India’s Parliament on Wednesday approved a bill providing a 10 percent quota in government jobs for the poor members of upper castes who have been excluded from existing quotas for low-ranking castes.

The Congress party and other opposition parties supported the legislation, but criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for getting it approved just months before the national elections, in an effort the opposition claimed was aimed at winning votes.

The Modi government surprised the opposition by unexpectedly moving the bill in the lower house of Parliament on Tuesday and getting it approved. The upper house adopted it by sitting late into night on Wednesday during the final day of the current parliamentary session. The bill now only needs the approval of India’s president, a formality, to become law.

Discrimination under the caste system was outlawed soon after India’s independence from Britain in 1947. But the system’s influence remains strong and the government has sought to redress discrimination against those on the lower rungs by setting up quotas for government jobs and university spots.

Until now, 49.5 percent of government jobs and places in state-funded educational institutions were allocated to the lower castes.

The economically poor among higher castes have been clamoring for a similar quota to improve the quality of their lives.

Modi on Wednesday hailed the passage of the bill in Parliament in a tweet as a way for younger, economically disadvantaged Indians from higher castes “to showcase their prowess and contribute toward India’s transformation.”

Opposition lawmakers, including D. Raja of the Communist Party of India and Satish Mishra of the Bahujan Samaj Party, a party representing the lower castes, said the government provided the job quota to upper caste Indians to save embarrassment from its failure to create 2 millions jobs every year as promised after coming to power in 2014.

“Job quotas are being provided as a substitute for jobs,” said Ashish Nandy, a well-known political commentator.

The new law will face a test in India’s Supreme Court, which has put a 50 per cent cap on job quotas in the country based on social and educational backwardness.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the job quota for upper castes would not be affected by any court restrictions because it was introduced because of an economic need.

Critics have said the lower castes should be strengthened through education rather than quotas because many jobs and university spots that have been reserved for them remain empty.

 
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Deep in a provincial region of northwestern Turkey, it looks like a mirage — hundreds of luxury houses built in neat rows, their pointed towers somewhere between French chateau and Disney castle.

Meant to provide luxurious accommodations for foreign buyers, the houses are however standing empty in what is anything but a fairy tale for their investors.

The ambitious development has been hit by regional turmoil as well as the slump in the Turkish construction industry — a key sector — as the country’s economy heads towards what could be a hard landing in an intensifying downturn.

After a long period of solid growth, Turkey’s economy contracted 1.1 percent in the third quarter, and many economists expect it will enter into recession this year.

The country has been hit by high inflation and a currency crisis in August. The lira lost 28 percent of its value against the dollar in 2018 and markets are still unconvinced by the readiness of the government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to tackle underlying economic issues.

The villas close to the town center of Mudurnu in the Bolu region are intended to resemble European architecture and are part of the Sarot Group’s Burj Al Babas project.

But the development of 732 villas and a shopping center — which began in 2014 — is now in limbo as Sarot Group has sought bankruptcy protection.

It is one of hundreds of Turkish companies that have done so as they seek cover from creditors and to restructure their debts.

Driving force 

Sarot Group filed for bankruptcy protection after some of their Gulf customers could not pay for the villas they had bought as part of the $200 million (175 million euros) project, Sarot’s deputy chairman, Mezher Yerdelen, said.

So far, $100 million has been spent on the project.

“Some of the sales had to be cancelled,” Yerdelen told AFP, after the company sold 351 villas to Arab investors.

The villas are worth between $400,000 and $500,000 each. They were designed with the Gulf buyers in mind, architect Yalcin Kocacalikoglu said.

While the drop in oil prices hurt its Gulf customers, Sarot Group was also hit by “the negative impact of the economic fluctuations on construction costs” in Turkey, Yerdelen said.

Despite a legal battle over its bankruptcy status, Yerdelen said the company can continue making sales and that he hopes the project will be inaugurated in October 2019.

Yet the Al Babas project is hardly alone. Unfinished and empty housing projects are strewn across the country, testimony to the trouble the construction sector, and the wider economy, now finds itself in. 

