Торги на російському фондовому ринку відкрилися 9 березня падінням більш як на 2%. Таке зниження, зокрема, демонструє номінований у доларах США індекс РТС.

Причиною втрат стало аналогічне падіння нафтових котирувань у вечірні години 8 березня. Станом на 9:15 за Києвом 9 березня ціна нафти марки Brent на світових біржах становить близько 53 з половиною доларів за барель, хоча від початку березня цей показник намагався закріпитися вище позначки 56 доларів за барель.

Аналітики називають причиною зниження ціни нафти те, що ринок перестав ігнорувати дані, які впродовж багатьох тижнів надходили зі США. Нафтовидобувники зі сланцевих покладів постійно збільшують кількість активних свердловин, а запаси нафти та нафтопродуктів на найбільшому світовому ринку майже невпинно зростають.

За прогнозами аналітиків Citigroup, обсяг видобутку сирої нафти в США до четвертого кварталу 2017 року виросте на 1 мільйон барелів на добу порівняно з аналогічним періодом торік. Крім того, капітальні витрати в сланцевій індустрії і в цілому в нафтовому секторі Північної Америки зростуть у 2017-му на 80% і 45% відповідно.
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On Pingtung jail’s sunlit roof, prisoner No. 24 has a view of a brighter future.

Ex-cop Chen, serving time for bribery, is learning how to install solar panels in a program that’s part of Taiwan’s shimmering vision of a future without nuclear power.

The 48-year-old is working on a project that has seen the southern Taiwan prison become the first to send solar power into the island’s electricity grid. 

“I should be out in two-three years,” said Chen, whose full name can’t be disclosed under prison rules, “this should help (in finding a future job).”

Things are looking up for Chen, selected for the solar team on good behavior. But with a capacity of 1.8 megawatts, enough to supply power to 639 average Taiwanese households for a year, the drop-in-the-ocean Pingtung project highlights the towering scale of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s pledge to make the island nuclear-free by 2025.

Nuclear accounts for around 14 percent of Taiwan’s total electricity generation. Renewable sources, including solar, wind and hydro, together account for less than 5 percent, leaving the 2025 goal of having renewables, primarily solar, account for a fifth of electricity generation by 2025 looking like a mirage.

Not a main power source

At Pingtung prison, where temperatures outside can peak around 33 degrees Celsius in summer, the chief of project manager Taichung-based Lixma Tech Co. said the arithmetic was simple: It’s not possible for renewables, dependent on weather conditions, to be a main supply source.

“Renewable energy can reduce and replace a lot of traditional power generation, coal or nuclear power, only during peak electricity consumption periods,” said Lixma’s Chief Executive, Thomas Hsu.

With plentiful sunshine at its disposal, Taiwan has certainly made progress in expanding solar energy in recent years. From current capacity of about 1,061 megawatts, Taipei is targeting about double that amount by mid-2018, with other jails among those considering solar projects, Pingtung prison officials said.

But to match official government targets of having solar power account for 73 percent of total renewable energy capacity by 2025, Taiwan would need nearly 20 times’ current solar power capacity within nine years — about 20,000 megawatts. That kind of power could mean panels taking up around 25,000 hectares of space on the island — nearly the size of capital Taipei.

Roadblocks vs consensus

While Pingtung sees Taiwan join the ranks of countries from the United States to Brazil and South Africa in developing solar prison projects, the island will have to resolve numerous serious roadblocks if it’s to implement the massive rollout of renewables it needs to meet its goals, experts and industry insiders say.

Problems in grid transmission for renewable energy, outdated regulations governing a power industry long dominated by state monopoly Taiwan Power Co., known as Taipower, environmental concerns and rival interests among government agencies and local communities are among issues to be overcome.

“The biggest uncertainty is how to get consensus among the various stakeholders,” said Laurence Li, head of the government’s Renewable Energy Project Office in Taipei, who says private sector players are eager to participate.

While a key player in encouraging renewables projects like the Pingtung prison, Taipower is also the principal operator of Taiwan’s nuclear energy industry, as well as coal and liquefied natural gas plants.

Financing development

At Pingtung prison, Lixma shoulders all costs and says it will receive around T$9 million ($292,000) a year from Taipower for the solar power from the prison. Lixma CEO Hsu said the firm won’t break even on the project until the ninth year of its 20-year contract with the prison and Taipower.

