Living in large cities has its downsides, and one of them is a lack of fresh organic locally grown produce. But growing vegetables is something everyone can do and it can be done in literally a handful of soil. Two amateur gardeners in the Swedish city of Gothenburg started small, but now see gardening as a way to profitability. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Рада виконавчих директорів Світового банку затвердила 2 травня кредит для України в розмірі 150 мільйонів доларів з метою підтримки малих і середніх підприємств, орієнтованих на експорт. Про це йдеться в повідомленні на сайті банку.

«Україна має креативний і унікальний діловий потенціалом і може виробляти високоякісну конкурентоспроможну продукцію», – заявила директор Світового банку по Україні, Білорусі та Молдові Сату Кахконен.

«Однак багато перешкод обмежують можливості України в експорті. Однією з них є нестача якісного фінансування. Доступ до довгострокових фінансів для малих і середніх підприємств допоможе країні збільшити експорт і сприятиме пожвавленню економічного зростання в Україні», – додала вона.

Очікується, що проект під назвою «Доступ до довгострокових фінансів» здійснюватиме ТОВ «Укрексімбанк», надавши субкредити банкам, які, в свою чергу, вкладуть гроші в різні малі та середні підприємства в Україні. Ці підприємства, як повідомили в Світовому банку, будуть відібрані з огляду на їхню фінансову стабільність і потенціал.

Світовий банк є одним з найбільших міжнародних партнерів України. Ця інституція надає підтримку у здійсненні енергетичних, комунальних, транспортних, соціальних проектів тощо.
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U.S. lawmakers have put the nation’s airlines on notice: Improve customer service or we will make you.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing for top airline executives to testify, and to determine how Congress might respond after a passenger was violently dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight.

“Seize this opportunity,” committee Chairman Bill Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican, told United CEO Oscar Munoz and other airline executives at a hearing. Otherwise, “we’re going to act and you’re not going to like it,” he said, predicting a “one-size-fits-all” solution that may serve some airlines but not all.

Munoz apologized repeatedly for the removal of David Dao, 69, who last month refused to give up his seat to make room for airline employees. The video of airport police dragging Dao from his seat went viral.

“In that moment for our customers and our company we failed, and so as CEO, at the end of the day, that is on me,” Munoz said. “This has to be a turning point.”

Munoz was joined at the hearing by United President Scott Kirby and executives from American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines.

American Airlines experienced its own public relations fiasco last month when a passenger video went viral, showing a woman on a plane in tears holding a child in her arms and another at her side after an encounter with a flight attendant over a baby stroller.

United and other airlines have announced policy changes regarding overbooked flights. Airlines have said they routinely overbook flights because a small percentage of passengers do not show up.
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President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to China said on Tuesday he would do everything possible to address what he called China’s “unfair and illegal” sales of underpriced steel in the world market.

“I want to do everything I can to make sure that we stop the unfair and illegal activities that we’ve seen from China in the steel industry,” the nominee, Iowa’s Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, said at his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing.
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African military expenditures have finally slowed down after more than a decade of steady increases, according to a new report on global defense spending. The main reason, the report found, is a drop in oil prices.

“The sharp decreases in oil prices has affected quite a number of African countries, namely South Sudan and Angola.  This has kind of driven almost the entire regional trend,” said Nan Tian, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) Arms and Military Expenditure Program, the organization that authored the report.

The SIPRI report found military spending in Africa in 2016 was down by 1.3 percent from the previous year and totaled about $37.9 billion.

Despite the drop, Africa’s military spending remains 48 percent higher than it was a decade ago.  “A few of the top spenders within these regions are generally oil economies, so the low oil prices have meant sharp cutbacks in government financing and that includes military spending,” he said.

Some of Africa’s biggest spenders in recent years have included oil-rich Angola, which has sought to modernize its air force and navy, and Algeria which has tried to preserve its stability amid the collapse of Libya and the rise of extremism in North Africa.  Both of those countries have slowed spending recently, Tian said.

