The quiz games and ring tosses at factories around Vietnam are more than just amusement; charity workers are using them in their efforts against human trafficking, with the support of foreign governments and corporations.

Factory workers play these games as part of training workshops to raise awareness about trafficking, held by the nonprofit Pacific Links Foundation. The organization partners with multinational companies that buy products from manufacturers in Vietnam, such as Walmart and the makers of Abercrombie & Fitch, Express and Victoria’s Secret.

In the workshops, Vietnamese learn about the tactics of traffickers who target them in industrial parks. It’s a heavy topic, though the instructors bring some levity with the entertainment, which can include prizes for participants who answer quiz questions.

“Through our work with survivors, we’ve seen a growing trend of victims being recruited from industrial zones,” Pacific Links co-founder Diep Vuong said in explaining the foundation’s focus on young people and factory workers, who are susceptible to those who offer dubious work abroad.

She said human trafficking is “stealing the future away from our youth and workers.”

Social responsibility

Victims can be misled by the promise of tantalizing jobs in foreign countries, only to arrive and find that wages are lower than were advertised, passports are confiscated, or they are in insurmountable debt because of travel and agent fees, anti-trafficking activists say.

For companies, participation in campaigns like this has become one way to meet their corporate social responsibility goals.

“Vietnam is a very important sourcing market,” Walmart executive vice president for global leverage Scott Price said at a press conference with Pacific Links Friday. He added, “We ultimately want to be in a place where we are able to prevent forced labor in the first place.”

Walmart is supporting the Pacific Links workshops, which are collectively known as the “FACT” program and were launched in March. Besides contributing money and volunteers, the company sponsors related projects like tuition and bicycles donated to Vietnamese girls to help them stay in school, especially for rural families who sometimes prioritize boys when they cannot afford to educate all their children.

Success stories

Nguyen Le Anh Thu is one of the beneficiaries of these scholarships. She described her earlier struggles, when making a living, rather than school, was the main concern in her family. For $1 or $2 a day, she would help her mother peel fruit for sale and save money for her grandmother’s medication.

“I thought, education is the only way I can get out of poverty,” said Anh Thu, who wins over strangers with her shy pauses and frequent smiles as she practices the English she has now learned.

The idea is to reach out to vulnerable populations before human traffickers do and work with them to achieve more economic stability so that they have less incentive to take illegal jobs abroad.

“Prevention measures, such as monitoring labor recruitment programs, community resilience and economic empowerment, and awareness-raising campaigns, are hugely important to help educate at-risk communities and strengthen their protections against future cases,” said U.S. consul general Mary Tarnowka, whose office in Ho Chi Minh City hosted the conference.

Pacific Links said it works on preventive measures, such as increasing financial literacy so families manage their household budgets consistently, as well as reactive measures, such as sheltering and reintegrating trafficking victims who return to Vietnam. According to the foundation, a worrying aspect of the problem is that many human traffickers used to be victims themselves, meaning they go on to bring more people into the same labor trap that they faced.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that Janet Yellen has not said yet whether she plans to remain on the Federal Reserve board when her term as chair ends in February, but the administration is moving ahead with filling other vacancies.

There are three vacancies on the seven-member Fed board and there could be a fourth if Yellen decides to leave. Her term as a board member does not end until 2024.

In an interview on Bloomberg TV, Mnuchin said he had breakfast with Yellen on Wednesday from which he came away with the impression that she had not made a decision about her future at the Fed.

Last week, President Donald Trump announced he would nominate Fed board member Jerome Powell as the next Fed chairman, bypassing Yellen.

If Yellen did stay on the board, she would be only the second former chair to do so. Marriner Eccles, whose name is on the Fed’s headquarters in Washington, remained on the board for three years after he was not nominated for another term as chair by Harry Truman in 1948.

Mnuchin said the goal was to fill the vacancies quickly, but the administration did not necessarily see a need to pick someone with a PhD in economics for the vice chair position even though Powell will be the first person to lead the Fed without a degree in economics in nearly four decades.