Better known in Taiwan for the aged soy sauce its inmates have been making for decades, Pingtung prison is content to offer its 10,000 square meters of roof space for the 6,000 installed panels for the advancement of renewables.

“We are primarily a resource for absorbing solar energy,” said vice warden Lin Cheng-rong. “It is the companies with technical capabilities who invest and set up the solar panels and who sell the solar energy to Taipower,” Lin said.

Part of the central government’s corrections agency, the prison can’t keep revenue from the solar energy it is generating, or even directly use the power itself — before lights-out at 9 p.m., its bulbs run on electricity from the Taipower grid.

For inmate Chen, each night brings release and the day he no longer needs his No. 24 prison vest a step closer. Once the solar panel installation is complete, he’ll return to tending crops on prison grounds as part of his regular prison life, but with rooftop views still firmly on his mind.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Wednesday that substantial negotiations to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement likely will not get started until the latter part of this year and could take a year to complete.

Ross, speaking to Bloomberg Television, said U.S. legal notification requirements with partners Mexico and Canada create some built-in delays to the start of substantial discussions.

“You’re talking probably the latter part of this year before the real negotiations get underway,” Ross said.

NAFTA renegotiation ‘complex’

The 79-year-old billionaire investor, who was sworn into his job just last week, said he hoped the renegotiations could be completed within a year, but it was unclear how long it would take to see benefits like a smaller U.S. trade deficit with Mexico.

He said the NAFTA renegotiation would be “complex,” with more than 20 chapters in the 23-year-old agreement that needed to be modernized, along with new chapters such as those covering the digital economy and other sectors that did not exist in the early 1990s.

Without a U.S. Trade Representative in office, Ross is taking the lead on trade negotiation issues in the early weeks of the Trump administration.

Agreement needs to be updated

In Detroit last week, Mexican economy minister Ildefonso Guajardo said he was hopeful that Mexico, Canada and the United States could begin discussions in June to “modernize” NAFTA, stressing that Mexico would not accept tariffs.

A less belligerent U.S. tone towards Mexican trade in recent weeks has lifted the Mexican peso from historic lows of about 22 to the dollar in January to about 19.6.

But Ross said on Wednesday that Mexico would have to make some  concessions to the United States.

Trump to study House proposal

President Donald Trump during his election campaign threatened to slap 35 percent tariffs on Mexican imports. He is studying a House Republican proposal for a border tax adjustment system that would levy a 20 percent tax on all imports while exempting exports. The plan is partly aimed at offsetting value-added taxes charged on imports by Mexico and many other countries.

Ross said Trump “has made my job a lot easier by softening up the adverse parties. What could be better than going into a negotiation where the fellow on the other side knows he has to make concessions?”

The new Commerce secretary also said he was not concerned about starting trade wars, because the United States was already fighting one.

“We’ve been in a trade war for decades,” he said. “The difference is now our troops are coming to the ramparts.”
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National leaders may have been the ones to sign the Paris Agreement to combat climate change — but when it comes to putting the deal into effect, “it is cities that drive most of the change,” says Cape Town’s mayor Patricia de Lille.

Since taking charge of South Africa’s second biggest city in 2011, her administration has overseen the installation of LED streetlights on 25,000 roads, retrofitted 32 city buildings to make them more energy efficient and installed 46,000 roof-top solar water heaters.

A big plot of land in the city has been set aside for green companies that want to move in and build solar panels, wind turbines or other forms of clean tech.

Tesla committed to Cape Town office

Already U.S. electric car manufacturer Tesla has indicated it intends to open its first Africa office in Cape Town, de Lille said, and a Chinese manufacturer of solar-powered electric buses will come in next year.

Cape Town has an order in for 10 of the buses, the first of which will hit the streets later this year, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

“They’re going to save us a lot of money,” said de Lille, 66, a former trade union leader and longtime South African politician.

“Our maintenance budget will be cut by 60 percent, as they’re very easy to maintain. And to recharge the batteries we’re also going to use solar energy.”

Women lead the way

Around the world, cities are increasingly at the forefront of action to curb climate change — and a growing number, from Cape Town to Paris to Sydney, are now run by women.

In two years, the number of women in charge of large cities leading on climate action has risen from four to 16, according to the C40 Cities network of more than 80 cities committed to addressing climate change, which is organizing a conference for women leaders in New York this month.