Weighing spending against needs

Tian said that perhaps the most important question to ask, is whether military spending in Africa is at appropriate levels.

Ten African countries have military expenditures greater than 3 percent of their GDP. The highest are the Republic of the Congo where military expenditures totaled 7 percent of GDP in 2016, and Algeria where military spending totaled 6.7 percent of GDP.

Globally, military spending is 2.2 percent of GDP or about $227 per person.

“You have the security aspect also in Africa.  We have the opportunity costs,” Tian said.  “It is the poorest continent.  The question is: should this continent be spending?  Are they spending enough or are they spending too much on military based on their current income levels?  Should they rather be prioritizing other aspects of spending maybe health care, maybe education, maybe infrastructure?”

Not all African countries saw a decline in military spending.  According to the report, Botswana’s military spending grew by 40 percent, or about $152 million.  Botswana is regularly noted for having a long record of peace and good governance, and is undergoing a military modernization program.

Nigeria increased its military spending by 1.2 percent to $1.7 billion as it strives to defeat the radical Islamist group Boko Haram.  Similarly, Kenya and Mali increased military spending due to extremist threats in their regions.
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India-based technology company Infosys said Tuesday it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States, growing its American footprint at a time when it has become a political target in the U.S.

Infosys has been a big user of H1-B visas in the U.S., a program under which overseas firms, most often technology companies, move foreign workers to the United States after the overseas businesses declare they cannot find enough qualified U.S. workers. Critics of the visa program say the foreign firms have cost U.S. workers their jobs, however, because the foreign companies usually pay the temporary workers less than they would have had to pay American employees to do the same job.

As part of his “America First” pledge, President Donald Trump recently ordered government agencies to review the visa program. Trump said he wants to bring in the “best and brightest” foreign workers and reform immigration laws as they relate to work and border security. But one suggested reform – that companies paying the highest wages be granted the work visas – would directly affect Infosys.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages the visa petitions, says that about 70 percent of the 85,000 H1-B visas issued annually go to Indians, and more than half of them are working for information technology companies like Infosys, which then outsource the workers to American firms.

Infosys has been one of the biggest users of the H1-B visa program, sending more than 15,000 workers to the U.S. in the last two years, although it has trimmed its visa requests for this year. Under the program, foreign-born workers typically can be employed for three years by a sponsor company and apply to stay longer.

Infosys said it would hire the 10,000 U.S. workers over the next two years, opening four technology centers, with the first in the midwestern state of Indiana, where Vice President Mike Pence was governor before Trump tapped him as his running mate in last year’s national political campaign.

Infosys chief executive Vishal Sikka told Reuters, “The reality is, bringing in local talent and mixing that with the best of global talent in the times we are living in and the times we’re entering, is the right thing to do. It is independent of the regulations and the visas.”
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Oystermen, pirates and police clashed violently more than a century ago over who could collect the Chesapeake Bay’s tasty and lucrative oysters. As the shellfish makes a comeback, a modern-day oyster war is brewing, this time between wealthy waterfront property owners and working-class fishermen.

Over the past five years, oyster production has doubled on the East Coast, driven by new farming methods, cleaner water and Americans’ growing taste for orders on the half shell. The resurgence has led to unprecedented resistance from coastal Virginians who want to maintain picturesque views from their waterfront homes and has fueled a debate over access to public waterways.

“These people can’t have it all,” said Chris Ludford, an oysterman in Virginia Beach who sells to nearby farm-to-table restaurants.  

Ludford said he faces fierce pushback along a Chesapeake Bay tributary from people with “a $2,000 painting in their house of some old bearded oysterman tonging oysters.

“But they don’t want to look out their window and see the real thing,” he said.

Views spoiled, privacy lost

 Homeowners say the growing number of oystermen — dressed in waders and often tending cages of shellfish — spoil their views and invade their privacy. Residents also worry about less access to the water and the safety of boaters and swimmers.