“I think our priority is that we are going to fill these positions quickly. Our focus was on the chair,” Mnuchin said. “Now that we have resolved that issue, we are already looking at people for these positions. So I am comfortable we will have the jobs filled.”

Before Trump’s announcement last week, Yellen had declined to say what she might do if she was not tapped for a second term.

“I have said that I intend to serve out my term as chair, and that I’m really not going to comment on my intentions beyond that,” she told reporters in September.
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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross plans to completely divest from a shipping company that counts a Russian gas producer with ties to the Kremlin among its major customers.

A commerce department spokesman says Ross plans to sell all his shares of Navigator Holdings. That company ships products from Sibur, a Russian gas producer whose owners include two Russian oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin and a businessman believed to be Putin’s son-in-law.

Details of the Ross stake in Navigator were revealed among the Paradise Papers leak of documents about offshore entities.

Critics have said Ross should not hold the stock given his public office. He has said that he disclosed his stake in reports filed with the government earlier this year and has done nothing wrong.
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The Chinese internet company Tencent has acquired a 10 percent stake in Snap, with the social media company struggling to boost user growth.

Tencent runs the WeChat messaging app, as well as online payment platforms and games. Earlier this year, it bought a 5 percent stake in Tesla Inc.

Snap Inc. is the parent company of Snapchat, a camera app that lets people send short videos and images. The company, based in Venice, California, said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that Tencent bought 145.8 million shares.

Snap revealed Tuesday that its loss tripled to $443.2 million during the third quarter on weak user growth and revenue. The app is getting a redesign to make it easier to use.

Snap faces intense competition from Apple, Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp, and Google’s YouTube.

Shares, which had fallen 20 percent before the opening bell, cut those losses in half on news of the Tencent interest.

It’s been a busy week in cross-Pacific deal making.

With President Donald Trump meeting in China with President Xi Jinping for the first time, U.S. and Chinese companies signed deals valued at around $9 billion.

 
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Національний банк України оскаржує рішення суду, який зобов’язав «Приватбанк» повернути сім’ї Суркісів 1,05 мільярда гривень, 266,2 тисячі доларів і 7,8 тисячі євро.

Як повідомили Радіо Свобода у прес-службі регулятора, НБУ подав касаційну скаргу до Вищого адміністративного суду і просить суд зупинити виконання цього рішення до вирішення спору в касаційній інстанції.

«Ми вважаємо, що суди першої та апеляційної інстанції порушили процесуальне законодавство, проігнорували надані докази у справі та винесли неправосудне рішення. На даний момент вивчається можливість звернутись з цього приводу до Вищої ради правосуддя», – йдеться у заяві НБУ.

За даними ЗМІ, у грудні 2016 року Окружний адмінсуд Києва відкрив провадження за позовом сім’ї Суркісів: Ігоря, Григорія, Рахміль (батько Ігоря й Григорія), Марини (дочка Ігоря), Світлани (дочка Григорія) Суркісів й Поліни Ковалик (дружина Григорія), вони просили скасувати рішення НБУ №105 від 13 грудня 2016 року, яким вони були визнані інсайдерами «Приватбанку».

17 травня Окружний адміністративний суд міста Києва задовольнив позов родини Суркісів щодо оскарження пов’язаності та стягнення коштів з «Приватбанку» загальною сумою в 1,05 мільярда гривень, 266,2 тисячі доларів США і 7,8 тисячі євро. 

Київський апеляційний адміністративний суд 6 листопада відхилив апеляційну скаргу на рішення суду першої інстанції.

У грудні минулого року уряд схвалив рішення націоналізувати «Приватбанк». У Нацбанку наголошують, що під час входження держави в капітал «Приватбанку» кошти пов’язаних з банком осіб були конвертовані у капітал банку (процедура bail-in), тобто ці кошти внесли в капітал банку для зменшення витрат держави на порятунок фінансової установи. 
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Was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move to scrap most currency overnight a year ago a “watershed moment” that helped clean up India’s economy or a “reckless move” that pulled down the world’s fastest-growing economy?  