The construction sector has been a driving force of the Turkish economy under Erdogan, who has overseen growth consistently above the global average since he came to power in 2003.

But the sector contracted 5.3 percent on-year in the third quarter of 2018.

“Three out of four companies seeking bankruptcy protection or bankruptcy are construction companies,” said Alper Duman, associate professor at Izmir University of Economics.

Turkey’s ‘locomotive’

“Whether we call it a construction bubble or a housing bubble, there is a bubble in Turkey,” he said.

He pointed to unsold housing stock as the main indicator of this, with data showing in that over the past 16 years 10.5 million apartments have been built but only eight million have been approved for use. 

“There is a high risk this bubble will burst,” he said.

Trade Minister Ruhsar Pekcan said in mid-December that 846 companies had applied for bankruptcy protection since March 2018 but opposition daily Sozcu claimed in October the figure was more than 3,000.

Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers head Cemal Gokce expressed pessimism, predicting “more bankruptcy protection applications, bankruptcies” among construction companies.

He said too many homes have been built in Turkey.

And most are not luxury villas like Burj Al Babas with its style reminiscent of the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disney theme parks, but simple apartments and homes for ordinary Turks.

The construction confidence index of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) fell 2.1 percent in December to 55.4, after 56.6 in the previous month. Anything below 100 indicates a pessimistic outlook.

However, Kerim Alain Bertrand, who previously headed up a firm that provided and analyzed data on Turkey’s real estate market, said recently he was more optimistic, partly due to the country’s growing population.

“The construction sector is this country’s locomotive sector,” he said. 

While there will be a consolidation in the sector, it will “continue to be kept alive” by the young population, he added.

The median age of the population in Turkey was 31.7 in 2017, according to TurkStat, compared to 42.8 in the European Union.
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Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel replaced his transport and finance ministers this week in his first Cabinet reshuffle since forming his own government in July and amid a cash crunch and growing discontent with the island’s transport sector.

Cuban state media said Wednesday that Transport Minister Adel Yzquierdo, 73, and Finance Minister Lina Pedraza, 63, had been “freed from their roles” without explaining why, adding they would be given “other responsibilities.”

Both had been originally been named by former President Raul Castro during his 10-year mandate and reconfirmed in their roles by Diaz-Canel, who took office from the 87-year-old in April.

They will be replaced by the respective vice ministers in each ministry, Eduardo Rodriguez, 52, and Meisi Bolanos, 48.

​Public transport mess

Some Cubans questioned the logic of promoting those who had also overseen strategies they deemed had failed.

Transport is one of the top complaints of Cubans living in the capital, with new regulations vastly reducing the number of private collective taxis on the road that had supplemented the creaking public transport system.

Many Cubans say they are struggling to get around and it is taking them far longer and costing more to do so.

“Transport is awful,” said Maritza Carrion, waiting for a bus in the business district of Vedado.

In one of his last public appearances, Yzquierdo announced on state television in December that Cuba was importing hundreds of microbuses and buses to alleviate the transport shortage.

The government has periodically done so in the past, only partly resolving the chronic transport shortage for a short while.

​National airline

Meanwhile Cuba’s national airline Cubana has had to slash flights over the last year because of a lack of planes that it blamed partly on the decades-old U.S. trade embargo.

It also faced a plane crash that killed 112, its deadliest in nearly 30 years, just weeks after Diaz-Canel took office.

“What we need are real solutions because it’s been nearly 60 years that we’ve been behind on transport,” said Yadier Osorio, 41. “The government still hasn’t found a solution.”

Under the article on state-run website Cuba debate about the Cabinet changes, many readers called for greater transparency over such decisions. Growing internet access is fostering greater public debate online and accountability from officials.
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Young people from around the world who provided low-cost child care for American families will share in a proposed $65.5 million settlement of a lawsuit brought by a dozen former au pairs against the companies that bring the workers to the United States. 