Low tides often expose oyster cages, usually accompanied by markers or warning signs that protrude from the surface. In some places, cages float.

“All of sudden you have people working in your backyard like it was some industrial area,” said John Korte, a retired NASA aerospace engineer in Virginia Beach who’s among residents concerned about oyster farming’s proliferation. “They may be a hundred feet away from someone’s yard.”

Ben Stagg, chief engineer at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said the state is poised to break its record of leased acreage for oyster growing. But nearly 30 percent of more than 400 new lease applications face opposition, an unprecedented number that’s led to a backlog of leases awaiting approval.

 “Occasionally I can resolve those by having the parties get together and adjust the area further offshore,” Stagg said. “But oftentimes, I can’t.”

Oysters make a comeback

There hasn’t been this much interest in oysters in Virginia since the early 1960s. Since then, disease and overfishing took hold and growers started to disappear.

Over the last few decades, breeding programs have produced more disease-resistant and faster-growing oysters. The water’s cleaner. American palettes have evolved, increasing demand.  

Farming techniques also changed. Traditionally, oysters are grown on the bottom of a calm and salty river or bay, then harvested with tongs or dredges that pull them onto boats.  

Now, fishermen are increasingly using cages to grow oysters over a two-to-three year period. The equipment keeps predators away and produces oysters with a more uniform shape and size, which restaurants prefer.

 But the cages are often placed in shallower water closer to shore — and people’s homes.  

Virginia Beach is perhaps ground zero for today’s oyster war. The state’s largest city sits at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. And oysters thrive in the city’s Lynnhaven River, a network of bays and creeks flowing past expensive homes. Lynnhaven oysters are well-known for their salty taste and size.

Solution is not easy to find

A state task force was formed to find compromise. It recommended giving residents more power to block nearby oyster leases. But the idea was rejected by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, with the majority of commissioners saying state lawmakers should step in.  

Proposals in the Statehouse have included raising the cost of an oyster farming lease from $1.50 an acre annually to $5,000. But legislators haven’t found a solution.  

Conflicts also have flared up along Maryland’s Patuxent River, the coastal lagoons of Rhode Island and on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.  

In Delaware, a group of people who mostly own vacation homes successfully blocked potential oyster farming along their part of an inland bay.

“Oftentimes, affluent and new members of the community have the point of view that they own the water in front of them, which is really not true,” said Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association. “We need to win back our social license to farm.”

Rheault said he’s seen these battles “up and down the East Coast” — even before the crop began to double five years ago.

 “The industry was there before the waterfront mansions were built,” Rheault added. “But it hasn’t been there for this generation.”

Ludford, who also works as a Virginia Beach firefighter, is relatively new to the business. He and other relatives started growing oysters in 2010 after leaving the crab industry.

Is zoning the answer?

On a recent morning, Ludford sorted through cages as he stood in the Lynnhaven River, hundreds of yards from the nearest home.  

He dragged cages into view as grass shrimp wriggled on the shells. He and two helpers retrieved more than 500 oysters, which he sold at 75 cents apiece to three restaurants — totaling about $375.

“Really, people haven’t seen an oysterman behind their houses in 50 to 60 years,” Ludford said.

Steven Corneliussen, who owns a waterfront home in Poquoson, Virginia, said he’s among a group that successfully protested new leases along his corner of the Chesapeake. He said waterways should be subject to zoning, like land.     

“That water out in front of me doesn’t belong to me,” he said. “But it doesn’t belong to them, either.” 
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Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta spoke at the annual May Day celebrations Monday in Nairobi, a day when many countries celebrate workers. But in sub-Saharan Africa, about three-fourths of those laborers work in the informal sector, without contracts or job protections, according to the International Labor Organization.

Kenyatta pledged to tackle high unemployment during his May Day speech.

