The introduction of post-Brexit customs checks could cost traders more than 4 billion pounds ($5.28 billion) a year, according to a think tank report released on Monday.

The British government has said it plans to leave the European Union’s customs union when it leaves the bloc, and it wants to negotiate a new relationship that will ensure trade is as free of friction as possible.

In its report ‘Implementing Brexit: Customs’, the Institute for Government said the government needed to offer as much certainty as possible to business and help them plan for changes to customs.

Around 180,000 traders now operate only within the EU and face making customs declarations for the first time after Brexit. The government estimates an extra 200 million declarations a year will be made.

Those declarations cost 20 to 45 pounds each, the IfG said, putting the total additional cost at 4 billion to 9 billion pounds.

“The scale and cost of change for many traders could be significant. Government must engage with them in detail about changes, understanding their requirements and giving them as much time to adapt as possible,” the report said.

The government has proposed two options for the future customs relationship. One is a system using technology to make the process as smooth as possible; the second a new customs partnership removing the need for a customs border. It wants a transition period after Britain leaves in March 2019 to allow time to adapt.

However, the EU says negotiating the customs relationship must wait until the two sides have made make progress on the rights of expatriates, Britain’s border with EU member Ireland and a financial settlement.

“To be in and out of the customs union and ‘invisible borders’ is a fantasy,” Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s coordinator for Brexit, said on Twitter after the British government floated its proposals. “First need to secure citizens rights and a financial settlement”.

Moving customs requirements away from the physical border, retaining access to key EU computer systems and setting up working groups with the private sector on implementing changes are among the report’s suggestions for smoothing the process.

To avoid a cliff-edge, the government must make sure everyone from port operators to freight companies and local authorities is ready, the IfG said. It should also work with EU partners to ensure issues at European ports do not cause significant disruption to supply chains.

“In the past they have been given years to adapt to any government change; they now have fewer than 20 months to prepare without yet being clear what they are preparing for,” the report said. “Successful change relies on all these organizations being ready.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The kind of breakthrough performance where it’s immediately apparent that an actor is going to be a star for years to come is a rarity in movies. Think of Emma Stone in “Easy A” or Jessica Chastain in “The Tree of Life.”

But that kind of thunderbolt moment is striking now for 21-year-old Timothee Chalamet, a New Yorker with the talent to speak multiple languages, play numerous instruments and take the festival circuit by storm with a handful of performances  — including one assured of ranking among the finest performances of the year.

The Toronto International Film Festival has been a coming out party for Chalamet, who has three films at the festival. He stars in Luca Guadagnino’s coming-of-age, coming-out tale “Call Me By Your Name,” he’s a supporting player in Greta Gerwig’s equally lauded coming-of-age tale “Lady Bird,” and he co-stars in the Christian Bale-led Western “Hostiles.” A Cape Cod thriller in which he stars, “Hot Summer Nights,” was also acquired here by A24.

But the headliner is his performance in “Call Me By Your Name,” which Sony Pictures Classics will release Nov. 24. In the film, adapted by James Ivory from André Aciman’s novel, Chalamet plays Elio, a headstrong 17-year-old living with his parents in 1980s northern Italy. When a handsome academic (Armie Hammer) comes to stay with them, Elio has a self-discovery that mingles love with art, language and natural beauty.

In the film, he plays piano and guitar, speaks fluent French and Italian, and indelibly captures the experience of first love. The film and its cast are considered likely Academy Awards contenders, partly because of Chalamet’s uncommon poise and wide-ranging intelligence in a deeply sensual movie.

“It feels like a real seminal moment,” said Chalamet in an interview. “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world that I get to share it with Luca and Armie and Michaels Stuhlbarg. I’m obviously very young and I’ve had a short career, but I’ve never been a part of anything like this.”

“He’s being excessively humble,” Hammer cuts in. “He’s the man of the year here at TIFF and we’re just riding his coattails.”

Though the two are separated by a decade in age and experience, they’ve become close friends, drawn closer by the intimacy of making “Call Me By Your Name” in the meadows, cafes and villas of Crema, Italy, where Guadagnino lives.