Nearly 100,000 au pairs, mostly women, who worked in American homes over the past decade will be entitled to payment under the proposed settlement filed in Denver federal court Wednesday, a month before the case brought by a dozen former au pairs from Colombia, Australia, Germany, South Africa and Mexico was set to go to trial.  

They claimed 15 companies authorized to bring au pairs to the United States colluded to keep their wages low, ignoring overtime and state minimum wage laws and treating the federal minimum wage for au pairs as a maximum amount they can earn. In some cases, the lawsuit said, families pushed the limits of their duties, requiring au pairs to do things like feed backyard chickens, help families move and do gardening, and not allowing them to eat with the family. 

“This settlement, the hard-fought victory of our clients who fought for years on behalf of about 100,000 fellow au pairs, will be perhaps the largest settlement ever on behalf of minimum wage workers and will finally give au pairs the opportunity to seek higher wages and better working conditions,” said David Seligman, director of Denver-based Towards Justice, which filed the lawsuit in 2014. It was later litigated by New York-based firm Boies Schiller Flexner. 

Companies deny wrongdoing 

Under the settlement, which still must be approved by a judge, the companies agreed to make sure au pairs are informed about their legal rights in the future, but they denied any wrongdoing. 

Lawyers now need to track down au pairs who came to the U.S. on J-1 visas between Jan. 1, 2009, and Oct. 28, 2018, and have set up a website to help spread the word about the deal. 

While sometimes confused with nannies, au pairs have much less experience and earn a lot less.   

The program, overseen by the U.S. State Department, was launched as a cultural exchange program in 1986 as demand for child care grew. At first there were only 3,000 participants as part of a pilot, but last year there were over 20,000. The program occupies a gray area between work and an international relations effort, and critics say that makes it ripe for abuse.  

The sponsors said they were just following regulations from the State Department — which last adjusted au pair pay to $195.75 for a 45-hour work week in 2009 after the federal minimum wage rose to $7.25. Their hourly wage has actually been $4.25 though: Families were told to deduct 40 percent of their pay to cover the room and board they’re required to provide the au pairs, a practice challenged by the lawsuit. 

Too costly

In court filings, the sponsors argued requiring families to pay more in states with higher minimum wages would destroy the program by making au pairs unaffordable, hurting foreign policy goals. 

According to a 2016 report on U.S. child care by the Washington-based think tank New America, the average cost of full-time care in a child care center for children up to 4 years old is $9,589 a year for each child, more than the average cost of in-state college tuition. The average cost of full-time care at home with a nanny was $28,353 — 53 percent of the median U.S. household income and nearly three times the annual pay for an au pair.   

The practice of having au pairs — French for “on par with” — developed in postwar Europe, where young people lived with families in other countries to learn a language in exchange for helping with child care and some housework. In Europe, au pairs generally are limited to working 30 hours a week. 

Sarah Azuela said the ad she saw her final year of college in Mexico promised coming to the United States to work as an au pair would be the best year of her life, full of travel, meeting new people and becoming part of an American family. But she says what grew into a two-year stay turned out to be the worst time of her life, with her feeling more like a slave subject to the whims of her host families than a member of the household.  

At her last placement — working for a single mother in Virginia — Azuela said that in addition to helping care for three children, she cooked all the meals, cleaned, planted flowers and packed the family’s belongings and helped move them twice, first to an interim apartment and then to a permanent home. 

Positives

Nevertheless, Azuela was grateful her host mother gave her time to study for a business certificate at a university, which led her to extend her stay, and for not yelling or threatening to hit her as a previous host had done. 

“I don’t wish anyone to experience anything like this,” Azuela, who is from Hermosillo, Mexico, but now lives in Wisconsin, said about why she joined in the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, a related case challenging whether Massachusetts had the right to protect au pairs in its domestic workers’ bill of rights, since they are regulated by the federal government, is pending in federal appeals court. The State Department said in a court filing in September that federal law requires only that au pairs are paid the federal minimum wage, arguing federal law specifically states when other international guest workers, like camp counselors and teachers, are entitled to make more.  
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Гривня продовжує падіння до євро і долара, свідчать дані на сайті Національного банку України.