One hundred meters away, 31-year-old Christine Ndunge continued her work selling sodas and snacks. She has been a street vendor at a public park in central Nairobi for several years. 

“These days getting a job is hard,” she said. “I have decided to employ myself so that I can survive. Like now, it’s a rainy season — there are not enough customers to buy drinks. I motivate myself to continue selling because there is nowhere else I can work.”

In his address Monday, Kenyatta announced that Kenya will be raising its minimum wage by 18 percent.

The crowd cheered, but analysts say policies like raising the minimum wage won’t help a majority of the workforce. 

According to the Kenyan government’s 2017 economic survey, 833,000 jobs were created last year. However, less than 20 percent of those jobs were in the formal sector.  

“There is that disconnect,” said Kwame Owino, CEO of the Institute of Economic Affairs in Kenya. “So on one side, we have unions, which are talking for people who are in the formal sector, raising wages. And when that happens in standard economics, one of the first things that happens is employment shrinks. So when that employment shrinks in the formal sector, most of these people fall back to the informal sector. We are solving the wrong problem.”

He said Kenya and other African countries need to improve conditions for entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs in Africa often struggle to raise capital. Owino said what governments can do is create new regulations making it easier for small businesses to get loans. He said policymakers can also streamline the process of registering and running a legal business and make it cheaper.

Josphat Mwendo, a trained mechanic, spent years unsuccessfully looking for a job. Finally, the 32-year-old started fixing cars for money himself. Now, he has three people he pays to help him.

“I don’t feel good because they did not speak about people like us,” he said. “I think it’s good to think about those who have employed themselves too, so that they can know their worth and also feel they are Kenyans like the rest.”

The problem is particularly acute among young people.

A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that Africans between the ages of 15 and 24 are just a third of the continent’s total working-age population, but account for nearly two-thirds of the continent’s unemployed.
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With the U.S. economy on solid footing and unemployment at a near-decade low, the Federal Reserve remains in the midst of a campaign to gradually raise interest rates from ultra-lows. But this week, it’s all but sure to take a pause.

The Fed is widely expected to keep its key short-term rate unchanged after having raised it in March for the second time in three months. Most analysts foresee the Fed raising its key rate again at least twice more before year’s end, a testament to the durability of the U.S. economic recovery and a more stable global picture.

One reason for the Fed to stand pat this week is that even though the job market has shown steady strength, the economy itself is still growing in fits and starts. On Friday, the government estimated that the economy, as gauged by the gross domestic product, grew at a tepid 0.7 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter. It was the poorest quarterly performance in three years.

Though some temporary factors probably held back growth last quarter and may have overstated the weakness, the poor showing underscored that key pockets of the economy — consumer spending and manufacturing, for example — remain sluggish. On Monday, the government said U.S. consumer spending stalled in March for a second straight month. And the Institute for Supply Management reported a drop in factory activity.

“Given all the uncertainties they still face and especially with growth coming in so weak, the less the Fed says at this meeting, the better,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at DS Economics.

Most economists have expressed optimism that the economy is strengthening in the current April-June quarter, fueled by job growth, higher consumer confidence and stock-market records. Many think that annualized growth could accelerate to around 3 percent and that the Fed will feel more confident to resume raising rates at its June meeting.

“The Fed will probably say in their statement that they expect the economy to rebound in the second quarter,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at the Martin Smith School of Business at California State University.

It isn’t just the Fed’s short-term rate — a benchmark for other borrowing costs throughout the economy — that will likely occupy attention at this week’s meeting. Officials will also likely discuss how and when to start paring their extraordinary large $4.5 trillion portfolio of Treasurys and mortgage bonds. The Fed amassed its portfolio — commonly called its balance sheet — in the years after the financial crisis erupted in 2008, when it bought long-term bonds to help keep mortgage and other borrowing rates low and support a frail economy. At the time, the Fed had already cut its short-term rate to a record low.

