Russia, China, India, and South Africa aim to reduce reliance on the US dollar

Money-is-Trash

Important Takeaways:

  • Russia calls on BRICS to ditch dollar
  • The statement was made at the Russia-China Financial Dialogue forum in Beijing on Monday, where Siluanov met with his Chinese counterpart, Lan Foan.
  • The BRICS group of emerging economies – which currently incorporates Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – has been discussing ways to facilitate payments in local currencies between member countries. The bloc aims to reduce their reliance on the US dollar and the euro for accelerated growth.
  • “We need to further develop financial cooperation within the BRICS countries. Here we see opportunities … to develop a payments system that would be independent of the infrastructure, which does not always fully fulfill the goals of individual countries,” Siluanov stated.
  • “Therefore, the sustainable development of financial relations and settlements on the BRICS platform is important for us, and we believe that it is necessary to work out such issues, and today we will consider a number of them,” he added.

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CDC and World Health are concerned over woman in Brazil dying from Swine Flu

Luke 21:11 There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.

Important Takeaways:

  • Brazilian woman dies of SWINE FLU: Fatality sparks terror and CDC investigation
  • US health chiefs are investigating the death of a Brazilian woman who became a rare victim of swine flu.
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials plan to probe samples collected from the patient, 42, who died from an H1N1 variant spreading in pigs.
  • Her death earlier last month has sparked concern because she had no direct contact with pigs — which may signal onward transmission from someone else.
  • Scientists are concerned that the next pandemic could come from flu viruses — such as H1N1 — which can be spread by pigs.
  • In 2009 the world faced a swine flu pandemic after an H1N1 subtype killed up to 575,000 people globally.
  • A spokesman for the WHO said: ‘Based on the information currently available, the WHO considers this is a sporadic case, and there is no evidence of person-to-person transmission of this event.’

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A months’ worth of rain has brought flooding and mudslides to Petropolis Brazil

Important Takeaways:

  • Death toll in Brazil’s Petropolis mudslides, floods hits 176; more than 110 missing
  • Downpours in the colonial-era city exceeded the average for the entire month of February causing mudslides that flooded streets, destroyed houses, washed away cars and buses, and left gashes hundreds of yards wide on the region’s mountainsides.
  • rainfall was the heaviest registered since 1932 in Petropolis, a tourist destination in the hills of Rio de Janeiro state, popularly known as the “Imperial City”
  • Responding to the disaster, several Brazilian states sent reinforcements to help searching for missing people and cleaning up the debris alongside Rio’s fire department.

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Death toll from Brazil flooding rises in Bahia’s ‘worst disaster’ ever

By Leonardo Benassatto and Sergio Queiroz

ITABUNA, Brazil (Reuters) – The death toll from floods hammering northeast Brazil rose to 20 on Monday, as the governor of Bahia state declared it the worst disaster in the state’s history and rescuers braced for more rain in the coming days.

Much of Bahia, home to about 15 million people, has suffered from intermittent flooding for weeks, after a long drought gave way to record rains. Flooding in some areas intensified late on Christmas Eve and early on Christmas Day after a pair of dams gave way, sending residents scrambling for higher ground.

Rescue workers patrolled in small dinghies around the city of Itabuna, in southern Bahia, plucking residents from their homes, including some who escaped through second-floor windows.

Bahia Governor Rui Costa said on Twitter that 72 municipalities were in a state of emergency.

“Unfortunately, we’re living through the worst disaster that has ever occurred in the history of Bahia,” he wrote.

Manfredo Santana, a lieutenant-colonel in Bahia’s firefighting corps, told Reuters that emergency workers had rescued 200 people in just three nearby towns. The heavy currents of the swollen Cachoeira River complicated rescue efforts.

“It’s difficult to maneuver even with jet skis,” he said. “Rescue teams had to retreat in certain moments.”

Bahia’s civil defense agency said on Monday afternoon that 20 people had died in 11 separate municipalities.

Newspaper O Globo, citing a state firefighting official, said that authorities are monitoring an additional 10 dams for any signs they may collapse.

The scrutiny of public infrastructure and urban planning comes just a couple years after the collapse of a mining dam in neighboring Minas Gerais state killed some 270 people.

In televised remarks, Costa, the Bahia governor, attributed the chaotic scenes in part to “errors that have been committed over the course of years.”

(Reporting by Leonardo Benassatto; Writing by Gram Slattery; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Brazil in recession as drought, inflation and interest rates bite

By Marcela Ayres and Camila Moreira

BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazil’s economy contracted slightly in the three months to September, government data showed on Thursday, as surging inflation, steep interest rate hikes and a severe drought triggered a recession in Latin America’s largest economy.

The 0.1% decline in Brazil’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter, reported by official statistics agency IBGE, was below a median forecast for zero growth in a Reuters poll.

