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(Reuters) – Apple Inc reported its first quarterly increase in iPhone sales in a year, powered by strong demand for the latest version of its flagship smartphone, sending the company’s shares up more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.

Apple sold 78.29 million iPhones in the first quarter ended Dec. 31, up from 74.78 million last year. Analysts on average had estimated 77.42 million, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.

The results, which reflected the first full quarter of iPhone 7 sales, come at a time when global demand for smartphones is slowing and cheaper Android alternatives are flooding the market.

The company is heavily dependent on the success of iPhones, which account for more than three-quarters of its total revenue.

Analysts and investors have already set their sights on Apple’s 10th-anniversary iPhone, which is expected to feature better touchscreen technology, wireless charging and a shift to OLED display.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said demand was especially high for the larger iPhone 7 Plus in the first quarter.

Revenue in the services business – which includes the App Store, Apple Pay and iCloud – jumped 18.4 percent to $7.17 billion, helped by the popularity of games, including Pokemon Go and Super Mario Run, and increased revenue from subscriptions.

Analysts expect growth in the segment to help offset declining hardware sales as the smart phone market matures.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said on a conference call on Tuesday that he expects services revenue to double in the next four years.

“Services obviously continues to be a real success story for them. It’s one of the fastest-growing segments they have, driven largely by the App Store,” said Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson.

Apple’s revenue from the Greater China region fell 11.6 percent to $16.23 billion.

“We were encouraged by our performance in China because it was clearly an improvement over the last couple of quarters. In mainland China in particular, our revenue was flat and actually grew in constant currency terms,” Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said.

The company also forecast revenue of between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion for the current quarter. Analysts, on average, had expected revenue of $53.79 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Maestri added that a stronger dollar hurt the company’s revenue forecast.

Analysts on average expect the company to sell 53.43 million iPhones in the current quarter, according to FactSet.

The company’s net income fell to $17.89 billion in the quarter from $18.36 billion a year ago. On a per share basis, it earned $3.36, beating the average analyst estimate of $3.12.

Revenue rose 3.3 percent to $78.35 billion in the quarter, compared with the average estimate of $77.25 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Up to Tuesday’s close, Apple’s shares have gained 14.7 percent since mid-November, compared with the 5.3 percent rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

(Reporting by Narottam Medhora in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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Just a few kilometres from Spielberg in Austria, where Arch will compete on 23-24 April, he fulfilled a long-held ambition at one of the world’s highest wind farms, 1,900 meters above sea level, slaloming through the fourteen wind turbines of the Tauern Wind Farm in Oberzeiring (Styria, Austria). Always on the hunt for new challenges and innovative ways to use his skills, the passionate race pilot set a new milestone in his career.

Gazing on the Tauern Wind Farm in his Styrian homeland, the native of Trofaiach had often played with the idea of attempting a slalom flight in Oberzeiring:

“If, as a Red Bull Air Race pilot, you have such a wind farm on your front door and fly past it, it’s no wonder that you also want to fly through it at some point!”

Wind turbines don’t bend, they are rigid, and that is precisely why the idea of flying in between such massive “gates” had such an irresistible appeal for the Austrian pilot. In contrast, the Red Bull Air Race World Championship gates are 25 metres-high inflatable pylons that tear immediately upon contact with the plane. However, when it comes to flying through such gates, Arch assures us:

“Respect is of ultimate importance, and without my experience as a Red Bull Air Race pilot I would never have given the idea of flying between them a second thought.”

With official permission both from the local authorities and the wind farm’s management granted, and after intensive preparations, Hannes Arch finally powered his way between the 60 metres-high wind turbines in the Niedere Tauern mountains.