На 10 січня офіційна вартість одного долара встановлена на рівні 28 гривень 12 копійок, що на 10 копійок більше, ніж попереднього дня.

Євро зріс на 16 копійок – до 32 гривень 21 копійки.
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У 2018 році інфляція на споживчому ринку становила 9,8%, свідчать дані на сайті Державної служби статистики України.

За цією інформацією, у 2018 році базова інфляція становила 8,7%.

У Національному банку України прогнозували, що у 2018 році інфляція складе понад 8%.

За даними Держстату, у 2017 році споживча інфляція становила 13,7%.

Індекс споживчих цін є показником зміни в часі цін і тарифів на товари та послуги, які купує населення для невиробничого споживання.

Базовий індекс споживчих цін показує стійку динаміку цін з мінімізацією короткострокових нерівномірних змін цін, викликаних шоками пропозиції та адміністративним регулюванням.
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«Збільшити міжнародні резерви вдалося насамперед завдяки отриманню Україною зовнішнього фінансування та купівлі НБУ надлишку валюти на міжбанківському ринку»
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Світовий банк знизив прогноз зростання темпів світової економіки у 2019 році з 3% до 2,9%. Тенденція зачепить і регіон Східної Європи, в тому числі й Україну.

В опублікованому 8 січня огляді «Перспективи розвитку світової економіки» Світовий банк відзначає зниження обсягів міжнародної торгівлі, скорочення інвестицій і підвищену напруженість у торговельних відносинах.

«Уповільнення або скасування структурних реформ в Азербайджані, Вірменії, Білорусі, Туреччині та Україні викличе зростання політичної невизначеності, а посилення напруженості навколо Сирії або України здатне привести до запровадження нових санкцій і підриву довіри до регіону», – йдеться в доповіді.

Світовий банк публікує доповідь «Перспективи світової економіки» двічі на рік, у січні і в червні. Експерти аналізують ключові аспекти глобальної макроекономічної кон’юнктури і їхній вплив на держави-члени організації.
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Авдіївський коксохімічний завод – одне з підприємств Донецької області, яке постраждало найбільше від бойових дій на сході України
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China approved five genetically modified (GM) crops for import on Tuesday, the first in about 18 months in a move that could boost its overseas grains purchases and ease pressure from the United States to open its markets to more farm goods.

The United States is the world’s biggest producer of GM crops, while China is the top importer of GM soybeans and canola.

U.S. farmers and global seed companies have long complained about Beijing’s slow and unpredictable process for approving GM crops for import, stoking trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

The approvals, announced on the agriculture ministry’s website, were granted while a U.S. trade delegation is meeting with its counterparts in the Chinese capital this week.

“It’s a goodwill gesture towards the resolution of the trade issue,” said a China representative of a U.S. agricultural industry association.

“It’s been in the system for a long time but they chose today to release this good news,” he added, declining to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The approved products included DowDuPont Inc.’s DP4114 Qrome corn and DAS-44406-6 soybean, known as Enlist E3, as well as the SYHT0H2 soybean developed by Bayer CropScience and Syngenta but now held by German chemical company BASF.

The other two newly approved products – BASF’s RF3 canola and Bayer-owned Monsanto’s glyphosate-tolerant MON 88302 canola – had been waiting six years for permission.

The approvals came as farmers in North America were deciding which seeds to plant this spring. China before the trade war bought some 60 percent of U.S. soybeans and U.S. farmers do not widely plant varieties it has not approved.

The newly approved canola will allow farmers in Canada to boost production, according to Jim Everson, president of industry group the Canola Council.

“The industry expects growers will produce $400 million more canola every year using the same amount of land – a step-change for canola productivity,” Everson said in a statement.

Five other products known to be seeking approvals were not given the green light, including two GM alfalfa products developed by Monsanto and two DowDuPont soybean traits.

