Introducing a brand-new, multimillion-dollar intergalactic adventure film based on a French comic book strip during a summer box office dominated by superheroes and sequels may be considered a big risk to take by an independent filmmaker.

But French director Luc Besson was so confident in his vision for adapting the Valerian and Laureline sci-fi comics into a film, he took his script and sketches to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival three years ago with the hopes of securing funding for the $150 million project.

“They all raised their hands because they loved the script, so we had almost 90 percent of the funding in one day,” Besson told Reuters.

Set in the 28th century where humans and aliens have found a home on the space station Alpha, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets follows two space agents, the cocky Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and the spirited Laureline (Cara Delevingne), trying to uncover the origins of a mysterious force.

They journey through the different environments and diverse population of Alpha, known as the city of a thousand planets where species include sea monsters, organic robots, winged reptilians and thuggish, bug-eyed ogres.

The film comes out in theaters on July 21 and is the fruition of Besson’s nearly 50-year obsession with the comic strip he discovered at age 10, setting him on a path to make films such as The Fifth Element and Lucy.

Lots of competition

The stakes are high for Besson’s EuropaCorp film studio as Valerian enters a box office saturated with superhero films such as Wonder Woman and Spider-Man: Homecoming and sequels such as War for the Planet of the Apes and Despicable Me 3.

Still, the director didn’t consider it a gamble.

“You take risks when you do a first-time director movie at $8 million and no cast. That’s a gamble,” Besson said, adding that Valerian’s theatrical rights had already been bought across nearly 120 countries.

Early reviews for the film have been mixed, with critics praising the vibrant visuals but criticizing the plot and performances.

Variety’s Peter Debruge said the film’s “creativity outweighs its more uneven elements.” Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy dubbed it a front-runner for the Razzies, Hollywood’s annual tongue-in-cheek “worst film” awards.

But Besson believes the audience will determine the success of the film and future installments.

“I wish they love the film because I’m dying to make another one because I love Cara and Dane,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Working 50 meters (164 feet) under ground with minimal air supply, Uuganbaatar is one of thousands of Mongolians trying to make a living digging for coal.

Although the mining season does not begin until autumn, when the ground freezes and work is safer, the 31-year-old and his colleagues are seeking to gain a head start by digging a shaft in Nalaikh, one of the nine districts of Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, in late June.

But their mine could soon be shut by the government, which has launched an unprecedented crackdown on sites that don’t meet safety standards.

That would mean even fewer opportunities for Mongolia’s individual prospectors, who have already been hit hard by the privatization of mines previously open to all.

Miners such as Uuganbaatar dig for coal under loose arrangements with local unions and private companies.

“Things seem really tough for private miners now,” said Uuganbaatar, who, like many Mongolians, goes by one name. “All the licenses have been bought up by influential big shots. Whenever you start to dig somewhere, someone shows up and chases us away. It’s impossible to find a place or mine to dig in.”

A weak economy and particularly harsh winters drove herdsman from across Mongolia to Nalaikh’s private mines in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The district, with a population of nearly 30,000, was home to Mongolia’s first state mining company, which collapsed in the 1990s in the midst of a post-communist economic crisis. The firm’s dilapidated buildings dot the landscape.

With the economy slowing again after a commodities boom earlier in the decade, authorities fear more people could be tempted down the mines.

“More mines will probably be shut down,” said Byambadorj, a woman who ran two private mine shafts with her husband for 13 years until the government closed them in June.

“In Nalaikh, life revolves around mining, and mining is the main means to support our lives,” she says, insisting that her mines were operating according to the safety standards.

The government had tried to get companies to improve safety by issuing licenses. An official said nine companies had been granted licenses, but not all had met the standards.

“People were working in shafts with no air supply,” said S. Battulga, an official whose department is responsible for reviewing mining licenses across the country.

“Therefore, it was requested that the private mining licenses in Nalaikh be cancelled” on health and safety grounds, he added.

Nalaikh authorities would like people to switch from mining to work in brick factories, but no one seems keen to switch despite the danger.

