HUAWEI SAYS 2020 REVENUE FOR EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA FELL 12.2% TO 180.8 BLN YUAN
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HUAWEI SAYS 2020 REVENUE FOR EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA FELL 12.2% TO 180.8 BLN YUAN

By Jane Lanhee Lee and Nathan Frandino
Mountain View, Calif. March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; French logistics firm Geodis and Silicon Valley remote driving software startup Phantom Auto Inc on Wednesday announced a partnership for developing remote-controlled forklifts, a move that can make forklift driving an office job.
“So I can be in one warehouse in Marseille in the morning and work for another warehouse in Calais in the north of France during the afternoon,” said Stéphanie Hervé, chief operating officer of Western Europe, Middle East and Africa for Geodis.
Hervé said the technology could eventually help alleviate the challenges of hiring employees for warehouse work and also enable people with disabilities to have a new kind of job.
“With this solution we create a new environment of working which could probably be more attractive for young talent, for digital natives,” she said.
In a demo for Reuters, Phantom Auto had a forklift in a warehouse in Mountain View, California, move pallets of plastic-wrapped boxes. The driver was sitting 50 feet (15 metres) away at a desk, one hand on the wheel, the other maneuvering a joystick while watching a monitor featuring six sub-screens showing the vantage point of the corresponding cameras positioned on the forklift.
“To show the robustness of our technology, we’ve had customers that have driven the forklifts 5,000 miles away,” said co-founder Elliot Katz. “We’ve had customers remotely operating in Asia a forklift located here in California.”
In addition to remote controlling machines, Phantom Auto technology can also be used to monitor autonomous vehicles that might get stuck and need a human hand. It has worked with San Francisco delivery startup Postmates and its small sidewalk robots and can be used for yard trucks and robotaxis, said Katz.
The forklifts used at the Geodis warehouses are made by Fenwick-Linde, part of German multinational Kion Group AG .
Phantom Auto has raised approximately $25 million to date, with Bessemer Venture Partners as one of its investors. (Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee and Nathan Frandino; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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At logistics firm Geodis, driving forklifts can be an office job

JOHANNESBURG, March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; South Africa&#8217;s rand fell in early trade on Wednesday, hit by higher demand for the dollar and other safe haven assets as fears of rising coronavirus infections and higher U.S. bond yields dampened demand for emerging market assets.
At 0650 GMT the rand was 0.15% weaker at 14.9400 per dollar compared to an overnight close of 14.9175.
The greenback rose to a fresh one-year high versus the yen and multi-month peaks with other rivals as investors bet that massive fiscal stimulus and aggressive vaccinations will help the United States lead a global pandemic recovery.
The rand has seen erratic trade this week, initially pulling away from two-week lows above the 15.00 mark, but it struggled to sustain those gains, with a patchy recovery reflected in local economic data and a still-slow rollout of vaccines stifling demand.
In a speech late on Tuesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said phase one of the country&#8217;s vaccination programme, which involves inoculating 1.25 million health workers, is on track to be completed within three months after starting in the middle of February.
Money supply and credit extension continued to remain slow in February, with latter at its lowest since late 2010 despite the central bank cutting lending rates to record lows and indicating last week that it would keep them there for the remainder of 2021.
Balance of trade data is due at 1200 GMT and a monthly measure of purchasing manager activity comes out on Thursday, but levels are set to be influenced by month-end flows for the remainder of the week, traders said, likely keeping the rand weak.
Bonds firmed, with the yield on the benchmark 2030 issue down 2 basis points to 9.52%. (Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana; Editing by Rashmi Aich)
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South Africa’s rand weaker as cautious investors favour safe-haven assets

March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; Mota Engil SGPS SA:
* SAYS FY EBITDA 380 MILLION EUROS VERSUS 417 MILLION EUROS YEAR AGO
* SAYS FY NET LOSS 20 MILLION EUROS VERSUS PROFIT 27 MILLION EUROS YEAR AGO
* SAYS FY TURNOVER 2.43 BILLION EUROS VERSUS 2.91 BILLION EUROS YEAR AGO
* SAYS BACKLOG 6.1 BILLION EUROS AT END-DECEMBER
* SAYS FY TURNOVER IN AFRICA 761 MILLION EUROS VERSUS 1.00 BILLION EUROS YEAR AGO Source text: https://bit.ly/3fqMWlx Further company coverage: (Gdansk Newsroom)
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BRIEF-Mota Engil FY Net Result Turns To Loss At 20 Mln Euros Yoy

