(Reuters) &#8211; Americans debated mask mandates and the reopening of schools during the coronavirus pandemic on Friday as state and local officials imposed conflicting orders and cases rose by more than 70,000 across the nation for the second day in a row.



<



The United States recorded a total of at least 70,674 new COVID-19 infections on Friday after climbing by a record 77,499 a day earlier, the largest increase posted by any country since the pandemic started, according to a Reuters tally.



U.S. deaths on Friday rose by at least 912, the fourth day in a row that fatalities have exceeded 900 a day.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RELATED COVERAGE</h4>



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-trump/trump-says-he-will-not-consider-a-national-mask-mandate-idUSKCN24I2WH">Trump says he will not consider a national mask mandate</a></li></ul>



In the state of Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp sued Atlanta’s mayor to prevent her from mandating masks.



Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a plan to offer both in-person and remote instruction at the nation’s third-largest school district, over the objection of the teachers’ union, which wants remote learning only.



Americans have become divided along political lines over mask orders, with conservatives more likely than liberals to call the rules a violation of their Constitutional rights.



“Everybody saying that (wearing a mask) is a violation of their freedom &#8211; no, it’s not. Because a seatbelt is mandated and that’s to save your life,” said Sharon Taylor, 48, a cardiothoracic nurse in Atlanta.



With school set to resume in a few weeks, local officials across the country have announced a variety of plans to resume teaching.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">TRUMP SAYS WON’T ORDER MASKS</h3>



California Governor Gavin Newsom, who until now has allowed school districts in the nation’s most populous state to set their own policies, said on Friday schools could reopen only in counties that for 14 days have stayed off a worsening trends watch list.



As of Friday, 30 of the state’s 58 counties were on the list and schools there must remain closed. Among them are Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego counties, accounting for nearly 40% of the state’s population.



The United States has been averaging about 60,000 cases a day in July with cases rising in 41 states on Friday, based on a Reuters analysis. Texas and Arkansas reported a record number of deaths on Friday, while Kansas, Ohio, North Dakota and Puerto Rico reported record numbers of infections.



President Donald Trump has urged a return to normal, stressing the importance of reigniting the economy. The Trump administration and some health experts argue children are better off in classrooms for their development, and also to allow parents to return to work.



Trump told Fox News on Friday he did not believe in implementing a national mask mandate.



Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, urged political leaders to “be as forceful as possible in getting your citizenry to wear masks.”



Miami Beach, Florida imposed an 8 p.m. curfew in its entertainment district after social media posts showed maskless revelers crammed into restaurant patios.



Oklahoma City’s council voted in favor of an indoor mask requirement in the absence of a statewide face-covering mandate.



In Georgia, Kemp &#8211; a Republican and Trump supporter &#8211; urged all Georgians to wear masks for at least four weeks but said mandates were unenforceable and suggested they would hobble the economy.Slideshow&nbsp;(3 Images)



“Brian Kemp does the bidding of President Trump,” Atlanta’s Democratic Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who has tested positive for the coronavirus, told CNN on Friday.



Louis Charles, 68, of Atlanta, sided with the mayor on Friday as he wore a mask, all alone, sorting through his mail outside a post office.



“It’s wrong,” Charles said. “The mayor is trying to help people. This is a pandemic. How much worse does he want it?”



Reporting by Daniel Trotta, Peter Szekely, Rich McKay, Lisa Lambert, Lisa Shumaker, Maria Caspani, Gabriella Borter, Andrew Hay, Liza Feria, Brendan O&#8217;Brien and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Rosalba O&#8217;Brien, Cynthia Osterman and Lincoln Feast.

20200715_192019

U.S. divided over masks, schools as coronavirus cases rise by over 70,000 again

NEW YORK (Reuters) &#8211; Investors are searching for bargains in the world of U.S. small-caps, as the beaten-down asset class prepares for what may be the worst earnings season in its history amid a resurgent coronavirus pandemic.



Small-cap companies are expected to post a year-over-year earnings declines of approximately 90% as companies report their second-quarter results over the next several weeks, compared to a 67% hit for mid-caps and 44% for large-caps, according to Jefferies. That would be the largest drop since the fourth quarter of 2008, data from S&amp;P Dow Jones Indices showed.



While some investors had counted on a third-quarter rebound, many are now concerned that potential coronavirus-fueled economic shutdowns in California, Florida and Texas will deal a disproportionate hit to smaller firms, which are more directly tied to domestic spending and have been among the biggest beneficiaries of stimulus measures delivered by the Federal Reserve and Congress.



People fear a “‘Night of the Living Dead’ of small-cap companies that would otherwise go bankrupt without the benefit of the stimulus and record-low interest rates,” said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Wells Fargo Asset Management.



Small-cap stocks are often considered a barometer of investor sentiment and tend to be among the first to recover in an economic revival. Their lackluster performance this year has led to concerns over the sustainability of a nascent recovery in unemployment and other key metrics after devastating declines.



The Russell 2000 index of small-cap companies is down approximately 12% for the year to date, compared with a less than 1% decline in the S&amp;P 500 index, according to Refinitiv data. The Russell 2000 is up just 16.5% over the last 5 years, compared with an approximately 52% gain in the S&amp;P 500.



There are signs that recent economic gains may already be faltering. Real-time measures of the economy such as retail foot traffic and employee work hours have stalled recently, as states have implemented new restrictions to try to halt the spread of coronavirus pandemic.



Still, some investors believe a patient approach will win out over time.



Jon Christensen, a portfolio manager at Kayne Anderson Rudnick, said the recent jump in coronavirus cases will likely make small-caps more volatile until there is a vaccine or effective treatment.



As a result, Christensen is buying companies he believes will outperform over the next three years, despite recent hits to their share prices. He recently added shares of daycare provider Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/BFAM.N">BFAM.N</a>), which are down 23.1% for the year to date.



“Over the long term, even if we have more people working from home we know that Bright Horizon centers will continue to benefit from people needing childcare away from home,” he said.



