylvania to upstate New York, and is supported by labor unions.
Cuomo’s administration denied permits for Constitution and other pipelines on environmental grounds, and instead is using his own version of the Green New Deal to get 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040.
Cuomo said he would fight Trump’s permitting reforms “tooth and nail.”
“President Trump’s Executive Order is a gross overreach of federal authority that undermines New York’s ability to protect our water quality and our environment,” Cuomo said in a statement Wednesday. “Any efforts to curb this right to protect our residents will be fought tooth and nail.”
President Trump’s Executive Order is a gross overreach of federal authority that undermines New York’s ability to protect our water quality and our environment. Any efforts to curb this right to protect our residents will be fought tooth and nail. pic.twitter.com/oP1qIqc8Sa
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) April 10, 2019
Trump is looking to set stricter timelines and narrow the scope of review states can use evaluate pipelines and other projects that need CWA permits. For example, New York rejected the Constitution pipeline 360 days into its review.
New York rejected a CWA permit Valley Lateral pipeline in 2017 over the impacts it could have on climate change, which, of course, has nothing to do with water quality. Trump’s order could prevent states from using such an expansive standard for review.
In the meantime, however, Cuomo’s pipeline rejections have strained gas supplies in the northeastern U.S., including New York and New England. Supplies are so constrained in New York, for example, that a moratorium on new gas hook-ups hit Westchester County in March, worrying local officials that new development would collapse.
“This obstruction does not just hurt families and workers like you; it undermines our independence and national security,” Trump said, mentioning how New England paid much more for gas this winter because of its lack of pipelines.
Del Bigtree has been exposing the pharmaceutical industry for years and now, with the passage of SB-276, the battle has reached the next level.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and acting U.S. Secretary of Interior David Bernhardt arrive to place a wreath at the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, U.S., January 21, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
April 11, 2019
By Valerie Volcovici
(Reuters) – The U.S. Senate is set to confirm former energy lobbyist David Bernhardt as the next Interior Secretary on Thursday, even as coastal state senators from both parties raise concerns about his plans to vastly expand offshore drilling.
Bernhardt would replace former Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke as the head of the Interior Department, which manages federal and tribal lands and waters and is key to President Donald Trump’s efforts to boost domestic crude oil, natural gas and coal production.
He is expected to be approved by the Republican-controlled Senate over the objections of Democrats concerned that his former lobbying for industry means he will favor energy and minerals development over conservation.
Republican Senators including Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida have also raised concerns over the Interior Department’s looming five-year offshore drilling plan, which could expand drilling into new parts of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic. Coastal states like Florida are concerned about the impact of a spill on their tourism industries.
But in a sign that Bernhardt has assuaged some of those concerns in recent days, Rubio said on Twitter Wednesday evening he would vote for Berhardt’s confirmation.
“I am VERY confident that when all is said & done no oil drilling is coming to our coastline,” Rubio said.
Rubio and Scott had sent a letter to Bernhardt last month urging him to keep Florida protected from offshore drilling and honor a promise Zinke had made prior to his resignation that Florida would be exempted from the plan.
Scott did not comment on Bernhardt’s confirmation.
Democratic senators continued to urge that the Senate reject Bernhardt’s confirmation because of his close ties to some of the industries that the Interior Department would regulate.
Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, for example, asked the Department of Justice earlier this week to investigate whether Bernhardt was in violation of lobbying disclosure laws.
“Add these troubling allegations to the long list of reasons why the nomination of David Bernhardt should be stopped, or at minimum delayed, until the Senate and the American people get all of the facts,” said Wyden.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Source: OANN
Amazon employs thousands of people to listen in on what people around the world are saying to their Alexa digital assistant, according to what is sure to be a Congressional hearing-inspiring report by Bloomberg, which cites seven people who have worked on the program.
While their job is to “help improve” NSAlexa – which powers the company’s line of Echo speakers – the team “listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices,” which are then transcribed, annotated and fed back into the software in order to try and improve Alexa’s understanding of human speech for more successful interactions. In other words, humans are effectively helping to train Amazon’s algorithm.
