Mozambican protesters kept up the heat for weeks on the ruling party they say stole elections in October, inspired by charismatic opposition leader Venancio Mondlane who mounted a formidable social media campaign from a hiding place abroad.Known simply by his first name, the 50-year-old former MP and media commentator has vowed to return home Thursday …
In a vast Bangladeshi factory hall thrumming with sewing machines, garment workers churn out seemingly endless pairs of mountain hiking trousers for customers in Europe and North America.Bangladesh’s key clothing manufacturing industry supplying global brands was crippled by a revolution that toppled the government last year, in which garment sector protesters played an important role.While owners say business has bounced back, frustrated workers say hard-won concessions have done little to change their circumstances, and life remains as hard as ever.”It is the same kind of exploitation,” said garment worker Khatun, 24, asking that only her first name be used as speaking out would jeopardise her job.Production in the world’s second-largest garment manufacturer was repeatedly stalled by the months-long violence, before protesters forced long-time autocrat Sheikh Hasina to flee in August.An interim government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, took over.Protests, however, continued in a string of garment factoriesfor better conditions and more pay, with the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) warning in October of $400 million in losses.Scores of factories closed and tens of thousands lost their jobs.But after a five percent wage hike was agreed in September, the industry rebounded.- ‘Operating at full swing’ -“We are doing well,” said garment producer factory owner S.M. Khaled, who heads the Snowtex company, employing 22,000 workers.The South Asian nation produces garments for global brands — ranging from France’s Carrefour, Canada’s Tire, Japan’s Uniqlo, Ireland’s Primark, Sweden’s H&M and Spain’s Zara.The apparel industry accounts for about 80 percent of Bangladesh’s exports, earning $36 billion last year, dropping little despite the unrest from the $38 billion exported the previous year.”I am working with at least 15 international brands, and our products will be available in 50 countries,” Khaled said.”Almost all garment factories are operating at full swing after waves of unrest. We are on the growth side.”Despite challenges with a cooling of demand, Anwar Hossain, the government-appointed administrator of BGMEA, said the industry was returning to strength.”The largest contributor to exports was the apparel sector,” Hossain said.The garment industry recorded a 13 percent increase from July-December 2024 — the period after the revolution — compared to the same period the year before, he said.- ‘Half my basic wage’Workers tell a different story.Khatun welcomed the wage rise but said factory managers then hiked already onerous demands for “nearly unachievable production targets”.Scraping by in the capital Dhaka’s gritty industrial suburb of Ashulia, she earns $140 a month including overtime and benefits to support a family of four.The wage increase of $8.25 a month seems a miserly addition.Opening her fist, she showed a 500-taka note, just over four dollars, all she had left after paying rent and other expenses.”We have good facilities inside the factory, like toilets, a canteen, and water fountains,” she said. “But we don’t get even a 10-minute break while trying to meet the targets”.Many factory owners were close to the former ruling party.In the immediate days after Hasina was toppled, several factories were damaged in retaliatory attacks.Some owners were arrested and accused of supporting Hasina, who is herself in exile in India skipping an arrest warrant for “massacres, killings, and crimes against humanity”.Mostfactories are now back in operation, but employees say some offer conditions far worse than before.”We weren’t receiving salaries on time after the owner was arrested,” said worker Rana, also asking not to be identified.”Now, they’ve offered me half my basic wage, around $60 to $70. I have a six-month-old child, a wife, and elderly parents to support”, he added.Hussain, who lost his job in the unrest, tells a common tale.While he has since found work packing clothes, the new job means he “doesn’t benefit from the increment” deal, while living costs have risen.”House rents have shot up with the news of the pay rise,” he said.- ‘Take more responsibility’ -Taslima Akhter, from the Bangladesh Garment Workers’ Solidarity (BGWS) group, a labour rights organisation, said that “workers are struggling to maintain a minimum standard of living”.Akhter said factory bosses must push back against global purchasers wanting to maximise profits at the expense of a living wage.”Garment (factory) owners need to take more responsibility and learn to negotiate better with international buyers,” she said.”This industry is not new, and problems are not impossible to solve.” Despite the industry’s apparent fiscal success, Abdullah Hil Raquib, a former BGMEA director, warned it was on fragile ground.”The stability in the garment sector we see now is only on the surface,” he said.