Joe Van Cavage, a portfolio manager at Intrepid Capital, is focusing on companies that were gaining market share ahead of the economic shutdowns. He has purchased shares of discount retailers Burlington Stores Inc (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/BURL.N">BURL.N</a>) and Ollie’s Bargain Outlet Holdings Inc (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/companies/OLLI.O">OLLI.O</a>), which he believes could benefit from a prolonged economic recession as consumers trade down and spend less.



With fewer companies providing earnings guidance, “we say ‘Let’s stay on the edge of the storm and see what we can scoop up and not fly into the middle and try to hold onto dear life,” he said.

wall street

WEEKEND READ: Wall Street Week Ahead: Fund managers navigate ‘Night of the Living Dead’ in small caps

PARIS (Reuters) &#8211; French oil major Total has signed a $14.9 billion senior debt financing agreement for its massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Mozambique, the biggest project financing ever in Africa, it said on Friday.



The project includes the development of the Golfinho and Atum natural gas fields in the Offshore Area 1 concession, and the construction of a two-train liquefaction plant with a capacity of 13.1 million tons per annum, Total said.



Jean-Pierre Sbraire, chief financial officer of Total, said the signing, which secures the majority of the project’s total investment of $20 billion, shows financial institutions have confidence in the long-term future of LNG in Mozambique.



Mozambique LNG is one of several projects being developed in the country’s northernmost province of Cabo Delgado after one of the biggest gas finds in a decade off its coast. Together, the projects are worth some $60 billion.



Rival Exxon Mobil delayed the final investment decision on its nearby Rovuma LNG gas project due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Mozambique expects the decision next year.



Mozambique LNG’s project financing includes direct and covered loans from eight export credit agencies (ECAs), 19 commercial bank facilities, and a loan from the African Development Bank, Total said in a statement.



UK Export Finance (UKEF) was among the ECAs contributing to the financing, alongside the Export Import Bank of the United States, Italy’s SACE, the Netherlands’ Atradius, the Export Credit Insurance Corporation of South Africa, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Nippon Export and Investment Insurance, and the Export-Import Bank of Thailand.



Reuters reported last month that UKEF was planning to commit around $800 million of funding &#8211; a contribution that drew criticism from environmental campaigners who say Britain should not be funding fossil fuel projects.



Sealing the Total project financing is a win for Mozambique’s government as it tackles security challenges.



Cabo Delgado has seen an Islamist insurgency with links to Islamic State gather pace over the past year, and suspected Islamist insurgents attacked a town 60 km (37 miles) south of the gas projects late last month.

Mozambique records first COVID-19 death

Total signs $14.9 billion debt financing for huge Mozambique LNG project

WASHINGTON (Reuters) &#8211; John Lewis, who died on Friday at age 80, was a hero of the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s who endured beatings by white police and mobs and played an outsized role in American politics for 60 years.



Lewis, an Alabama sharecropper’s son elected in 1986 as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia, died after a battle with pancreatic cancer.



A protege of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., Lewis led sit-ins to integrate all-white lunch counters, was one of the original “Freedom Riders” who integrated buses, and suffered a skull fracture while demonstrating for Black voting rights in a savage beating by a nightstick-wielding white Alabama state trooper during an incident now called “Bloody Sunday.”



Lewis was just 18 when he first met King and went on to play a vital role in the civil rights movement that strove for equality for Blacks in an America grappling with racial bigotry and segregation, particularly in the South.



As a congressman, Lewis tangled with President Donald Trump starting even before Trump took office. Lewis in January 2017 said he did not view Trump as a “legitimate” president because of Russian meddling in the 2016 election to boost his candidacy. Trump drew criticism even from fellow Republicans when he called Lewis “all talk” and “no action.”



Lewis was present at many of the civil rights movement’s seminal moments, and was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, hoping for a land where Blacks “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”



Lewis, the last surviving speaker at that speech, maintained the fight for civil rights until the end of his life. He made his last public appearance in June, as protests for racial justice swept the United States and the world.



Using a cane, he walked with Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on a street by the White House that Bowser had just renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza, which had just been dedicated with a large yellow mural &#8211; large enough to be seen from space &#8211; reading “Black Lives Matter.”



Amid a national movement to abolish Confederate monuments and symbols, calls have grown rename the bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Lewis was brutally beaten during a 1965 voting rights march, for Lewis. It is named for Edmund Pettus, who fought in the Confederate Army and robbed African-Americans of their right to vote after Reconstruction.



Long before the March on Washington, Lewis helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became a prominent civil rights group, and served as its president for three years.



He proved he was willing to risk his life for the cause of civil rights and non-violent protest and organized the first lunch-counter sit-ins demanding service for Blacks at whites-only eateries.



In 1960, at a whites-only diner in Nashville, Tennessee, a white waitress dumped cleaning powder down his back and water on his food. He was beaten by whites in South Carolina and Alabama during 1961 anti-segregation bus tours called Freedom Rides. And he suffered further injuries during “Bloody Sunday” in 1965 in Selma.



“I thought I was going to die a few times,” he said in a 2004 interview, mentioning Selma and a 1961 mob beating at a bus station in Montgomery, Alabama. “I thought I saw death, but nothing can make me question the philosophy of non-violence.”



Barack Obama, the first Black U.S. president, awarded Lewis the presidential medal of freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, in 2011.



“Generations from now, when parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind &#8211; an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time, whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now,” Obama said a White House ceremony.



Lewis was born on Feb. 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama, when Blacks faced segregation in all public facilities and were effectively barred from voting in the U.S. South &#8211; where Black slavery ended only due to the 1861-1865 Civil War &#8211; thanks to the notorious “Jim Crow” laws.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">‘I FELT SO FREE’</h3>



Lewis plunged into the civil rights movement as a student at Fisk University in Nashville, where he organized the sit-ins at segregated lunch counters.



“The Nashville sit-ins became the first mass arrest in the sit-in movement, and I was taken to jail,” Lewis said.