In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa “lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter.” But like many software tools built to learn from experience, humans are doing some of the teaching. -Bloomberg
The listening team is comprised of part-time contractors and full-time Amazon employees based all over the world; including India, Romania, Boston and Costa Rica.
Listeners work nine hour shifts, with each reviewing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift according to two employees from Amazon’s Bucharest office – located in the top three floors of the Romanian capital’s Globalworth building. The location “stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure” of the Pipera district and “bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon’s presence.”
Alex Jones goes on Logan Paul’s podcast “ImPaulsive”
While much of the work is boring (one worker said his job was to mine for accumulated voice data for specific phrases such as “Taylor Swift” – letting the system know that the searcher was looking for the artist), reviewers are also listening on people’s most personal moments.
Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word—or come across an amusing recording. -Bloomberg
Occasionally Amazon listeners come across upsetting or possibly criminal recordings – such as two workers who say they listened in on what sounded like a sexual assault.
According to the report, when things like this happen the workers will mention it in the internal chat room to “relieve stress.”
And while Amazon says that it has procedures to follow when workers hear distressing things, two of the Romania-based employees say they were told “it wasn’t Amazon’s job to interfere” when they requested guidance for such instances.
“We take the security and privacy of our customers’ personal information seriously,” said an Amazon spokesman in a statement provided to Bloomberg.
“We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone,” the statement continues. “We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it.”
That said, Amazon does not mention the fact that humans are listening to recordings of some of the conversations picked up by Alexa. Instead, they have a generic disclaimer in their FAQ that says “We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems.”
What Amazon records
According to Amazon’s Alexa terms of use, the company collects and stores most of what you say to Alexa – including the geolocation of the product along with your voice instructions, reported CNBC‘s Todd Haselton last November.
Your messages, communication requests (e.g., “Alexa, call Mom”), and related instructions are “Alexa interactions,” as described in the Alexa Terms of Use. Amazon processes and retains your Alexa Interactions and related information in the cloud in order to respond to your requests (e.g., “Send a message to Mom”), to provide additional functionality (e.g., speech to text transcription and vice versa), and to improve our services. -Amazon Terms of Use
Alexa, are you spying on me?
Alexa: *coughs* No, of course not.
— Wrong, Brian (@leonidasmoderus) May 25, 2018
Last May, an Amazon Echo recorded a conversation between a husband and wife, then sent it to one of the husband’s phone contacts. Amazon claims that during the conversation someone used a word that sounded like “Alexa,” which caused the device to begin recording.
“Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like ‘Alexa,’” said Amazon in a statement. “Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, ‘[contact name], right?’ Alexa then interpreted background conversation as ‘right’. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”
The wife, Danielle, however said that the Echo never requested her permission to send the audio. “At first, my husband was like, ‘No, you didn’t,’” Danielle told KIRO7. “And he’s like, ‘You sat there talking about hardwood floors.’ And we said, ‘Oh gosh, you really did!’”
Can you disable?
Alexa does allow people to stop sharing their voice recordings for the development of new features, while a screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg reveals that the recordings provided to Alexa’s listeners do not provide the full name or address of a user. It does, however, link the recording to an account number, the user’s first name, and the device’s serial number.
“You don’t necessarily think of another human listening to what you’re telling your smart speaker in the intimacy of your home,” said UMich professor Florian Schaub, who has researched privacy issues related to smart speakers. “I think we’ve been conditioned to the [assumption] that these machines are just doing magic machine learning. But the fact is there is still manual processing involved.”
“Whether that’s a privacy concern or not depends on how cautious Amazon and other companies are in what type of information they have manually annotated, and how they present that information to someone,” added Schaub.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: A Chevron gas station sign is seen in Del Mar, California, in this April 25, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/FileS/File Photo
April 11, 2019
By Ross Kerber and Jennifer Hiller
BOSTON/HOUSTON (Reuters) – Chevron Corp will put a focus on human rights in Myanmar under an agreement with an investor group that had urged it to pay more attention to violence in the Asian nation where the U.S. oil company has operations.