March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; Alfa Laval AB:
* ALFA LAVAL WINS SEK 50 MILLION VEGETABLE OIL ORDER IN SOUTH AFRICA
* ORDER HAS A VALUE OF APPROXIMATELY SEK 50 MILLION
* DELIVERY IS SCHEDULED FOR 2022. Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdansk Newsroom)
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BRIEF-Alfa Laval Wins SEK 50 Million Vegetable Oil Order In South Africa

By Kate Kelland and Julie Steenhuysen
LONDON/CHICAGO, March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; The rapid rise in different parts of the world of deadly, more infectious coronavirus variants that share new mutations is leading scientists to ask a critical question &#8211; has the SARS-CoV-2 virus shown its best cards?
New variants first detected in such far-flung countries as Brazil, South Africa and Britain cropped up spontaneously within a few months late last year. All three share some of the same mutations in the important spike region of the virus used to enter and infect cells.
These include the E484k mutation, nicknamed &#8220;Eek&#8221; by some scientists for its apparent ability to evade natural immunity from previous COVID-19 infection and to reduce protection offered by current vaccines &#8211; all of which target the spike protein.
The appearance of similar mutations, independent of one another, springing up in different parts of the globe shows the coronavirus is undergoing &#8220;convergent evolution,&#8221; according to a dozen scientists interviewed by Reuters.
Although it will continue to mutate, immunologists and virologists said they suspect this coronavirus has a fixed number of moves in its arsenal.
The long-term impact for the virus&#8217; survival, and whether a limit on the number of mutations makes it less dangerous, remains to be seen.
&#8220;It is plausible that this virus has a relatively limited number of antibody escape mutations it can make before it has played all of its cards, so to speak,&#8221; said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in San Diego.
That could enable drugmakers to stay on top of the virus as they develop booster vaccines directly targeting current variants, while governments struggle to tame a pandemic that has killed nearly 3 million people.
The idea that the virus could have a limited number of mutations has been circulating among experts since early February, and gathered momentum with the posting of a paper showing the spontaneous appearance of seven variants in the United States, all in the same region of the spike protein. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.12.21251658v1

EVOLUTION, IN REAL TIME
The process of different species independently evolving the same traits that improve survival odds is central to evolutionary biology. The vast scope of the coronavirus pandemic &#8211; with 127.3 million infections globally &#8211; allows scientists to observe it in real time.
&#8220;If you wanted to sort of write a little textbook about viral evolution, it&#8217;s happening right now,&#8221; Dr. Francis Collins, a geneticist and director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said in an interview.
Scientists saw the process on a smaller scale in 2018 as a dangerous H7N9 bird flu virus in China appeared to begin adapting to human hosts. But no pathogen has evolved under such global scrutiny as SARS-CoV-2.
Wendy Barclay, a virologist and professor at Imperial College London and a member of a scientific advisory panel to the UK government, said she is struck by the &#8220;amazing amount of convergent evolution we&#8217;re seeing&#8221; with SARS-CoV-2.
&#8220;There are these infamous mutations &#8211; E484K, N501Y and K417N &#8211; which all three variants of concern are accumulating. That, added together, is very strong biology that this is the best version of this virus in the given moment,&#8221; Barclay said.
It&#8217;s not that this coronavirus is especially clever, scientists said. Each time it infects people it makes copies of itself, and with each copy it can make mistakes. While some mistakes are insignificant one-offs, the ones that give the coronavirus a survival advantage tend to persist.
&#8220;If it keeps happening over and over again, it must be providing some real growth advantage to this virus,&#8221; Collins said.
Some specialists believe the virus may have a limited number of mutations it can sustain before compromising its fitness &#8211; or changing so much it is no longer the same virus.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s going to reinvent itself with extra teeth,&#8221; said Ian Jones, a professor of virology at Britain&#8217;s University of Reading.
&#8220;If it had an unlimited number of tricks&#8230;we would see an unlimited number of mutants, but we don&#8217;t,” said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York.

CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM
Scientists remain cautious, however, and say predicting how a virus will mutate is challenging. If there are limits on how the coronavirus can evolve, that would simplify things for vaccine developers.
Novavax Inc is adapting its vaccine to target the South African variant that in lab tests appeared to render current vaccines less effective. Chief Executive Stan Erck said the virus can only change so much and still bind to human hosts, and hopes the vaccine will &#8220;cover the vast majority of strains that are circulating.&#8221;
If not, Novavax can continue matching its vaccine to new variants, he said.
Researchers are tracking the variants through data-sharing platforms such as the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Flu Data, which houses a huge trove of coronavirus genomes.
Scientists recently identified seven U.S. coronavirus variants with mutations all occurring in the same location in a key portion of the virus, offering more evidence of convergent evolution.
Other teams are conducting experiments that expose the virus to antibodies to force it to mutate. In many cases, the same mutations, including the infamous E484K, appeared.
Such evidence adds to cautious optimism that mutations appear to share many of the same traits.
But the world must continue tracking changes in the virus, experts said, and choke off its ability to mutate by reducing transmission through vaccinations and measures that limit its spread.
&#8220;It&#8217;s shown a very strong set of opening moves,&#8221; Vaughn Cooper, an evolutionary biology specialist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said of this coronavirus. &#8220;We don&#8217;t know what the end game is going to look like.&#8221;
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Josephine Mason and Bill Berkrot)
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ANALYSIS-In mutant variants, has the coronavirus shown its best tricks?

The following scheduled economic events, company announcements, equity and currency market moves may affect South African markets on Wednesday.

ECONOMIC EVENTS
&#8211; South Africa&#8217;s February trade balance published by revenue service. 1200 GMT

COMPANIES
&#8211; No major releases.

SOUTH AFRICAN MARKETS
South Africa&#8217;s rand and stocks firmed in late trade on Tuesday, ahead of President Cyril Ramaphosa&#8217;s address to the nation on the country&#8217;s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stocks also firmed, with the Johannesburg All-Share index .JALSH up 0.3% to 67,291 points while the Top-40 index .JTOPI climbed 0.24% to 61,589 points.

GLOBAL MARKETS
Asian stocks were on the backfoot on Wednesday while the safe-haven dollar held near a one-year high as Treasury yields resumed their upward march, hitting sentiment even as Chinese data underpinned signs of a solid global economic recovery.

WALL STREET
U.S. stocks ended down slightly on Tuesday, with investors selling tech-related growth shares after U.S. Treasury yields hit a 14-month high.

GOLD
Gold prices fell on Wednesday to their lowest in more than three weeks as elevated U.S. Treasury yields and a rising dollar kept the metal on track for its biggest quarterly drop in over four years.

EMERGING MARKETS
For the top emerging markets news, double click on
&#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211;
Some of the main stories out in the South African press:

BUSINESS DAY
&#8211; Land Bank and lenders strive to find debt solution Talks on debt restructuring continue on eve of March 31 deadline to repay Standard Chartered.
&#8211; SA to seek 120 billion rand by 2030 for climate change initiatives.

FIN 24
&#8211; Over 600 SABC employees lose jobs in a &#8216;difficult and emotionally charged&#8217; restructuring process.
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South African Markets – Factors to watch on March 31

March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; Barloworld Ltd:
* JSE: BAW &#8211; BAWP &#8211; PRE-CLOSE TRADING UPDATE FOR THE PERIOD UP TO 28 FEBRUARY 2021
* BARLOWORLD &#8211; GROUP&#8217;S TRADING RESULTS ARE PLEASING WHEN COMPARED TO SAME TRADING PERIOD IN PRIOR YEAR
* BARLOWORLD &#8211; WHILST TRADING CONDITIONS REMAIN AFFECTED BY COVID-19, BARLOWORLD&#8217;S BUSINESSES HAVE ADJUSTED TO NEW OPERATING CONDITIONS.
* BARLOWORLD &#8211; GROUP HAS MADE GOOD PROGRESS IN ALL AREAS OF STRATEGY TO SUSTAINABLY DOUBLE ITS INTRINSIC VALUE EVERY FOUR YEARS
* BARLOWORLD &#8211; EQUIPMENT SOUTHERN AFRICA&#8217;S TOTAL REVENUE WAS DOWN 4.9% FOR FIVE MONTHS TO 28 FEBRUARY 2021 COMPARED TO PRIOR YEAR
* BARLOWORLD &#8211; GROUP&#8217;S SHORT-TERM PRIORITIES WILL BE ON INTEGRATION AND EXTRACTING VALUE FROM OUR RECENT ACQUISITIONS OF EQUIPMENT MONGOLIA AND INGRAIN
* BARLOWORLD &#8211; GROUP IS MINDFUL OF CAPITAL ALLOCATION AS PART OF ITS OVERALL STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
* BARLOWORLD &#8211; BOARD WILL BE CONSIDERING RESUMPTION OF DIVIDEND AND CAPITAL REDUCTION AT MAY BOARD MEETING.
* BARLOWORLD &#8211; TOTAL EQUIPMENT FIRM BACK ORDER REMAINS STRONG AND AMOUNTED TO R2.2 BILLION AT END OF FEBRUARY 2021
* BARLOWORLD SAYS HY-END GROUP&#8217;S NET DEBT POSITION (EXCLUDING IFRS 16) HAS INCREASED TO R6.8 BILLION (R2.6 BILLION AT SEPTEMBER 2020) Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
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BRIEF-Barloworld Says To Consider Dividend Resumption, Capital Reduction In May Board Meeting

