U.S. President Donald Trump says a new Republican plan to overhaul the country’s national health care system is “wonderful,” but its fate in Congress is uncertain.

Trump, in Twitter comments Tuesday, claimed the current law, championed by former President Barack Obama, “is a complete and total disaster” and “is imploding fast!”

The new president said he is working on a system to promote competition among drug manufacturers to cut the price of expensive medicines and to allow health care insurance to be sold across state lines in hopes of lowering the cost of insurance premiums.

“Pricing for the American people will come way down!” Trump vowed on drug prices.

Republicans have long sought to repeal the U.S. health law, popularly known as Obamacare. But the new proposal advanced by Republican congressional leaders drew immediate attacks from conservative Republicans in both the House of Representatives and Senate, along with derisive comments from Democratic lawmakers who want to keep Obamacare.

‘Obamacare Lite’

Republican critics of their own leaders’ proposal mocked it as “Obamacare Lite,” saying it is too much like the law they promised voters they would repeal.

“I don’t see any significant change here,” said Congressman Jim Jordan, one of the conservative Republican critics of the proposal. “This is Obamacare by a different form.”

Republican critics especially voiced opposition to the proposal to give tax credits to low-income Americans to help them buy insurance, calling it a new government “entitlement program” that could prove costly in the years to come.

“This is a Republican welfare entitlement,” one conservative congressional group said. “Writing checks to individuals to purchase insurance is, in principle, Obamacare. It does allow more choices for individuals, and is more patient-centered, but is fundamentally grounded on the idea that the federal government should fund insurance purchases.”

Surcharge, but no requirement to buy

The new proposal would rescind Obamacare’s chief component, a requirement that all Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty if they do not — a provision Republicans say has been an unwarranted overreach by the national government into peoples’ personal lives.

The new proposal, however, would have a similar penalty, a 30-percent surcharge against those who let their insurance coverage lapse and then decide to buy a new policy. Both the surcharge and Obama penalty are aimed at encouraging people to buy insurance before they get sick and need health care.

The Republican proposal also would retain two of Obamacare’s most popular provisions: allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until they are 26, and blocking insurance companies from refusing to insure Americans with pre-existing medical conditions that are costly to treat.

Obamacare has added insurance coverage for 20 million previously uninsured people, but critics such as Trump say the cost of insurance for the individuals who buy policies under Obama’s law has risen so fast that it is no longer affordable for many people.

Democrats say the Republican plan would leave more Americans without health insurance.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Trump, in criticizing Obamacare, “doesn’t even have the faintest idea of what he’s talking about.”

She added, “Republicans have decided that affordable health care should be the privilege of the wealthy, not the right of every family in America.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer tweeted, “Trumpcare doesn’t replace the Affordable Care Act — it forces millions of Americans to pay more for less care.”

Schumer said the new plan will “force Americans to pay more so insurance companies can pad their bottom line.”
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Кілька регіональних управлінь та відділів Національної поліції України протягом грудня 2016 року – березня 2017 року уклали контракти без тендерів на закупівлю форми та аксесуарів із приватним підприємством «Компанія «Надежда» на загальну суму 7,3 мільйона гривень. Така інформація міститься на офіційному порталі аналітики Business Intelligence ProZorro, передає #Точно, проект Радіо Свобода. 

Серед замовників товарів, які синхронно без тендерів уклали контракти на постачання одягу, значаться управління поліції в Івано-Франківській, Запорізькій, Кіровоградській, Полтавській, Тернопільській, Черкаській, Чернівецькій, Хмельницькій областях, а також Криворізький міський відділ поліції.

Безпосередньо поліцейські закупили форменний одяг, а також футболки, пальта, капелюхи, аксесуари та штормовий одяг.

Усі контракти укладені без проведення торгів за процедурою «неконкурентні допорогові закупівлі», тобто тендерні комітети управлінь та відділу самостійно обрали підрядників. Відповідно до закону «Про публічні закупівлі», замовники тендерів мають право закуповувати товари та послуги очікуваною вартістю до 200 тисяч гривень без конкурсних торгів.

