MOSCOW – Russia and the United States failed to make any major progress on Tuesday in resolving a row over the size and functioning of their embassies and there is a risk that relations could worsen further, Russia‘s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

With ties already at post-Cold War lows, the two countries are in a dispute over the number of diplomats they can post to each other’s capitals, though Moscow said it was willing to lift restrictions imposed in recent years.

“I cannot say that we have achieved great progress,” Interfax news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying after talks in Moscow with U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. “There is a risk of a further sharpening of tensions.”

Nuland’s meetings with Russian officials have been “useful,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said at a briefing for reporters, adding that U.S. stance on the staffing of U.S. missions in Russia remained “firm.”

“We expect parity on staffing numbers and we expect visa reciprocity. There must be fairness, there must be flexibility on the Russian side, if we are to achieve an equitable agreement and that’s precisely what we are after,” he said.

He said there will be another round of talks at a lower level and that Washington hoped to find a resolution to the ongoing dispute. “We need an adequately staffed embassy in Moscow,” he said.

Last week the Russian foreign ministry said a U.S. congressional proposal to expel https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senators-suggest-expelling-300-russian-diplomats-amid-embassy-dispute-2021-10-05 300 Russian diplomats from the United States would lead to the closure of U.S. diplomatic facilities in Russia, if implemented.

U.S. senators urged President Joe Biden to remove the Russian diplomats because they said Russian curbs on the hiring and contracting of U.S. Embassy staff had left the United States with only about 100 diplomats in Russia compared with 400 Russians in the United States.

‘HOSTILE’ ACTIONS

“It was emphasized on the Russian side that hostile anti-Russian actions would not remain unanswered, but Moscow did not seek further escalation,” Russia‘s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“We propose to remove all restrictions that have been introduced on both sides over the past few years.”

Moscow does not rule out the work of Russian and U.S. diplomatic missions being frozen, but would like to avoid such a scenario, the RIA news agency cited Ryabkov as saying.

He said the two sides would hold new consultations on resolving the issue around visas and diplomats, without specifying a date.

Nuland’s visit to Moscow this week angered some Russian nationalists who ransacked a makeshift memorial to slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in central Moscow early on Monday.

Nuland, a veteran Russia specialist, is regarded by Kremlin hawks as someone who has stirred up anti-Russian sentiment in former Soviet republics such as Ukraine that Moscow considers within its sphere of influence.

Her visit comes at a time when ties between Washington and Moscow are badly strained over a host of other issues, including cyberattacks launched from Russia against U.S. businesses and the jailing of Alexei Navalny, the most prominent domestic opponent of President Vladimir Putin.

Biden and Putin held a summit in June in Geneva, when the U.S. president said Washington would find out in the next six months to a year whether it was possible to establish a worthwhile strategic dialogue with Moscow. – Reuters

By David Shepardson and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON – The United States will lift restrictions at its land borders with Canada and Mexico for fully vaccinated foreign nationals in early November, ending historic curbs on non-essential travelers in place since March 2020 to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement the administration next month “will begin allowing travelers from Mexico and Canada who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 to enter the United States for non-essential purposes, including to visit friends and family or for tourism, via land and ferry border crossings.”

The new rules are similar but not identical to planned requirements announced last month for international air travelers, U.S. officials said in a call earlier with reporters.

Lawmakers from U.S border states praised the move to lift the unprecedented restrictions which harmed the economies of local communities and has prevented visits to friends and families for 19 months.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, members of our shared cross-border community have felt the pain and economic hardship of the land border closures. That pain is about to end,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

Unvaccinated visitors will still be barred from entering the United States from Canada or Mexico at land borders.

The officials from President Joe Biden’s administration emphasized that the White House would not lift the “Title 42” order put in place by former President Donald Trump’s administration that has essentially cut off access to asylum for hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking to enter from Mexico.

The precise date in early November when the restrictions will be lifted on both land and air travel will be announced “very soon,” one of the officials said.

Homeland Security said the administration was creating “consistent, stringent protocols for all foreign nationals traveling to the United States – whether by air, land, or ferry.”

Canada on Aug. 9 began allowing fully vaccinated U.S. visitors for non-essential travel.

‘GREAT RELIEF’

Once the U.S. curbs are lifted, non-essential foreign visitors crossing U.S. land borders, such as tourists, will be able to visit if they are vaccinated. In early January, the United States will require essential visitors, like truck drivers or healthcare workers, to be vaccinated to cross land borders, the officials said.