Corteva Agriscience, the agriculture unit of DowDuPont, said, “We are happy to see the regulatory approval of our seed traits progressing in China.”

Bayer said in a statement it welcomed the news but noted “many of these products were stuck in China’s regulatory process for many years and others were not granted approvals, underscoring the need for continued improvement in China’s regulatory processes.”

Chinese officials met their U.S. counterparts in Beijing on Monday for the first face-to-face talks since U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed in December to a 90-day truce in a trade war that has roiled global markets.

China had not approved any GM crops for import since July 2017, when it cleared two products following high-level talks with Washington. It also approved two products in June 2017.

China’s scientific advisory board on GM crops met in June but did not give the go-ahead for imports of any products.

“China’s approval of the new GMO products is paving the way for China to import large volumes of U.S. soybeans in the future. It is a positive signal,” said Li Qiang, chief analyst with Shanghai JC Intelligence Co. Ltd.

The truce in the Sino-U.S. trade war prompted a resumption of U.S. soybean purchases. Buying had slumped after China imposed a 25 percent import duty on U.S. shipments of oilseed on July 6 in response to U.S. tariffs.

Only a Fraction

China does not allow the planting of genetically modified food crops, but imports of GM crops such as soybeans and corn for animal feed are fine.

The country, the world’s biggest soybean consumer, has so far purchased only about 5 million tons of the 2018 U.S. soy harvest, a fraction of its typical purchases.

The United States has demanded that China change its GM crop import application process to make it more transparent, timely and based on scientific methods.

The latest approvals should not be taken as a sign that China is conceding to those demands, said a China-based industry source, who also asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“It’s another piece of evidence that China’s approval process is not entirely scientific but political,” said the source, who also believed the approvals were timed for the trade visit.

The ministry also announced on Tuesday the extension of import approvals for 26 other GM crops by a further three years.
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Venezuela’s opposition-run congress on Tuesday issued a resolution calling deals between state-run oil company PDVSA and U.S. and French companies announced this week illegal, since they had not been sent to lawmakers for approval.

The body said the oilfield deals with France’s Maurel & Prom and little-known U.S. company Erepla violated article 150 of Venezuela’s constitution, which requires that contracts signed between the state and foreign companies be approved by the National Assembly, as Venezuela’s congress is known. 

“They are giving concessions that violate the law,” said lawmaker Jorge Millan, mentioning the two contracts.

Congress, largely stripped of its power since the opposition took it over in 2016, is unlikely to be able block the deals from going forward. But the rejection could create legal complications under a future government.

Maduro is set to be inaugurated for his second consecutive term on Thursday following a May vote considered a sham by the domestic opposition and many foreign governments. A regional bloc of Latin American countries last week called on Maduro, a protege of the late Hugo Chavez, not to take office.

The deals are part of Maduro’s effort to reverse a sharp decline in the OPEC nation’s crude output that has crippled its economy. Erepla said it would invest up to $500 million in three fields, while Maurel & Prom said it would invest up to $400 million for a 40 percent stake in an oilfield joint venture.

PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment. Maurel & Prom did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of normal business hours in France.

A spokesman for Erepla, registered in Delaware in November and part-owned by a prominent Florida Republican donor and shipping magnate, said Venezuela’s hydrocarbons law “allows PDVSA to contract with companies like Erepla to execute field services without any additional approvals required.”

Referring to the Erepla deal during the congressional session earlier on Tuesday, Millan said that while PDVSA referred to the agreement as an oilfield service contract, “the company will be conducting oil exploration and production activities.”

Maurel & Prom Chief Executive Michel Hochard said the company would act “in accordance with the instructions given” by Maduro and Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo, according to a statement attributed to him in a PDVSA press release.

 
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The World Bank is downgrading its outlook for the global economy this year, citing rising trade tension, weakening manufacturing activity and growing financial stress in emerging-market countries.

