MAHENTO

China Says it Followed Law in Approving 38 Trump Trademarks

China on Thursday defended its handling of 38 trademarks it recently approved provisionally for President Donald Trump, saying it followed the law in processing the applications at a pace that some experts view as unusually quick.

Democrats in Congress were critical of Trump after The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the potentially valuable trademarks had been granted, raising questions of conflict of interest and political favoritism. One senator said the issue “merits investigation.”

Trump has sometimes struggled to win trademarks from China; he secured one recently after a 10-year fight that turned his way only after he declared his candidacy for the presidency.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a regular briefing with reporters that Chinese authorities handle all trademark applications “in accordance with the law and regulation.” He declined to comment on speculation about political influence on Trump’s trademark approvals.

Critics fear foreign governments might gain leverage from Trump’s global portfolio of brands.

Democrats in Congress have been pushing Trump to sever financial ties with his global businesses to avoid potential violations of the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars federal officials from accepting anything of value from foreign governments unless approved by Congress.

The monopoly right to a successful brand in a market like China can be worth huge sums. Former top ethics lawyers from the administrations of Barack Obama and George W. Bush say any special treatment from Beijing in awarding Trump intellectual property protection would violate the Constitution.

Concerns about political influence are particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party, and foreign companies and the lawyers that work for them regularly ask embassy staff for help lobbying Chinese officials.

Spring Chang, a founding partner at Chang Tsi & Partners, a Beijing law firm that has represented the Trump Organization, declined to comment specifically on Trump’s trademarks. But she did say government relations are an important part of trademark strategy in China. She said she has worked with officials from both the U.S. and Canadian embassies to help her clients. The key, she said, is “you should communicate closely with the government to push your case.”

Drawing on public records from the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the AP compiled a detailed list of 49 trademarks Trump’s lawyers applied for in 2016, even as he railed against China on the campaign trail. On Feb. 22, seven of those marks were rejected, though public records do not indicate why. China granted preliminary approval for 38 marks on Feb. 27 and Mar. 6. Four applications are pending.

Matthew Dresden, a China intellectual property attorney at Harris Bricken in Seattle, said the rejections suggested that the trademark office hadn’t done Trump any special favors. “Some did not go through, that suggests it’s just business as usual,” he said.

Dan Plane, a director at Simone IP Services, a Hong Kong intellectual property consultancy, said it would be difficult to draw firm conclusions without in-depth research. However, he said the efficiency of China’s trademark office in handling Trump’s caseload suggested favor for a man whose decisions could have a powerful impact on China.

“For this many marks to all sail through to preliminary approval this quickly, with nary an issue in sight – that is unheard of to me, and I have been doing this for 16 years,” he said. “I wish my clients’ applications would be dealt with half as expeditiously and graciously.”

If no one objects, the new marks will be officially registered after 90 days, bringing the number of Trump’s trademarks in China to 115. Nearly all are in the president’s own name; a few are registered to a Delaware company called DTTM Operations LLC.

The new marks could lay the groundwork for an expanded range of branded businesses, including financial, insurance and real estate services, golf clubs, educational institutions, restaurants and bars. A number of the trademarks granted, including those for “social escort” and “body guard” services, appeared to relate specifically to hotels. Other international hotel companies whose documents were reviewed by AP sought similar trademarks.

It’s unclear whether any of these Trump-brand businesses will materialize in China. Many companies here register trademarks just to prevent others from using their name inappropriately. Trump has also said he will refrain from new foreign deals while in office.

Trump began to file trademark applications in China in late 2005, an effort that accelerated in 2008 as Trump’s lawyers fought for control of Chinese variations of his name, public records show. Years of ambition in China, however, have yet to yield a single marquee development. And despite all the recent activity, Trump still doesn’t have a firm hold on his brand in China. More than 225 Trump-related marks are held or sought by others in China, for an array of things including Trump toilets, condoms, pacemakers and even a “Trump International Hotel.”

Trump Organization chief legal officer Alan Garten said the latest registrations were a continuation of efforts that long predate Trump’s presidential run. “Any suggestion to the contrary demonstrates a complete disregard of the facts as well as a lack of understanding of international trademark law,” he said in an email.

But a growing number of Democrats disagree.

After AP reported Wednesday about the sweep of new approvals, Senators Debbie Stabenow and Ben Cardin called a press conference to lambaste President Trump for his growing Chinese entanglements. Also citing AP’s report, Senator Richard Blumenthal said on the Senate floor that Trump’s intellectual property in China “merits investigation.”

“This President’s conflicts of interest are creeping into every corner of the world,” he said in an email to the AP. “The consequence is that he has done nothing to counter Chinese currency manipulation, trade rules violations, military buildup, and other aggressive Chinese actions. Standing up for a great America means putting our nation before personal profit.”

Democrats have also written to Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urging scrutiny of Trump’s intellectual property interests in China.

