The owners of a Mexican hotel using the name Hotel California on Wednesday said a trademark infringement lawsuit by the Eagles, whose song “Hotel California” is arguably the band’s most famous, should be dismissed.

Hotel California Baja LLC, which runs the Todos Santos hotel in Baja California Sur, said the band long ago waived its trademark rights, having waited four decades to assert them since releasing the song “Hotel California” on a 1976 album with the same name.

The owner said it “flatly denies” the Eagles’ “baseless contention” that the 11-room hotel seeks to mislead travelers into thinking the property is associated with the band.

“Any alleged use of plaintiff’s trademarks is not likely to cause confusion, deception or mistake as to association, connection, sponsorship, endorsement, or approval of plaintiff,” the owner said in a filing in Los Angeles federal court.

Lawyers for the Eagles were not immediately available for comment.

In their May 1 lawsuit, the Eagles said the defendant encourages guests to believe their hotel is associated with the band, including piping its music through a sound system, to sell T-shirts and other merchandise.

The hotel is located about 1,000 miles (1,609 km) south of San Diego and 48 miles (77 km) north of Cabo San Lucas.

It was named Hotel California at its 1950 opening, underwent some name changes, and later revived the original name after a Canadian couple, John and Debbie Stewart, bought it in 2001.

U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner scheduled a conference in the case for Aug. 21.

The album “Hotel California,” won the 1977 Grammy Award for record of the year.

The case is Eagles Ltd v Hotel California Baja LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 17-03276.
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The marketability of Tiger Woods will suffer following his arrest for driving under the influence, but the former world number one golfer’s current sponsors will likely stay by his side, according to experts.

Woods, who had surgery in April to relieve back pain, blamed the incident on prescription drugs, but that was not enough to keep his droopy-eyed mug shot from being etched in the minds of many who were once captivated by his dominance on the course.

Still, despite his struggles on and off the course, Woods is the greatest golfer of his generation and sponsors like Nike, Bridgestone Golf, Monster Energy and TaylorMade are not likely to rush and cut ties with him, marketing experts told Reuters.

“They have to be very measured in terms of their response to their relation with him,” said David Carter, professor of sports business at the University of Southern California’s Marshal School of Business.

“He may not be delivering value but you could also be doing harm to your own brand if you cut and run on a guy with such global notoriety.”

Has barely played in recent years

Woods is second on the all-time list with 14 major titles but a player whose famous fist pump and beaming smile were once a regular site on the PGA Tour has lost his form and barely played in recent years.

Most of his sponsors, when asked by Reuters if they would review their agreements with Woods in light of Monday’s DUI arrest, either did not respond to requests for comment or said it was inappropriate to do so at this time.

Bridgestone Golf, however, said they “will continue to monitor this situation and gather information from the appropriate sources investigating the matter.”

But details of the arrest report which stated, among other things, that Woods was asleep at the wheel of a parked car with the engine running and was disoriented when woken up by a police officer, cannot be sitting well with sponsors.

Sidelined with back injury

And with Woods expected to miss the rest of the 2016-17 PGA Tour season after back surgery, his level of appeal to companies may be at an all-time low.

“You can overcome a DUI if you are a big enough star and you keep winning,” said Bob Dorfman, creative director of Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco.

“But you can’t overcome not being on the course for months, not winning championships and being pretty much a non entity in the golf world. And that’s what Tiger has become and the prospects don’t look very promising for him.”

This is not the first time Woods has made headlines away from the course. In 2009, a sex scandal turned his previously unblemished life and career upside down.

It also cost Woods a number of endorsement deals, while other sponsors shifted away from using him in marketing but did not end their contracts with him.

‘He has less chips to play with’

Woods could see a similar reaction this time around.

“He’s not playing, he’s not winning and so he has less chips to play with, if you will, in the endorsement game so that clearly makes it even more difficult for him,” said George Belch, marketing professor at San Diego State University.

“But you are still talking about an extremely high profile athlete here who transcended sports in many ways even if his baggage has clearly gotten bigger through the years.”

While the arrest report showed Woods had no alcohol in his system, results of a urine test that have not been released will go a long way in determining Woods’ marketability.

Tell the truth

Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, said sponsors will likely cut ties with Woods should the results show he was lying.

“The main issue is whether Tiger’s story is accurate. If indeed he is taking multiple medicines and they interacted with each other and knocked him out and he didn’t anticipate it then I think he fully recovers,” said Zimbalist.