De Lille said that women leaders are far from “the panacea for all of our problems.” But when it comes to climate change, “you always see it is girls and mothers who are disproportionately affected. As women, we have to represent those voices of other women.”

The poor in Cape Town have much to lose if climate change is not effectively dealt with.

Cape Town faces water shortage

Worsening flooding has hit the poor particularly hard, she said, and now extended drought — the worst in 100 years over the last two winters — has left the city’s main water supply dam at just 23 percent of capacity. That is water for just 121 days, the mayor said.

The seaside city is looking for more water where it can — recycling water, treating effluent and pumping it back into the dam, tapping into old springs under the city and testing out desalination.

But the solutions need to keep the poor in mind, de Lille said.

“Desalination is very expensive and once you go for expensive infrastructure and operating costs, it will put up the price of water” — something she would like to avoid, she said.

Renewable ambitions …  and obstacles

One of de Lille’s key ambitions is to see Cape Town get at least 20 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020 — just three years away. Independent solar and wind power producers, hoping to feed energy into the national grid, have sprung up, including in Cape Town.

But Eskom, the national company that produces 95 percent of South Africa’s electricity, has yet to sign agreements to purchase much of the renewable power, arguing the deals could put Eskom’s finances at risk.

The company is waiting for the completion of two big and years-delayed coal-fired power plants it is building, designed to reduce energy shortages in the country.

The impasse has so far limited Cape Town’s ability to source renewable power — and has led de Lille and the renewable energy firms to threaten lawsuits.

“I don’t think they’ve got a right to block me buying clean renewable power from any independent power producer,” the mayor said.

Focus on ‘implementation’

De Lille said that she’s seen little push back on her clean energy agenda at home and that, like many mayors, she spends her time focusing on “implementation, implementation, implementation.”

“In government, things don’t just happen by wishing,” she said. But with good leadership, “later on, you find that people have now bought into the idea and understand the benefit of what we are achieving. Then it’s much easier — you have leadership at all levels bought into the new way of doing things.”

One thing she wishes she had, however, is more money.

International funding to help developing countries address climate change is only slowly getting flowing and what arrives at the national government level does not always trickle down to cities, she said.

To change that, the world’s mayors should work together “to say to these multilateral bodies that we want a say in how the resources are distributed,” she said.

Mayor hopes to reach goals by 2020 

De Lille’s term as mayor ends in 2021 — one reason her renewable energy goal is set for 2020.

“I’m going to push as hard as I can to get all or most of my targets embedded in this city so no one can change them again, so they can just come in and build on that,”she said.

With climate change impacts worsening fast and few years left to bring about a wholesale shift to clean energy, “there’s no time for trial and error,” she said. “We have to make sure we do it right the first time.”
…

Сенат Канади у другому читанні схвалив ратифікацію Угоди про зону вільної торгівлі з Україною. Про це на своїй сторінці у «Твіттері» повідомила заступник міністра економічного розвитку, торговий представник України Наталія Микольська.

Тепер документ передадуть у профільний комітет, після чого відбудеться остаточне голосування у третьому читанні. Після ратифікації Сенатом угоду ще має підписати генерал-губернатор Канади.

Нижня палата парламенту Канади ратифікувала Угоду про зону вільної торгівлі з Україною 15 лютого. Сторони підписали її у липні 2016 року.

Очікується, що зона вільної торгівлі між Україною та Канадою дасть змогу зняти більшість торгових обмежень і митних зборів у взаємній торгівлі.
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Українські споживачі через значне підвищення температури повітря оновлюють мінімуми добового відбору із підземних сховищ газу (ПСГ). Про це свідчать оперативні дані компанії «Укртрансгаз».

Згідно з цими даними, в понеділок, 6 березня, з підземних сховищ було відібрано близько 13 мільйонів кубометрів газу. Це найнижчий цього року показник добового відбору.

Порівняно з піковими навантаженнями обсяг споживання скоротився більш як усемеро: наприклад, 1 лютого споживачі використали 91,8 мільйона кубометрів.

Станом на початок доби 7 березня в українських ПСГ було понад 8,2 мільярда кубометрів газу. Від початку року запаси зменшилися майже на 3,8 мільярда кубометрів, а від початку опалювального сезону (13 жовтня) – більш як на 6,5 мільярда кубометрів.