After completing his flight at speeds of over 300 km/h and stresses approximating 6 G, the Styrian was emphatic:

“I don’t know if a pilot has ever done anything comparable. Regardless, I am super happy that I was privileged to have such an experience”, and the Austrian continues: “One of the greatest challenges in comparison to the Red Bull Air Race is having to adapt far more to the natural conditions. In the middle of the mountains, you are rising and falling. You can’t fly as close to the obstacles, which increases the radius, and, at around 300 km/h, things can get a bit tight. Every second, you have to be perfectly clear in your mind that you have wind turbines in front of you and need to know precisely what you are going to do next. Though it has nothing to do with the Red Bull Air Race, it’s every bit as much fun, with the added benefit that it’s not about the time you clock. Things will get really serious again at the next race in Spielberg!”

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LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron published his tax records on Sunday in an attempt to draw a line under questions about his personal finances raised by the mention of his late father in the Panama Papers for setting up an offshore fund.

The revelations have led to demands for Cameron’s resignation and handed ammunition to opposition lawmakers who questioned why he was reluctant to detail his financial connections with his father.

Cameron took the unorthodox step of releasing the normally confidential details after saying he should have handled the scrutiny of his family’s tax affairs better.

The documents from RNS Chartered Accountants – which cover six years – show Cameron paid tax of 75,898 pounds ($107,198) on income of 200,307 pounds in the 2014-2015 financial year, the most recent one included.

His income comprised his 140,522 pound salary, taxable expenses of 9,834 pounds, 46,899 pounds from half of the share of rent from his family home in London and 3,052 pounds in interest on savings, according to the record.

Scores of politicians and business figures have been implicated in the Panama Papers, including the prime minister of Iceland who has since stepped down. The 11.5 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca detail the creation of more than 200,000 companies in offshore tax havens.

While Cameron is not accused of doing anything illegal, he made four different statements over four days about his late father’s inclusion in the documents.

He said on Thursday he once had a stake in his father’s offshore trust and had profited from it.

He said the unit investment trust was not set up to avoid tax but to invest in dollar-denominated shares and that he had paid all taxes due on his own investment, which was worth “something like 30,000 pounds” when he sold out in January 2010, before he became prime minister.

TAX TASKFORCE

Cameron’s admission of fault comes after a torrid period for his Conservative government. It is divided over a June 23 referendum on whether to remain in the European Union, has been forced to backtrack on welfare cuts and has been accused of not protecting Britain’s steel industry.

Seeking to further take back the initiative, Cameron also announced on Sunday a new taskforce, jointly led by Britain’s tax authority and National Crime Agency, to build on the work Britain has done to tackle money laundering and tax evasion.

When Britain hosted a G8 summit in 2013, Cameron put tackling tax avoidance at the heart of the agenda. Some of Britain’s former colonies increasingly rely on revenues from shell companies and trusts that often hide wealth.

“The UK has been at the forefront of international action to tackle the global scourge of aggressive tax avoidance and evasion, and international corruption more broadly,” Cameron said in a statement.

“There is clearly further to go and this taskforce will bring the best of British expertise to deal with any wrongdoing relating to the Panama Papers.”

The government said it had tracked down 2 billion pounds  ($2.82 billion) from offshore tax dodgers since 2010, and authorities were already investigating 700 current leads with links to Panama.

The taskforce will receive 10 million pounds of funding to start work, the government said.

 (Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Alison Williams)

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LONDON/REYKJAVIK (Reuters) – Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson is to resign, his party said on Tuesday, becoming the first casualty of leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm which have shone a spotlight on the finances of an array of politicians and public figures worldwide.

The Panama Papers showed the premier’s wife owned an offshore company with big claims on Icelandic banks, infuriating many in his country who joined mass street protests calling for him to resign.

The more than 11.5 million documents, leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, have caused public outrage over how the world’s rich and powerful are able to stash their wealth and avoid taxes while many people suffer austerity and hardship.

Mossack Fonseca denies any wrongdoing and on Tuesday, Panama President Juan Carlos Varela’s chief of staff told a news conference that the government could retaliate after France announced it would put the Central American country back on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions. The official, Alvaro Aleman, said that no Panamanian company had been found to have committed a crime.

He added: “We are not going to allow Panama to be used as a scapegoat by third parties. Each country (implicated) is responsible.”