“Another part of his ability to rebound and what happens to his legacy is going to be determined by how he comes back as a golfer and nobody knows the answer to that, probably not even Tiger himself.”
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday halted methane emission standards for oil and gas companies in its latest move to unwind Obama administration climate change rules, amid reports that the United States will withdraw from a global climate change agreement.

The agency issued a 90-day stay of the 2016 New Source Performance Standards for the oil and gas industry, which require companies to capture fugitive emissions, obtain engineer certifications and install leak detention devices while it reconsiders the rule.

The rule, completed last year under former President Barack Obama, was due to go into effect on June 3.

The EPA said it expects to prepare a proposed rule and launch a public comment period after the stay.

Environmental groups vowed on Wednesday to block the EPA move in court.

“The Trump administration is giving its friends in the oil and gas industry a free pass to continue polluting our air,” said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We will fight Trump’s latest polluter giveaway in court.”

The Environmental Defense Fund also said it would sue the EPA to block a rollback of the rule.

Methane is the second most prevalent greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Methane lasts in the atmosphere for 20 years, and is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat.
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U.S. President Donald Trump discussed trade with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during a White House visit on Wednesday and welcomed the signing of business deals worth billions of dollars and the jobs they would bring.

General Electric said earlier it had signed deals with Vietnam worth about $5.58 billion for power generation, aircraft engines and services, its largest ever single combined sale with the country.

“They just made a very large order in the United States — and we appreciate that — for many billions of dollars, which means jobs for the United States and great, great equipment for Vietnam,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Phuc said on Tuesday he would sign deals for U.S. goods and services worth $15 billion to $17 billion during his Washington visit, mainly for high-technology products and for services.

Protesters greet Phuc

Hundreds of people upset by Vietnam’s human rights record, called “dire” by Human Rights Watch, protested outside the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

Mai Huynh, a U.S. Navy veteran said, “I’m here today because I think it’s our responsibility to show the young generation in Vietnam that we’re supporting them in their fight for basic human rights, including the right to freely elect our leaders and ask them to listen to our call.”

Others posted comments on VOA Vietnamese: “President Trump, prior to any deal with Vietnam, please make sure to prioritize human rights as a core condition,” said Tien Nguyen.

Lolita Mancheno-Smoak, vice-chairwoman of the Fairfax (Virginia) County Republican Committee, told VOA Vietnamese, “The United States, as a nation, can’t have relationship or coordination with the government that prosecute and imprison its own citizens just because they’re blogging on in the internet and sharing their opinions, or just gathering peacefully or even worshipping the God, and holding the Bible in the public.

“We stand in solidarity with the Vietnamese community and the people in Vietnam to fight for their freedom,” Mancheno-Smoak said of a nation where the ruling Communist Party tightly controls many activities. “It goes to our hearts here in America when we know that people are dying and we feel for them.”

From adversary to partner

Communist Vietnam has gone from being a bitter adversary of the United States during the Cold War to an important partner in the Asia-Pacific, where both countries share concerns about China’s rising power.

Phuc told Trump the relationship had undergone “significant upheavals in history,” but that the two countries were now “comprehensive partners.”

However, while Hanoi and Washington have stepped up security cooperation in recent years, trade has become a potential irritant, with a deficit widening steadily in Vietnam’s favor, reaching $32 billion last year, compared with $7 billion a decade earlier.

Trump, who has had strong words for countries with large trade surpluses with the United States, said he would be discussing trade with Phuc, as well as North Korea.

Washington has been seeking support for efforts to pressure North Korea to drop its nuclear and missile programs, which have become an increasing threat to the United States. Hanoi has said it shares concerns about North Korea.

Analysts said that while the Trump administration welcomed new business deals with Vietnam, it wants to see moves on trade.

Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said the view was that deals were “nice, but not enough.”

“They want Vietnam to bring some ideas about how to tackle the surplus on an ongoing basis,” he said.

On Tuesday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed concern about the rapid growth of the deficit with Vietnam. He said it was a new challenge for the two countries and he was looking to Phuc to help address it.

The deficit with Vietnam — Washington’s sixth largest — reflects growing imports of Vietnamese semiconductors and other electronics products in addition to more traditional sectors such as footwear, apparel and furniture.

Vietnamese Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh presented Lighthizer on Tuesday with suggestions to address some U.S. concerns, such as advertising on U.S. social media, electronic payment services and imports of information security and farm products, Vietnam’s trade ministry said.

 

Vietnam also urged the United States to remove an inspection program for catfish, speed import licenses for its fruit and make fair decisions on anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures on Vietnamese products, the ministry said.