In the past 25 years, the government has recorded 234 fatalities in Nalaikh’s coal mines, although residents say the real number is hundreds higher.
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From: MeNeedIt

Not all the action now underway at Wimbledon is on the tennis court. In back rooms on the tournament site, technology is taking the matches to a whole new level. It offers the most immersive view to tennis fans, whether they are in the stands, or following the play on screens around the world. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry has this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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From: MeNeedIt

Environmentalists promote solar energy as an option to reduce pollution, but in places without a central electricity supply solar panels can be a practical solution. They are frequently used by nomads moving through the desert, and people living in remote villages. In recent years solar panels have come to serve as a source of energy in places affected by war and conflict. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports solar panels are now a common sight in villages across Syria.
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From: MeNeedIt

Japanese car parts company Takata on Tuesday recalled another 2.7 million air bags that it previously thought were safe.

The recall affects certain Ford, Mazda and Nissan cars from the 2005 through 2012 model years.

Takata’s air bags are inflated by a chemical — ammonium nitrate — in emergency situations, but it can deteriorate in conditions of high humidity and heat. The company added a desiccant to stop the chemical inflators from degrading and thought they had then been made safe.

However, tests by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board showed that Takata air bags were still subject to inflating without warning, expanding with great force and sending metal parts flying. Previous problems with Takata air bags have killed at least 17 people and injured more than 180.

Takata, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, has already recalled 42 million cars to replace the defective inflators, the largest automobile-related recall in U.S. history. But the latest recall raised doubts about the safety of other Takata inflators. The company has agreed to recall all original equipment inflators without a drying agent in phases by the end of 2018. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave Takata until the end of 2019 to prove that inflators with the drying agents are safe, or they must be recalled as well.

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said federal regulators have to act faster to determine whether all Takata air bag inflators are safe.

“We certainly can’t afford to wait until the December 2019 deadline. … If even more are found to be defective, it will take us from being the biggest recall ever to something that could become mind-boggling,” Nelson said.
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From: MeNeedIt

On the day they were freed from slavery, the fishermen hugged, high-fived and sprinted through a stinging rain to line up so they wouldn’t be left behind. But even as they learned they were going home, some wept at the thought of returning empty-handed and becoming one more mouth to feed.

Two years have passed since an Associated Press investigation spurred that dramatic rescue, leading to the release of more than 2,000 men trapped on remote Indonesian islands. The euphoria they first felt during reunions with relatives has long faded. Occasional stories of happiness and opportunity have surfaced, but the men’s fight to start over has largely been narrated by shame and struggle.

Some of them are lucky to find odd jobs paying pennies an hour in cramped slums and rural villages in Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. Others must travel far from home for back-breaking labor.

Some suffer night terrors and trauma from the years or even decades of physical and mental abuse they endured on boats run by Thai captains. Others have fought their demons with drugs and alcohol.

At least one Cambodian tried to hang himself. Another Thai fisherman went back to work on a different boat at home, only to have his arm ripped off by a net. He says he was offered about $3 and a few packets of instant noodles as compensation.

The men left their impoverished homes years ago full of hope and headed to neighboring Thailand, promising to send money back from good-paying jobs. Instead, they were tricked, sold or even kidnapped and put onto boats that became floating prisons.

They then were trafficked thousands of miles away to the isolated Indonesian island village of Benjina, where the AP first found hundreds of captive fishermen, including some locked in a cage simply because they asked to go home. They were beaten and routinely forced to work up to 22 hours a day. The unluckiest ones ended up in the sea or buried in a company graveyard under fake names – their bodies will likely never be recovered.

The AP story prompted the Indonesian government to initiate a rescue. It also traced fish tainted by forced labor back to the supply chains of many major U.S. companies and pet food brands, including Wal-Mart, Sysco, Kroger, Fancy Feast and Iams.

“What happened in Benjina has opened everybody’s eyes,” says Indonesian fishing minister Susi Pudjiastuti, who oversaw the rescue and is pushing for improved human rights at sea globally.

