A global cyber attack on Friday affected British hospitals, government agencies and companies in 99 countries, with Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan the top targets, security software maker Avast said.

Hacking tools widely believed by researchers to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency that were leaked online last month appear to have been leveraged to launch the attacks.

Around 1,000 computers at the Russian Interior Ministry were affected by the cyber attack, a spokeswoman for the ministry told Interfax.

Some of the companies affected:

FedEx Corp

Telefonica SA

Portugal Telecom

Telefonica Argentina
…

Агентство Standard&Poor’s підтвердило рейтинги України зі стабільним прогнозом

Міжнародне рейтингове агентство Standard&Poor’s підтвердило довгострокові і короткострокові рейтинги в іноземній і національній валютах на рівні «B–/B» зі «стабільним» прогнозом.

Як мовиться в повідомленні агентства, такий рівень відображає необхідність для України в осяжному майбутньому виплачувати значні боргові суми, а також політичні виклики і блокаду на сході країни, що вповільнює економічне зростання і впливатиме на стан економіки.

За оцінкою агентства, рівень напруженості з Росією і, як мовиться у прес-релізі, «квазі-сепаратистськими регіонами» на сході погіршився від часу попередньої оцінки.

Але той факт, що на наступні 12 місяців уряд України збереже доступ до підтримки офіційних кредиторів, дає підстави висловити стабільний прогноз, мовиться в повідомленні.

Наприкінці квітня ще одне з провідних міжнародних рейтингових агентств Fitch теж підтвердило свій суверенний довгостроковий рейтинг України в іноземній і національній валютах на рівні «B–» зі «стабільним» прогнозом.
…

From the United States and Canada to small islands in Europe and the Caribbean, Chinese are spending billions on new passports and visas to move their families away from their homeland.

China’s middle and upper classes are demanding better schools, cleaner air and a more secure life for their children. And as China gets wealthier, millions of families have the means to purchase a new life elsewhere.

Their demand has transformed a once obscure market for immigration by investment. To study China’s impact, the Associated Press collected statistics from 13 countries that offer citizenship or permanent residency for a price.

Here’s a look at AP’s analysis of the market, by the numbers.

China’s favorite programs

Consulting firms in China’s biggest cities hawk investor visa programs in weekly sessions at hotels and on social media. The market leader is the United States, as urban Chinese are widely familiar with American schools and culture.

Here are the five countries in the AP’s analysis with the most visas issued to Chinese investors and their families in the last decade:

— 43,448: the United States’ investment visa program, known as EB-5.

— 35,278: Canada’s investment bond programs, including a program offered by the province of Quebec.

— 7,875: Portugal’s “golden visa” program for real estate investors.

— 6,405: Hungary’s residence bond program, recently suspended by the government.

— 4,640: Australia’s program for high-dollar “significant investors.”

What they buy

Depending on the country, Chinese investors looking for a second home can join business projects, invest in bonds or make an outright payment to the government. Currency conversions are as of May 11.

— $250,000: the minimum price of citizenship in Antigua & Barbuda for an investor who donates to the island government’s development fund and pays a $50,000 government fee.

— $380,000 (350,000 euro): the minimum value of real estate investors must purchase in Portugal’s “golden visa” program.

— $500,000: the minimum business investment in the United States’ EB-5 program, with a “green card” given to investors whose money creates or saves 10 jobs.

— $584,000 (800,000 Canadian dollars): the minimum amount of interest-free investment to be made or financed for residence in the Canadian province of Quebec. (Canada closed a similar national program in 2014.)

— $3.7 million (5 million Australian dollars): the required investment in Australia’s Significant Investor Visa program in a mix of developing businesses and funds as defined by the government. Australia’s program is by far the most expensive in the AP survey.

What they spent

To understand how China has changed the global investor migration market, the AP estimated how much Chinese families have invested at a minimum in foreign countries for a visa or passport. The AP multiplied the number of investors, excluding family members, by the minimum investment level for each year, in each program for the last decade. In some cases, the AP estimated the number of investors with the help of government data or experts on investment migration.  

The figures below are an undercount because some investors put in more than what’s required. Investment amounts for each year were converted to U.S. dollars based on the average exchange rate that year. The figures have not been adjusted for inflation.

— $7.7 billion: estimated minimum investment in the United States through the EB-5 program.

— $6 billion: estimated minimum investment in Australia through its Significant Investor Visa program.

— $4.3 billion: estimated minimum investment in Canada, including Quebec, through its immigrant investor programs.

— $1.96 billion: estimated minimum investment in the United Kingdom through its Tier 1 investor program.

— $1.71 billion: estimated minimum investment in New Zealand through its investor and entrepreneur programs.
…

In a move that is likely to give a boost to China’s Belt and Road Forum, the United States has announced that it will participate in meetings on the initiative beginning this weekend in Beijing.

The decision to attend is part of a 100-day plan and new deal between Washington and Beijing that was initially hammered out when President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping met early last month in Florida.

