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Virginia court rejects challenge to 11 legislative districts

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to the state’s 2011 redistricting process and found that 11 challenged state House and Senate districts are constitutionally valid.

The high court issued its ruling Thursday in a lawsuit brought by OneVirginia2021, redistricting advocacy group that alleged lawmakers violated a state constitutional requirement that legislative districts be compact. The group argued that the current redistricting process focuses too heavily on protecting incumbents and helping political parties.

Last year, a Richmond Circuit Court judge rejected the challenge brought by OneVirginia2021.

The state Supreme Court agreed with the judge’s finding that evidence presented at trial would “lead reasonable and objective people to differ” regarding the compactness of the districts and it was “fairly debatable” whether the districts violated the compactness requirement.

https:// www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/31/virginia-court-rejects-challenge-to-11-legislative/

Activists use international law to try to stop Trump's 'zero tolerance' border policy

Immigrant-rights groups asked the Organization of American States on Thursday to step in and try to force the Trump administration to end its new “zero tolerance” policy at the border, saying parents who broke the law are being thrown in jail without knowing what’s happened to their children.

The activists called for the OAS’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to invoke Article 25 of the IACHR charter to order the U.S. to stop filing criminal charges against illegal immigrant parents, and to “promptly” release illegal immigrant children from custody.

Led by the Texas Civil Rights Project, the activists said parents and children are facing serious emotional harm and it’s time the international community get involved.

“Any amount of deliberate, unjustified separation between children and parents by a state — especially when employed as a punitive tactic — is a violation of their human rights,” the activists said in their petition to the OAS.

They petition was filed on behalf of five illegal immigrant parents nabbed at the border last week along with their children. In each case, the parents were separated from their children.

The parents say they have no idea where their children ended up, and the government is refusing to provide them information.

Some of the parents said they are fleeing violence or other dangers back home.

But in each case the migrants chose to jump the U.S.-Mexico border rather than enter through a port of entry to make an asylum claim, which is the standard legal process.

While jumping the border has long been a crime, previous administration’s have only selectively prosecuted it. Instead, most illegal immigrants are sent into the immigration system, where the main penalty is deportation, not jail time.

The Bush and Obama administrations did use prosecutions against some adult illegal immigrants to fight back against surges of illegal immigration.

Now facing a new surge, the Trump administration has expanded prosecutions, making them the standard rather than the exception under a new zero tolerance policy.

And the administration said that includes parents traveling with children. Otherwise, officials argued, illegal immigrants would realize that the key to gaming the system was to show up at the border with children, including by kidnapping them.

The administration argues that it’s treating the lawbreakers the same as anyone who is prosecuted and ends up in jail. Every lawbreaker is separated from his or her family, officials said.

Immigrant-rights activists counter that the zero tolerance policy itself is inhumane, and illegal immigrants who come as families shouldn’t be detained at all, much less face criminal charges.

Congress is on a week-long vacation but a number of Democrats have said they’ll introduce legislation to try to stop separation of parents and children caught sneaking into the U.S. It’s not yet clear how that legislation would work without creating a loophole smugglers could exploit.

The White House, meanwhile, said it’s more worried about a different kind of family separation: people whose relatives are killed by illegal immigrants.

“Juan Pina was forced to bury his 14 year-old daughter after she was strangled, raped, and murdered by an illegal immigrant. He has been separated from his daughter forever,” the White House said on Twitter Thursday afternoon.

Administration officials didn’t immediately respond to questions about the OAS appeal.

The activists, in their petition to the OAS, said they tried to track down the children of the five migrants named in the case. First, they found the phone number the government lists for its hotline is inaccurate, with two numbers interchanged.

After finding the correct number, and spending 45 minutes on the phone, the activists were only able to track down six of the seven children at issue.

https:// www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/31/organization-american-states-ask-force-end-trumps-/

US will push China to let its firms hold majority stakes in companies, says Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow

American government and business have long complained that restrictions on equity holdings are used to force technology transfers

The US advance team for the trade talks landed in Beijing on Wednesday afternoon and preparatory discussions are under way ahead of the start of the formal talks on Saturday.

Chinese observers have said Beijing was expected to continue loosening restrictions on foreign investors and companies at its own pace rather than yielding to US pressure – especially given Trump’s inconsistent approach towards China.

The Trump administration has accused Beijing of using restrictions on ownership and technology licensing, which prevent foreign companies holding a majority stake, to force US investors to transfer their most sophisticated technology to their Chinese joint venture partners.

Foreign businesses have complained that mandatory technology transfers are rife in the car, semiconductor and new energy industries.

In a radio interview late on Wednesday, Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said that in addition to lowering trade imbalances, the issue of equity ownership has been raised during the previous two rounds of talks, but China had not seriously addressed the issue.

“American businesses, in many cases, are forced to go into joint ventures with Chinese companies in order to produce,” he told The John Batchelor Show.

He continued that because US companies are not allowed more than a 49 per cent stake, the Chinese majority owners can“force the transfer of technology to these new companies they create”.

“The only way to stop the transfer of technology is to give American companies ownership, move up to 51 per cent, move up to 55 per cent and move up to 100 per cent, then we won’t be forced to lay the blueprints on the table and open up the tech door,” Kudlow said.

He also told the program that if China agreed to the demands “that would be news and would be encouraging. So far, they haven’t”.

The first round of trade talks in Beijing in early May ended without agreement because of the deep divisions between the two sides.

The second round ended with China’s agreement to make “meaningful” increases in its purchases of US energy and agricultural products to cut its trade surplus with the US – a key demand of Trump’s.

But there were no details as to what this would entail, and this week’s visit by the US party, led by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, is expected to nail down the specifics.

The US has been pushing for sweeping concessions from China, including an agreement to cut the trade gap by US$200 billion by 2020 and an end to state subsidies for industry.

It also wants China to offer non-discriminatory market access, including the removal of foreign investment restrictions and foreign ownership and shareholding requirements.

China has already said it will further open up access to its markets and lower equity caps, saying this move also serves its own interests.

Zhao Xijun, a finance professor with Renmin University, said the major difference between the two countries was in the timing of these reforms.

“Loosening equity caps has been an area of discussion between China and the US for many years. When promoting the reform of state-owned enterprises, the Chinese government has different considerations in different sectors,” he said.

“We are not clear about what the outcome and impact would be if we fully liberalised some sectors,” he added.

Chinese economy reform and opening-up ‘clearly a win-win’, IMF says

China’s financial regulators are revising the rules to raise the caps for foreign investors in brokerage, wealth management, banking and insurance.

Beijing will also phase out equity controls in the car-making sector within five years.

China’s banking and insurance watchdog is also seeking public feedback on the revised rules governing foreign insurance companies, which focuses on raising equity caps in joint life insurance companies and fewer restrictions on setting up branches.

The US Chamber of Commerce in China welcomed the recent announcements, but said US investors still lacked access to some sectors such as agriculture and entertainment sector and were subject to a 50 per cent equity cap in cloud services.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: U.S. raises the stakes on chinese ventures

http:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2148712/us-will-push-china-let-its-firms-hold-majority-stakes