У НАК «Нафтогаз України» ще наприкінці 2016 року заявляли, що вважають сформовані в підземних сховищах запаси газу достатніми для проходження опалювального сезону. За розрахунками компанії, на кінець опалювального сезону у сховищах залишатиметься 7 – 8 мільярдів кубометрів при допустимому значенні 5 мільярдів кубометрів.
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Wednesday March 8 marks International Women’s Day, with festivals, concerts and exhibitions among the numerous events planned around the world to celebrate the achievements of women in society.

The annual event has been held since the early 1900s and traditionally promotes a different theme each year, with this year’s edition calling on people to #BeBoldForChange and push for a more gender-inclusive working world.

Reuters photographers have been speaking with women in a range of professions around the world about their experiences of gender inequality.

Here are just a few of the women and their comments:

Doris Leuthard, Switzerland

Doris Leuthard says she still sees gender inequality occur in the workplace.

“Salaries. The differences between wages of men and women can be up to 20 percent. It happens to many women. Transparency helps, discussions about salaries are important. In upper management and leading positions in politics we still seem to be the minority. I encourage women to work on their career,” she said.

Cristina Alvarez, Mexico

“I’ve never felt any gender inequality,” Alvarez said.

“I believe women can do the same jobs as men and that there should be no discrimination.”

Serpil Cigdem, Turkey

“When I applied for a job 23 years ago as an engine driver, I was told that it is a profession for men. I knew that during the written examination even if I got the same results with a male candidate, he would have been chosen. That’s why I worked hard to pass the exam with a very good result ahead of the male candidates,” Cigdem said.

“In my opinion, gender inequality starts in our minds saying it’s a male profession or it’s a man’s job,” she said.

Phung Thi Hai, Vietnam

Hai is among a group of 25 women working at a brick factory where she has to move 3,000 bricks a day to the kiln.

“How unfair that a 54-year-old woman like me has to work and take care of the whole family. With the same work male laborers can get a better income. Not only me, all women in the village work very hard with no education, no insurance and no future,” she said.

Tomoe Ichino, Japan

“In general, people think being a Shinto priest is a man’s profession. If you’re a woman, they think you’re a shrine maiden, or a supplementary priestess. People don’t know women Shinto priests exist, so they think we can’t perform rituals. Once, after I finished performing jiichinsai [ground-breaking ceremony], I was asked, ‘So, when is the priest coming?,'” Ichino said.

“When I first began working as a Shinto priest, because I was young and female, some people felt the blessing was different. They thought: ‘I would have preferred your grandfather.'”

“At first, I wore my grandfather’s light green garment because I thought it’s better to look like a man. But after a while I decided to be proud of the fact that I am a female priest and I began wearing a pink robe, like today. I thought I can be more confident if I stop thinking too much [about my gender].”

Yanis Reina, Venezuela

“No doubt this is a job initially intended for men, because you have to be standing on the street all your shift, it is dirty, greasy and there is always a strong gasoline smell. I have to adapt the pants of my uniform because they are men’s and make me look weird but I adore my work. My clients are like my relatives, they come here everyday and we chat a couple of minutes while the tank is being filled. They come every day because they feel safer to be served by a woman,” Reina said.

“With the difficult situation that we have in Venezuela, having a job that covers your expenses is almost a luxury, but beyond that, I’m very proud of my job. I believe that now we, the women, have to be the  warriors,” she said.

Januka Shrestha, Nepal

“There is no difference in a vehicle driven by a woman and man. While driving on the road people sometimes try to dominate a vehicle especially when they see a woman driving it,” she said.

“People have even used foul language toward me. When this happens I keep quiet and work even harder to prove that we are as capable as men,” Shrestha said.

Maxine Mallett, Britain

“The most stressful time of my career was when I had children. Women who return to work after having a child are sometimes treated with suspicion, as if they now lack commitment to the school when it is quite the opposite,” Mallett said.

“We need to remove barriers and support all. Having a fulfilling career should not have to be a battle that you have to constantly fight.”

Jeung Un, South Korea

“Most news outlets prefer to employ male photographers. I feel strongly about gender inequality,” Un said.

“When I cover violent scenes, sometimes I am harassed and hear sexually-biased remarks.”

Deng Qiyan, China

“Sometimes [gender inequality] happens,” Qiyan said.

“But we cannot do anything about that. After all, you have to digest all those unhappy things and carry on.”