The interagency delegation from Washington will be led by Matthew Pottinger, a top adviser to the Trump administration and National Security Council senior director for East Asia. China is pleased with the decision.

“We welcome all countries to attend. And we welcome the United States’ attendance as the world’s largest economy in the relevant activities of the Belt and Road initiative,” said Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao.

Fact and fiction

China has long been playing up the global benefits of its ambitious trade project, but analysts note that the plan is opaque and vague. Besides, the economic benefits for developed nations such as the United States are still unclear.

For many, the project still seems largely China-centric. It boasts six economic corridors, all of which are to enhance links with China through connectivity and trade infrastructure. Those include connections between China and Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

“It’s about making China great again — in Trumpian terms — and making China great on the international stage,” said Tom Miller, author of China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road.

Domestically, China’s leaders present the project as part of their attempt at the grand rejuvenation of the Chinese people. Internationally, Beijing is trying to convince the world that it is a cooperative win-win plan that will equally benefit all participants.

So far the response has been mixed, but Beijing hopes that its forum on Sunday and Monday, which will include heads of state from 29 countries and official delegations from several other countries, will bring more clarity.

For starters, there is no official map of the grand plan, and the scope of the project continues to balloon. Beijing is entirely in the driver’s seat and the direction of the initiative is fuzzy at best, analysts said.

“What actually gets built will depend on what deals Chinese companies make with other countries abroad or on the deals that Chinese government makes with other governments abroad, and no one knows exactly what those are going to be,” Miller said.

Bumps on China road

There are also the geopolitical implications of the project.

Many developing countries along the route will obviously welcome and be eager and open to receive Chinese investment, infrastructure and development, said Paul Haenle, director of the Beijing-based Tsinghua-Carnegie Center for Global Policy.

In addition to communicating with developing countries, China needs to proactively engage with developed nations such as the United States and others as well.

China “should explain fully what the objectives are for the initiatives,” Hanele says. “And if it doesn’t do a very good job, I think then China risks these nations projecting their worst fears onto the Belt and Road initiative.”

While China-backed infrastructure projects could bring many benefits to developing countries, they could also make them reliant on Beijing’s largesse.

“The more power that China gains economically, [the more] it will have a geopolitical impact,” Miller said. “And in that sense, you can say that it does equate to a double win for China.”

Critical eye

Having developed countries such as the United States, Germany and Britain participate in the meeting could help make it more transparent.

Other developed European countries and the United States are right to look at Chinese behavior that is opaque and poorly defined with a critical eye, Haenle said.

He added Washington’s decision to attend and not shun the gathering, as it did during China’s formation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) two years ago, is a better approach.

The United States would do well “to ask about what the rules will be and what the purpose is behind this, but at the end of the day, the U.S. should not have a hostile attitude,” Haenle said.

Friday’s last-minute announcement has raised questions about whether the United States may reverse former President Barack Obama’s decision to stay away from the AIIB and join. The bank is hosting a special press conference on Saturday to announce new members.
…

Напередодні націоналізації «Приватбанк» оформив 110 мільярдів гривень кредитів на понад 30 фірм, більшість із яких мають ознаки фіктивності. Такого висновку дійшли журналісти програми «Схеми», отримавши доступ та проаналізувавши аудиторський звіт про фінансово-господарську діяльність банку, складений аудиторською фірмою Ernst&Young.

Проаналізувавши список фірм-боржників, кожна з яких винна тепер вже державному «Приватбанку» від півмільйона до майже п’яти мільярдів гривень, журналісти виявили, що ці юрособи не ведуть реальної господарської діяльності, мають у статутному капіталі в середньому не більше ніж 1000 гривень, а їхні засновники та директори – це люди, що не мають стосунку до бізнесу.

За допомогою Єдиного держреєстру юридичних осіб журналісти дізналися адреси реєстрації нових фірм, їхніх засновників та директорів і вирушили до них, щоб запитати, як їм вдалося отримати мільярдні кредити в «Приватбанку» і як вони планують розраховуватися. 

За адресами реєстрації цих фірм, їхніх засновників та керівників або нікого немає, або там перебувають зовсім інші люди.

 Деякі компанії оформлені за адресою масової реєстрації, на автозаправних станціях, станціях техобслуговування або в квартирах житлових багатоповерхівок.

За реєстрацією інших фірм розташовані вже нові компанії. 

За вказаними в реєстраційних документах номерами телефонів або ніхто не відповідає, або вони вже не обслуговуються.

«Виходить, що коли банк був приватним – він роздав понад 100 мільярдів гривень фірмам-бульбашкам. А зараз ті винні гроші вже державному «Приватбанку». І якщо не повернуть, то за них розрахуються звичайні громадяни – платники податків, – тому що держава вже влила в установу облігації внутрішньої державної позики (ОВДП) на суму понад 100 мільярдів гривень, щоб він не збанкрутував», – мовиться в матеріалі журналістів програми «Схеми», спільного проекту Радіо Свобода та телеканалу «UA:Перший».