Despite all the suffering following their homecomings, there are stories of inspiration.

Some of the men borrowed money, enrolled in trade school or found decent work, saving what little they could. Others are opening small businesses, or have married and started families.

A few have gone to court to challenge their former captains, receiving a small portion of the pay they were owed. In rare instances, some even helped send their traffickers to jail.

Many say time has helped soften the pain, but most remain angry about the money and years lost to Benjina. Still, they are thankful to be home, living as free men.

They are slaves no more.

Sick and unemployed

MON STATE, Myanmar – Myint Naing sits outside the flimsy thatch shack he shares with five other family members. He stares silently at a computer alongside his mother and sister, watching flickering images of their extraordinary reunion two years ago.

The memories are still raw of Myint collapsing into his wailing mother’s arms on the same dusty road just feet away from where they sit now in southern Myanmar. That day was tinged with both joy and sorrow for all the time lost – ending 22 years of separation after Myint was taken to Indonesia and nearly beaten to death by a captain who refused to let him go home.

His mother blots her eyes and briefly looks away from the screen. Myint’s younger sister sees herself embracing her brother and screaming, “We don’t need money! We just need family!”

She never realized just how much those words would be tested every day in the harsh reality of poverty.

Myint, now 42, desperately wants to work, but he’s simply not able. He tried doing construction and other manual labor, but the muscles on the right side of his body were weakened by a stroke-like attack in Indonesia. He can’t even steady a smartphone with one hand long enough to take a selfie.

He dreams of opening a little snack shop to contribute to the family’s income, but there is no money to start it.

“Half of my body is suffering, and it’s very challenging for me to get a job anywhere,” he says, as his nieces dance around him on a rickety porch. “I don’t really know how to keep going like this.”

He’s also stressed. He and his sister moved out of their mother’s house soon after he returned, partially because Myint didn’t get along with his new stepfather, who is about his age.

His sister, Mawli Than, and her husband together earn less than $5.50 a day to feed three children and three adults. But she has kept her promise to love and care for him no matter what.

She wishes she could afford to get Myint the long-term medical care he needs. Her voice cracks when she talks about not being able to give him a proper ceremony before he left to study as a Buddhist novice, a custom that every devout Burmese male tries to fulfill.

“I feel really sad and guilty that I wasn’t able to do that,” she says, sobbing, as he listens quietly in the doorway. “My brother is like a father to me.”

Myint’s freshly shaved head reveals two large scars he received during his years in Indonesia. One is from a motorbike helmet, the other from an iron rod – both blows from angry fishing captains.

He eventually escaped his captors and lived in the jungle for years, farming vegetables with help from sympathetic local families.

He insists life is better now that he is home. But his mind often drifts to the past. If his former Thai captains would just pay him what he’s owed for all the time he worked on the boats, he could buy his own house and help his sister instead of making her life harder.

“I’m very angry at them. I can’t even find words,” he says. “If I ever saw them again, I might kill them.”

Happy on land

PREK TATIENG, Cambodia – A gas-powered pump growls on Sriev Kry’s back as he walks barefoot, spraying a stream of pesticide on pink lotus blossoms that will soon be ready for harvest.

The work is hard and unforgiving. He doesn’t wear a mask or other protective gear, and there aren’t any trees in the surrounding rice paddy to shield him from the blistering sun. But this is Cambodian soil, and it belongs to him. It’s a freedom he says he never really understood until being trafficked and enslaved in Benjina.

The wiry rice farmer never wanted to be a fisherman because the ocean’s roiling waves had always sent him running to the side of the boat to vomit. So when a cousin asked if he was interested in leaving his rural Cambodian village to find higher-paying work in Thailand, he refused until he was promised a factory job or something else on land.

Unlike most migrant workers who cross the border illegally, Sriev Kry and two of his cousins waited to receive passports before leaving in 2014.

They were immediately taken to a boat and ordered to get on board after receiving $880 advances. They were told they wouldn’t be at sea long. But it was all a lie.