“I’ll tell you, I felt so liberated. I felt so free. I felt like I had crossed over. I think I said to myself, ‘What else can you do to me? You beat me. You harassed me. Now you have placed me under arrest. You put us in jail. What’s left? You can kill us?’”



The “Bloody Sunday” attack took place when segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace directed police to use night sticks and tear gas to stop the peaceful march for voting rights led by Lewis and others.



As hundreds of Black protesters crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers, many on horseback, waded into the crowd swinging billy clubs. Lewis was beaten so badly that his scars were visible decades later when he served in Congress.



The horrific nature of the event inspired action in Washington. President Lyndon Johnson days later demanded that Congress approve legislation removing barriers to Black voting. Lawmakers then passed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.



In a moving postscript to his protest years, Elwin Wilson, a white man who assaulted Lewis at a bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1961, traveled to Washington in 2009 to apologize tearfully to Lewis, who forgave him.



“That’s what the movement was always about &#8211; to have the capacity to forgive and move toward reconciliation,” Lewis told the New York Times in 2013 after Wilson died at age 76.



After leaving SNCC in 1966, Lewis worked for community organizations. He later was Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s choice to head the federal volunteer program ACTION and he was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981.



Lewis lost his first run for the House in 1977 to Democrat Wyche Fowler in the campaign to replace Andrew Young, the first Black elected to Congress from Georgia in modern times. Carter had picked Young to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.



When Fowler headed to the Senate, Lewis defeated another civil rights figure, Julian Bond, in 1986 for the House seat representing the congressional district encompassing Atlanta.



In the House, he amassed a liberal voting record and was a member of the House Democratic leadership team.



Lewis began the 2008 campaign supporting Hillary Clinton as she faced Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Obama won Georgia’s Democratic primary, Lewis switched allegiance in a key moment of the campaign.



As a congressman in June 2016, Lewis used the non-violent protest tactics he learned from King to help organize a 24-hour sit-in on the House floor to push for gun control legislation following a shooting that killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The rare protest virtually shut down the chamber.



Lewis had one son with his wife Lillian, who died in 2012.

Politicians on the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington

John Lewis, U.S. congressman and sharecropper’s son, was civil rights hero

On Mandela Day 2020, I am reminded of my late friend and Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg who stood shoulder –to-shoulder with Nelson Mandela in the shadow of the death penalty back in 1964. Goldberg, who died on April 30, spent 22 years in prison for his part in the sabotage campaign against the apartheid regime was a warm man with a robust sense of humour. He was an engineer by trade and was given the job of making bombs that earned him the title of ‘Mr Technico’ among his comrades.



Goldberg spent his retirement years a spit from the crashing waves of Hout Bay near Cape Town. His home, with a balcony overlooking the sea and the mountain range that hems in the bay, was typical of the man.



Not for him the expensive, luxury, homes of Hout Bay; he built his own home amid the fishermans’ cottages on the less fashionable side of Hout Bay. Among the people, he once said to me. It was in this glorious setting high above the sparkling sea that Goldberg related many of the stories of the desperate days of the struggle and the dock at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria in 1964.



“Nelson loved a fight, we used to send him to wag his finger at them!” he said with his trademark smile.



Goldberg never forgot the first day of the trial in Pretoria when Mandela when prison officers shoved Mandela, shackled and in short trousers, next to him into the dock. Mandela was already serving a five year sentence for supporting strikes and leaving the country without a permit and was hauled from prison to face the death sentence.



“You were not supposed to humiliate a prisoner, before the judge, but they did,” Goldberg recalled. &nbsp;



“I stood next to him and had chocolate in my pocket. I nudged him and he looked down and nodded. I broke off a square of the chocolate and handed a bit to him. He wiped his hands over his face and the chocolate disappeared into his very, very thin cheek. Here we are, they are charging us with sabotage and here this little bit of chocolate melts away. He nodded again and I gave him some more; for me this was such a moment of humanity. You don’t get sweeteners in prison,” said Goldberg.



“But there he was standing there, his clothes were hanging off him because he had lost an awful lot of weight, demanding of the judge to look him in the eye.”



The two men survived the death penalty. More than 30 years later Goldberg asked Mandela why he thought they didn’t hang.



“Because I dared him too!” Mandela replied. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Yet Goldberg believed at one stage Mandela may have felt – as the leader of the accused – that he may face yet get the noose. He recalled how Mandela would lecture Goldberg in the holding cells, under the court, near the end of the long trial.



“He used to say: ‘Denis when you teach people about Marxism don’t talk about Europe and slavery and feudalism – our people don’t understand that. You have to go back to our own country and own experience’ I said to him: ‘Nel, why are you telling me this?’ He says: ‘I just think you should know’ I know he was thinking he was going to be hanged.”



In the end no one was hanged. When the life sentence was handed down the accused, sitting with Mandela and Goldberg all looked at each other and laughed in relief.



“Nelson said in his book A Long Walk to Freedom that I said to my wife, from the dock, when asked about the verdict: ‘Life, life to live’ I wouldn’t use such literary English and it wasn’t my wife , she was in England, I said it to my mother. I said: ‘Life, life is wonderful’ and I can tell you more than 30 years later life is wonderful,” recalled Goldberg.”



On Mandela Day 2020, I am reminded of my late friend and Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg who stood shoulder –to-shoulder with Nelson Mandela in the shadow of the death penalty back in 1964. Goldberg, who died on April 30, spent 22 years in prison for his part in the sabotage campaign against the apartheid regime was a warm man with a robust sense of humour. He was an engineer by trade and was given the job of making bombs that earned him the title of ‘Mr Technico’ among his comrades.



Goldberg spent his retirement years a spit from the crashing waves of Hout Bay near Cape Town. His home, with a balcony overlooking the sea and the mountain range that hems in the bay, was typical of the man.



Not for him the expensive, luxury, homes of Hout Bay; he built his own home amid the fishermans’ cottages on the less fashionable side of Hout Bay. Among the people, he once said to me. It was in this glorious setting high above the sparkling sea that Goldberg related many of the stories of the desperate days of the struggle and the dock at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria in 1964.