“It’s time for Republicans in Congress to join our efforts to hold President Trump accountable,” Senator Dianne Feinstein said in a statement Wednesday. “The Constitution demands it and the American people deserve it.”
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US Commerce Chief Sees No Major NAFTA Talks Until Later This Year

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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‘No Time for Trial and Error’ as Cape Town’s Mayor Leads Green Push

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.”
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‘Fearless Girl’ Statue Stares Down Wall Street’s Iconic Bull

A new statue of a resolute young girl now faces Wall Street’s famous Charging Bull, erected by a major asset managing firm for International Women’s Day to make a point: There’s a dearth of women on the boards of the largest U.S. corporations.

State Street Global Advisors, the Boston-based investment giant, had the statue created to push companies to increase the number of women directors.

Artist Kristen Visbal’s “Fearless Girl” drew both tourists who came to pose for pictures with the bull and workers arriving at their jobs in the Wall Street area Wednesday.

The girl, sculpted in bronze, appears to be staring down the bronze bull, her hands firmly planted on her waist. Her head is held high, with a ponytail that looks like it’s swinging.

“Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference,” reads a plaque at her feet.

“As a steward of nearly $2.5 trillion of assets, we want to engage with boards and management around issues that we think will drive core results,” said Lori Heinel, State Street’s deputy global chief investment officer. “And what you find repeatedly is having more diverse boards and more diverse senior management will actually drive better results for companies.”

Twenty-five percent of the Russell 3000 — an index of the nation’s largest companies — have no women on their boards, according to State Street, which manages many of their assets. Nearly 60 percent have fewer than 15 percent of female directors.

Heinel said State Street will contact those companies, urging them to change the composition of their leadership. She said the financial giant also is working with companies in Great Britain and Australia to urge them to pursue diversity in board membership.

One man working in corporate America needed no convincing.

Chandrasekar Sundaram says a woman is the CEO of the company he works for in Texas, Hewlett-Packard, and he says there are quite a few women in top executive positions there.

“But when it gets to 50 percent, that’s when I think it’ll be right,” said Sundaram, a Dallas resident and native of India who was visiting New York with his family — with the Charging Bull as one of their stops.

The mammoth bronze was a “guerrilla art” act, dropped in the middle of the night in Bowling Green Park in 1989, without permission, by an artist who created it as a symbol of Americans’ survival energy in the face of the 1987 stock market crash. The city gave its permission for the bull to remain.

This week, McCann New York, a top advertising agency, dropped off the statue of the girl — with a city permit for at least a week. Negotiations are underway for the piece to remain there longer.

Why choose the Charging Bull as the site to place the girl?

“Well, we really wanted the bull to have a partner, and a partner that we thought was worthy of him,” Heinel said. “And so we got a very determined young woman who is fearless and is willing to drive the change that we believe we need.”

Sundaram’s 8-year-old daughter, Sankaribriya, got the message.

She wanted to pose with the sculpted girl “because I just wanted to look at her and wanted to feel like her.”
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Study: Herders’ Livestock Paved Silk Road

The hooves of nomads’ livestock forged the critical middle link between the civilizations of East and West along the Silk Road, according to new research.

Rather than seeing pastoralists as marginal players in the stories of the great civilizations of Asia and Europe, the new study puts these herders squarely at the center of the ancient transcontinental trade route.

The Silk Road was a conduit for the exchange of goods and ideas at least as far back as the third century BCE. Maps of the route typically resemble modern highway maps: a network of lines connecting cities from Xi’an in the east to Genoa in the west.

In the middle, however, are the mountains of Central Asia. Only slightly smaller than the Himalayas, these mountains formed a “pretty scary barrier,” says Washington University anthropologist Michael Frachetti.

The search for the Silk Road’s route through that barrier often follows paths of least resistance between cities.

“That makes sense if your destination is the other side,” Frachetti says. “But what if that’s not your destination?”

Livestock led the way

Herder communities have lived in these mountains for millennia, Frachetti notes. Even today, these groups migrate up and down the mountains as the seasons change.

“Their number-one priority isn’t taking the easiest path,” he explains. “Their number-one priority is feeding their animals along the way.”

As they travel from pasture to pasture, they meet, trade and intermarry with other pastoralist communities.

“They get up to these summer pasture zones where there’s a lot of populations coming up from different areas,” Frachetti says. “They’re coming up with their families, with their sons and daughters that want to get married.” Goods are exchanged and bonds are formed. “Think of them like festivals,” he adds.

Studying present-day herder communities in Kazakhstan, Frachetti had previously modeled how Bronze Age herders may have moved through the mountains of Central Asia from highland pastures in summertime to lowlands in winter.

But that research “wasn’t about the Silk Road at all,” he says. “People kind of smiled and said, ‘that’s interesting.’ And that’s where it sat for 11 or 12 years.”  