Among those named in the documents are friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the leaders of China, Britain and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine.

Gunnlaugsson quit ahead of a planned vote of no-confidence, hours after asking the president to dissolve parliament, a move which would almost certainly have led to a new election.

The deputy leader of his Progressive Party, Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, told reporters the party will suggest to its coalition partners in the Independence Party that he himself should become the new prime minister. Opposition parties said, however, that they still wanted a snap general election.

With the fallout from the leaks reverberating across the globe, British Prime Minister David Cameron also came under fire from opponents who accused him of allowing a rich elite to dodge their taxes.

And in China, the Beijing government dismissed as “groundless” reports that the families of President Xi Jinping and other current and former Chinese leaders were linked to offshore accounts.

U.S. President Barack Obama said the Panama Papers showed tax avoidance was a major problem and urged the U.S. Congress to take action to stop U.S. companies from taking advantage of loopholes allowing them to avoid paying taxes.

“We’ve had another reminder in this big dump of data coming out of Panama that tax avoidance is a big, global problem,” he told reporters.

“It’s not unique to other countries because frankly there are folks here in America that are taking advantage of this same stuff. A lot of it’s legal, but that’s exactly the problem.”

Thousands gathered outside the Icelandic parliament in Reykjavik on Monday to protest about what the opposition said was Gunnlaugsson’s failure to disclose a conflict of interest over his wife’s offshore company, which has big claims on Iceland’s collapsed banks.

The prime minister has stressed his wife’s overseas assets were taxed in Iceland.

A government spokesman has said the claims against Iceland’s collapsed banks held by the firm owned by Gunnlaugsson’s wife totalled more than 500 million Icelandic crowns ($4.1 million).

Iceland’s main commercial banks collapsed as the global financial crisis hit in 2008 and many Icelanders have blamed the North Atlantic island nation’s politicians for not reining in the banks’ debt-fuelled binge and averting a deep recession.

Icelandic government bonds saw their biggest selloff in five months due to the uncertainty, with yields on 10-year bonds <IS10YT=RR> jumping 15.6 basis points to 5.891 percent.

“ABUSE MUST STOP”

In Britain, the leader of the opposition Labour Party demanded the government tackle tax havens, saying it was time Cameron stopped allowing “the super-rich elite” to dodge taxes.

“There cannot be one set of tax rules for the wealthy elite and another for the rest of us,” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said. “The unfairness and abuse must stop.”

He said Britain had a huge responsibility since many tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands, are British overseas territories, while others such as Jersey or the Isle of Man are British crown dependencies.

According to media that have seen Mossack Fonseca’s files, more than half of the 200,000 companies set up by the firm were registered in the British Virgin Islands, where details of ownership do not have to be filed with the authorities.

Cameron has cast himself as a champion in the fight against tax evasion in British-linked territories. But he was put on the spot by the leaks, which named his late father and members of the ruling Conservative Party among the list of clients who used Mossack Fonseca’s services.

Cameron said he did not own any shares or have offshore funds.

“I have a salary as prime minister, and I have some savings, which I get some interest from, and I have a house,” he said. “I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that.”

Other leading figures and financial institutions responded to the leak with denials of any wrongdoing as prosecutors and regulators began a review of the investigation by the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other media organisations.

Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands are among nations that have started inquiries.

Panama is one of the most secretive of the world’s offshore havens and has refused to sign up to a global transparency initiative.

Mossack Fonseca has set up more than 240,000 offshore companies for clients around the world. The law firm says it is the victim of a campaign against privacy and that media reports misrepresent the nature of its business.

Mossack Fonseca’s Hong Kong office said on Tuesday the firm had never been charged with or formally investigated for criminal wrongdoing in its nearly 40 years of operation.

“We do not advise clients on how to operate their businesses. We don’t link ourselves in any way to companies we help incorporate,” the firm said in a statement.

“Excluding the professional fees we earn, we don’t take possession of clients’ money, or otherwise have anything to do with any of the direct financial aspects related to operating these businesses.”