The balance sheet is now about five times its size before the financial crisis hit. The Fed stopped buying new bonds in 2014 but has kept its balance sheet high by reinvesting the proceeds of maturing bonds. The Fed’s thinking has been that reducing the balance sheet could send long-term rates up and work against its goals of fortifying the economy.

Now, as the Fed becomes more watchful about inflation pressures, the time is nearing when it will need to shrink its balance sheet, a process that could have the effect of raising some borrowing rates, at least modestly. The Fed jolted investors when it released the minutes of its March meeting, which showed that most officials thought that process “would likely be appropriate later this year.” This was sooner than many investors expected.

Could the Fed clarify its timetable for paring its balance sheet in the statement it will issue when its policy meeting ends Wednesday? It may decide against doing so, given that this meeting won’t be accompanied by a news conference with Chair Janet Yellen to explain any shifts in the Fed’s policy or thinking.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said the more likely signal the Fed could send is to reinforce the markets’ view that it intends to raise its short-term rate again next month.

“I expect two more rate hikes — one in June and then one in September,” Zandi said. “Then I expect the Fed to begin allowing its balance sheet to run off.”

Some Fed officials have suggested that they would prefer not to be raising the short-term rate at the same time that they are beginning to reduce their balance sheet. Giving investors too much to digest at once risks unsettling financial markets. In 2013, the Fed triggered a brief storm in bond markets when then-Chairman Ben Bernanke raised the possibility that the Fed would start tapering its bond purchases later that year, catching investors by surprise.

“They learned their lesson with the taper tantrum of 2013 that they need to give the markets plenty of warning of changes in their bond policies,” Sohn said.

Some analysts say they think the Fed will reveal nothing this week about its timetable for reducing its balance sheet, in part because the policy committee has yet to reach a consensus on when or how to do so.

“I have a feeling we are going to get much less information than we want,” Swonk said. “The Fed wants to move slowly, but they don’t have a consensus yet on how to proceed.”

 
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З 1 травня прожитковий мінімум для працездатних осіб в Україні зростає приблизно на 5% – до 1684 гривень. Це визначає закон про держбюджет на 2017 рік.

Згідно з документом, для дітей віком до 6 років з 1 травня прожитковий мінімум становитиме 1426 гривень, для дітей від 6 до 18 років – 1777, для осіб, які втратили працездатність, – 1312 гривні.

У зв’язку зі зміною прожиткового мінімуму для осіб, що втратили працездатність, із травня перераховується пенсія для 8,2 мільйона людей людей.

Згідно з законом про держбюджет, Кабінет міністрів України підвищуватиме прожитковий мінімум для працездатних осіб у 2017 році в три етапи – загалом до суми 1762 гривні.
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Monday is May Day, known worldwide as the day when workers and activists march in the streets and gather in city centers to honor laborers across the globe. 

The holiday is also known as International Workers Day and as Labor Day. 

Workers and union members in the Philippines celebrated May Day by marching in the streets of Manila, the capital. Workers’ rights groups and unions have also scheduled rallies across Manila. 

Indonesian workers took to the streets of Jakarta Monday. Thousands more workers are expected to join the rally later in the day. 

France’s presidential rivals — centrist front-runner Emanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen — will hold their own dueling rallies Monday. There will also be demonstrations against both candidates. 

In the U.S., May Day’s rallying point has shifted from workers to immigrants.Tens ofthousands of people are expected to mark the day from New York to Los Angeles to protest against President Donald Trump’s focus on boosting deportations.Organizations have called for immigrant strikes in some cities to show Americans what a day without immigrants would look like.

Cuba is facing its first May Day celebration without longtime President Fidel Castro, who died in November.Monday’s observance will also be the last May Day overseen by President Raul Castro, who has promised to step down from office in February. 

Hundreds of thousands of people traditionally celebrate May Day in Havana’s Revolution Square with Cuban flags and portraits of Fidel Castro.
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