The contentious debate intensified on the anniversary of the measure as opposition parties held street protests calling it “Black Day”, while the government defended the ban on high value currency as a bold and ethical step to tackle the menace of corruption.

The scrapping of 86 percent of the country’s currency last November led to huge cash shortages for nearly two months.  Millions of ordinary Indians stood in serpentine lines outside banks, ATM’s ran dry, rural areas with limited access to banks faced a massive problem and the cash-dependent informal sector that employs 75 percent of the country’s workforce reeled.  

The government had billed the move as a strike against graft and terrorism, often funded with cash or counterfeit bills.

But critics have slammed it as one of the most disruptive economic measures attempted at a time when the economy was growing at a healthy pace.

Calling it a “reckless” move, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said that “nowhere in the world has any democracy undertaken such a coercive move.”  He said that demonetization had a huge adverse impact on small and medium businesses in the country.

A year afterwards, critics point to data that shows it failed to achieve its objective.  Nearly all the abolished currency made its way back to banks defeating the government’s target of wiping out piles of untaxed bank notes.

Job losses

Estimating that about two million jobs were lost between January and August, the Center for Monitoring of Indian Economy called job losses one of the biggest costs of demonetization.

And as the economy turns sluggish, many of the tens of thousands who were laid off such as hawkers, vegetable sellers and laborers are still struggling to find jobs.

Growth has plunged to its lowest in three years costing India the tag of the world’s fastest growing economy, the economy grew by 5.7 per cent in the April to June quarter.

While the government argues that there were signs of a slowdown even before the ban, economists say that the currency ban contributed to the dip in growth.

However there is optimism that significant benefits will accrue in the long-term as the measure sent a message that the government was serious about curbing corruption.

N.R. Bhanumurthy with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi says the measure will help make the economy more transparent

as the number of people paying taxes and those opting for digital payments increase.  

“A few sectors like construction where cash had a major role, those sectors have taken a major hit, but if that can help in shifting this informal transaction to the formal transaction, going forward that would certainly help.”

That is what the government is highlighting.  Calling the move a “watershed moment”, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said it signifies the government’s resolve to cure the country from the “dreaded disease of black money.”

“Demonetization is not a solution to all problems but it has changed the agenda, ushering in a less cash economy, increasing numbers of tax assesees and squeezing terror funding,” he said.

Others say that these objectives could have been achieved without undertaking a move as drastic as the currency ban.

Political effect

While the economic impact of demonetization will be debated for years to come, the immediate focus is turning to its political impact as two states, including Modi’s home state Gujarat, head into regional polls.

Facing criticism, Modi has vowed to continue his campaign against graft in campaign rallies.

The shock move had strengthened the perception of Modi as a leader who is tough and willing to do what it takes to crack down on pervasive corruption. But whether that image perseveres will be tested during these polls.

Political analyst in New Delhi Ajoy Bose says there has been a rising tide of resentment against Modi in recent months as people cope with the after effects of the currency ban and a recent tax reform measure.

“Demonetization along with GST (Goods and Services Tax) seems to have got certainly a section of the population very agitated and very angry because over the past year things have not been going well for the trading community. We will have to see how this plays out electorally,” says Bose.
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Players line up beside a small kiosk in a poor neighborhood to choose animals in a lottery game that has become a craze in Venezuela even as the oil-rich country suffers a fourth year of brutal recession.

It seems more and more Venezuelans are turning to gambling in their desperation to make ends meet amid the country’s unprecedented economic crisis.

Though more people lose than win overall, the illusion of a payday has become more alluring as Venezuelans endure the world’s highest inflation, shortages of basics from flour to car batteries, and diminished real-term wages. 