Just as their trawler reached the Malaysian border, Sriev Kry says he woke up to learn a Burmese fisherman was missing. They didn’t stop to search for him, and no calls were made for help. Instead, Sriev Kry says the Thai owner told the workers that “life on the boat doesn’t matter. No one cares about missing people.”

He says the men then watched as the crew member’s passport was tossed into the sea, destroying the only record of his existence.

“The other workers just saw that life is very cheap,” Sriev Kry recalls. “It is cheaper than the bodies of dogs.”

He tried not to cause problems and worked nonstop on the boat, sorting mountains of fish. He saw other crew beaten or scalded by water tossed on them when they were too sick to work.

“It’s like a slave’s life. It’s even worse than a slave. Slaves can sometimes complain or challenge the owner,” he says. “If we refused, if we complained, the Thai owner always asked: ‘You want to live? You want to have a life? Or do you want to die?’”

Sriev Kry was only able to contact his wife a few times from Benjina. He told her he wasn’t sure he’d ever make it back home to the emerald green rice paddies and lotus fields they tended together.

Two of their four children were studying in the capital, Phnom Penh, with one already in university. The baby was just a year old, and the family was struggling to survive because Sriev Kry never sent the money he was promised. But his wife, Khan Srin, encouraged him to hold on. To focus on staying alive.

When he was finally rescued, Sriev Kry was done being silent: He volunteered to testify against his captain. He saw it as his duty to speak out to prevent others from facing the same fate. He is still waiting for his day in court.

Today, at 44, he earns about $10 a day farming the field that rings a one-room shack perched on stilts overlooking the few acres of land he owns. He sleeps here sometimes, away from his nearby village, to stand watch over his crops. He also sells mangoes from his beat-up motorbike just across the border in Vietnam and harvests catfish from a lake – the only fishing he says he will ever do again.

It’s not much, but it’s enough to pay his debts and feed his family. His captain in Benjina swore more earnings would be sent, but Sriev Kry says nothing ever came.

He remains angry and is still haunted by the image of the dead crewman’s passport being thrown into the sea. But he’s happy to be home and vows he’ll never leave his family again.

“I was just rescued from hell,” he says, shaking his head. “Why would I go back to hell again?”

Still a fisherman

YANGON, Myanmar – Phyo Kyaw’s father wept when he heard his son was returning to Thailand to board another fishing boat. But there was nothing he could do.

After the 31-year-old was rescued from Benjina, he worked a few months on the gritty outskirts of Yangon driving a bus and a motorbike taxi, but the money wasn’t good and his bike soon was stolen.

Several of Phyo’s friends from Benjina already had gone back to Thailand to find better-paying work, and they encouraged him to get a passport and join them on another fishing boat. They had heard good stories about the company, and they all had legal working documents this time. They were convinced their papers would protect them from exploitation.

Phyo left Myanmar without telling his father. He went to the same port town where he was initially trafficked and got on a trawler with 13 other Burmese men.

After being beaten and spending more than two years on Benjina with no pay, he was scared of being trafficked again but decided to take a chance. As he prepared to leave, he met other fishermen who had just docked – they had been at sea for three years without touching land.

“I don’t think it’s fair, but it’s my choice to go,” Phyo says. “My father is the only financial provider here for the moment so at least if I go to Thailand, I can bring some money back.”

Phyo didn’t know where his boat was going or how long he would be gone. He also had no idea if he was fishing legally or poaching, a common but dangerous practice that can land an entire crew in a foreign jail.

The days were still long but, this time, he got a few more hours of sleep – four or five a night – and he wasn’t beaten.

After six months at sea, the trawler returned to Thailand. Phyo should have made nearly $1,600 for the trip, but was left with just $350 after deductions for fees, food and supplies.

He could have earned nearly double that amount driving the motorbike taxi back home. Still, he’s thinking about going out to sea again with another group of Benjina guys.

His father, an electrical engineer, can only shake his head with disappointment.