Vietnam was disappointed when Trump ditched the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, of which Hanoi was expected to be one of the main beneficiaries, and focused U.S. trade policy on reducing deficits.

Phuc’s meeting with Trump makes him the first Southeast Asian leader to visit the White House under the new administration.

It reflected calls, letters, diplomatic contacts and lower-level visits that started long before Trump took office in Washington, where Vietnam retains a lobbyist at $30,000 a month.

Tra Mi of VOA’s Vietnamese Service contributed to this report.
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Immigrants from around South America hoping to seek their fortunes in the continent’s copper mining capital of Antofagasta, Chile, are instead finding poverty, exclusion and a precarious home in the city’s growing temporary slums.

Chile, one of Latin America’s most developed countries, has become a magnet in recent years for immigrants from poorer and less stable parts of the region, especially Haiti, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador.

Many are attracted to this northern Chile city, close to where the majority of mines are located in the world’s biggest copper exporter. Not all seek work in the mines themselves, but rather in providing the ancillary services that mushroomed during the previous decade’s commodity boom.

But the end of that boom and a sharply lower copper price have hit investment and jobs, which has been felt particularly sharply in Chile’s northern provinces. While most of the country has maintained weak economic growth thanks to other industries like agriculture, Antofagasta has been plunged into recession.

Migrants to Chile on average have a higher level of education than Chileans, according to U.N. data. But anti-immigrant sentiment — increasingly exploited by politicians — means they are more likely to be left without work.

Reality is different

“The idea was to move up and progress,” said Angela Maria Concha, 36, a photographer who arrived in Antofagasta from Colombia three years ago.

“When we got here, we found reality was different,” she said. “It’s not the way it’s pictured there [in Colombia]. … Before there were not so many immigrants. Now there are a lot.”

Ecuadorean Yoana Paredes, 34, who arrived in 2009 hoping to study and work, said: “We are good people, working people, and we always end up stigmatized for being foreigners, and [they think] we all come to commit crime.”

Paredes lives in the “Ecuachilep campamento,” where temporary homes built from sheets of plywood and metal have sprung up in the dry desert dust, housing mainly immigrants from Andean countries.

Such camps now dot the city’s outskirts, said Antofagasta Mayor Karen Rojo.

“In today’s conditions, with the economic crisis our country is going through, the copper price fall, the Antofagasta labor market is not able to absorb all the immigrants who come today looking to improve their life chances,” she said.
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ExxonMobil’s chief executive said on Wednesday the company would reconsider how it communicates the risks its faces from climate change after shareholders approved a measure calling for increased transparency.

The non-binding proposal passed with 62 percent of ballots cast in a rare defeat for Exxon’s management, which had recommended a vote against the measure. The company argued that it already provides sufficient information on the potential impact of changing technologies and energy demand on its asset portfolio.

The results likely reflected a shift in how big shareholders voted on the measure, as the same proposal last year received only 38.1 percent of shares voted.

Asset manager BlackRock Inc backed the proposal, according to a source familiar with the matter. BlackRock holds about 6 percent of Exxon shares.

Among other top Exxon shareholders, spokespeople for State Street Corp and Vanguard Group declined to comment on the vote on Wednesday.

“It’s a powerful message,” New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in an interview. A New York state public employee pension fund he oversees was one of the proposal’s sponsors.

“They recognized the global community is staying committed to Paris,” he said, referring to the Paris global climate accord.

The proposal asked for Exxon to report on risks its business could face from technology changes and from climate change policies such as the 2015 accord aiming to keep average global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius.

In remarks following the shareholder meeting, Exxon Chief Executive Darren Woods said the board would reconsider its climate change-related communications but did not commit to producing the report requested in the proposal.

He also said board directors would review a policy designed to bar them from meeting individually with big shareholders, a practice criticized by the climate proposal sponsors.

“We take the vote seriously will respond to that feedback and look for opportunities” to communicate, Woods said. “That issue along with others is part of dialogue we have with the board.”

Exxon still faces probes by Massachusetts and New York Attorneys General into whether it misled the public and investors by soft-pedaling climate change risks. Exxon has said suits are politically motivated and intended to force it and others to change their positions on climate change.

Protesters, some in skeleton costumes, held up signs saying “Exxon Lied” across the street from Wednesday’s annual meeting.

Approval of Exxon’s executive pay meanwhile received 68 percent of ballots cast, down from 89 percent a year ago. Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services had recommended shareholders reject the executive pay plan.

A proposal calling for a report on Exxon’s efforts to reduce emissions of methane, another greenhouse gas, in its operations received support of nearly 39 percent of ballots cast.