Таким правом в повній мірі скористалося управління поліції охорони в Тернопільській області, яке уклало одразу 7 контрактів по 199,9 тисячі гривень кожний на загальну суму 1 мільйон 399 тисяч гривень. Та управління поліції охорони в Запорізькій області, яке уклало 6 контрактів по 199,5 тисячі гривень кожний на загальну суму 1 мільйон 197 тисяч гривень. 

ПП «Компанія «Надежда» відоме в Полтавській області як нафтогазовий трейдер. Позиціонує себе як один із найбільших операторів поставок скрапленого газу в Україну.
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Росія відкрита для інвестицій та співпраці з американськими компаніями в нафтовій і газовій промисловості, заявив російський міністр енергетики Олександр Новак 6 березня на конференції в Х’юстоні.

Новак додав, що Росія як провідний світовий нафтовидобувник усе ще має «величезний потенціал» для відкриття нових родовищ на континентальному шельфі, в арктичних просторах, а також у сланцевих покладах.

Російський міністр твердить, що за нинішніх цін на нафту між 50 та 60 доларами за барель прибутки в Росії є «одними з найвищих у світі».

Новак повідомив російському агентству ТАСС, що зустрівся в Х’юстоні з представниками 13 «глобальних фондів», зацікавлених в інвестуванні в російські нафту й газ. Водночас міністр не назвав, із ким саме мав зустрічі.

Росія нині відчуває вплив запроваджених через її агресію щодо України санкцій, у тому числі і в нафтогазовій промисловості. Москва не має доступу до передових технологій видобутку, які розробляють провідні західні компанії.
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More developing countries urgently need insurance to cushion their farmers against weather extremes that can worsen poverty, but it is no magic bullet to ward off the escalating impacts of climate change, experts say.

The burning question of how to stop drought becoming a major crisis — especially in Africa — has caused many to eye insurance as a possible answer.

“People think sometimes that insurance is the solution for everything. It is not correct,” said Mohamed Beavogui, director general of the African Risk Capacity, an African Union agency that helps states plan for natural disasters and climate change, and provides them with insurance through its company, ARC Limited.

“Insurance is … [for] when you have done everything you can and there is still a risk you cannot cover,” Beavogui said.

Planning for those risks — such as the number of people a government would be unable to help in a crisis — is vital, he told Reuters.

As climate change bites harder, bringing with it worse droughts and floods, demands on donors’ purse strings are likely to grow, and experts say development gains — especially in Africa — are at risk of being rolled back.

Last year, southern African states appealed for $2.9 billion in aid when the region was hit with its worst drought in 35 years, affecting 39 million people. Now, drought in the continent’s east is pushing millions into hunger.

Insurance can be triggered more quickly than international aid, which can take months to fund. ARC’s cover is based on a pre-agreed plan for how the government will use the payout.

Since ARC Ltd began issuing policies in 2014, eight nations have taken out insurance and four — Senegal, Mauritania, Niger and Malawi — have received payouts totaling $34 million.

The index-based insurance offers maximum coverage of $30 million per country per season for drought events that occur with a frequency of one in five years or less.

But while drought last year left 6.5 million people in Malawi in need of food aid, Malawi did not receive an ARC payout until January.

Malawi took out insurance based on a crop — long-cycle maize — that, as it turned out, most farmers did not grow in the 2015/2016 season. Long-cycle maize survived the drought, while the short-cycle maize most farmers grew did not.

In the end, ARC’s member states agreed to an $8.1 million payout for Malawi — the amount it would have received had the government requested short-cycle maize as the base.

“It means that we shouldn’t rely only on data the government gives us,” Beavogui said. ARC will now also check what farmers are growing with research centers and extension services, among others, he added.

Jury still out

Insurance companies that pay out directly to farmers are still few and far between in many developing countries, and they offer limited services.

Where they do exist, they mainly serve commercial farmers because the poorest cannot afford to pay premiums without help from a donor or government, said Andrew Shepherd, director of the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network, based at the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think tank.

“The jury is still out” on whether insurance can make the poorest farmers more resilient to drought, but it can play an important role in preventing wealthier farmers from becoming impoverished, he said.