“He’s a very difficult dude to hate,” Hammer said.

What Chalamet lacks in vanity, those around him make up for in their praise for him.

“Not to sound pompous, but the guy is kind of a genius,” said Guadagnino, the Italian filmmaker of “I Am Love.” “He has a capacity for understanding human nature instinctively that’s astonishing. It’s also naive in a way, because he’s young, but also very focused. The cinema is at its best when it can present a new personality in the world.”

Chalamet doesn’t come out of nowhere. He’s appeared on stage, earning a Drama League Award nomination for John Patrick Stanley’s “Prodigal Son.” He was a regular on “Homeland” and played smaller roles in films like Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” and Jason Reitman’s “Men, Women and Children” — his screen debut.

“I have been working for a number of years,” says Chalamet. “I just graduated from theater high school in New York. I went to LaGuardia so I’m very close to the reality that lot of actors work rarely.”

Chalamet’s mother was a Broadway dancer and his French father works for UNICEF. He credits them for pushing him into piano lessons and taking him on trips to France.

He recently shot a father-son drama, “Beautiful Boy,” in which he plays a methamphetamine-addicted son to Steve Carell. After making “Call Me By Your Name,” he shot his scenes for “Lady Bird,” in which he plays the alluring love interest of Saorsie Ronan’s high-school senior.

“To have those films back-to-back, and they contrast so heavily, it helps you understand filmmaking,” said Chalamet. “There’s the truth to every moment that you have to bring to every scene, but you have to understand the tonality the film before you begin, which isn’t something that’s instinctual to me.”

Chalamet will have plenty of practice to get accustom to that adjustment. He’s also to star in Woody Allen’s next, untitled film. But whatever lies ahead for Chalamet, making “Call Me By Your Name” will remain an experience he long treasures.

“I miss the sense of belonging somewhere,” he says. “I miss the sense of belonging on a film as much as I did on ‘Call Me By Your Name.”’
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From: MeNeedIt

The former chairman of the world’s largest meatpacker, whose testimony implicated Brazil’s president in corruption, turned himself in to police Sunday after the country’s Supreme Court ordered his arrest.

Joesley Batista has avoided prosecution under a plea bargain deal in which he described how meatpacking giant JBS had bribed dozens of politicians, including President Michel Temer.

Earlier this year, Temer was charged with corruption for allegedly orchestrating a scheme in which he would get payouts totaling millions of dollars for helping JBS resolve a business issue.

Temer denies wrongdoing, and Congress voted in August that he would not stand trial on the charge while in office.

But Brazil’s sprawling probe into the massive trade in bribes and kickbacks for favors between companies and politicians, known as Operation Car Wash, continues to churn out new allegations on almost a daily basis. Just this week the country’s chief prosecutor, Rodrigo Janot, filed charges against three former presidents and several other powerful politicians, accusing them of forming criminal organizations to pilfer from public coffers, and authorities detained a former Cabinet minister and close ally of Temer after $16 million in cash was found in an apartment linked to him.

Janot also has said he plans to file more charges against Temer. To do so, he’ll need to act in the coming days since his terms ends on Sept. 18.

But the specter that Batista and others withheld information could cast a pall over the Car Wash investigation, which has relied heavily on plea bargain deals, a fairly new innovation here. Many in Brazil are uneasy with the agreements, in general, and the deals JBS executives got provoked specific outrage from those who thought they were too lenient.

Janot said last week that he is investigating whether Batista and other cooperating witnesses omitted some information from their testimony and he has threatened to revoke the deals if they didn’t tell the whole truth.

The revelation came after Janot’s office received audio of a conversation between Batista and Ricardo Saud, an executive at J&F Investimentos, the holding company that controls JBS. The men apparently did not know they were being recorded, and Janot said it contained vague references to potentially illicit activity not previously disclosed, including the possibility of wrongdoing in his own office and at the Supreme Court.

