The new agreement brings to 21 the number of countries with approved Gap franchisees. The first franchisee was signed in January 2006, and over 100 franchised Gaps and Banana Republic stores are now open in 13 countries.

In Mexico, Gap (NYSE: GPS) will open stores within stores at a Mexican department store chain through a partnership with Distribuidora Liverpool. Gap products will become available in spring 2009.

Gap Inc. will also expand its Middle East presence with franchised Gap and Banana Republic stores in Egypt and Jordan. Fawaz Alhokair Group will open the first Gap stores in Egypt and Jordan by the end of the year, with Banana Republic stores following in 2009. Fawaz Alhokair also has franchised Gap and Banana Republic stores in Saudi Arabia.

Gap and Banana Republic franchise stores are now open in Bahrain, Greece, Indonesia, Korea, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Philippines, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. The company has also announced franchise agreements to open stores in Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania and Russia over the next five years.

Mexico’s government is setting sail with the largest infrastructure project in the nation’s history, a $4-billion seaport that it hopes will one day rival those of Los Angeles and Long Beach. President Felipe Calderon is scheduled to travel to northern Baja California today to open bidding on a development that his administration hopes will catapult Mexico into a major player in North
American logistics.

Plans call for the construction of a massive port in the tiny coastal village of Punta Colonet, about 150 miles south of Tijuana, along with new rail lines to whisk Asian-made goods north to the United States. Mexico’s aim is to snatch some Pacific cargo traffic from Southern California’s ports, whose growth is constrained by urban development and environmental concerns.

Punta Colonet is expected to have a capacity of 2 million shipping containers annually when it opens in 2014, Mexico’s transportation secretariat told The Times But officials envision it ultimately handling five times that amount. Last year, the ports of L.A. and Long Beach handled 15.7 million containers combined. The massive development is to be privately funded, with the first phase estimated to cost $4 billion to $5 billion. The government is expected to award the 45-year concession in 2009. A number of major players are expected to vie for the project, including Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, the world’s second-richest man. Slim’s infrastructure company, known as Ideal, has teamed with Mexican mining and railroad giant Grupo Mexico and New Jersey-based terminal operator Ports America Group to make a run at the deal. “We’ve spent a lot of years working on this,” said Miguel Favela, head of Mexican operations for Ports America. “It’s going to make Mexico . . . much more competitive.”

About 30 million shipping containers crossed the Pacific Ocean last year, a flow that increased about 10% annually in the last decade. A weak U.S. economy has slowed the trade, but experts predict it will rebound. With shippers increasingly worried about congestion at L.A.-Long Beach, Punta Colonet has emerged as an attractive alternative. It’s close to the United States. It possesses a wide, natural harbor. And it’s in a lightly populated area offering room for expansion. When Calderon visits the dusty hamlet of about 2,500 people today, he is expected to talk about the big changes in store. The village will need extensive upgrades to its roads, housing, electrical grid and water supply. State and local officials are planning for a city of about 200,000 to spring up around the port.

The changes envisioned are alarming environmentalists, who worry about the potential destruction of the area’s plants and wildlife. But the farmers who scratch out a living there are thrilled at the prospect. “What we need is employment for our kids,” said Jesus Lara, representative of several peasant landowner groups that are eager to sell. “Everyone is excited. Having the president come to your town is like winning the Lotto.”

But whether Punta Colonet turns out to be lucrative for Mexico won’t be known for years. Competitors up and down the Pacific coast are in the midst of major upgrades. Panama has begun a $5.3-billion expansion of its landmark canal. Canada’s Prince Rupert port in British Columbia began speeding containers to the American heartland by rail last year and is planning a major expansion. Little of the cargo bound for Punta Colonet will stay in Mexico, making the port vulnerable to the whims of shippers, who can choose other routes to the U.S.  “Nothing is guaranteed,” said Asaf Ashar, research professor with the National Ports and Waterways Institute in Washington. “It’s a big risk.”