“All the focus by governments, and often donors, is on getting people out of poverty, and not on preventing people from falling into poverty,” he said.

India is one of the few developing countries with a national insurance scheme for farmers, including those with as little as one cow or buffalo, which works through local agents, said Shepherd.

Senegal has two kinds of insurance — macro-insurance through ARC, and micro-insurance — both of which paid out when bad drought hit in 2014.

The Compagnie Nationale d’Assurance Agricole du Senegal (CNAAS) — set up by the government, insurance companies and international agencies — targets most farmers in rain-fed crop areas with index-based insurance products.

In 2014, Senegal’s ARC payout reached people and livestock with aid, getting help to herders within three months, said Mathieu Dubreuil, micro-insurance adviser at the World Food Program (WFP).

“It was a good match” between ARC which pays out in a crisis and micro-insurance schemes that pay out more often, he said.

WFP, which offers small-scale insurance for farmers, is also exploring taking out ARC insurance, which would give an additional payout to countries, disbursed either by WFP or through the government.

Vicious cycle of hunger

In Malawi, farmers are waiting for the April maize harvest to bring an end to months of food shortages.

“If we are not careful, we will have a vicious cycle of hunger,” said Wycliffe Kumwenda of the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi, representing more than 100,000 farmers.

Uninsured farmers are condemned to line up for food aid — time taken away from cultivating their fields — while hunger saps their energy, he said.

There is some insurance for Malawian tobacco farmers, but many do not know about it. Premiums are a problem too, as is the ability to make a claim, Kumwenda said.

“We need to install proper instruments that can capture weather parameters like rainfall [and] temperature,” he said. “Most of the met stations are not reliable.”

That makes claims hard to justify, putting off potential insurance providers, he added.

As climate impacts are expected to worsen in the coming years, potentially pushing up the cost of premiums, ARC is developing an Extreme Climate Facility (XCF) which will give countries access to finance for climate change adaptation.

“You have to insure what you cannot cover, and at the same time you have to prepare and adapt,” said Beavogui. “My real fear is we don’t do it quickly enough.”
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As China’s economy slows to growth rates not seen in more than a quarter of century, the country’s Communist Party rulers are under increasing pressure to create jobs.

Millions enter the workforce each year, and as China tries to reduce overcapacity in steel and coal industries a growing number are looking for work after being laid off.

China’s northeast is reeling from the impact of zombie enterprises, debt-laden companies who have let overcapacity run amok and are now facing massive layoffs, and it is struggling to keep young workers and talent at home.

Stay or go?

At a recent job fair in China’s northeastern city of Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province, many say they are concerned about the slowing economy and its dampening impact on jobs.

“The outlook now for jobs is not as good as a few years ago and I think that’s because the economy is not that great,” said Shenyang resident Wang.

The job fair was one of several that Saturday and it was packed with hundreds, if not several thousand job seekers. Some were struggling to find work and unqualified for the opportunities they sought.

Another resident named Wu said he was not finding the kind of work he was looking for at the fair because many opportunities were in the services sector.

“I am worried about finding work. If I can’t find a job here, I’ll most likely go somewhere else to work,” he said.

Wang from nearby Jilin province said he was looking for steady work, something stable and closer to home.

“The jobs I worked in the past would change every three of four months, from one location to the next, from Shenyang to Changchun and other places,” Wang said. “Pay was better by comparison about $870 to $1,450 a month, but there were no benefits.”

Favors, money

During his annual work report to China’s legislature on Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said the world’s second largest economy aims to create more than 11 million new jobs this year. He also talked about the importance of the northeast to the Chinese economy. Li was party secretary of Liaoning from 2004-2007.

But while the northeast has long been on the government’s priority list, policy measures appear to have done little to change the overall environment. Heavy industry and state owned enterprises have long dominated the region’s economy, contributing to an ongoing exodus of talent to other parts of the country, analysts said.

For many university students, going somewhere else is the only option, even for those who eventually want to come back and make Shenyang their permanent base.

“I hope to go somewhere better and then bring some of those good practices and experiences back to Shenyang,” said a music student named Han.

But medical student Ni said he plans to head back home to the south after he graduates, because, as he put it, the mindset and environment there is more open.