Журналісти «Схем» звернулися до вже колишніх його акціонерів – Ігоря Коломойського та Геннадія Боголюбова, а також екс-голови правління банку Олександра Дубілета. Ніхто з них не висловив бажання прокоментувати ці факти.

Матеріали аудиту Ernst&Young, до якого вдалось отримати доступ «Схемам», – це останній перед націоналізацією «ПриватБанку» незалежний звіт, документ датований 22 листопада 2016 року.

Журналісти звернулися до Ernst&Young з проханням підтвердити або спростувати справжність документу та повідомити, чи вносились у нього ще якісь зміни. У компанії відмовились від коментарів, посилаючись на внутрішню політику організації.

У Нацбанку кажуть, що у позичальників ще є час, щоб повернути кошти, – до 1 липня. «Якщо ж цього не відбудеться, то, звичайно ж, власник нинішній «Приватбанку» – Міністерство фінансів, менеджмент «Приватбанку», його незалежна наглядова рада повинні почати ті процеси, які роблять всі банки, коли позичальники не погашають кредити. Це претензійна робота, це суди з метою повернути активи, які були виведені з банку», – заявила заступниця голови НБУ Катерина Рожкова.

Економісти вважають, що якби Нацбанк раніше ухвалив рішення про націоналізацію, збитки державі були б набагато менші.

«Я впевнений, що фахівці Нацбанку прекрасно знали (тому що весь ринок знав) про бізнес-модель функціонування «Приватбанку», але чому вони покривали її – я думаю, що тут окреме розслідування потрібно проводити», – зазначив економіст Ерік Найман.
…

A sweeping trade agreement, ranging from banking to beef, has been reached between Washington and Beijing, the U.S. Commerce Department announced on Thursday.

“It was pretty much a Herculean accomplishment to get this done,” said U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “This is more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China relations on trade.”

The breakthrough results from an agreement U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping made during their meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6.

Trump “was briefed more or less every single day” as negotiations progressed since then, Ross said.

Beef imports

Following one more round of “technical consultations,” China has agreed to allow U.S. beef imports no later than July 16, consistent with international food and animal safety standards, Ross told reporters at the White House.

The United States Cattlemen’s Association applauded the agreement, saying market access to China is crucial for its members.

“Success in this arena will drive the U.S. cattle market and increase demand for U.S. beef” in China, association president Kenny Graner told VOA.

In exchange, Washington and Beijing are to resolve outstanding issues that would allow imports to the U.S. of cooked poultry from China “as soon as possible,” according to the Commerce Department.

Another significant breakthrough will see American liquefied natural gas (LNG) going to China. Under the agreement Chinese companies will be permitted “at any time to negotiate all types of contractual arrangement with U.S. LNG exporters, including long term contracts,” according to the Commerce Department.

This is “a very big change,” said Ross, noting China is trying to wean itself off coal at a time “it doesn’t produce enough natural gas to meet its needs.”

Financial, other business services

Among other action listed in the 100-Day Action Plan:

* China is to allow, by July 16, “wholly foreign-owned financial services firms” to provide credit ratings services and to begin licensing procedures for credit investigation.

* U.S.-owned suppliers of electronic payment services (EPS) will be able to apply for licensing in China under new guidelines.

* China is to issue bond underwriting and settlement licenses to two qualified U.S. financial institutions by July 16.

* China’s National Biosafety Committee is to meet by the end of this month to conduct science-based evaluations of all eight pending U.S. biotechnology product applications “to assess the safety of the products for their intended use.” Those that pass the tests are to get certificates within 20 working days.

The outcome of the joint dialogue will also see a United States delegation attending China’s Belt and Road Forum in Beijing next week.

A U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue will be held this summer, according to the Commerce Department, to deepen engagement on these and other issues.

“There are probably 500 items you could potentially discuss” in the wider one-year plan for bilateral trade, Ross added.
…

Kongkaew Vonusak smiles when he recalls the arrival of Chinese investors in his tranquil village in northern Laos in 2014. With them came easy money, he said.

The Chinese offered villagers up to $720 per hectare to rent their land, much of it fallow for years, said Kongkaew, 59, the village chief. They wanted to grow bananas on it.

In impoverished Laos, the offer was generous. “They told us the price and asked us if we were happy. We said okay.”

Elsewhere, riverside land with good access roads fetched at least double that sum.

Three years later, the Chinese-driven banana boom has left few locals untouched, but not everyone is smiling.

Experts say the Chinese have brought jobs and higher wages to northern Laos, but have also drenched plantations with pesticides and other chemicals.

Last year, the Lao government banned the opening of new banana plantations after a state-backed institute reported that the intensive use of chemicals had sickened workers and polluted water sources.

China has extolled the benefits of its vision of a modern-day “Silk Road” linking it to the rest of the world – it holds a major summit in Beijing on May 14-15 to promote it.

