The New York Times editorilaizes on paying for refugees  The world’s attention has been riveted on the refugee crisis unfolding in Europe, and on the shift in Europe as leaders, finally, take steps to deal with it. But one of the reasons Syrians are risking their lives to reach Europe is that life has become unbearable in the countries closer to home.

About 12 million Syrians — more than half the country’s prewar population — have been displaced since fighting began in 2011. More than four million have fled the country, with most going to neighboring Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. In Lebanon, Syrian refugees are now a quarter of the population.

These countries are overwhelmed and, as numbers have swelled, conditions for refugees have deteriorated sharply. One reason is that the United Nations agencies that provide vital food, medical care and shelter are, as the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, bluntly warned in July, “financially broke.”

As a direct result, the World Food Program has had to cut rations for 1.6 million Syrians, with refugees in Lebanon allocated just $13 a month.

There is also scant money for emergency medical care — including treating bullet and shrapnel wounds — let alone for treating preventable and other diseases. Many Syrian refugees are being forced to sacrifice housing or medical care to try to feed their families. Only 30 percent of Syrian children in Lebanon are in school. No wonder refugees who can gather the money to pay smugglers are risking the fraught journey to Europe.

We support welcoming refugees, but we also need to understand who is financing their movements.  Mexican drug lords collect money for the journey.  They are the ones who profit.  We need to address this problem at its root, as well as the humanitarian needs of families.

Greg Schuessler writes:  Patricia Lekanoff-Gregory remembers when a delegation of American Unangax flew to Russia’s Komandorski Islands to meet their kin in the early 1990s.

But now, Unangax leaders say, escalating tensions between Russia and the United States have hampered their efforts to reconnect across the border. Visas are taking longer to process, taking four to five weeks rather than two to three, and Gamble said he has heard reports that Russian Unangax doing work funded by his Anchorage-based association are facing government scrutiny and even harassment. Efforts to reach out to Unangax leaders in Russia were unsuccessful.

Russian visas for American citizens cost at least $160, and to visit the Russian Unangax, Lekanoff-Gregory will have to fly from her home in Unalaska to Anchorage before heading south to Los Angeles, then across the Pacific and north to Russia, where she will catch a flight to the Komandorskis, which are only 500 miles west of her home.

Another effort to reach across the border hampered by deteriorating relations between Russia and the U.S. The National Park Service has recently granted more than $80,000 to Iñupiat residents of the Alaskan village of Little Diomede — a tiny island in the Bering Sea separated by just 3 miles from Big Diomede, which is part of Russia — who are looking to reconnect with their relatives in Russia.

The Iñupiat residents of Big Diomede, who are related to those in Little Diomede, were moved to the Soviet mainland in 1948.

Igor Krupnik, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution, said that it would have been easier to bring the Diomede residents together several years ago, before relations between Russia and the U.S. soured. It takes time to navigate the now rocky relations between the two countries, and time is something in short supply for the   Diomedes’ Iñupiat.Delores Gregory, Lekanoff-Gregory’s daughter, is active in traditional dance and has always wanted to visit the Russian Unangax.

Should Zimbabwe reform its labor laws and revive the country’s industrial capacity if the country is to start experiencing an economic boom.

 Hundreds of companies have shut down since the disputed 2013 elections while more than 25,000 employees have lost their jobs this year alone, according to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.

Re-opening industries and reforming labor laws might act as catalysts in reviving the country’s moribund economy.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said the government has asked for a meeting with international creditors that include the IMF, World Bank and the African Development Bank on the sidelines of the World Bank annual general meeting in Peru’s capital, Lima, so that Zimbabwe can present its case for fresh funding that it badly needs to inject into the economy.

The minister said the country is battling to clear its debt arrears that now amount to $1.8 billion. Authorities say the country’s debt overhang is hovering around $10 billion.

As a result of Zimbabwe’s failure to clear its debt, Harare is no longer accessing fresh lines of credit from international money lending institutions.

Chinamasa said the economic slowdown in China is also affecting trade between Harare and Beijing.

Christine Lagarde comments on US Fed’s interest rate hike.  “The Fed has not raised interest rates in such a long time, that it should really do it for good, not give it a try and then have to come back,” Lagarde said.  “The IMF thinks that it is better to make sure that data are absolutely confirmed, that there is no uncertainty, neither on the price stability front nor on the employment and unemployment front, before it actually makes that move,” she said. Traders are torn on when the Fed will raise interest rates. The Fed could raise or hold rates when it meets on Sept. 16 and Sept. 17.

