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3/23/2015
SheTaxis app for Fare Ladies
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Volkswagen's Russian Plant
Volkswagen Golf VII cars are pictured in a production line at the plant of German carmaker Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, March 13, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Fabian Bimmer
(Reuters) – Volkswagen will reduce shifts and lay off at
least 150 workers at its Russian car plant, to try to cut costs in a market
downturn, the German car producer said on Monday,.
Car sales in Russia dropped sharply last year as the economy
was hit by a fall in oil prices and Western sanctions over Ukraine. The rouble
also weakened and hurt demand.
General Motors said last week it will shut its Russian
factory and wind down the Opel brand in the country, while Nissan Motor Co
suspended Russia production for 16 days this month.
"In the first months of 2015 the Russian auto market
continued to feel the impact of a weak economy, significant price increases and
high interest rates. We don't expect that to change in coming months,"
Volkswagen said in emailed comments.
Volkswagen car plant in Kaluga, south of the capital Moscow,
will work four days a week from April to July this year and starting from May
the number of shifts will decrease to two from three.
As part of measures intended to help the company adapt to
the current economic environment, the production will be suspended for two
weeks on May 5-8 and May 12-15.
Volkswagen will not renew contracts with at least 150
employees and will offer some others the chance to move to its new auto parts
warehouse in the Moscow region or an engine plant. Both are scheduled to open
later this year.
It will also offer compensation packages to employees who
will give up their jobs by mutual agreement.
Volkswagen's Russian sales fell 40 percent in
January-February, year-on-year, while the broader market was down 32 percent,
according to Moscow-based lobby group the Association of European Businesses.
However, the German carmaker said its Russian investment
plans are intact, with the construction of the engine plant and the auto parts
warehouse on schedule.
"The Russian market still has a significant growth
potential long-term," it said in the statement.
Global laws you may not know
A
New Zealand bar manager and two Burmese colleagues were sentenced to
two and a half years in jail in a Yangon court on Tuesday.
Their offense? Posting a Facebook image of a Buddha wearing headphones to promote an event last December.
According to the Myanmar Times, the trio was sentenced to 2 years in jail for insulting religion through written word or pictures and a further six months for breaching local authority regulations.
The sentencing comes as a reminder of how easy it is to get into trouble abroad for what to some are not-so-obvious crimes.
Here's
a sampling of reasons travelers might suddenly, surprisingly, find
themselves in jail -- or at least forced to pay a fine.
Netherlands: Don't carry or use drugs.
While
the Netherlands has a reputation for being tolerant on the use of
so-called "soft drugs," this exists only for designated areas.
Possession of prohibited substances or buying them can carry a prison sentence.
Penalty: Arrest, detention.
Italy (Venice) and USA (San Francisco): Feeding the pigeons is against the law.
Penalty: Fine.
Japan: It's illegal to bring some commonly available nasal sprays containing pseudoephedrine into Japan.
Penalty: Fine.
Spain (Barcelona):
It's against the law to wear a bikini, swimming trunks or to go
bare-chested away from the beach-front area in Barcelona.
Penalty: Fine.
Singapore: Chewing gum on the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system is strictly prohibited.
Penalty: Fine.
Italy (Florence):
It's an offense to sit on steps and courtyards or to eat and drink in
the immediate vicinity of churches and public buildings in Florence.
Penalty: Large fine.
Saudi Arabia: Photographing government buildings, military installations and palaces is prohibited.
Penalty: Arrest and detention.
Barbados: It's an offense for anyone, including children, to dress in camouflage clothing.
Penalty: Fine.
Nigeria: It's illegal to take mineral water into Nigeria.
Penalty: Fine, confiscation.
Fiji: Sunbathing topless is prohibited.
Penalty: Fine.
Maldives: Public observance of religions other than Islam is prohibited for non-Maldivians and visitors.
Penalty: Arrest, detention.
United Arab Emirates:
Alcoholic drinks are served in licensed hotels and clubs, but it's a
punishable offense to drink, or to be under the influence of alcohol, in
public.
Tourists won't have any problems in licensed venues, though residents need a permit to be able to drink in them.
Sri Lanka: Another country that doesn't take kindly to its religion being insulted, whether the slight is intentional or not.
Tourists have been arrested for mistreating Buddhist images and artifacts while taking photos, while one woman was reportedly arrested and deported for having a tattoo of Buddha.
Peru: It's illegal to purchase any souvenirs made with animal parts.
That includes condor feathers, which are found widely in the tourist markets of Cusco.