He was careful to add that any information they have given — like the allegations against Temer — was still valid.

In his decision, Justice Edson Fachin said there was sufficient indication that Batista and Saud had withheld information from prosecutors when formalizing their plea bargains. Fachin ordered both men be detained. The decision was made Friday but was only made public by the court on Sunday.

Guilherme Barros of the public relations firm GBR that represents J&F said Batista and Saud have turned themselves in to Federal Police in the city. A statement e-mailed by GBR said that both Batista and Saud deny that they lied or omitted information in their deals and that they are fulfilling the terms of the agreement.
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From: MeNeedIt

More than 500 people have died so far in a cholera epidemic that is sweeping the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Outbreaks of the water-borne disease occur regularly in Congo, mainly due to poor sanitation and a lack of access to clean drinking water.

But this year’s epidemic, which has already hit at least 10 urban areas including the capital Kinshasa, is particularly worrying as it comes as about 1.4 million people have been displaced by violence in the central Kasai region.

The WHO said at least 528 people had died and the epidemic had spread to 20 of Congo’s 26 provinces.

“The risk of spread remains very high towards the Grand Kasai region, where degraded sanitary and security conditions further increase vulnerability in the face of the epidemic,” the WHO said in a statement.

So far, health officials have recorded more than 24,000 suspected cases of the disease across the vast nation this year, averaging more than 1,500 new cases per week since the end of July.

The WHO sent a team of experts including epidemiologists and public health specialists to Congo this month in an effort to contain the disease’s spread.
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From: MeNeedIt

Agrico, an agricultural company in the Middle East country of Qatar, is creating fertile soil through composting.  The reason:  Most crops can’t be grown in the Qatari desert, but with this specially-blended compost, vegetables are being cultivated in greenhouses.  VOA’s Deborah Block tells us about it.
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From: MeNeedIt

Landfills are probably the oldest type of waste disposal – dumping trash in a midden or pit. But when a landfill is filled up, what can a community do with the site? A 30-year project to reclaim what was once the largest landfill in the world demonstrates the possibilities. Faith Lapidus reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

It’s been only 10 years since Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs presented the first iPhone. Since then, the competition with other companies has evolved into a giant battle of smartphones, each trying to outsmart and outperform the others. Samsung and LG already released their new phones for this year, so expectations for the iPhone 8 are high. VOA’s George Putic looks at what features the new version may bring.
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From: MeNeedIt

The White House’s decision this week to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries: The undocumented young people who were brought to the United States as children.

But the cost, which is difficult to quantify for a workforce faced with the real possibility of losing their job and forced to leave the country, is evident to employers, who largely view both the moral and economic implications of ending the program as intertwined.

“Losing [the economic contributions of DACA recipients] is a direct cost,” said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of Partnership for New York City, which represents the city’s business leadership. She said the state’s DACA workforce contributes several billion dollars a year to the local economy.

WATCH: DACA Repeal to Cost U.S. Businesses, Economy Billions

“It’s also a signal to the rest of the world that somehow America is no longer a place that is embracing talent and hard work and the energy of immigrants,” Wylde told VOA. “That message has a ripple effect in terms of hurting recruitment efforts by our major companies, because they need talent — multilingual talent — from all over the world.”

Employers bear the brunt

To date, more than 400 U.S. entrepreneur and business leaders have signed an open letter that calls on U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress to preserve DACA and provide a permanent solution that ensures recipients’ ability to continue working legally in the country without risk of deportation.

“Our economy would lose $460.3 billion from the national GDP and $24.6 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions,” the letter reads, referencing research conducted by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, over a 10-year period.

The conservative-leaning CATO Institute places that figure at $280 billion.

​Lose-lose

Following the announcement of DACA’s repeal, the White House suggested unemployed American workers might somehow benefit, based solely on the age of the workforce.

“There are over 4 million unemployed Americans in the same age group as those that are DACA recipients,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

“Over 950,000 of those are African-Americans in the same age group; over 870,000 unemployed Hispanics in the same age group. Those are large groups of people that are unemployed that could possibly have those jobs,” Sanders said.

