the last straw some plastic items could be on the way out in the e.u. including drinking straws as the european parliament votes to ban certain single use disposable products from. the u.s. fed is normally seen as the caretaker of the u.s. economy but now it seems to have made an enemy in a high place the white house. also ahead under-investment and a bad harvest take their toll on cuba's sugar industry deila nation turns to imports for the first time. i'm stephen beers limber lin welcome plastic may be cheap for producers but it's become an environmental menace now the e.u. parliament has voted through a ban on a range of single use plastic products environmentalist say it can't come soon enough. the mountain of waste on land and waterways and seas continues to grow

the e.u. currently recycles only a quarter of the twenty five million tons of plastic waste it produces annually now european lawmakers say urgent action is needed to tackle the problem you need yeah eight billion tons of plastic produced in less than sixty five years six billion tons of waste the figures speak for themselves more than four billion tons for europe alone all oceans have become dust bins and they are dying on the plastic accounts for more than eighty percent of marine waste and slow decomposition means that traces are often found in marine life as well as the seafood that ends up in supermarkets under the proposal ten single use plastic products would be banned directive aims at banning certain single use plastic products where alternatives available and affordable as it is to case for him but sticks bellows to expected he

plays straws and still is well there is no deal though tentative material to plastics the directives goal is to significantly reduce the use this will apply to cups and lids food containers and very light. she wanted it in the parliament must now hold talks with member states on the final rules to be adopted. if they agree next year the legislation should go into effect by two thousand and twenty one. shares on wall street were slammed in the final minutes of trading with the dow jones shedding more than six hundred points racing gains for all of twenty eighteen disappointing earnings reports fueled a sell off also in the background was a brewing fed controversy with u.s. president donald trump once again riled up over the fed signaling further interest rate hikes trump called the fed the single biggest threat to the american economy it's not the first time the president has attacked the fed and its chairman jerome

powell for sticking to its own monetary policy. and here to shed more light on this is young's quarter our financial correspondent new york yes the president has of course targeted fed chairman powell in the past about rate hikes and he was being criticized for it so why does he keep doing it. yes actually the president increased the pressure here on wednesday when he is saying that he has the feeling that your own policy of the fed chair seems to be happy each time that he increases interest rates well donald trump often in the past fame to himself for being responsible not just for the good economy but also that stock markets are going from one record to another and now that stock markets are under heavy fire here on wednesday for instance blue chips lost by more than six hundred points of an as they composite lost by more than four percent so donald trump

claims that the federal reserve was those interest rate increases is the guilty party here for the heavy selling pressure on wall street so yes does the president maybe have a point there that. that is the fed wellington certainly when. well certainly i mean when interest rates are increasing then it can be a damper on the economy and actually that is also one reason why the fed increases interest rates to prevent an overheating of the economy or to prevent inflation getting out of target the so in that respect the president is not entirely false but the big question is not that the federal reserve is increasing interest rates where why and one big reason are the huge tax cuts from u.s. president donald trump that just would lead to inflation tendencies i'm here in the

united states so he's not entirely wrong but actually he's the one who sort of put the federal reserve under pressure to keep interest rates rising so fears of an overheated economy there are there for us in new york thank you yes. more bad numbers for germany's biggest lender reporting a sixty five percent drop in your on your profit for the third quarter leadership says it needs time to right the ship but investors remain impatient and bank shares have fallen forty one percent since the beginning of the year in a letter to employees c.e.o. christians a ving said georgia is on track for its first profitable year since two thousand and fourteen once one of europe's leading financial institutions has struggled since the financial crisis. the european parliament has also agreed on that use twenty one thousand budget paving the way for final negotiations with member

states lawmakers want members to fund one hundred forty nine billion euros in spending a bit more than governments had agreed to the plan preserves job creation schemes and add seven hundred million euros for education and youth employment programs goshi asians for the final budget will resume mid november. italian deputy prime minister matteo salvini says his government won't budge on its twenty one thousand budget despite e.u. demands he says italy no longer wants to be a quote servant to silly rules brussels rejected rome's draft proposal and has demanded a revised spending plan within three weeks credit ratings agency moody's has downgraded italy to a notch above junk status pointing to the country's significant. now italy's planned budget includes a citizens wage the basic income scheme is aimed at pulling the poorest italians

out of poverty but it will cost ten billion euros and is likely to drive up debt. inside a job center in a poor naples neighborhood dozens of people are filling out the same form. a team of five employees helps them but they use paper clips and piles of folders more than computers. soon the job centers will be launching a new welfare policy but no one's explain the details to local officials but if you see fucked up i think it would at least met two or three times and labor minister luigi de milo asked us to explain our difficulties and that but every region has different problems and i could be the same if he didn't explain anything about the basic income scheme or how it will be implemented in the job centers i mean dad a. bit of a basis for the outside of man while they've already i'll lay says he has no hope the jobs i will find him work on the radio and it was the same for my father he was

signed up here for more than thirty years and never received a phone call never i wouldn't mind so that's actually the unemployed greengrocer gets only a few hundred euros per month but under the new scheme his benefits will be much more generous up to seven hundred eighty euros per month. the government plans include investing large sums into modernizing job centers which will verify that recipients are actively looking for work. but currently only three percent of job seekers find employment with the help of the centers. the new policy is designed to lift five million a talionis out of poverty it's part of italy's proposed big spending budget aimed at boosting private consumption economic growth and tax revenues. but if the scheme fails some observers warn it could trigger another eurozone financial crisis.

on to cuba which used to be a world leader in sugar production it once accounted for seventy five percent of cuban exports for the first time the communist nation is turning to imported sugar from as far away as france behind the shift is underinvestment and unpredictable weather police you know borrow quickly noticed the curious turn of events when produced from cane as in cuba sugar tends to be brownish but the french version comes from beets and is white. we will end this on the sugar the now been arriving is good it's very sweet not very different from cuban sugar that the main difference is the colors of. cuba sugar industry was once the flagship of the ons and with cultural exports fidel castro cutting sugar canes after the revolution illustrated the france importance to the nation. the soviet union used to buy most of cuba sugar after the fall of communism in europe trade figures dwindled as did

investments in seeds and put in lines as. more recently last year's hurrican erma devastated large parts of the country the subsequent harvest was one eighth of the size of nine hundred ninety. yeah. there's a lack of resources and a lack of money but i believe that there are also structural and organizational factors with other software that what it was here. and most of what does get harvested has to be shipped abroad mostly to china due to longstanding contracts. to meet domestic demand forty thousand tons of french sugar were imported in the second quarter alone symbolizing a broader change sugar is no longer cuba's long flying. tourism and remittances from emigrants on now the major driving forces of the ons economy. and that's your business report i'm stephen beard thanks for joining us.

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