“GROUNDLESS ACCUSATION”

The reports also pointed to offshore companies linked to the families of Chinese President Xi and other powerful figures.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, when asked if the government would investigate tax affairs of those mentioned in the documents, told reporters the ministry would not comment on “these groundless accusations”.

Beijing also moved to limit local access to coverage of the matter. State media denounced Western reporting on it as biased against non-Western leaders.

The Hong Kong government said its tax department would take “necessary actions” based on any information it received.

Credit Suisse and HSBC two of the world’s largest wealth managers, dismissed suggestions they were actively using offshore structures to help clients evade tax.

Both were among the banks that helped to set up complex structures that make it hard for tax collectors and investigators to track the flow of money, according to ICIJ.

The famous personalities drawn into the affair also included soccer star Lionel Messi of Barcelona and Argentina. Spanish tax authorities said they are investigating allegations of tax irregularities involving Messi after the release of the documents.

A Messi family statement denied wrongdoing and said it “never used the company” involved in the matter.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux, Writing by Angus MacSwan and Grant McCool; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Anna Willard and Meredith Mazzilli)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In April 2014, the administration of President Barack Obama announced the most ambitious clemency program in 40 years, inviting thousands of jailed drug offenders and other convicts to seek early release and urging lawyers across the country to take on their cases.

Nearly two years later the program is struggling under a deluge of unprocessed cases, sparking concern within the administration and among justice reform advocates over the fate of what was meant to be legacy-defining achievement for Obama.

More than 8,000 cases out of more than 44,000 federal inmates who applied have yet to make it to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for review, lawyers involved in the program told Reuters. That is in addition to about 9,000 cases that are still pending at the DOJ, according to the department’s own figures.

Only 187 inmates have had their sentences commuted, far below the thousands expected by justice reform advocates and a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million people behind bars in the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate.

The administration said it wanted to decide on all the applications before Obama’s term ends next January, when the program will automatically expire.

A senior DOJ official told Reuters it is calling on the lawyers’ group — Clemency Project 2014 — to simply hand over the outstanding cases without further vetting, saying it is not working fast enough. So far, the group estimates it has handed over around 200 cases.

But criminal justice experts say the administration itself should bear much of the blame. The idea to tap pro-bono attorneys to help vet the cases originated with the DOJ, and critics say it should have prepared its own staff to handle the large volume of applications.

“It’s unfair to criticize the volunteer group that you asked to help,” said Rachel Barkow, a criminal law professor at New York University who has studied clemency in U.S. prisons.

She estimates that about 1,500 prisoners should be eligible for commutation, saying the 187 granted so far does not “fulfill the promise of the program.”

The DOJ declined to comment when asked for its response to such criticism.

The delays have left prisoners like Linda Byrnes, 69, in limbo.

“I thought clemency was for people like me,” Byrnes told Reuters through an electronic messaging system from a federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia.

Byrnes, who has spent 20 years in prison for distributing marijuana and has two years left on her sentence, was recently diagnosed with mouth cancer and has yet to hear whether she has been assigned a lawyer after submitting her application to Clemency Project in August 2014.

Obama, who has commuted more sentences than the past five presidents combined, has been a stern critic of harsh U.S. sentencing policies that he says have disproportionately burdened minorities.

Federal life sentences have fallen since Obama took office, from 280 in fiscal year 2009 to 153 in 2013, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. About three quarters of the sentences were given to minorities and most were for non-violent offences, the report said.

Clemency Project 2014 said it does not comment publicly on the individuals it represents.

The group vets the applications, writes the petitions and sends them to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which oversees all pardons and sentence commutations and makes recommendations for the president’s approval.