Another proposal calling on the company to increase shareholder payouts in light of climate change-related risks was approved by less than 4 percent of ballots cast. Exxon had opposed both proposals.

Earlier, Exxon’s Woods had said the company supported the goals of many of the proposals, but disagreed with the methods.
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Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said Tuesday that he would sign deals for U.S. goods and services worth $15 billion to $17 billion during his visit to Washington, mainly for high-technology products and for services.

“Vietnam will increase the import of high technologies and services from the United States, and on the occasion of this visit, many important deals will be made,” Phuc told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce dinner.

Phuc, who is due to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday at the end of a three-day visit to the United States, did not provide further details of the transactions.

GE Power Chief Executive Officer Steve Bolze told the dinner that General Electric Co. would sign deals worth about $6 billion with Vietnam, but also offered no details.

Phuc’s comments came after U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed concern about the rapid growth of the U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam, saying this was a new challenge for the two countries and that he was looking to Phuc to help address it.

“Over the last decade, our bilateral trade deficit has risen from about $7 billion to nearly $32 billion,” Lighthizer said. “This concerning growth in our trade deficit presents new challenges and shows us that there is considerable potential to improve further our important trade relationship.”

Reducing deficits

Lighthizer and other Trump administration trade officials have pledged to work to reduce U.S. bilateral deficits with major trading partners. The $32 billion deficit with Vietnam last year — the sixth-largest U.S. trade deficit — reflects growing imports of Vietnamese semiconductors and other electronics products in addition to more traditional sectors such as footwear, apparel and furniture.

The trade issue has become a potential irritant in a relationship where Washington and Hanoi have stepped up security cooperation in recent years, given shared concerns about China’s increasingly assertive behavior in East Asia.

Phuc’s meeting with Trump makes him the first Southeast Asian leader to visit the White House under the new administration.

It reflected calls, letters, diplomatic contacts and lower-level visits that started long before Trump took office in Washington, where Vietnam retains a lobbyist at $30,000 a month.

Vietnam was disappointed when Trump ditched the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, in which Hanoi was expected to be one of the main beneficiaries, and focused U.S. trade policy on reducing deficits.
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Mexico’s foreign minister says the country is “inevitably” set to review rules of origin when renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, giving a boost to President Donald Trump’s manufacturing push.

Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray said Tuesday at an event in Miami that NAFTA has allowed Mexican industry to enter the U.S. market with lax rules of origin. The rules dictate how much U.S. content a product assembled in Mexico must have in order to escape tariffs when being imported into the United States. Currently set at 62.5 percent for the auto industry, that number could increase.

“One part that must inevitably be reviewed is the chapter on rules of origin,” Videgaray said at the University of Miami. “Over time, the free trade agreement has sometimes been used — not always, of course, but sometimes — as a way to access the U.S. market perhaps with laxity in some ways of rules of origin.”

The Trump administration told Congress this month there would be 90 days of consultations on the renegotiation of the 23-year-old pact before beginning talks with Canada and Mexico. Annual trade of goods between Mexico and the U.S. was worth $525 billion in 2016, with the U.S. running a trade deficit of more than $63 billion.

The foreign minister said Mexico won’t entertain any talks on building a wall along the border. Videgaray maintained it is seen as an unfriendly sign and questioned its efficiency. Trump’s budget seeks $2.6 billion for border security technology, including money to design and build a wall along the southern border. Trump repeatedly promised voters during the campaign that Mexico would pay for a wall.
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A man investigating working conditions at a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-brand shoes has been arrested and two others are missing, the arrested man’s wife and an advocacy group said Tuesday.

Hua Haifeng was accused of illegal surveillance, according to his wife, Deng Guilian, who said the police called her Tuesday afternoon. Deng said the caller told her she didn’t need to know the details, only that she would not be able to see, speak with or receive money from her husband, the family’s breadwinner.

China Labor Watch Executive Director Li Qiang said he lost contact with Hua Haifeng and the other two men, Li Zhao and Su Heng, over the weekend. By Tuesday, after dozens of unanswered calls, he had concluded: “They must be held either by the factory or the police to be unreachable.”

China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, was planning to publish a report next month alleging low pay, excessive overtime and the possible misuse of student interns. It is unclear whether the undercover investigative methods used by the advocacy group are legal in China.

For 17 years, China Labor Watch has investigated working conditions at suppliers to some of the world’s best-known companies, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China’s state security apparatus.

“Our plan was to investigate the factory to improve the labor situation,” Li said. “But now it has become more political.”