“As parents, you are always worried about your children,” Aye Kyaw, 67, says inside the family’s small, sweltering apartment.

But Phyo just shrugs. Fishing is what he knows.

“If I can get a better job here, I won’t go,” he says. “But if I don’t have anything, I will go on a fishing boat.”

Forgiveness as a monk

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand – Wrapped in flowing saffron robes with a shaved head, Prasert Jakkawaro speaks calmly and softly as he looks back on his lost life.

He spent eight years fishing the Arafura Sea’s rich waters off Benjina. If he was lucky, his boat docked twice a year. He worked around the clock, but says he was never paid what was promised.

The memories still cut like razor blades, but he does not show it. His voice remains steady, his fingers laced loosely across his lap. The rage that once sent him searching for solace at the bottom of a bottle has died. He now finds comfort praying in a monastery as a Buddhist monk and helping others who have lost their way.

“I feel that I have to give forgiveness and kindness back,” he says, his robe concealing tattoos from his former life. “I have another chance. There’s no point in dwelling on the past. The anger will only follow me in this life and into the next.”

Finding peace wasn’t easy: He was first forced to confront all of the evil he saw.

Even though the captains were Thai like him, he says he was treated just as badly as his fellow fishermen from Myanmar and Cambodia. They rarely had vegetables or meat to eat – just fish and rice for every meal, and even that wasn’t guaranteed. Those who got sick were forced to work anyway, and he saw one crew member die due to a lack of medical attention. Sleep was a luxury.

“If you don’t get up, the metal rod will be used to bang on your door and beat on your legs,” says Prasert, 53. “The rule is that if you can eat, then you have to work.”

When he asked to go home after just one year on his trawler, he was told he first had to find a replacement, an impossible request on a remote island with hundreds of other enslaved men just as desperate to leave.

Once, after coming ashore, Prasert asked his captain for more money. As punishment, he says he was tossed into a tiny, muggy cell with about 20 other men.

The security guards then used the imprisoned fishermen for a twisted form of entertainment – forcing them to beat each other up.

“You would get hit so hard that you could see the handprints on your face,” Prasert says.

Over the years, he lost hope and rage festered inside him. He talked about attacking the captain, but the other fishermen always managed to calm him down.

After he was finally rescued and returned home to Thailand, he received a settlement of about $2,250 from the boat owner. It was far short of the nearly $9,000 he says he was owed, but he knows most of the other men received nothing.

The anger continued to swell, and he wallowed in alcohol and slept anywhere he could find, including on a bathroom floor. Staff at the local nonprofit Labor Rights Protection Network, which has long assisted trafficked fishermen, pushed him to seek help.

With encouragement from his sister, Prasert spent three months studying at a Buddhist temple.

Slowly, the hatred began to melt.

“When I attend ceremonies, people really look at me as if I can shine a light on their life, and it makes me feel that I am useful again,” he says. “I feel like I can have real happiness at last.”

* Information for this story came from interviews with nearly 15 former fishermen in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand along with nonprofits in Cambodia and Thailand.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. House Republicans expect to introduce bills later this week that would bar states from setting their own rules for self-driving cars and take other steps to remove obstacles to putting such vehicles on the road, a spokeswoman said.

The legislative action comes as major automakers are joining forces with auto suppliers and other groups to prod Congress into action.

Last month, a U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee held a hearing on a Republican draft package of 14 bills that would allow U.S. regulators to exempt up to 100,000 vehicles a year per manufacturer from federal motor vehicle safety rules that prevent the sale of self-driving vehicles without human controls.

Blair Ellis, a spokeswoman for the committee, said on Monday it was likely that legislation would be introduced this week and a formal hearing on the bills would occur next week.

Republican U.S. Representative Robert Latta said last month he hoped to win committee approval of a bipartisan legislative package by the end of July.

The draft measures would bar states from setting self-driving rules and prevent the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from pre-approving self-driving car technologies.