Emilie Jeannin, France

“Once I could not help laughing when an agricultural advisor asked me, where the boss was, when I was standing right in front of him. I can assure you that the meeting got very quickly cut short!,” Jeannin said.

“Being a breeder is seen as a man’s job. In the past women were usually doing the administrative work or low level tasks. People need to be more open-minded. This change needs to happen everywhere not just on the fields.”

Meet more of the women in our photo gallery:
…

Wednesday March 8 marks International Women’s Day, with festivals, concerts and

exhibitions among the numerous events planned around the world to celebrate the achievements of women in society.

Reuters photographers have been speaking with women in a range of professions around the world about their experiences of gender inequality.
…

Brazil’s President Michel Temer launched an infrastructure concessions program on Tuesday that he said should raise 45 billion reais ($14.43 billion) in investment in building and operating roads, port terminals, railways and power transmission lines.

Temer said the program was key to restoring an attractive business environment as Brazil struggles to emerge from its worst-ever recession.

“There will be 45 billion reais in new investment in the energy, transport and sanitation sectors which will lead to the creation of 200,000 new direct and indirect jobs,” Temer said.

Inaugurating a meeting of the Program for Partnerships and Investments (PPI), which will oversee the tendering of the concessions, Temer said 55 projects would be launched with private-sector partners.

“We are leaving behind a deep recession and entering in a phase of prosperity where private investment will be decisive,” said the president, who has said his top priority is curbing unemployment running above 12 percent.

Data on Tuesday showed a surprise acceleration in Brazil’s deep economic downturn in the final quarter of 2016, stepping up pressure on President Michel Temer and the central bank to do more to promote growth.

The economy showed a steeper-than-expected decline of 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter, following a 0.7 percent drop in the previous three months.

Wellington Moreira Franco, the minister coordinating the PPI, said the federal government would propose 35 concessions in energy transmission.

The government said in a statement it would also launch the early renovation of five railway concessions in return for commitments on investment.

The government said it would launch concessions for new areas in the ports of Santana, Itaqui and Paranagua and extend contracts in Santos, Vila do Conde and Niteroi.

With its budget squeezed by the deep recession, Temer’s government is betting that an increase in private investment can help revive the economy despite political turbulence caused by a sweeping anti-corruption investigation.

($1 = 3.1179 reais)
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China is trying to implement an ambitious “Made in China, 2025” plan to upgrade technology and product quality in a desperate move to battle rising pollution and falling exports. It is seeking the best technologies from the Western world in areas like new generation Information Technology, semiconductors, robotics, new energy vehicles and medical devices.

Chinese leaders are losing patience with China’s image as “factory to the world” for low-end goods. They want local industry to add value by scaling up their capabilities in engineering, designing and marketing by 2025.

It is the methods adopted by China that are causing a lot of concern. Beijing is pushing Chinese companies to grab technology by buying out foreign companies. It is also pressuring foreign companies based in China to hand over their technology in return for market access.

“European business is facing intense pressure to turn over advanced technology in exchange for near market access,” Joerg Wuttke, president of European Chamber of Commerce in China, said on Tuesday. The government is subsidizing some areas like robotics, resulting in overcapacity, which in turn poses serious marketing challenges for both Chinese and foreign business he explained.

The 2025 plan is so important that Premier Li Keqiang reported its progress in his annual Work Report to the National People’s Congress, the Chinese parliament, last week.

“We took further steps to implement the Internet Plus action plan and the national big data strategy, fully implemented the Made in China 2025 initiative, and implemented and improved policies and measures to encourage people to launch businesses and innovate,” he said.

Challenges ahead

But this is one of those challenges that a Communist decree cannot resolve. China is facing resistance from Western countries, whose technology it needs.

The plan is up against some serious challenges, which include a move by three European countries, Germany, France and Italy, to scrutinize attempts by Chinese companies to buy out local companies with the sheer money power behind highly subsidized state-owned companies.

“We don’t want state monopolies in our backyard. We want acquisitions to be driven by market forces, not state intervention,” Wuttke said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has also indicated he wants his administration to closely examine investment proposals coming from China. He has also threatened to impose a high 45 percent duty on Chinese goods on the grounds they are highly subsidized in China.

Chinese takeover bids for high tech enterprises like German robot manufacturer Kuka, machine maker Aixtron or lighting specialist Osram have raised questions about the extent of Chinese state involvement, the Mercator Institute of China Studies (Merics) said in a recent report.