But economists and immigration analysts find fault with Sanders’ argument: The native-born unemployed population is not a perfect substitute for the DACA workforce, and the displacement of one worker for another does not increase productivity.

Under the repeal of DACA, CATO estimated employers would incur $6.3 billion in turnover costs, a figure that includes the recruiting, hiring and training of 720,000 new employees in often highly skilled positions. Thirty-six percent of DACA recipients 25 and older hold a bachelor’s or advanced degree.

Many DACA recipients “are highly educated and working in positions such as health care and education, where they are more highly paid and therefore more productive,” said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at CATO Institute. “[Those are] the industries where you’re going to see a greater impact as a result of this forced turnover caused by the DACA repeal.”

“Contracting the labor force, kicking people out of the country, will not create jobs. It will just shrink the overall size of the economy,” Bier said.

Over the long term, Wylde said, failing to find a permanent solution for DACA workers would inhibit U.S. businesses’ ability to compete.

“We want to be at the forefront of the attraction and support of our talent,” she said. “We don’t want to be deporting them.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The White House’s decision to repeal DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, carries enormous repercussions for the nearly 800,000 beneficiaries who arrived in the U.S. as children. Over the next two years, more than 700,000 employed recipients will find themselves without a job. And for their employers, laying off a qualified workforce carries not only moral implications, but billions in lost revenue and an overall reduction in U.S. economic growth. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

We know that fingerprints can be lifted off various surfaces. But now technology is available to steal fingerprints from a digital photograph. VOA’s Deborah Block explains how.
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From: MeNeedIt

Hugh Jackman, Lupita Nyong’o, Aaron Paul and Demi Lovato will co-host this year’s Global Citizen Festival, an annual free event held in New York’s Central Park.

Performers at the Sept. 23 event include Stevie Wonder, Green Day, The Killers, The Lumineers, The Chainsmokers, Pharrell Williams, Big Sean, Andra Day and Alessia Cara.

The organization announced Friday that Frieda Pinto, Connie Britton, Deborra-lee Furness, Joan Smalls, Kal Penn, Malin Akerman, Mark Cuban and others will also co-host the multi-hour event. It will air live on MSNBC and Comcast NBCUniversal.

Fans can earn their free tickets for admission by joining the movement at globalcitizenfestival.com.

Last year, Jackman co-hosted the event with Neil Patrick Harris, Chelsea Handler and others. Performers at the 2016 concert included Rihanna, Eddie Vedder, Kendrick Lamar and Metallica.
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From: MeNeedIt

Real estate experts say Hurricane Irma’s winds threaten 8.5 million homes and businesses in Florida.

A report from data analysis firm CoreLogic says storm surges — floodwaters driven by high winds and low pressure — may also endanger 3.5 million commercial and residential properties.

Standard & Poor’s analysts say they are still adding up the costs of Hurricane Harvey, but Irma seems likely to cost even more. Researchers at Barclays Bank say hurricane claims costs might rise high enough to wipe out a year of earnings for certain insurance companies.

Deadly Hurricane Irma is also hurting transportation companies, including airlines, which have canceled 4,600 flights to and from airports in the Caribbean and Florida, according to FlightAware.com. Bad weather is forcing Miami’s airport to stop operating Friday and Orlando’s facility to end flights on Saturday. Together, these major airports handle about 2,000 flights on normal days.

Florida accounts for about 5 percent of the U.S. GDP and 6 percent of U.S. jobs. PNC Bank chief economist Gus Faucher says U.S. economic growth may briefly slow in the third quarter because of Harvey and Irma, but he thinks it will bounce back late this year and early next year. Faucher says insurance and government aid will fund rebuilding efforts in the wake of the storms, and that will add to economic activity and hiring.

Commonwealth Financial Network’s Brad McMillan says previous major storms like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy caused huge local problems but did not change the national economy in a “fundamental” way. He says the recovery in this case may take “longer than usual.”
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From: MeNeedIt