So far, 25,000 of 34,000 applications received by Clemency Project have been rejected for failing to meet the basic criteria – no record of violence, no significant ties to a gang or drug cartel, good behavior in prison and completion of at least 10 years of sentence. About 10,000 inmates did not go through the Clemency Project and either applied directly to DOJ or through a paid attorney.  “It really would be a sad state of affairs if individuals who had asked for a lawyer weren’t considered in time because their petitions never reached the pardon attorney’s office,” a DOJ official told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

(Graphic on the clemency bottleneck: http://tmsnrt.rs/1VThxVT)

“CRITICAL ROLE”

A large number of mostly unqualified applications, a shortage of lawyers and the complexity of the cases have slowed progress, said Cynthia Roseberry, project manager for Clemency Project 2014.

“There are a lot of gray areas,” said Roseberry, who estimates it takes 30 days for one lawyer to review one case on average. “We’ve got to unpack each of these applicants to see specifically what factors affect them… and so that takes a little more time.”

This includes finding pre-sentencing reports for each case, determining if the person would have received a shorter sentence under current law and reviewing prison behavior records.

Roseberry said the group was unaware of any request from the Justice Department to hand over the pending applications. Roseberry said the group’s initially slow pace has picked up in recent months.

The Justice Department declined to elaborate on its private communication with the lawyers.

The Pardon Attorney’s office has brought in personnel from other parts of the department to help to speed up reviews of petitions, the DOJ official said.

Roseberry said about 3,000 applicants still need to be assigned to a lawyer, and that it was not certain whether the group will be able to submit all of the applications it has received before Obama leaves office.

The group has more than 570 law firms and 30 law schools contributing to the effort.

Some rejected prisoners and those who have yet to hear a decision say they believe they would have had a better chance if they had sent their clemency petition directly to the government.

Josie Ledezma was sentenced to life for conspiracy to transport cocaine and applied for clemency through Clemency Project 2014. She said she did not hear from them for six months and later learned that her assigned lawyer had shut down her legal practice. In January, nearly one year after applying, she was told Clemency Project 2014 could not help her and encouraged her to apply directly.

“I wrote back and asked what was it that made me not qualify, but never got a response,” Ledezma told Reuters through an electronic messaging service for federal prisoners.

(Editing by Jason Szep and Stuart Grudgings)

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BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s carbon emissions, by far the world’s highest, may have peaked in 2014, according to a study published on Monday,  potentially putting Beijing under pressure to toughen its climate pledges.

China has promised to bring greenhouse gas emissions to a peak by “around 2030” as part of its commitments to a global pact to combat global warming, signed in Paris last year. Evidence that the country has peaked much earlier could lead to concerns that its existing targets are too easy.

The study, by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics, said that the 2030 peak was a very conservative estimate.

“It is quite possible that emissions will fall modestly from now on, implying that 2014 was the peak,” said the report, noting that recent data already showed that China’s emissions fell in 2015.

“If emissions do grow above 2014 levels … that growth trajectory is likely to be relatively flat, and a peak would still be highly likely by 2025,” the authors said.

Xie Zhenhua, China’s senior climate change envoy, said at a press conference on Monday that the country’s emissions had not peaked in 2014 and were still growing.

While total energy consumption rose 0.9 percent to 4.3 billion tonnes of standard coal in 2015, coal consumption fell 2.2 percent on a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on official data.

Chinese carbon experts said any fall in emissions in 2015 would be mainly due to a slowdown in China’s economy, and it was unlikely that emissions had peaked so early.

“I would like to believe that the peak will be around 2030, and if stricter policies for carbon reduction and some reforms in the way local leaders are evaluated on GDP growth, the peak will come in 2025,” said Xi Fengming, a carbon researcher with the China Academy of Sciences.

“But I do not think China has reached peak emissions in 2014,” he said.

The government said on Saturday that it would cap total energy consumption at 5 billion tonnes of standard coal by 2020, amounting to an increase of 16.3 percent from 2015.

It also said that it would cut carbon intensity – or the amount of CO2 emissions per unit of economic growth – by 18 percent over the 2016-2020 period.

The 2030 peak pledge was made in a joint declaration with the United States in late 2014. China also agreed it would make its best efforts to peak earlier.