Among multiple options from race courses to back-street betting parlors, the roulette-style “Los Animalitos” (or the Little Animals) is currently by far the most popular game on the street.

“Most people I see playing the lottery are unemployed, trying to make a bit extra this way because the payouts are good,” said Veruska Torres, 26, a nurse who recently lost her job in a pharmacy and now plays Animalitos every day.

Torres often plays more than a dozen times daily at the kiosk in Catia, spending between 5,000-10,000 bolivars, but sometimes making up to 50,000 or 60,000 bolivars in winnings – more than a quarter of the monthly minimum wage.

When that happens, she splits the money between buying food and diapers for her baby boy, and re-investing in the lottery.

The Animalitos game, whose results appear on YouTube at scheduled times, is hugely popular because it goes through various rounds, holding people’s interest, and provides more chances to win than most traditional betting options.

The cheapest ticket costs just 100 bolivars – a quarter of a U.S. cent at the black market currency rate, and more than 10 times less than that at the official exchange level.

“It helped me a lot,” said Eduardo Liendo, 63, of a timely win. He recently lost his house and lives in a car in Caracas’ Propatria neighborhood, but had a successful punt on the Animalitos, choosing the dog figure after his own had died.

There is no hard data on betting figures, and the government’s betting regulator did not answer requests from Reuters for information. But those behind Venezuela’s gambling businesses, run by a mixture of private companies and local regional authorities, said trade was booming, with lines longer and busier than ever – because of, not despite, the hard times.

“In a crisis like the one we’re going through, people drink and gamble more to escape from reality,” said psychologist Rosa Garcia from the rural state of Barinas.

The latest scarcity in Venezuela is cash – as authorities cannot produce enough notes to keep up with dizzying inflation – so many bars, shops and betting parlors have quickly switched from cash to electronic transactions to keep money flowing.

That has hit the Caracas hippodrome, where cash is still king. But thousands still go there at weekends, pushing against fences in front of the sand track to cheer their horse on as salsa music booms in the background.
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Inflation in Venezuela’s crisis-hit economy was 826 percent in the 10 months to October and may end 2017 above 1,400 percent, the opposition-controlled National Assembly said Friday.

The government stopped releasing price data more than a year ago but congress has published its own figures since January and they have been close to private economists’ estimates.

As well as the alarming Jan-Oct cumulative rise, the legislative body, which has been sidelined by President Nicolas Maduro’s government, put monthly inflation at 45.5 percent for October, compared with 36.3 percent in September.

Opponents say Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, have wrecked a once-prosperous economy with 18 years of state-led socialist policies from nationalizations to currency controls.

The government says it is victim of an “economic war” including speculation and hoarding by pro-opposition businessmen, combined with U.S. sanctions and the fall in global oil prices from mid-2014. OPEC member Venezuela relies on crude oil for more than 95 percent of its export revenues.

Prices in Venezuela, which has long had one of the highest inflation rates in the world, rose 180.9 percent in 2015 and 274 percent in 2016, according to official figures, although many economists believe the real data was worse.

Announcing the October calculations, opposition lawmaker Angel Alvarado told the National Assembly that inflation next year could reach 12,000 percent.

“This is dramatic, this is Venezuelans’ big problem, it’s what keeps workers awake at night, it’s what’s killing the people with hunger,” Alvarado said.

In a research note this week, New York-based Torino Capital estimated Venezuela’s 2017 inflation would be 1,032 percent.

A central bank spokeswoman could not provide official data.
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Unless emissions can be drastically and quickly curbed, efforts by small island nations to adapt to climate change may be in vain, a leader of a group of small island nations said Tuesday.

Hurricanes that hit the Caribbean this year were like nothing seen before, with Hurricane Irma so strong it was picked up by seismic machines that detect earthquake tremors, officials said.

National plans to curb planet-warming emissions, drawn up ahead of the Paris Agreement, currently add up to a projected temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100 — well above the 1 degree Celsius rise already seen.