Brazil’s economic rebound from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic has sputtered as inflation surged into double digits, forcing the central bank to raise borrowing costs aggressively despite the downturn.

Economists have said that the stubbornly high levels of inflation in Brazil have steadily eroded consumers’ purchasing power, proving a drag on the economy.

Some analysts said Thursday’s weak data may discourage the bank’s monetary policy committee, called Copom, from an even larger interest rate increase at its December meeting.

“Against this backdrop, we no longer see Copom upping the pace of monetary tightening next week,” William Jackson, chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, told clients in a note, forecasting another rate increase of 150 basis points.

Big rate hikes from the central bank, whose autonomy was written into Brazil’s constitution this year, are one more headwind for a weak economy, which is weighing on President Jair Bolsonaro’s popularity as he prepares to seek reelection in 2022.

Revised data showed a 0.4% drop in the second quarter, worse than the 0.1% decline reported previously. Two straight quarters of contraction meet the definition of a recession.

Unusually dry weather this year has also hurt key Brazilian crops such as corn and coffee. Vanishing reserves at hydropower dams drove up electricity costs, adding to price shocks.

Agricultural production fell 8.0% in the third quarter, while industrial output was flat and services advanced 1.1%.

Brazil’s auto industry has struggled to ramp up production amid a shortage of components such as microchips in global supply chains. Shortages have also hurt manufacturing in Mexico, whose economy contracted more than expected in the quarter.

WORSE TO COME

Some economists are warning of a deeper downturn next year.

The market outlook for 2022 economic growth has fallen from 2.3% in June to less than 0.6% in the latest central bank poll of economists, released on Monday.

Brazil’s Economy Ministry dismissed that consensus in a statement on Thursday, reaffirming its forecast of economic growth above 2% next year and pointing to recent job creation data as evidence of a resilient recovery.

Brazil’s unemployment rate fell to 12.6% in the third quarter from 14.2% in the prior quarter, data showed this week, hitting the lowest point since the beginning of the pandemic.

“The government has an obvious bias to overestimate (growth) as long as possible. But there comes a point when you can’t,” said José Francisco Gonçalves, chief economist at Banco Fator.

Compared to the third quarter of 2020, Brazil’s economy grew 4.0%, IBGE data showed, below a median forecast of 4.2% growth.

(Reporting by Marcela Ayres in Brasilia and Camila Moreira in Sao Paulo; Writing by Brad Haynes; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Daniel Flynn and Richard Chang)

 

Exclusive: Major coffee buyers face losses as Colombia farmers fail to deliver

By Maytaal Angel

LONDON (Reuters) – Coffee farmers in Colombia, the world’s No. 2 arabica producer, have failed to deliver up to 1 million bags of beans this year or nearly 10% of the country’s crop, leaving exporters, traders and roasters facing steep losses, industry sources told Reuters.

World coffee prices have soared 55% this year, mainly due to adverse weather in top producer Brazil, prompting Colombian farmers to default on sales clinched when prices were much lower in order to re-sell the coffee at higher rates.

“Traders are getting defaulted on, it’s a mess. If drought continues (in Brazil), 300 cents (per lb. of coffee) is possible. It’s going to be mayhem,” said a dealer at a global agricultural commodities trade house.

He said leading global roasters are planning to change the branding on their ‘single origin Colombia’ coffees due to sourcing problems.

Delivery defaults in a major producer like Colombia can exacerbate price spikes on world markets, although these would be temporary because the coffee ultimately exists and will weigh on markets once it is re-sold.

Colombian farmers say they will deliver the coffee later this year or next but buyers are unconvinced.

Many are opting to see losses now and write the purchases off as defaults rather than wait and risk even bigger losses if farmers still don’t deliver next year and prices rise further, according to a senior trader at another global trade house.

He said several global trade houses are looking at losses of $8-10 million each on undelivered coffee, while Colombia’s coffee growers federation FNC, which represents farmers but also accounts for 20% of the country’s 12.5 million bags of annual coffee exports, faces higher losses.

TAKING THE HIT

“There was easily 1 million bags of forward (Colombian coffee sales) done before the market started rallying mid-May,” said the senior trader. “If you work for a multinational (trade house) your boss will say come on, we have to take the hit.”

Delivery defaults in a rallying coffee market are a huge issue for commodity exporters and traders who often hedge physical purchases by taking short positions in the futures market, causing them to sustain steep losses as prices rise.

Usually, traders would be able to sell the physical coffee they are owed at current lofty rates in order to offset their futures market loss, but in the case of a default, they can’t.

Defaults can also force traders to purchase supplies pre-sold to roasters at a loss in the pricey spot market.

FNC head Roberto Velez confirmed to Reuters that Colombia is facing widespread defaults.