Building a seaport from scratch would be difficult enough. But the overland transportation piece is likely to make or break Punta Colonet. The deal is being structured as a joint port-and-rail project,
requiring terminal operators, railroads and construction companies to team up in consortia to win the bid. The railroad’s ultimate route and U.S. crossing points will depend on which railway operator is chosen and how it manages to link up with existing rail networks on both sides of the border.
Union Pacific Corp. of Omaha and Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway Co. control the U.S. side of the tracks at most of the key U.S.-Mexico border crossings. Striking a deal with one of those companies to get the cargo to the American side will be crucial, said Paul Bingham, managing director of the global trade and transportation practice for Global Insight, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm.

“They have the ability to essentially choke off that port,” Bingham said.  BNSF spokesman Patrick Hiatte said Wednesday that the company was “very interested” in the Punta Colonet project. He declined to say with whom the firm might collaborate to make a bid. Union Pacific could not be reached for comment. The company earlier had teamed with Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings to make a run at the project, but that alliance dissolved last year.

The campaign, which promotes ideal scenarios under the slogan “In an Absolut World,” showed a 1830s-era map when Mexico included California, Texas and other southwestern states. Mexico still resents losing that territory in the 1848 Mexican-American War and the fight for Texas independence.

But the ads, which ran only in Mexico and have since ended, were less than ideal for Americans undergoing a border buildup and embroiled in an emotional debate over illegal immigration from their southern neighbor. .. Absolut said the ad was designed for a Mexican audience and intended to recall “a time which the population of Mexico might feel was more ideal.”

“As a global company, we recognize that people in different parts of the world may lend different perspectives or interpret our ads in a different way than was intended in that market, and for that we apologize.” Vin & Sprit, Absolut’s Sweden-based parent company, will be acquired by French spirit maker Pernod Ricard SA under a deal reached last week.

Last year the Irvine-based California Avocado Commission unsuccessfully sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture in an effort to keep out Mexican avocados because of concerns about armored scale insects.

Now, Mexican avocado exporters have two active lawsuits against California interests.

Following up on a January lawsuit against the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the Avocado Producer and Exporting Packers Association of Michoacán (APEAM) has filed a lawsuit against the California Avocado Commission, requesting an unspecified amount to compensate for what it called severe damage to the marketing of Mexican avocados in California caused by the commission in 2007. Tom Bellamore, senior vice president and corporate counsel for the California Avocado Commission, said APEAM essentially has refiled the case that was dismissed without prejudice last September. “It is the commission’s position that that those claims then lacked merit and still do today,” he said.

Mexican exporters had hoped to settle the matter out of court, but the avocado commission’s board rejected a settlement proposal, said Emiliano Escobedo, APEAM’s U.S. representative in Los Angeles. “We had definitely hoped that the lawsuits were behind us, but they unfortunately are not,” he said. “What we really want is to sell more avocados and not have to fight anyone in court.”
The lawsuit states that less than two months after Mexico began shipping avocados into California in early 2007 the commission created significant disruption to the market and “severely damaged the ability of Mexican growers and packers to market their fruit,” according to a press release from APEAM.

The lawsuit charges that the California Avocado Commission spread falsehoods and disparaged Mexican avocados in ways that significantly reduced sales. Dale McNiel, Washington, D.C.-based lawyer for APEAM, said the lawsuit alleges trade defamation, interference with contractual relations, interference with prospective economic advantage, negligence and unfair competition. “The gist of the matter is that CAC made numerous public defamatory statements about Mexican avocados which contributed to the severe drop in demand during 2007 and to some extent continuing into the future,” he said.

California, the top U.S. food producing state, has sent its first official agricultural trade mission to communist Cuba, looking to tap a potential $180 million food market. While other U.S. states have pushed ahead in selling Cuba an average $350 million per year in agricultural products, mainly grains, California is a late arrival. Californian companies sold products worth just $735,000 to Cuba in 2006.

“Some of us might be a little late in getting here, but we are here,” California Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura told reporters in Havana. Kawamura is leading a delegation of companies seeking Cuban contracts for dairy products, wine, grapes, figs, nuts and other specialty fruits. So far, Cuba has bought powdered milk and rice from California, and some wine and apples.