Disney decision

Walt Disney Co. stopped working with a toy maker in Shenzhen last year after the group exposed labor violations. China Labor Watch has also published reports on child labor at Samsung suppliers and spent years investigating Apple Inc.’s China factories. In the past, the worst thing Li feared was having investigators kicked out of a factory or face a short police detention.

That has changed.

The arrest and disappearances came amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China’s ruling Communist Party, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch. Faced with rising labor unrest and a slowing economy, Beijing has also taken a stern approach to activism in southern China’s manufacturing belt and to human rights advocates generally, sparking a wave of critical reports about disappearances, public confessions, forced repatriation and torture in custody.

Another difference is the target of China Labor Watch’s investigation: a brand owned by the daughter of the president of the United States.

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred questions to Ivanka Trump’s brand. The Ivanka Trump brand declined to comment for this story.

Abigail Klem, who took over day-to-day management when the first daughter took on a White House role as presidential adviser, has said that the brand requires licensees and their manufacturers to “comply with all applicable laws and to maintain acceptable working conditions.”

No reply from police

Li said China Labor Watch asked police about the three missing investigators on Monday but received no reply. Li added that a friend had tried to file a missing-person report on Li Zhao in Jiangxi, where the factory is located, but was told he had to do so in the man’s hometown.

AP was unable to reach the other investigators’ families. China’s Ministry of Public Security and police in Ganzhou city and Jiangxi province could not be reached for comment Tuesday, which was a national holiday in China.

All three men were investigating Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co.’s factory in Jiangxi province, just north of Guangdong province. Su Heng had been working undercover at the factory since April, Li said. The parent company is known as Huajian Group.

In January, Liu Shiyuan, then spokesman for the Huajian Group, told AP the company makes 10,000 to 20,000 pairs of shoes a year for Ivanka Trump’s brand — a small fraction of the 20 million pairs the company produces a year. A current spokeswoman for the company, Long Shan, did not reply to questions Tuesday. “I told you I could not check until tomorrow,” she said. “If your official letter contains a stamp and signature, we can confirm whether the media is real or not.”

Li said investigators had seen Ivanka Trump-brand shoes in the factory, as well as production orders for Ivanka Trump, Marc Fisher, Nine West and Easy Spirit merchandise.

“We were unaware of the allegations and will look into them immediately,” a spokeswoman for Marc Fisher, which manufactures Ivanka Trump, Easy Spirit and its own branded shoes, said in an email. Nine West did not respond to requests for comment.

Li Zhao and Hua Haifeng were blocked from leaving mainland China for Hong Kong in April and May — something that had never happened to his colleagues before, Li said. Hua Haifeng was stopped at the border Thursday and later questioned by police, Li said. During their final phone conversation on Saturday, Hua told Li that police had asked him to stop investigating the Huajian factory — another turn of events that Li said was unprecedented.

Excessive overtime, low wages

Li said the men had documented excessive overtime, with working days sometimes stretching longer than 18 hours, and a base salary below minimum wage. They were working to confirm evidence suggesting that student interns, some of whom allegedly quit in protest, were putting in excessive hours on work unrelated to their field of study, in violation of Chinese law, Li said.

The use of student workers in China is legal, but meant to be strictly regulated. Rights groups and journalists have documented widespread abuse of the system over the years.

“It is the role of the police to prevent that kind of independent investigation,” said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director for Amnesty International. “The threshold is much lower today than it was one year ago, two years ago, and if this is something that has a foreign diplomacy dimension, that would make national security personnel even more willing to stop it.”

Hua’s wife, Deng, meanwhile, has yet to tell the couple’s children, ages 3 and 7, about their father’s plight. But they seem to know anyway, she said.

“My son suddenly burst into tears. He said he missed Papa,” Deng said by phone from her home in central China’s Hubei province. “I said Papa would come home soon and buy you toys.”

She said the child looked at her and answered: “Papa was taken away by a monster.”
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The Brazilian government decided on Tuesday to wait until next week to put a bill modernizing labor laws to a vote in the Senate Economic Affairs Committee, its leader in the upper chamber, Senator Romero Jucá, said.

Speaking earlier at an investment forum in Sao Paulo, Budget and Planning Minister Dyogo Oliveira said the bill that will lower labor costs for businesses would clear the Senate this week and be ready for President Michel Temer to sign into law.

The bill, which has already been approved by the lower house, has faced fierce opposition from labor unions that will lose power over workplaces. It also allows more temporary work contracts and outsourcing, eliminating mandatory union dues.