March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; ENGIE EPS SA:
* ENGIE EPS FY2020 RESULTS AND 2021 HIGHLIGHTS
* BACKLOG AMOUNTS TO $39 MILLION (OR EUR 33 MILLION(), UP 12% COMPARED TO 2019) WITH OVER 50 MWH UNDER CONSTRUCTION OR DEVELOPMENT IN CALIFORNIA, MASSACHUSETTS, COMOROS AND ITALY
* EBITDA REPRESENTS A LOSS OF EUR 8.4 MILLION IN 2020 COMPARED TO A EUR 5.7 MILLION LOSS IN 2019 AND NET RESULT AS OF 31 DECEMBER 2020 IN LINE WITH 2019, FROM EUR -14.6 MILLION TO EUR -14.8 MILLION
* AS OF TODAY, PIPELINE STANDS AT OVER EUR 1 BILLION, WITH A STRONG MAJORITY OF OUR PROJECTS OUTSIDE OF ENGIE GROUP AND EMOBILITY REPRESENTING 21% THANKS TO JV
* AS OF 30 MARCH 2021, BACKLOG AND CONTRACTS SECURED SUM UP TO $173 MILLION AND 700 MWH IN US, EUROPE AND AFRICA
* ENGIE EPS DOUBLED PRODUCTION CAPACITY FOR RESIDENTIAL CHARGING SOLUTIONS, FROM 500 EASYWALLBOX PER WEEK ACHIEVED IN 2020 TO 1,000/WEEK STARTING FROM MARCH 2021
* IN ADDITION, ENGIE EPS IS ALREADY PLANNING A FURTHER SCALE UP TO 1,500 EASYWALLBOX A WEEK BY MAY 2021
* ON JV WITH STELLANTIS: BOTH PARTIES WILL RELEASE SHORTLY COMPOSITION OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND BRAND NAME OF NEW ENTITY, WHILE TRANSACTION CLOSING AND RELATED ANNOUNCEMENT ARE EXPECTED BY END-APRIL
* FY REVENUE EUR 10.8 MILLION VERSUS EUR 19.7 MILLION YEAR AGO Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdansk Newsroom)
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BRIEF-Engie EPS FY EBITDA Loss Widens To 8.4 Million Euros