“Nelson loved a fight, we used to send him to wag his finger at them!” he said with his trademark smile.



Goldberg never forgot the first day of the trial in Pretoria when Mandela when prison officers shoved Mandela, shackled and in short trousers, next to him into the dock. Mandela was already serving a five year sentence for supporting strikes and leaving the country without a permit and was hauled from prison to face the death sentence.



“You were not supposed to humiliate a prisoner, before the judge, but they did,” Goldberg recalled. &nbsp;



“I stood next to him and had chocolate in my pocket. I nudged him and he looked down and nodded. I broke off a square of the chocolate and handed a bit to him. He wiped his hands over his face and the chocolate disappeared into his very, very thin cheek. Here we are, they are charging us with sabotage and here this little bit of chocolate melts away. He nodded again and I gave him some more; for me this was such a moment of humanity. You don’t get sweeteners in prison,” said Goldberg.



“But there he was standing there, his clothes were hanging off him because he had lost an awful lot of weight, demanding of the judge to look him in the eye.”



The two men survived the death penalty. More than 30 years later Goldberg asked Mandela why he thought they didn’t hang.



“Because I dared him too!” Mandela replied. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Yet Goldberg believed at one stage Mandela may have felt – as the leader of the accused – that he may face yet get the noose. He recalled how Mandela would lecture Goldberg in the holding cells, under the court, near the end of the long trial.



“He used to say: ‘Denis when you teach people about Marxism don’t talk about Europe and slavery and feudalism – our people don’t understand that. You have to go back to our own country and own experience’ I said to him: ‘Nel, why are you telling me this?’ He says: ‘I just think you should know’ I know he was thinking he was going to be hanged.”



In the end no one was hanged. When the life sentence was handed down the accused, sitting with Mandela and Goldberg all looked at each other and laughed in relief.



“Nelson said in his book A Long Walk to Freedom that I said to my wife, from the dock, when asked about the verdict: ‘Life, life to live’ I wouldn’t use such literary English and it wasn’t my wife , she was in England, I said it to my mother. I said: ‘Life, life is wonderful’ and I can tell you more than 30 years later life is wonderful,” recalled Goldberg.”



“Was it worth it? Every single day. I wouldn’t change it except, I wouldn’t want to get caught if I were to it again!”

DSC_1387

MANDELA DAY 2020: How Mandela ate chocolate in the shadow of death: Goldberg on Madiba

WASHINGTON (Reuters) &#8211; The government of India has agreed to allow U.S. air carriers to resume passenger services in the U.S.-India market starting July 23, the U.S. Transportation Department said on Friday.



The Indian government, citing the coronavirus, had banned all scheduled services, prompting the U.S. Transportation Department in June to accuse India of engaging in “unfair and discriminatory practices” on charter air carriers serving India.



The Transportation Department said it was withdrawing an order it had issued requiring Indian air carriers to apply for authorization prior to conducting charter flights, and said it had approved an Air India application for passenger charter flights between the United States and India.&nbsp;



A group representing major U.S. airlines and the Indian Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment on Friday.



India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation said on Twitter it was moving to “further expand our international civil aviation operations” and arrangements from some flights “with US, UAE, France &amp; Germany are being put in place while similar arrangements are also being worked out with several other countries.”



“Under this arrangement,” it added, “airlines from the concerned countries will be able to operate flights from &amp; to India along with Indian carriers.”



The U.S. Transportation Department order was set to take effect next week. The Trump administration said in June it wanted “to restore a level playing field for U.S. airlines” under the U.S.-India Air Transport Agreement. The Indian government had banned all scheduled services and failed to approve U.S. carriers for charter operations, it added.



The U.S. government said in June that Air India had been operating “repatriation” charter flights between India and the United States in both directions since May 7.

U.S. passenger flights to India can resume July 23

TUNIS (Reuters) &#8211; The collapse of Tunisia’s shortest-lived government since its 2011 revolution has plunged its young democracy into a new crisis after successive failures by elected leaders to turn political freedom into economic success.



Prime Minister Elyes Fakhfakh’s coalition had only taken office in February after months of political wrangling in the deeply fragmented parliament formed by last year’s election.



His resignation on Wednesday means there will be a new round of talks to try to form a government and, if that fails, another election just as the country demands clear leadership to handle the global pandemic and its economic fallout.



For Tunisia, widely seen as the sole comparative success story of the “Arab Spring” it triggered nine years ago with the revolution that introduced democracy, the stakes could hardly be higher.



“Enough is enough,” said Samia ben Youssef, a teacher out shopping at a street market in the Ettahrir district of Tunis.



“At a time when people are suffering from a crisis, when coronavirus is spreading around the world, they let us face our destiny alone,” she added.



Already, in the impoverished southern towns where the rising flared in 2011, a fresh wave of protesters are demanding jobs and more government aid, while the government said last week it wanted to delay debt repayments to four donor countries.



On Thursday some of these protesters started blocking Tunisia’s modest oil exports by closing a pumping station, a tactic that has already damaged the phosphate industry.



Against this fraught backdrop, Tunisia faces a reckoning with its awkward democratic model, a mix of parliamentary and presidential systems but without a constitutional court, which was intended to resolve disputes but has not yet been set up.



With many leading politicians, including the president, wanting to change the system, the party that did best in a recent opinion poll is the one that champions the old, pre-revolution, autocracy.



“My fear is we are entering an era of turbulence and without having enough political force to face it &#8230; It’s a very gloomy scenario,” said Youssef Cherif, a political analyst.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">POLARISATION</h3>



Politicians now have until late August to form a new government with majority support in parliament, but will struggle to bridge the divisions that weakened Fakhfakh’s coalition.



The largest party is the moderate Islamist Ennahda, the only constant presence in Tunisian politics since the revolution as numerous other parties rapidly came and went. But it has only a quarter of the seats and its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, faces a vote of confidence as parliament speaker.