Asian markets struggled Thursday after a tepid lead from Wall Street, with investors growing increasingly worried about the outlook for inflation and US interest rates as Donald Trump’s second presidency looms.A report saying the president-elect was considering declaring a national economic emergency to provide legal cover to impose tariffs on all imported goods added to the sense of uncertainty on trading floors.Sentiment was also clouded by data showing that Chinese consumer inflation remained almost non-existent despite a raft of stimulus measures in the final three months of last year.Equities have had an unremarkable start to 2025 after the Federal Reserve in December made a hawkish pivot and indicated it would not cut rates as much as initially expected over the next 12 months owing to sticky inflation and a still-strong labour market.Worries about Trump’s plans to slash taxes, regulate immigration and ramp up tariffs have also led to warnings that prices could reignite.That has sent yield on the 10-year US Treasury note surging and fanned speculation it could top five percent for the first time since October 2023.Friday’s US employment figures are now well in focus for trade, with markets in New York closed Thursday to mourn former US president Jimmy Carter.Forecast-topping data on job openings and prices paid by services firms compounded traders’ concerns, while analysts said there was unease among investors about Trump’s unpredictable governing style, particularly with him not having to face another presidential election.After fluctuating through the day, the Dow and S&P 500 ended slightly higher on Wall Street but the Nasdaq dipped.In early trade, Hong Kong edged up while Shanghai fell as investors assessed data showing Chinese inflation eased in December, and officials face calls to ramp up stimulus to boost consumption.Leaders have unveiled a range of measures to kickstart the world’s number two economy with a focus on getting people to spend and support for the troubled property sector.”Given the various high-level meetings and policy communiques over the past month, it appears a safe bet to expect more aggressive fiscal policy support from China in 2025, as well as continued monetary policy easing,” said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING.”There is the obvious and extensively discussed angle of a less favourable external environment with a high likelihood of additional tariffs and sanctions from the US once President Trump enters office. “Another less discussed element is that there appears to be a greater consensus building domestically on the need for stronger policy support to shake the economy from its extended period of heightened pessimism.”Tokyo, Sydney, Wellington, Taipei and Manila also dropped, though Seoul and Jakarta rose.On currency markets, the dollar held gains against its major peers after getting a bump from Trump’s reported mulling of an economic emergency declaration, with sterling at its lowest since April last year and the euro around its weakest since November 2022.- Key figures around 0230 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.8 percent at 39,678.93 (break)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 0.3 percent at 19,339.31Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.4 percent at 3,216.11Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0318 from $1.0316 on WednesdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.2362 from $1.2361Dollar/yen: DOWN at 158.06 yen from 158.38 yenEuro/pound: UP at 83.46 pence from 83.44 penceWest Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.5 percent at $72.99 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: DOWN 0.4 percent at $75.86 per barrelNew York – Dow: UP 0.3 percent at 42,635.20 (close)London – FTSE 100: UP 0.1 percent at 8,251.03 (close)
Mozambique’s opposition leader is expected to return from exile Thursday to push his claim to have won presidential elections, risking an escalation in a dispute about the vote just days ahead of the swearing in of his rival. Venancio Mondlane announced last week he would land at Maputo’s international airport at around 8:00 am (0600 GMT) …
One rum, two owners: the decades-long legal battle between the Cuban government and spirits giant Bacardi over the popular Havana Club rum brand has entered a new phase with the enactment of a new US trademark law.Entitled “No Stolen Trademarks Honored in America Act” and signed into law last month by outgoing US President Joe Biden, it prohibits US courts from recognizing trademarks that were “illegally confiscated” by the Cuban government since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.The law cements Bacardi’s rights to Havana Club and could prevent Cuba’s state-owned Cubaexport and its French partner, beverage giant Pernod Ricard, from asserting their rights to the brand in the United States.While Cuba currently cannot export its rum to the United States because of a decades-long trade embargo, the government in Havana and Pernod Ricard believe that maintaining trademark rights to the iconic drink is important in case restrictions are lifted.The law, which was championed by incoming Secretary of State and Cuba hardliner Marco Rubio, was swiftly criticized by the government of the Communist island, which said that it violates international norms.”Once again, the United States government provides space for the dark interests of the most aggressive anti-Cuban sectors whose manipulation of the American political system has become a practice,” the government said in a recent statement.Bacardi, which was exiled from Cuba after the country’s Communist revolution, says that the Cuban government unlawfully seized rum distilleries and the Havana Club brand from its founder Jose Arechabala SA in 1960. But the Cuban government has maintained its rights to the brand and has marketed Havana Club worldwide, with the exception of the United States because of the embargo Washington imposed in 1962. In 1976, Cuba managed to assert its rights to the brand in the United States, until Bacardi contested it in 1995 and started selling its own rum in the United States under the Havana Club brand.- Booming market -The legal fight is unlikely to subside because the rum industry is booming.According to a recent report by Dublin-based consultancy Research and Markets, the global rum market is expected to grow at an average rate of 7.7 percent per year over the next six years, jumping from $19.1 billion in 2024 to $32.2 billion by 2031. In 2016, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) renewed Cubaexport’s registration of the Havana Club brand for ten years, but the enactment of the law is likely to complicate its renewal in 2026.John Kavulich, director of the New York-based Cuba-US Trade and Economic Council described the law as “an immensely cost-effective” lobbying effort for Bacardi.”Most significantly was the complete lack of opposition — even from the most vocal members of the United States Congress who support commercial, economic, financial, and political re-engagement with Cuba,” Kavulich said to AFP.After the brief thaw in US-Cuban ties that began under Barack Obama (2009-2017) and the strengthening of sanctions during Republican Donald Trump’s first presidency (2017-2021), which largely remained unchanged under Democrat Biden, tensions with Havana could rise further under Trump’s second term.