NAIROBI, March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; The following company announcements, scheduled economic indicators, debt and currency market moves and political events may affect African markets on Wednesday. &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; EVENTS: *Kenya and Uganda statistics offices expected to release consumer inflation data for March. GLOBAL MARKETS Asian stocks were on the backfoot on Wednesday while the safe-haven dollar held near a one-year high as Treasury yields resumed their upward march, hitting sentiment even as Chinese data underpinned signs of a solid global economic recovery. WORLD OIL PRICES Oil prices rose on Wednesday, paring overnight losses a day ahead of a meeting of OPEC and its allies, with investors betting the producers will largely agree to extend their supply curbs into May. EMERGING MARKETS For the top emerging markets news, double click on AFRICA STOCKS For the latest news on African stocks, click on SOUTH AFRICA MARKETS South Africa&#8217;s rand and stocks firmed in late trade on Tuesday, ahead of President Cyril Ramaphosa&#8217;s address to the nation on the country&#8217;s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. AFRICA ECONOMY Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to post economic growth of 2.3%-3.4% this year, the World Bank said in a new report on Wednesday, bouncing back from a pandemic-induced 2.0% contraction last year. NIGERIA BANKING Nigeria&#8217;s biggest lender Access Bank has bought a controlling stake in South Africa&#8217;s Grobank for around $60 million and will shore up the bank&#8217;s capital, its chief executive said on Tuesday, becoming the first Nigerian lender to venture into South Africa. KENYA MARKETS Kenya&#8217;s shilling was steady on Tuesday, with muted demand from importers, partly driven by a government decision to put stricter COVID-19 containment measures in the capital Nairobi and four other adjacent regions, traders said. KENYA ECONOMY Kenya&#8217;s central bank has room to cut its benchmark interest rate, its governor said on Tuesday, adding that other interventions were also needed to help economic recovery in the face of a coronavirus-induced slump. AFRICA PRIVATE EQUITY African private equity raised less cash for investments in 2020 compared with the previous year as a result of the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA) said. GHANA BOND Ghana&#8217;s finance ministry said on Tuesday it had successfully raised $3 billion on the international debt market using a 4-year zero-coupon bond tranche. MOZAMBIQUE SECURITY Tens of thousands of people are feared to have been displaced following a deadly attack by Islamic State-linked insurgents on a gas hub town in northern Mozambique, aid agencies said, as rescuers searched for survivors on Tuesday. For the latest precious metals report click on For the latest base metals report click on For the latest crude oil report click on 
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African Markets – Factors to watch on March 31

DAKAR, March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; The terms of China&#8217;s loan deals with developing countries are unusually secretive and require borrowers to prioritise repayment of Chinese state-owned banks ahead of other creditors, a study of a cache of such contracts showed on Wednesday.
The dataset &#8211; compiled over three years by AidData, a U.S. research lab at the College of William &amp; Mary &#8211; comprises 100 Chinese loan contracts with 24 low- and middle-income countries, a number of which are struggling under mounting debt burdens amid the economic fallout from the COVID-10 pandemic.
Much focus has turned to the role of China, which is the world&#8217;s biggest creditor, accounting for 65% of official bilateral debt worth hundreds of billions of dollars across Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.
&#8220;China is the world’s largest official creditor, but we lack basic facts about the terms and conditions of its lending,&#8221; the authors, including Anna Gelpern, a law professor at Georgetown University in the United States, wrote in their paper.
The researchers at AidData, the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), Germany&#8217;s Kiel Institute and the Peterson Institute for International Economics compared Chinese loan contracts with those of other major lenders to produce the first systematic evaluation of the legal terms of China’s foreign lending, according to CGD.
Their analysis uncovered several unusual features to the agreements that expanded standard contract tools to boost the chances of repayment, they said in the 77-page report.
These include confidentiality clauses that prevent borrowers from revealing the terms of the loans, informal collateral arrangements that benefit Chinese lenders over other creditors and promises to keep the debt out of collective restructurings &#8211; dubbed by the authors as &#8220;no Paris Club&#8221; clauses, the report said. The contracts also give substantial leeway for China to cancel loans or accelerate repayment, it added.
Scott Morris, a senior fellow at CGD and co-author of the report, said the findings raised questions about China&#8217;s role as one of the G20 group of major economies that has agreed a &#8220;common framework&#8221; designed to help poorer nations cope with the financial pressure of COVID-19 by allowing them to overhaul debt burdens.
The framework calls for comparable treatment of all creditors, including private lenders, but he said most of the contracts examined prohibit countries from restructuring those loans on equal terms and in coordination with other creditors.
&#8220;That&#8217;s a very striking prohibition, and it seems to run counter to the commitments the Chinese are making at the G20,&#8221; Morris told Reuters, though he added that it was possible China would simply not enforce those clauses in its loan contracts.
The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
China has said in the past that its financial institutions, and not just the country’s official creditors, were working to help ease the debt woes of African nations.
It also said in November that it had extended debt relief to developing countries worth a combined $2.1 billion under the G20 programme, the highest among the group’s members in terms of the amount deferred.
The material examined by researchers for the study includes 23 contracts struck with Cameroon, 10 with Serbia and Argentina as well as eight with Ecuador.
In January, the World Bank warned that several countries were in urgent need of debt relief due to the severity of the global recession triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. (Reporting by Alessandra Prentice and Karin Strohecker; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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Database reveals secrets of China’s loans to developing nations, says study