Tunisia’s biggest political rift is over fiscal policy. Ennahda has tended to stand with parties that favour reforms sought by donors to curb spending and public debt.



President Kais Saied appears to stand on the other side of that division, Cherif said, along with Arab nationalist parties and the other major player in Tunisian politics, a powerful labour union.



Talks have already started with the International Monetary Fund over a new loan programme, but it has previously wanted tough economic reforms that much of parliament opposes.



In parliament on Thursday the tense political atmosphere was encapsulated by Abir Moussi and her populist Destouri party, which voices support for the ousted autocracy of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who died in exile last year.



They seized the speaker’s chair to stop Ghannouchi sitting there, raising the spectre of renewed tension between Islamists and secularists and aggravating the risk of street confrontations between their supporters.

IMF_logo

Public debt, populism and protests as Tunisia faces crisis

Nelson Mandela once said that he may have been in prison for 27 years but he was not confined for one day because he could read and that lent his spirit freedom.



It appears that hunger for literacy may have condemned Mandela and his comrades to a life behind bars. On the eve of Mandela Day, July 18 which would have been his 102nd birthday, it is interesting to speculate that this joy of reading may have set in motion of chain of events that led to a life behind bars for his comrades in the underground.



One crisp winter afternoon on July 11 1963 police scooped up almost the entire leadership of the underground as they met in a small cottage the back of Liliesleaf farm, in Rivonia, Johannesburg, in a Trojan horse-style raid, with dogs and officers concealed in a pharmacy van. They arrested a ‘who’s who of the struggle: Govan Mbeki; Ray Mahlaba; Denis Goldberg; Walter Sisulu; Ahmed Kathrada; and Andrew Mlangeni.



“Ons het de jackpot!” said the triumphant arresting officer, as he telephoned the police station to inform his colleagues of the raid. In English, we have hit the jackpot. The police couldn’t believe their luck as they chained who they saw and desperadoes in a circle, on the Liliesleaf lawn,and allowed their dogs to snap at them.



“It is high treason chaps,” said Mbeki as the van was driven away. The captured laughed but they all knew the charges they were to face meant the death sentence. The armed struggle and bombings they had been running for many months had destroyed many key installations.



How the raid on Rivonia, which lent its name to the trial in which all were sentenced to life, came about has been argued over for years. Theories abound from informants, to nosey neighbours, to foreign spies.



There could be another theory connected to Mandela’s love of reading. Mbeki et al used to pretend to be farm workers at Liliesleaf, as part of their cover. They were so good at this that they used to sell the vegetables they grew to the nearby Rivonia police! So the police put food on the table through the hard work of revolutionaries, yet never twigged who grew it.



What could have given the Liliesleaf crew away was their love of reading. Being intellectual revolutionaries they all devoured daily newspapers that aroused suspicion. Surviving fellow farm workers recalled in interviews, in 2012, that they told people they worked with “black men with newspapers” – a rarity in 1960s South Africa.



Another incident, depicted in the painting by Kevin Krapf at the top of this article, involving Nelson Mandela reading a newspaper, heightened that suspicion.



 A nearby farmer  by the name of Ernest Vickers called in to see Arthur Goldreich, an activist who lived in the farm as a front for the underground. Vickers was shocked to see a black man sitting in the lounge with his feet up on the coffee table reading a newspaper. The man was lawyer Mandela who was pretending to be a domestic worker at the farm and was to become his country’s first democratically elected president.



Unbelievably, in this day and age, Vickers reported what he had seen to the Rivonia police, maybe as it was taking another delivery of vegetables.  Years later, Vickers was convinced that it was this report that led to the raid and life imprisonment. He was also worried about the repercussion there could be for his own family.



Maybe ?&nbsp; Maybe not. It could be forever lost in the mist of times that shroud the rich Mandela story. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

20200717_093810

“It is high treason chaps!”-  How the joy of reading could have put Nelson Mandela and his struggle comrades behind bars.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa’s Reserve Bank is expected next week to cut its repo rate for the fifth time this year, most likely by 25 basis points to an all-time low of 3.5% as the COVID-19 pandemic batters the economy, a Reuters poll found.



The SARB cut rates in May by 50 basis points after the economy was shut down to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. That followed two aggressive 100 basis point cuts in succession in March and April.



But the decision at the July 23 meeting is in the balance. The July 9-16 poll found 13 of 28 economists expected a 25 basis point cut and two expected 50 basis points to 3.25%. Thirteen said the Bank would leave rates unchanged.



“Given growth risks, the SARB will be willing to ease further, perhaps even accommodating a negative real repo rate temporarily in 2021,” Razia Khan, head of research for Africa and the Middle East at Standard Chartered, said.



“Although the SARB introduced secondary-market bond purchases in March, this was in response to significant market dislocations. Monetary accommodation is likely to happen through more conventional rate cuts,” Khan added.



The local bond yield curve had steepened in recent months as investors fretted over the long-term sustainability of gross debt.



Median forecasts from the poll suggest rates are expected to be left at 3.5% for the remaining September and November meetings this year. The SARB may then raise the repo rate to 3.75% next year.



Still, annual inflation in South Africa has moderated sharply to 2.1% and is expected to average 3.4% this year before quickening to 4.1% next year. That is still within the Reserve Bank’s comfort level of 3-6%.



South Africa’s economy in the last quarter is expected to contract 38.7%, the poll found. That would be the most since comparable records began in 1993, the year before South Africa held its first fully democratic elections.



It would follow a 2.0% contraction reported for the first quarter of the year, before Africa’s second-largest economy largely shut down in March.



The economy is forecast to partially bounce back by an annualised 19.3% in the three months to September and grow in all of the following quarters. That would likely mean 3.5% growth next year following an 8.0% contraction this year.

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POLL: S.Africa’s Reserve Bank to cut rates again, by modest 25 bps

LONDON (Reuters) &#8211; Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he hoped Britain could return to normality before Christmas, setting out a phased removal of lockdown restrictions, but warned that while he was hoping for the best, the country must also prepare for the worst.