“Investments in industries such as semiconductors are likely to trigger concerns over defense-related uses,” Jost Wubbeke, head of program for economy and technology at Merics, told VOA.

There are both positive and negative aspects of Chinese investments, which increased 77 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year.

“The majority of these [Chinese] investments has positive impacts on the target countries. However, the significant increase of state-supported investment in high tech industries could cause a large-scale transfer of critical technology,” Wubbeke said.

Internal challenges

China is also facing problems internally because the government prefers using a set of state-owned companies for buying and implementing new technologies. The more dynamic Chinese private sector has little role to play in the effort.

“They [government leaders] do this with the tool box out of the socialist backyard, meaning that they want to steer the companies, they want to subsidize the companies,” Wuttke said.”We think that China would be better served if they leave this to private Chinese enterprises to drive this forward”.

The European Union Chamber of Commerce is worried China is picking the wrong winners, preferring SOEs instead of private enterprises like Alibaba and Tencent. “These are the guys that are really innovative,” he said, referring to Chinese private entrepreneurs.

Transition problems

Much of Chinese industry uses low and medium range technologies, and the transition to digitalization and robotics may not be easy. Most industries still rely heavily on manual labor and low-level automation. The share of robots is very low.

“China still has a long way to go before it achieves the same level of productivity as industrial countries. State-owned enterprises perform less well in this regard, while foreign-invested enterprises generally have a higher level of production technology,” Wubbeke said.

Opportunities vs threats

Despite concerns, analysts point out that Beijing’s technology acquisition drive opens up a wide range of opportunities for foreign companies, which may not be available in any other country on the same scale as China.

“Made in China 2025” offers enormous opportunities for foreign businesses in the short term as China needs critical core components and advanced manufacturing equipment from abroad.In the long term, however, “Made in China 2025” seems to be a substitution strategy with the aim of replacing foreign products with Chinese products, Merics said in its report.

“Europe needs to find a way to keep the door open for positive investments, but at the same time screen the problematic ones,” Wubbeke said.

 
…

The chairman of China’s biggest beverage maker, Hangzhou Wahaha Group, said the United States would suffer more in any trade war with China, with a loss of access to cheap Chinese-made goods hitting American wallets.

U.S. President Donald Trump had campaigned on a promise to confront China more aggressively on trade, including by levying new tariffs on goods from abroad and branding China a currency manipulator.

Beijing says it will work with Washington to resolve any trade disputes, but Chinese state media has warned of retaliation if Trump takes the first steps towards a trade war.

“The new American administration has threatened to launch a trade war, but in my view, they will suffer more from the war,” Wahaha Chairman Zong Qinghou told reporters on the sidelines of China’s annual parliament meeting on Tuesday.

“People will grumble about the [U.S.] government as domestic prices rise.”

Zong, one of China’s richest men, also predicted that the U.S. trade deficit with China would persist as long as Washington maintained “stupid” restrictions on high-tech exports to China.

The politically sensitive U.S.-China trade deficit stood at $347 billion last year.

China has long asked Washington to loosen its restrictions on exports of sensitive technology, arguing that it could cut its trade deficit by selling more of what China needs.

But the strict U.S. export controls against China on a range of products with both military and civilian uses, such as some computer processors and software, were implemented as a national security measure.

“Western countries, especially the United States, sometimes are stupid, as they ban companies from selling advanced technology products in China,” said Zong, who is also a member of parliament.

“Only by exporting the products to a broader market can the U.S. cover the investment in the research and development stage.”

Zong was listed as mainland China’s fifth-richest person, worth 112 billion yuan ($16.24 billion), according to the 2017 Hurun Report, which tracks global wealth.

Wahaha, which means laughing baby in Mandarin, exports bottled beverage, drinking water, and its hit product, mixed congee, to the United States.

 
…

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

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

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

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

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

‘Obamacare Lite’

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

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

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

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

Surcharge, but no requirement to buy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jury still out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vicious cycle of hunger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay or go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Favors, money

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bad reputation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Росія ж узагалі не визнає своєї агресії проти України.
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Scientists and engineers are constantly looking for more efficient ways to harvest energy from sustainable sources, such as the sun, wind, ocean waves and river flows. Researchers from Brown University have teamed up with a company from Rhode Island to build an innovative power generator suitable for slow-flowing rivers and tidal canals. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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