The banana boom pre-dated the concept, which was announced in 2013, although China now regards agricultural developments in Laos as among the initiative’s projects.

Under the “Belt and Road” plan, China has sought to persuade neighbors to open their markets to Chinese investors. For villagers like Kongkaew, that meant a trade-off.

“Chinese investment has given us a better quality of life. We eat better, we live better,” Kongkaew said.

But neither he nor his neighbors will work on the plantations, or venture near them during spraying. They have stopped fishing in the nearby river, fearing it is polluted by chemical run-off from the nearby banana plantation.

Chinese frustration

Several Chinese plantation owners and managers expressed frustration at the government ban, which forbids them from growing bananas after their leases expire.

They said the use of chemicals was necessary, and disagreed that workers were falling ill because of them.

“If you want to farm, you have to use fertilizers and pesticides,” said Wu Yaqiang, a site manager at a plantation owned by Jiangong Agriculture, one of the largest Chinese banana growers in Laos.

“If we don’t come here to develop, this place would just be bare mountains,” he added, as he watched workers carrying 30-kg bunches of bananas up steep hillsides to a rudimentary packing station.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he was not aware of the specific issues surrounding Chinese banana growers in Laos, and did not believe they should be linked directly to the Belt and Road initiative.

“In principle we always require Chinese companies, when investing and operating abroad, to comply with local laws and regulations, fulfil their social responsibility and protect the local environment,” he told a regular briefing on Thursday.

Laos’ Ministry of Agriculture did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment for this article.

China is the biggest foreign investor in Laos, a landlocked country of 6.5 million people, with over 760 projects valued at about $6.7 billion, according to Chinese state-run media.

This influence is not only keenly felt in the capital Vientiane, where Chinese build shopping complexes and run some of the city’s fanciest hotels. It also extends deep into rural areas that have remained largely unchanged for decades.

Banana rush

Lao people say Chinese banana investors began streaming across the border around 2010, driven by land shortages at home.

Many headed to Bokeo, the country’s smallest and least populous province.

In the ensuing years, Lao banana exports jumped ten-fold to become the country’s largest export earner. Nearly all of the fruit is sent to China.

For ethnic Lao like Kongkaew, Chinese planters paid them more for the land than they could earn from farming it.

For impoverished, hill-dwelling minorities such as the Hmong or Khmu, the banana rush meant better wages.

At harvest time, they can earn the equivalent of at least $10 a day and sometimes double that, a princely sum in a country where the average annual income was $1,740 in 2015, according to the World Bank.

They are also most exposed to the chemicals.

Most Chinese planters grow the Cavendish variety of banana which is favoured by consumers but susceptible to disease.

Hmong and Khmu workers douse the growing plants with pesticides and kill weeds with herbicides such as paraquat. Paraquat is banned by the European Union and other countries including Laos, and it has been phased out in China.

The bananas are also dunked in fungicides to preserve them for their journey to China.

Switching crops

Some banana workers grow weak and thin or develop rashes, said Phonesai Manivongxai, director of the Community Association for Mobilizing Knowledge in Development (CAMKID), a non-profit group based in northern Laos.

Part of CAMKID’s work includes educating workers about the dangers of chemical use. “All we can do is make them more aware,” she said.

This is an uphill struggle. Most pesticides come from China or Thailand and bear instructions and warnings in those countries’ languages, Reuters learned. Even if the labeling was Lao, some Hmong and Khmu are illiterate and can’t understand it.

Another problem, said Phonesai, was that workers lived in close proximity to the chemicals, which contaminated the water they wash in or drink.

In a Lao market, Reuters found Thai-made paraquat openly on sale.

However, some workers Reuters spoke to said they accepted the trade-off. While they were concerned about chemicals, higher wages allowed them to send children to school or afford better food.

There is no guarantee the government’s crackdown on pesticide use in banana production will lead to potentially harmful chemicals being phased out altogether.

As banana prices fell following a surge in output, some Chinese investors began to plant other crops on the land, including chemically intensive ones like watermelon.

Zhang Jianjun, 46, co-owner of the Lei Lin banana plantation, estimated that as much as 20 percent of Bokeo’s banana plantations had been cleared, and said some of his competitors had decamped to Myanmar and Cambodia.

But he has no plans to leave. The environmental impact on Laos was a “road that every underdeveloped country must walk” and local people should thank the Chinese, he said.

“They don’t think, ‘Why have our lives improved?’ They think it’s something that heaven has given them, that life just naturally gets better.”
…

Ideas were flying at a brainstorming session to create a slogan for a group of North Carolina Democrats when Catherine Cloud blurted out a phrase that made a colleague’s eyes light up: “Because this is America.”

The words were quickly scrawled on a notepad, and the New Hanover County Democratic Party in Wilmington began its scramble to own the phrase. It applied days later for a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

From President Donald Trump’s dash to own “Keep America Great” for his 2020 re-election campaign — even before he took office — to a rush by a foundation for the victims of the September 11 attacks to claim “Let’s Roll” just days after New York’s Twin Towers were reduced to rubble, Americans are rushing to trademark catchy phrases.