Britain is the worst-affected country in Europe by COVID-19 with a death toll from confirmed cases of more than 45,000 but has begun to lift national lockdown restrictions as case numbers and infection rates fall.



Johnson set out the latest timetable for easing on Friday, saying that employers would be given more discretion over working from home, that larger gatherings would be tested for safety and social distancing rules might be dropped in time for Christmas.



“It is my strong and sincere hope that we will be able to review the outstanding restrictions and allow a more significant return to normality from November at the earliest – possibly in time for Christmas,” he said.



However, he stressed that the plan was conditional on success in keeping infection rates down, setting out new powers for local government to lockdown COVID-19 hotspots and extra healthcare funding.



“We’re making sure we’re ready for winter and planning for the worst. But even as we plan for the worst, I strongly believe we should also hope for the best,” he told a news conference.



The government has faced criticism over several different aspects of its response to the pandemic, including that it was too slow to impose a lockdown and failed to ramp up testing capacity quickly enough.



Johnson said that from Aug. 1 he would scrap official guidance that encouraged people to work from home and give employers the power to decide whether it was safe for workers to return.



Johnson also set out a 3 billion pound ($3.76 billion) cash boost for the state-funded health system which would be made available immediately, and permitted the use of private hospitals and temporary field hospitals would be permitted to ease the increased winter burden.



The funding announcement applies only to the English health service, with knock-on increases for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to be set out later.



The government will also increase testing capacity and flexibility, bolster its stockpiles of protective equipment and, wary of increased pressure from other seasonal illnesses, increase its annual flu vaccination programme.

london

Britain eyes normal life by Christmas, but preparing for second COVID-19 wave

LONDON/ABIDJAN (Reuters) &#8211; The steepest dive in cocoa demand in a decade has thrown into jeopardy a plan by top producers Ivory Coast and Ghana to guarantee some two million farmers a living wage, sources within the countries’ regulators said.



Leading chocolate-makers agreed to a proposal from the African nations last year to charge the industry a premium for cocoa beans and guarantee a minimum income to farmers who earn just $1 a day.



But the scheme, set to come into effect this October, was based on expectations that international cocoa prices would stay within average ranges. Instead, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on demand has driven them to their lowest in nearly two years and they are expected to stay weak for at least a year, the industry says.



“It is not certain we will be able to guarantee farmers the amount originally expected,” a source at Ivory Coast’s cocoa regulator the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC), which sets the official farmer price each season, told Reuters.



The source, who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the press, said the country’s cocoa sales for next season were some 30% below average levels for the time of year.



The CCC did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.



A spokesman for the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) said in a statement sent via WhatsApp the process of determining the price cocoa farmers will get was ongoing. He added, however, farmers would still get a better price than without any premium.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">MINIMUM WAGE ERODED</h3>



Market weakness could appear a good thing for chocolate consumers offered discounts on the high street, but for farmers it could mean hunger.



Already the closure of retail outlets during lockdowns to try to contain the novel coronavirus stifled impulse-buying of chocolate, significantly denting demand.



Now widespread economic hardship is expected to limit sales just as the industry anticipates production will rebound when the new cocoa season starts, generating a large global surplus.



A series of meetings between representatives of the cocoa industry, Ivory Coast and Ghana last year agreed a premium of $400 a tonne for all sales for the upcoming 2020-21 season, including any production sold ahead of the season’s start in October.



Because the market has suffered a sustained fall with prices now below $2,000 a tonne, even with the premium added, the earnings of Ivory Coast and Ghanaian farmers will fall below the guaranteed minimum wage.



Four sources in total at Ivory Coast and Ghana’s cocoa regulators, all asking not to be named, predicted the income guarantee would be missed by around $120 a tonne. That would mean farmers get some increase in revenue, but far short of expectations.



Calculations made by Ivory Coast and Ghana when the new pricing plan was agreed a year ago showed a $400 premium would allow them to guarantee farmers 70% of a minimum $2,600 a tonne target price from 2020/21 onwards, or about 20% more than they currently receive.



Farmers in Ivory Coast and Ghana said they had yet to be told they would receive any less and were counting on an increase for the upcoming season.



“Life is hard for us cocoa farmers and if the price is not good, we cannot live well. Everything is expensive and you don’t earn enough to live like men. Here in the village we survive,” Alidou Konate, a farmer with 7 hectares in Duekoue, in western Ivory Coast told Reuters.



Francis Yeboah, who has 3 acres in the Ashanti region of Ghana said all farmers had “put a lot of hope in this new pricing system” and it was up to industry and the government to make up the difference in the event of any shortfall.



“Even if the coronavirus has an impact on the market and it lowers the price, it is up to the government to find a way to maintain a high price for the poor cocoa farmers that we are. It’s not up to us to make a sacrifice but to the chocolate-makers and the government,” he said.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">TRADE ALSO ANXIOUS</h3>



Figures from the industry offer little comfort.



An internal report from Barry Callebaut, seen by Reuters, shows the world’s biggest chocolate maker expects a global surplus of 317,000 tonnes in 2020/21, the biggest since 2016/17, when excess supplies kept world prices below $2,000 a tonne for more than a year.



Barry Callebaut also adjusted a previously expected 85,000 tonne deficit for 2019/20 to a 6,000 tonne surplus.



The company’s sales dropped 14.3% in the April to June quarter. It expects a gradual rebound over the next three years, but it will not be enough to balance the market in 2020/21.



It is not just farmers who will suffer. Some traders fear for their livelihoods.



“I’m concentrating my efforts on saving my job. Our business is getting impacted. Small trade houses will probably go bankrupt this year,” the head of cocoa trading at a global commodities house said, also asking not to be named.



($1 = 0.7965 pounds)

Cocoa_farmer_David_Kebu_Jnr_holding_the_finished_product,_dried_cocoa_beans_ready_for_export._(10687070725)

Pact to aid poor cocoa farmers in peril as COVID-19 hits demand

LAGOS (Reuters) &#8211; Annual inflation in Nigeria rose for a 10th straight month in June, lifted by higher food and healthcare costs, the statistics office said on Friday, as the coronavirus pandemic disrupted logistics.