U.S. lawmakers have been pushing the White House to lift restrictions that have barred non-essential travel by Canadians across the northern U.S. border since March 2020, and many border communities have been hit hard by the closure. Mexico has also pressed the Biden administration to ease restrictions.

Senator Maria Cantwell said the announcement “will provide great relief to those waiting to see friends and loved ones from Canada.”

The White House announced on Sept. 20 that the United States in early November would lift travel restrictions on air travelers from 33 countries including China, India, Brazil and most of Europe who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. It also said it would extend the vaccine requirements to foreign air travelers from all other countries.

Foreign visitors crossing into the United States by land or ferry will need to be vaccinated but will not necessarily need to show proof of vaccination unless they are referred by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol for secondary inspections.

By contrast, all non-U.S. air travelers will need to show proof of vaccination before boarding a flight, and will need to show proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test. Foreign visitors crossing a land border will not need to show proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test.

On Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the United States would accept the use by international visitors of COVID-19 vaccines authorized by U.S. regulators or the World Health Organization.

One question unanswered is whether the United States will accept vaccines from visitors who received doses of two different COVID-19 vaccines.

The U.S. land border restrictions have not barred U.S. citizens from returning home. – Reuters

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON, Oct 12 (Reuters) – The Asian Development Bank‘s will boost its climate financing goals by $20 billion to a new target of $100 billion for the 2019–2030 period and aims to launch its concept for retiring coal-fired power plants at the COP26 climate conference in Scotland next month, the lender’s chief said on Tuesday.

The plans, disclosed by ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa in an interview with Reuters, increase a previous $80 billion goal for climate financing for developing countries in Asia for the decade announced in 2018.

“The fight against climate change will be won or lost in Asia and the Pacific, and we are committed to serving as a climate bank and a long term climate partner for our region,” Asakawa said.

The additional $20 billion in financing support will provide support for climate mitigation efforts including low-carbon energy sources, climate adaptation projects and private sector projects.

Asakawa said ADB now plans for $66 billion for climate mitigation financing through 2030, including for new energy storage, energy efficiency and low-carbon transportation investments. The Manila-based lender will plan for climate adaptation financing of $34 billion, including agriculture, urban and water adaptation projects.

The bank also plans to boost its private sector operations to attract more private sector capital to finance new climate technologies and innovations, using $12 billion from its balance sheet to attract up to $30 billion in new private capital, due to increased demand for such financing, Asakawa said.

The plans were presented on Tuesday to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who had convened a meeting with multilateral development banks, including ADB and the World Bank, to discuss their efforts to boost climate financing in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.

COAL PLANT RETIREMENTS

Reuters first reported in August that ADB was working with major financial firms to develop a mechanism to buy up coal-fired power plants in Asia and retire them early to shrink the biggest source of carbon emissions.

Asakawa said the group has finished an initial feasibility study and is now embarking on a longer study of the concept in three target countries — Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The initial feasibility study provided a framework for the ADB to engage with a broad set of country, regional and global stakeholders to support the transition from coal to clean energy. Asakawa said that interest is growing among other developing countries to join the initiative at a later date.

ADB and its partners, including British insurer Prudential , lenders Citi and HSBC and BlackRock Real Assets, are aiming to complete and launch a pilot investment fund in 2022 and make its initial power plant purchase next year or early 2023.

The concept is not included in the ADB’s overall climate financing goals, because most of the money will come from private investors and donor sources, including philanthropists, Asakawa said.

A study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis estimated that retiring half the coal power plants in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam would require as much as $55 billion in financing, requiring strong support from Southeast Asian governments to attract financing.

The ADB will announce the partnership to design and establish the Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM) at COP26.

“Even now, some philanthropists have already shown interest in investing in this new initiative. So we plan to launch the ETM at COP26 in Glasgow,” Asakawa said.

Asakawa added he hopes to be able to present the plans along with Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Philippines Finance Minister Carlos Dominguez. – Reuters

By Kane Wu and Julie Zhu

HONG KONG – Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, largely out of public view since a regulatory clampdown started on his business empire late last year, is currently in Hong Kong and has met business associates in recent days, two sources told Reuters.

The Chinese billionaire has been keeping a low profile since delivering a speech in October last year in Shanghai criticising China’s financial regulators. That triggered a chain of events that resulted in the shelving of his Ant Group’s mega IPO.

While Ma made a limited number of public appearances in mainland China after that, as speculation swirled about his whereabouts, one of the sources said the visit marked his first trip to the Asian financial hub since last October.

Alibaba did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside of its regular business hours. Comments from Ma typically come via the company.

The sources declined to be identified due to confidentiality constraints.