Leftist parties in Congress had vowed to obstruct a vote in the Senate committee where it will be debated this Tuesday.

The vote will take place next Tuesday, said Juca, who leads the coalition of pro-government parties in the Senate. He said the reason to postpone the vote was to avoid a “battle over procedures” in the committee.

Quick passage of the labor reform bill was important for the government to show that its reform agenda aimed at restoring economic growth and business confidence is on track.

Temer’s main proposal for reducing Brazil’s gaping budget deficit is reform of the costly pension system.

But its progress in the legislature has been slowed down by the political crisis sparked by allegations that the president condoned corruption. The fate of the unpopular measure is uncertain.
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Nigerian lawmakers passed a bill aimed at cracking down on money laundering by urging foreign countries where currency crooks are hiding to cooperate in prosecuting them, a senior official said on Tuesday.

According to the bill, Nigeria may ask any country where a money launderer is hiding to help it prosecute the offender, or prosecute that person itself. In the second case, Abuja would supply the country with evidence to support a conviction.

Development in the OPEC member, which has Africa’s largest economy, has been stunted by endemic corruption. Most people live on less than $2 a day despite the country’s vast energy wealth, much of which has been plundered by a rich elite.

“This act will facilitate the needed cooperation with other states to prevent individuals from escaping prosecution by fleeing to another country,” said Senate President Bukola Saraki.

The bill was originally presented by President Muhammadu Buhari, who was elected in May 2015 after vowing to fight corruption.

The 74-year-old president is on medical leave in Britain for an unspecified ailment. He has handed over power to his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, in his absence.

 
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Fuel shortages have paralyzed the small central African nation of Burundi, threatening further damage to an economy already moribund after years of political violence and raising questions about the role of the country’s only oil importer.

The problem has damaged two big foreign investors, Kenya’s KenolKobil and South Africa’s Engen, a subsidiary of Malaysian parastatal Petronas.

The shortages, which forced the government to introduce rationing on May 16, have paralyzed commerce and caused food prices to jump by around a third, raising the prospect of a wave of economic migration. More than 400,000 people have already fled Burundi into the volatile central African region.

Anti-corruption campaigners said the fuel shortages became severe after Burundian company Interpetrol Trading Ltd. received the lions’ share of dollars that are allocated by the central bank to import fuel.

“The oil sector is undermined by favoritism and lack of transparency, because the rare hard currency available in the central bank reserves is given to one oil importer,” said Gabriel Rufyiri, head of anti-graft organization OLUCOME.

The central bank declined to answer Reuters’ questions.

Interpetrol’s lawyer, Sylvestre Banzubaze, said: “I am not associated with the day-to-day operations and only intervene on legal questions. You should address your questions directly to Interpetrol sources.”

He did not respond when asked for further contacts, and the company does not have a website.

Rufyiri said that government sources told him that the bulk of dollars for fuel purchasing had been allocated to Interpetrol since March this year.

Reuters confirmed with two other sources that Interpetrol received the bulk of dollar allocations. Other companies only received a small fraction of the dollars they needed, the sources said, severely damaging their businesses.

Earlier this month, South African petrol company Engen confirmed it had sold its assets in Burundi to Interpetrol.

Engen declined to comment further. KenolKobil also declined to comment, but Burundian citizens say most of their petrol stations have been closed for three months.

Sole importer

Interpetrol is now the sole oil importer and runs all the fuel storage tanks in the country, said an industry source.

Banzubaze said there was “no link” between Interpetrol’s shareholders and any member of the government.

But a 2011 U.S. State Department report described attempts by senior government officials to pressure judges into dropping a corruption case against the company, owned by brothers Munir and Tariq Bashir. Neither the government nor Interpetrol’s lawyer responded when asked about the status of the case.

Government officials blame dollar shortages on aid cuts that donors imposed after President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term in 2015, triggering a wave of political violence.

“These days, fuel importers don’t get enough dollars to bring petroleum products,” said Daniel Mpitabakana, the government’s director of fuel management.

Burundi’s economy shrank by 0.5 percent last year, and the International Monetary Fund expects no growth at all this year and 0.1 percent next year.

Black market prices for fuel range between 5,000 to 6,000 Burundi francs per liter, vendors said, double the official price of 2,200 francs.

The street exchange rate is 2,600 francs to the dollar, although it is just over 1,700 to the dollar at the central bank. Only the central bank can receive dollar deposits and allocate dollars to businesses.

In the capital, queues at empty petrol stations snaked around the block. One civil servant said he had taken the last three days off work to search for gas.