U.S. food sales to Cuba were allowed in 2000 under an exception to the trade embargo Washington has maintained since 1962 against Fidel Castro’s government.

AT&T today announced a $500,000 contribution to be paid over the next two years to the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation (MAOF), a community-based organization providing a wide range of family services to low-income residents throughout California. The contribution will fund a pilot program called “BeSchoolReady”, an Internet-based educational tool that introduces young children to computer technology through Internet-delivered learning modules designed to develop learning, language and cognitive skills. The purpose of the program is to prepare preschool students to begin their formal education and increase their chances of kindergarten success.

AT&T’s contribution will provide over 1,300 preschool students from low-income families within the next two years with the opportunity to use the BeSchoolReady program. For many children, and their parents, it will be a first-time experience with computers, so the project also helps to encourage technology literacy in the Latino community. MAOF preschool children are already using the BeSchoolReady web program at several Los Angeles County MAOF Centers.

“We are thrilled to partner with AT&T to help encourage technology literacy in the Latino community,” explained Martin Castro, MAOF President & CEO. “The launch of the BeSchoolReady program will help ensure our preschoolers are comfortable with computers and can be better prepared to succeed in the public school system when they enter kindergarten.”

The California Republican Party has decided no American is qualified to take one of its most crucial positions — state deputy political director — and has hired a Canadian for the job through a coveted H-1B visa, a program favored by Silicon Valley tech firms that is under fire for displacing skilled American workers.  Christopher Matthews, 35, a Canadian citizen, has worked for the state GOP as a campaign consultant since 2004. But he recently was hired as full-time deputy political director, with responsibility for handling campaign operations and information technology for the country’s largest state Republican Party operation, California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring confirmed in a telephone interview this week.

In the nation’s most populous state — which has produced a roster of nationally known veteran political consultants — “it’s insulting but also embarrassing … to bring people from the outside who don’t know the difference between Lodi and Lancaster … and who can’t even vote,” said Karen Hanretty, a political commentator and former state GOP party spokeswoman.

U.S. Department of Labor records show the state Republican Party applied for an H-1B visa to fill the job of “political consultant” and was granted a visa labor certification in March 2007. The three-year H-1B visa does not become valid until Oct. 1, 2007, government records show.

Party officials said Matthews has been working in the interim under a “TN” visa — a renewable one-year special visa for Canadian and Mexican professional workers created under the North American Free Trade Agreement.  Matthews was hired by Michael Kamburowski, an Australian citizen who was hired this year as the state GOP’s chief operations officer. But neither new official has experience in managing a political campaign in the nation’s most populous state — and as foreign citizens, neither is eligible to vote.

Kamburowski, a former real estate agent who sold property in the Dominican Republic, is a permanent U.S. resident in the process of obtaining American citizenship and does not require a specialized work visa, state GOP officials said. “There are talented Republicans in California, and the message that (party chair) Ron Nehring is sending is that there’s no talent pool here,” Hanretty said.  The state party and its 58 county operations face several challenges, Hanretty said, including “redistricting on the ballot, uncertain legislative races ahead of us … and a number of Republican congressmen who are under federal investigation and are going to be challenged by Democrats.  “Who will help these candidates?” she asked. “A couple of foreign transplants who don’t know the political landscape and don’t know the history of the complicated politics in California?”

This is about the eighth time I’ve seen a report similar to this one that undisclosed donors are financing a Schwarzenegger trade mission… The excuse put forth by the Governor’s spokespeople is always the same: this SAVES taxpayer money because they don’t have to finance these trade missions! Really? What about all the corporate welfare checks that get cut as a result of this access? What about all the watered-down regulations that cost taxpayers, not only with money but with public health and quality of life? What about the state contracts that could go to lower bidders who don’t have the same relationships (read: bribery poke) with the Governor? .. It should frankly be outlawed for a private company with business before the state to finance the Governor’s travel, especially when it’s supposed to be official business. This is government for sale from the guy who was supposed to be such a big reformer because he was richer than dirt. This is also why I’ve been so adamant about the CDP-Chevron donation. Influence peddling in the capital is an epidemic that needs to stop.