That may bring climate impacts that are impossible for small island nations to deal with, their leaders warned Tuesday at the U.N. climate talks in Bonn.

If ambition to curb climate remains modest, “have we created a situation for small island developing states where resilience may not necessarily be … achievable?” asked Janine Felson, Belize ambassador to the United Nations and vice chair of the Alliance of Small Island States.

This year, Hurricane Maria destroyed broad swaths of homes and infrastructure on the Caribbean island of Dominica and stripped its trees bare. Barbuda island was left temporarily uninhabitable when Irma whipped through the region.

“In the Caribbean we’re used to hurricanes, but … for the first time we’ve seen storms turbocharge and supersize in a matter of hours,” she said, speaking on the sidelines of the climate talks.

The storms’ impact was “quite apocalyptic,” and magnified the acute vulnerability of small island states, Felson said.

Even so, countries — who are now clear on the risks — can take steps to protect themselves by building structures better able to weather storms, and ensuring policies take into account the rapidly changing climate, she said.

“If we do not know the extent of our vulnerability, then we will not change,” Felson said.

Bouncing back

In Fiji, resilience to the rapidly changing climate is about communities being able to bounce back, rebuild together and become stronger, said Inia Seruiratu, Fiji minister for agriculture, rural and maritime development, and national disaster management.

When Cyclone Winston struck Fiji last year, it caused $100 million in damage to infrastructure alone. Businesses and people’s livelihoods suffered, women and girls became more vulnerable, and school records were lost, Seruiratu said.

“We need to put in place response measures that will allow vulnerable countries to cope with such severities,” he said.

Small island states also need to look at climate risk insurance schemes, and diversify their economies, he said.

“Our dependence on agriculture and tourism makes our economies particularly vulnerable,” he said.

Felson said that international climate funds — including the Green Climate Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund and the South-South Cooperation Fund on Climate Change — need to better serve the needs of the most vulnerable countries facing climate impacts now.

Countries should also try to tap into the private sector, where much more financing is potentially available, she added.

No fossil fuel

Small island nation campaigners are pushing for countries to immediately phase out existing fossil fuel projects and ban new ones, alongside the overall Paris Agreement commitment to switch to renewable energy by the second half of the century as a way to keep planet-warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“We are fighting for our future. We want our children to be able to live where we live, to learn about our traditions, our culture,” said Billy Cava, Pacific coordinator for 350.org, an activist group, as he described changes in his home territory of New Caledonia.

With new coal mines and coal-fired power plants opening in many parts of the world — including a huge new mine planned in Australia — rapidly phasing out all fossil fuels remains a challenge, experts say.

But the stakes are too high to not push for this change, one campaigner from Fiji said.

“We have to move our plantations inland; we have to build back better after storms,” said Alisi Rabukawaqa-Nacewa, the Fiji program coordinator for the Coral Reef Alliance and a member of Pacific Island Represent campaign group.

“But that is not enough. We cannot keep adapting, moving farther and farther inland. What can we do? Build on the top of the mountain, buildings in the sky? No, we need a phase-out of fossil fuels,” she said.
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The United States and other countries hoping to host the 2026 World Cup should provide government guarantees on visa-free travel plus work permit and tax exemptions for their bids to be accepted, according to documents published by FIFA on Tuesday.

The U.S wants to host the 2026 tournament in a joint bid with Canada and Mexico, who would also have to commit to the government guarantees for their proposal to be accepted by soccer’s world governing body.

Morocco is currently the only other country to have indicated they will bid for the finals, which will be the first to feature an expanded 48-team field.

FIFA wants a visa-free environment, or at least non-discriminatory visa procedures, while the work permit exemptions apply to anyone involved with the World Cup and tax exemptions relate to the soccer governing body and its subsidiaries.

While FIFA has asked for — and received — similar exemptions in the past, their inclusion in a revamped World Cup bid process will mean the current U.S. administration of President Donald Trump will need to sign off on the exemptions.