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA ECONOMIES CONTRACTED BY AN ESTIMATED 2.0% IN 2020 &#8211; WORLD BANK
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SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA ECONOMIES CONTRACTED BY AN ESTIMATED 2.0% IN 2020 – WORLD BANK

* Developing nations to help set climate diplomacy agenda in 2021
* UK criticised for decision to cut overseas aid budget
* As costs of climate change soar, calls for debt relief grow
By Megan Rowling
March 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) &#8211; Britain will highlight how the poorest who have done the least to cause climate change are suffering the worst of its impacts, and urge rich countries to offer more support at an online ministerial summit on Wednesday.
The virtual meeting will bring together governments, development banks and others to work on solutions to the floods, droughts and extreme heat faced by many developing countries, as well as ways to boost energy access, clean air and smart cities.
In a statement, London said the event would be an opportunity for countries on the climate frontline to &#8220;help set the international agenda&#8221; ahead of the G7 summit in June and the COP26 U.N. climate talks to be held in Glasgow in November.
People in developing nations being hit the hardest by climate change are suffering &#8220;a searing injustice&#8221;, Alok Sharma, the UK&#8217;s president for COP26, is expected to say at the event.
&#8220;Developed countries have a particular responsibility to support the response of communities which are most vulnerable to climate change,&#8221; he will add in a speech.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is due to tell ministers from about 35 countries, including in Asia, Africa and Latin America, that a lack of finance is creating barriers to meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
&#8220;Combined with the challenge of recovering from the pandemic, this threatens to set back progress,&#8221; he will say.
&#8220;We need to consider where international systems can do more to deliver urgent climate action.&#8221;
The meeting comes amid calls from development organisations for Britain to reverse a decision to cut its foreign aid budget temporarily in response to economic pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic.
London has promised the move will not affect 11.6 billion pounds ($15.9 billion) in climate finance it has committed to deliver over the next five years.
But because international development spending and climate aid often overlap or can strengthen each other, cuts to one can lead to setbacks on both fronts, experts said.
That is particularly true as many debt-laden poor nations struggle to respond to the twin COVID-19 and climate crises, with aid cuts likely to undermine already weak resilience to extreme weather and rising seas, researchers and aid workers said.
In a letter ahead of the summit, the heads of nearly 20 groups working on climate change and development warned the cuts would &#8220;inevitably harm the most vulnerable in society, pushing huge numbers (back) into poverty&#8221; and should be reversed.
Clare Shakya, director of climate change research at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said Britain&#8217;s aid reduction would undermine its credibility in encouraging other wealthy nations to step up funding for climate action.
&#8220;In the middle of a pandemic, to have health or education services under threat because of one donor suddenly disappearing&#8221; can throw overall progress off track, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
&#8220;It&#8217;s incredible that (the UK) could think that isn&#8217;t a problem,&#8221; she added.
The Foreign, Commonwealth &amp; Development Office noted Britain would double its climate finance over the next five years.
&#8220;We stand by this commitment and are pushing other developed countries to follow our lead,&#8221; it said in emailed comments.
The letter from NGOs also urged Britain to appoint a champion to prioritise efforts to tackle losses and damage caused by climate change, and called for a greater share of climate finance to go to efforts to adapt to climate impacts.
That work currently receives only about a fifth of climate funding for developing countries.
The U.N. chief has called for adaptation efforts &#8211; to protect people, cities and infrastructure from climate change &#8211; to receive half of international flows.
A paper from the Center for Global Development this month found that almost half of about $79 billion in climate finance provided by wealthy countries in 2018 came from existing aid spending and was not &#8220;new and additional&#8221;, as promised.