In a report titled “Darkening Skies,” the anti-poverty agency said Tuesday that it expects the world economy to grow 2.9 percent in 2019, down from the 3 percent it forecast back in June. It would be the second straight year of slowing growth: The global economy expanded 3 percent last year and 3.1 percent in 2017.

‘Risks are rising’

“Global growth is slowing, and the risks are rising,” Ayhan Kose, the World Bank economist who oversees forecasts, said in an interview. “In 2017, the global economy was pretty much firing on all cylinders. In 2018, the engines started sputtering.”

The bank left its forecast for the U.S. economy unchanged at 2.5 percent this year, down from 2.9 percent in 2018. It predicts 1.6 percent growth for the 19 countries that use the euro currency, down from 1.9 percent last year; and 6.2 percent growth for China, the world’s second-biggest economy, versus 6.5 percent in 2018.

The bank upgraded expectations for the Japanese economy, lifting its growth forecast to 0.9 percent, up from 0.8 percent in 2018.

President Donald Trump, declaring that years of U.S. support for free trade had cost America jobs, last year slapped import taxes on foreign dishwashers, solar panels, steel, aluminum and $250 billion in Chinese products. Other countries retaliated with tariffs of their own in disputes that have yet to be resolved.

The exchange of tariffs is taking a toll on world trade. The bank predicts that the growth of world trade will slow to 3.6 percent this year from 3.8 percent in 2018 and 5.4 percent in 2017. Slowing trade is hurting manufacturers around the world.

Rising interest rates

Rising interest rates are also pinching emerging-market governments and companies that borrowed heavily when rates were ultra-low in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 Great Recession. As the debts roll over, those borrowers have to refinance at higher rates. A rising dollar is also making things harder for emerging-market borrowers who took out loans denominated in the U.S. currency.

“Now debt service is eating into government revenues, making it more difficult (for governments) to fund essential social services,” said World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva, who will replace bank president Jim Yong Kim on an interim basis when he leaves at the end of January.

The bank slashed its forecast for 2019 growth for Turkey, Argentina, Iran and Pakistan, among others.
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Гривня знецінилася на 32 копійки стосовно долара, свідчать дані на сайті Національного банку України.

На 9 січня курс встановлений на рівні 28 гривень 2 копійок за долар.

Євро подорожчав на 47 копійок – до 32 гривень 5 копійок.
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Стихійні лиха у 2018 році завдали збитків на 160 мільярдів доларів США і призвели до загибелі близько 10 400 людей – такі висновки дослідження однієї з найбільших компаній із перестрахування в світі Munich RE. Це ставить 2018 рік на четверте місце за збитковістю для страхувальних компаній за період з 1980 року.

Як зазначають дослідники, прогнози на початку 2018 року не передбачали такої кількості катаклізмів, які припали на другу його половину.

Всього близько 29 стихійних лих протягом року завдали збитків на мільярд доларів або більше протягом року. Серед них згадують урагани Майкл і Флоренс біля південно-східного узбережжя Сполучених Штатів, тайфуни Джебі, Мангкут і Трамі в Азії й низку землетрусів і цунамі в Індонезії, які коштували життя понад трьом тисячам людей.

«На жаль, 10 400 людей по всьому світу загинули внаслідок природніх катастроф минулого року. Це ставить 2018-й в один ряд із 2016-м, 2014-м, 2000-м та ще трьома роками у 1980-х, коли кількість жертв становила близько 10 тисяч», – йдеться у звіті.

Читайте також: Цунамі в Індонезії: кількість загиблих зросла до 429​

Дослідники звертають увагу зокрема на те, що повені спричинили 35% смертей, хоча зазвичай цей показник становить 14%. Причину вбачають у масштабних повенях в Азії й Африці.

Зі 160 мільярдів доларів, втрачених внаслідок стихійних лих, 60 мільярдів покрило страхування. У США страхувальники компенсували 68% збитків, в Азії – 23%, у Європі – 8%. Ще 1% складають страхові виплати у Південній Америці, Африці, Австралії й Океанії.
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