Democrats say the NHTSA must play a more aggressive role in mandating self-driving car safety.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a group representing General Motors Co, Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor Corp and others, and the Association of Global Automakers, representing major foreign automakers including Honda Motor Co and Hyundai Motor Corp, are forming the Coalition for Future Mobility to press Congress to act.

The group, which includes the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, National Federation of the Blind and Securing America’s Future Energy, a group of corporate officials and retired military leaders, plans to begin airing radio ads on Tuesday portraying the legislation as “liberating innovation for self-driving vehicles.”

GM, Alphabet Inc., Tesla Inc., and others have been lobbying Congress to pre-empt rules under consideration in California and other states that could limit self-driving vehicle deployment.

The administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama last year unveiled voluntary guidelines on self-driving cars. President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, has said she plans to quickly update those.
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From: MeNeedIt

Russia has indicated a potential new legal salvo in its trade war with Ukraine and the European Union, telling the World Trade Organization that a trade deal between Kiev and Brussels breaks the rules by penalizing Russia.

Minutes of a June 29 meeting of the WTO’s committee on regional trade agreements, published on Tuesday, record Russia’s representative as saying the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement was “an exemplary case of a situation where a free trade area worsened trade conditions for other trading partners”.

That meant it was a breach of the WTO rules, which say that free trade areas should encourage trade between the signatories without raising new barriers with other countries, the Russian representative said.

Russia has launched six trade disputes within its first five years as a WTO member, all of them against Ukraine or the EU.

Its most recent complaint, in May this year, accused Ukraine of “a universe of restrictions, prohibitions, requirements and procedures” that discriminated against Russia.

Russia’s representative at the WTO committee on regional trade agreements said the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States had harmonized trade legislation with Ukraine since the 1990s, and signed a treaty in 2011 on coordinating the removal of technical barriers to trade.

“To sum up, there were dozens of bilateral and multilateral agreements in the field of trade and investment that linked Ukraine with the CIS countries. Many of Ukraine’s commitments were inconsistent with its obligations under the EU-Ukraine Agreement,” the minutes of the meeting said.

Russia’s representative also said Ukraine’s 2015 law on the natural gas market required the operator of Ukraine’s gas pipelines to be a person with at least five years’ experience from the European Energy Community or the United States.

The Energy Community, which aims to extend the EU’s internal energy market to the Balkans and Black Sea region, excludes Russia.

The Russian representative at the WTO meeting asked how excluding pipeline experts from other countries could be justified and how it could correspond with the WTO rules that say free trade agreements should not diminish other countries’ rights.

She also said that Russia’s share in Ukrainian imports had fallen significantly since Ukraine began implementing its Association Agreement with the EU, while the EU’s share had grown.

The chairman of the WTO committee invited follow-up written questions, which Ukraine and the EU were asked to respond to by July 20.
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From: MeNeedIt

A federal appeals court on Monday revived a lawsuit seeking to force a Madrid museum to return an Impressionist masterpiece to the family of a Jewish woman who was compelled to sell it to a Nazi art appraiser for $360 in 1939 so she could flee Germany.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said two of Lilly Cassirer’s great-grandchildren may sue the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum for the return of Camille Pissarro’s 1897 depiction of a Paris street scene, “Rue Saint-Honoree, Apres-midi, Effet de Pluie.”

Monday’s decision revived a 16-year legal battle that began after the Cassirers learned that the Pissarro, whose value may exceed $40 million, was on display in the Madrid museum, its home since 1992.

Applying Spanish law, the appeals court said it was an open question whether the museum knew the painting was stolen when it acquired it in 1993 in a $338 million purchase of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art collection.

It said that price was well below the collection’s estimated $1 billion to $2 billion value, and the baron may have known he also got a bargain when he bought the Pissarro from a New York art dealer for $275,000 in 1976.

“The Cassirers have created a triable issue of fact whether [the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection] knew the painting was stolen from Lilly when TBC purchased the painting from the Baron,” Circuit Judge Carlos Bea wrote. “There is a triable issue of fact as to the Baron’s good faith.”