Inflation climbed to 12.56%, its highest level in more than two years, from 12.4% in May, the National Bureau of Statistics said.



A separate index for food, which accounts for the bulk of the inflation basket, showed a price increase of 15.18% from 15.04% in May.



Nigeria has more than 34,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 76 deaths. Most cases are in urban areas, where the brunt of price increases is felt, especially for imported drugs and food.



Nigeria’s central bank meets early next week to set interest rates.

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Nigerian inflation rises for 10 months in a row in June

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa’s rand was unchanged early on Friday as investors reassessed the impact of coronavirus, with infections locally and worldwide continuing to climb. At 0715 GMT the rand had not moved against the dollar, still trading at its overnight closing level of 16.7400 per dollar. The rand rallied most of last week and early this week, reaching one-month highs. But momentum has since stalled as coronavirus infections rose around the world, especially in the United States, and local cases breached 200,000. Risk demand was also weakened by data showing China consumer demand slackened and by renewed tensions between Washington and Beijing. President Donald Trump’s administration is reported to be considering banning travel to the United States by all members of the Chinese Communist Party. “The South African currency surrendered gains as risk appetite ebbed in the wake of poor data out of China, dwarfing optimism surrounding promising vaccine trial results,” said analysts at NKC African Economics. Bonds were weaker, with the yield on the 2030 government issue up 7 basis points to 9.42%.

ArcelorMittal South Africa fined R3.64 million over hydrogen sulfide emissions

South Africa’s rand flat as COVID-19 infections climb

LONDON (Reuters) &#8211; Blended finance, a mix of public and private capital, is set to boom in Africa to meet funding demand from businesses cash-strapped in the wake of COVID-19 and as investors seek safeguards against financial risks.



Africa has been hit hard by the pandemic, pushing it into its first recession in 25 years and likely to drag 27 million people in the sub-Saharan region alone into extreme poverty.



Businesses across the continent have struggled as banks and other financiers have slashed lending at a time when companies facing plummeting revenues need cash to pay suppliers.



Blended finance, which gained traction in recent years to help governments respond to long-term challenges such as climate change and food security, is helping fill the void.



Proponents such as the World Bank’s private sector investment arm IFC and the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation have in the past helped mobilise up to $50 billion for Africa, more than a third of the global market.



But with the continent facing an estimated $44 billion fiscal gap, such funding is being used to help fix short-term challenges, like trade finance for medical supplies or working capital to keep businesses afloat.



For example, the IFC says it is allocating twice as much funding to blended finance as in recent years.



“What we’re seeing is a tremendous amount of demand from distributors for some sort of working finance to help their customers,” said John Simon, founding partner of U.S.-based TOTAL Impact Capital, which aims to invest for social good.



TOTAL Impact Capital and another firm, Cardano Development, aim to harness blended finance in countries including Kenya to help buy thousands of pharmaceutical sales invoices where goods have already been delivered.



By advancing only a portion of the invoice value, with the balance paid at collection, the investment ensures returns for investors, while alleviating cash flows for the companies by shortening payment cycles, said Nico de Nijs CEO of IMFact, a company set up by the pair.



Demand has surged in the pandemic’s aftermath, said Ladé Araba, Africa managing director for Convergence, a global network for blended finance, noting more interest from institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies.



Comparing the demand in 2020 to spikes after the 2008-9 financial crisis and in 2015, she said many of the deals involved loans which offered more generous and flexible terms than those from a bank or institutional investor.



Calculating returns for blended finance can be tricky.



As they involve a “concessional funder”, returns for private investors were often limited by the need to avoid the perception of subsidising private profits, said Simon.



Araba said such funding attracted private investment by either transferring risks to soft loan providers or providing an additional risk premium &#8211; and a more attractive upside &#8211; for investors.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">SHRINKING PIPELINE</h3>



International banks are striving to play a role, either through lending or by pulling in private investors.



Japan’s MUFG was one of several banks involved this month in a loan, backed by a 359 million euro ($409.5 million) guarantee by MIGA, part of the World Bank Group, to help the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank offer trade and project finance to its 22 member states.



JPMorgan in January launched a unit through which it aims to finance more than $100 billion annually in development activities from investment banking deals, with extra contributions from its markets businesses.



IFC is using blended finance to support cash-strapped companies it deems have a sustainable future with a focus on International Development Association (IDA) countries, many of whom are in Africa, said Martin Spicer, IFC’s director of blended finance.



“We’ve had a shrinking of the immediate pipeline of projects, but an increase in the COVID funds part of the business,” said Spicer, adding that the timeline was uncertain for the delayed projects.



Before the coronavirus outbreak, about 50% of blended finance investment targeted energy and financial services, said Araba.



This was partly because much of the focus had been on helping governments meet global targets to improve education, infrastructure, food security, climate change and health by 2030, requiring $5 trillion to $7 trillion per year.



($1 = 0.8766 euros)

Farmers_farming,Jimma_,Ethiopia

Public, private lending mash-up offers lifeline to virus-hit African firms

ABUJA (Reuters) &#8211; Nigeria hopes changes it has made to gold mining regulation will earn the government $500 million a year in royalties and taxes and create 250,000 jobs, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Thursday.



The reforms have made artisanal mining legal and will create gold buying centres and tax trade of the precious metal, Buhari said in a statement.



“These operations will help in diversifying our revenue base,” said Buhari.



Nigerian authorities have said illegal mining, prominent in the northwest, has fuelled widespread violence they attribute to “bandits”. Thousands of people have been killed in the region in recent years and swathes of the region are inaccessible. The military is deployed to tackle the insecurity but the conflict shows little sign of ending.



The extra revenues from gold could be a lifeline as the coronavirus pandemic and resulting global oil price crash cut off much of the state’s income.



Buhari said the country has lost a total of $3 billion from 2012 to 2018 because of illegal gold mining.