Sunil Gulati, chairman of the joint U.S, Mexican and Canadian “United Bid Committee” has previously stated that Trump supports the attempt to bring the World Cup to the United States, which hosted the 1994 finals.

FIFA produced new bidding criteria after the organization was heavily criticized over the selection process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals, won by Russia and Qatar respectively.

Formal submission of the completed bids has to be made by March 16, 2018 and FIFA will decide whether to select one of the candidate bids at their congress in June next year, or re-open the process if none of the bids are accepted.

Overview document

Regarding immigration and travel guarantees, the FIFA overview document on government guarantees states: “In order to cover the needs of the respective groups of individuals, the Government is requested to generally establish a visa-free environment or facilitate existing visa procedures for them. Regardless, any visa procedures must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner.”

As a presidential candidate, Trump called for a total ban on Muslims entering the U.S. as a counter-terrorism measure.

The courts have blocked his latest executive action barring entry into the United States for people from several Muslim-majority countries.

The FIFA document adds however that: “It is understood that such ease of access to the Host Country/Host Countries must by no means adversely affect the national immigration and security standards in the Host Country/Host Countries.”

The document also says a bidding nation’s government “is requested to guarantee the issuance of valid work permits unconditionally and without any restriction or discrimination of any kind” to people involved in the preparation, organization and hosting of the tournament.

It adds that the government “must grant a general tax exemption for FIFA, the 2026 FWC (FIFA World Cup) Entity, the 2026 FWC Subsidiaries (if applicable) and any other FIFA subsidiary limited to the period of preparation, delivery and wrap-up of the Competition, commencing on the date of appointment of the Host Country/Host Countries and ending on 31 December 2028.”

FIFA’s “enhanced” bidding guidelines are part of a series of reforms enacted after a corruption crisis in 2015 engulfed the organization. They include ethics, human rights and transparency commitments plus demands on stadium size and infrastructure.

 
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За останні 10 років Росія вперше увійшла в трійку країн за обсягом інвестицій в Україну. Про це свідчать дані Державної служби статистики. 

За даними служби, за період з січня по червень 2017 року в Україні спостерігається приріст прямих іноземних інвестицій – на 1656,5 мільйона доларів США. 

До четвірки найбільших країн-інвесторів в економіку України входять Кіпр ( 9925,4 мільйона доларів або 25,5% в структурі іноземних інвестицій), Нідерланди (16,2%), Росія (11,4%) і Велика Британія (5,5%). 

У звітах Держстату ще на кінець 2016 року Росія перебувала на четвертій сходинці за обсягом інвестицій – її частка складала 10,2%, у 2015 та 2014 роках частка російських інвестицій була трохи більше 6%, у 2010 році – 7%.

В 2007-2009 та 2011 роках Росія взагалі не потрапила до четвірки найбільших країн-інвесторів в економіку України – четверте місце посідала Австрія.

За 10 років Росія вперше посіла третю сходинку за обсягом інвестицій і Україну у 2017 році. З 2008 по сьогодні Кіпр завжди посідав перше місце.

У Держстаті уточнюють, що дані про прямі інвестиції сформовано на підставі інформації юридичних осіб-резидентів та постійних представництв нерезидентів в Україні з урахуванням адміністративних даних Нацбанку про ринкову вартість прямих інвестицій (акцій, майна тощо) підприємств та установ.

Крім того, за даними Держстату, за період з січня по серпень 2017 року Україна зменшила експорт до Росії на 0,3%, натомість імпорт з Росії до України збільшився на 1% в порівнянні з аналогічним періодом 2016 року. 

Після анексії Криму навесні 2014 року на частині Донбасі почався збройний конфлікт. Україна і Захід звинувачують Росію у підтримці бойовиків на Донбасі, Москва ці звинувачення відкидає. Після цього Україна запроваджувала санкції щодо фізичних та юридичних осіб із Росії у зв’язку з агресією Росії проти України і підтримки нею сепаратизму на українських територіях.
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