He said in the northeast, “Whether it is the government, schools or hospitals there is too much focus on connections and favors. What you can do is not important and there is no room to put your talents to good use.”

Bad reputation

Liaoning has also been forced to confront corruption in a very open way.

In 2016 it was the slowest growing province in the country, the only one to see negative growth. Last year, it’s leaders made a rare admission, revealing that between 2011 – 2014 the province’s figures for economic growth were faked, in some cases by more than 20 percent.

And a vote-buying scandal was disclosed as well, the worst since the Communist Party came to power.

Liaoning officials have pledged to put an end to the practices and spoke openly about the scandals at a meeting Sunday in Beijing.

“We’re overly reliant on heavy industries. Innovation and creativity is lacking. The impact on the [economic] environment is not good and talent is not being put to its best use,” said Li Xi, Communist Party boss in Liaoning and spokesman for a delegation to this year’s annual Twin Sessions meetings of the National People’s Congress.

Last year, almost half of the Rust Belt province’s representatives to the NPC were caught up in the scandals. Li Xi said the election of officials who bought their way into office, many of them prominent businessmen, had an impact on “personnel arrangements by central authorities.”

While some are hopeful the government’s pledge to clean up the environment will bring about change, the region’s heavy emphasis on infrastructure as a model for jobs and growth has most waiting for clearer signals.
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In Malawi, the head of the former ruling party is expected in court Tuesday on allegations he fraudulently granted citizenship documents to more than 50 foreigners in 2013 when he was minister of home affairs. 

Uladi Mussa surrendered himself Monday at the office of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, or ACB, in the capital Lilongwe.

“So since he came in today, this morning, to hand himself, our investigators have just sent him to the police station for safe custody,” said Egrita Ndala, an ACB spokesperson 

Mussa is accused of taking bribes in exchange for issuing Malawian passports to foreigners during his time as home affairs minister under the previous administration.

He told a local radio in Lilongwe that he feels his arrest is politically motivated.  He denies any wrong doing.

“I do not know anything, why they have been hunting for me,” said Mussa. “The issue is very strange to me because that is one of major functions and responsibilities of a minister of home affairs.”

Mussa said, as the minister, he was signing the citizenship applications following the approval from police and immigration officials that an applicant had met all the necessary requirements.

This is the second arrest in this case.  Last Wednesday, the ACB arrested former chief immigration officer Hudson Mankhwala, who is now out on bail, on charges of neglect of official duty and abuse of office.  He has also denied the charges.

The ACB’s Ndala defends the bureau’s investigations.

“We do not just arrest.  An arrest will come after we have done a background work in investigation.  And we have been working in prevention,” said Ndala. “We have been working with public education, about their role in the fight against corruption, but otherwise that is our mandate according to Corrupt Practices Act.” 

The Anti-Corruption Bureau has made the local news quite a bit lately.

Two weeks ago, the president fired his agriculture minister after ACB investigators found cash worth nearly $200,000 in the minister’s home as part of a probe into a recent maize procurement from Zambia. 

Investigations into that matter continue. 
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Надання цього траншу залежало від ухвалення в Україні підтриманого МВФ бюджету на 2017 рік і реформ у банківській сфері.
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Україна відновила співпрацю з МВФ за чотирирічною програмою розширеного фінансування (EFF) в обсязі 17,5 мільярда доларів у вересні 2016 року
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It may seem odd that the world’s largest land mammal would be afraid of bees, but Kenya-based research and conservation group Save the Elephants has used the elephants’ fear of being stung around the eyes, mouth and trunk to deter them from crop-raiding. It is doing this through “beehive fences,” which they have found to be 80 percent effective.

“Elephants have come to my farm but they couldn’t manage to enter the farm,” said Hesron Nzumu, a farmer who lives near the Tsavo East National Park in Kenya. “They see the beehive and they are really afraid of the bees. When they see them, they run away.”

Research findings by Save the Elephants, the Kenya Wildlife Service, and the Mwakoma community near Tsavo East have been published in the journal Conservation Biology. Researchers used data collected over a three-and-a-half-year period from 10 farms near Tsavo East where 131 beehives were placed.