“I have no fuel for days and I don’t know if by chance will get it today,” he said, asking not to be named.

Burundi has also been battered by drought and almost two years of political instability. Hundreds of people were killed and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee abroad during the political violence, which still sometimes erupts in low-level clashes.

Almost 3 million of Burundi’s 11 million citizens are dependent on food aid, the U.N. says.
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In a roadside cafe in Kenya’s majestic highlands, Elly Sigilai cradled a steaming mug of tea and recalled how 17 relatives died after British colonialists ousted them in 1934 to plant tea on their family land.

The 79-year-old is one of hundreds of elderly Kenyans seeking to sue the British government for alleged displacement and torture by its colonial predecessor, in a case that could encourage other former colonies to press similar claims.

“Those on this list died from malaria and sleeping sickness,” said Sigilai, a neatly folded piece of paper in his hand naming the dead in his family, including two brothers and a sister. “They were sent to a valley infested by tsetse flies to die.”

Survivors and their descendants hope to win “significant” compensation from Britain’s High Court and the return of swaths of land, largely owned by international tea companies, said George Tarus, a legal adviser to the government of Nandi County in Kenya’s North Rift region, which is financing the case.

“We became beggars in our own land,” Sigilai said, removing a faded baseball cap and putting it on the table by his tea.

“We love it,” he said of the commodity which is grown in and around Kericho, 260 kms (162 miles) northwest of Kenya’s capital. “But it has brought a lot of misery to my community.”

Around 200 people have already come forward with evidence to support the case, Tarus said.

“All land within Nandi belongs to the county and we want it all to be given back to us,” he said.

Kenya’s 47 counties manage leaseholds on their land.

A British foreign office spokeswoman declined to comment on the legal proceedings.

The case could be politically important for millions of voters ahead of Kenya’s elections in August, with some politicians already starting to stoke tensions over land.

More than 1,200 Kenyans were killed following a disputed 2007 poll, largely in the Rift Valley where resentment over the loss of land during the colonial era still festers.

Much of the land vacated when the British left Kenya in 1963 after 43 years was sold to the political elite who could afford to buy it, rather than returned to its original owners.

Atrocities

Kenya was one of Britain’s most important colonies with hundreds of settlers moving into the best agricultural land to grow tea, coffee and tobacco, forcing Africans into reserves and employing them as cooks, guards and gardeners.

The British displaced hundreds of Nandi and Kipsigis families — sub-tribes of Kenya’s third-largest ethnic group, the Kalenjin — from the Rift Valley highlands for tea plantations.

“They have to pay for what they did to us,” said Moses Mosonet, 83, a Nandi, his eyes coated with a milky veneer.

“They can take their tea and leave us with our land,” he said, seated outside his home, which overlooks lush, hilly tea estates in Nandi, some 70 km north of Kericho, not far from the African reserve where his parents were taken eight decades ago.

Kenya is the world’s largest exporter of black tea, an industry which employs more than 3.5 million Kenyans, directly and indirectly, the national trade union says.

London-based Finlays, one of the tea companies whose land is being targeted, declined to comment.

Dozens of villages were decimated, the potential plaintiffs say, and those who opposed the displacement tortured and exiled.

“Serious atrocities were committed,” said Philemon Koech of Lilan and Koech Associates, which won a tender from Nandi County government in March to pursue a civil case for reparations. “If such things like the torture of the people and their subsequent displacement were to happen in present day, we would be dealing with the International Criminal Court [ICC].”

More than 5,200 other elderly Kenyans won almost 14 million pounds ($18 million) in compensation from Britain in a 2013 out-of-court settlement for abuse by colonial forces during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency.

Evidence

Gathering evidence will not be easy, particularly as the annexation of African land was legal under British colonial law, said Gitobu Imanyara, a Kenyan human rights lawyer.

“There can hardly be anyone alive to corroborate some of the claims,” he said.

Once the evidence is collected, British lawyer Karim Khan, who specializes in international criminal law and international human rights law, has agreed to assess its worth.

“I will advise on the merits or otherwise of a case under English law,” he told Reuters by phone. “I can’t possibly say that there will definitely be a case in the High Court until I have advised on the evidence.”

Khan is well-known in Kenya for successfully defending deputy president William Ruto against charges of crimes against humanity in the ICC from 2013 to 2016.

While the undulating manicured tea bushes, extending as far as the eye can see, evoke painful memories for the elderly, the younger generation are more skeptical about the case.