Donald Trump returns to the White House in two weeks with everything seemingly going his way — from stronger grassroots support than ever to a cowed billionaire class and a demoralized opposition.Yet a chaotic and polarized Republican Party on Capitol Hill threatens to frustrate his ambitions for a legacy-defining second term unless he is able to master the political equivalent of herding cats.The Republican rank-and-file reveres Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) agenda of tax cuts, tough border controls and boosted fossil fuel production, but long-simmering disagreements on how to get it into law are starting to boil over.”Our members are ready to get to work and we have hit the ground running, as we promised everyone we would on the campaign trail,” an upbeat Mike Johnson, who leads the Republicans in the House of Representatives, told reporters this week.But Johnson’s troops have been locked in an increasingly heated debate with their Senate colleagues over whether to pass Trump’s entire agenda in one giant, all-or-nothing package or break it up into smaller chunks.Top MAGA policy aides have argued that a piecemeal approach would allow Trump to notch a straightforward early win on border security without having to get bogged down in more contentious fights.But House Republicans worry that, with their threadbare and fractious majority, they will only get one swing at this — and that renewing Trump’s fast-expiring 2017 tax cuts will fall by the wayside if it is peeled off from immigration reform.- ‘Big, beautiful bill’ -Trump muddied the waters in his inimitable style by flip-flopping on his own preference.”I like one big, beautiful bill and I always have, I always will,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “But if two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker, because you can do the immigration stuff early.”The fight is just one of many potential speed bumps as Trump races against time to make his mark before the Republican iron grip on Washington is potentially weakened by midterm elections in just 22 months. The former real estate mogul, 78, is already behind the pace he set on winning his first term in 2016, when the Senate took important procedural steps towards passing his priorities before he set foot on Pennsylvania Avenue.Trump has previewed other upcoming battles — from reversing President Joe Biden’s offshore drilling restrictions to acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal — that could drag the administration into court.But support from a Supreme Court bolstered by three of Trump’s own nominees seems more assured than an easy ride in Congress.Trumpist Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin acknowledged during a leadership challenge in the House last year that a disunited rank-and-file on Capitol Hill could be Trump’s biggest frustration.”The Republican Party, it’s like trying to herd cats. Everyone is going in different directions,” he told Fox News.Trump has already demonstrated that he is not above rolling up his sleeves and wading into the fray. – Charm offensive -He micro-managed Republicans through the recent House leadership election, upbraiding lawmakers by telephone in the middle of votes for ticking the wrong box, and strategizing in daily phone calls with key players.He has spent much of the post-election period on a charm offensive targeting high-profile business executives and key Republican interest groups at Mar-a-Lago, the oceanfront redoubt that he calls his “Winter White House” in Florida.Having won what critics see as tacit concessions from leading press barons and tech CEOs that he can expect less friction in 2025 than he got in 2017, Trump was due in Washington on Wednesday to build trust with Senate Republicans.A dinner is planned at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday with Republican governors — heavyweight, largely independent-minded politicians needed by Trump to execute his program at a state level — and various lawmakers are dropping by on Saturday.Trump also plans a giant bash for the entire Senate Republican group in the coming weeks, US media reported. On the Democratic side, leaders in Congress have pledged to work with Republicans to improve people’s lives — but also to hold Trump’s feet to the fire over campaign promises.”They are now in the majority. They now have the responsibility,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor of the chamber on Tuesday.”We and the American people will be watching.”
Tech giant Meta has rolled back restrictions around topics such as gender and sexual identity, a sweeping move advocacy groups fear will fuel hate speech.The change coincides with the company’s shock announcement on Tuesday that it was ending its third-party fact-checking program in the United States and adopting a crowd-sourced model to police misinformation similar to the Elon Musk-owned X.The latest version of Meta’s community guidelines said its platforms — which include Facebook and Instagram — would now permit users to accuse people of “mental illness or abnormality” based on their gender or sexual orientation.The updated version also struck out previous restrictions on referring to women as “household objects or property,” Black people as “farm equipment” and transgender or non-binary people as “it.””We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, wrote in a blog post.”It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms.”But advocacy groups quickly voiced concern that the policy shift threatened the safety of marginalized communities.”Removal of fact-checking programs and industry-standard hate speech policies make Meta’s platforms unsafe places,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the advocacy group GLAAD.”Without these necessary hate speech and other policies, Meta is giving the green light for people to target LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups with violence, vitriol, and dehumanizing narratives.”Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, in a video announcing the changes, claimed the previous restrictions on immigration and gender were “just out of touch with mainstream discourse.””What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it has gone too far,” Zuckerberg said.The move comes just weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House with his Republican Party also back in control of Congress after fiercely attacking social media speech restrictions during the election campaign.Gender identity issues were also a key line of attack by Trump and Republicans against their Democratic opponents.After the move was announced on Tuesday, CyberWell, a nonprofit focused on combating online antisemitism, denounced the “systematic lowering of the bar” by Meta on policies against hate speech and harassment.”This change particularly undermines the safety of all marginalized communities,” CyberWell executive director Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor said in a statement.