“I can tell you there are few Colombian exporters not suffering (from defaults). All the major trade houses and also the federation as a major exporter, we’re all suffering (losses),” he said.

“When a grower doesn’t deliver, the whole chain gets stuck losing money,” he added.

Traders told Reuters the federation has given Colombian farmers at least another year to deliver the coffee – a move that could force the industry body to approach the government for bail-out funds if the farmers still don’t deliver in time.

MOUNTING LOSSES

A senior Columbia-based coffee trader with Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) left the company in the wake of losses, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

LDC said it does not comment on organizational changes except in relation to executives.

“Companies will be in trouble with (the scale of the losses), big guys will change their team, but smaller guys will go bankrupt,” said a senior trader.

He added major local Colombian exporter La Meseta has been hard hit by farmer defaults and is struggling to make good on its supply deals with international roasters, leaving them exposed to losses.

La Meseta did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Selling coffee forward in Colombia has become popular in the last few years, but up until this year, the move had mostly worked out in favor of farmers as world prices drifted lower so farmers received better prices for their coffee on delivery, not worse.

About 550,000 Colombian families make their living growing coffee and the Andean country is the largest producer of the washed arabica grade on which benchmark futures contracts on the ICE exchange are based.

(Reporting by Maytaal Angel in London; Additional reporting by Oliver Griffin and Julia Symmes Cobb; in Bogota; Editing by David Gaffen, Veronica Brown and Susan Fenton)

Pfizer study to vaccinate whole Brazilian town against COVID-19

BRASILIA (Reuters) -Pfizer Inc will study the effectiveness of its vaccine against COVID-19 by inoculating the whole population over the age of 12 in a town in southern Brazil, the company said on Wednesday.

The study will be conducted in Toledo, population 143,000, in the west of Parana state, together with Brazil’s National Vaccination Program, local health authorities, a hospital and a federal university.

Pfizer said the purpose was to study transmission of the coronavirus in a “real-life scenario” after the population has been vaccinated.

“The initiative is the first and only of its kind to be undertaken in collaboration with the pharmaceutical company in a developing country,” Pfizer said.

A similar study was conducted by the Butantan Institute, one of Brazil’s leading biomedical research centers, in the smaller town of Serrana, in Sao Paulo state, to test the CoronaVac shot developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

In May, Butantan said mass vaccination had reduced COVID-19 death by 95% in the town with a population of 45,644 people. The institute is considering extending the study for a third dose.

“Here we believe in science and we lament the almost 600,000 deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil,” Toledo Mayor Beto Lunitti said at a news conference announcing the Pfizer study.

Regis Goulart, a researcher at Toledo’s Moinhos de Vento Hospital, said its aim was to validate the real-world efficacy and safety of the vaccine seen in clinical trials.

The observational study will also be an opportunity to do long-term monitoring for up to one year of participants and to answer lingering questions such as the duration of vaccine protection against COVID-19 and new variants, Goulart said.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Jason Neely and Mark Porter)

Their prospects dim, Haitian migrants strain Mexico’s asylum system

By Daina Beth Solomon

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico could see asylum applications jump 70% this year compared with 2019 as requests from Haitians soar, though most of those Caribbean migrants do not meet the criteria under current rules, according to Mexico’s top asylum official.

Haiti is currently the second-most common country of origin for asylum requests in Mexico, and is on track to overtake Honduras to claim the top spot for the first time in nearly a decade.

The surge has been fed by political and economic malaise in Haiti and South America, and last month thousands of mostly Haitian migrants crossed into Del Rio, Texas.

Thousands then retreated back to Mexico to avoid being deported from the United States to Haiti.

Most Haitians do not qualify for asylum in Mexico because they left home years ago for economic reasons, said Andres Ramirez, head of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR).

Most resettled in Brazil and Chile after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake and are heading north due to poor economic prospects in their adopted countries, Ramirez told Reuters.

“They’re not really refugees, they don’t even want to be refugees,” Ramirez said in an interview on Monday. “The majority want to get to the United States.”

Haitians were seeking asylum because they had no alternative, but the demand had brought COMAR to a standstill, which was “detrimental to genuine refugees, who we can’t serve because there are too many Haitians,” he added.

Asylum applications are now taking six to seven months, at least twice the time they should take, he said.

In the southern border city of Tapachula, where most migrants request asylum, COMAR is scrambling to lighten the load by canceling appointments of applicants no longer there.

COMAR is in talks with Mexico’s migration authorities and international aid organizations to see if Haitians have options for staying in Mexico aside from asylum, Ramirez said, such as humanitarian visas that let migrants work and travel freely.

Lasting one year and renewable, that visa is currently only available to migrants after they apply for asylum with COMAR.