One of the main bones of contention during the Paris climate talks was a regular five-year “stocktaking” process that would compel countries to adjust their targets in light of new economic or technological circumstances, with China arguing that any such adjustments must be voluntary.

U.S. climate change envoy, Todd Stern, said in Beijing last week that China could come under pressure to draw up tougher targets if it became clear that the existing goals were too easy.

“It will be up to the Chinese government whether they increase their target but there will obviously be a lot of international opinion looking forward to additional measures – whether it is China or anyone else,” he told reporters.

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Richard Pullin and Joseph Radford)

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BEIJING (Reuters) – China faces a tough battle to keep its economy growing by at least 6.5 percent over the next five years while creating more jobs and restructuring inefficient industries, Premier Li Keqiang said as he opened China’s annual parliament on Saturday.

Growth of 6.5 percent would mark a ripping pace for most countries but would be the slowest in China in a quarter century as world’s No. 2 economy grapples with gyrating financial markets, softening global trade and efforts to reduce environmental degradation.

“Our country’s development faces more and greater difficulties … so we must be prepared for a tough battle,” Li said.

In 2016, Beijing will aim for an economic growth rate between 6.5-7 percent, as Reuters previously reported, with a consumer inflation target of around 3 percent and money supply expansion of around 13 percent, according to a series of draft reports ahead of the opening of the 12-day parliament.

Many investors had been hoping China would post an aggressive target for fiscal spending to prop growth.

But the draft goal of running a fiscal deficit equivalent to 3 percent of GDP, while up from the previous year’s target of 2.3 percent, still disappointed some who had hoped for a number closer to 4.

“The budget deficit of 3 percent is not enough and should be increased,” economist and former central bank advisor Yu Yongding told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

Zhou Hao, economist at Commerzbank in Singapore, said the low figure may reflect concerns that a higher number would signal tolerance for another spree of debt-fueled growth such as that Beijing embarked on in 2009.

Moody’s recently downgraded the outlook for Chinese sovereign debt, a move Chinese regulators said was unjustified.

“The pressure from rating agencies could be something China has to consider, indicating that China is cautious on rolling out large infrastructure investment that could result in long-term debt issues,” Zhou said in a email.

KILL THE ZOMBIES

The reports provide a blueprint of China’s aspirations for the next five years across a range of sectors and measures.

They show Beijing trying to strike a balance between holding up growth and restructuring under-performing industries, where so-called “zombie firms” are responsible for much of the country’s corporate debt overhang left over from the 2009 stimulus.

In lead up to parliament, the government flagged major job losses in key coal and steel industries. Overall, China aims to lay off 5-6 million state workers over the next two to three years, two sources said, in Beijing’s boldest retrenchment program in almost two decades.

Li said the country will create 10 million new jobs, address zombie firms through mergers, bankruptcies and debt deals, and hold the urban registered unemployment rate below 4.5 percent in 2016.

Seeking to improve the environment, Beijing aims to cap total energy consumption at 5 billion tonnes of standard coal by 2020 and set targets for improving water efficiency.

China will increase military spending by 7.6 percent this year, its lowest increase in six years, as it pursues a modernization plan that will shrink staffing.

Unlike previous years, the documents did not mention a specific target for trade figures, having missed their goals repeatedly in recent years.

Weighed down by sluggish demand at home and abroad, industrial overcapacity and faltering investment, China’s economic growth slowed to 6.9 percent in 2015.

Economists widely expect it to cool further to a still-healthy rate of around 6.5 percent this year.

But slower growth raises the specter of social unrest, as the transformation from low-end manufacturing to high technology and services leads to rising structural unemployment.

FIXING MARKETS

Beijing hopes the country’s financial markets can play a stronger role in supporting the economic transformation.

“We will move forward with the reform of stock and bond markets and increase the level of rule of law in their development, promote the sound development of the multilevel capital market, and ensure that the proportion of direct financing is increased,” Li said.

The reassurance comes after Chinese markets erupted in 2015, with the stock indexes crashing, the yuan sliding sharply, and property markets in major cities spiked while smaller cities lagged.