&#8216;SOARING COSTS&#8217;
Ahead of the meeting, Harjeet Singh, ActionAid&#8217;s global lead on climate change, said governments could &#8220;no longer ignore the soaring costs of the climate crisis in the global south&#8221;.
He cited the example of Mozambique, which had to borrow from the International Monetary Fund to pay for its response to two powerful cyclones in 2019 and is now struggling to help &#8220;hungry and desperate&#8221; communities rebuild their lives.
&#8220;Urgent debt cancellation to enable countries to recover from the COVID-19 health and economic crisis and build climate resilience is also vital,&#8221; he said in a statement.
Wednesday&#8217;s meeting is not expected to yield pledges of fresh finance from the donor countries that will attend, which include the United States, Italy, Japan, Norway and France.
The aim is rather to build consensus on practical actions and solutions to better respond to climate impacts and alleviate fiscal pressure so developing countries can better address climate change.
Ministers will also consider ideas to improve the quantity, quality and access to climate finance for vulnerable countries and communities.
Ahead of the event, the UK government announced half a million pounds ($685,000) in funding to develop high-quality voluntary carbon markets, which it said could increase finance flows to where they are most needed.
IIED&#8217;s Shakya said she hoped the summit would lead to the establishment of a taskforce and plan to push key finance shifts ahead of COP26, including helping poorer nations access major international climate funds more easily.
Right now the climate finance system &#8220;isn&#8217;t working,&#8221; she noted, and &#8220;we need to fix it&#8221;.
($1 = 0.7292 pounds) (Reporting by Megan Rowling @meganrowling; editing by Laurie Goering. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)
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UK-hosted summit seeks solutions for ‘searing injustice’ of climate change

(Repeats with no changes to text)
* Extent of losses still unclear, says a Nomura insider
* Nomura had surge in overseas and U.S. profit last year
* Bank sought to expand beyond Japanese heartland
* CEO&#8217;s &#8216;relative honeymoon&#8217; draws to close, says analyst
By Makiko Yamazaki and Sumeet Chatterjee
TOKYO/HONG KONG, March 30 (Reuters) &#8211; Nomura Holdings will have to sharpen its focus on risk management systems and may need to rein in its U.S. ambitions, analysts said after the Japanese bank flagged a possible $2 billion loss tied to a single U.S. client.
Nomura and other investment banks may lose more than $6 billion after lending to Archegos Capital, a U.S. investment firm run by former Tiger Asia manager Bill Hwang that was forced to liquidate large equity bets last week in a sell-off that rocked Wall Street.
It raises tough questions for Nomura, Japan&#8217;s biggest brokerage and investment bank, which has been on a drive to expand beyond its domestic market, mainly with a push in the United States, and as it seeks to join the top league of global investment banks.
&#8220;The key question that comes up is what were the compliance and risk folks doing all this while?&#8221; said one person with knowledge of a debate now going on inside Nomura.
&#8220;There were definitely plans to do more (in the United States) and those plans will now be put on the hold until they sort out this mess. The exact extent of the losses is not clear yet,&#8221; said the person, who was not authorised to speak to the media and asked not to be named.
Some brokerages have cut their ratings on Nomura, whose shares have fallen 17% in two sessions.
Nomura is not alone. Credit Suisse warned of losses linked to a U.S. client, which like Nomura it did not name, although sources said it was Archegos. The brokerage arm of Japan&#8217;s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group on Tuesday flagged potential losses of about $300 million, also related to an unnamed U.S. client.
Yet it deals a particular blow to Nomura and Chief Executive Kentaro Okuda, who has been running the bank for about a year. He has been driving the Japanese firm&#8217;s global expansion after stop-start efforts in the past decade.

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&#8220;Nomura has been repeating this cycle – expanding the overseas business and restructuring it after a financial hit. This is exactly the same pattern again,&#8221; said Fumio Matsumoto, chief strategist at Okasan Securities.
&#8220;To become a top global bank, Nomura would have to take risk with emerging clients and increase its share, in the hope of eventually getting conventional clients. It&#8217;s extremely hard, but Nomura has no choice,&#8221; Matsumoto said.
Nomura declined to comment.
Till now, under Okuda, international operations have grown strongly. Overseas business, including the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia excluding Japan, tripled its profit in the nine months to December to 167.2 billion yen ($1.52 billion).
Nomura&#8217;s U.S. income in the same period surged to 126.8 billion yen, after its reported just 7.4 billion yen in profit in the year to March 2020 and a 114.1 billion loss in the year to March 2019, according to its latest financial filings.
&#8220;I still feel that our international business is seen as unstable, affected by market conditions,&#8221; Okuda, who previously headed U.S. operations, told an investor event in December.
But he added: &#8220;We are transforming into an organization capable of delivering consistent revenues despite market turbulence.&#8221;
Turbulence looks set to continue for now.
&#8220;If it proves that there has been a big loss on transactions with only one client, there will be questions asked about the company&#8217;s risk management system,&#8221; JPMorgan wrote, as it lowered its rating on Nomura stock to &#8220;underweight&#8221; from &#8220;neutral&#8221;.
Morningstar Equity Research said Nomura could decide to take fewer risks in some areas where it had been more aggressive, such as U.S.-listed equity options.
&#8220;We think the unexpected loss may end the relative honeymoon new CEO Kentaro Okuda has enjoyed since assuming the top post last April,&#8221; it said.