Investors scaled back expectations for the US’s first rate increase since 2006 after a sell-off in China became a global stock-market rout. The Fed’s key interest rate has been frozen since  2008. Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer gave a mixed review of the latest US jobs report in a briefing to G20 officials, Luxembourg Minister of Finance Pierre Gramegna said:  “He told us that the numbers in the US are excellent because unemployment went down from 5.3% to 5.1%, which is an excellent number, but then he immediately cautioned that the number of 173,000 additional jobs was an August figure and that the August figure wasn’t very reliable,” Gramegna said. Emerging-market officials at the G20 were divided on whether it is better for the Fed to tighten its policy this month or later on, saying that there were “both sentiments in the room,” he said.

The gain in payrolls, while less than forecast, followed advances in July and June that were stronger than previously reported, the US Department of Labor.  The jobless rate was the lowest since April 2008. The strength of the economy and the jobs market has yet to lift inflation up to the Fed’s 2% target. Prices in the U.S. rose 0.3% in the 12 months through July, measured by the Fed’s preferred gauge. Inflation has lingered below the Fed’s target for more than three years.

Martti Ahtisaari writes: The division of Cyprus may be moving toward resolution. For the first time since 2004, there is a fragile alignment of the political stars over the eastern Mediterranean.

There has been little reason for optimism during the decade that has passed since the last serious attempt to overcome the island’s division. The proposal in 2004 by then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would have united the island by creating a federation of two states. But while Turkish Cypriots embraced the so-called Annan Plan, Greek Cypriots rejected it in a referendum one week before the Republic of Cyprus entered the European Union.

In 2008, there was an attempt to revive the peace effort, after the moderate Demetris Christofias replaced Tassos Papadopoulos as the Greek Cypriot president; but the process soon lost steam. In 2014, the discovery of vast energy reserves in the waters between Cyprus and Israel led some to hope that peace would soon be at hand; but the potential energy bonanza ended up aggravating tensions. Last fall, Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades called a halt to the peace process, citing Turkish brinkmanship over rights to gas exploration.

This time, it is a political development on the Turkish side that has improved the outlook for peace. The election in April of Turkish Cypriot President Mustafa Akinci has brought a breath of fresh air to the island. Akinci, a former leftist mayor of northern Nicosia, known for his steadfast commitment to peace in Cyprus, immediately brought about a change in the relationship between the two communities.

Anastasiades had, in 2004, campaigned in favor of the Annan Plan, and Akinci’s election seems to have reawakened his counterpart’s desire for an accord. Over the last few months, the two leaders have agreed on a package of confidence-building measures, including two new crossing points along the Green Line that divides the island; improved mobile, radio, and electricity connections; and mechanisms for business and cultural cooperation. In an unprecedented move, the two presidents, strolled together in Nicosia’s old town, crisscrossing the Green Line. Above all, they vowed to resume peace negotiations.

When talks resumed in earnest in May, both presidents were directly involved, their participation having been facilitated by UN Special Adviser on Cyprus Espen Barth Eide. Anastasiades and Akinci are committed to reaching an agreement within months, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called on them to forge an accord by the end of 2015.

To be sure, there is no guarantee that a deal will be struck. Plenty of details remain to be hammered out. The agreement is likely to entail greater territorial adjustments than were called for under the Annan Plan, as well as modernized security guarantees, a phasing out of settlement and property restrictions, and clearer and more decentralized governing arrangements. But, though the negotiations will be tough, even the conflict’s most hardened observers recognize that peace may now be within reach.  

Wenjie Chen, David Dollar and Heiwei Tang write:  China continues to generate controversy with its rapidly growing investments in Africa. However, new research reveals that some of the West’s biggest concerns over Chinese investment—its true size, its focus on natural resources, and its disregard for good governance—are not always well grounded.

China has emerged as Africa’s largest trading partner, providing demand for the continent’s energy and minerals. At the same time, there is a growing volume of Chinese direct investment in Africa. Some of it has taken the form of high-profile natural resource deals in countries with poor track records of governance (e.g., Angola and Sudan). These developments have given rise to a number of ideas about Chinese investment in Africa:  That it is on the same enormous scale as China’s trade; that it is aimed primarily at natural resources; and that it is concentrated in countries with poor governance.First, on the scale of China’s direct investment in Africa,

Chinese statistics on what they call “overseas direct investment” (ODI) show a stock of $26 billion in Africa as of the end of 2013. This number would amount to about 3 percent of total foreign direct investment (FDI) on the continentSecond, concerning natural resources, in our paper we examine the allocation across African countries of the stock of Chinese ODI and the stock of total FDI (which, as noted, mostly comes from Western countries). Other things equal, African countries that are more resource rich attract more Chinese investment. However, this effect is about the same for Western investment, and it is only one factor determining investment. For example, Chinese ODI is also influenced by the size of the domestic market, indicating that some of it is aimed at serving that market.

We go beyond the aggregate data and also work with the firm-level data compiled by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). capital-scarce countries, suggesting its importance as a source of external financing to the continent.  China’s Investment in Africa

Explanation for discrepancy: Disability Payments and Food Stamps?