There were 391,837 trademark applications filed last year, with the number growing an average of 5 percent annually, government reports show. The USPTO does not break out how many of those applications were for phrases.

‘That’s Hot’

The surge is the result of headline-grabbing cases like socialite Paris Hilton’s winning settlement of a lawsuit over her trademarked catchphrase “That’s Hot” from her former television reality show, said trademark attorney Howard Hogan of Washington.

“It can’t help but inspire others,” Hogan said. “It feels good to get recognition of something you feel you have created.”

Trademarks can mean cash from everything from bumper stickers to thongs printed with the protected phrase. More important for some, however, is claiming ownership of a powerful message.

” ‘Because this is America’ is a rallying cry that focuses on what we have in common, rather than what divides us,” Cloud said.

The phrase is the tagline in a commercial that was set for online release Thursday about the New Hanover Democrats’ key issues: “Clean water. Because this is America,” “Quality education for every child. Because this is America,” and “No matter your ethnicity, you are welcome here. Because this is America.”

Mindful that the slogan that could easily be employed by rival Republicans, the county Democratic committee filed to trademark it just 18 days after Cloud said it.

Trump looks ahead

Two days before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. applied to trademark the phrase he said he intends to use for his 2020 re-election campaign: “Keep America Great,” both with and without an exclamation point. The campaign committee already owns the trademark for Trump’s 2016 slogan: “Make America Great Again.”

Just 15 days after Todd Beamer inspired fellow airline passengers to overwhelm hijackers above a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001, the Todd M. Beamer Memorial Foundation applied to trademark his rallying cry, “Let’s Roll.”

Three days after “Nasty Woman” grabbed headlines when Trump used it to describe his opponent Hillary Clinton in an October 19, 2016, debate, entrepreneurs across America started filing trademark applications for the phrase. There are at least 11 applications pending to trademark “Nasty Woman” for the sale of products as wide-ranging as pillows, wine, firearms, scented body spray, mugs, backpacks and jewelry.

Typically it takes about 18 months for the Patent Office to grant a trademark.

But it can take much longer, as cartoonist Bob Mankoff of The New Yorker learned when he tried to trademark the caption to a 1993 cartoon. Two decades passed before he was allowed to register it on January 19, 2016.

Ironically, the phrase aptly describes Mankoff’s anticipated payday from the sale of merchandise, bearing the words that first appeared under his cartoon of a businessman trying to schedule a meeting: “How about never — is never good for you?”
…

The answer is corn. The question is, what really changed U.S. President Donald Trump’s mind about saving the North American Free Trade Agreement and trying to revise it only hours after he said the United States was pulling out of the treaty?

Edward Goldberg, professor at NYU’s School of Professional Studies, Center for Global Affairs, explains, “Mexico is the second largest consumer of U.S. corn.  Mexico purchases $2.6 billion worth of corn every year.

When Trump decided to pull out of NAFTA, Mexicans started a movement, “Just say ‘No’ to American corn.”

That got the attention of U.S. farmers, U.S. agriculture experts, and Midwestern Congressmen. According to Goldberg, “the pressure mounted on the U.S. president.  He changed his mind because of political pressure from Congress and their farming constituents.”  

Political reality, it is called.  He needed their votes on repealing Obamacare.

NAFTA at 23

NAFTA is a trade agreement among three nations, the United States, Canada and Mexico, that has been in effect since Jan. 1, 1994. U.S. trade with NAFTA partners went from less than $3 billion to $1.14 trillion in 2015.  

One of the major issues is the annual trade deficit, $63 billion with Mexico and about $11 billion with Canada, according to 2015 figures. This has prompted concerns about lost jobs, especially in the well-paying manufacturing sector.

The 300-member American Apparel Footwear Association, headed up by Rick Helfenbein, believes NAFTA did not result in loss of jobs and U.S. factories.  

“NAFTA didn’t cause these problems at all,” said Helfenbein.  “Scholars and people in the know will tell you it’s actually the ‘ations,’ – automation, innovation, globalization, regulation, that’s caused the loss of these factories.”

“April 26, 2017,”  Helfenbein continued, “NAFTA became the topic of the day.  From the Trump concept of killing NAFTA that morning, followed by phone calls between the U.S. president and his counterparts in Canada and Mexico, Justin Trudeau and Enrique Pena Nieto, by 10:30 in the evening an email was released stating that the patient, NAFTA, was in recovery and negotiations will take place.”

NYU’s Goldberg said, “From what I’m hearing it wasn’t just Congress pressuring Trump.  Every major trade association in the United States was knocking on the White House door.”

NAFTA revision schedule

According to a treaty provision there is a 90-day waiting period before re-negotiations can begin. That probably means nothing will happen before September.