($1 = 110.3600 yen) (Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki in Tokyo and Sumeet Chatterjee in Hong Kong; Editing by Edmund Blair)
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RPT-ANALYSIS-Nomura faces tough questions over global plans after U.S. client loss

By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO, March 30 (Reuters) &#8211; A critical component of the immune system known as T cells that respond to fight infection from the original version of the novel coronavirus appear to also protect against three of the most concerning new virus variants, according to a U.S. laboratory study released on Tuesday. Several recent studies have shown that certain variants of the novel coronavirus can undermine immune protection from antibodies and vaccines.
But antibodies &#8211; which block the coronavirus from attaching to human cells &#8211; may not tell the whole story, according to the study by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). T cells appear to play an important additionally protective role.
&#8220;Our data, as well as the results from other groups, shows that the T cell response to COVID-19 in individuals infected with the initial viral variants appears to fully recognize the major new variants identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil,&#8221; said Andrew Redd of the NIAID and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the study.
The researchers analyzed blood from 30 people who had recovered from COVID-19 before the emergence of the new more contagious variants.
From those samples, they identified a specific form of T cell that was active against the virus, and looked to see how these T cells fared against the concerning variants from South Africa, the UK and Brazil.
They found the T-cell responses remained largely intact and could recognize virtually all mutations in the variants studied.
The findings add to a prior study that also suggested T cell protection appears to remain intact against the variants.
The NIAID researchers said larger studies are needed to confirm the findings. Continued monitoring for variants that escape both antibody and T cell protection is needed, Redd said.
The paper has been accepted for publication in Open Forum Infectious Diseases but has yet to be peer reviewed. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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T cells induced by COVID-19 infection respond to new virus variants -U.S. study

GENEVA, March 31 (Reuters) &#8211; Women will not reach parity with men until the middle of the next century as the COVID-19 pandemic hits them hardest, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) report released on Wednesday.
&#8220;The pandemic has fundamentally impacted gender equality in both the workplace and the home, rolling back years of progress,&#8221; said WEF&#8217;s managing director Saadia Zahidi.
The annual report estimated that the gender gap will not be closed for another 135.6 years, versus 99.5 years previously.
A report by a global body of legislatures earlier this month was more optimistic, saying gender parity in politics would take 50 years.
Progress is stalling partly because women are more frequently employed in sectors affected by lockdowns, combined with added pressures of care at home, it said.
WEF cited data from the International Labour Organization showing that women had lost jobs at higher rates due to higher representation in sectors disrupted by lockdowns, such as the consumer sectors.
Overall, Iceland was ranked the most gender-equal country and Western Europe the most equal region. The largest gender gap was in the Middle East and North Africa region, the report said. (Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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Pandemic pushes gender equality back a generation -WEF

BAMAKO, March 30 (Reuters) &#8211; Mali&#8217;s government forecast on Tuesday that cotton production would rebound in the 2021/22 season to 810,000 tonnes as it set a farmgate price of 280 CFA francs ($0.5047) per kilo.
Production plunged 79% in the 2020/21 season, which ends this month, to 147,200 tonnes after demand was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic and farmers went on strike to protest low prices.
Mali is one of the four top cotton producers in sub-Saharan Africa, alongside Chad, Benin and Burkina Faso.
Agriculture Minister Mahmoud Ould Mahmoud said farmers would be encouraged to produce by an increase in the farmgate price from 200 CFA francs in 2020/21 and the introduction of an insurance programme for farmers.
&#8220;We are going to reach 810,000 tonnes, and this time, with Canadian partners, we are going to try to put in place a new strategy that will allow us to cover the risk for the farmers,&#8221; he said on state television.
Mali had originally forecast output at 820,000 tonnes for the 2020/21 season compared with 700,000 tonnes in 2019/20. ($1 = 554.7500 CFA francs) (Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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