Recently, however, study co-author Tim Williams at University College London mapped 258 known Silk Road sites.

When Frachetti and colleagues lay their map of likely livestock routes over Williams’ map of Silk Road sites, they lined up remarkably well.

“There’s kind of a moment of truth where you say, ‘Okay, how much do they intersect?’ And the intersection was surprising,” he says.

Social network

The research suggests that long before traders crossed the continent in caravans, there was a web of interconnections through the mountains that later became a crucial link in the Silk Road.

“It takes us away from this image of the Silk Road as a highway and turns us towards an image of the Silk Road as a social network,” Frachetti adds.

The study, which appears in the journal Nature, “changes the playing field,” says Dan Rogers, curator of archaeology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who was not part of this research.

The nomads of Central Asia are portrayed as bloodthirsty barbarians everywhere, from ancient Chinese literature to modern movies about Genghis Khan, Rogers says. “What we’re finding is a much more complicated picture.”

The next step, he adds, is field work that connects what the maps say to what actually happened on the ground.

“Let’s go a bit deeper into what the archaeology shows us,” he says. “What evidence do we have for how the routes were being used? We’d have to do some excavations.”

Frachetti says the new research is “a model against isolationism.” The Silk Road connected not only the disparate civilizations of East and West, but also did so by weaving in previously marginalized societies of nomads.

“Through interaction with culturally diverse populations, a greater aggregate civilization arose,” he says. “That’s a pretty powerful notion.”
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NYSE: 200 Years of Market Ups & Downs

Two hundred years ago on March 8, 1817, the New York Stock & Exchange Board was officially launched by a group of financial brokers, who rented rooms at 40 Wall Street.

It was renamed the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1863. 

The idea for stock market was informally created in 1792, when 24 brokers and merchants signed The Buttonwood Agreement to trade securities in return for commission.

It was named for the group’s meeting place under a Buttonwood tree.

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Throughout the early 1800’s, the NYSE expanded beyond government bonds and bank stocks. New York City soon surpassed Philadelphia as the financial center of the United States.

Today, the NYSE is by far the world’s largest stock exchange, with its listed companies valued at $19.3 trillion as of June 2016.

The average daily trading value was an estimated $169 billion in 2013. More than a billion shares are bought and sold daily by traders who work the floor of the exchange.

“The NYSE is the best example of a free, but managed, marketplace,” said VOA’s Bob Leverone, who has covered NYSE for 30 years. 

“The trading in individual equities is managed by designated market makers, at clear locations on the NYSE floor,” added Leverone. “Those market makers have a responsibility to manage the order flow between buyers and sellers.”

From the days of handwritten, paper trading tickets that covered the floor at the NYSE, to the high speed electronic transactions of today, that market maker process has been a foundation for trading on public capital markets in the United States. 

Market basics

Every Monday through Friday at 9:30 a.m. sharp, a bell rings to open the market. The closing bell rings at 4 p.m. 

​Buyers and sellers — or traders — bid on shares of stocks on the floor of NYSE.

Stocks are a small piece of ownership of a public corporation, and their prices usually reflect investors’ opinions of what the company’s earnings will be.

Traders who think the company will do well in the future bid the price up, while those who believe it will do poorly  bid the price down.

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Sellers try to get as much as possible for each share, trying to receive more than what they paid for it.

Buyers try to get the lowest price so that they can sell it later for a profit.

Ups and downs

Over 200 years, the New York Stock Exchange has had a rocky history. Here are some of the most notable and newsworthy moments:

1867: The stock “ticker” is invented, revolutionizing the market by allowing investors to get current stock prices anywhere.
1878: The first telephone is installed on the floor of the exchange, two years after. Alexander Graham Bell’s successful tests of the new technology.
1903: The NYSE moves to a new building at the corner of Broad Street and Wall Street, where it is still housed today.
1914: As World War I escalated, the NYSE closed for more than four months to stop plunging stock prices. It was the longest the NYSE has been closed.
1929: Stocks fall dramatically on Oct. 24, which became known as “Black Thursday” and is considered the start of the Great Depression.​
1943: In the midst of World War II, women work on the floor of the NYSE for the first time.
1954: Dow Jones industrial average passes its 1929 peak for the first time.
1987: Dow Jones industrial average falls 22.61%, the largest one-day percentage drop.
2001: NYSE closes for four days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. When it reopens, the Dow falls 684.81 points, steepest one-day point decline
2017  The Dow Jones Industrial Average surpasses 21,000 for the first time ever.​

The NYSE lists several stock market indices: the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, the NYSE Composite, NYSE US 100 Index, the NASDAQ Composite and others.

 
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From Boardroom to Butcher Shop, Women Discuss Gender Inequality

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:
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World’s Working Women Discuss Gender Inequality

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.
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Brazil’s Temer Launches 45B-reais Infrastructure Concession Plan

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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