Professor Goldberg says it’s been 23 years and counting for NAFTA.  Time for an update.  The world economy has changed and so have the three countries.

And, he added, “Most of the updates have been worked out a year or two ago during TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership agreement) and they have to do with environmental protection, better labor standards, technology and I-T.  Canada and Mexico are part of TPP, the United States has withdrawn from the treaty.”

He predicts, “What is going to happen at NAFTA negotiations, in my mind, is more theater than change.”

Ramon Taylor contributed to this report.
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Iraq and Algeria support the extension of oil production cuts by OPEC and non-OPEC producers through the end of the year to try to boost prices, they said in a joint statement Thursday.

The oil ministers of the two countries held a press conference in Baghdad where Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi said “there might be new ideas to be presented” at an OPEC meeting on May 25, without providing further details.

In late November, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to cut production by 1.2 million barrels a day, the first such reduction agreement since 2008. The following month, 11 non-OPEC oil-producing countries pledged to cut an additional 558,000 barrels a day, reaching an overall reduction of 1.8 million.

In March, OPEC announced the possibility that such cuts would be extended.

Iraq – OPEC’s second-largest producer and a country that relies on oil revenues for nearly 95 percent of its budget – committed to reduce daily production by 210,000 barrels to 4.351 million.

News of a possible extension of the OPEC cuts and reports that U.S. crude stockpiles have dropped by 5.2 million barrels last week slightly boosted worldwide oil prices.

Crude oil sold for over $100 a barrel in the summer of 2014, before bottoming out below $30 a barrel in January 2016. Brent Crude, used to price international oils, now trades at around $50 a barrel in London.
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Uber is launching its private ride-hailing service in the Myanmar commercial capital of Yangon on Thursday, aiming to tap into one of the world’s youngest and fastest-growing online markets.

The launch follows Singapore-based GrabTaxi’s debut by about two months.

Uber is one of the world’s largest on-demand transportation platforms. It is seeking an alliance with the government to smooth acceptance of the use of private vehicles for commercial transport.

A taxi ride in Myanmar usually involves negotiating prices, no use of meters and a lack of air conditioning or seat belts. Using a ride-hailing app is still a relatively new concept, though the practice has been gaining in popularity.

Local travel services start-up Oway and Hello Cabs, a rival service run by a construction and auto dealership tycoon, also provide ride-hailing services. 

“I definitely want to try Uber,” said Nyan Zay Htet, 26, a company worker who was haggling with a driver over a fare on a downtown street in Yangon. “I welcome having international companies come in because it can be more convenient for us if we don’t have to bargain over prices and can just hop in and go.”

More than two-thirds of Southeast Asians are younger than 40 and the number going online to buy goods and services is soaring. A recent research report by Google and the Singaporean investment arm Temasek put the potential ride-sharing market in six larger regional markets at $13 billion by 2025, up from $2.5 billion in 2015.

With more than 50 million people, Myanmar is growing fast and its public transport networks are not keeping up. Taxis are plentiful in Yangon, with local media reporting authorities estimate there are more than 50,000 on the city’s jammed roads. The industry is something of a free-for-all, with non-licensed drivers turning their cars into taxis as they please. But the government has said it intends to crack down on that.

Incomes for most people are still low, so price competition may be key.

An online Uber fare estimator put the base fare in Yangon at 1,500 kyats (pronounced chuts) ($1.09) with a minimum charge of 1,800 kyats ($1.31).

Uber has faced trouble from regulators in various markets, including China, France, Spain and Mexico. But generally they target services transporting paying customers using private vehicles that are not registered for public transport, not ride-hailing that uses smartphone apps to call licensed taxis.
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China’s President Xi Jinping initiated the ambitious Belt and Road development plan but it has become a world plan not tied to his presidency, the Commerce Ministry said Wednesday, days before Xi hosts a global forum on the initiative.

The forum in Beijing next week will draw heads of state to discuss Xi’s plan to expand trade links between Asia, Africa and Europe through billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.

Representatives from more than 100 countries will attend China’s biggest diplomatic event of the year, though only one leader from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, is set to join.

China says that between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $304.9 billion along inland and maritime corridors of the plan, also known as the New Silk Road. But some of the projects could be in development for years.

Judging by recent precedent in China’s political system, Xi is slated to step down from the presidency in early 2023 at the end of his second five-year term.

Asked what guarantee the world had that the initiative would go on after Xi’s second term, Vice Minister of Commerce Qian Keming told a news briefing that its vitality lay in countries’ hopes for development and not in the idea of “who proposed it or what term in office there is later.”

“The Belt and Road initiative was proposed by President Xi in 2013, but this initiative is not an individual proposal, or merely left at a proposal level. Rather it is an initiative that has been widely received by the whole world. It is jointly owned by everyone,” Qian said.

China has repeatedly rebuffed concern that the plan is part of a grand strategy to expand its economic interests for selfish gain and to seek global dominance, saying that anyone can join the plan to boost common prosperity.