“If they tell the multinationals to leave who will employ us?” asked Justus Ngetich, 30, a taxi driver in Bomet, some 70 km south of Kericho. “It is all about power and politics, not about the well-being of the people. We shall just sit here and watch the tea estates change hands from the whites to blacks.”
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With retail stores shutting down at the fastest pace since the crash of 2008, the head of the American Booksellers Association is grateful to see business holding steady.

 

After seven straight years of growth, core membership in the independent sellers’ trade group has dropped slightly since May 2016, from 1,775 to 1,757. At the same time, the number of actual locations rose from 2,311 to 2,321, reflecting a trend of owners opening additional stores.

The association’s CEO, Oren Teicher, says sales from reporting outlets are up around 2 1/2 percent in the first four months of 2017 over the same time period last year. Sales increased 5 percent from 2015 to 2016.

 

“We’re pleased that the sales and presence of independent stores continues to grow at a time when thousands of other stores are closing,” he told The Associated Press during a recent interview.

 

Teicher said he was also encouraged by a bump in “provisional members,” those intending to open a store, from 103 to 141. During the association’s prolonged decline, when the rise of superstores and e-books helped cut membership from around 5,000 in the 1980s to just 1,401 in 2008, the market looked so dire that some profitable stores closed because the owner wanted to retire and no buyer could be found. In recent years, independent stores have been helped by a variety of factors, from the fall of Borders and the struggles of Barnes & Noble to the leveling off of e-book sales.

 

Concerns do remain for independent sellers as they prepare to join thousands of publishers, authors, agents and librarians at the industry’s annual national convention, BookExpo, which begins Wednesday at New York’s Jacob Javits Center.

Closed stores of any kind can reduce foot traffic in a shopping district and hurt booksellers among others. And one company expanding on the ground is the online giant Amazon.com, which has been cited as a factor in closings for everyone from J.C. Penney to American Apparel.

 

Amazon just opened its first bookstore in Manhattan and seventh overall. One outlet is within 1 1/2 miles of Third Place Books in Amazon’s hometown Seattle, where Third Place managing partner Robert Sindelar says sales initially dropped after the Amazon store opened in November 2015, but had bounced back by the end of last year.

 

“So it feels that their larger impact on us was short-lived,” said Sindelar, the booksellers association’s new president. “However, any bookstore — Amazon, indie or chain store — that close is going to impact our sales to some degree.”

 

BookExpo runs Wednesday to Friday and will be immediately followed by the fan-based BookCon, which ends Sunday. Profits have long been narrow or nonexistent in publishing and BookExpo/BookCon is one way to limit costs.

For much of its century-plus history, the convention rotated locations, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., in the spirit of fairness and of spotlighting different parts of the country. But since 2008, New York publishers have preferred staying home. The 2016 show in Chicago, once a favorite setting for BookExpo, was notable for a drop in attendance and floor space and a lack of high-profile guests.

 

This year, the names have returned, although floor space continues to decline and side programs have been cut back. Hillary Clinton will speak at an hour-long event billed as “An Evening With Hillary Clinton” and is expected to promote a book of essays coming this September that will touch upon her loss to Donald Trump in 2016. Daughter Chelsea Clinton will be autographing her picture book “She Persisted” and Stephen King will make a joint appearance with son Owen King. Other featured speakers include Dan Brown, Kevin Hart and Sen. Al Franken, promoting his memoir “Al Franken, Giant of the Senate.”

 

Events director Brien McDonald says that the convention will address issues within and beyond book publishing. A First Amendment “resistance” panel organized by PEN America, the literary and human rights organization, will include Scott Turow and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors. A discussion sponsored by the grassroots organization We Need Diverse Books is called “Real Talk About Real Apologies.”

The panel’s moderator, Laura M. Jimenez, noted that Rick Riordan apologized for inappropriately using the term “spirit animal,” a sacred creature for some American Indians, in his novel “The Sword of Summer.” Little, Brown and Co., publisher of Lemony Snicket’s (aka Daniel Handler’s) picture book “The Bad Mood and the Stick,” promised to remove images of blacks by illustrator Matt Forsythe that were criticized as racist.

 

Jimenez said she wanted the panel to emphasize how “the overwhelming whiteness of publishing makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible for them to see the problematic representations.”

 

“It seems the insular world of children’s literature publishing creates a space where white people are unaware of their own privilege and, historically, have been unwilling to hear us,” said Jimenez, a lecturer at Boston University’s School of Education. “That is changing with Twitter and other social media outlets and blogs. … I think an all-out drive for diversity in publishing is needed.”
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