Though in most cases officials reportedly turn a blind eye, tourists could face fines for the offense.
Nairobi's billion dollar traffic blues (video)
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3/22/2015
The death of cash?
On March 17th Facebook, the world’s biggest social network,
announced that in USA its instant-messaging app will soon allow users to send
each other money just as easily as texts and photos. All they will have to do
is link their debit cards to their Facebook account, tap on a dollar sign in
the app, type in the amount and press send.
Facebook is not the first to enter the market for free
person-to-person (or P2P) payments. In November, for instance, Snapchat, a
messaging app that lets users send each other photos that disappear after a few
seconds, introduced a service called Snapcash. It competes with Venmo, a
popular money-transfer app owned by PayPal, an online-payments firm.
In contrast to Snapcash and Venmo, Facebook’s service does
not make instant payments: the money only arrives after a few hours or even
days, depending on how quickly users’ banks act. This is because money is not
transferred between accounts managed by the social network, but goes through
conventional payment channels from one bank account to the other.
Facebook’s new
offering is further proof that technology firms are moving onto banks’ turf.
Next month Apple will begin
selling its smartwatch, which will allow consumers to pay by waving their arm
at the cash register. This will help the firm’s new contactless payment
service, which already accounts for two of every three dollars spent in USA by
gesturing with a smartphone or a card.
Google recently bought Softcard, a mobile-payment service,
to boost its own payment app and catch up with Apple.
If some day Facebook expands its offering internationally
and makes it truly instant, the impact could be huge. Facebook has 1.4 billion
members, its messaging service 500m users. Many send remittances across
borders; some are probably unbanked. The regulatory and logistical challenges
of serving such customers will be huge. Banks struggle to profit from them.
Then again, that is just the sort of challenge tech firms relish.
Monica Lewinsky: The price of shame (TED Talk)
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Pope declares jubilee
FOR the head of
the hoteliers’ association in Rome, the announcement was “manna from heaven”.
On March 13th Pope Francis declared an extraordinary jubilee, or holy year, that
will last from December 8th 2015 until November 20th 2016.
In the late
Middle Ages, the church used jubilees to market indulgences to shorten the stay
in purgatory. Nowadays, holy years mostly generate profits for others. Shares
in Atlantia, Italy’s biggest motorway concessionary, rose by more than 3% after
last week’s news.
“The flow of visitors is not concentrated into
a brief period, as happens with big sporting events like the Olympic Games or
the football World Cup,” notes Matteo Caroli, a professor at the
business-oriented Luiss University in Rome. The most recent jubilee in 2000
brought an estimated 25m visitors to Rome, a rise of about a quarter on the
previous year.
The capital’s
left-wing mayor, Ignazio Marino, expects “a big leap forward” in the city’s
GDP. Tourism businesses say they will be satisfied with 15% above normal. But
nobody knows how many people the hugely popular Francis will attract.
A vast security
operation will be needed, and perhaps emergency funding. However, with less
than nine months to go and the government’s 2015 budget already decided, there
is no scope for a grand plan to boost infrastructure.
The mayor has already
announced plans. The city will further pedestrianize the road through the
forums, reopen a long-disused railway line, expand a metro station and increase
the frequency of trains to and from Fiumicino airport.
The Vatical will
formally proclaim the Jubilee on Sunday April 12 and place the bull on the
front of the Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica.
3/20/2015
Small businesses (video)
The U.S. Small Business Administration classifies a business with less
than 500 employees as small. Right now, there are 23 million small
businesses across the United States and together they account for 54
percent of all U.S. sales.
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3/15/2015
HSBC CEO questioned by committee (videos)
Video 1
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Video 2
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Video 2
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US "Maternity Hotels"
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Homeland Security agents swept into The Carlyle, a luxury property in Irvine, California, which housed pregnant women and new moms who allegedly paid over $40,000 to $80,000 to give birth in the United States.
None of the women were arrested and paramedics were on hand in case any of them went into labor during the crackdown. They are being treated as material witnesses since the investigation was aimed at ringleaders who pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars tax-free.
The organizers who allegedly ran the Carlyle site, Chao Chen and Dong Li, used a website to describe the benefits of a child with U.S. citizenship: 13 years of free education, low-cost college financial aid, less pollution, and a path for the entire family to emigrate when the child becomes an adult.
Clients were counseled on what lies to tell to obtain a tourist visa; how to fly through Hawaii, Las Vegas or Koriea to avoid suspicious immigration officers at Los Angeles International Airport; and how to disguise their pregnancy in transit, according to search warrant affidavit unsealed Tuesday.