Bea also said Lilly Cassirer did not waive her ownership rights when Germany’s government paid her 120,000 marks for the loss of the painting in 1958, when its whereabouts were unknown.

The Pasadena, California-based appeals court returned the case to U.S. District Judge John Walter in Los Angeles, who dismissed the lawsuit in June 2015.

“We’re obviously very pleased,” said Stephen Zack, a Boies, Schiller & Flexner partner representing the Cassirers, in a phone interview. “This has been a scar they’ve had to deal with for generations.”

David Boies, a prominent U.S. lawyer, had argued the Cassirers’ appeal.

Thaddeus Stauber, a lawyer for the foundation that runs the museum, wrote in an email that the baron and the museum acquired the Pissarro in good faith.

“We remain confident that the foundation’s ownership of the painting will once again be confirmed,” Stauber said.

Both sides agreed that Lilly Cassirer’s sale of the Pissarro to Berlin art dealer Jackob Scheidwimmer amounted to a forcible taking. Pissarro’s works had been popular among European Jewish collectors.

The case is Cassirer v Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Nos. 15-55550, 15-55977, 15-55951.
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From: MeNeedIt

A cholera outbreak in Yemen “continues to spiral out of control,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which says there are now over 300,000 suspected cases of the water-borne disease.

The country is also struggling to battle famine in the midst of a two-year war between a Saudi-led coalition and Shiite rebels who control the capital city of Sana’a.

The World Food Program has reported that two-thirds of Yemen’s population does not know where their next meal will come from.

“Disturbing. We’re at 300k+ suspected cases with ~7k new cases/day,” ICRC Regional Director Robert Mardini said in a tweet.

“More than 1,600 have died,” the ICRC tweeted.

Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial infection that can be spread through contaminated food and water. The disease thrives in impoverished areas like Yemen.

Although easily treatable, the disease is spreading in war-torn Yemen as less than half of all medical facilities have become useless.

According to the U.N’.s Humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick, most of the $1.1 billion in aid promised to Yemen has not been delivered yet, causing food security to become even more of a problem.

“Humanitarian Organizations have had to reprogram their resources away from malnutrition and reuse them to control the cholera outbreak,” he said in Sana’a last week. “We’re trying to do our best, but its very much beyond what we can cope with.”
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From: MeNeedIt

A giant Chinese red flag flutters on a pole where an American flag used to fly at a steel mill in this dusty industrial Serbian town. The company logos of U.S. Steel are faded on the huge chimneys stacks, replaced by those of a Chinese company.

When U.S. Steel sold its loss-making smelter in Serbia to the government for the symbolic sum of $1 in 2012, few here thought the ailing communist-era factory would ever be revived. Then came along a state-owned Chinese company.

Hebei Iron & Steel’s 46 million-euro ($52 million) purchase of the Steelworks Smederevo last year is part of China’s broader effort to project influence and gain an access point to the European market as other traditional powers, particularly the U.S. under President Donald Trump, retreat from the world stage.

The dynamic was laid bare at a world summit over the weekend, where Trump showed little interest in promoting free trade and was at odds with other countries on issues like climate change. China, meanwhile, was keen to promote itself as a champion of commerce and openness – even though in practice it falls far short of being one.

The Serbian plant is economically irrelevant in the short term to China, which abounds with steel production at home. But the deal saved 5,200 local jobs and gained Serbia’s political favor.

“It seems to me that everything China has been doing in the past several years in the field of its investments abroad also has a political background and connotation,” said Mijat Lakicevic, a Serbian political and economy analyst.

“China doesn’t really need the Serbian plant that produces practically nothing compared to the steel production in China,” he said. “So, I would describe this as placing a foot in the doorway in order to enter the market and the area where Russia and America are already present.”

The longer-term strategy for China is to open markets for its businesses as its home economy slows. The most high-profile effort in this direction is the ambitious $900 billion Belt and Road project, often referred to as the New Silk Road – a transport and trade corridor running from China to Germany, via Greek ports, the Balkans and Central Europe.