Chevron will undertake steps including social investment reviews in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, donate to humanitarian organizations for Rohingya refugees, and help develop practices for companies operating amid risks of crimes against humanity, according to a letter signed by a company executive.
Azzad Asset Management, an activist investor that submitted a shareholder resolution calling on Chevron to report on its business with governments complicit in genocide or crimes against humanity, agreed to withdraw the proposal, according to a copy of the agreement viewed by Reuters.
“Chevron appreciates Azzad’s constructive engagement and commends them for recognizing our actions related to human rights,” Mary Francis, Chevron’s governance officer who signed the letter, said in an emailed statement. Francis declined to be interviewed.
A similar resolution was opposed by the company at previous shareholder meetings and last year won support from just 7% of votes cast according to a securities filing.
Joshua Brockwell, investment communications director at Virginia-based Azzad, which describes itself as “a faith-based socially responsible investment firm offering halal investment portfolios,” said the agreement “demonstrates positive steps forward after years of dialogue.”
Rakhine State came to global attention in 2017 when the Myanmar army drove about 730,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims across the border and into neighboring Bangladesh, following attacks by Rohingya insurgents on police posts. U.S. and United Nations officials have decried the crackdown as a form of genocide.
More recently, the military has been battling another armed rebel group, the Arakan Army, which draws recruits mostly from the ethnic Rakhine population, who are mainly Buddhists, and is fighting for greater autonomy for the western state.
Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have spent more than 15 months in detention since they were arrested in December 2017 while investigating a massacre of Rohingya Muslim civilians involving Myanmar soldiers.
Chevron, the second-largest U.S.-based oil producer, does business in Myanmar through a subsidiary, Unocal Myanmar Offshore Co, according to Chevron’s website. Its projects there include a minority interest in natural gas production and in a pipeline company.
(Reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston and Jennifer Hiller in Houston; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Source: OANN
Chinese banknotes are seen at a vendor’s cash box at a market in Beijing February 14, 2014. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
April 11, 2019
By Stella Qiu and Se Young Lee
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s factory-gate inflation picked up for the first time in nine months in March, edging away from deflationary territory, in a fresh sign that government efforts to boost the economy may be starting to revitalise domestic demand.
Consumer inflation also quickened, jumping to the highest since October 2018 as pork prices soared due to a growing epidemic of swine fever, official data showed on Thursday.
The step-up in producer inflation, while slight, will likely add to optimism that the world’s second-largest economy is slowly starting to turn the corner, after recent surveys showed factory activity expanded for the first time in months.
But analysts urge caution, saying it will take a few more months of better data and further policy support from Beijing to see if a recovery can be sustained.
China’s producer price index (PPI) in March rose 0.4 percent from a year earlier, in line with analysts’ forecasts in a Reuters poll and advancing from a 0.1 percent increase in February, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
Most of the gain was in mining, with prices in extraction rising 4.2 percent on-year, up from 1.8 percent in February. Drops in raw material prices also moderated.
But improvements may have been due more to changes in commodity prices than stronger demand. Prices of consumer durables fell for a second month, pointing to lingering weakness in demand for big-ticket items such as cars and appliances.
“Looking ahead, we expect oil prices to fall back in the coming months. This will drag down PPI… Meanwhile, continued economic weakness is likely to keep a lid on broader price pressures,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, Senior China Economist at Capital Economics.
On a monthly basis, producer prices increased for the first time in five months. The index inched up 0.1 percent, compared with a 0.1 percent decrease in February.
The world’s second-largest economy is growing at its weakest pace in almost three decades amid weaker domestic demand and a year-long trade war with the United States. Multi-year campaigns to curb debt risks and pollution have deterred fresh investment.
In response, Beijing plans more spending on roads, railways and ports, which is expected to push up demand for and prices of construction materials. Prices of steel reinforcing bars used in building hit 7-1/2 years highs this week.
Last month, the government announced nearly 2 trillion yuan (227 billion pounds) in additional tax cuts to ease the pressure on corporate balance sheets, while authorities are pressing banks to keep lending to struggling smaller firms.