They found that only 20 percent of the 253 elephants that entered Mwakoma farms during that time managed to break the fences.

Strong fencing wire outlined the boundary of each trial plot of 0.4 hectares, upon which dummy hives and real hives were alternately suspended every 10 meters. If an elephant disturbed the wire, it would also anger the bees, making the fence essentially “moveable,” unlike other stationary deterrents.

“It’s a sustainable, long-term, low-cost solution for these small-scale farms, and we’re not at all pretending this is going to work on a large-scale, for 100-acre farms; this is for the one-acre, two-acres farms, who have absolutely minimal income,” said Lucy King, who heads the Human-Elephant Coexistence Program at Save the Elephants, and is the lead author of the paper.

Honey provided by the bees gives farmers added income, says King, who offers an example of a farmer in her study who makes $22 per month. With earnings from honey, he and his colleagues could each make as much as an extra $100 to $200 a year — a significant increase.

Nzumu is one of the farmers who has benefited from the honey.

“The beehive protects my farm from elephants,” he said. “Secondly, I harvest the honey and sell it and sometimes we use it at home. Most of the honey we sell so that we can reduce poverty and also pay school fees for our children.” Nzumu added that the bees also help with pollination of his crops.

When it comes to poaching, sedentary farmers rarely become poachers, says King, but she adds that it is not uncommon to hear of farming communities that turn a blind eye when poachers come into the area because they are angry at the elephants.

Like many other conservationists, King argues that in the long term, human-wildlife conflict will be a bigger threat to elephants than poaching.

“And it’s just going to be such a conflict because they require so much food and they need to move across the landscape. If they don’t, they start to damage vegetation in a very quick manner. And so these elephants have to be allowed large areas of land. And it’s becoming less viable in Africa, which is developing so fast and the human population is expanding so fast,” King said.

King says that farmers have promoted the fences to their neighbors, resulting in 24 farms in the area now using them. And it looks like the buzz is spreading: Beehive fences are being tested in 14 countries across Africa and Asia.
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Міністерство з питань тимчасово окупованих територій розробляє рекомендації для подачі позовів до Європейського суду з прав людини власникам підприємств, які привласнили угруповання «ЛНР» та «ДНР» на Добасі, повідомив у Facebook заступник міністра Георгій Тука.

«На цей раз, уловка «мы не конфисковывали/национализировали, мы просто ввели внешнее управление» не пройде», – зазначив він.

У січні активісти, серед яких депутати Верховної Ради та люди, що називають себе ветеранами АТО, розпочали блокаду деяких ділянок залізниці з вимогою припинити, за їхніми словами, торгівлю з окупованими районами Донбасу.

Після цього ватажки угруповань «ЛНР» і «ДНР» висунули ультиматум, що якщо до 1 березня 2017 року не припиниться блокада активістами торгівлі з непідконтрольною територією, то на всіх підприємствах української юрисдикції, які працюють на територіях, захоплених цими угрупованнями, запровадять «зовнішнє управління».

3 березня на їхніх сайтах з’явились повідомлення про запровадження «тимчасових адміністрацій» на 43 підприємствах на окупованих територіях Донецької області, що дотепер працювали у правовому полі України. Підтвердження цих даних з інших джерел немає.

Тим часом, Служба безпеки України заявила, що бойовики мали намір здійснити захоплення підприємств, що діють на окупованих територіях в українській юрисдикції, і оголосити власну блокаду постачання вугілля на вільну територію України незалежно від того, чи виконав би Київ їхній ультиматум. Як доказ був оприлюднений, як стверджують, запис перехопленої телефонної розмови про це ватажка угруповання «ДНР» Олександра Захарченка з одним із його соратників.

Раніше в середу СБУ також заявила, що має й доказ, так само перехоплену бесіду Захарченка зі співрозмовником із Росії про те, що російські куратори мають намір передати економічно найпривабливіші з захоплених підприємств структурам олігарха Сергія Курченка, який утік до Росії, залишивши самим бойовикам тільки збиткові – з чим Захарченко висловлював незгоду.

Росія ж узагалі не визнає своєї агресії проти України.
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