Xi has used the initiative to help portray China as an open economy, distinct from a rising wave of global protectionism.

However, the government has faced criticism from foreign business groups and governments alike, who say it has done little to remove discriminatory policies and market barriers that favor Chinese companies.

Foreign business groups have questioned whether multinational companies would be able to compete with Chinese firms through the plan in transparent bidding processes.

Zhang Xingfu, an official from the Commerce Ministry’s cooperation department, played down such concerns.

“Chinese enterprises conducting investment and cooperative business in countries along the Belt and Road initiative will … actively participate in project bidding, and cooperate and compete with international enterprises in the same industries on the same platform,” Zhang said.
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Electric carmaker Tesla has added another product to its lineup: Solar roof tiles.

As of Wednesday, customers worldwide could order a solar roof on Tesla’s website. Installations will begin next month in the U.S., starting with California. Installations outside the U.S. will begin next year, the company said.

The glass tiles were unveiled by Tesla last fall just before the company merged with solar panel maker SolarCity Corp. They’re designed to look like a traditional roof, with options that replicate slate or terracotta tiles. The solar tiles contain photovoltaic cells that are invisible from the street.

Guaranteed for life of home

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said one of the drawbacks to home solar installations has been the solar panels themselves: They’re often awkward, shiny and ugly. Buyers will want Tesla’s roof, he said, because it looks as good or better than a normal roof.

“When you have this installed on your house, you’ll have the best roof in the neighborhood. The aesthetics are that good,” Musk said in a conference call with media.

The roof is guaranteed for the life of the home, which is longer than the 20-year lifespan for a typical, nonsolar roof, Musk said. It has gone through the same hail, fire and wind testing that normal roofs endure.

Tesla’s website includes a calculator where potential buyers can estimate the cost of a solar roof based on the size of their home, the amount of sunlight their neighborhood receives and federal tax credits. They can also put down a refundable $1,000 deposit to reserve a place in line.

$42 per square foot

Tesla said the solar tiles cost $42 per square foot to install, making them far more costly than slate, which costs around $17 per square foot, or asphalt, which costs around $5. But homes would only need between 30 and 40 percent of their roof tiles to be solar; the rest would be Tesla’s cheaper nonsolar tiles, which would blend in with the solar ones.

It would cost $69,100 to install a solar roof with 40-percent solar tiles on a 2,600-square-foot roof in suburban Detroit, according to Tesla’s website. That includes a $7,000 Tesla Powerwall, a battery unit that stores the energy from the solar panels and powers the home. The roof would be eligible for a $15,500 federal tax credit and would generate an estimated $62,100 in electricity over 30 years. Over that time period, Tesla estimates, the homeowner would save $8,500.

Tesla said the typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot for a Tesla solar roof. The cost can be rolled into the homeowner’s mortgage payments and paid for over time, the company said.

Sales to be slow at first

Musk wouldn’t say how many orders the company expects to get this year. He expects the initial ramp-up to be slow.

“It will be very difficult and it will take a long time, and there will be some stumbles along the way. But it’s the only sensible vision of the future,” Musk said.

Palo Alto, California-based Tesla Inc. is making the solar tiles at its Fremont, California, factory initially. But eventually all production will move to a joint Tesla and Panasonic Corp. factory in Buffalo, New York. Panasonic makes the photovoltaic cells used in the solar tiles.

Tesla said it would be installing equipment in the Buffalo factory over the next few months.
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Earlier this year, engineers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who track rivals’ prices online got a rude surprise: the technology they were using to check Amazon.com several million times a day suddenly stopped working.

Losing access to Amazon.com Inc.’s data was no small matter. Like most big retailers, Wal-Mart relies on computer programs that scan prices on competitors’ websites so it can adjust its listings accordingly. A difference of even 50 cents can mean losing a sale.

But a new tactic by Amazon to block these programs — known commonly as robots or bots — thwarted the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer.

Its technology unit, @WalmartLabs, was unable to work around the blockade for weeks, forcing it to retrieve Amazon’s data through a secondary source, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The previously unreported incident offers a case study in how Amazon’s technological prowess is helping it dominate the retail competition.

Now the largest online retailer in the world, Amazon is best known by consumers for its fast delivery, huge product catalog and ambitious moves into areas like original TV programming. But its mastery of the complex, behind-the-scenes technologies that power modern e-commerce is just as important to its success.

Dexterity with bots allows Amazon not only to see what its rivals are doing, but increasingly to keep them in the dark when it undercuts them on price or is quietly charging more.

“Benchmarking against Amazon is going to become hard,” said Guru Hariharan, a former Amazon manager who now sells pricing software to retailers as chief executive of Mountain View, California-based Boomerang Commerce.

A Wal-Mart spokesman declined to discuss the January episode but said the company improves its technology regularly and has multiple tools for tracking items. He said the company offers value not only through pricing but from discounts for in-store pickup and other benefits.