“What concerns me is when I know someone isn’t a refugee, and they come to us because they have no other option,” Ramirez said. “But there could be another way… there is a precedent.”

Mexico distributed humanitarian visas in early 2019 when thousands of Central Americans arrived in migrant caravans, but stopped after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose trade tariffs if Mexico did not curb the flow of people.

The Biden administration is also putting pressure on Mexico to stem migrant traffic, even as it gradually rolls back Trump-era measures and promises more humane migration policies.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute did not immediately respond when asked if it was considering issuing humanitarian visas to Haitian migrants.

Asylum applications in Mexico from all nationalities reached 90,300 by September. Ramirez estimated the number could surpass 120,000 by year’s end.

Suppressed by the coronavirus pandemic, applications tumbled to just over 41,000 last year, but rose for Haitians, who filed 5,957 requests. From January to September 2021, the number of Haitian applications leapt to 26,007.

An increase in requests from Brazilians and Chileans has been fueled by children born to Haitians in those countries, Ramirez said.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Dave Graham and Alistair Bell)

Brazil hospital chain hid COVID-19 deaths, whistleblowers’ lawyer tells Senate

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) – A Brazilian hospital chain tested unproven drugs on elderly COVID-19 patients without their knowledge as part of an effort to validate President Jair Bolsonaro’s preferred ‘miracle cure,’ a lawyer for whistleblowing doctors told senators on Tuesday.

At least nine people died of COVID-19 during the trials at the Prevent Senior hospital chain from March to April 2020, but their charts were altered to hide the cause of death, lawyer Bruna Morato told a Senate inquiry.

Prevent Senior did not reply to a request for comment.

Pedro Batista, owner and executive director of the hospital chain, acknowledged in testimony to the Senate inquiry last week that patients’ charts where altered to remove any reference to COVID-19 after they had been hospitalized for two weeks, saying they were no longer a risk of contagion.

He denied testing unproven drugs on patients without their knowledge, saying patients were asking for treatments in clinical trials and doctors made the prescriptions they saw fit.

“It’s the doctor who prescribes any medicine and, at the time, everyone recalls comments from (President Bolsonaro) and other influential people, so there were a lot of patients demanding prescriptions,” Batista told the senators.

On Tuesday, Morato, representing 12 doctors employed at Prevent Senior, said the company threatened and fired doctors who disagreed with a predetermined “COVID kit” that included hydroxychloroquine, erythromycin and ivermectin. There is no scientific evidence that those drugs are beneficial in the treatment of COVID-19.

“Very vulnerable elderly patients were told there was a good treatment, but they did not know they were being used as guinea pigs,” Morato, the whistleblowers’ attorney, told senators investigating Brazil’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

She said doctors were told not to explain the treatment to the patients or their relatives.

“The purpose was to show that there was an effective treatment against COVID-19,” Morato said.

She said the hospital wanted to help the Bolsonaro government, which was touting the unproven drugs as an effective treatment against the virus that would protect Brazilians from contagion if they went back to work.

“It was like an exchange, I was told. Some doctors called it a pact, others described it as an alliance,” she said.

The Health Ministry did not reply to a request for comment. It is unclear how much the government knew about the alleged trials.

In a speech last week at the United Nations, Bolsonaro again praised “early treatment” of COVID-19 via off-label use of unspecified drugs, claiming that science would some day vindicate their use against the coronavirus.

The pandemic has killed nearly 600,000 Brazilians in the world’s second-deadliest outbreak outside the United States.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

UN migration body asks Brazil to receive Haitians on US-Mexico border

By Gabriel Stargardter and Lisandra Paraguassu

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has formally asked Brazil whether it would receive some Haitians camped along the U.S.-Mexico border hoping to enter the United States, according to two sources with knowledge of the request.

The petition from the IOM, a United Nations agency, comes as U.S. President Joe Biden faces mounting pressure to resolve yet another migration crisis. A massive flow of migrants has arrived at the U.S. southern border, sparking political headaches and logistical obstacles for the United States and Mexico.

Up to 14,000 mostly Haitians were camped just north of the Rio Grande river this month as they attempted to enter the United States. Washington has begun flying some back to Haiti, while Mexico has urged others to give up their U.S. dreams and seek asylum in the south of the country.

The IOM asked that Brazil receive Haitians who have a Brazilian child, or who have passed through Brazil before entering Mexico on their journey north, the two sources said. They said the first request was more likely to be approved. One of the sources said the second one would require more analysis.

Without mentioning the IOM request, Brazil’s foreign ministry said in a statement that “the topic was discussed in conversations between authorities from different countries and is being analyzed in light of current legislation.”

The IOM, via its Mexico office, said it has “a voluntary return program, assisting migrants of various nationalities, and the implementation of this program requires an agreement among the countries involved.” It gave no further details.

(Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; editing by Diane Craft)