Annual investment by Chinese companies in Europe reached an all-time high of $18 billion in 2014, with annual inflows averaging $10 billion over the past four years, according to the Rhodium Group, a China investment monitor.

Beijing is encouraging its industries to diversify abroad in hopes of reducing China’s reliance on exports and its domestic market. That has also led to a string of acquisitions in chemicals, tourism, insurance, banking and other industries.

Steel producers have an extra incentive because Beijing is trying to shrink its bloated state-dominated industry at home. China’s production glut has led to a flood of low-priced exports, which has depressed global markets and cost jobs in the U.S. and Europe, raising political tensions. As China negotiates the issue with the U.S. and EU, its acquisition of the Serbian plant gets it some rare good headlines in which it is credited with saving, not destroying, jobs.

Chinese companies are also starting to make inroads into Eastern European construction and engineering markets, including plans to build a $2 billion high-speed rail line from the Serbian capital, Belgrade, to Budapest in neighboring Hungary.

And while the EU remains the Western Balkans’ largest trading partner, local governments have sometimes looked with favor to countries like China that are willing to invest large amounts without raising concerns about the region’s patchy record on human rights or media freedoms.

“Serbia has an important role in China’s global Belt and Road project and we want to capitalize on all its potential,” Serbian Construction Minister Zorana Mihajlovic said. “This project cannot be realized without developed infrastructure in the countries where it passes.”

She said that China has so far loaned some 5.5 billion euros ($6.3 billion) in Serbia for the construction of bridges, highways and railroads that it plans to use as transport routes for its goods into the heart of Europe.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has often been criticized by Western European leaders as being authoritarian, has often expressed his admiration for the economic achievements of countries like China. He wants to make Hungary the main hub for Chinese business and investments in Central and Eastern Europe.

“The old model for globalization has become obsolete,” Orban said in May in Beijing while taking part in a Belt and Road conference. “The engine room of the global economy is no longer in the West, but in the East.”

In Smederevo, the town of some 100,000 people where thousands make a living from the steel plant, there was praise for China.

Though salaries are about 25 percent below what they were under the U.S. company – roughly 750 euros ($855) compared with 1,000 euros ($1,140), mayor Jasna Avramovic said it was important that the jobs had returned in the first place.

“It’s been one year since the Chinese came to our town and a calmer atmosphere is visible,” Avramovic said. “There is no more uncertainty over what will happen with the plant. The salaries come on time.”
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From: MeNeedIt

China’s biggest shipping company, state-owned COSCO Shipping Holdings Co., is creating the world’s No. 3 container shipping giant by acquiring rival Orient Overseas (International) Ltd.

Shares in both companies surged Monday following the announcement of the $6.3 billion deal.

A wave of consolidation has created huge competitors in a global shipping industry that is struggling with sluggish trade and depressed prices.

On Monday, COSCO’s shares traded in Hong Kong jumped 4.7 percent while Orient Overseas’ shares soared 19.5 percent.

On its own, COSCO ranks No. 4 globally with 317 ships and 8.4 percent of container traffic, according to Alphaline, an industry database. Adding Orient Overseas would give it market share of 11.7 percent, moving it ahead of Marseilles, France-based CMA CGM Group.

The No. 1 shipper is Denmark’s AP Moeller-Maersk with 643 ships and 16.4 percent of container traffic.

Orient Overseas, with 103 ships, is controlled by the family of former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa.

The transaction is subject to antitrust review by Chinese, European and U.S. authorities, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The filing said COSCO will pay $10.07 per share (HK$78.67), a premium of 38 percent over Orient’s Friday share price on the Hong Kong Exchange. The total price tag for the deal will be $6.3 billion (HK$49.2 billion).

AP Moeller-Maersk acquired Hamburg Sud of Germany in December. CMA CGM bought Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines last year.

Orient Overseas reported a loss of $219.2 million last year. It blamed a glut of capacity, slow growth and rising fuel prices as well as freight rates that sometimes dipped below those seen in 2009 during the financial crisis.
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From: MeNeedIt