In February, Nigeria licensed two gold refineries mainly to produce gold for the central bank to hold in its reserves but also for export. The bank received its first locally-produced gold bar on Thursday.



Nigeria has largely untapped deposits of 44 minerals including gold, iron ore, coal, tin and zinc, in more than 500 locations, but mining makes up just 0.3% of the economy

Investors rushing for gold amid COVID-19 fears

Nigeria hopes gold mining reforms can bring in $500 million a year

LUSAKA (Reuters) &#8211; Glencore’s Zambia subsidiary Mopani Copper Mines on Thursday said the country’s mines ministry rejected its proposal to suspend operations because of low copper prices and disruptions caused by the coronavirus crisis.



Mopani said it would appeal against the decision and will continue mining operations pending the outcome of the appeal process.



Operations were halted at its mines at the start of April, with Mopani citing the COVID-19 pandemic and other problems, but mining resumed a month later after the decision sparked a backlash from the Zambian government.



“Mopani remains of the belief that the only way to protect the company’s value and preserve the option to deliver its growth projects when conditions further improve is to transition the operations to C&amp;M (care and maintenance),” it said on Thursday.



Zambia’s mines minister, Richard Musukwa, said the government had made it clear from the beginning that it wants Mopani to continue and said he was happy Mopani had “responded favourably” to his call not to place the mine under care and maintenance.



Musukwa said that Mopani has cut the number of expatriates working at the mine from 94 to 49 and the company will address concerns over what he described as its high cost of production.



“We are open to dialogue because we want what’s best for the people of Zambia and Mopani is strategic to [our] economic trajectory,” he said.



Mopani Copper Mines, which produced 119,000 tonnes of copper in 2018, is 73.1% owned by Glencore, 16.9% by First Quantum Minerals and 10% by Zambia’s mining investment arm ZCCM-IH.

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Zambia rejects Glencore copper mine’s suspension plan

HARARE (Reuters) &#8211; Zimbabwe’s economy is expected to shrink by 4.5% this year owing to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and a brutal climate change-related drought, the finance minister said on Thursday.



The crucial mining sector will contract by 4%, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube added in a mid-term budget speech, although he projected that GDP would rebound to 7.4% growth in 2021.



Ncube added that inflation was expected to gradually decline to 300% by December, compared with 737.36% currently.



Zimbabwe’s economy was in a mess even before COVID-19 struck, with rampant inflation, chronic shortages of food, foreign currency and medicines, all worsened by a drought that scorched crops.



“With regards to the domestic economy, the impact of the pandemic is &#8230; lower commodity demand and&#8230; prices, reduced tourist arrivals due to travel restrictions &#8230; currency volatility, high inflation,” Ncube told parliament.



Exports, however, seemed to remain resilient, despite the COVID-19 shock, declining only slightly to $1.53 billion in first five months of this year against $1.56 billion in the same period of last year.



As is often the case, Zimbabwe’s economic crisis risks spurring renewed social unrest. The opposition is planning street protests on July 31 to demonstrate against government corruption and its handling of the economy.



The Zimbabwe dollar currency, which was re-introduced last year unbacked by any foreign or gold reserves, has plummeted, eroding wages and triggering memories of the 2008 hyperinflation in 2008 — which wiped out savings and forced the government to abandon its previous currency.



Public sector unions want U.S. dollar pay, but the government says that is impossible, offering a 50% pay rise that unions have rejected.

Newsletter

U.S. divided over masks, schools as coronavirus cases rise by over 70,000 again

WEEKEND READ: Wall Street Week Ahead: Fund managers navigate ‘Night of the Living Dead’ in small caps

Total signs $14.9 billion debt financing for huge Mozambique LNG project

John Lewis, U.S. congressman and sharecropper’s son, was civil rights hero

MANDELA DAY 2020: How Mandela ate chocolate in the shadow of death: Goldberg on Madiba

U.S. passenger flights to India can resume July 23

Public debt, populism and protests as Tunisia faces crisis

“It is high treason chaps!”- How the joy of reading could have put Nelson Mandela and his struggle comrades behind bars.

POLL: S.Africa’s Reserve Bank to cut rates again, by modest 25 bps

Britain eyes normal life by Christmas, but preparing for second COVID-19 wave

Pact to aid poor cocoa farmers in peril as COVID-19 hits demand

Nigerian inflation rises for 10 months in a row in June

South Africa’s rand flat as COVID-19 infections climb

Public, private lending mash-up offers lifeline to virus-hit African firms

Nigeria hopes gold mining reforms can bring in $500 million a year

Zambia rejects Glencore copper mine’s suspension plan

Zimbabwe economy to shrink by 4.5% this year on COVID-19, drought

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Newsletter

U.S. divided over masks, schools as coronavirus cases rise by over 70,000 again

WEEKEND READ: Wall Street Week Ahead: Fund managers navigate ‘Night of the Living Dead’ in small caps

Total signs $14.9 billion debt financing for huge Mozambique LNG project

John Lewis, U.S. congressman and sharecropper’s son, was civil rights hero

MANDELA DAY 2020: How Mandela ate chocolate in the shadow of death: Goldberg on Madiba

U.S. passenger flights to India can resume July 23

Public debt, populism and protests as Tunisia faces crisis

“It is high treason chaps!”- How the joy of reading could have put Nelson Mandela and his struggle comrades behind bars.

POLL: S.Africa’s Reserve Bank to cut rates again, by modest 25 bps

Britain eyes normal life by Christmas, but preparing for second COVID-19 wave

Pact to aid poor cocoa farmers in peril as COVID-19 hits demand

Nigerian inflation rises for 10 months in a row in June

South Africa’s rand flat as COVID-19 infections climb

Public, private lending mash-up offers lifeline to virus-hit African firms

Nigeria hopes gold mining reforms can bring in $500 million a year

Zambia rejects Glencore copper mine’s suspension plan

Zimbabwe economy to shrink by 4.5% this year on COVID-19, drought

News Tips

Advertise With Us

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