Ma, once China’s most famous and outspoken entrepreneur, met at least “a few” business associates over meals last week, said the people.

Ma, who is mostly based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, where his business empire is headquartered, owns at least one luxury house in the former British colony that also houses some of his companies’ offshore business operations.

Alibaba is also listed in Hong Kong, besides New York.

The former English teacher disappeared from public view for three months before surfacing in January, speaking to a group of teachers by video. That eased concern about his unusual absence from the limelight and sent Alibaba shares surging.

In May, Ma made a rare visit to Alibaba‘s Hangzhou campus during the firm’s annual “Ali Day” staff and family event, company sources have said.

On Sept. 1, photographs of Ma visiting several agricultural greenhouses in the eastern Zhejiang province, home to both Alibaba and its fintech affiliate Ant, went viral on Chinese social media.

The next day, Alibaba said it would invest 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) by 2025 in support of “common prosperity”, becoming the latest corporate giant to pledge support for the wealth sharing initiative driven by President Xi Jinping.

Alibaba and its tech rivals have been the target of a wide-ranging regulatory crackdown on issues ranging from monopolistic behaviour to consumer rights. The e-commerce behemoth was fined a record $2.75 billion in April over monopoly violations.

Earlier this year, regulators also imposed a sweeping restructuring on Ant, whose botched $37 billion initial public offering in Hong Kong and on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style STAR Market would have been the world’s largest. – Reuters

WASHINGTON – Persistent supply chain disruptions and pricing pressures are constraining the global economy’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday as it cut growth outlooks for the United States and other major industrial powers.

In its World Economic Outlook, the IMF trimmed its 2021 global growth forecast to 5.9% from the 6.0% forecast it made in July. It left a 2022 global growth forecast unchanged at 4.9%.

“This modest headline revision, however, masks large downgrades for some countries,” the IMF said in the report. “The outlook for the low-income developing country group has darkened considerably due to worsening pandemic dynamics. The downgrade also reflects more difficult near-term prospects for the advanced economy group, in part due to supply disruptions.”

Global manufacturing activity has been slammed by shortages of key components such as semiconductors, clogged ports and a lack of cargo containers, and a labor crunch as global supply chains optimized for efficiency have struggled to return to normal after pandemic-induced shutdowns last year.

Demand-supply mismatches, fueled in part by excess savings built up in wealthy countries, have driven up prices, causing spikes in inflation. The IMF said it expects inflation to return to pre-pandemic levels next year, but warned that persistent supply disruptions risked unanchoring inflation expectations.

US GROWTH SLOWDOWN

The United States is taking the brunt of these effects, and the IMF slashed its 2021 U.S. growth forecast by a full percentage point, to 6.0%, from 7.0% in July – a level that was seen as the strongest pace since 1984.

U.S. growth could shrink further, the IMF said, because its forecasts assume that a deeply divided U.S. Congress will approve President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure and social spending worth $4 trillion over a decade. Lawmakers now are trying to achieve consensus on a smaller package, and the IMF said a significant reduction would reduce growth prospects for the United States and its trading partners.

The report, which was issued at the outset of the IMF and World Bank fall meetings, also cut growth forecasts for other industrial economies. German growth was reduced by half a percentage point from the July forecast to 3.1% while Japan’s growth was lowered 0.4 point to 2.4%.

The IMF’s forecast for British growth this year fell only 0.2 point to 6.8%, giving it the fastest growth forecast among the G7 economies.

China’s 2021 growth forecast was trimmed by 0.1 point to 8.0%, as the IMF cited a faster-than-expected scaleback of public investment spending. India’s forecast was unchanged at 9.5%, but prospects in other emerging Asian countries have been diminished due to a worsening of the pandemic.

The IMF cut its forecast by 1.4 points for the “ASEAN-5” grouping of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.

Some commodity-exporting countries such as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia saw modest growth upgrades due to higher oil and commodity prices.

VACCINE DIVIDE

The report also warned of a dangerous divergence in economic prospects fueled by “the great vaccine divide,” with low-income countries, where 96% of the population remains unvaccinated, facing lower growth for longer periods, more poverty, and the prospect of de-anchored inflation expectations.

“About 65 million to 75 million additional people are estimated to be in extreme poverty in 2021 compared to pre-pandemic projections,” the report said, adding that low-income countries needed some $250 billion in additional spending to fight COVID-19 and regain their pre-pandemic growth path.

Currently, these countries are forecast to have cumulative output next year that is 6.7% below pre-pandemic levels. Advanced economies, meanwhile, will have 2022 output nearly 1% above pre-pandemic levels, the IMF said. — Reuters