Those moves prompted heavy-handed intervention from the government, leading some to question whether the Chinese Communist Party was capable of following through on its commitment to let markets play a “decisive role” in setting the price of assets.

Li said China will open its capital account in an “orderly manner” and continue to improve the exchange rate regime in 2016.

(Additional reporting by Kevin Yao, Sue-Lin Wong, Zhang Xiaochong, Adam Rose, Kathy Chen, Niu Shuping, and Michael Martina; Writing by Pete Sweeney; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

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By Jeff Mason and Alana Wise

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz  released tax returns for several years on Saturday in an effort to pressure billionaire front-runner Donald Trump to follow suit.

Rubio, whose financial decisions earlier in his life have come under scrutiny, paid $78,917 (£56,914) in taxes on $335,561 in gross income in 2014, along with his wife, Jeanette.

Cruz paid $389,124 in taxes on $1.2 million income in 2014 along with his wife, Heidi, who is employed by Goldman Sachs and currently on leave from the bank.

Rubio and Cruz, both first-term U.S. senators, trail Trump in national polls and are fighting to stop the political novice from locking up the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election after big wins in South Carolina and Nevada.

The real estate developer has said he will not release his returns until a routine audit has been completed.

“If Donald is embarrassed about his tax returns, it’s up to the voters to assess the facts. It’s time to stop delaying and come clean with the American people,” Cruz said in a statement.

Rubio released his last five years of federal returns on Saturday, while Cruz submitted four years.

Rubio said Trump, who has promoted his success as a businessman as one of his key qualifications for the presidency, may not be as wealthy as he suggests.

“I think part of it is he’s not as rich as he says he is,” Rubio said while campaigning in Georgia.

Rubio and his wife have only one debt: the mortgage on their house, the campaign said, seeking to emphasize that the senator had moved past previous financial woes.

Rubio often refers to the nearly $150,000 in student loan debt he incurred by the time he graduated from law school, paid off with proceeds made from his 2012 autobiography.

He also faced questions for struggling for several months in 2008 to pay the mortgage on his $384,000 South Florida home, despite a $300,000 salary from his job at a Miami law firm.

Rubio also drew scrutiny for liquidating a retirement account to cover expenses, such as home repairs and school fees. That was reflected in $68,241 of income as part of his 2014 return.

During his 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate, which followed his stint as a Florida state lawmaker from 2005-2006, Rubio had to defend his use of a Republican Party-issued American Express credit card for more than $7,200 personal expenses, which he later paid back.

Trump has accused Rubio of living beyond his means.

Rubio’s adjusted gross income in 2010 was $183,826 in 2010. It spiked to $929,439 in 2012, when his book “An American Son: A Memoir” was published.

“There is no doubt the Rubio family has come a long way from the days when their largest monthly expense was a check to (student loan provider) Sallie Mae and checks were sent in the mail to pay bills with the hope the payment did not arrive before the next paycheck was deposited into their account,” Rubio’s campaign said.

Cruz’s wealth, with $1.2 million in combined income with his wife in 2014, placed them well above the $423,000 threshold of the top 1 percent of earners in Texas, according to a 2015 Economic Policy Institute report.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Alana Wise; Editing by Leslie Adler and Mary Milliken)

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s political rhetoric is “racist,” and evocative of Adolf Hitler, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told reporters at an event in Mexico City on Saturday.

“This logic of praising the white supremacy is not just anti-immigration,” Calderon said. “He is acting and speaking out against immigrants that have a different skin colour than he does, it is frankly racist and [he is] exploiting feelings like Hitler did in his time,” Calderon said.

Trump has accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the U.S. border and has said he will make Mexicans pay for a wall on the border.

Felipe Calderon was president of Mexico from 2006-12.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Calderon’s predecessor, also compared Trump to Hitler in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN.

“He reminds me of Hitler,” Fox told Cooper on Friday.

(Reporting by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein and Luis Rojas, editing by G Crosse)

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