The women were then set up at the Carlyle, which charges about $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom apartment and features amenities including private balconies, a resort-style pool, and cabanas with flat-screen televisions.
The women's handlers provided transportation for doctor visits and trips to restaurants and shops. They were funneled to several Orange County hospitals to deliver, but they didn't pay full price — approximately $25,000 — for medical services, officials said. Instead, they got reduced rates for the indigent, ranging from nothing to $4,000.
That meant big losses for the hospitals. More than 400 babies linked to the scheme were born at just one facility in a two-year period.
The investigators discovered that the parents of one baby born in April 2014 who paid the hospital just $4,000 were spending money at the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel, Rolex and Louis Vuitton, using an account with almost a quarter of a million dollars in it.
China's one-child policy is contributing to the trend of pregnant Chinese women traveling to California to give birth in collusion with tour companies who bring them to the United States under false pretenses.
It is unclear what will happen to the women.
"I’m sure that part of what investigators will
consider is: If you send back to China a pregnant woman who came here to skirt
the one-child policy, would she be forcibly aborted?" Women’s Rights
Without Frontiers President Reggie Littlejohn said.
“If news of the raids reaches China, it may deter some
pregnant women from traveling to the United States, due to a fear of being
prosecuted for lying on their visa applications…The number of Chinese women who
make such "maternity" trips to the United States annually is in the
"thousands", Ms Littlejohn added.
China eased its one-child policy in 2013, stating that if
one or both parents are an only child, they can seek official approval to have
a second child of their own. Many parents are reluctant to have a second child
in China because of the regulations involved and the high cost of living.
Littlejohn said another motivation for pregnant Chinese
women to seek U.S. citizenship for their babies is their desire to give them a
U.S. education. As U.S. citizens, their children will have the ability in the
future to go to U.S. colleges and pay regular tuition fees as opposed to the
higher tuition fees for foreign students.
Some Chinese parents also hold the U.S. education system
in high esteem. The Los Angeles Times quoted a Chinese woman at one of the
raided "maternity hotels" as saying, “America has the world's best
universities.”
There is one catch, though.
Getting a U.S. passport for a baby means the child will eventually be
responsible for U.S. taxes.
edited from CNBC VOA and CNN
3/08/2015
McDonald's sued by Brazilian unions
Brazilian unions are suing the world’s largest McDonald’s
franchisee over allegations that it violated labor laws.
The suit, filed on Monday, alleges that the Brazilian
operations of Arcos Dorados paid below legal minimum wages, maintained an
unhealthy work environment and failed to make severance or retirement insurance
payments.
Some of Brazil’s largest labor groups are backing the
lawsuit. Ricardo Patah, president of UGT, or general workers union, said “We
will do everything that can be done to stop companies coming to our country,
violating labor laws and taking the profits out of our nation.”
McDonald’s spokesman stated “McDonald’s is not
responsible for working conditions or wages at franchised restaurants. I suggest referring your questions to
Arcos Dorados”.
Arcos Dorados, the franchisee, said “We have not yet been
officially notified of the lawsuit. We are absolutely confident in our labor
practices and comply with all laws and regulations. All our employees are
registered according to the law and receive remuneration and benefits complying
with collective agreements reached with unions”.
Arcos Dorados is based in Buenos Aires. The company
employs more than 90,000 people in 20 countries and territories throughout
Latin America and the Caribbean. It
accounts for around 6 per cent of McDonald’s global sales.
The company is facing a deepening economic crisis in Venezuela,
another important market, together with high inflation in Argentina and
currency depreciation and a slowdown in consumption in Brazil.
McDonald’s situation is not easier in the US. In some weeks the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will hold hearings
over allegations that McDonald’s and its franchisees violated worker rights,
including wage theft.
In a landmark decision that could deal a severe blow to
the franchise system, the NLRB ruled that the restaurant chain is a “joint
employer”, meaning it may be liable for unfair labor practices at its over
14,000 US restaurants. The NLRB decision is a win for unions in their effort to get the agency to
hold franchisers liable for labor violations by store owners.
The NLRB
stated: “Our
investigation found that McDonald’s, USA, LLC, through its franchise
relationship and its use of tools, resources and technology, engages in
sufficient control over its franchisees' operations, beyond protection of the
brand, to make it a putative joint employer with its franchisees, sharing
liability for violations of our Act. This finding is further supported by McDonald's,
USA, LLC’s nationwide response to franchise employee activities while participating in fast food worker protests to improve their wages and working conditions".
edited from Financial Times and NLRB
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