Cuts in value-added tax (VAT) that kicked in on April 1 have already led authorities to reduce prices for electricity and natural gas. Retail gasoline and diesel prices are to be reduced as well.
A growing number of companies ranging from Apple Inc to BMW have lowered prices for their products following the tax cuts.
SWINE FEVER DRIVING UP PORK PRICES
The consumer price index (CPI) in March rose 2.3 percent from a year earlier, a five-month high, largely due to higher pork prices as the spread of African swine fever prompts farmers to cull their herds.
That was more than a 1.5 percent increase in February but just below market expectations for a 2.4 percent rise.
Pork prices rose 5.1 percent in March from a year earlier, the first increase after a 25-month declining streak.
On a month-on-month basis, CPI rose 1.2 percent.
Some analysts forecast pig production in China, which eats about half of the world’s pork, will fall by around 30 percent in 2019, which would send meat prices soaring.
But economists say the central bank is unlikely to overreact to a food price spike if it appears temporary and core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food prices, remains steady.
Non-food consumer inflation was 1.8 percent on-year, just a touch more than February.
(Reporting by Stella Qiu and Se Young Lee; Editing by Kim Coghill)
Source: OANN
Chinese banknotes are seen at a vendor’s cash box at a market in Beijing February 14, 2014. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
April 11, 2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s factory-gate inflation picked up for the first time in nine months in March, edging away from deflationary territory, in a fresh sign that government efforts to boost the economy may be starting to revitalize domestic demand.
Consumer inflation also quickened, jumping to the highest since October 2018 as pork prices soared due to a growing epidemic of swine fever, official data showed on Thursday.
The pick-up in producer inflation, while slight, will likely add to optimism that the world’s second-largest economy is slowly starting to turn the corner, after recent surveys showed factory activity expanded for the first time in months.
But analysts urge caution, saying it will take a few more months of data and more policy support from Beijing to see if a recovery can be sustained.
China’s producer price index (PPI) in March rose 0.4 percent from a year earlier, in line with analysts’ forecasts in a Reuters poll and advancing from a 0.1 percent increase in February, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
Most of the gain was in mining, with prices in extraction rising 4.2 percent on-year, up from 1.8 percent in February. Drops in raw material prices also moderated.
But improvements may have been due more to changes in commodity prices than stronger demand. Prices of consumer durables fell for a second month, pointing to lingering weakness.
On a monthly basis, producer prices increased for the first time in five months. The index inched up 0.1 percent, compared with a 0.1 percent decrease in February.
The world’s second-largest economy is growing at its weakest pace in almost three decades amid weaker domestic demand and a year-long trade war with the United States. Multi-year campaigns to curb debt risks and pollution have deterred fresh investment.
In response, Beijing plans more spending on roads, railways and ports, which is expected to push up demand for and prices of construction materials. Last month, the government announced nearly 2 trillion yuan ($297.27 billion) in additional tax cuts to ease the pressure on corporate balance sheets.
Cuts in value-added tax (VAT) that kicked in on April 1 have already led authorities to reduce prices for electricity and natural gas. Retail gasoline and diesel prices are to be reduced as well.
A growing number of companies ranging from Apple Inc to BMW have lowered prices for their products following the tax cuts.
SWINE FEVER DRIVING UP PORK PRICES
The consumer price index (CPI) in March rose 2.3 percent from a year earlier, a five-month high, largely due to higher pork prices as the spread of African swine fever prompts farmers to cull their herds.
That was more than a 1.5 percent increase in February but just below market expectations for a 2.4 percent rise.
Pork prices rose 5.1 percent in March from a year earlier, the first increase after a 25-month declining streak.
On a month-on-month basis, CPI rose 1.2 percent.
Some analysts forecast pig production in China, which eats about half of the world’s pork, will fall by around 30 percent in 2019, which would send meat prices soaring.
But economists say the central bank is unlikely to overreact to a food price spike if it appears temporary and core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food prices, remains steady.
Non-food consumer inflation was up 1.8 percent on-year, just a touch more than February.
(Reporting by Stella Qiu and Se Young Lee; Editing by Kim Coghill)
Source: OANN
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