A spokeswoman for Amazon said the company is aware of competitors using bots to check its listings and denied any “campaign” to stop them. “Nothing has changed recently in how we manage bots on our site,” she said. Still, she said, “we prioritize humans over bots as needed.”

Bots can slow down a website, a big motivator for retailers to block them.

Reuters interviewed 21 people familiar with bots and how they are deployed, including current and former Wal-Mart employees, former Amazon employees and outside specialists. Many spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issues publicly.

Most pointed to Amazon’s leadership in the burgeoning bot wars.

The company’s technological edge has been good for its profit margin, and it’s proving a winning formula for investors.

Shares of the internet powerhouse have risen about 15-fold since the market’s bottom in March 2009, while the S&P 500 has more than tripled in value. Amazon hit $100 billion in annual sales in 2015 — faster than any company in history, it said.

Brave new world

Bot-driven pricing has represented a massive change for the retail industry since Amazon helped pioneer the practice more than a decade ago.

Traditionally, brick-and-mortar stores changed prices no more than weekly because of the time and expense needed to swap labels by hand.

In the world of e-commerce, though, retailers update prices with ease, sometimes multiple times a day, helped by algorithms that consider inventory levels, sales forecasts and rivals’ pricing data.

To stay in the game, companies such as online wholesaler Boxed, based in New York, depend on a variety of methods including bots to ensure they do not lag others’ price moves for even 20 minutes.

“That’s like a lifetime during Christmas,” said Chief Executive Chieh Huang, whose company sells bulk staples like toilet paper and pet food. “If we’re not decently priced, we’ll see it almost immediately” in sales declines.

Disguised as humans

Using bots to view massive amounts of data on public websites — a process known as crawling or scraping — has many purposes. Alphabet Inc.’s Google, for example, constantly crawls the Web to gather information for its search engine results and to sell ads.

In e-commerce, though, the use of bots has developed into a cat-and-mouse game. Companies try to thwart the practice on their own websites while aiming to penetrate their competitors’ defenses. Third-party services abound to help less-savvy retailers.

To protect data from rivals, some retail websites use what’s known as a “CAPTCHA” — typically a distorted string of letters and numbers that humans can read but most bots can’t. Amazon shies away from the practice because it annoys some customers.

For merchants seeking to evade such defenses, disguising their computer programs as real shoppers is key. Some pricing technology experts have programmed computer cursors to meander through a Web page in the way a person might, instead of going directly to the prized data. Another technique is to use multiple computer addresses so that retailers cannot track a barrage of clicks to a single source.

“It is an arms race,” said Keith Anderson, a senior vice president at e-commerce analytics firm Profitero, based in Ireland. “Every week or every month, there’s some new approach from both sides.”

Amazon’s maneuver that halted Wal-Mart in January took aim at a specialized Web browser called PhantomJS. Unlike, say, Internet Explorer, this browser is designed specifically for programmers — a telltale clue that its users are not typical shoppers. Amazon put up a digital curtain to hide its listings from PhantomJS users, according to three people familiar with the situation.

It was unclear how the move, which was not aimed at Wal-Mart in particular, affected other companies.

Tests conducted in recent weeks for Reuters show that among major U.S. retail chains, Amazon had by far the most sophisticated bot detection in place, both for its home page and for two popular items selected by Reuters because they change price frequently — a De’Longhi coffee maker and a Logitech webcam.

The tests were run by San Francisco-based Distil Networks, which sells anti-bot tools. In one of the tests, Distil programmed bots to hit each retailer’s website 3,000 times, but slowly enough to mimic a person clicking through listings. This tricked most retail behemoths, but not Amazon.

Blocked bots would not have seen, for instance, that Amazon’s price for the De’Longhi espresso machine changed four times in a single 24-hour period starting on the morning of April 25, according to price tracking website camelcamelcamel.com. During that time, the price swung by more than 10 percent, from a low of $80.06 to $88.16.

Swarming with bots

Despite Amazon’s capabilities, the sheer volume of crawling on its site is staggering. At times, as many as 80 percent of the clicks on Amazon product listings have been from bots, people familiar with the matter say, compared with just a third or more of the traffic on other large sites.

In addition to rivals seeking price data, that traffic includes bots from university researchers studying competition, search engines, advertising services and even fraudsters trying to break into Amazon accounts.

For Wal-Mart, a small group in Silicon Valley directs its automated pricing strategy while dozens of engineers in India and around the world handle the code, current and former Wal-Mart employees said.

Amazon had about 40 engineers who would covertly extract and organize rivals’ data with bots as of several years ago, one of the people interviewed said. Amazon did not discuss the size or structure of its teams working with bots.

According to one U.S. patent application, Amazon is working on encryption technology that would force bots, but not humans, to solve a complicated algorithm to gain access to its Web pages.

“Amazon has both the competency to detect bot traffic and the wherewithal to do something about it,” said Scott Jacobson, a former Amazon manager and now managing director of Madrona Venture Group. That “isn’t the case for most retailers.”

 
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